“You can’t deny me. Unless you want to let word spread you’re a coward?” Wyatt shook his head and smirked at all the witnesses around them. “I’m sure news will spread fast.”
Fire burned in Harris’s eyes. Amber churned in the depths as he lifted his chin and sneered. He didn’t even turn his head as he gave his order. “Lock the cub inside. We do this now.”
“No!” Atticus yelled. The wall of bodies swayed with his frantic shoves, but no one moved.
“Mark me, boy. This is how you put down rebellions. Learn from this moment,” Harris snarled over the noise. He eyed Wyatt up and down, then jerked his head toward the door. “Bring him.”
Rough hands grabbed him and dragged Wyatt forward. He struggled to yank himself free, but others were ready to push him from behind and keep him moving.
Atticus thrashed somewhere on the other side of the press. Too many hands. Too many bodies. He couldn’t get a glimpse of his cub before the door slammed shut. Small fists beat against the wood in an eerie progression toward the most important fight of Wyatt’s life.
Some ran ahead, summoning everyone close and on the territory. By the time Wyatt was shoved outside, a good portion of the streak gathered right in the damn backyard. More spilled out of the streak house, eyes blazing in more than once face. Spiky anger and apprehension choked the air.
“You know the rules,” Harris started. His voice twisted with the raw anger that he kept off his face. “Step outside the circle, and forfeit your claim. Die inside the circle, and I win.”
“No shifting, partial or otherwise, from the witnesses. No outside help.” Wyatt spat on the ground. “Step in and take your beating, old man. I know the fucking rules.”
Harris sneered again. “I don’t even need my tiger to beat you.”
Wyatt shoved his hair out of his face and smirked. “I’ll do this on two feet just as easily as four.”
He slid his gaze to the men and women ringing them. Other faces and scents stood out among those there to witness the fate of their streak. He recognized some as alphas and elders of Redwater, all spotted with Harris while he’d stalked his prey.
Fuckers no doubt expected another sham trial and execution.
Well, someone would die. Wyatt didn’t intend for his blood to spill.
Harris worked quick fingers down his shirt and tossed it to one of his people. “You’re weak. Allowing yourself to be led around by some female and her whelp? You shouldn’t have stuck your nose where it didn’t belong.”
Some female. Some whelp. Harris was the weak one to not see the value in his own daughter. Alanna was good and kind. Wyatt wanted to earn his place at her side.
She wasn’t a weakness; she was his strength.
Wyatt ripped his own shirt over his head and threw his arms wide. “And you’re an asshole. You’re going to admit you lied to set me up all those years ago, just like you’re lying tonight. Then I’m going to take your streak.”
Harris growled, long and low. The sound skittered over the circle. Tigers rolled their shoulders and rubbed hands up and down their arms.
Wyatt braced himself. His wolf flashed sendings to him, each one covered red with blood.
Harris charged with a roar. The man was fast, flying from one attack to the next. Even with hate filling his heart, Wyatt could see how Harris kept a stranglehold over the streak for all his years.
His wolf howled through him and everything else went black.
Nothing else existed except for Harris. Not a single breath, a beat of a heart. Wind didn’t dare rustle through the fucking grass. There was darkness and Wyatt and Harris.
He threw punch after punch, driving Harris away from the center of the circle. Uncorked rage bottled up and stewed for thirteen years kept him on the move even when Harris snuck in a low blow. Wyatt bent over as the wave of nausea gripped his insides, and took a knee to the face for the moment of understandable weakness.
The blinding pain of a broken nose submerged him back in his overwhelming desire for revenge. He roared his fury at the tiger and redoubled the attack, swinging hard and fast. He’d hunted the man. Stalked him. Waited for the right moment to make things even. The time was now, or die knowing he’d failed his mate and cub.
Harris stumbled back, arms going up to shield his face. When he reached the edge of the circle, his own tigers shoved him back inside.
Harris lost his footing and went down. Wyatt kicked him in the ribs once, twice, then dropped over him.
“Say it!” Wyatt snarled. He punctuated the demand with a fist into Harris’s face. “Say you framed me. You kept me from Alanna. You kept me from my cub.”
