Jenni gives an abrupt laugh. “Nice. Isn’t that against your religion or something?”
“Nope. We all know what it is. Lycan just don’t always like it.”
“So you feel a little choiceless as a species?”
Quill nods, his expression clearly conveying she’s nailed the idea. “But as the humans say, it is what it is. That state of being is what it is to be a Were.”
“Do Were date?” Jenni asks.
Quill shakes his head. “Not really. There are so few females, it’s like the beasts just come together, they work, and the two mate.”
“That’s not an absolute,” a voice says from behind them.
Quill curses mentally. He knew this would happen. Once he wasn’t leader anymore, other Were would vie for Jenni.
After all, it’s an ancient directive. He scented the other Were but was unconcerned. They’re pack.
Slowly, Quill turns and faces Dare.
Cousin by blood, he is also a friend. Still, he’s another Were—pure and simple.
“What’s going on?” Jenni looks between the two of them.
Quill scents her anxiety, and that makes the interruption piss him off even more.
He narrows his eyes on the other Lycan. “I don’t need this, Dare.”
Dare shrugs. “You’re not Alpha of the pack anymore, Quill—you know how it goes.”
Yes, he does.
“You were in the right place at the right time.”
Fucker.
“Listen to me hard, Dare”—he clips his words off with a hacksaw—“I saved her, and you protected Devin and Ella. Period. You are beta, and I am Alpha. Think it fucking through.”
Dare walks forward.
Jenni steps back. “Wait a second, no one is fighting over me. I’m just some nurse. I’m no one special.” Her voice shakes, and Quill’s beast roars.
“She is unguarded. Open to any other male until you claim her Quill.”
“Is that true?” Jenni asks in a tight voice.
“He didn’t tell you?” Dare asks without looking at her.
Now Quill scents fear. Moondammit. “No,” Quill grits. “I wanted to spare Jenni the concern, being as how she was nearly killed by that fucking rogue. I wanted Jenni to feel safe and let her heal without mental headspace being taken up with more information than what she could process.”
Dare smirks. “And how’d that work out, pal?”
One minute there’s a question, and the next his fist is on Dare’s face.
Dare flies backward, but he arrests the backward momentum, his hand snapping out and grabbing the tree trunk.
It breaks in half, and Dare roars, charging low and hard for Quill.
Quill gently shoves Jenni out of the way and meets the charge. The two collide, and Quill rolls with the strike as they crash into the nearest tree.
Using their combined momentum, he throws the other Were away from him as he spins and crouches, instinctively finding Jenni through scent—behind him and to the left.
Dare rises from the ground, coniferous needles decorating his body like fragrant green snow. “Why are you not letting me try? You have no right to keep the female on lockdown. What if she comes into heat and you’re not mated? Every male within fifty miles will come. You know this.” Dare spreads his muscled arms away from his body. “You know it, Quill. Tell her.”
“I didn’t want to pressure her, you fuck.”
He and Dare face off again.
“Well, I know now. Or I can get the gist of it.”
They turn to her.
Jenni’s placed herself at a safe distance, giving them a wary once-over. “I can’t say I’m super-impressed.”
Quill knew she would feel like this, so he held off on telling her the danger she might be in as an unmated Alpha female. Thank moon she wasn’t in heat.
He was acutely aware of another troubling occurrence: when one female entered heat, others would sometimes follow if they were mature enough. It was similar, Quill had heard, to human women living close to one another and their cycles aligning.
Except that occurrence is not a big deal for humans. A bunch of unmated Were females going into heat at the same time—that’s a problem.
Adi went into heat and now is with whelp.
Who’s next? Devin? Jenni? Or Moon forbid, Nova? Quill just as quickly dismisses the whelpling. Yes, Nova is close to maturation, but with the exception of Adi, he’s never heard of a female entering maturation and heat that closely. Hell, Nova seems like an infant to Quill.
