“The blackbox system that you should be here installing with me.”
Yeah, Rafes had a point. As the lead engineer on the project, it was inexcusable for Nago not to be there to install the technology that would probably define his legacy. And as a brother, bailing on Rafes was a shit move of the most unsupportive kind.
“Listen, Rafes. I wish I could be there, but—”
“Do you know how far Mom is up my ass? Her latest protest is all over the WolfNet, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to walk up the mountain tomorrow and find her chained to a tree or something crazy like that!”
“Yeah, probably,” Nago agreed with a sympathetic wince. Their mom had gone into full-on battle mode after Rafes had announced the project’s start date. She’d led protests across the nation, the biggest and most intense of which had been at the North Dakota kingdom gate where the first black box would be installed.
“Great, glad we’re in agreement about that. I’m sure you can also agree it would be better to have you here by my side to do battle against her. Especially since you’re her favorite.”
“I’m not her favorite,” Nago answered, completely deadpan. “She just likes me more than you and Knud.”
As usual, Rafes didn’t laugh at his joke. “Listen, I’m going to level with you. Knud is still M.I.A. Dad’s staying out of it. And you know the twins are, like, mini-Alishas. I could use your support.”
“Yeah, I get it, man. And I wish I could be there,” Nago answered.
“Don’t wish,” Rafes all but growled, baring his teeth. “Get your ass to Tallahassee, and I’ll have a drone meet you.”
The thing inside him growled low at the mere suggestion of leaving his she-wolf behind. Of letting her be mated by another male while he was off playing the dutiful little brother.
“I can’t,” Nago answered. “I’ve got to see this through.”
“Why?” Rafes demanded. Then before Nago could answer, he said, “You’re acting crazy. You know that, right? This is all going to blow up in your face. And when it does, Dad’s going to have to come down there and clean up your mess. Again—even though you’re supposed to be your own alpha now.”
Strange, Rafes was only older than Nago and Knud by an untimed minute or two, but at moments like this, Nago felt very much like the younger brother in their relationship.
“Look, I won’t call Dad. If this blows up in my face, I’ll fix it. I promise.”
“How can you promise that?” Rafes demanded, his voice cold and clipped. “Last time—”
“Rafes—I know what happened last time. I know I scared you guys, but…I’m better now. And I’ve got to work this out.”
“Why—?” his brother started to ask again.
Only to have Nago shoot back, “Fuck the why of it, Rafes! Do you think I’d be doing this if there were any other way?”
Rafes went silent for a long time before he finally said, “Fine. But know this, Nago. I am not Dad. I will not drop everything and rush down there to rescue you when all this blows up in your face. I’ve got bigger shit on my plate than whatever drama you’ve got going on with that she-wolf.”
On that note, Rafes ended the ell, having apparently had it with his brother.
Nago couldn’t blame him.
Rafe Sr. was particularly close with his oldest triplet, so Rafes had probably heard the full story of what happened in Tallahassee. Dad had never told Nago any of what went down after they pulled him out of that hotel room, just that “the she-wolf didn’t take the news well.” Which was probably an understatement if her reaction to seeing him here tonight was any indication.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
The words lifted Nago’s head, but he knew better than to turn around right away. First, he put his wolf in a very deliberate chokehold. And only then did he turn to face Eric Maccon, the youngest prince of Ohio.
But getting a hold of the wolf didn’t help much. Even his human had trouble not going after the smug-faced prince.
Just for wanting her.
Just for touching her.
Just for fucking looking at her.
So Nago remained motionless, not trusting himself to say anything to the wolf who’d seemed a-OK with putting his girlfriend up for Chivaree.
“I’m not sure what the history is between you and Halle. She says it’s nothing. That you’re nothing to her now, but…” Eric glared at Nago across the dark space between them. “You’re aware she doesn’t want you here, yes?”
Yes, Nago was aware of this…and suddenly he realized there was something he could trust himself to say to the Ohio prince.
