Of Savage and Sin (Wolves of Ossary #2)

CHAPTER NINE

–Naya–

“I’LL GO WITH you, Tréan,”

I said when he claimed Niall was causing trouble and would be going back to keep an eye on him. Though I hated how strongly I felt about Niall, there was no stopping my inner beast’s growing devotion to him.

“You will not,”

Bain ground out. After he let Tréan by, he blocked my path in the tight earthen tunnel and shook his head, his narrowed wolven eyes shimmering reddish gold in the darkness between torchlight. “You will keep going and break free from him.”

Even though I knew Kaia was behind me, waiting for us, everything dwindled down to Bain and his determination to keep me from Niall. A determination and wall of muscle that infuriated me far more than it should, but I couldn’t stop my building fury and desperation to return to my mate.

“Easy, mo chara is gaire.”

Bain’s tone turned oddly soft and without challenge when a low growl started in my throat. “It does not need to be like this. Just keep following Kaia.”

“I’m trying,”

I bit out, barely recognizing the dangerous warning in my voice, only that I couldn’t stop it if I wanted to. My beast needed to return to its mate and stand by his side. Protect him as he would protect me. “But you’re keeping me from him. Keeping me from my mate and the safety we can provide for each other.”

“Yet I am not.”

Bain blocked my every attempt to get around him. “I am keeping you safe instead, my closest friend. Keeping you safe just like I always have.”

Something about the look in his eyes as they stayed with mine made me calm down for a moment or two because there was safety in him, wasn’t there? Was a way out? A way free of the deep, dark sea and the danger all around me?

In a moment of clarity, I thought for a moment I was free of Niall once and for all until Bain somehow, some way, crashed in all around me, and I grew more furious than before.

Not at Niall. Never Niall. But at Bain.

“Move,”

I growled, my voice more and more foreign to my ears as I plotted how to get around Bain and reach Niall. Prove to him I would never betray him. I was taken against my will. “Move, or you’ll regret it. Move or you’ll—”

Taking advantage of the softening and, strangely, the worry I thought I saw in Bain's eyes, I used everything Kaia had taught me over the years, moving faster than ever thanks to being half wolf, and swiped a blade off him. I’d had no clue where he kept them sheathed when we started down this tunnel, but somehow, I did now because my inner beast showed me. Gave me insight I would not have had otherwise.

To be expected, given he was a warrior, Bain countered my every move when I attacked. I swiped, he evaded. Though he had pulled a blade just as swiftly, he remained on the defense. Even so, despite how small the space and how tight the confines were, I fought for all I was worth.

When I tried to drive the blade into his side, he blocked it. I tried to knee his groin, but he blocked that, too. Nothing I did gained me any ground because he was too fast, anticipating my every move. So fast when I roared and tried to side-kick him, he evaded that, as well.

So I roared louder and louder, so far beyond furious now that I saw red, and my roar went from sounding ferocious to a muted howl full of grief and rage because I couldn’t get to Niall.

Then I growled because my emotions came through even better that way.

I growled so deeply and so long it took me several seconds to realize I wasn’t fighting Bain anymore but looking up at him and baring my teeth—growling not through a human mouth but a wolf’s. A beast so pent up and enraged that I wasn't terrified to be in my wolven body when I should be. Instead, I was determined.

Determined despite having four paws.

Determined despite knowing I’d shifted without a full moon and had no idea how to shift back. And it had happened without an ounce of pain when my first two shifts had been excruciating.

This time, there had only been determination and sheer will.

“Then get by me,”

Bain’s challenge whispered through my mind. Not how he had sounded before but different when a blink later, a man didn't stand in my way but an all too familiar beast.

A huge, black, beautiful wolf with silver undertones.

Bain.

As he had been when we first met in New Hampshire, but somehow even more impressive, he dwarfed me as we stared each other down. Both alluring and damning at the same time, he was like my savior, and the devil come for my soul all at once.

Although everything inside me screamed that I needed to get to Niall, something deeper, buried in the dark recesses of my mind, took a step forward only to take a step back when Bain released a low growl of warning and stepped forward.

