She’s never been in heat, but all females are viable unless they’ve suffered a severe injury.
At least she’s escaped that. Not that Tanya didn’t try her moonest to hurt her where it counted—her reproduction.
If Marley had been just a little less gorgeous, she might have escaped the worst of the other beta femalesʼ attention. But Moon had decided Marley would freeze males in their tracks until they came to their senses and realized there was a brain in there somewhere—besides just looks.
Everyone on the planet thinks it’s so great to be revered for beauty. For Marley, it just means she has to try harder, be nicer, and downplay her intellect, because Moon knows, she can’t be stunning and intelligent. No, that would be too bitter a pill for other Were to swallow.
She’s managed to survive ten months since maturing from whelpling to female and is only twenty-three.
Marley believes her king and queen saved her.
Her only true friend was Tahlia, their daughter, the princess. The fact she was like a second daughter to them was not lost on Marley. In fact, though not closely, she and Tahlia resemble one another.
Marley shares Tahlia's shade of raven hair, but where Tahlia’s eyes are mainly blue, shot through with a streak of violet, Marley’s are petal purple. Large, soulful, and thick lashed.
The females cried right before the princess departed for her travel to her betrothed, Drek. Then word came back they would be traveling dignitaries to the Northwestern.
Marley feels more relaxed to become part of a pack without a bunch of beta females, and she’s looking forward to the bonus of seeing Tahlia again. Otherwise, traveling with two strange males might be a little intimidating.
The male called Jake turns, sighting down on her, and Howard brings up the rear, stopping a few paces at her back. “You okay, Marley?”
She bites her lip, trying to determine if lying is a great option, and finally deciding it isn’t—they’ll scent her tiredness—she gives a small shake of her head. “My leg is giving me a little trouble.”
Jake’s eyes tighten.
Her response is immediate. Marley doesn’t cower but remembers too many dark halls where females took advantage of having no witnesses.
“Don’t fear us, female. We will not beat you.”
Practicing a little deep breathing, Marley understands they will not hurt her. In fact, it took two days before Jake and Howard could string a few words together in her presence, they were so blown away by her looks.
Marley doesn’t really get it. She looks at herself each day in the mirror, and she’s just the same Were. Same old face. Whatevers, as some of the girls say.
But it’s not her that’s looking, is it? Judging? Hating?
Howard walks around to face her, and Jake treks back down the gentle needle-laden slope of ground between thick trees, approaching from ahead.
Shame threatens to strangle Marley. All the vicious comments from Tanya and the other betas haunt her mental struggle, tagging Marley’s efforts to be at least neutral of herself in her own mind.
Howard’s nostrils flare as he looks down on her. Not in disdain, but because he’s so tall, he still towers over her five feet ten. Though she’s tall too, she’s put together delicately, and that did not help her in fights of ascension. Bird bones break easily.
Jake comes to stand at his right. “I scent your exhaustion.”
“And fear of reprisal,” Howard tacks on helpfully.
Yup, love the transparency of my life, Marley thinks. “Sorry, force of habit.”
“We knew your history before we agreed to your acquisition. That your leg would be troublesome, that you had a timid streak. Not a bad thing in a beta, or an unnatural one.” Jake’s voice is very matter-of-fact, not accusing. He’s focused, she’s coming to know of his nature.
The entire conversation just makes Marley feel tired, though.
“I’m not timid. I’m handicapped.” Marley stares down at her hiking boots, leg throbbing.
The males say nothing, but their arms sink around her body, holding her tightly between them.
A deep growling begins, resonating like a tuning fork through the bones of her sternum, flexing into her ribs and spine, and a deep peace steals over her, quieting her shame, her nerves, and the small anxieties of the future of belonging to a new pack.
The gesture is a gift decent males can give a female who is anxious, and she appreciates them greatly.
Jake lays the side of his face against the top of her head. “We will protect you, female. There are no females for you to fight in the Northwestern.”
Marley’s shoulders drop in relief.
Truly, Marley doesn’t think her leg can take another blow. The Were physician thinks if there is no more damage, over time, her monthly change to her beast might heal it enough to regain the full use. Eventually.
It’s been a tough year for Marley, and she allows herself a bit of skepticism.
Jake pulls away, and his sandy-blond hair appears translucent in the late afternoon sun.
Howard’s arms tighten around her because she shivered a moment ago. “Let us warm you, female.”
Normally, when males say that, they are asking for more than keeping her warm. However, the males of the Northwestern have so far been honorable.
Marley nods, and the males remove their traveling packs from their broad backs, hiking to a stand of trees just a few yards from where they’d stood in the middle of a wide trail.
As Howard comes close to the thick tree line, he turns to her. Jake begins to set up an overnight camp in the distance. Howard's light-hazel eyes go wolfen at the edges. “Stay close, Marley.”
She gives a single nod.
Marley would never attempt to stray. She’s like an antelope in the wild, hunted by all.
Vague human noise reaches her ears from a distance, and with a last look around, Marley makes the short trek to bed down with the males, just as the sun bleeds its final tangerine rays in the west.
