Of Savage and Sin (Wolves of Ossary #2)

CHAPTER TWO

Medieval Ireland

–Bain–

I SAT ON my throne on a dais overlooking the great hall and stared broodingly at the flames crackling in one of two sizeable fire pits. Although I worked at a smile for my people, I could not truly muster one. Nor could I find the willpower to enjoy the female nestling on my lap, her voluptuous backside against my cock, or the other one sitting by my side cooing in my ear.

All I wanted to do was go below stairs and pace in my den until the female on my lap distracted me enough that I could lose myself in her body before losing myself in the other woman who now nibbled on my neck.

Anything to rid my mind of Naya.

I never thought the dreams I had over the years would turn out to be my worst nightmare. That might sound harsh to the average person, but nothing was average about what I would face if I accepted her call across the centuries. If I accepted that if I went to her, she would strip me of my freedom and turn me into her slave.

Doing my best to free her from my mind, I ran my hands over the ample curves of the woman on my lap, but again, my blasted cock refused to behave just like it had for over two fortnights now.

Refused to behave since Naya was bitten.

“Leave me,”

I grunted, setting the woman aside before she realized I had lost my virility. Bidding all a good eve, I strode downstairs in a huff my people didn’t deserve, but in truth, they were used to my despondent nature of late.

I cursed under my breath when I found my sister, Mave, awaiting me in my den with ale in hand and another ale resting on the small table beside her. A fire burned on the hearth, and despite all the wonderful female scents lingering everywhere from rutting, I felt no rush of lust.

“Nor should you,”

Mave reminded, the firelight glinting off her cedar-tinted sable hair as she followed my thoughts. “Unlike me, you are doomed to be with just one.”

“Where is your harem, anyway?”

I muttered in return, referring to her female lover and two males. “Go be with them because I wish to be alone.”

“So you can try to rouse that useless beast betwixt your legs?”

She snorted, took a deep swig of ale, and gestured at the cup she had poured for me. “Whilst I should be the last to remind you, there is more to life than rutting.”

I snorted as well but plunked down in a chair and took her up on her offer, drinking the ale in one long, hopefully, mind-numbing swill. “You are the last one who should tell me that, sister.”

“Yet here I am because you clearly need to get your tail out of your arse.”

She refilled my cup. “All might be well with our brother Tréan and his new mate, Kaia, but that doesn’t mean we do not have a pack war on the horizon.”

She tipped her cup at me in acknowledgment. “And ‘twill require more sacrifice from some than others.”

Her eyebrows perked. “Though I cannot help but wonder how hard that chore will be for you, all things considered.”

“All things being one wolf for the rest of this life and all to come?”

I exclaimed, downing my next mug. “’Tis the worst kind of punishment, and you know it.”

“Is it, though?”

she said softly, too softly, her knowing sage green eyes trained on my face. “When you have dreamt of her your whole life? Tried to slake your lust for her by bedding every female who was willing.”

“She won’t be enough,”

I vowed, meaning every word because I had to. The idea of the woman who had haunted my dreams sinking her teeth into me and locking me down was terrifying. Cloying.

I wanted nothing to do with it.

Nothing to do with her, even as I craved her with every breath I took. Craved her despite knowing she had turned from me. Craved her despite her being lost to me because I would never forgive her for shutting me out when she needed me most.

Never forgive her for all it had led to after that.

“She was a child,”

Mave murmured, her gaze never leaving my face. “And you were nothing more than a face in a nightmare. A nightmare you kept from Tréan, your alpha, no less. A nightmare that might have given him foresight into all that was coming.”

“Was she a child when I tried to warn her about the danger all around her?”

I fumed under my breath, staring into the flames, wishing I had never dreamed of her, yet desperate for her at the same time. “Was she a child when she tempted her maker that night at the club? When she kissed him? When she was willing to take him betwixt her thighs?”

“We both know what she was that night,”

Mave countered, forever her defender. “And ‘twas not a female willing to go into Niall’s arms. Certainly not one looking to be cursed against her will.”

“No, she was…”

I trailed off when Naya’s face flashed in my mind. Never in its entirety, but enough that I knew it was her. Bits and pieces that forever tempted me yet were never whole.

She looked in the mirror and covered herself with fur, her determination stronger than ever. That alarmed me because I had never encountered a more determined soul who would do whatever it took to accomplish her goals. I often called it foolish determination because she and her actions were out of my hands, but it was determination, nevertheless.

Stubborn, prideful, relentless determination.

And I both hated and admired her for it because I understood it.

“She’s coming,”

I exclaimed, cursing under my breath. Striding from my den without a backward glance, I shifted into my wolf and fled the castle.

I had tried to stay away from the twenty-first century and all that came with it, namely her, but over the years, I had failed miserably. Failed to the point that I knew exactly where I was going when I trotted into the nearest oak tree and came out in front of the old Colonial in New Hampshire.

Rather than shift back, I headed across the dirt driveway into the dark woodland beside the barn, where I would have a good vantage point of the comings and goings and watched.

Waited.

Just like I had been doing since Naya first haunted my dreams. Since I first craved her and then was shunned by her, I always knew there would be no escape.

She was coming for my soul whether I liked it or not.

“She is nearly here,”

came a familiar voice out of the darkness before my alpha’s hand landed on my shoulder, not in anger because he would have every right but in comfort.

Although tempted to remain in wolf form and soak up his comfort because it was much needed, I knew I needed to face him as a man.

Face him as his brother.

So I shifted, fell to a knee, and lowered my head to Tréan in supplication and hope of forgiveness. I might be an alpha in my own right, but he ranked highest, being my maker, and I would always respect that. “I am sorry I did not tell you I knew of Naya sooner.”