“No,”

I fumed into any mind listening because I felt Kaia hovering behind me, waiting and watching. “Don’t you dare growl at me, Bain. You haven't earned that right.”

Even though I was desperate to get by him, I was equally desperate to let him know it was too late for that.

He was too late.

“I’m lost to you.”

Lowering my head, I pulled my ears back in warning and bared my teeth in a snarl. “So let me go.”

“Never,”

he replied, emitting a low, threatening growl. When his lips pulled back and his hackles went up, making him even more intimidating, I stepped back just as he took a step forward. When my growl deepened in warning because he was taking this too far, I went to step forward only to fall back several steps.

However desperate I might be to get to Niall, Bain was no joke, and my wolf knew it. He could easily overpower me. I wasn’t a coward, though, so I tried to edge forward again, only for Bain to come at me far more aggressively.

And that seriously didn’t work for me.

His aggression triggered something inside me or maybe just exacerbated what was already there because any tentativeness I felt snapped, and I attacked, my desperation to get to Niall uncontrollable now.

Or at least I tried to attack before running into a brick wall that sent me flying back. The world flipped over in a dizzying spin before I found myself belly down, pinned to the ground with a massive set of deadly teeth wrapped around my throat in warning.

“No more, mo chara is gaire,”

Bain ground out, his huge beast in full control of mine now.

I was about to tell him he had some nerve calling me his friend when he had me in a death grip, but the words died on my internal tongue when I caught the scent of my surroundings. They had shifted to an aroma that held me captive as readily as the wolf hovering above me.

Bain.

Not just in the dirt or the rock walls but all around me. Oddly, I hadn’t caught his scent until now, and it made all the difference. It calmed my inner beast in ways I’d never been able to relax, speaking to something deep down inside that had only ever seemed caught in dreams. Snippets and moments wrapped up in time and other places. Caught in chance moments when I’d been sound asleep yet somehow wide awake. Entrenched in familiar scents and warm, masculine strength right there, but not. Always just out of reach.

“Until now,”

he murmured in my ear, his warm breath fanning my neck. “Now I am very much within your reach, mo chara is gaire.”

Shocked, I realized we had shifted back, and I was fully clothed. How? When? Yet again, I’d felt no pain. There had been no full moon. Only me and Bain and this.

Him.

His scent.

Then, there was so much more when I became aware of him on top of me, his front to my back. I knew he kept most of his weight off of me, but not all of it. There was just enough pressed against me to let me know I wasn’t going anywhere without his permission because it was needed now.

I was on his territory, and he was alpha here.

Now I understood why he’d backed my wolf up, and I finally attacked. My inner beast had sensed matters would be taken out of its hands if I walked further down this tunnel and ended up on Bain’s territory.

Or, at the very least, it would become more difficult to return to my mate.

Yet as I lay there, assessing my situation and sinking deeper into Bain’s scent, the overwhelming need I had felt to return to Niall only moments before waned.

Instead, my sole focus became the man at my back.

More pointedly, how he made me feel when he nipped my earlobe and issued a low growl of warning that I best play nice, driving me crazy in all the right ways. Especially when combined with the weight of his heavy erection nestled against my ass and how he inhaled deeply, trailing his nose from the side of my neck up to my temple until his lips hovered close to mine and his hot breath whispered across my lips.

“Are you ready to stop fighting me?”

he murmured, his deep, commanding voice pulsing through me. A sharp ache didn’t just blossom between my thighs but spanned out, making my entire body hypersensitive to his every touch.

“I am,”

I whispered because my voice wouldn’t quite work. I was way too aroused and feeling uncharacteristically submissive. Granted, I had always enjoyed a man who liked to try to take control, but they always failed at getting it right because, in the end, I controlled them.

None had ever ripped that control away until now.

None until Bain and the firm way he held me down and controlled me, yet I felt safe. There was freedom and an ability to let go of my fear in his touch, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. All I knew was it was real.

This was real.