Marley sits straight up between the two males, their arms still around her slim form, feeling disoriented.
Heart racing, she scans their immediate surroundings. What woke me?
Marley was in the middle of a vague nightmare, the kind that clings to the mind like cobwebs without being remembered, a sense of mild lingering unease permeates her consciousness.
Her gaze stretches before her as she blinks into the darkness. Light pollution is unable to pierce the thick woods they’ve traveled through for days on end.
Now they are less than a day’s travel from the Northwestern, and Marley is anxious.
Looking first left then right, Marley recognizes that if there was a threat, the males would have been alerted.
Her heartbeat calms the longer she stares at the nothingness of the night, thoughts sliding into position as she grows more wakeful.
This is ridiculous. Turning, she beats a fist into the small travel pillow, causing a divot. With a tired sigh, she shifts to flatten herself between Howard and Jake again, noting the chilliness of the air. This early in autumn, the lower temperature is not unusual.
With a last look around, she’s poised to fling back into the cocoon the males provide.
When she sees the red eyes in the darkness, at first Marley is utterly confused.
Scentless, the creature approaches with a degree of stealth borne of finesse, and Marley’s blood begins to pump sickly through her veins. Like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights, she freezes.
Marley and the creature stare at each other for a space of seconds.
She opens her mouth to scream, turning to the males to alert them. When her head swings back to where those eyes were, there is nothing but cool night air and the nocturnal silence of the woods.
It’s gone.
The male is certainly dangerous to Marley. He possibly thought to gauge his chances. There is only one thing that is very attractive about a supernatural to one such as he.
And that would onl
y be a certain type of blood. As far as Marley knows, no one suspects her to be anything but pure Were.
As surprises go, it’s a good one.
Discovery and simultaneous confirmation of one’s true ancestry is always interesting.
Her new-found lineage explains why so many of her former pack were eager to bring Marley low by battles for ascension.
The natural enemies of the Were do not go after their women or show interest in their females… unless those females possess blood of the Singer.
And the males in question are vampire.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Drek
D rek: All is well. Our party makes good time to the Northwestern. I’ll text again when we arrive.
Bowen: I don’t trust Neil, he’s a major player.
Drek grins, tapping out a fast-thumbed reply. Nor do I.
His smile slips. How does the pack fare in my absence?
The long pause before Bowen replies troubles Drek further.
Bowen: Unsettled—you knew it would be that way if you were to leave that quickly after our return from trying to acquire Tahlia. For the record, it’d be so much better if you’d just mated her. The entire pack would be more solid.
Drek frowns. She’s not ready. Tahlia is in grief from the loss of her guardians and feels this Tessa will somehow assuage that, and she’s young. She’s never been in heat—
Bowen: Don’t think her heat can’t happen, Drek.
Drek scrubs a hand over the roughness of two days’ worth of beard and taps out: I’m aware.
Bowen: If that female goes into heat with Neil around. It’ll be wolf eats wolf. He won’t give shit one that you’re our prince—you know that. A Lanarre alpha female? No way. He’ll kill you and beg forgiveness later. And she doesn’t have the protection of his surprise over her rare talent. Neil knows she has a bird form.
Heat encapsulates Drek, as he minds his beast with an iron fist. The thought of Neil—or for that matter, any Were—trying to take Tahlia makes his beast enraged.
He’ll not have her.
Bowen: My prince, I’m afraid.
Drek won’t lie, not to Bowen, who is like a whelpmate to him. They have fought together, laid with females together, and shared meals.
He hesitates to text the weakness of his words, though they are the baldest of truths. As am I. This will not take long, this tracking of Tessa and Lazarus so Tahlia can tangibly witness the female is fine, and get a sense of something she feels is missing.
A full minute unwinds between them. Finally, a chime sounds and Drek peers at Bowen’s reply.
Speed be to you, my prince.
Drek stares at the formality of the ending salutation. After a long moment of stillness, Drek shuts off his cell and slides the small flat rectangle into the tight pocket at the back of his denims. Scenting Tahlia easily, he makes his way through the low brush toward the biggest river that winds thought the Olympic Peninsula, the Dosewallips.
Raven hair falls to her trim waist. Her dusky skin contrasts with bluish violet eyes that are striking close up.
Tahlia is lovely as she bathes in the icy water.
Drek smiles, even from where he stands, he’s close enough to see the shiver of her slender shoulders from the chill.
As though sensing his gaze on her, Tahlia turns and waves at him, her nudity on full display.
Drek tenses, finding her lack of clothing odd. There could be other males. It is never good practice for a Were female to be unclothed without the protection of her pack.
His eyes search the area, but Drek sees nothing.
The small noises of the forest reach his ears. All around him is the rush of the water and the play of wind through the trees.
Scenting deeper, his sensitive nostrils take in another odor.
Awareness drills through him, causing the fine hairs at his nape to rise and gooseflesh to flow over his exposed skin.
Neil should have been guarding Tahlia during his brief commune with Bowen.
His head swivels, scanning the area again. The male is nowhere.
