Chapter SEVEN
–Kaia–
THERE WAS NO way around it.
Today had been a real bitch.
I had fled Boston and my Irish mafia maker asshole only to wind up going through my second Oh So Important Moon Shift with a perfect stranger, making him, by default, my sole pack.
Super.
Now, here I sat with said pack over a thousand years in the past, trying to stay one step ahead of the Hot As Hell warrior wolf-man who just shared he’d ultimately been my creator because...wait for it...he had been the first of our kind.
The very tippy-top of the werewolf pyramid.
Do you know what pissed me off the most, though, if all that wasn’t enough? I felt bad for him, yet at the same time, I wanted him to stop talking, so I could straddle him and thank the living fuck out of him for bringing me here.
And I mean that literally.
Fuck, that is.
I wanted to screw him until he poured his heart out to me and made me scream in pleasure...a few hundred times, for starters.
Because he could do it.
I didn’t doubt it for a moment.
Hell, he was almost doing it from where he sat across the small table in front of a fire in an underground earthen room.
Just the way he looked at me while confessing to his sins made me fight squirming in pent-up arousal and showing him my cards.
Made me try hard not to let him know just how much he owned me already because although everything inside me fought tooth and nail against it, I was done.
Gone.
Lost in a monster I had only just met.
The monster, as it turned out.
Forget the hardened street criminals I had grown up around who had seen Gen Pop, or General Population, in prison, or the bikers or mafia or the gangbangers that frequented the projects of my youth.
They had nothing on Tréan, and I could feel it in his aura even if I couldn’t see it.
Yet still, I wanted him fiercely.
Wickedly.
And it was a Lick Him All Over sort of want, from his booted heels to his broad leather-clad shoulders to all the hot, hard flesh waiting for me underneath.
Then, I wanted even more.
“Tell me everything,”
I said before I could stop myself, but I wanted to know what I wasn’t catching in his thoughts.
“Tell me why I’m here and how you think you’ll keep me safe when I’m the first mate you’ve ever taken, and I’ll bet that means something to your enemies.”
Trying not to inhale his spicy, masculine scent, I kept my gaze on his face, narrowed my eyes, and demanded answers.
“I deserve to know what I’m in for, and you know it.”
Although Tréan’s features remained admirably unwavering, making clear he’d make a great poker player, I had the advantage of feeling him from the inside out more by the moment.
So much so I struggled to breathe at the thought of him lying to me because I would know it, and any trust we were gaining would tank.
After all, I didn’t forgive a breach of trust.
Not once. Not ever.
“You will receive absolute acceptance and friendship from my pack.”
Tréan didn’t bat a lash, and his eyes stayed locked with mine, his vow legit as far as I could tell.
“There is no way around that because you are my mate.”
I ignored the way that made the flesh between my thighs pound in anticipation because that’s not how I worked.
I’d spent my whole life keeping me and my cousins out of trouble and away from anyone who sounded like a mob boss or affiliated with trouble, period.
I’d wanted none of it.
Not for me or the people I loved most.
“And being your—”
I made air quotes because no man owned me— “mate,”
makes me what, exactly, in these parts? Because you kinda sound like the kingpin of the biggest, most badass evil gang known to man.”
I perked an eyebrow at him, driving my point home.
“I don’t think you meant to, but still, it is what it is.”
I shook my head.
“I can’t imagine the power you wield no matter what era you travel to and what wolves you deal with.
You’re...you.
Him. It. The true maker of us all.”
I nearly chuckled and said, “Excluding the creation of vampires, that is, because damn, they better not exist, too,”
but I bit my tongue because I didn’t want to know.
“They do.”
Tréan took a swig of ale as if it were no big thing before going on.
“And if it’s all the same, when it comes to us and our breed, I prefer lycan to werewolf.”
“Of course you do,”
I muttered, taking another sip of bourbon.
It might have been magically created, but it was good.
Really good.
Just like the smell of the succulent meat he’d manifested, but I refused to eat because I was a vegetarian.
“As to what your becoming my fated mate means in this era,”
he went on, “that has yet to be seen, but I suspect it will be noteworthy to my enemy because you are the first of your kind in both of my lives.”
Right.
That.
Reincarnation.
Honestly, its existence was the least shocking thing I’d learned lately.
“You can call me your mate or fated mate—”
which sounded like he'd smoothly upped the playing field— “but I’ve agreed to no such a thing.”
I ignored the way my heart leapt at being his first.
Not that I had any real clue what that meant.
It seemed maybe my inner wolf did, though, because it was definitely aware of him in a way I’d never been aware of a man before.
“And even if I were, which I’m not, I find it hard to believe you’ve never taken a mate in either life.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“What does mate, or fated mate, mean exactly to your...our kind, anyway?”
“It means to bond eternally,”
he said casually as if he hadn’t just dropped a bombshell.
“It’s different than simply mating or marrying, deeper, often following souls from life to life.
An eternal connection with no real end.”
He shrugged.
“Though more often than not, fated mates marry too.
‘Tis just logical given they will never be satisfied with another.”
Good God.
He really was insane.
I frowned, not liking the sound of this or the resolution in his tone.
“And you chose me, why?”
“I did not,”
he clarified.
“My wolf did, and I cannot say why precisely, nor am I certain the answer will ever come to me, as it doesn’t always with things like this.
Sometimes, it's just instinctual, much like humans having chemistry with each other, as you would describe it.”
Chemistry? I swallowed hard.
Whatever was happening between us felt a heck of a lot stronger than mere chemistry.
