Of Savage and Sin (Wolves of Ossary #2)

CHAPTER SEVEN

–Naya–

IN A STRANGE way, today was both the best and worst day of my life. What shocked me was that it was so good because I’d finally laid eyes on my midnight stranger and knew without a shred of doubt he was real. Regrettably, as the day progressed, laying eyes on Bain also made it my worst day.

I had taken a deep dive into the dark waters of my mind to stow away how I felt when Bain kissed the woman draped across his lap in Tréan’s dining hall, on Niall’s orders, no less. Honestly, I wondered if the waters were deep enough to hide how hard it had been to watch them. To see the female respond to him so intensely, touching him in ways I knew meant she’d been with him before.

After all, she knew what he liked.

As if my emotions and even my heart weren’t already acting odd enough, like it splintered into a million tiny pieces, when Bain swung her up in his arms and carried her off, my chest tightened, making matters worse. He was trouble in a way I didn't let myself get in trouble with men. Especially not ones I was trying to get out of my head not to mention one that would only drive my inner Renegade closer to Niall.

And all I could do was watch.

If that weren’t crappy enough, after Bain carried her off with an eye-popping erection straining against his pants, I was stuck on Niall’s lap in an Irish medieval castle having no choice but to let him caress and kiss me because my inner beast had, however reluctantly, dutifully permitted him.

Even worse, he touched me with more relish than I had ever let anyone get away with in front of others. It felt raw, borderline wild, and designed to please the monster inside me. It was as if I were in a drug-induced haze with no control over my traitorous inner beast and its pleasure at his caresses because, under normal circumstances, I loathed his touch.

So I knew these feelings weren't real.

I only felt them because of my inner wolf.

With that firmly in mind, I took a deep breath and did my best to focus on anything but Niall without him being the wiser. Namely, the beautiful women flirting, teasing and manipulating his men because that's what they were doing, only it didn't seem like Niall knew it.

That in and of itself was shocking enough, but watching him allow his men to trail off one by one with wolven eyes, lustful thoughts, and heavy erections blew me away because it was so out of character for him. Unlike me at the moment, he was always in control.

So when Niall requested a place to rest and took me to bed, I had no choice but to obey him.

The room we ended up in was more than spacious with ornate wooden furnishings, speaking to wealth that made sense for Tréan’s stature but felt off somehow as if they weren’t him any more than the rest of this castle. I had little time to assess that before I was on my back, and Niall made it clear he wanted what his men were getting as he pawed at my clothes and ground against me.

I felt locked in place in more ways than one. Helpless because my inner beast refused to fight back and offend him. Hopeless and useless because the inner strength and willpower that had always been mine seemed depleted and beyond my grasp more by the hour, and it had only gotten worse since Bain vanished with that other woman.

Oddly, I felt like everything that had grounded me was seeping away. Like the power I had wielded for years as I clawed my way out of the darkness was gone, and my underwater caves made of pure titanium were breaking apart, leaving me vulnerable and bare.

And the last thing any woman should feel around Niall was vulnerable.

We might have been friends once, but I’d known since we were kids never to let your guard down around him, and it became a thousand times clearer after he turned wolf.

Yet here I was as he shoved my thighs apart like he owned me because he did, vulnerable and bare and furious yet at the same time passive and accepting because I had no damn choice. I’d been foolish enough to sleep with him, and now I was paying for it. The pleasure my inner beast had felt at his touch in the dining hall seemed to have dissipated, so I dug down deep, found a nugget of strength in all my weakness, and detached.

Sank.

Fell into the dark recesses of the murky sea of my mind and closeted my emotions deep down until I drifted away in the tight confines of my underwater cage. Let it all go, Niall go, until I felt nothing when I knew he wanted me to feel everything.

Knew my inner beast was trying to demand it.

Yet, I didn’t let it grab hold of me. I refused to groan in pleasure at his foreplay because he liked that. In fact, I didn't allow myself to feel a thing. Rather, I felt pleasantly numb and more than a little out of it when Niall fell away, and I began drifting. Floating.

Was I dying? Was this it? Had I finally sunk too deep into the dark waters of my mind? Escaped too far this time?

“No,”

Bain whispered into my mind, or had he yelled? He sounded far away but right there all at once, his handsome yet disgruntled face flashing in my mind until his hand reached into the darkness, cupped my cheek, and his wolven eyes locked with mine.