Drek’s trepidation deepens.
The scent of Blood permeates the air. And underneath that, Drek scents heat.
Tahlia’s heat. The fragrance is not a siren’s wail. Not yet. As a point of fact, she might not realize her heat hovers at the horizon.
But the very thing Bowen had warned him about has come to fruition. And the male he trusted enough to keep close has vanished.
Tahlia whirls suddenly, covering her breasts with her hands.
Their eyes lock across the one hundred yard distance of water and shore.
Drek is not anywhere near enough when Were begin to surround the river.
Tahlia cannot shift when she’s in heat. She can move to quarter change, but nothing more.
Stomach knotting, Drek leaps from the gentle knoll, the fibers of his body tearing, bruising, and stretching to accommodate the flight that he presses it into. Shifting to wolfen form in movement is always painful.
He grunts through the sensation of his flesh rending, pouring on the speed as strings of his shed human form whip behind him like gory flags.
Tahlia’s scent of distress hits Drek dead on and is also clear on her expressive features as she begins to awkwardly plow through the water toward a small pile of clothes at the shore.
Five Were crash into the water after her.
She smoothly dives into the river, swimming against the current but making steady progress with strong strokes.
Not all Were can swim, and Drek’s relieved she can.
Reaching the shore, a naked, dripping Tahlia bounds to her feet, grabbing a shirt with one hand and pants with the other. She races in his direction, nearly colliding with him.
Eyes wild, she gasps, “What is this?”
“Dress,” he growls a command, putting his body before Tahlia as she dons her clothes.
Drek recognizes the Were—they are from his own pack.
His skin pebbles with unease.
Neil is gone, and his pack chase his intended. It doesn’t take much thought to figure out that Neil being with Drek didn’t matter. His followers have made a stand.
Carlisle, the Were who pursued Tahlia most closely, relieves the water of his soaked body. “My prince.”
Drek wastes nothing on pretense, as is his way. “Why do you chase my queen?”
Carlisle cants his head to the left, making a tsking sound. “She is nothing, yet. She is a female who leads you by your prick while you leave the pack with the mongrel, Bowen. As you know, he was certainly not fit to rule.”
Prejudice and disdain color his voice. The Were’s nose flares to catch the subtle scent Tahlia’s heat puts off. His head whips to her, eyes narrowed.
Drek grits his teeth, canines aching to escape. From the periphery, he notes Tahlia’s dressed, tense by his side.
“You would talk to me in this manner, Carlisle—your prince?” His snort is one of menace. “You do not fear reprisal?”
Ignoring his question, Carlisle asks, “Did you think that heartwarming text was sent by Bowen?”
Drek’s heart begins to drum within his chest.
He scents Neil before he sees him, strolling out from the very stand of trees where Drek had stood to communicate with Bowen.
Neil raises a cell with a triumphant grin, shaking the plastic rectangle back and forth.
Tahlia’s sharp intake of breath is the only sound in the space of seconds it takes for Drek to realize what Neil has in mind—what he always had in mind.
Giving a sharp nod at Carlisle, Neil calls out, “Boys.”
Drek senses Tahlia move closer to his side, but he does not ease his defensive stance.
One of the other Were from his pack strides forward, a black sack in his hand.
Drek is struck with the smell of Bowen rotting.
Tahlia makes a choked sound.
His throat crowds with grief, a black cloud of suffocation moving through him.
; Tahlia takes his hand, and Drek shakes off her compassion. Drek will need to kill Were this day, and he can’t have limbs occupied with anything but his enemiesʼ blood.
The Were’s hand disappears inside the inky bag, gripping something.
Drek howls his grief into the sky as Bowen’s head is unceremoniously tossed at his feet.
Neil’s eyes travel Drek’s expression, a wide smile blooming on his hateful face. “Did you think, my dear prince, that Bowen would stand a chance against the dissenters? Oh”—he gives an exaggerated wink—“and for extra fun, we took turns on your sister. We showed Mae a good time.”
Drek’s beast comes in a burst of emotion, scattering gore to the edges of where the traitorous members of his pack stands.
And with the loss of his wolfen form, reason will soon follow. With the last bit of sanity that remains, he turns to Tahlia, eyes revolving so rapidly, her image appears as though she’s at the end of a long silver tunnel. He issues a slurred, guttural command: “Run!”
Then his muzzle swivels in their direction, facing the Were who killed his best friend, raped his sister, and dared to take his intended.
Drek leaps.
Tahlia
Tahlia is so hot, like an internal blow torch has been turned on inside her body. She puts the back of her hand against her head. There’s no sweat, just feverish heat. And she feels achy and terrible.
Were do not become sick. Tahlia scowls. She doesn’t need this—whatever it is.
She told Drek that a bath in the river was in order. Normally, that would be too cold for her, even with their species’s propensity for a rather warm internal temperature. But today, the chilly goodness the river offers sounds perfect.
Tahlia scrunches her nose, letting her hand drop from her hot forehead with a sigh.
Neil is standing guard.
Alpha Blood Page 9