Alanna. His cub. Those were his reasons for existing. For fighting. He’d been an aimless wanderer, one hair-trigger away from deserving to be put down for all his sins before Alanna stepped back into his life. She cleared out all the cobwebs encasing his heart and breathed meaning into its beat.
And none of that would have been necessary if Harris hadn’t interfered long ago.
One by one, the wolves and bears and other alphas slipped out of the circle, leaving gaping holes in the ranks. They saw the way the wind blew and wanted to batten down the hatches before they were caught in the maelstrom.
Harris rolled to his side and tried to crawl to the edge of the circle. Wyatt grabbed his ankle and dragged him back to the center. “We’re not done, fucker.”
“I did it. I set you up.” A cough. A sputter. Harris waved his hands in the air. “I yield.”
Wyatt crouched by Harris’s head. His wolf shoved forward, ready to rip into the other man and end the threat once and for all. No one hurting Alanna. No dragging Atticus into his machinations. The world would be better with Harris fucking Ayers polluting the air.
But death was easy. Living with the consequences would tear the man apart.
“What’s that, old man?” Wyatt demanded. “Say it louder for the rest of them. Let them hear you choose cowardice over a clean death.”
Pure hatred glared out of bright amber eyes. “I yield.”
Wyatt pushed to his feet. His breath heaved in his chest and his wolf howled to be set free.
Eyes all around the circle looked to him. He could feel them slowly pressing on his brain, imprinting themselves, sliding under his skin. He was never meant to be alpha. Never wanted the responsibility. At the end of the day, all he wanted to do was fuck shit up.
“I reject you,” he snarled.
Confusion rolled through the streak, followed by angry murmurings. No one challenged for the alpha position and just walked away. It wasn’t done.
Until now.
Wyatt jabbed a finger at one tiger after another. “I want this streak to burn. Get out, all of you. Take your former alpha, if you’ll have a sniveling coward. Take your shit and get out. I reject you.”
The tigers milled and murmured with one another. His blood boiled at the sight. He shoved his hair out of his eyes and roared, “Go!”
The first spat on the ground and glared at him, but shoved past. The second and third, too. More streamed past him, melting into the night behind him.
Beyond the tigers, he spotted Jensen and Ellis.
Then Alanna, standing with Atticus.
Alanna stepped forward, eyes wide and hands shaking.
Fury swelled at the sight of them, fueled by all the worry he’d ignored from the moment she called him to say their cub was missing. The tail end of the bloodlust from the challenge fight surged back into life. Someone had to pay for disobeying his orders.
He brushed her off and rounded on Jensen and Ellis. “You had one job. One fucking job!”
“Wyatt.”
Like a dog yanked by a chain, he whirled around to face her. He slashed his gaze away from her. Fucking hell, he didn’t want her to see him covered in blood and bruises.
She pressed her palms to his cheeks and turned his eyes to meet hers. He expected revulsion. Hatred. Disgust.
He didn’t expect pride.
“You made us safe,” she said in a thick voice and threw her arms around his neck.
Shock froze him for a solid moment. Then his wolf surged to the surface.
Bite. Mark.
Mate.
Wyatt wrapped his arms around her trembling shoulders and buried his face in her hair. The floral spices of her scent swirled in his nose and cut the stench of blood and sweat and fury.
She was everything he needed in the world.
He’d made her safe, and she made him whole.
“No!”
Wyatt turned at Atticus’s shout.
Harris soared through the air toward him, mouth open wide and claws extended to sink into his soft, human body.
A smaller tiger speared into his side and knocked him off balance. The two rolled and tumbled, roaring their fury.
When they slid to a stop, the smaller tiger was on his feet. Atticus roared right in Harris’s face and ended with a snarl.
Wyatt threw his arms wide to stop Alanna and Jensen from charging after the tiger. “He doesn’t die,” he growled. His wolf bled into his voice. “He had his chance for that already tonight. He walks away from here.”
