She nods. “I change, but heat is unpredictable.” Marley licks her bottom lip, and he scents her acute nervousness.
Slash raises an eyebrow. “How’d that go?” He could only guess.
“Badly, four males killed each other in the Rite.”
Slash winces. “Were you bred and mated?”
Marley shakes her head, and he scents the acrid smell of her shame. “I was rejected because I’d caused too much trouble, though there was one male who wanted me.”
Slash senses she’ll talk if he doesn’t interrupt.
A minute goes by, and then she says, “But I was beta, and he was a royal Alpha.”
He shakes his head. The male was a fool. Choose who your beast wants instead of what the pack might think of the coupling.
“So he’d rather another had you than profess his desire for you in front of the pack?”
Marley nods, face flaming. “He wanted me in secret, to breed but not to mate.”
“And what was your answer to that proposition?”
Her eyes darken to violet, sizzling with a sudden fire that surprises Slash. “I told him to go fuck himself.”
Slash shouts a hoarse laugh into the small room they occupy, and Marley smirks.
“Oh, I think you’ll do fine, female. There’s spirit there. I smell it.” Slash taps his nose. “And I think there might be a male yet who will overlook your beauty.”
They share a wry chuckle.
“Really”—she gives a small shrug—“I’m glad to be somewhere safe for the first time since I left whelphood. But I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that my suspicions were confirmed and that a creature of the night seeks me because of the blood that runs in my veins.”
Slash meets her stare again, pleased she will at least hold his eyes now. Moon, but is she slow to trust. “He will not have you.”
Marley thanks him, but her eyes are not confident. He can see why—excepting Tahlia, it appears she’s been let down too many times to have instant faith in anyone.
As Alpha, Slash wants to lead well.
By actions, not words.
Words are smoke; deeds are flesh and bone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Tessa
T essa has a case of the creeps. Now, that’s not exactly a technical term but one that sums up how her skin pebbles with gooseflesh.
Of course, it could be because Laz is running a possessive hand back and forth on her flank. His touch burns, warming her.
Tessa rolls to her back, unabashedly naked, and cuddles beside him.
Popping up on his elbow, Laz gazes down at her. “I love this.”
She could ask what he means, but she’s got his number. Laz likes the easiness of them and their union.
“I love it too.” She arches her neck, and Laz slides a large hand behind her nape, heating her skin, and presses his lips to her own.
A growling stomach interrupts their kiss, and she laughs against his mouth.
Laz pulls back his jaw, eyes hooding. “My Redemptive must feed.”
“‘My Redemptive must feed,’” Tessa mimics in a Laz-like, deep and serious tone.
He frowns. “Do not mock me, or I shall take you again—hard.”
Tessa grins. “Oh, pretty please.”
His frown becomes a scowl, and he flops down on his back, arm crossing his stomach as he looks up into the rare, flawless patch of sky revealed by a break in the canopy of forest.
Worried, Tessa rolls over, careful to avoid her slightly swelling stomach, and rests her head on his chest. “You’re too serious. Just call me Tessa and stop the Redemptive thing. I get it—we’re connected in a really awesome way. But all that talk just reminds me of before.”
Laz sits up, scooping her onto his lap.
Splitting her legs, she lets her still-moist center rest against his rigid cock.
He throbs against her heat and dumps his head to her chest while holding her securely. “You undo me, Tessa. And I do not understand how to control myself in this circumstance. I am unfamiliar.”
“I can’t remember life without you, Laz.”
His hand comes between them, flattening against the curve of her stomach. A slight frown burrows between his golden-blond eyebrows. “Is this typical?”
Her pregnancy is already showing after just two weeks in.
“No, I look way more pregnant than I should.”
Laz shakes his head. “Our females are inseminated, then deliver their demon spawn within two months of your Between time.”
Tessa feels her eyes widen. “Um… Were take six months.”
“And humans nine. Strange.”
She shakes her head. “Nah. It’s just all the different species. But two months? Holy cow.”
“What does a bovine have to do with anything?”
Tessa giggles then slaps a hand over her mouth. “It’s a human expression, and I love it. I also like telling people not to ʻhave a cow.ʼ”
Laz’s expression is adorable, going from bemused to stoic—his default expression—to confused. “My apologies, I can’t—”
Tessa puts her fingers to his ruby lips. They’re so red, they look painted. However, she knows it’s what he would call his “ugly” demonic coloring.
She likes watching his pale red flesh knife hers while he plunges deeply inside her body. Tessa could care less about what demonkind thinks of his looks.
“I know it’s impossible for anyone to have an actual cow.” That is, Tessa’s having a hot dog, as they affectionately call the unborn whelp. Or whatever it might be. He. She. Tessa’s not sure.
What is sure is that he or she is coming sooner than later. “From the looks of things, our whelp will arrive sooner than a normal gestation of six months.”
Laz cocks his head. “Perhaps somewhere in between. Say three and a half or four months?”
Tessa lifts a shoulder. “Who knows. What I will say is I want to birth the whelpling within the protection of a sane pack. I don’t want a Lanarre around for fifty miles.”
