by Hettie Ivers
She knew Guadalupe meant “river of the wolf,” and Lupe, her preferred nickname, simply, “wolf.” It was no secret Alcaeus wanted her to stay and become a permanent member of the Reinoso pack. But that was not her wish. She saw her time there as temporary—a necessary means to ensure the safety of her unborn were-child.
As for Alcaeus, Lupe dubbed him “old man” upon learning his true age was nearly 360 years. She’d sensed his romantic inclinations toward her from the start and hoped to put him off. Although he meant well by her, the adoring, puppy-dog look in Alcaeus’ eyes was often unsettling, reminding her of the way Nahuel had looked at her. And in Lupe’s limited and highly traumatizing experience, the flipside of werewolf adoration could be homicidal rage with no foreseeable warning.
Kai noted her unease. Unbeknownst to Lupe, he counseled Alcaeus to back off and to better school his emotions and attraction where the girl was concerned, often reminding him that she was, in fact, a girl.
Alcaeus introduced Lupe to every single human pack member living at the Reinoso compound on her second day there, hoping the others might allay her trepidation about living amongst wolves. But she preferred to keep to herself rather than make friends, forging a connection with just one human pack member during her initial stay.
Hector Varela was a quietly fascinating 103-year-old Argentinian gentleman who had been with Alcaeus since the age of nine. Lupe found out Alcaeus had also given Hector his surname. When Hector winked at her and teasingly wagered that she couldn’t keep her given name a secret from the wolves for as long as he had kept his last name a secret, she smiled a genuine smile for the first time since her parents’ murder.
Hector was a widower, having outlived his much younger wife. They’d had one child, a son named Mateus. Mateus had been living abroad for the past several years, working on some special pack mission in America. Alcaeus explained that Hector enjoyed a prolonged life due to a healing procedure administered early in his youth by a very powerful werelock.
Eventually, Lupe learned that Hector had suffered a history of loss and violence even more gruesome than hers. More disturbing, she learned the same werewolf pack Nahuel had belonged to was responsible for the slaughter of Hector’s entire family. This did little to comfort her about her chances for survival.
For the most part, Alcaeus and Kai kept her separated from the rest of the pack, persuading her to accept private living quarters in Alcaeus’ home, which was located through the woods at the farthest edge of the property, far from the main estate. Proud and stubborn as Lupe was, she despised the idea of accepting their charity, so Alcaeus convinced her he was in desperate need of a housekeeper and petitioned her to stay on through her pregnancy as a guest and paid human staff member in his home.
Kai and Alcaeus purposely downplayed Lupe’s importance to them to Alex, the Alpha. She was never introduced, but she caught brief glimpses of him in passing on her visits to the human quarters adjacent to the main house, where she would go to check in on Hector and listen to his stories. She was told the Alpha didn’t trouble himself much with the human help, and Lupe was glad for that because the Alpha looked decidedly mean.
Alcaeus and Kai had repeatedly tried to convince her she was safe, but she refused to be separated from her machete, carrying it with her whenever she left Alcaeus’ home, often concealing the blade at her side within the folds of her skirts.
Plagued by nightmares throughout her pregnancy, she’d awaken to the sound of her own screams in the night. Alcaeus would rush to her room; he’d try to hold and comfort her, but she’d shoo him away every time, apologizing for waking him and insisting she was fine. She never cried. Never broke down in front of him or anyone else. In truth, she never broke down in private either. But every so often the pressure would build up behind her eyes to the point it became a physical pain, as if her body was demanding the ducts be drained. And yet, strangely, she still found it difficult to cry for her loss.
Then, in July, during her second trimester, the first Brazilian telenovela aired. Though she’d officially been appointed Alcaeus’ housekeeper, he hadn’t actually allowed her to clean anything yet, having a staff of servants who already performed those chores. Nonetheless, Alcaeus insisted he required her supervisory skills to make sure everything was getting done properly around the house. This left Lupe with more down time than she preferred. So when she started watching 2-5499 Ocupado to pass the time, the telenovela became both an escape and a vehicle for her emotional release. She logged hours crying over Emily’s plight in the São Paulo prison—sobbing harder than perhaps the storyline required at times.