12
“I’m asking you nicely, one last time, to go.”
It wasn’t an excuse to talk to him, Halle told herself the next morning as she stood on the other side of the cage Nago had been voluntarily locked in earlier.
The large metal eight-by-eight cages were custom-made for Chivarees back in the 70s when they reached the height of their popularity. And over a half century later, they looked it. From a distance, the cages appeared to be painted dark red, but that was just the thick layer of rust covering the surfaces. The cages also had a strange blue mold growing in the corners. The kind that made Halle want to stop the proceedings and put in a call to the CDC to make sure the kingdom wouldn’t be sued for exposing the Chivaree bidders to some type of biotoxin.
But in Nago’s case, she didn’t feel sorry for him at all. She just wanted him to go.
“You won’t win,” she informed him. “You’re just going to embarrass yourself. And me.”
Much like yesterday, he didn’t respond. But unlike yesterday, she could feel him disagreeing over their mate bond. Feel his resolve to win, as if the determination was her own.
God, she couldn’t wait to get rid of this link once and for all. Just a few more hours, she promised herself. And then the bond would be transferred to Eric.
Speaking of which…
Halle stomped away from Nago’s Chivaree cage over to Eric’s. Unlike Nago who’d just been standing in his cage looking cocky as hell, Eric was cycling through what looked like a Krav Maga routine. He wore fatigues and a white tee, like a soldier preparing for battle, and had a crossbow attached to his back, since a bow and arrow were the only weapons besides a tranq gun that Chivaree chasers were allowed. She supposed the king who came up with this ritual wanted it to feel potentially lethal, with entertaining fights among the contestants, without it turning into a complete bloodbath.
“Hi!” she said, raising her voice a few octaves and giving him a beatific smile. “You look Kravnificent!”
“Good one, dear,” Eric said, pointing a finger at her as he continued with his routine.
And she ignored the little spike of irritation that sometimes popped off in the back of her mind when he said something like “good one” or “oh, how funny” instead of, you know, laughing at her jokes.
“How does he feel about you talking to me before you went over to talk to him?” Nago’s voice suddenly piped up inside her head.
Instead of giving him the satisfaction of an answer, Halle said in a voice pitched loud enough for Nago to hear. “I tried to convince him to leave. But he’s obviously a psycho. I’m so sorry you have to put up with this.”
“Really, dear, it’s no problem,” Eric answered, seemingly more interested in finishing up his routine than having this conversation with her.
“And what’s up with him calling you ‘dear.’ What is he, like, 80?”
Eric was twenty-eight. A year younger than her. But she refused to give Nago the satisfaction of an answer. Especially one delivered over a mate bond she wished to God had never happened.
“But I know you’ll win,” she assured Eric.
“Me too,” Eric answered with a tight smile.
“You know, you should try beating me up again when I catch you. That was kind of hot. I mean, not as hot as gummi bears. You got any? Could use the sugar right about now.”
Halle
fought the urge to scream at Nago to get the hell out of her head. Because no, she didn’t have any gummi bears. Mainly because he’d ruined them for her. They used to be her favorite treat, but she hadn’t been able to so much as look at them since what happened in Tallahassee—
A familiar tingling sensation cut off her bitter thoughts. And a flush came over her body with a suddenness that was surprising but not unexpected. Twelve hours at least and twenty-four hours at most, the doctor had told her when he gave her the pill yesterday morning.
Suddenly Eric wasn’t so consumed with his Krav Maga routine anymore. He came to a standstill, nostrils flaring as the scent of her heat filled the air.
And as if to announce what had just happened, there soon came a great cheer from the crowd…along with a series of loud metal bangs. BANG! BANG! BANG!
Not Eric, she quickly realized. He still stood before her, his pupils dilated. His face stark with intent.
No, it was another wolf. Another wolf who was—based on all the noise—throwing his massive body against his cage’s rusty bars in an “I don’t give a damn about lockjaw” bid to get out.