As if I’d been drowning, I gasped for air and bolted upright only to find myself not beneath Niall but in a fur-covered bed in what appeared to be a torch-lit, windowless, earthen room. The walls were made of roots, dirt, and stone, and the air smelled of wood smoke and...I inhaled deeply, pulling in the spicy masculine scent, only to realize it was in the furs covering me, so I pulled them to my nose, inhaled again, and let the scent chase my demons away.

“My scent,”

a familiar voice said gruffly from somewhere nearby. “And may your demon soon die by my blade.”

I lowered the fur from my nose and blinked into the dim room lit only by the dying embers on a stone hearth built into the wall but saw nothing else until I spied reddish-golden wolf eyes staring back at me from the darkness. Until the darkness peeled away, and I spied Bain sitting in a chair, watching me as though he’d never taken his eyes off of me since the day I was born.

For a moment, I felt like we stared at each other across time and space. I saw a young boy reaching out to me in the darkness, but a blink later, he was gone, and Bain was there. And there was nothing boyish about him as his chiseled features remained locked in a fierce scowl, and his eyes dared me in a battle where I didn’t know the rules.

Only he did, and I said so.

Just not the way I had intended.

“How am I here, and why the hell are you looking at me like I’ve screwed you over when you’re the one clearly screwing everyone else?”

I didn’t deserve his condemnation because that’s what it felt like. More than that? He hadn’t earned the pretty, polite words and kiss-ass climb-the-ranks demeanor I had cultivated after leaving the projects. He hadn’t earned my civility but my sharp tongue the moment he locked lips with that woman. The moment I felt so betrayed, even though I was the one who betrayed him. I think. Maybe? Hell, I didn’t even know anymore. All I knew was he had the power to hurt me far more than anyone, and that said something because I’d also trained myself to rise above. Skip the drama.

Avoid the pain.

“I’m looking at you this way because you lay with him,”

Bain ground out, no less angry than me based on the flare of his wolven eyes. His big, strong hands clenched, and his jaw tightened as he struggled with his words. “Gave yourself to him when...”

For reasons I couldn’t explain, as his words trailed off, my throat thickened with emotion at both the rage and pain in his eyes combined with the endless anger simmering inside me. Anger born of bad circumstances. Of loss and survival. Of hard times. Of a thousand moments of hardship peppered with moments of triumph, flecked with buoyant wins.

Finally, thankfully, fortunately, because I hated being tongue-tied and weak, I found my words and ground them out in return, knowing full well he was referring to me sleeping with Niall after he’d bitten me in my century. “I lay with him, as you put it, because I had no choice.”

I flung aside his furs, ignoring how my inner beast responded to the loss of being wrapped up in his scent. It was a confusing mix of betraying Niall and an intense need for Bain.

Battling the wreckage of Niall’s hold over me, I squared my shoulders and looked Bain in the eyes like I had one too many men across boardroom tables. Then I made it clear, although usually far more tastefully and tactfully, that they were messing with the wrong woman.

“I slept with Niall to protect my family.”

I narrowed my eyes and clenched my fists, too, because my anger became more untamable the longer I was around Bain. “I would do anything with him if it meant gaining the knowledge to bring him down. To give me and my cousins the freedom we deserve.”

I shook my head once and never lost eye contact because that wasn’t my style. I didn’t look away in fear. Ever. “So lose your bullshit attitude or else.”

Or else? I wasn’t sure why I said that, but I meant it. Right now, Bain felt like a threat that needed to be addressed. Like he was trying to shame me into something I didn’t deserve to feel.

And that crap was a hard no.

I might have done some less-than-stellar things on my climb to the top, but I never harmed anyone who didn’t deserve it, so I refused to feel guilty. Everything I had ever done wasn’t for my pleasure but to pull my family out of the gutter. To show the world my cousins were worthy.

I was worthy.

“And you are, mo chara is gaire,”

Bain murmured softly, the fight gone from his gaze. He relaxed his clenched fists, and the wolven in his gray eyes simmered down, but not the way he kept taking me in, lighting me on fire in ways I’d only ever felt in my dreams. “I will work toward being less angry...”

When he trailed off again, I sensed his anger had been less at me and more at himself. He carried a heavy sense of guilt I hadn’t felt until now, yet that wasn’t what caught me off guard.

