by Hettie Ivers
I crossed my arms over my chest and assumed a nonchalant expression, hoping beyond hope that he wasn’t referring to what I feared (knew) he was. “What are you talking about?”
“Your shift, Avery.” Alcaeus’s deep voice echoed in the sparsely furnished, dimly lit entryway, making his words sound harsh. As he turned to face me, I was sure I caught both horror and disgust in his features, confirming what I’d been dreading most. “That was—Jesus, what the fuck was that back there?”
Warmth flooded my cheeks. I wasn’t much of a blusher, which made my reaction all the more embarrassing. I pressed the tip of my tongue to the roof of my mouth to stem the irrational tide of emotion that rushed forth at his criticism. It was a stupid, petty thing to be embarrassed about. I told myself I was just feeling emotional from the adrenaline rush letdown.
“What? You know I don’t have the luxury of disappearing and conjuring my clothing like you guys can,” I said defensively. “If it’s not practical or convenient to change and preserve my clothes, I avoid shifting for fights unless it’s an emergency and I absolutely have to. Otherwise, I’d waste most of my life running around naked and stealing clothes to wear.” It sounded rational and plausible enough to me.
“We said we’d conjure new clothes for you,” Kai inserted snidely, like the dick that he was. “Multiple times. And for future reference, an attack by forty-some Romanian werelocks and werewolves against the two and a half of us constitutes a fucking emergency.”
“I’m not a half, asshole. I’m an excellent fighter in human form!” My shouted retort sounded painfully loud to my own ears as my words bounced and echoed. I flicked my eyes from Chaos’s concerned ones to glance around at the marble entryway walls and floors surrounding us before landing a glare at Kai. “Where are we?”
I turned to look behind me when I realized my words were still echoing there, and found an enormous, darkened room with massive floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a great expanse of a familiar city’s nighttime skyline that was most definitely not Denver’s.
“Welcome to Al’s penthouse in Tribeca.”
I spun back around. “You teleported me to New York?”
Kai physically recoiled as my volume reached a hysterical level.
“I need to be in Colorado. Send me back right now.”
Kai gave me that bland, patronizing smile I’d come to despise so well in the past two days. “Good luck with that.”
“Kai, leave us,” Alcaeus ordered.
“But it’s just getting good,” he protested with a dry laugh that was entirely at my expense. “Ms. Haskie is about to explain why she shifts like an epileptic.”
“Kai.”
“I’m hoping her explanation includes how she managed to survive a rogue werewolf attack as well as her initial transformation, given the fact she was a human with zero family history of any werewolf DNA. No doubt this shifting seizure defect is related.”
“That’s enough, Kai.”
“I don’t need to explain anything to you, and I give zero fucks what you think of me, my DNA, or my shifting ability.” I knew I shouldn’t let Kai rattle me. But the expanding pity and resignation I glimpsed in Alcaeus’s eyes hurt worse than the horror and disgust I’d convinced myself had been there a moment before.
“You don’t need to explain anything to Kai. But you are going to explain it to me.” Alcaeus’s low voice had taken on an angry, imperious Alpha quality that sent an unbidden shiver through me. “Leave us, Kai.”
For the first time, I wasn’t sure I wanted Kai to leave me alone with Chaos.
“I didn’t sign up for this, Al. Either she learns to take orders and to shift like a normal wolf or I let her die the next time we’re ambushed like that.”
“There won’t be a next time.” Alcaeus’s calm, cold words rang with such finality that for a paranoid moment I wondered if he meant to kill me himself.
“She’s a handicap enough as it is in a fight being a common werewolf. We don’t need the added distraction of her trying to fight in human form like a flashing neon target getting us both killed.”
“I said it won’t happen again. Leave us.”
“Gladly.” Kai’s eyes passed over me with unmasked scorn. “I’ll go report the incident to Milena.”
“No. You’ll go upstairs, get cleaned up, and report to no one,” Alcaeus told him.