His eyes lock with hers, flipping to black then back to their normal icy blue. “Nor I.”
Tessa’s stomach lets out another loud roar, clearly insulted by her lack of food. With a sigh, Tessa reluctantly untangles herself from Laz and stands.
He does, as well, now soft from their talking and post-coital glow. “Are you cold?” Laz wraps his heavy arms around her and she lays her face against his chest.
“With you? Never.”
She feels his unseen smile.
Laz
He doesn’t share his worry with his Redemptive. He can recall no precedent in which a female Lycan was impregnated by a male demonic.
Certainly a Redemptive has been legend for centuries among his kind. But who had ever known of it to happen?
Laz can’t remember any concrete coupling. There was talk, but nothing more.
Now he is living the legend. And the future is a long, dark void of the unknown. That makes Laz uneasy. He is not precisely pessimistic, but Laz is not given to joviality. After his torture by the Lanarre and subsequent battle with yet more Were, the one bit of positive news is they are only an hour’s walk from the Northwestern.
That will prove interesting.
Laz has grown quite wary of the Were as a species. Excepting his lovely mate and the porcupine princess, there are none he would call friend.
Though he doubted any demons could really say they have friends. It was not part of the fabric of their existence.
In Below, only the most rudimentary education of Lycan and other supernatural species was given. After all, it was not as though any of them could ascend.
Laz is a rarity. He vividly remembers Praile’s degradation. He was weakening every moment they spent Between.
He tosses a clean bone into the fire he began and watches Tessa unselfconsciously lick each finger and wrap her tongue along part of the bone to extract the last succulent morsel.
Her eyes flick to his, and a laugh burst
s forth. “You can say it.”
She picks another piece of meat from the spit they fashioned.
Laz leans back, crossing his feet at the ankles. “It is very satisfying to watch you eat, Tessa.” Calling her by her given name is a chore, because he does not think of her in those terms.
Laz adores calling her by what she means to him, rather than who she is.
He has the most ironic name of all.
Though Laz does not know the demonics who birthed him, he has always wondered why they chose a name from the Book Which Shall Not Be Named or Thought Of.
Heat spirals lazily as he breathes.
His Redemptive is filling her stomach with the meat of a hooved creature that’s been picked clean and lies a few yards from their fire.
“What? You don’t like deer?”
Laz nods slowly. “I had my half.”
“You’re male. Eat more.”
He will not steal food from the plate of his pregnant female. What male would?
“I’m sated.”
“Hmph.”
Laz hides his grin.
“I know I’m a sow. I get that. But I’m so hungry.”
That is normal, she is feeding a life within her. Laz would see her eat no other way.
She throws the last bone in the fire and gives a disgusted snort at her body. “I’m a mess. Full of blood and food and dirt.”
“And the delicious smell of my seed within you.”
Tessa rises to her knees and turns. Laz grips her buttocks, lifting her and seating her against his hardness again.
Her lips tilt. “Back to that again, are we?”
“Always,” Laz says easily then kisses her. He scents the meat they shared, their sex, and his hunger for her.
“No, big guy. Let’s keep on task. You’ve already had me.”
“Thrice,” Laz says and happiness fills him when a blush tints her cheeks.
“And we’re filthy.”
As though Laz cares. In Below, they bathe infrequently.
“We’re covered in blood.”
Also of little importance, as Laz considers how his days were generally spent making the unrepentant bleed.
His uniform was his skin and others’ blood. The high demonic torture naked; wearing clothing is a senseless pursuit.
“I will become clean because it’s important to you, but not because of societal pressure.”
Tessa rolls her face to the side, seeming to listen to his heart beat, and they quietly remain in that posture for a time before she asks against his flesh, “What about those jerks who went after us back there?”
Laz’s senses are dulled in Between as compared to Below. But he senses nothing as his nature reaches out to touch on those who are perverse enough to stir it.
“They are not close to us.”
“Well, yeah, I don’t scent any Lycan.”
“My vigilance is not less.”
“I know that, God.”
Laz flinches as pain lances him.
“Sorry—Moon. Sometimes, I use the wrong swear word, baby. I lived around humans for so long, I’ve picked up some of their words.”
“More than some,” Laz says and stands with Tessa in his arms. “Where can we bathe?”
“Set me down.”
Laz does, but before she can move away, he bends at the waist, pressing the side of his face against her bare belly.
He loves the offspring already, and a fierce wave of protectiveness for Tessa and the unborn babe sweeps through him.
Trapping the alien emotion deep within him, Laz straightens.
“I think there’s a state park in Purdy, then we’re up the butt of the Northwestern.”
Laz dismisses the disgusting visual. He understands they’re not literally inside the anal canal of the Were den, but some of Tessa’s expressions leave something to be desired.
Giving a soft giggle, she slaps his ass, and Laz growls low. Mild shows of violence are erotic for his kind.
And not so mild.
His eyes flare, and her pupils dilate.
