Wild Love (Alien Bride Race #7)

Chapter 1 Zorin

The pack’s communal den is a shattered pile of rubble scattered among clusters of starship wreckage from the recent battle against the Nebulous Empire and their puppets, the Denarso.

Little Rhysan whimpers in my arms, his silver and white fur dusty and stained with his mother’s blood. Agonizing emptiness consumes me.

He’s far too young to lose her. Even as I think it, I know my brother and I weren’t much older than him when we lost our parents.

This has to end. We are dying off.

My brother cries out and rocks as he clutches the body of his cold mate amid the fractured beams and broken concrete.

Jezza once told me that pups could sense our emotions better than grown Shifters, so I do my best to stifle my urge to howl with my brother and bury my pain beneath my love for my nephew.

“Hush, Rhysan. I am here. Uncle Zorin is here.” But my heart throbs when I rest a hand to Azrim’s back.

His body trembles with rage and shock. I know he’s torn between shredding what’s left of her pack, and carrying her into the woods and shifting into his Night Stalker form.

Likely both. I know I am. Because I know Scarnis, Jezza’s pack leader and the one we have reported to since Jezza and Azrim’s bonding, is going to want to take Rhysan from us.

Over my dead body.

The Nebulous Empire came for our resources.

Humans, Drathious, and Amphirans helped defend our world and the Thorians’ planet, Alpha Prime.

But we still took damage from gunfire and crashing ships.

Now, there are rumors of portalling soldiers.

As if battle wasn't hard enough, returning home to find Jezza buried under the collapsed building, frantically digging for her, and finding her light had darkened, has ripped us both apart.

Azrim sobs until he grows still and quiet. His face remains pressed to hers for a long time before he lifts his howl skyward again.

My peaceable nature, the side of me that once tried to mend alliances between packs like Jezza’s traditional one, and what’s left of our modern one, disintegrates.

I am sorry, Rhysan.

I tilt my head back and join Azrim in mourning.

Rhysan is only six months old, and he has lost his mother because her pack did not heed our warnings. He joins us with his high-pitched whine.

Stone and beams rustle behind us. I twist and look back.

Kinross is a tall, pale blue Morrawyn who always follows the rules. “Let us carry her to the afterlife.”

Azrim snarls at him in the most violent way.

Kinross doesn’t flinch. He is used to submitting to the orders of Scarnis.

But the Morrawyn Range Pack Council presides over all our district packs.

And they report to Mindoran Alliance of Packs, which handles our intergalactic relationship with the federation.

Kinross’ request is not simply honorary.

It is mandated by MAP that we burn the deceased so that the Nebulous Empire and its cohorts—Denarso, bounty hunters, Novarks, Talhuskins, and others—cannot dig them up and take them. It has happened in the past.

Azrim needs more time.

I get to my feet and clutch Rhysan close. Crushed stone and splintered wood rain from my body. “Please, give us a moment.”

I slide a glare to our pack leader, who is stalking the obliterated shelters in his wolf form. Tahliel, his second in command, digs through houses with the rest of the pack and reports what he finds.

“Let him grieve,” I reply. “Let them all. There is no rush. The empire has left the system.”

Kinross sighs. “It is not your place to counter Scarnis’ orders.”

I scowl at him. “We fought for Mindor. Where the fuck were you? Where was Scarnis, Tahliel, the others? Why did you not take everyone below, into the bunker we carved for your pack to protect you?”

His eyes brighten to a cold dull blue. A defensive ripple passes over his gray-blue body. He wants to shift. He doesn’t because he’s an obedient twit. “We didn’t get enough warning.”

“The burning skies weren’t enough?” I snarl.

Rhysan squirms in my arms. He won’t calm down. Jezza curled herself around him as the building collapsed. He is alive because she gave her life for his, and Kinross is treating all this destruction like just another day.

The hatch in the floor rattles. I look over to see Azrim break off a lock and look at it. He scours the area around him and Jezza. “You never even opened it! She tried to pry it open! Jezza would be alive if you had listened to us!”

Azrim’s muscles bulge as he crushes the lock in his hand. He stalks toward Kinross, grabs him by the throat and squeezes. “Shall I shatter you like you did to my mate?”

“You two are from another pack,” Hoskar, a camp perimeter guard remarks, shifting upright. “Drop him.”

“No,” Azrim sneers, his eyes filled with menace. “Unless you want to give up the one who refused to open the hatch.”

