Forbidden Alliance: A Werewolf's Tale (Forbidden Alliance Trilogy)

by Ayusso, Danae

  “I will see what I can do,” I dryly commented, pulling Jay Dee away from him.

  She is mine! I mentally snarled before shaking my head, trying to clear the suddenly possessive thoughts from my mind.

  “How was school?” I asked, trying to think of anything but the unfamiliar thoughts that were, once again, consuming my mind. I honestly didn’t care about school or anything else, I was more concerned with the sudden possessiveness that I found myself feeling towards the beautiful young woman I couldn’t stop thinking about, however small talk kept humans at ease, and my anything but normal behavior was making it unbelievably comfortable for her.

  We made ourselves comfortable in the parlor, and I softly growled under my breath when Steffen went to sit next to Jay Dee. He cocked an eyebrow, confused by my actions, but Abigail seemingly understood when I did not, and pushed him back on the chaise across from us and crawled up on his lap.

  “School?” Steffen asked unsure, still looking at me curiously, his eyes going between Jay Dee and I many times.

  “Yes, school,” I repeated, my top lip snarling.

  Jay Dee weaved her fingers through mine and held my hand.

  Instantly I was at ease and I turned to regard her and smiled when our eyes met.

  “It was strange,” Steffen said—I didn’t miss his underlying statement. “After the first hour, nearly a quarter of the students disappeared and didn’t return. Something about someone was missing, but I can’t be sure. It was very hush-hush.”

  Jay Dee groaned and buried her face in our hands since I would let go of hers. “This is so stupid!” she said.

  Bloody hell, I will let go of your hand. You do not have to get narked about it!

  She looked at me with pleading eyes.

  Huh? Oh shite.

  Realization washed over me before I said or did something even more daft than I already had that day.

  “Jay Dee’s adoptive parents are the alphas of the pack,” I explained. “They were looking for her. Duckie, do you need to phone your parents before an all out war begins?” I asked.

  She groaned and nodded.

  “It is all right, Duckie. They will not attack,” I assured her.

  Honestly, it was a lie. I hadn’t a clue if they would attack or not, and since Toran was away on business, there was no one to speak on the vampires behalf with standing in the werewolf community.

  Before I could get my mobile, Mum and an unfamiliar man walked into the parlor.

  “Jay Dee, what in the hell do you think you’re doing?” the man, correction, werewolf, demanded.

  “Hey Daddy,” she greeted with a raised eyebrow. “I skipped school and work, and went swimming.”

  He started yelling at her in an unfamiliar language and she yelled back much the same.

  It was as if we were watching Lummi Tribe soap operas without subtitles. I hadn’t a clue what they were talking about, however I had an idea; her werewolf father was narked that she had spent the day with a vampire boy.

  “Stop,” she yelled loudly. “You are being rude. We are in their home, thus you will show respect by using your inside voice.”

  He glared at her and his nostrils flared.

  Jay Dee ignored him. “Daddy, this is Mr. Tanis Ashton, and these are his cousins: Steffen and his wife, Abigail. Tanis, this is my father, Chief Reign Lightfoot.”

  I stood. “Sir,” I said with a nod and offered him my hand but he growled at me, and Jay Dee growled back at him.

  “We are leaving,” he growled through clenched teeth.

  “Now that we look like white trash trailer park rejects who just performed a live taping of Jerry Springer in their living room, you think?” she said, rolling her eyes and I laughed, most of the vampires in the room did. She turned to me. “Tanis, thanks for listening to me bitch for hours today, when no one else would.” She glared at her father when she said the latter. “I had fun, and I hope to see you around sometime.”

  “Of course, would you care for a ride to school?” I offered with smile.

  She smiled just as wide back. “I will see you bright and early in the morning.”

  Reign grabbed her by the arm and pulled her towards the door.

  Steffen and Abigail grabbed a hold of me when I went after him, to address his roughness with someone so delicate and beautiful, but they kept me from following them out the front door. Once it slammed behind them, and the loud growl of Reign’s truck was far in the distance, they let go of me.

