His eyes flare hot, a zealous glint suffusing their icy shade. “I’ll make you first wife. I’ll shower you with gifts, money. I’ll release your father in the morning, and your family will want for nothing.” He jerks my head again, and his fingernails shift into claws in my periphery. “Just submit to me now. Give me your body, your heart, your soul for the rest of your life. Submit to me willingly, and I will never hurt you again. I swear it.”
I must be hallucinating now. Jacob Knight doesn’t negotiate. He doesn’t bargain, and he certainly doesn’t swear to anything. If he wants someone’s submission, he compels them, and they obey.
My limbs begin to lose feeling. That’s a bad sign. My wolf usually heals minor wounds within minutes, to the point where they aren’t bleeding anymore, and with the amount of blood soaking the floor around me, I’m fairly certain I’m bleeding out on Jacob’s fancy Persian carpet. Rather dazedly, I hope the asshole ends up having to replace the beautiful rug and it costs him an arm and a leg.
My wolf pushes into my consciousness so strong, I know she could take control if she truly wanted to wrest it from me. An image of my body healed and whole lays out before my vision for a second before I blink it away.
“Wife. I’ll be his wife,” I whisper to her, knowing she’ll understand my meaning.
Right now, my broken body is probably the only thing keeping Jacob’s tentative touches from turning violating. The moment I heal, that will change. He’ll make me his wife, in the eyes of the North American Lycanthropy Council, against my will.
I don’t know what the larger meaning of Jacob being willing to negotiate for my submission is, but as my head grows dizzy and vision tunnels, I’m feeling decidedly reckless. Why not see just how far he’s willing to go to get what he wants?
“I’ll submit to you, but I have a few conditions first.” I grit my teeth and wait. He eyes me in surprise and—color me shocked, but is that a hint of approval?—before he gestures for me to continue. I ignore the slow prickling and numbing of my fingers and say, “My father will be released tomorrow morning and all the crimes you charged him with withdrawn. My mother and sister will be allowed to transfer to the Manhattan pack and leave immediately.”
“Done,” he says.
The gleam in his eyes burns brighter, a strange excitement building within him. He lets go of my hair, kneels next to me, and pulls me into his embrace. He cradles me against his chest but still tilts my head, so I’m forced to look at him. It’s a strange mix of tender and possessive, like he’s holding a wayward pet he’s had to punish.
Jacob seems oblivious to the amount of blood I’ve lost, and I know if I time this just right, I can get him to swear to my demands before I succumb to my wounds.
For my family, I’ll sacrifice almost anything, including my life. But submitting to Jacob body and soul? There isn’t a power on this red fiery Earth that could induce me to do that.
“My father will continue to further his genetic research without any retaliation from you.”
Jacob’s jaw locks, and I think I’ve pushed him too far. He abolished all research on our species when he came into power. When my father was discovered, Jacob had only spared my father from death because of the long-standing connection between our families. Well, that was the official reason, my father had alpha blood. He was the second son of the alpha of Southern California and transferred to The Six Rivers Pack to help his brother make a smooth transition into power. Jacob’s father had been his best friend at the time, and Dad had happily taken the beta role under him.
My father had seemed content with a life of scholarly pursuits, teaching at the local university, and never giving the slightest inkling he wanted more power—even though he probably could have grabbed it. But his wolf was and always will be a strong, not yet ascended, alpha, and I think, deep down, Jacob is terrified of him. I’d bet money that’s why Jacob imprisoned him rather than face him in any sort of combat.
The Manhattan Pack is connected with various universities with excellent genetics research teams dedicated to studying the low birth rates of females within our species, hoping to rectify the situation. Jacob has never explained his obsession with seeing the research ended by any means possible, including murder.
I hold my breath as he considers my demand, but he finally grounds out the word, “Done.”
His declaration makes me feel all kinds of lightheaded from shock…or maybe it’s from the whole bleeding out issue.