While the telenovela eased the pressure build-up in her tear ducts, the nightmares persisted. She dreamt Nahuel’s family was coming for her—for her baby. The dreams were disjointed and confusing, but they always ended the same way. A wolfman with one green eye and one blue one would ultimately find her. He would laugh at her. And then she’d wake up. Every single time.
Sometimes she dreamt Nahuel still lived and was coming for her, and she would spend days afterward paralyzed with fear that it might be true, that somehow dismembering and burning him hadn’t been enough to stop his supernatural body from regenerating—and subsequently locating its severed head that she’d burned and buried 300 miles from said charred bodily remains. In some dreams, Nahuel was angry and confrontational; threatening, like her dreams of his family. But in most, he was repentant, continually begging her forgiveness and understanding.
Then there were the dreams in which she relived moments between them before his psychotic killing spree. Those were the cruelest of all. He would touch her—and she would like it. He would murmur words of love in her ear like he had in her parents’ barn. She would melt for him all over again, letting her battered heart pretend that it was all right—that the horrors that had followed had never occurred. And she would awaken utterly disgusted with herself, physically nauseous.
After one such occasion, she wound up on her knees in the bathroom retching and dry heaving to no avail. She jumped when she felt warm, masculine hands gathering her hair atop her head, away from her face.
The big guy had a knack for sneaking up on her.
“Only me, Lupe,” Alcaeus’ deep, sleep-roughened voice said in the darkness. “It’s okay. You’re safe now.” One big hand held her hair while the other spread warmth along her spine.
She felt an irrational urge to turn into his arms and cry. She shoved it down.
“I’m fine,” she croaked, pushing away from the toilet bowl, her voice sounding broken and hollow in the tiled room. “Sorry I woke you.”
He released her hair and gave her space as she rose and crossed to the sink, where she proceeded to wash up, splashing her face with cold water and rinsing her mouth. She took her time, thinking maybe he’d get the hint and leave. But as she toweled her face dry, she turned and started when she found his hulking frame towering in the doorway, casually watching her—with golden wolf eyes. She backed up a step.
He stepped forward. “S’okay … don’t be afraid. It’ll pass in a moment.”
She held her breath and tried to be brave. She had no choice. He was blocking her exit. And he kept coming closer.
“Please, understand, my wolf would never harm you, Lupe.” His hand rose to her face, his fingers ghosting her cheekbone. She closed her eyes and willed herself to nod rather than back up another step away from him. She wasn’t sure how his wolf would take it. What if he flipped out and attacked?
“Fuck,” Alcaeus swore, dropping his hand. She cringed. “Why do you have to be so afraid of me? I would never lay a finger on you to hurt you. Lupe, my wolf comes out because he feels so protective of you.”
It was partly true. His wolf had also emerged because he’d scented her arousal. He wanted to press his nose between her thighs—to lap at the cream that had soaked her underwear beneath her short nightdress. But the man shook those thoughts aside. She was just a girl, as Kai too often reminded him. A scared girl.
He could have entered her mind. He could have compelled her. He’d wanted to since the first day. Sometimes he wondered why he still hadn’t. It would be for her own good. And he could know her name at last.
“I can’t help you unless you talk to me, sweetheart.”
Her wobbly knees failed as their backs hit the toilet, and she sat down with a noisy thud atop the closed lid. He knelt in front of her. She forced her green eyes to hold his, which were now thankfully hazel. For the first time she noticed he was naked except for a sheet wrapped around his waist. This was often the case whenever he rushed to her room in the night, and she’d come to suspect he routinely slept in the nude.
She recognized that her employer was not an unattractive male. Quite the opposite. Though he’d never brought any women home that she’d been aware of since her stay with him, she was fairly certain he saw more ass than the toilet she was seated upon.