“Damn,” she says softly, “you really are responsive to everything.”
Laz gives a minute shake of his head. “It is the unique signature of Redemptive to demonic. At least, that’s what the legends tell.”
“Well, come on. This legend feels skanky, and I need a big hose down.”
Laz follows her. The sway of Tessa’s hips are as hypnotic as a cobra moving to music. Her hair, though worse for wear, is in its normal plait. The blood of the beast they killed speckles her fair skin, and her muscles ripple as she walks to a building made of cement blocks with a crude window in its center.
Laz gingerly carries their things, his hands so fouled with the duty of killing, rendering, cooking, and eating that they are sticky with drying gore.
Looking everywhere at once, Laz notes that the time of day is good. Though their nakedness is conspicuous in this realm.
Luck is with them, and they enter separate parts of the same building, where they feed a coin machine to take their showers, as Tessa calls them. They shower in relative peace and towel off to dryness with a meager and threadbare piece of sandpaper disguised as cloth.
Though Laz expends energy to appear more human after he exits the shower, he is still observed by a human male.
The male appears intrigued by Laz’s presence. A golden cross dangles from his thick neck.
Laz does not wince at the sight, but the symbol inspires a certain discomfort.
Looking away from the male as he takes his turn at the trough-like urinal, Laz pulls on socks and thin black pants of a silken material that Tessa assures him “go away.” Finally, he tears an equally lightweight plain black shirt over his still-damp hair.
Shrugging on a jacket that matches the pants, Laz glances at his reflection in the warped mirror above a dripping faucet.
All is well. The hot water washed away the blood, and his skin is almost without a red hue. It is the best Laz can do, what with all the mental energy expended to give him a more human look and his concern about their imminent reception to the Northwestern.
“You from around these parts?” the male, who Laz had completely dismissed a moment before, asks from his elbow as the human makes a show of washing his hands.
This close, the Christian cross around the man’s thick neck is acutely disturbing to Laz, and he retreats a step.
“No,” Laz says, backing away and scooping the knapsack from the small vanity counter that flanks the row of sinks.
The faucet, which shuts off automatically, still allows a few, stray drips to hit the basin. They tap between him and human with an odd, resounding echo.
Drip, drip, drip.
“And your lady friend?” His brows hike.
Laz is an instinctive creature and wastes no time hitting the stranger in the face with the heavy sack. The human spins, landing on his ass.
Tessa.
Running for the doorway, he slams open the restroom door with a palm and meets Tessa at a dead run.
She sights him. “Laz!”
And just like that, what little bit of disguise that remains melts away at the fear that fills his Redemptive’s voice.
They were almost to the Northwestern. Now what could this be?
Laz does not sense supernaturals.
But his eyes take in a band of human males, three pickup trucks deep, and eyes only for him and Tessa.
Dread fills Laz.
He could kill them all. But that leaves a trail of the proof of their passing to all supernaturals who may travel this way.
Including those who dwell in the dark.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Bray
F ucking Neil. What an arrogant gonad licker. But Bray continues along behind him.
Earl too.
And a newly resurrected Billy, who’s as fucking looney as ever. Thank God for small fucking favors.
“Keep up,” Neil instructs.
Actually, he sort of gasps
that short phrase out. They’re running after the Lanarre prick forced them into wolfen.
Bray told him, “Hey, man, too far from the moon for that shit.”
Then Neil called his beast.
Bray swears to God, his bones shifted inside his body at that dude’s command. So Bray dropped to his knees, all thought process flatlining.
The sensation of his body rearranging itself was about the worst thing that has happened to Bray since those Lanarre chodes changed him to begin with.
A spittle of drool and blood hung from his mouth, fingers stung, and toes tingled as they shot through his now-worthless tennis shoes.
That fucker, Bray had time to think before his eyes leaked the gore of the change from human to wolfen. Bray’s tired brain interjected how fucking righteous it would be to be a chick and quarter-change his ass at will.
Oh no, that’s too easy. Instead, he’s got to be male and go through the agony of human to wolfen when the moon is twenty days to full.
Fuck me.
“You’ll live,” Neil said, and Bray could taste killing the male on his tongue.
“I smell your ire. Don’t act upon it.”
My fucking ire? Bray thought. How about my absolute fucking hate?
Maybe not agreeing to Neil’s little plan would have been better. But then Billy wouldn’t have made it.
And… Bray couldn’t use this Lanarre dick to get to Ella and fuck that Jenni bitch into next week.
He felt cheated.
Bray was gonna have that female if it was on the last breath he took in this shitty world.
So Bray schemed while they ran.
He cannot take pleasure in the perfume of the forest or the furtive sounds of small creatures that parted for the Were. They do not make the distinction of changed or born.
Animals make sense quickly of the need to avoid Lycan.
Bray’s body aches. The only one of them who seems unaffected is Billy. He positively glows with good health.
Probably all the awesome Lanarre juice Neil pumped into him via fang.
God.
Neil pours on the speed, and Bray reaches deep down, tapping a well of reserve he didn’t know he had.
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