Geez, this place had an upstairs?
Kai appeared stunned by Alcaeus’s quiet command. His mouth opened and closed like a fish before sputtering, “But the pack needs to be informed of the attack. Milena and Alex just met with the Vasile pack a month ago. They formed an alliance. Yet they’re obviously in league with Gabriel. This ambush tonight means war.”
“We’ll inform them later.”
“But they could be—”
“Later.”
As he made to storm past Alcaeus, Kai stopped and leaned in to his friend, hissing just loudly enough for me to hear, “Fuck her, bite her, fucking strangle her for all I care. Bring her to heel or get her the hell out of your fucking system, Al. Because it’s going to come down to her or me.”
After Kai’s departure, Chaos and I stood and stared at one another as a glacial two minutes ticked by on the antique grandfather clock adorning the foyer.
“Your best friend is a dick.” It was probably the wrong thing to say to break the silence, but I needed to get it off my chest. And Alcaeus’s uncharacteristically quiet, cool demeanor was making me anxious.
His nostrils flared. “That dick saved your life tonight.”
I swallowed the childish retort I yearned to speak. “You’re right.” It burned like acid in my throat to admit it, but I knew it was true. “I owe you both for saving my life. T-thank you,” I managed to force out.
He shook his head, his gaze falling to the floor between us. “You owe Kai. Not me. I couldn’t have saved you with that many werelocks attacking at once. You’d have been dead without Kai’s ability to fight and to teleport you out of harm’s way.”
Great. I’d damaged his male ego as well as his hero-complex pride, strained his relationship with his long-time friend and Beta to the breaking point, and almost gotten him killed tonight. I was on a roll.
I was also dirty, exhausted, and emotionally spent. But lashing out at Kai had been the wrong call. I needed to get back to Sloane. And that was best accomplished by appeasing the werelocks presently holding me captive—particularly the one upstairs who hated me and wanted me gone. Who also happened to have the ability to teleport me back to Denver in a pinch.
“I—I feel terrible about all this,” I announced with what I thought passed fairly well for sincerity. “I should go apologize and thank Kai,” I suggested, moving swiftly in the same direction Kai had gone.
“No.” Alcaeus’s hand shot out and imprisoned my wrist.
Oh, boy.
“You and I are far from done here.”
He led me from the foyer past the main room with all the windows, down a hallway, and into a fancy, open sitting room. Soft lighting gradually illuminated the space upon our entry.
“Sit.” He released my wrist and pointed to a modern, minimalist-looking, dark leather tufted sofa.
I sat.
He walked over to a little standing bar shelf in the corner and poured himself a full glass of caramel-colored liquid from an unmarked crystal decanter. He downed it like a shot in one gulp then chased it with another before refilling the same glass, walking over, and extending it to me in offering. I happily snatched it from his hand and drank it down in one pull before he could even tell me what it was.
I gasped and coughed as the liquid burned a hole straight to my stomach. “That’s not scotch! What the hell is that?”
“Werelock scotch.”
“You trying to kill me?”
The sound of his soft laughter made me instantly feel better. There was something so natural about the way Chaos laughed. His angry, cool demeanor in the foyer had felt all wrong.
“I’m trying to get you relaxed enough to let me teach you how to shift,” he admitted.
“Nice buzzkill. In that case, you’d better bring the whole bottle over.”
Ten minutes and another two glasses of “werelock scotch” later, my vision had gone a little blurry and I couldn’t quite feel my face anymore as I sat slumped sideways on the sofa next to Alcaeus, blatantly staring at his lips as he explained how my inner wolf was supposed to lead the shift, not me.
“I suspect what’s happening is that you’re overthinking things, honey.”
I liked when he called me honey—although I’d never admit it.
“See, you’re trying to control each stage of the shift with your human mind”—he pressed his fore and middle finger gently to my temple—“rather than giving in to your wolf’s instincts and letting her shift freely.”