  “Thank you,” I mumbled under my breath.

  They both nodded and looked at me curiously.

  “That was not the ending to the day I was hoping for,” I admitted. “However, the day went better than I could have ever imagined,” I said, turning to them with a smile and they both laughed.

  Next time no one will stop me.

  Dad continued yelling at me the entire drive home, through the house, and up to my room, where I slammed the door, locking it behind me.

  “Was it not you who said to play nice with the vampires? Was it not you who told me to go out and have some fun and try new things? What in the hell? Why is it that when I finally do, you freak out?” I yelled for what felt like the hundredth time. “It isn’t like I was off killing people, swapping fluids with a damn vampire or anything! Tanis’ mom was even there, so we were totally supervised...for the most part,” I mumbled the latter and threw myself back on the bed.

  “You are grounded!” Mom yelled before laughing halfway through the idle threat.

  That translated to Mom wasn’t nearly as pissed as Dad, and that tomorrow morning, after a mother-daughter talk, all would be forgiven.

  I was startled by the soft knock at my window.

  “Jay, let me in.”

  I hurried to the window to let Yahto in.

  “Hey, what are you doing out there?” I asked.

  It had been at least three years since Yahto crawled in my bedroom window like a misplaced asexual Dawson Leary. I used to tease him by putting on that shitty Dawson’s Creek song when he’d climb in my window. He didn’t find it nearly as funny as I did.

  “Fishing,” he said, making a face and rolled his eyes. “What in the hell do you think I’m doing out here? I came to see you.” He hugged me tight and threw us back on the bed, and we stretched out like we used to do as kids. “Please tell me that you didn’t skip school to suck face with a vampire,” he groaned.

  I smacked him in the chest. “His name is Tanis, not vampire, and yes...no...not really...something in between. He picked me up for school and I kind of lost it. Not because he picked me up, but because I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately and last night I realized a lot of stuff and I didn’t like it.”

  “Wait, you were together last night?” he whispered, the unmistakable sound of disgust in his tone made me smack him again.

  “Yeah, you were supposed to pick me up from work and flaked as usual.”

  Yahto smashed the butt of his palm against his forehead. “Shit, I totally forgot. I am so sorry. Please, oh please, tell me that I didn’t steer you to the arms of a vampire.”

  I snorted. “No. You give yourself way too much credit. Anyway, Tanis was waiting for me when I got off of work in case I needed a ride. We waited until six-thirty-one for you, and then he took me to Bellingham for dinner. We ate at that Italian place, D’Anna’s on State Street.”

  “No shit? How was it? I’ve always wondered.”

  “It was delicious. I wanted to kill him when I did the math. Tanis didn’t think twice about dropping over a grand on dinner!”

  “Shut up,” he gasped. “Seriously? That suckhead spent a thousand dollars on dinner? And you didn’t even have to put out?!”

  “Shut up!” I smacked him again. “His name is Tanis, not suckhead or vampire or Count Suckula. And no, I didn’t have to put out and we didn’t kiss. We almost kissed today, while we were swimming, but his cousin interrupted us.”

  “Wait, where were you swimming and you seriously want
to kiss him, even though he has fangs and is nothing more than an animated corpse?”

  Oh my god! Why am I talking to him about this?

  “I have fangs, you have fangs, everyone has fans, even humans,” I reminded him. “And, just so you know, that animated corpse is the only person who has ever treated me like a person,” I snapped at him. “Sorry, that was rude. You and your family are part of the few exceptions, but I’m tired of being different. Now that there are others around who are different as well, I don’t feel alone anymore.”

  Yahto kissed the side of my head and wrapped his arms around me even more, pulling me into him. “Sweetie, you’ve never been alone. You know that.”

  “I know, but this is different. I like the way I feel when I’m around him. I like the way he makes me feel. Is that so bad? For a brief moment...when I’m around with, I feel normal.”

  He shook his head but didn’t say anything else.

  We lay there for a few hours, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling, just holding each other like we used to do when we were younger, until he broke the silence.

