by Kate Douglas
Even now the thought had his body hardening, so he started walking, knowing Phelan would follow.
“If she’s a decoy we’ll know soon enough. And we’ll have leverage when they attack,” he told his second in command.
Phelan grabbed his shoulder then, but when Blaez turned, looking at him with narrowed eyes, the beta let his hand fall slowly down to his side.
“We don’t negotiate with them. We kill the sonsofbitches!” Phelan exclaimed.
“No. We try to live peacefully until there is no other choice but to defend ourselves. And rest assured, if this is a plan to attack us by the Hunters, we will do just that,” he said in a tone that should have ended this conversation.
But Phelan continued, “What if it’s more than that?” he asked him. “I saw how you looked at her.”
Blaez moved immediately, stepping closer so that the few inches he was taller than Phelan were noticeable. They stared eye to eye. “You. Saw. Nothing.”
Phelan’s reply was a muscle twitching in his jaw, the scar beneath his left eye that had been left by a very angry fury years ago pulsating. He was angry, which wasn’t new for Phelan. The lycan had joined the Marines to quench the rage that simmered inside him. Twelve years later, Blaez was sad to report it hadn’t worked. Phelan was just as pissed off as ever, and considering he’d joined a pack of Devoteds, there weren’t too many outlets he could find in the mountains of Montana to assuage that particular ailment. But Blaez didn’t give a damn; his goals where Kira was concerned were going to be made clear, here and now.
“I will handle this,” he continued. “I will handle her. Do you understand?”
Phelan nodded just as there was a loud screech coming from downstairs.
Blaez moved with lightning-fast speed, descending the steps with his feet barely touching them, stopping in the kitchen his gaze already intent on her, as she’d been the focus of his chase. He’d known Kira had left the room he’d locked her in last night, had known the second she’d popped that lock and attempted to sneak away. Of course, he’d also known that she would never make the escape she planned, since she had no idea how to disengage the locks on the doors and windows of the house.
Nobody could get in or out of the fortress he and his pack mates had renovated without them knowing, as was their plan. A year ago, when the existence of the Shadow Shifters—half-human, half-feline shape-shifters—had been unveiled to the human world on national television, all otherworldly beings that walked this earth alongside humans had been put on notice. Their time was coming soon. And just like what had happened since the Shadow Shifters were discovered, the human’s mass panic, combined with the interspecies fighting, would create a world in a constant state of war, a place of mass hysteria, confusion, death, just as Lykaon had tried to tell the people of Arcadia before Zeus had arrived to permanently shut him up.
If the human world thought living among big, deadly cats that looked like humans most of the time was scary as hell then they could never be prepared for all the wickedness that came with Blaez’s world. The one where lycans were the norm along with furies, demigods, age-old rivalries, and gods that did not take kindly to being ticked off.
The idea to cease the contract covert operative work they’d been doing for the U.S. government had been Blaez’s, moving far away and steering clear of the chaos that was brewing in the human world his main goal. He would not be a part of the fighting, would not be forced to kill more lycans because half of them wanted revenge for what started from a god’s wrath.
Blaez’s fellow soldiers, the ones who had been a part of him since day one in the Marine Corps, had decided to come with him. They were committed to his cause. Together, the four of them had transformed the old run-down log cabin into a sprawling estate that could easily rival any lodge or resort situated in the picturesque mountain range. Only they did not take visitors; with all the money they’d earned over the years for the private contracting work, added to Blaez’s inheritance, the pack members rarely needed to leave their oasis. Some would call it hiding, running away from the problem, quite possibly cowardice. Blaez and his pack called it self-preservation, because otherwise the training of the human killers combined with the hybrid wolf genetics would most assuredly make them public enemy number one.
The moment Blaez saw Channing’s arms around Kira’s waist, his face nuzzling way too damned close to her cheek, a grin on his pretty-boy face, all of Blaez’s genetics and military training came bubbling to the surface. His claws broke free, teeth elongating, sideburns and hair sprouting instantly until he looked every bit the alpha male he was. Right there in the middle of the country-style kitchen.
“Release her!” he stated, his voice deeper, raspier, when he was in this form.
Channing had looked up instantly the moment Blaez’s telltale pissed-the-hell-off growl echoed throughout the room. However, Channing hadn’t immediately dropped his hands from her waist. No quick movements that could be construed as defensive. That was a rule when dealing with a lycan, as such movements would most assuredly get the person killed. Even if it was a beta in that alpha’s pack. Instead, Channing had kept eye contact with Blaez, moving slowly away from her.
Kira had been the one to step forward instantly, getting in Blaez’s face as if his teeth, claws, and growling didn’t scare her one bit.
“Good morning to you too,” she quipped, seemingly not impressed at all at his appearance.
Blaez’s head tilted, the unfamiliar feeling that had coursed through him at the sight of Channing’s hands on her ebbing only slightly, being replaced with something else Blaez wasn’t used to and therefore could not pinpoint. As he pulled the beast within back as quickly as it had appeared, his claws retracted, hair along his face and head vanishing, teeth drawing back inside his mouth. His nostrils still flared, her scent powerful as she stood this close, even over the aroma of whatever Channing was preparing for breakfast.
