Releasing The Wolf (Eye Of The Storm)

by Dianna Hardy

  “It did?”

  “Do you like it?”

  Like it? She loved it! But, shit, she couldn’t admit that, even in her reduced-to-puddle state – they’d still ransacked her home and—

  Her eyes landed on the local phone book that she’d found Dr Allbright’s number in. It had been ripped apart, the pages strewn on the floor, although some of them had made it into the bin.

  She glanced at him in bemusement. “Is there a puppy somewhere in this room, or did you just not like my phone book?”

  He glowered and crossed his arms over his chest.

  Her mouth suddenly went dry, because his biceps and triceps and all his many-ceps were just insanely gorgeous. Uh-oh. She wanted him just as much as in her dreams – more so. Like, now.

  “I didn’t like the red circle. You’re not insane. You don’t need to see a therapist.”

  “Insane or not, I may actually have wanted to talk to someone.”

  “You can talk to me.”

  Yuh-huh – I wonder how well that will go. She made a mental note that Taylor would be her go-to man for chats.

  Oh, crap! Now she was thinking of Taylor and his kindness, the strength of his friendship… How was this fucked up mating arrangement even going to work? “You don’t share,” she blurted out.

  He stared at her, confused. “You want me to talk about my feelings or something?”

  “What? No. I’m talking about three nights ago: the thunder and lightning and the mating. With three of you.”

  His face took on a stony expression. “Oh, yeah … that.”

  She found herself inexplicably pissed off at his flippancy. “That?” she bit out, grinding her teeth. “Hey, maybe that was a weekly event for you, but I find myself with an altered life and tied to three men.”

  “Werewolves.”

  “Whatever.”

  He sighed. “No, it’s not a weekly event for me, or any of us.” Looking up, he met her eyes with his liquid-brown ones and her breath caught in her throat. How did he turn her to goo with just a look? “I’ve dreamt about you for ten years; been looking for you for almost just as long. Wolves mate for life, and you’re right: we don’t fucking share. It’s not just a choice – it’s biological. The way our genes are made up, there’s only one mate for us. I’m not all fancy on the terminology like Lawrence is, but the gist of it is this: our mate matches our DNA so exactly that when we bond, we lose our human years – the two of us create longevity for each other and our actual genetic code changes after the mating. Mated werewolves can live for centuries; unmated ones die within decades. The exact match of a pairing guarantees fertility. We mate, impregnate and produce children so our race can survive. It can only happen with the one we’re supposed to mate with – not three. Lawrence is looking into that part – it was all rather unexpected.”

  She stared at him, dumbfounded. Biological? DNA? “That is so unromantic.”

  He threw her a lopsided smile. “I did get you flowers.”

  She glanced at them again. Yeah, the disarranged flowers did hit her soft spot. It was stupidly endearing that he’d tried so damn hard to get them to look right.

  In the time she’d looked away, he had taken two strides and now stood in front of her. His hands snaked across her stomach and back where they rested, fingers interlocked, and she suddenly remembered she was wearing nothing but bedding.

  Of course, her body responded to his touch, nipples puckering, moisture pooling … because they were DNA compatible.

  Sod that!

  Ryan had been more than ‘biological’ about sex in her dreams – he’d been sexy and aggressive and gentle, and sinful when sin was needed… And looking at her the way he was looking at her now.

  Her heart rate accelerated.

  He lowered his head towards her, then abruptly stopped and she all at once knew the scent he’d picked up on.

  “Taylor’s been to see you,” he growled, possessively.

  “He dropped off my clothes.”

  His growl deepened. “He dropped your clothes off you?”

  “No – he dropped off my clothes; the ones I wore three nights ago.”

  “Why aren’t you wearing them now?”

  “I was too angry to put them on.”

  “Angry at Taylor?”

  “Angry at you … for taking over my life.”

  “That explains why you stormed in here, storm-wielder.”

  Storm-what?