“What did you just call me?”

I asked just as softly, struggling past the emotion clogging my throat once more because I knew his words. Time and time again, I’d heard them in my dreams.

Before he could reply, I managed to go on, despite how raspy my voice had become, repeating the Irish Gaelic words as if they were mine—as if they were my language.

“Mo chara is gaire,”

I whispered, my gaze drifting to his face...drinking it in. “My closest friend.”

Yet again, I blinked and swore I saw a dark-haired boy reaching out to me in the darkness, but a blink later, he was gone, and Bain’s smoky gray eyes were there.

Calling.

Reaching out to me.

Trying to remind me.

Then, something slammed shut between us, and nausea overwhelmed me.

“’Twas Niall,”

Bain exclaimed, as if trying to hold onto the moment, only to frown when I shook my head in confusion.

“Niall is coming between us,”

he went on. “Calling to your Renegade wolf in ways we will fight together.”

I met his frown, trying to shake off the feeling of my beast being so loyal to Niall, but he was stuck to me like glue—unshakable in a way that terrified me. I refused to show it, though, because that meant I was weak and beholden to another when I had worked a lifetime not to be.

“Yet you need not hide your fear from me,”

Bain said, his tone surprisingly gentle. He gestured at the chair opposite him beside a table filled with food and drinks. “Sit and eat, as you ate little in the dining hall. Sit and talk with me not in dreams or nightmares but as we are now. Talk so we might find a way forward. Talk...because we need to.”

When I shook my head, still caught between a strange mix of disloyalty and jealousy, one hell of a weird combination, Bain sighed, braced his elbows on his knees, and stared into the flames rather than at me, clearly having trouble finding his words.

“Nothing happened with the woman on my lap, Naya,”

he ground out. His gaze lingered on the fire a moment longer before his brow furrowed, and he looked me in the eyes. “I haven’t been able to lay with another woman since you were bitten because my inner beast will have no other. Craves no other. The only reason my passion stirred was because I imagined she was you. I should never have carried her off, so for that, I’m sorry. It could have cost not just you but the Wolves of Ossary.”

Even though I was unsure what to make of everything he had just said, it seemed my inner beast believed him and appreciated his words because the tension knotting my shoulders eased. How effortlessly he seemed to follow my thoughts, however, led to renewed tension, and I addressed it rather than avoided it, along with a few other things.

“Why are you able to follow my thoughts so easily?”

I asked, finally making my way to the chair, grateful to find red wine in my cup. “And why do I know what mo chara is gaire means?”

I narrowed my eyes. “Better still, why did you call me your closest friend when we’ve only just met?”

“I think we both know that’s not true.”

His steady gaze never left my face. Eyes I knew all too well. “I think we have known each other for years in ways that make little sense but are real just the same. As to my following your thoughts, ‘tis not all of them but many. More, I suspect, as time goes on, if we can keep you free of Niall.”

He put several pieces of succulent meat and bread and cheese on a wooden plate and slid it my way. “As to you understanding my language? ‘Tis bound to happen because you are, or at least were my closest friend and likely more if Kaia is right.”

“If Kaia is right about what?”

I wasn’t sure what to feel about him claiming we were so close when he’d only ever been made of childhood dreams until he became more. My midnight stranger. Something I tried to keep from my thoughts, but it was tough with him sitting right in front of me in all his hot, huge masculine glory.

Normally, if I were somewhere strange with a guy his size, I’d be more nervous, but I wasn’t. Not at all because his physical strength didn’t frighten or intimidate me but made me feel safe in a way I never had before.

It also made me feel other things.

Yet again, I was acutely aware of how broad his shoulders were. How muscles strained against leather. How his spicy, masculine scent seemed to wrap around me and pull me closer even though I hadn’t moved.

“Kaia believes we might not just be friends but fated mates,”

he replied, answering my question about Kaia and backing up what Adlin had already shared with me in my era. Bain’s gaze never left my face as if he were eager to see my response. “That winning our pack war might depend on us becoming fated mates.”

“And what does fated mates mean exactly?”

I asked, wondering about his take on it compared to Adlin’s.

I was prepared for an answer that was way too much, way too soon, but I didn’t quite anticipate his response or what he intended to do next.