She knew she should scold him for calling her “sweetheart,” and maintain the clear boundary she’d worked so hard to establish between them. But she didn’t.
He tucked her hair behind her ear on one side, his fingers proceeding to glide against her scalp in a gentle caress. “Talk to me, please? Tell me about the nightmares? Tell me what happened to you? Tell me who did this to you? Please? I can’t bear not knowing. Not being able to make it right.”
She shook her head, nearly laughing with bitterness. “You can’t make it right.”
“Maybe not. But I can try … if you let me? If you tell me what happened?”
She had considered telling him, knowing about Hector and the fact that according to Hector, Alcaeus had sheltered him from the Salvatella pack for most of his life. But her situation was different. Hector’s former guardian had been a powerful werelock who had requested this of Alcaeus. Whereas she was the alleged mate of one of his worst known enemies. And she was carrying the enemy’s baby.
She’d sought out the Reinoso pack upon learning of their bitter rivalry with Nahuel’s, thinking their compound might possibly be the one place Nahuel’s family wouldn’t look or be able to access her. The one place her unborn baby might be safe. But she had no way of knowing how Alcaeus or Kai would react if they discovered her secret. Though they’d been good to her so far, they could still turn on her. They might hand her over to Nahuel’s family.
Or simply kill her.
“If I tell, will you promise … not to kill me … or my baby?”
“Kill you? Jesus Christ, Lupe, how can you ask me such a thing?” He rose and paced uselessly in the small bathroom. “What the hell do you think you could ever tell me that would make me want to kill you? What have I done to make you think for one moment that I’d ever harm you?”
She took a deep breath. “The man—erm … wolf … who did this … was your enemy.”
Elation shot through him at her confession, and he rushed back to his kneeling position in front of her. She was talking! She was opening up to him.
“You’ll have to be more specific, sweetheart.” He smiled tentatively at her in the dark, slowly, gently resting his big palms atop her shaky knees. Twice now she hadn’t corrected him for calling her “sweetheart,” and he quietly reveled in that small victory. “I’m afraid I have more than one enemy. Will you give me a name, Lupe? Please?”
Again, she hesitated, for what felt like an eternity. Eventually, her whole body began to tremble, and he was just about to tell her that she didn’t need to tell him and tuck her back into her bed, when finally she answered.
“Salvatella.” It was barely a whisper. “Nahuel Salvatella.”
His eyes abruptly squeezed shut. He swallowed the growl that wanted to rumble up through his chest. There was no need to frighten her further with a reemergence of his wolf. When he could speak in a voice that sounded human, he asked, “When? How?” Then simply demanded, “Talk.”
Her heart tripped and sprinted. “You’re angry.”
He nodded, eyes still closed. “Not at you, Lupe. Never at you,” he assured her. “Promise. Please explain what happened between you and Nahuel?”
Word of Nahuel’s disappearance had reached their pack months ago. He’d been presumed dead. But Alcaeus had never thought … never imagined … his sweet little Lupe … with that asshole? That pig? Alcaeus thought he might be the one dry heaving over the toilet bowl next.
He wanted more than anything to hold her as she relayed her terrible tale, but he was still too unpracticed with handling humans, and in his current state, he feared he might unintentionally squeeze her too tightly. Because he was positively stunned by her revelation! Horrified. Sickened. Enraged.
Also, unbelievably proud. Awed. He could scarcely believe her courage and ingenuity. His Lupe had felled one of the Salvatella brothers. All by herself! Granted, Nahuel had never been known to be as clever as his older brothers, nor as skilled with magic in the manner they were. But he’d been a big beast of a werelock. A ruthless killer quick to rage and prone to pillage anything that got in his way—including Lupe’s parents when they had refused him their daughter.
And Lupe’s tiny hands and small person had chopped him down to pieces. Literally.