  His expression changed from possessive to dangerously hungry – in the Lydia-be-sexual-prey kind of way.

  Oh, god, she wanted him holding her down as he fucked her to oblivion, but she battled it anyway out of principle – the men in her life could not go doing whatever they wanted with it, whether they were werewolves or not. “You owe me an explanation. No, wait, actually, you owe me lots of explanations.”

  “I know exactly what I owe you.” He fisted her hair, pulled her head back and possessed her mouth with his.

  Good god!

  She died a mini-death under his sensual attack. “What?” she gasped, coming up for air. “What do you owe me?”

  He tugged at her duvet and it fell to ground, leaving her exposed to him. “Ten years worth of orgasms – real ones you don’t have to wake up from.”

  Her brain froze mid-thought – it might even have drooled a little. What had she come in here for?

  She groaned – practically grovelled – when he slid his fingers against her folds.

  “Christ, so wet.”

  “Always wet for you, babe,” she whispered. “Ten years worth of orgasms?”

  “Do you have a problem with that?”

  The wolf in her rose instantly to the challenge, although she doubted her human self would have complained. “Do your fucking worst.”

  He threw her on the bed – literally.

  She squealed mid-air, and then bounced a couple of times on landing on the mattress.

  He skewered her with his eyes, a devilish glint in them. Slamming the bedroom door shut, he prowled towards her, whipping his shirt off in a matter of seconds, then tugged at the buckle of his belt. His ravaging smile told her all she needed to know: she’d be walking out of this room on shaky legs … or crawling.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She’d lost count after the seventh orgasm. Being a werewolf had its huge perks – like stamina. Oooh, yeeeaaaah.

  Lydia grinned against Ryan’s chest where she lay. He’d fallen asleep and was snoring his head off, but she was really here, and he was really here … in her arms!

  She sighed contentedly, and then found herself frowning. The whole biological, DNA crap was an issue. She didn’t want it to be, but it was. It meant they were duty-bound to be together. This wasn’t what she’d dreamt of over the years. Subconscious Ryan had always been in love with her. God knows, somewhere along the years she’d fallen in love with him – or at least her illusion of him, if that’s all her dreams were. She didn’t think that’s all they were. She hoped that wasn’t all they were.

  She chided herself. What the hell had she been expecting? A relationship? A husband? A cardboard cut-out hero from a romance novel? Her eyes pricked hot, and she realised that she had. With the safety net of thinking her dreams were merely fantasy, she’d allowed herself the luxury of falling into them as if they were reality, and she’d fallen hard. How much of her dreams had been real, and how much had been her own yearnings? More fool her.

  But the sex was awesome, just like it was in her dreams – more so in reality. He really did fit her perfectly in that respect. There was a physical completeness she didn’t feel and had never felt with anyone else. She just kind of wished that completion extended to her heart. Maybe her dreams had in fact been a mesh of Ryan, Taylor and Lawrence – it was just Ryan’s form that had imprinted itself in her mind, so that’s all she saw – who knew.

  She sighed again.

  Taylor and Lawrence.

  Taylor was a sweetheart, and even though she could ignore it
‘til the cows came home, she knew she was developing feelings for him. She was pretty sure everything was accentuated by her being mated to him – them – all three of them… And where did Lawrence fit into this? She’d only ever seen him twice, and both those times she’d pretty much embarrassed herself by almost undressing in front of him, and whimpering for him to bite her. Albeit, the whimpering may have had something to do with his skilful hands on her breasts.

  God, she was getting wet thinking about it.

  Shit! She was wet thinking of Lawrence, while lying here with Ryan. Christ! Talk about fucked up!

  She gently pushed herself off his chest and slipped out of bed. He didn’t show any signs of noticing, his snoring still steady, and she got the distinct impression that he slept like the dead.

  Not a very good guard dog then, she smiled, unable to deny herself the delight of staring at that muscular torso for an extra few seconds. She loved his impetuous, live-for-the-moment nature – it was so fucking sexy.