These thoughts race through Quill’s mind, because in the next moment, Dare says, “You don’t have to be impressed. You just need to be mated.”
Jenni backs up another step, her face impassive, her body on guard.
“We’re not going to hurt you, Jenni,” Quill says quietly.
Her dark-brown eyes flick to Dare. “Not you. I’m not so sure where instinct and intellect part ways, though, sorry.”
Dare plows his fingers through his dark-auburn hair, exhaling roughly. “I can’t apologize for wanting a chance. I won’t. This is what it is to be Lycan, and if Quill can’t spit out the truth because he wants to fucking save your sensibilities, that’s not my problem. I think you need to know what’s what.”
Jenni’s silence fills the space between them. “Then Bray coming for Devin was more than just him being the baby daddy to Ella.”
“Revenge played a part of it,” Quill admits reluctantly.
Jenni makes a fist, putting it between her breasts. “He almost killed me. There was no high-and-mighty offer to mate me. Bray and crew were rapists who were supernatural. Period.”
“Rogue Were don’t handle their impulses. Wires get crossed,” Dare begins, and Jenni opens her mouth—to offer an argument, Quill’s sure,—but he continues, “I’m not condoning their bullshit. I’m just saying that’s what to expect from rogues.”
“Then what happens?” Jenni asks.
Quill’s arms cross his chest, chin dipping. Fuck.
“I need to choose one of you and fast—or my goose is cooked?”
He lifts his head, and their eyes meet.
She goes on slowly, “Essentially, I’ll bring males who aren’t a part of our happy little pack because I’m stalling.” Jenny bites her bottom lip, and with each second, Quill watches her thought processes coalescing. “My humanity is the problem. I want dating then to say yes to the right guy. Because believe me, fellas, I’ve been with the wrong ones, and I can’t say I’m really interested in revisiting that whole deal.”
Quill scents Slash from a quarter mile away. Taking in the small cuts that heal as he watches, Quill figures their quarrel drew the attention of the new Alpha.
Swell.
Slash doesn’t charge into the woods. He strolls, nostrils flaring, scar snagging on the grim smile he directs at Quill and Dare. “Problems, boys?”
Dare meets Slash’s stare, but finally, his eyes drop. “Yes,” he hisses.
Jenni suddenly interrupts. “No, there’s no problem.” She gives rapid nods, as if agreeing with herself.
Slash’s head whips to hers.
“I’m leaving. Then no one has to wonder about me and the problem I present. I don’t want to be the thing that causes more distress, especially for Adi. As I see it, I’m back at square one.”
“You’re naked without the protection of the pack,” Slash states in a flat voice.
Maybe Quill was too soft with Jenni.
Her head jerks back, her eyes slitting on him. “And when you told Adi to leave you because you didn’t care about her and she ran around in heat, then the Lanarre assholes got a whiff of her?” Jenni snorts.
Slash badly covers a flinch.
“You can never understand the lengths a male who is your mate will go to keep his female safe.”
Jenni walks to where Slash stands.
Quill knows she is safe with their new Alpha. That doesn’t stop his beast from coiling inside him like a snake ready to stri
ke.
Slash is aware, giving him a peripheral eye flick.
Reds can scent anything.
“You know what, I’ll never forget what Quill did for me, but it seems like I’m in more danger outside the pack, but I have more freedom.”
Slash widens his legs, planting his feet wide. “A female doesn’t need freedom. She needs protection.”
Jenni’s mouth falls open.
Moon. Quill restrains slapping his forehead.
“Have you told that to Adi?”
Slash is silent.
Jenni cocks a hip. “Because I bet she might object, given her nature.”
“I knew,” a female voice says from behind Slash. “I gave up some of my independence to be Slash’s mate. I knew if I mated an old dude, I’d be in for old-school ideals.”
Adi’s eyes flash in the darkening woods. The hazel that is amber cause her eyes to look like low-burning fire. But that could be spirit.