I leaned into his touch as his fingers stroked downward, tucking my hair behind my ear. He was disheveled and dirty from our battle with the Romanian wolves, and still he smelled divine.
“So you’re making it harder than it needs to be, understand? But it’s not your fault or anything to be embarrassed about. Oftentimes young werewolves will pick up and cling to ineffectual habits that they learn early on. It’s especially problematic when there’s not a reliable elder in a pack to assist new wolves their first time shifting.”
My eyelids fluttered shut as his fingers curled behind my neck and began to rub back and forth. Oh, that felt nice.
“Avery, honey, will you talk to me about what happened the first time you shifted?”
What would it hurt to share just a little? I needed his help. It was essential to my daughter’s survival that I learn how to shift right. How would I teach Sloane how to shift one day when her time came if I didn’t know how to do it right myself?
“Well, I was in a cage in a basement. I had my only friend—a human guy I’ve known for years—watch from outside the cage with a tranq gun aimed at me in case I went berserk.”
“Jesus.” His fingers stilled against my neck.
“We made the most of it … ’cause I didn’t really think I’d live through it. He told me stories about comic book superheroes and villains to pass the time before things got intense. Oh, and we had a tripod with a video camera set up … you know, to record the transformation for scientific research purposes and all.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
I cracked one lazy eye open, then the other, and sighed at the look on his face. “You’re disgusted by me again.”
“No, I’m not.” His jaw was taut; lines of stress marred his forehead. “What do you mean by again? I have never been disgusted by you, Avery, and I never will be. I’m upset and disgusted by the circumstances surrounding your first shift. You really didn’t have any werewolf assist you your first time? Just some human who didn’t know any more than you did about what was going to happen next?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m so sorry.” His big hand cupped my jaw as troubled hazel eyes roamed my face. “I can’t believe—can’t imagine—how you survived that. It’s unheard of, honey.”
I swallowed and shrugged it off as I told myself he was more than concerned. He was suspicious. And he was still my enemy. “Wasn’t your fault; it all worked out okay.”
His eyes on me were intense. “Go on. Please?”
“Keep massaging my neck,” I ordered, hoping to lighten the mood.
He cracked a weak smile and resumed his ministrations.
“Not much else to tell. The last three days were the worst—where it felt like my bones were melting and my organs were exploding. And then the actual transformation was pretty fucking gross. Wyatt threw up a few times during the final stages,” I recounted with a humorless chuckle. “He’s never done well with blood and gore. But he stuck by me the whole time.”
Alcaeus made a subtle “hmph” sound and mumbled sarcastically, “Sounds like how a guy named ‘Wyatt’ might handle it.”
Hellfire. I’d slipped up and said Wyatt’s name. That werelock scotch was straight-up moonshine.
I was beating myself up while simultaneously reassuring myself that it wasn’t as if I’d dropped Wyatt’s last name—there were far too many guys named Wyatt in the world for Alcaeus to ever connect it to my Wyatt—when suddenly, Alcaeus’s fingers froze against my neck. His whole body went stiff as a board and his heart rate accelerated. And he smelled …
Upset.
Really upset.
“Ah, God.” He withdrew his hand and stood up. He began pacing. “Oh, my God, I’m an idiot.” He crossed to the bar shelf, poured himself another drink, and downed it.
He resumed pacing.
“You tried to kill me,” he said more to himself than to me. “You came into the bathroom to kill me. Your gun was already aimed at me when I first turned around and saw you.”
What? The hell? Was he just realizing this now?
After all that had happened between us since, now he was upset that I’d shot him five times?
Avery
“You don’t follow orders,” Alcaeus continued talking to himself, tugging at the back of his neck. “It’s like your wolf can’t even feel my commands.”
“It’s nothing personal.”
He shook his head. “You have no pack. You’ve been run off by every pack you’ve ever tried to join.”
I didn’t like where this line of revelation appeared to be headed. I shrugged, even as my breath quickened. “I’ve always been a loner-ish type.”