  She reached down and picked up her duvet off the floor, wrapping it around herself once more, then slipped out the door into the dark corridor. She could do with a shower to wake herself up a bit and … er … ease the ache of raw Ryan-sex. She was also looking forward to getting some clothes on her. Then she’d pop back to her studio flat to make sure they hadn’t missed anything, although she was still pissed they’d just forced her out of her own home.

  That home was a cesspool.

  That’s so not the point, she argued with herself.

  She wasn’t even sure where she’d been brought, but she’d bet it wasn’t that near town, and she had no other mode of transport other than her feet. How was she going to get to work every day?

  “You must be the new girl,” drawled a voice from behind her.

  She turned to find a woman there, about her age, her long, silky, strawberry-blonde hair doing nothing to soften the look of pure hatred in her eyes.

  “Er—”

  “How does it feel to have your cake and eat it too?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Selena.”

  The woman’s eyes widened at Lawrence’s smooth tone, then she cast them downwards.

  He stepped towards them out of the corridor’s shadows, although half of his face remained in darkness. “Full moon was last night. No need for you to be here any longer. Your family will be expecting you.”

  “Yes, Lawrence,” she mumbled, but when she looked up, it was Lydia she glared at.

  Lovely. Just what she needed: a potential bitch fight on her hands.

  Selena flipped her hair back as she turned, then made her way down the corridor towards the stairs, her back straight as she disappeared from view.

  With Selena gone, Lawrence’s presence suddenly magnified. Goosebumps raced over her skin, and her body trembled slightly, just as it had in the restaurant when she’d first seen him.

  “I trust you slept well.”

  She blushed, which was annoying because she wasn’t the blushing type, but she was standing in front of him in her duvet and she couldn’t shake the feeling that he could see right through it.

  “I’ll take your silence as a yes.”

  Her inability to form words annoyed the crap out of her. “Yes,” she finally managed, and wished she’d kept her mouth shut, because her ‘yes’ came out breathless and she sounded all whimpery again.

  She caught sight of his lip curl upwards. Was he smirking at her? Bastard!

  She finally found her voice and to her relief it had some backbone to it. “What gives you the right to force me out of my home and my jobs?”

  He moved fast.

  He was towering in front of her in a blink of an eye, his nose in her hair, breathing…

  Fuck it, her legs buckled – they actually buckled. She would have fallen down, but his arm caught her around the waist. His words feathered across her cheek.

  “Taylor’s tears have touched your hair. Ryan’s pounded his scent into you so hard, he may as well have urinated all over you—”

  Oh, GOD, how humiliating!

  “—and my blood flows through your veins. Does that answer your question?” He lowered his head and licked her neck at the exact same spot he’d bitten her.

  And she whimpered.

  AGAIN.

  And it wasn’t out of fear or surprise; it was out of pure, unadulterated want … to please him.

  In that second, she understood what Lawrence represented to her, and it sent hot rage surging through her … and hot lust. Not the playful hot lust that Ryan could muster in her with little more than a glance, but the consuming hot lust you could lose your identity in. He called to her wolf. He called to her primal side; the ancient aspect of her animal self that wanted to submit. It wanted to submit to him; to sacrifice all of who she was at the altar of his maleness and lay herself bare for his taking.

  Fuck that! She brought up her hands and shoved against his chest, and hurrah for super-strength, because he didn’t seem to be expecting it.

  He glanced at her in surprise, then anger, then his features became as icy as always.

  Something inside her died. She’d denied him, and it didn’t sit well with the wolf in her – not one little bit. It paced furiously inside her – furious with her. An apology sat on the tip of her tongue, but before she could utter a single word, he’d gone, leaving her among the shadows he’d appeared from.