Jacob inches his lips closer to mine. I feel a peaceful disconnect from my body, but I’m still not finished with my demands. Yes, my family would be safe, but there are six women in this pack who need my help above all else.
“I won’t…just be first wife. I’ll be your only wife. You’ll release all your wives…and…any rights to them. Allowing them to assimilate back into the pack…without any repercussions. You haven’t had any children, so it should be easy.”
“You ask too much,” he says with a snarl next to my ear. Cold fear slices along my spine, but I say exactly what I know he’ll want to hear.
“I won’t share my husband with anyone.” His snarls abruptly cut off. I’m trying to mask my shaky breaths, so he doesn’t see how bad this is, but I don’t have much time left. “I won’t share my alpha.”
His piercing gaze brightens with a ravenous ferocity. Jacob lowers his face inches from mine. I realize he wants me to prove my words. He wants to test my own passion for him, which means I better make this good. Kissing while on my death bed isn't what I envisioned my day turning into, but I pull forth some last reserves from my wolf, who willingly gives me the energy I need. She’s always encouraged me in any ruthless action I’ve ever considered. Even more than that, she’s as determined to protect our family as I am.
His mouth descends, slanting over mine. I soften my lips and accept the demand of his kiss. His lips push into my own while his tongue tastes my mouth. He’s an accomplished kisser, and for just a moment, my fuzzy brain forgets the monster behind the affection. I’m suddenly locked in another kiss, a soft, gentle kiss from a very different boy.
It was only two weeks ago when my best friend, Mack, pulled me under the school bleachers at the prep week rally. He’d told me he had something to give me, and I’d complained he’d given me enough for my eighteenth birthday. Instead, Mack leaned in as his sapphire eyes glinted with mischief and kissed me.
The first thing I felt was complete shock. According to society, I was ‘some trashy werewolf girl’ and he was a prince of the fae; he wasn’t supposed to be my friend, let alone kiss me.
And yet, our mouths fit together like they were made for each other. As cheers and chants erupted from the bleachers above us, Mack rolled on top of me. His full lips held mine hostage, his tongue tangling with mine.
Mack’s hand had slipped under my dance uniform to cup over my breast. I’d pulled away from the kiss for that moment, glancing up at the feet of my classmates and knowing I should object. The only way our classmates would see us was if they stuck their heads between the bleachers and looked down, but it still felt very risky. We could be caught. But a slow, tingling heat had built in my belly as a slick wetness soaked my dance team underwear.
With a gasp, I wake from my confused delirium and realize I’m not kissing Mack. No, not even close. Just as that forbidden rendezvous under the bleachers had been interrupted, so does the beautiful dream of it. It’s almost as if my wolf shielded the ugly truth with a beautiful fiction—it’s just the kind of benevolently devious thing she would do.
And as I pull back, I inspect the face of a murderer—my murderer, if the hollow, delirious state of my body and mind are anything to go by.
Jacob’s breathing is heightened, and a noticeable erection rubs against my thigh as he hovers over me. When he finally pulls away, his icy eyes are suffused with a surprising shade of warm gold. He looks at me with the closest thing to adoration I think is possible on Jacob Knight’s face.
The man is psychotic, nar
cissistic, and dangerous, and for some reason, I’ve become his number one obsession. He proves this by saying, “I agree to all of your terms.”
What the actual fuck?
What the hell does this guy see in me?
I mean, I’m a just turned eighteen-year-old who’s never even been on a date. I spend all my time eating, sleeping, or studying, but Jacob just transferred some serious power into my hands when he could have just compelled me.
Not normal. This is wholly uncharacteristic of the Jacob I know and loathe, but my sluggish brain can’t process the variables in this scenario.
He bites into his palm, allowing the blood to drip from his hand to my shoulder. Once his blood covers my skin, he pauses and looks at me. “Once I do this, you will submit to my own demands, body, heart, and soul?”