Harris shot looks toward everyone left in the clearing. No one defended him. No one stepped up to him. He backed away slowly, utterly broken in his defeat.
The smaller tiger paced back and forth, snarls sawing in and out of him as he saw fit. Over Wyatt’s shoulder, Alanna looked ready to spit fire, but he held up a hand to stop her.
“You did good, punk,” he said in a low voice and rubbed a hand over his cub’s head. “But don’t you ever do that again.”
Chapter 17
Alanna sighed as Atticus’s door clicked closed. She sank back against her spot on the couch, feeling like she’d been hung out to dry. He’d demanded more information about everything, all the hows and whys and whens, and called her out if she tried to hold anything back or temper the details. Wyatt added what he could and faced his own inquisition.
The toll was worth the prize at the end. He’d thrown his arms around her neck for a quick hug and a gruffly muttered, “I’m sorry, Mom.”
Her eyes had prickled with tears, but she held back from outright bawling. Her boy was growing up and wouldn’t appreciate the babying.
Now, alone with Wyatt, relief coursed through her. They’d won. They were safe. No other tigers would show up at her door and make demands. No one would steal Atticus away and cull out all the good in her sweet little punk. Her family was protected and on the cusp of becoming whole.
“He’s a good kid. He’ll come around.”
Alanna glanced to the front window. Wyatt stood framed against the curtains, dark gauzy material hanging behind him like he was stepping out of the shadows.
Maybe he had. He’d gone off into the night for her and Atticus and returned with them to their small apartment.
“What about you?” she asked.
“I’m coming around to the idea of staying in Redwater.” He pushed away from the window and stalked across the living room. His face was still bruised, but those wounds were fading. His broken nose had been reset and healing aided by a quick shift to his wolf form. “I’m coming around to working at Dark Horse. Maybe opening up my own shop.”
“Is that all?”
He held out a hand and pulled her to her feet. “There’s this gorgeous tigress and her cub I’d like to make happy.”
Alanna’s lips twitched, but she tamped down the excitement prickling in her blood. Atticus received all the answers and assurances he needed. Now she needed to exact her own.
She pressed a hand to Wyatt’s chest. The tips of claws darkened her nails and pierced his shirt. His skin, too, from his wince and hiss.
Good. She had his attention.
Alanna pressed harder as her tigress rumbled with approval. Mark him, the beast seemed to say. Punish him. Make him understand they were equals. “Don’t you dare leave me behind like that again.”
Guilt flashed through his eyes. He shoved his hair back from his face. “I went there to kill him, Alanna. I didn’t want you to see me like that.”
“You let him live instead.”
“Only because I thought it’d be a worse fate.” He landed his hands on her hips and squeezed. “I want him to suffer for keeping us apart.”
“You took everything from him.” The streak had been her father’s life. Wheeling and dealing, politicking, trying to maneuver his way into higher social circles with other tiger streaks, she thought those were the only things he truly cared about. Wyatt had smashed it like an egg when he took alpha and disbanded the streak. “I think you get your wish.”
Disbanded. Hell, she could barely wrap her head around the destruction of the Ayers streak. Wyatt had absolute power within his grasp and he threw it all away.
“Good. About time he knows how that feels.” Wyatt’s eyes flashed silver before they settled back to grey. His fingers dug into her hips with another squeeze. “I want you, Alanna. Not just tonight. I want this forever.”
“What are you saying?” she asked, breath stuck in her lungs.
“I want you to be my mate.” He leaned into her, not quite kissing her. Their breath mingled. Their eyes met. “I want you to bear my mark. I want to raise our cub. I want what we should have had from the beginning.”
Her tigress roared a fiery acceptance. Alanna rumbled with a thick purr, riding the high Wyatt’s words surged inside her. Years. She’d waited years to feel the dip in her stomach, the lightheadedness, the grin spreading across her face. Her heart thundered against her breastbone as she nodded.
“I want that, too. I want you to be my mate.”
Wyatt’s face swam into her vision, a matching grin hitching up his lips.