“Leave us,” Blaez directed both Channing and Phelan, who he’d known stood a few feet behind him, most likely ready to pull Blaez off of Channing had it come to that. Blaez would thank the one beta later and apologize to the other. Only after he made it perfectly clear to each of them that there was a hands-off rule where Kira was concerned.
Channing nodded his acknowledgement while casting a quick glance at Kira. He moved past Blaez on his way out and Blaez remained silent until Channing and Phelan were both gone.
“Wow, somebody sure did wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” Kira said before turning to walk away from Blaez.
She moved with what felt to Blaez, and his growing arousal, like blatant sexuality. The pants she wore today as tight over her plump ass as the ones from yesterday. Only these were longer, flaring at her ankles and draping over her tennis shoes. Her shirt was just as tight as the tank from yesterday as well, its bright and perky color only highlighting breasts that his mouth watered to suckle. Clenching and releasing his fingers at his sides, he thought of palming the delectable globes, watching as they overflowed from his large hands, dark nipples peeking up at him teasingly.
The sound of her knocking a spoon off the island as she moved her arms—to probably fold over her chest, since he’d been staring at her tits like a horny teenager—broke through his lust-filled haze. Only to replace that intense feeling of need with one of shock and then … Blaez wasn’t quite sure what.
As Kira had bent down to retrieve the spoon her shirt rode up her back, her pants dipping lower on her hips. That’s how he was able to see it. The crescent-moon shape centered at the small of her back. Blaez sucked in a breath as realization hit him. She was not only an alpha female; she was also a Selected alpha female.
Damn.
“I asked you not to run,” he said through clenched teeth, now more annoyed than ever that she’d been in the woods alone. “And yet you tried.”
There was a quick jolt, one Blaez knew he hadn’t shown but he’d felt ricochet throughout his body. All of his feelings, his t
houghts, his actions, could usually be held in check. He was the alpha after all, he reminded himself once more. It was his birthright and this was what he was meant to do. If he said that to himself more than a dozen times a day not only would he believe it, but so would others.
Except her.
“I wasn’t running; I was leaving; there’s a difference. I don’t belong here, and if can’t see that your pack sure can. I know they’ve warned you about keeping a Hunter here. If you won’t listen to me, I’m curious as to why you won’t listen to them either,” she said, long lashes brushing over her high cheekbones as she watched him.
“Because I’m the alpha,” he told her, inwardly berating himself because he still sounded like he wasn’t totally convinced by that fact. This had never happened to him before and he didn’t like that it was happening now. “I know what I’m doing, Kira. And I know that you being here is safer than you being out there.”
“Are you positive?” she asked, lifting one elegantly arched brow. “Because Phelan, looks like he’s ready to claw my heart out at first opportunity. And Channing, well, he’s very nice, but he’s also suspicious. And the other one, Malec, he acts like he’s pissed at me for being a Hunter. Or he’s pissed at me because he’s in his needing. Either-or wouldn’t exactly lead to this being such a safe haven.”
She was right. Every word she’d spoken was absolutely correct. Blaez had seen it all for himself, so there was no sense denying it.
“And yet I can assure you that none of them will put a hand on you. And if, or should I say when, your pack comes for you, those three guys will actually protect you as they do me,” he told her seriously. They would do just as he said because he would order them to do so, regardless of what they might truly think of her on the inside. And to be perfectly honest, Blaez had no idea why he planned to ask them to protect her that way, as if she were his alpha female.
“They won’t come for me,” she said, momentarily looking away from him.
“Why?” he implored. “Tell me what happened to make you run.”
Her gaze was back on him, that stubborn chin of hers jutting up as she did. “They didn’t make me run. I decided it was time to go.”
“Because you thought that was the only choice you had.” He moved closer, finding himself just as entranced by the smooth buttertone of her skin and almond-shaped brown eyes as he was with her seductive and curvaceous body.
She stayed on the other side of the island, her hands flattened on the wood top. On the surface she looked calm, but Blaez could hear the quickened beat of her heart; he could smell the almost instantaneous drip of her arousal.
“You’re trying to find something,” he told her. “Something you want more than your own life.”
“You don’t know me,” she replied, her voice a breathy whisper.
“But I do,” he told her, realizing now why he’d been so drawn to her from the start. It wasn’t simply the burning desire that he’d first thought. It was so much more, so much deeper, and that much more annoying to him. “You’re running from who and what you are.”
“No.”
“Yes,” he continued. He recognized the look in her eyes, the persistence in her words, the bravado barely masking the fear. Blaez recognized all of these signs because once upon a time he’d felt them himself.
“Look,” she said, balling her fists, then releasing her fingers flat on the island top. “I don’t have to stand here and bare my soul to you. You think you know so much. Fine.” She shrugged. “You’re right; I am running. I’m running to the life I want to lead. The life I’m entitled to. Is there something wrong with that, Blaez? Aren’t you allowed to live the life you want to lead?”