  Epilogue

  Once upon a time, before even the dawn of time, Himet, the Great God and Yemet, the Great Goddess, had a fight. In growing knowledge of their status and abilities, one was no longer willing to yield to the other, nor to share the space of the universe they had created together.

  One day, their fight was so great, their anger so palpable across the cosmos, that their consumed rage tore them apart forever.

  Thrown from each other, Himet soared up and became the sky, the stars, the sun and the moon; Yemet soared down and became the earth, the trees, the plants and the animals that walked upon it. But they were lost without the other, and there was no way to mend the great divide they had brought upon themselves.

  In a plea for forgiveness, Himet dedicated the night to Yemet. Under the blanket of darkness, all the earth would be protected and allowed to rest; allowed to breath and renew its strength.

  Touched by his gift, Yemet wept rivers upon rivers for their loss, until her tears became oceans and seas, which along with the sun, gave rise to the weather, and in the storm of their emotions their union could be felt: in thunder their hearts pounded as one, in wind, their spirits flew as one, and when lightning from the sky penetrated the earth, they became whole once more, if just for the briefest of moments.

  In these moments, Yemet’s determination renewed, as did her anger, and she vowed to find a way to rejoin with Himet.

  One night, under the full moon, which reflected Himet’s love for her when the sun could not, Yemet led her most prized and loyal animal – the wolf – to the top of the highest mountain. She let her grief, her sorrow, her loneliness and her anger pour out of her until she manifested a storm. Himet responded, joining in her dance, and at the exact moment he sent down his lightning, she placed the wolf in its path and infused herself with it.

  Himet cried out in terror, but he could not pull back the lightning. It hit Yemet while she was in the physical form of the wolf – whilst she was mortal.

  “Why?!” he asked her, his sorrow consuming him.

  “I could not see, but now I do,” she replied with her dying breath, “to have all of you, I must yield all of me. Take my life, Himet. I trust you with it. I give it freely.”

  What a load of bullshit. Lawrence slammed the book shut in irritation. Fucking fairy tales with their hidden meanings. His sister had loathed this story with all her being and – at eight years old – had proudly announced that when she met her end, she’d do it fighting, not yielding. Not to god, not to society and certainly not to any male.

  Well, that was a promise sh
e’d kept – she’d gone down fighting.

  He sighed and pushed himself off his desk, too acutely aware that his sense of annoyance had more to do with the red-head he’d gone and mated with rather than the mythology he’d scoured through to try and make sense of what exactly had happened.

  He was pissed off that he’d lost his temper. He’d spent over twenty years controlling his animal nature, for very good reasons, and now it was taking all of his willpower to not beat Ryan and Taylor to the ground to claim Lydia for himself. Which would be stupid because firstly, it would tear their pack apart, and secondly, he had nothing to offer her, or any woman. He couldn’t be anyone’s god-damn Alpha, which is why he’d stepped down and let Ryan take the lead.

  He realised he was growling at his empty study.

  Maybe ‘pissed off’ didn’t cover it. He couldn’t for the life of him see how three males, mated to one female, was going to work. Hell, he couldn’t even see how it had happened in the first place – it shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t have been able to.

  But she was a storm-wielder. Fuck. She didn’t even know it – he’d have to train her. Double fuck. And make sure no one else ever found out what she was. Triple fuck.

  Until he got back the information he’d asked his sources for on her family, there wasn’t much he could do. The mountain of complications ahead of them made his head hurt.

  He picked up another book from his desk about lycanthropic molecular biology. Ryan had told him what The Trident had planned; that they had found a way to alter werewolf DNA so that werewolf became Trident. That had to be what he put his focus into. This whole thing with Lydia was bizarre, but not threatening. The Trident, however, threatened their very existence.

  He could do this. Let Ryan and Taylor have her – he didn’t need to be a part of it. He just had to remember that everything he felt around Lydia paled in comparison to what he’d been through; to everything he’d felt two decades ago; to everything he’d quenched… She was just another female.

  ~*~