His mouth found hers and began a slow exploration that set her on fire. His lips nipped and nibbled across hers, tasting and teasing the curve of her bottom lip, then switching to her upper. His tongue flicked against the seam of her mouth and she opened for him, but he didn’t take the invitation.
Wyatt fisted a hand in her hair and tilted her head to the side. From her lips, he blazed a path across her jaw and down the column of her neck. Over her collarbones, Back up the other side. Teeth found her earlobe.
Alanna rocked against him, unable to keep still. Goose bumps lifted up and down her arms while her tigress paced just under her skin. Need built in her core, growing stronger as Wyatt avoided her mouth, her breasts, her center.
More. She needed more.
A whimper worked out of her throat as she chased his kiss until he finally stopped denying her.
Wyatt tightened his hand in her hair and swept his tongue between her lips. Alanna jerked under the electric touch of their mouths moving together, molding just like she wanted with the rest of their bodies.
His fingers slipped under her shirt, tracing her skin with thumbs that rose higher and higher with every smoothing touch. Her shirt bunched around his hands and exposed her sides, then her midriff, finally her ribs.
Alanna darted a quick look over Wyatt’s shoulder. Heat blasted off him and through her, but thought of Atticus swinging open his door and finding them going at it in the middle of the living room doused her with cold reality. She peeled herself from Wyatt, hand tangling in the neck of his shirt.
“Come here,” she ordered.
“Yes, kitten,” he answered, amusement tinging his scent.
Alanna let him loose once she passed into her bedroom. She turned, feeling suddenly nervous. Insane. They weren’t heading to bed for the first time. Her tigress thought him worthy. But nerves still tickled her stomach.
Wyatt locked his eyes on her as he backed the door closed and clicked the lock. “You’re the only one for me, Alanna. Now, ten years from now, I don’t care when this happens. I’m going to stick by your side until my last day.”
“Now.” She lifted her chin. “We’ve waited long enough. I want you to be my mate.”
He was across the room in a split second. He c
upped her cheeks and angled her face to meet his lips in a crashing, consuming, claiming kiss that left her weak in the knees. Alanna balled her hands in his shirt to hold herself steady as he swept an arm behind her to lock her to his body and keep her upright.
Clothes went flying. Shirts, gone. Shoes, kicked off. Alanna growled when she couldn’t pop the button of his jeans fast enough. Wyatt rumbled with a laugh at her gasp when he dropped to his knees and peeled the rest of her clothes down her legs.
He spread her across the bed like a feast and devoured her with his gaze. Grey eyes swept down her body, darting over her curves. Silver eyes swept back up and met her own.
“You’re fucking gorgeous, kitten,” he growled, low. Sensual. Electric.
Alanna licked her lower lip and let her legs fall open.
Wyatt growled again, eyes zeroing in at the apex of her thighs. His chest heaved, the tattoos on his skin moving with each sharp breath. Not taking his eyes off her, his jeans dropped to the floor with a dull thud.
“Fucking gorgeous,” he repeated, sliding his thick cock between his fingers. He groaned, and pumped his length again.
Feeling powerful, Alanna arched her back. She pressed her palms to her hips, sliding one down to her entrance and the other to her breast. She cupped herself, rolling a nipple between her fingers, loving the way Wyatt’s eyes flashed nearly white with his inner animal. Her own tigress rolled over at the sight, yielding completely to man and beast alike.
He fell over her, wrapping her wrists in his hand and drawing them above her head. “Mine,” he growled, and bent his head.
He blew gently on her skin. Her nipple tightened into a sharp peak right before his hot mouth closed over her flesh. Alanna groaned as he sucked and tongued her, desire arrowing straight to her core.
His hands smoothed down her body and straight between her thighs. Another groan worked out of her as his fingers slid through her folds, gathering her wetness on his digits before spreading it to her clit. Her hips bucked and writhed under the excruciating torture of the slow passes he made over the sensitive bud.
His mouth followed the path of his hand. Open kisses, nips of his teeth. Fuck, she thought she even felt the hard length of a fang scraping against her. Alanna was ready to explode by the time he licked up her slit.
Tequila and Tigers: Book Two: Shifters and Sins Page 11