They share a grandsire, and he was a formidable male. All those from his line are hell-bent on their own independence.
Adi is no different. Quill doesn’t look at Dare but loops him.
Circling her mate, Adi runs a finger down his bare, heavily muscled arm. Slash’s eyes hood as she walks to face Jenni.
The two females exchange a stare, then Adi says, “You can go. Nobody is stopping you. And you know how I feel about ya. But one thing—males will find you, and they won’t give a shit that you say no. There’s more Brays out there. And if you want to be in another pack, and there’s an asston of females, you’ll have to fight because you’re Alpha. Here, the females won’t fight you. There’s not enough of us.”
“Are you convincing me?” Jenni asks, her expression skeptical.
Adi shakes her head, thumbing behind her at Slash. “He’s got the finesse of a bulldozer, but my mate is right.” Adi reaches behind her, and Slash takes her hand. “If I hadn’t had him, I might have been violated by that dickhead, Bray.”
A low growl sounds from Slash.
Jenni laughs, breaking the building tension. “How did he save you?”
Slash steps up beside Adi.
“I treed her,” he says quietly.
Dare snorts. “It’s a helluva lot more than treeing her.”
“You mean, you got her into one of these?” Jenni slaps a palm on the tree beside her.
Quill shakes his head. “No,” he points to an ancient single deciduous tree just outside the coliseum where the ancient rites take place.
Jenni’s eyes follow the path of his finger, and she sucks a breath. “Wow, that tree?”
Her face swings to Adi. “Could you have gotten up there?”
She shrugs. “Maybe if I could go wolfen, but I can’t anymore. I carry a whelp. I’m vulnerable because I’m carrying.”
“My whelp,” Slash says with a possessive edge, wrapping his forearm around her chest.
“So?”
“I can’t go more than quarter change.”
“Can’t or won’t?” Jenni asks.
“Can’t. It’s not possible for a female to change to her half form or for the moon to call her beast while she’s pregnant.”
“So you were totally vulnerable to those psychos.”
Adi nods.
“I’m not saying these things to be a chauvinistic bastard,” Slash says.
“He just sounds like one.” Adi’s voice is coy.
Slash ignores her. “I say them because a proper male defends his female because she is indefensible for a reason.”
A flood of emotion washes Jenni’s features: anxiety to anger to longing to resignation.
It’s the last emotion he sees that makes Quill uneasy.
An unwilling mate is not mate at all. Just a hostage.
“I need time to think.” Turning, she walks away from the small group.
Quill shoots Dare a look of pure malice.
“Fuck you, Quill. She needed to know.”
“The male’s right, though from the sounds of it, Dare could have handled things much better.”
“Yeah, duh,” Adi says. “At this stage, I’m not sure I improved Jenni’s life.” Adi releases Slash’s hand and, with a forlorn look after Jenni, heads toward their small cabin.
Dare leaves.
Slash gives Quill a lingering glance, then without a word, he departs.
Quill stands in the woods until full dark.
Just him and the thoughts that plague him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Marley
I can’t tell you more than what I already know.” Marley is trying to be civil, but the males are not reasonable. Though she doesn’t expect more.
They are males. And that gender distinction is generally enough.
Marley crosses her arms, and the more surly of the two males, Jake, glares at her.
“I can’t understand why we didn’t wake,” Jake mutters.
“I’m not standing here to convince you of it. Only that the event occurred. There was a vampire right there.” Marley points to a dense patch of underbrush.
Several small branches are clearly broken off, as though something large moved through them slowly, bending them to the breaking point then retreating. Exactly like what had happened.
Howard pegs strong hands on his hips. “If it were a vampire, then it sleeps during the day, and we can move to the Northwestern and be with our pack by nightfall.”
“Fair enough.” Jake kicks a rock with his hiking boot, and scowling, he begins to walk ahead of them, shrugging on his pack by one loop.
Howard shakes his head. “Come on, Marley. Let’s get out of here.”