“That, right there,” he told her with a nod of his head, “is why you fail.”
“What? You’re why I failed. If you hadn’t been creeping around in the woods like you were searching for something or someone, I would have been halfway to my destination by now.”
“Or you would have been dead, or taken,” was his simple reply.
She folded her arms over her chest, the action pushing her breasts up even higher, the mouthwatering rise of cleavage a momentary distraction.
“I’m so sick of hearing about this. Sick of the way all lycan males think.” She’d dropped her arms then, letting them slap against her sides, then raising both hands and running her fingers through her long tresses.
She was sick of the lycan males she’d known because they weren’t the ones she had been Selected for. The thought had Blaez cursing inwardly. He did not want to think about this. Did not want to be faced with an ancient legend on top of everything else. And yet he couldn’t walk away.
“Come with me,” he said, turning immediately away from her.
“What? No, I’m not coming with you, Blaez. You’re not my alpha,” she insisted.
Her words raked over something inside of him, adding to the unfamiliarity, doubling his intentions, cementing in his mind a plan he never thought he’d make.
“If you want to live on your own terms and be successful, I will show you how,” he told her slowly, matter-of-factly. “I will show you what you need.”
Chapter 5
“I don’t need a teacher,” she called after him, following him through the dining and living rooms and into an extended hallway.
He took long, deliberate strides with his shoulders squared, authority oozing from his every pore. As agitated as that made her, she had to admit he looked damned good doing it.
As the lycan had roared behind her in the kitchen she’d known it was him and had not been afraid but intrigued. Alphas possessed practiced control over their shifts, so why, when she turned around, had she looked right into the bright blue eyes of his wolf? Even with his teeth fully bared, hair where there normally was none, and his muscled legs spread wide in the prepared-to-fight stance, he’d awakened something inside her. Something that had immediately sat up and taken notice. It was arousal and a little bit more, which again irritated the hell out of her.
Now he had the audacity to be ignoring her, which only pushed more of her buttons. What was it about this guy that had her so ready to yell with consternation one minute and more than eager to pant with desire the next? She’d asked herself that question too many times throughout the night. And now here she was following him to who-knew-where, to do only he knew what. She hated the act of following altogether, hated the implications, and yet she couldn’t turn away.
Besides, if she did turn away, where was she going to go? Channing had told her that not only were all the doors in the lodge on that electronic lock system, but so were the windows. In addition, there was a perimeter monitor that would also alert them to strangers approaching their property. There were cameras outside the house, heat sensors along the floorboards of the front porch and upper and lower back decks. The trees were another source of security, lodgepole and ponderosa pine so tall and thick the only way to see the lodge was if someone knew it was there from overhead. In essence, it was a well-guarded fortress, one she found herself trapped in.
Temporarily.
She would figure a way out; she had to. But first, she had to put this guy in his place once and for all. Sure, he was right in that he was the alpha of this pack; she couldn’t deny that and generally wanted to respect it. He just kept pushing her, kept saying things and looking at her like she was … like he wanted to— She huffed and stopped right there, trying to get herself together.
Stop thinking. You’re wasting your energy on things you cannot change.
“Stay the hell out of my head,” was her quick retort just as he stopped in front of two double doors.
He turned to her partially, his silhouette just as breathtakingly perfect as the rest of him. He wore jeans today, dark denim that looked as if it had been cut and sewn perfectly over his sculpted physique. His shirt was royal blue, fitted to his skin just like the one he’d worn yesterday. At his wrist was a watch, silver, on his right ring finger a ring. The alp
ha insignia ring that Kira knew from tradition was passed down to the eldest alpha son of each family.
“Stop stalling. If there’s something you want bad enough, figure out how to make it happen. Lesson one, learn how to keep me and any other lycan out of your thoughts,” he said in a crisp, stern tone before pushing through the swinging doors knowing she would continue to follow him. Gritting her teeth, she did so, determined to not back down from him and his high-handed demeanor. And not to let those smoldering dark as night eyes excite her each time he looked her way. One of those tasks was going to be a lot harder than the other to achieve, she thought as she walked through the doors.
“Sit down over there,” he told her as he moved around the room.
“I know how to block mindchatter,” she told him. “My mother taught me.”
He turned to glance at her, a marginal look of shock on his face. “Your mother taught you how to hone your alpha skills?”
“Yes, she did,” Kira told him. That had been a mother’s job; Kira was certain that was a lycan tradition. Why that caused him pause she had no idea.
“What else did she teach you?”
“Everything I needed to know,” Kira replied.
He raised a brow. “You sure about that?” Blaez asked before continuing his trek across the room.
The room looked like one of the state-of-the-art gyms that cost a small fortune in membership fees every month. She remembered a place like this back in Seattle. Its industrial-carpeted floors and intimidating-looking equipment pulling her into the most competitive environment she’d ever been forced into. It had been two months after her mother’s death when Penn had unceremoniously snapped, “You need to get in shape if you hope to get claimed!”