  “I need to tell you something,” he whispered.

  “You can tell me anything, you know that,” I assured him. “You’re my best and only friend, most of the time.”

  “Ugh,” Yahto groaned and sat up, so I did likewise.

  What has him so upset?

  He fished something out of his pocket and held it tightly in his hand. “When my brother and I found you, you were completely naked, except for his.” Hastily, he shoved his hand at me and dropped the wad of metal in my lap. “We didn’t know what was going to happen to you, and we didn’t want the white man to get it in case it was worth something...y’know how that goes. I totally forgot about it until I found it while moving some shit from my brother’s room. I thought he had given it to your parents, but you know how flighty he is, he’d forget his ass if it wasn’t attached. Either way, happy early birthday,” he said with a shrug.

  I untangled the knotted pile of silver and studied it. The snake chain had a single dangling pendant hanging from it. The pendant was an X on its side with a circle in the middle which was filled with some kind of beautiful blue glass with smaller X’s in the corners.

  I punched Yahto in the arm before fastening the necklace around my neck.

  “What in the hell, you forgot?” I demanded in a harsh whisper.

  “Dude, you might be blonde but I’m really the blond here, you know that! Hell, I forgot my own birthday this year, remember? I’m sorry, babe. You know I didn’t mean to keep it from you. I love you, you know that. Please forgive me?”

  Why do men have to be so girlie and emotional?

  “Don’t I always?” I rhetorically asked before I kissed his forehead and he crushed me in a hug.

  After that, I didn’t want company anymore. I kissed him goodbye and he exited the way he had come in, leaving me to contemplate life and the only piece of my past which I now had.

  The mystery of the unusual necklace, mixed with the rain sheeting against the window, kept me up, to say the least.

  Sadly, that was what I was telling myself.

  I should have been sleeping, or trying to figure out the meaning of the necklace, but all I could think about was Tanis. His face was all I saw when I closed my eyes; his light tan skin, wide jaw and narrow chin, large, almond eyes which are in the most beautiful, haunting shade of blue with silver streaked through them. His lips, oh god his lips, were so beautiful and soft, not to mention, inviting. I still couldn’t believe we were so close to kissing!

  Mental note to self; kick Romeo’s ass for that one.

  A soft rapping came at my window.

  I rolled over and looked at the clock: one-thirty. Yahto should have been asleep by then.

  The sound came again, and I suddenly felt as if I was in some bad horror movie.

  I looked down at my outfit and groaned; I guess I was dressed the part: white ribbed cotton tank top and white cotton panties—just what every axe wielding serial killer was looking for!

  Scared but curious, I headed over to the window and peeked out of the curtains. I jumped back, grasping at my chest with one hand, covering my mouth with the other.

  Staring back at me through the rain and glass were two large blue, silver-streaked eyes.

  Tanis smiled, that crooked smirk of a smile that seeming clouded my mind in a thick, possessive fog of incoherency to the likes of nothing I’ve ever know, and caused my heart to race embarrassingly loud. Not that I needed help with that, my heart was racing from him scaring the hell out of me!

  I opened the window. “What are you doing out here?” I whispered.

  His eyes moved over my face many times before they worked down my body and up again.

  Tanis licked his lips, and his eyes sparkled in the dim light. “Forgive my intrusion this hour and the unconventional means, however, I simply could not wait to see you again. That is two times now that I have not gotten to kiss you goodnight, and that is not acceptable to me.”

  Tanis risked crossing the boundaries, starting a fight between our species, just so he could kiss me goodnight?

  It truly was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for me.

  “Okay,” I whispered and stepped back, waving him inside.

  He hesitated and bit his bottom lip.

  “This is a vampire thing, huh?” I surmised and he reluctantly nodded. “Y’know, you laughed at me for all of those dumb books I read, but some of them had some rather useful information in them,” I scolded.

  He made a face, the face that I got from him often, which translated to Duckie-you-just-earned-yourself-a-spanking, so I batted my lashes at him.