Now that he knew, now that he understood all she’d endured, the enigma that was his adorable, sassy Lupe made so much more sense. And she was even more irresistible to him than before.
He promised himself he would cease teasing her for always clinging to her machete. It had saved her once from one of their kind. She assumed it could save her again. He wouldn’t begrudge her that false security blanket.
And he would tell Kai everything. Kai needed to know. But they would keep it a secret from Alex … for now. Eventually, his brother Alex would have to know as well.
At length, he mustered enough inner calm to hold and stroke her hands gently in his while he listened. She let him. The whole time she spoke, she never cried once, her gorgeous malachite eyes barely dampening with the pain and sorrow her heavy heart harbored. It made his own heart break just watching her, witnessing her proud struggle. And he knew for certain then that he was falling hopelessly, irrevocably in love with the girl from Jussara.
He didn’t just want her physically. The feelings stirring within him went beyond possession. He knew he would do anything to protect her, go to any length to make her happy.
She didn’t respond the same way to him, he knew. It was too soon. She was too young. He would heed Kai’s advice and better curb his attraction so that she’d be more at ease around him—the way she was with Kai. Like all women were with Kai. He would simply be her friend. For now.
When she was finished talking, he somehow wordlessly managed to coax her into his arms, and then into his lap. Another small miracle. She had never let him hold her or get this close to her before. It was probably only because she was so overwhelmed—her body racked by fear and exhaustion. But he would take it just the same.
She fell asleep as he held her, curled in his lap on the tiled floor, her hands folded in protectively over her distended belly, as Alcaeus spoke solemn vows to her crown, promising to protect and care for her always. Swearing he would always stand between her and the Salvatellas, that they would never find her, never hurt her or her baby.
He remained awake through the night, cradling her in his arms there on the bathroom floor. He didn’t dare move her to the bedroom for fear she’d awaken and shatter the tenuous spell of ease he’d somehow finally established. And he wanted to enjoy every moment of her peaceful slumber. Oddly, as he studied each curve and angle of her pretty face, losing track of time and of himself listening to the sound of her steady heartbeat and that of her growing fetus, he concluded it might’ve been the most satisfying night he’d ever spent with a woman before.
CHAPTER THREE
Alcaeus had wanted to employ simple magic, if not modern-day pharmaceuticals, to shiel
d her from the pain of childbirth, but Lupe said no. She was adamant that her birthing process be whatever it was meant to be, whether long and painful or brief and mild. She wanted to experience it, saying she was certain becoming a mother was not meant to be a nonevent, so neither should the birthing process be made into one through manipulation of the natural order of things.
When the day of labor finally arrived and her contractions escalated, only sheer stubbornness prevented her from changing her mind as she walked the long, barren basement hallways that made up the compound’s little infirmary with Alcaeus, until her water at last broke. Twelve hours into Lupe’s labor, Alcaeus was so frantic with concern for her that Kai kicked him out of the birthing room, claiming his fretful behavior had already delayed the labor process for long enough.
Once Lupe was alone with Kai and his head nurse, Marissa, Kai instructed Lupe to embrace the worst of her contractions. He maintained she had to welcome the pain in order to be free of it, that fear and avoidance of pain only heightened it.
“Pain is nothing more than resistance,” Kai explained in that all-knowing, placid tone of his, dabbing a cool cloth over her sweaty brow where she sat propped upright in the oversized, fancy hospital-style birthing bed Alcaeus had made Kai order just for her—even though Kai insisted it was a ridiculous and unnecessary westernized contraption.
“True pain doesn’t exist beyond acceptance.”
“Can’t,” she groaned. It wasn’t pain she feared—not exactly. It was that emotional breakdown she was perpetually holding at bay. Acceptance sounded awfully dangerous, particularly when she’d spent so much of the past nine months refusing to accept the reality facing her.
“No. Uh-uh …”
“Lupe.” Kai’s cultured voice held a subtle warning. “This is what you wanted, remember? I thought you wanted to experience the natural order of things?”