Halle didn’t have to look to know who was causing all the clamor.
Nago. Trying to get to her.
“Run!” she heard a lady in white call out to her in the distance.
That’s right. She had to run, she remembered belatedly. It was as if her mind was trudging through a sea of sludge while thoughts slipped through her fingers like so much sand.
But…twenty minutes. She only had twenty minutes before the wolves would be uncaged and allowed to come after her. But that was okay…because there was a plan. A good one… Wait, what was it again?
The cabin!
She grabbed on to the thought like it was a piece of driftwood in a roiling sea. And she ran north, toward the river.
13
Who are you?
Samuel Odessi.
Punch straight to the gut. Which like most violence was worse than the stuff you see on T.V. The pain sliced out in all directions, and his stomach rolled. He didn’t throw up this time. Mainly because there was nothing left to throw up. But he’d take his pride points where he could get them.
“What’s your name?” his torturer asked again. Accent thick with menace.
“Sam—”
This time he was only allowed one syllable of the carefully prepared lie before another punch came. You’d think he’d have become numb to the pain by now, but no…by the Fenrir wolf, that gut punch hurt like a mother fucker, too.
He coughed, tasting blood. And then concentrated with all his might on not violating the first rule of Wolf Force. The one that had been drilled into him the moment he, his brothers, and a handful of other 18-year-old wolves from across the nation had been sequestered from their human counterparts.
The first rule of Wolf Force: don’t let anyone know you’re a wolf. Yes, seriously. Despite the obvious label, not shifting was their prime directive. They were to stay hidden and spread the Marine’s larger than life ethos without ever letting anyone know what they were.
Day three after his capture. Maybe. Probably not. They’d fed him so little, who knew how much time had passed. A baby was crying in the next room. Its wailing sliced through his mind, worse than the ropes at his wrists.
“What is your name?” the voice asked again. Clipped and efficient. Like an administrator who needed to fill out a form.
“Somebody feed that baby.” His voice sounded funny, he realized. Jumbled like Rocky’s at the end of the movie. But he’d won nothing. Hadn’t gone any distance. Just taken the hits.
Hits that could easily be healed by shifting.
Don’t shift…don’t shift…don’t shift… He thought of Halle. Visualized calling her and hearing her sweet voice when all of this was over. He fixated on her. And suddenly his vision of her held a baby in her arms. It was crying. Their baby was crying. “Babe…” he said. “The baby needs to be fed. Feed the baby.”
Halle only looked at him sadly.
Finally, the baby in the next room stopped crying.
And then his torturer punched him in the face.
“Lookit her run!” someone somewhere he couldn’t see called out.
Nago watched Halle sprint away. Watched her disappear past the tree line, leaving a trail of her scent behind.
Well, his human watched her go. The wolf who had completely taken over his body was too busy throwing himself against the bars to track anything.
This would be the hardest part, he realized, separating himself from the wolf the way Grady had taught him to. Not shifting. Going after her, but not letting the wolf take over. Dark memories swirled in his head. The growl of the wolf. The cry of that baby.
Florida. The hotel room.
He remembered being so surprised when she’d taken him in her hand. Stroked him. Made him forget what happened in Alarus for five minutes. The longest he’d gone in months. For those five minutes, she’d given him what he needed without knowing how much he needed it. Soothed the beast he’d been trying to keep at bay without saying a word.
Cleaning her up afterward had felt like a form of gratitude. And he remembered thinking that after he was done cleaning her right hand, he’d go over to his duffel bag to retrieve the ring he had hidden there and put it on her left hand.
He knew he should ask her father’s permission first. Mississippi was old-fashioned. You couldn’t even fly a drone over the state without worrying about one of those redneck assholes trying to shoot it down. So he’d planned to wait until tomorrow; until he could speak with her father face to face. But fuck it. He knew what he wanted, who he wanted to spend the rest of his life with—and he wanted Halle to know it, too.