  Tanis softly snarled under his breath before shaking his head at my absurdity when I growled back and snapped my teeth at him.

  “If you promise not to bite or hurt anyone in my house, you may enter, Tanis Ashton.”

  In a blur of movement, he was standing in front of me.

  I gazed into his eyes; it wasn’t until that moment that the height difference between us registered with me, and I had to look up to maintain eye contact with him. His usually styled hair was weighted down with rain, and it fell into his eyes, appearing more brown than blonde.

  “Hey,” he whispered, his warm breath washing over my face, once again enveloping my mind in a euphoric fog of possessive desire, and I swayed on my feet as I struggled to remember how to breathe.

  ‘Hey back’, I mouthed.

  Nervous, I licked my lips; I wasn’t entirely sure what I was supposed to do, or why I was suddenly undressing him with my eyes, fighting the urge to sink my fangs into his flesh to mark him as mine.

  Do I tell him goodnight and kiss him? Maybe offer him a seat in my microscopic bedroom before I rip his clothes off and sink my teeth into him, leaving a permanent reminder to the world that this bitch has claimed him, and that if any other bitch touches him, I’ll rip their throats out.

  Get it together, Jay Dee!

  Tanis’ eyes worked over my face many times before his fingers caressed along the ridge of my cheekbone, leaving a trailing wake of pulsating heat as he went, before brushing away a piece of loose hair off of my cheek and tucked it behind my ear.

  “I’m sorry about earlier,” I started to say but was cut off when his lips pressed against mine.

  The kiss was soft and tentative, at first. As light as a feather, his lips caressed mine. Tanis’ lips were even softer than I had dreamt them to be, and the contact caused my head spin and knees to shake. After a moment, he made a strange sound of frustration and wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me into him, holding me tight against his wet body. I gasped in surprise, and when I did, he took advantage and deepened the kiss. My lips yielded to his without much resistance as he slid one hand down my back and over my ass, the other painfully gripping onto the back of my neck as if he needed it there for control.

  I wasn’t complaining in the least; he obviously took my
warning about strong, werewolf women seriously.

  I shivered when his tongue traced along the inside of my lips, coaxing them apart even more. Teasingly, he curled his tongue along the underside of mine, as if he was trying to get me to play with him, and when I wrapped my tongue around his, it literally took my breath away.

  A perverse purr of pleasure rolled from his throat; he obviously knew what he was doing, and was enjoying torturing me.

  I hated it, but I loved it at the same time.

  The confliction that damn vampire caused in me was beyond anything I ever thought possible.

  When Tanis traced over my small fangs with the tip of his tongue, his body vibrated slightly—it was more than obvious he was laughing at my tiny fangs—so I wrapped my tongue around his and sucked it into my mouth and dug my nails into his shoulders.

  What I thought would have taught him a lesson, a silent reminder to not laugh at my tiny werefangs—as Jarvis called them—backfired because it was more than obvious that he liked it rough.

  Liked it a lot.

  Oh God, that feels...this can’t legal!

  I thought he tasted amazing when I licked his face at the restaurant, and it only got better when I sucked on his finger, but neither could remotely compared to the taste of Tanis’ mouth. Strangely cool yet pleasantly warm at the same time, the heat and intensity seemingly flowing from him to me consumed all of my senses and the possessive thoughts started to crawl out from the back of my mind, and screamed at me that he was mine and only mine.

  Once the short battle over his tongue was over, I kissed him as tenderly as he was kissing me, but there was something else happening between...we weren’t simply kissing. That was the only way I could describe it. It felt as if I could feel and hear each of his feelings and emotions. Never had I felt so in sync and connected to someone as I did then, and after the horrible emotional day I had, it was exactly what I needed...

  Tanis was what I needed.

  I held his face between my hands as my tongue explored his mouth just as he had done mine. The sweet taste of his mouth left me longing for more, and the sensation created when his tongue wrapped around mine sent a screaming line of desire, something only the frustrating vampire kissing me could cause, ripping through my body, seemingly swarming to my lower abdomen where it gathered in a ball of electrified nerves.