Neither one of them speaks.

“Brother,” I call to him. “Kinross isn’t worth it. And Jezza wouldn’t want you to kill him just because you are angry.”

I have never cared for Hoskar’s better-than-thou attitude. “We have been a part of this pack since we were ten and twelve, longer than our own. Have we not proven our loyalty?”

“Your pack is gone,” Hoskar says. “It makes some of us wonder why you two were the only ones left.”

Because our pack died in battle with the empire, with Denarso, and others. But we have been down this road before.

“Then we will leave,” Azrim says acidly, throwing Kinross back, then turning and collecting Jezza’s limp body against his armored chest. He strokes her dark hair, drawing it out of her eyes. She will never look up at us again, smile, or laugh. But he shows her the same affection.

I can’t believe she’s gone.

“You cannot take her...” Kinross rubs his throat.

Azrim’s skin ripples with the first hints of his shift. His eyes brighten to gold orbs, the predatory slits forming at the centers. His teeth lengthen. “If you think you can tear her from my arms, you are welcome to try.”

Just yesterday, Jezza was smiling and playing with Rhysan while she baked us sweet bars for our mission to space. She’d kissed my brother goodbye with such passion that I found myself a tad jealous. They had a love as bright as our sun.

Her lifeless face still isn’t registering in my mind, even though I have dealt death a thousand times. Perhaps karma does not care what side we are on, merely that if we take enough lives, it will hunt us and take the equivalent.

Jezza, however, was worth more than any number of lives I can think of.

She was gentle, kind, strong without being snappy, and patient beyond words.

And she had the most lustrous silver-white coat in her shifter form, a rarity among Mindorans.

Most are a shade of gray blue. A few of us are different.

We have brindle blue coloring in our upright forms that turns shades of black when we shift.

“I will send her off when I am ready.” Azrim’s entire body has gone rigid.

Scarnis slinks upright beside Kinross and Hoskar. “You may leave. The pup stays.”

I brace Rhysan to my chest and back away. My heart slams hard against my ribs. “Hell no.”

“He is my son!” Azrim snarls. “He is all I have left!”

I ignore the burn. Azrim is grieving, and it is selfish of me to want him to think about me in this moment.

“You know the rules. Males cannot feed pups.” Scarnis is right, but there has to be another way.

“You need a female who is producing to care for him until he is two, or he will not be strong enough to shift upright. You do not want to hinder his ability to grow and leave him to wander the woods in wolf form forever, do you?”

Azrim clenches his jaw. A murderous expression that even I fear washes over his face. “Then I will take whatever extra the females can offer, but he is my son. You do not get to take him because you think you know what is better.”

“I am the alpha of this pack,” Scarnis says. “I do know better. Rhysan needs a nuclear family to raise him so he can thrive. Morrawyn demands it. We do not want feral weres wandering our woods.”

He turns to me. “Zorin, hand him over, please. I do not want this to be messy.”

Azrim is going to lose everything today. I refuse to let him think he has lost me, too. And the way his eyes beg me not to betray him, tells me all I need to know.

“At least give us time to cope.”

Scarnis crosses his arms. He’s not a tall shifter or even particularly experienced in battle. He’s bossy and demanding. I think it’s the only reason he became alpha, because he took charge and didn’t give anyone else an option. “History has shown that ripping off the bandage is much easier.”

“For who, you? Because you feel guilty destroying another wolf’s entire world?” I bare my teeth at him and the others who gather around us.

“Jezza deserved better,” Varenco, a tall Shifter with a long scar down his neck, who had his eye on her long before we entered the pack, looks down at Rhysan. “Someone who would stay and protect her.”

Azrim walks away, his nose buried among Jezza’s wavy trestles. “She chose me. She knew what I was. At least I saw the threats that you all chose to ignore.”

I glower at Varenco as I follow Azrim. “You lack impulse control. She would be alive if you hadn’t locked her out of the one place that was safe. Now the camp is in shreds.”

Varenco’s cousin steps through the crowd.

She’s the only female I had ever considered as a potential match because of her fiery streak.

She would have been strong enough to handle us outsiders.

But the way her eyes burn with hatred, I’m certain there’s no hope for us.

“At least Varenco didn’t bring war to our camp!

Since we took you two fleabags in, it’s just been mayhem and fire in the sky.

The stars burn. Ash and metal and fire rain over our homes! ”