“Yes,” I whisper, hanging on to consciousness with one tenuous thread. His triumphant smile would make me sick to my stomach if I wasn’t so certain I’m about to have the last laugh here.
“In exchange for my promise to relinquish my wives and never harm or imprison your family again, you will acquiesce to me every time I call for your submission.”
He nips my shoulder where his blood is smeared everywhere, drawing forth my own blood and mingling it with his. A bright light flares, cementing our bargain, and he's now bound to every promise he just made. And I’m…I’m getting ready to let go of the last thread tethering me to my body.
He shifts to help me stand, and only then does he realize how bad off I am. His eyes widen in horror, staring at what's most likely a body’s worth of blood spread out behind me.
“Fuck you and goodbye,” I whisper before I let out a gurgled chuckle, which only makes him more desperate.
“No!”
An earsplitting growl deafens me for a moment as his rough hands pull on my shoulders and legs, lifting me from the floor and carrying me to the bed. He sets my bloodied body down and roars for help, his bloodstained hands clawing through his hair as he gazes at me with equal parts anger and agony.
Then, looking me straight in the eye, he says, “I forbid you to die. You will heal yourself. Do you hear me?”
A sharp tug on my chest and tingling sensation along my cranium and back accompany a sudden sizzling pain across my wounds. My mouth opens in horror as understanding dawns. He’s trying to use our newly formed deal to force my body to heal itself, and it’s working. Within me, my wolf starts to buck and fight, but she’s powerless against the promise I made, and her magic is making my muscles knit together.
Damn it. No.
“You will not die,” he says, throwing the force of his will at my wolf. He lifts me up and wraps his arms around me, easing me into his chest, but his eyes never waver from mine.
My mouth opens, and I shriek in pain, feeling something fundamental within me shift and change, ripping through my soul with lightning-like precision. His will is absolute. What have I done?
My wolf surges up in me, and I have one moment to realize she hasn’t been debilitated by the attack as I’d believed. No, she’s as strong as I’ve ever felt her. She was lying in wait to find a weakness, and she’s taking it. She fills my body. A heat like an open flame licking over my back tells me she’s speeding up my healing. My jaw aches as it stretches along with my teeth. Within moments, a snout and full mouth of fangs stretch from my face. My wolf doesn’t wait for the shock to drain from Jacob’s features. One word and he will own us. We lunge, and our teeth bury into our alpha’s throat. Sweet, delicious blood fills all our senses as we shake our head and bury our teeth in further.
It takes seconds, then we rip out Jacob Knight’s throat. Blood surges over me as both he and I collapse to the ground. Tangled in his arms the way I am, I land wrong, and my now healed back hits the floor, robbing me of breath.
Jacob’s massive form slams into me, and when my breath returns from the fall, I can barely manage to inhale under his dead weight.
A tingling awareness starts at the base of my neck and spreads slowly through my limbs. Six wolves pop up somewhere within a hundred feet of me. The whole thing is extremely strange because I feel them there but only see the confines of the empty room. They feel like pockets of electricity, and I’m connected to them through an invisible cord. More pop up, spanning out around me, and I start to feel their complicated pattern of cords to each other, but the strongest, thickest connections all stream out from me. It doesn’t stop there either; the network of bodies branches out, like thousands of stars blinking into existence all around me.
“No,” I whisper as I realize exactly what this is. “This isn’t happening.”
But it is happening. The pockets of electricity all move at once, in a path directly toward me, as if I’m reeling them in by their energy tethers, even though I’m not doing it on purpose. And I know the electricity is from all my werewolves, my werewolves, because I’m the new alpha. They’re heeding the call of a new alpha.
One of the four closest werewolves extinguishes like a star blinking out of existence. Seconds later, two of the remaining three also extinguish.
Loud footsteps thunder up toward me right before the door to Jacob Knight’s bedroom flies open and hits the wall so hard, it splits up its length.