Marley sighs. Her backpack already affixed between her shoulder blades, she moves between the two males.
As they hike closer to Gig Harbor, she thinks about crossing the Narrows Bridge and swallows. She loathes manmade heights; they’ve always scared her.
“Don’t look down, Marley,” Howard states matter-of-factly, but not without compassion.
Jake isn’t as patient. “It’s strange as fuck that you’re phobic. For a Were, it’s just fucked up.” He slaps his thighs, looking down at the waves that wrestle each other beneath the biggest bridge in Washington state.
Yes, it is. Nevertheless, like all phobias, they don’t make sense, and there’s no workaround for her. Intellect isn’t enough to combat fear sometimes.
“You scale trees, jump ravines. I don’t get it.”
She frowns at Jake. “Humans made this structure. That’s what I don’t trust.”
Howard scowls at Jake. “Come on, Jake. Ease up.”
“Fine, let’s go before the humans notice us.”
Marley thinks that’s possible. What with her looks and the malesʼ size, humans might take a second glance.
Not very many human males stand at six and a half feet tall and are built like Were.
Were males don’t affect artificial things to gain their size—there is no gym time. Their males are just built like this. Well, born males are. When it comes to changed males, they can be any size and retain whatever size they were as humans, only gaining size during their wolfen form or when they change to their wolf. Or they can also change to be larger than they were as humans. It’s all so dependent on whether they have Were genes or they were just turned cold, without a shred of Were biology.
Humans seem so frail, and Marley just can’t trust them to do anything where her safety is in question.
Like this tall bridge.
Walking behind Jake, she keeps her eyes glued to his broad back, studying him, to distract herself from her phobia as she treks across.
She thinks of his light-hair, though she knows the humans would call the color dishwater blond. It’s a luxurious mix of platinum, rich brown, and dark blond. The color suits his eyes, which are a deep indigo. In fact, when Marley first met Jake, they’d appeared black upon casual inspection. But they’re not. His eyes remind her of the sky just before night takes it. And unlike so many of the Were wit
h their perfectly chiseled features, Jake’s nose has been broken several times and never fully healed to straightness again, having a crook about midway down, just before his bridge.
Apparently, there was a time when the Northwestern was full of dissent.
No more. From what the males say, they’re starting fresh. Marley was excited about being a part of that. A new pack. A new environment. The only thing she’ll miss about her home pack is Tahlia.
But she’s mated now, isn’t she?
Marley doesn’t pause. Grief penetrates her more than the onslaught of wind as they bow forward, plowing through the resistance as it roars across the bridge.
Humans would not attempt to traverse the Narrows. They do not have the Were’s intrinsic center of gravity, for one.
Marley’s skull throbs where she plaited her hair so tightly, it hurts.
But the style was necessary.
The wind howls, burning her exposed ears and deafening Marley in a scary way. Lycan’s don’t realize how accustomed they become to their senses until one is stolen because of circumstance.
She can’t scent Howard behind her but senses his presence. Of the two males, he is the one who she feels most drawn to and not as tense around.
He is a poster child of the Were.
She allows her mind's eye to fill with the vision of his clear hazel eyes, planted in a face that has a ruddy complexion, hair that is thick and sandy-colored. Like many Lycan, he has the fair coloring of their ancient ancestry.
That is part of why her coloring is so unusual. Violet eyes paired with ebony hair is striking for a Lycan or human.
In her case, the vampire’s interest solidifies that she is something besides Were. Singer heritage is not unheard of in Lycan culture, but it is certainly not typical. Like Were, the Singers stick to their own kind in large part. Probably because all supernaturals do not procreate as easily as the humans.
A strand of hair escapes the tight braid and strikes Marley on the cheek like a whip. Just move across the bridge, Marley.
One foot in front of the other.
She follows Jake for what seems like a thousand years instead of a stress-filled hour, and finally, they are released from the narrow walkway.
Alpha Blood Page 12