And everything in me wanted him to take it further, for him to control me and keep me safe until the fear fell away altogether. Do whatever he wanted to me as long as it made me feel this good. This free. Yank my pants down, pull me back onto my knees, and fill me up. Hard. Rough. Again and again, until I wept because it felt so damn good.

“Soon,”

he promised, his mouth still hovering next to mine, ripping me from my thoughts and not without embarrassment because I’d forgotten how close he could follow what I was thinking now.

“And you will never want to leave my wolf den again,”

he went on.

“Assuming we ever get her there,”

Kaia said, reminding us she was still there.

Had been there all along.

Although brief, when Bain stood and pulled me up after him, I felt an intense sense of loss. Not just of his closeness and heat but of his strength and safety. A terrible emptiness that struck me hard, and I could only pray he didn’t see it on my face or sense it in my thoughts because it was the epitome of weakness. Pure vulnerability.

If he did, he said nothing but instead surprised me when he handed over not just the blade I’d initially stolen from him but several more. Then he shocked me even more when he chanted sheaths onto various parts of my body, including my bicep, waist, and thigh, and sheathed each blade before his eyes locked with mine. “You will always be free and safe by my side. And you will always be able to defend yourself.”

The corner of his mouth curled up, and his eyes took on a naughty gleam that about set me on fire. “Until you wish to relinquish control to me, that is.”

Our eyes held for a long, telling moment. One that told me he’d have me if it were the last thing he did, and everything I had just felt beneath him would be the least of what he could make me feel.

“And it seems you’ll be more defended still,”

Kaia said, interrupting our eye lock when she gestured at the blade Bain had sheathed at my waist.

One that looked different than it had moments ago.

“It’s the dagger you used to defend me back at the Colonial, Kaia.”

I unsheathed the gorgeous coppery gold dagger and admired it, liking its light weight because it looked like it should be heavier. I shook my head, confused, and glanced from Bain back to Kaia. “Why do I have it now?”

“Because it found its way to you, and that’s a good sign you two are heading in the right direction.”

Kaia looked at one of her empty sheaths and smiled. “That’s the blade given to Tréan for helping out his Viking friends, and it's beyond helpful. Magical. As if it’s guiding us along.”

She looked at me and shook her head. “It was never gold, at least not for me, but it shape-shifts and does what it needs to do for whoever's holding it.”

“’Tis the one you stabbed Tadc with, ta?”

Bain asked.

“It is.”

Kaia gave me a look. “But it magically found its way back to me, just like it did Naya now because it's meant to protect Tréan and his pack. I’m certain of it. Just like Tréan helped protect his Viking friends.”

Something had changed inside me since shifting and ending up on Bain’s territory because I could see it all now. Every moment of Kaia and Tréan’s journey. How intensely they loved one another even though they hadn’t known each other very long. How bonding as fated mates felt, and it terrified me even as it intrigued me.

My gaze fell to the coppery gold dagger, and I wondered...Why me? Why now? Why was it such a unique shade of reddish gold?

“Something I might be able to explain,”

Bain said softly, again catching my thoughts. “But not here. Not until we put more distance between you and Niall.”

“Which needs to happen now.”

Based on Kaia’s urgency and how she gestured that we continue down the tunnel, something was happening between Tréan and Niall.

Relieved to be out from under whatever overtook me when I needed to get back to that bastard, I fell in behind Kaia with Bain behind me, more and more conscious of him at my back. Whether it was because I was on his territory now or because of whatever just happened when I shifted, I’d become razor-sharp aware of him. Not just sexually either, but mentally. It was as if his thoughts attracted me as much as his physical appearance.

It felt strange bonding so quickly with someone I had just met in person for the first time, yet somehow not strange at all. Not the longer I was around him and on his territory. If anything, every step forward felt like a step I had been waiting to take my whole life.

A step in the right direction.

The feeling only grew the longer we walked until a door appeared ahead. One that made me stop dead in my tracks and shake my head. Worse yet, I was overcome with emotion, and everything changed in an instant.

Not only that, but it made me flee in the opposite direction.