My father stands in the doorway. He’s fully human, but blood drips from his hands and chin. We share similar features in the sharp shape of our faces and our red-blond hair, though his is redder and mine blonder. His shirt is a bloody, torn mess, but the long claw marks and half-moon teeth marks on his chest have healed to red, angry wounds no longer dripping blood.
“Scar,” he bellows as his gaze darts about the room.
“Here, Dad.”
Kind green eyes, so like my own, find mine, and relief floods their depths. The relief is followed by a sudden and intense outrage. His hands shift into claws, and he rips Jacob off me.
As quick as his anger arises, my father visibly calms himself as he crouches over me.
“You’re now the alpha? Can you feel the pack?” he asks as his gaze searches over me for injury.
My lip trembles as I nod. “My wolf forced me to kill him.”
My father pushes bloody hair out of my face. “Probably to save your life.”
“Yeah, to save my life for five minutes. How many wolves do you think are going to challenge me for alpha once they see all they have to do is kill a one hundred and twenty-pound teenager?” Hot tears course down my face, and I know they’re a further sign of weakness, but I can’t help it. “I don’t even want to be alpha. All I want to do is graduate high school and go to college. I hate this pack.”
My father wipes my tears away with the rough pads of his thumbs, as he’s been doing all my life. Grabbing my hands, he helps me to my feet.
“I just killed your three most immediate threats. We’ll claim you challenged Jacob before his three betas and then they each fought you to become alpha in turn. If everyone believes you killed one alpha and three betas in one night, wolves will at least pause before fighting you. We’ll get enough time to set up a pack structure.” He lets out a heavy breath. “Then, as your beta, I’ll start challenging anyone who threatens you.”
I shake my head slowly. What he’s describing, it’s tyranny. It’s everything he’s against.
His hands grip mine and fierce green eyes burn into me. “I am not losing a daughter. I’m not losing you, Scar, tonight or any night. I don’t care what I have to do.”
“And I’m not going to do that to you, Dad. We’ll figure out some other way. When the pack arrives, we’ll just tell them...” I trail off because I’m completely out of ideas. My dad’s plan isn’t going to work, but there aren’t any other options.
“Scarlet, we need to cover this up here and now. We can’t risk an investigation from the NALC—if the council suspects you killed Jacob outside of an official challenge, it would without a doubt mean a tribunal before the North American Lycanthropy Council.”
I’d have to prove before seven male alphas t
hat I made an honorable challenge—which would be impossible because I killed him in lingerie with no witnesses. Even if they knew the extenuating circumstances, they still probably wouldn’t deem it an honorable kill—not under their laws. “I don’t want to be alpha, Dad. I never wanted it. You know I hate even the idea of killing anything, ever. I wouldn’t have killed Jacob if my wolf hadn’t forced me to do it.”
Even the most benevolent and beloved alphas have to kill challengers from the outside. A pacifist alpha would last all of five seconds in this world. My father doesn’t revel in killing, but I know he could do it when needed and wouldn’t lose sleep over it.
Glancing back at Jacob’s hulking form, I doubt I’ll ever sleep again.
My father’s eyes fix above my head as his gaze moves far away. He works his bristly jaw back and forth, something he does often while considering a math or science problem.
“I do know one way you can lend the power to me, Scar,” my father says finally. He doesn’t sound happy about the idea, though, more like we’ve reached the last resort and he’s resigned himself to it. “But it’s imperfect. My alpha connection to the pack will be weak, but there’s no one strong enough to challenge me in single combat right now, so I could keep control until you’re ready to take the reins back—”
“Never. I’ll never want the reins.”
“If we cover this up now, there’s no going back,” my father declares. “There’s little hope of proving our innocence years down the line.”
What choice do we have? If we don’t cover it up, we’ll be living on borrowed time until the challengers finally kill us both. If we do, we would have Jacob’s dishonorable murder waiting to be uncovered.
There is only one way I can keep my father out of this. “You could just let me confess to the NALC, and...”
Dirty Alphas Page 2