I could hide how much I knew of her, but Tréan was alpha for a reason. He was unbelievably powerful, so I remained transparent. “As much as I disliked it, she has long haunted my dreams.”

“Yet you somehow kept it from me despite how bonded we are,”

Tréan said softly, his voice pained. “Kept it from me when it might have shown me what was coming…shown me Kaia.”

“Ta,”

I confessed, saying yes in our language. “But only because I did not want…”

When I trailed off because there were so many reasons I never mentioned Naya, mainly because she had wounded me so long ago, Tréan’s hand landed on my shoulder not in frustration but, once again, in comfort.

“We will talk more of this when the time is right, brother.”

He urged me to stand. “Until then, you are forgiven because I believe in your inner beast and have faith that your wolf had its reasons for hiding this from my wolf.”

While Tréan had always been a reasonable alpha, willing to hear his pack out and resolve matters rather than jumping to conclusions, he was more amiable than usual lately, and I didn’t blame him. His new mate, Naya’s cousin, Kaia, was exceptional, and he’d had his cock buried in her for the better part of a week.

“Even as I forgive you, your thoughts are too much,”

Tréan exclaimed, frowning as I stood. “Do you forget I can hear at least some of what you’re thinking? Namely, things about my fated mate and queen?”

“I merely point out the obvious, as your pack has superior hearing,”

I muttered, unable to stop myself now that I had been forgiven. “All three kingdoms have heard you two rutting nonstop, and ‘tis becoming a bit…”

I meant to say annoying, if not brutally enviable, but the words trailed off when I heard Naya’s car coming up the road and sensed how angry she had become. While curious why, I was more interested in finally seeing her for the first time outside a dream born of darkness and wolves. Born of everything I was, and now she was too when it was the last thing I had wanted for her.

I might have frequented this century enough to understand this era, but I always kept my distance from her. Stayed away because she had hurt me. Yet still, I never wanted this kind of pain for her. Never wanted her to turn wolf.

“You wanted to protect her so much you kept her existence from me,”

Tréan murmured, sensing more and more off of me. “Though tempted to warn you that you know nothing of this era outside of Kaia, I sense now ‘tis not true. You have long learned this world and the woman in it.”

His gaze homed in on the black sports car that peeled into the driveway and skidded to a halt as if being pursued despite the quiet woodland in its wake. “You have long awaited this moment even as you dreaded it.”

No truer words were ever said, so it was no wonder I forgot to breathe when a slender brunette exited the car, slammed the door shut, and strode toward the house. Despite her too-thin frame, it felt like a shockwave hit me when I saw Naya fully grown in her entirety for the first time. It was as if the exquisite pleasure of every run through a forest and every female I’d blissfully lost myself in combined couldn’t measure up to the impact of how she made me feel.

And I did not like it one bit.

“She will never make it in our era,”

I grunted, my voice too hoarse for my liking because she was far too beautiful with her stunning, delicate features. Far too tempting as she yanked off her fur jacket midstride as if angry with how hot it made her, managing to tear her bound hair loose at the same time, reminding me why she needed to stay away from what she would call medieval Ireland, but I called home.

I typically preferred more full-figured, voluptuous females, but she called to my inner beast regardless of her slender frame. Her backside was rounded enough, and her breasts were somewhat full but not as large as I usually favored. That didn’t seem to matter, though, because for the first time in too long, blood finally, at last, filled my cock at the sight of her statuesque frame and thick, flowing hair. It wasn’t as long as I knew she had once kept it, but long enough, full of blonde and crimson streaks against a rich, mahogany brown.

Her lips were fuller than most and would look perfect wrapped around my sizeable cock if I allowed it. And I would…perhaps…if she begged for it. Then I would make her…

“Enough.”

Tréan frowned, following my thoughts with ease now. “You might be familiar with my mate’s cousin, but that does not mean you will do anything to her she doesn’t want, or you will have your alpha and new queen to answer to.”

His brow lowered in warning. “Are we clear, brother?”

I muttered that we were clear under my breath, but alpha or not, that was all he would get from me because I was an alpha, too, and inwardly bristled at anyone telling me what I would and would not do with my mate. Not that she was my mate. Not if I had anything to say about it.

At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.

I fully intended to tell her that, too, so I started that way, determined to end this here and now and, admittedly, to be closer to her before Tréan put a hand on my forearm and stopped me.

“Someone’s coming.”

His eyes narrowed down the drive, and he tensed. “Trouble.”

He shook his head when I went for the axe sheathed at my back. “No, ‘tis not the time for that. Not yet.”

I might not want Tréan telling me how to handle Naya if I decided to handle her, but I trusted him without question regarding nearly everything else. He was my alpha, so if he said to hold back, I would.

What I didn’t expect, and I’m not sure Tréan did either, was for two sleek black cars to pull in behind Naya’s or for who stepped out when the driver opened the back door.

“Do. Not. Move,”

Tréan ground out. His eyes narrowed on the tall man with dirty blond hair in a black suit flanked by several equally sizeable men. Wolves all. “Not until—”

“You hear me out,”

the man said to us, his words carrying to our wolven ears despite the distance as he strode for the front door with his pack in tow. “Trust me, medieval wolves, you will want to hear me out if you want Naya to survive.”

Everything inside me went on high alert. My hackles would have risen had I been in wolf form. Truth told, I would have closed the distance and wrapped my teeth around the man’s neck in seconds if Tréan hadn’t stopped me.

Not when I knew, without question, he was the monster that had turned Naya.

“Niall’s not wrong,”

Adlin MacLomain said, melting out of the darkness wearing his long, white wizard robes to match his white hair and beard. “You verra much will want to hear him out.”

He looked at us gravely and said the last thing we wanted to hear.

Something even he had not seen coming.