“But you’re not a rogue.” His hazel eyes caught mine. “You can connect.” He licked his bottom lip. “Really, really well in fact.” His voice lowered and his eyes darkened as he said it. “And you bit me.” He took a step toward me. “Your wolf claimed mine.”
Where was he going with this? His behavior was making me nervous. I was too tired to deal. And suddenly very horny.
“I—I think I should go upstairs now and apologize to Kai,” I announced, standing up from the couch. “I need to shower, too. I’ll just go do that as well.” And masturbate.
“Sit down.”
I sat.
He came to stand directly in front of me. A certain hardness and determination had settled over his features, raising my hackles. “Kai says that you’re on multiple rogue hunters’ hit lists throughout the U.S. because you’ve been tracking and assassinating rogue hunters for the past decade. Is that true?”
He was throwing off that hardass Alpha mojo of his again. It hit me like a sucker punch to my clit.
“I haven’t killed that many,” I said with a huff.
He nodded slowly, his expression stern as his eyes traveled over me. I couldn’t tell if he was gearing up to lecture me or fuck me.
“And you survived a rogue attack. That’s how you were infected with werewolf venom, correct?”
I nodded. There was no point in denying it. I knew he’d heard it from Clifton and the Highlands Ranch pack already. Kai had gathered more than enough information on me to confirm it as well. And there was little to no chance Kai hadn’t already shared that information with Chaos.
“I need to know how you survived the rogue attack.”
I swallowed. “Um, well, there were four of us. I managed to grab a rifle while the rogue attacked the other three campers. I got lucky.”
“Why’d you just do that?”
“What? Grab a rifle?”
“No. Lie to me.”
“I didn—”
“I can smell it loud and clear when you lie, Avery. You aren’t adept at masking the scent of it. At all.”
Well, I’d never had to worry about it before.
“And why did you refer to them as ‘campers’ a moment ago,” he continued to interrogate me, “as if they were strangers who happened to be at the same campsite as you?”
Yep. Kai had told him plenty.
“Because people who camp are called campers,” I returned tartly. “In fact, the police report, park ranger report, and
all the newspapers referred to them as ‘campers,’ too. The headlines literally read: ‘Three campers found mauled to death in the White Mountains.’ ”
“But they were your friends who died. Your fiancé.”
The last part seemed harder for him to say.
“And they were also campers.” I contended. “Labeling them ‘campers’ doesn’t marginalize them in my heart, Chaos. Sure, maybe it compartmentalizes them a bit. Maybe I do it to avoid the innate emotional response tied to words like ‘fiancé’ and ‘best friend,’ but that doesn’t mean I’m pretending to myself that they weren’t important to me, or that I love them any less today than I did that day that I lost them.”
“I didn’t say that.” In one fluid movement, he’d invaded my space and was leaning over me—a hand braced on either side of me against the back of the couch—his muscular frame and delicious masculine scent scrambling my senses all over again.
“You didn’t have to.” I pushed my palm against his rock-solid chest, trying to put more distance between us. But his huge, hard form didn’t budge.
Fuck, the man was hot. And confusing. Why did he have to poke at me like this?
“Look, I don’t know what you’re getting at here, or what you expect me to say. I’m not perfect, all right? My shifting skills aren’t the most pretty or graceful. But I’m not broken. Stop looking for ways to fix me.”
“That’s not what I’m doing, Avery.”
“Yes, you are. Know how I know?” Crap. My voice had gone breathy.
“How?” His tongue swept his generous bottom lip as his hungry eyes feasted on my own mouth. His nostrils flared, and I knew he scented how wet I’d become.
“Because I know all about trying to fix people,” I continued with a brittle laugh. “I know all about trying to save people, too. And just so we’re clear, fixing and rescuing other people is a you problem.”
“I know it is, honey.”
“I mean it’s a me problem. And a you problem. Whatever. You get what I mean.” I was nervous-rambling now.