Later, what would hurt Nago the most was the optimism he’d had then. The absolute belief that because he loved Halle with everything he had, they could be together. That the thing residing inside him hadn’t completely ruined him and he had a real chance at happiness after all.
He believed this for a full minute while he cleaned her hands.
Then her heat scent filled up the room.
Just like it seemed to fill up the entire world now.
It had surprised him back then, but now the scent was familiar after ten years of being haunted by it. However, this time he was stuck in a cage. Separate but thrall to the wolf. Feeling like he was hovering somewhere above it all as the wolf lost its goddamn mind.
Disengage…disengage…disengage. That was the only way to keep himself from turning before the twenty minutes were up.
An electronic sound rent the air, and all the cage doors slid open. Thank fuck! Nago braced himself to re-enter his body, to take back the reins so he could track Halle over their mate bond. Get to her first before anyone else could.
But then he saw the other male wolves running in the direction she had gone. North. And when he tried to follow…
Pain. Pain that registered to his human. Because his cage door was still closed.
What the…?
“Oh no,” a voice said outside his cage. “Looks like there’s something wrong with the unlocking mechanism on this one. Sorry about that. But not a thing to worry about, I got the key right here. Just hold on, I know you’re eager.”
Halle’s father, nebbish and squat, appeared in front of his cage door. He reached down to his belt and made a big show of trying to find the key on the loop.
First, he tried a small key that came nowhere close to fitting. “Oops, that’s not it,” he said.
It wasn’t the next two either.
Or the two after that.
Maybe only one minute passed. Or it could have been ten. But it didn’t matter because Nago felt every second like a liter of blood dripping from his veins.
Don’t kill him, he prayed to the seething wolf. Don’t kill him. She won’t forgive me if you kill him.
The crowd had turned against the King of Mississippi now. Booing, with a few chanting to let the boy out.
The King chuckled, like the bumbling fool he’d convinced them all he was.
But Nago wasn’t convinced. At all.
The locked cage had nothing to do with the failings of an oafish King. And everything to do with strategic planning. Yes, this unworthy alpha knew exactly what he was doing.
And by the time Halle’s father released Nago, he was no longer in danger of being killed by Nago’s wolf. Because Nago was too far gone in the memory of his mate’s heat scent to act on his rage and frustration. He burst out of the cage as soon as the king unlocked it.
Only to stop when he reached the border of the woods. Several expletives echoed in the trees surrounding him when he realized…
Halle’s heat scent had completely faded. And as for the mating bond, that familiar tingle had disappeared as well.
14
The waiting was horrible. Halle’s heart beat with the thunder of a thousand numerical typepad clicks as she lay on the bed of her ancestor’s cabin. Waiting for Eric.
Despite the already sweltering summer heat, Halle wore thick sweatpants over a pair of leggings she’d placed in the cabin last night. She’d also positioned herself under a sheet with two thick quilts on top. All to contain her heat smell. She’d run as far as she could in twenty minutes. To the cabin that had belonged to that long ago ancestor on her mother’s side.
As a child, this cabin had been Halle’s refuge. And unlike her bedroom at the kingdom house, this place didn’t take heroic effort to keep up. Everything from the walls to the furniture had been made by hand over two hundred years ago. So that meant everything could be kept up by hand, too.
It was peaceful here, and even now she could hear birdsong outside the windows along with the high-pitched drone of cicadas and the babble of the river. It had always been the perfect refuge. And now it had become the perfect place to hide.
But the quilts covering her body hurt. As did the clothes. Having anything resting against her body other than a male was akin to torture. The urge to throw off the blankets, and tear off her clothes was almost overwhelming. And she wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold out.
NAGO, His Mississippi Queen: 50 Loving States, Mississippi (The Brothers Nightwolf Trilogy, Book 1) Page 7