“And what happens if I don’t want to be fated mates?”
“You do.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“Sorry, but I don’t settle down, and monogamy has never been my thing.”
“It is now.”
His steady gaze lingered on my face as if he couldn’t get enough of it.
“And I will have nothing to do with it.
‘Twill all be your inner beast demanding your loyalty to me.
If what they say is true, and I sense more by the moment ‘tis, then you will soon desire no other than me and me, you. Everyone else’s scent will be wrong.”
“We’ll see about that,”
I pushed past my lips because it was suddenly hard to get the words out.
More alarming? It was hard to say them because they felt like a lie.
“So you’re saying you’ve lived not one life but two without at least mating?”
I asked because it seemed far-fetched, not only because he was seriously easy on the eyes, at least in this life as he called it, but because he was wolfkind’s creator.
“You made wolf shifters, and you’re telling me you never mated or married?”
“I married and had children in my last life, but my wife and offspring were all fully human.”
When he took a swig of ale, I realized this subject wasn’t easy for him to talk about.
“I have not married or mated in this life because no one has drawn my eye.”
“Yet I did?”
Something sounded off about that.
“A shifter living over a thousand years in your future?”
I frowned and tried to wrap my head around it.
There seemed to be too many coincidences in all this, and I didn’t trust coincidences.
“Why were you there the moment I shifted? Interesting timing, don’t you think? You could say you were there to visit Adlin, but somehow, I don’t think that’s the case.”
“Because it was not.”
He shook his head and narrowed his eyes as if trying to understand it himself.
“I first sensed you in this era moments after helping my Viking friends battle a great darkness.
Something about your essence affected me differently than anything I’d come across before.
It made everything still inside me yet simultaneously come alive in a whole new way. There was excitement in it. So I sought you out.”
His voice dropped an octave as though he fought his emotions.
“Then I caught your scent.”
He inhaled as if drawing it in at this very moment.
“Then I saw you...and knew...or at least my wolf did.”
“And yet I saw you and thought you were the devil coming for my soul,”
I reminded.
“Why did you terrify me like that when I was so close to shifting? Because you don’t look particularly terrifying in general.”
Maybe badass and drool-worthy, but not evil.
“I could not say other than I felt your fear.”
He searched my eyes as if looking into the deepest parts of my soul, places even I couldn’t see before he ultimately confessed that I might be looking into him instead.
“And mayhap you saw, or even felt, things I could not control.
Something I took back with me after helping the Vikings.”
And then there was that.
Vikings? Truly? I only had more and more questions when it came to this guy.
Or at least I thought I did.
Every so often since traveling back in time, I felt I already knew the answers but couldn’t quite put my finger on them.
Almost as if they remained just out of reach until the timing was right.
“What do you think you took back after helping the Vikings?”
I eyed him curiously, trying to fit together the puzzle that was Tréan.
“And why would you help Vikings? I might not have paid much attention in history class, but weren’t they ruthless, raping conquerors?”
“Historically speaking, they were no more ruthless than countless other countries, tribes, or clans if it meant gaining more land and wealth.”
He sighed.
“However, the Vikings I’m referring to are Adlin’s dragon shifter ancestors and are by no means rapists.
Rather, they tend to save mankind in ways history will never know about.
Because of that, and their aid to me and mine over the years, my pack and I kept two of their own with us, safe from a curse. In the end, it took great magic and godly divinity to defeat the curse, and some of us suffered in ways we didn’t expect.”
A shiver shot down my spine, and unexpected nausea swelled.
“Meaning you.”
“Ta,”
he said softly, saying yes in his language.
A Celtic dialect I seemed to understand more by the moment.
“So it seems.”
“Hence the changed hair,”
I said just as softly, surprised by how my throat thickened with emotion.
What the hell was this? I’d long trained myself to be hard and unfeeling unless I was with my family.
And even then, these days, I kept level, so they kept level.
“Hence the changed hair,”
he echoed.
“Tell me more.”
Somehow, I knew I didn’t need to elaborate.
Minute by minute, he was picking up more of me.
Understanding me in ways that felt far too personal, considering I’d just met him, but felt right in ways that didn’t put me on edge.
The longer I was with him, the less on guard I felt, and I didn’t know what to make of it. I’d spent my whole life trying to figure out who I could and couldn’t trust, yet that defense mechanism was fast fading with Tréan.
“My pack and I didn’t just keep two Vikings safe, we raised them,”
Tréan went on, surprising me with his revelation and the tenderness in his voice.
A tenderness I sensed he rarely showed others because it could be perceived as weakness.
“Two little girls.
One, half dragon and the other half seer. They are home safely now, and the curse is lifted, but I fear my pack, and I will not be left unscathed. There will be a price to pay because dragons are our predators, and over the years, it has led to dissent amongst some.”
He was talking my language now.
“What’s the price?”
I took a swig of bourbon, wondering vaguely if it were me.
“What’s your good deed going to cost you?”
Having been down similar roads, I snorted.
“In my experience, good deeds rarely go unpunished.”
“I don’t know the full price yet,”
he replied, “but sensed enough from my blood brothers when here briefly to know change is upon our pack and ‘twill not be easy for any of us.”
Oddly, the more medieval he sounded, the easier being around him became.
It was as if hearing him the way he was supposed to sound suited me in a way that almost felt like the comfort I experienced around my family.
An easiness and trust that had taken a lifetime to earn, not less than twenty-four hours.
Heck, twelve hours, if that.
Or, technically speaking, over a thousand years, timewise.
Though a part of me had been terrified when he revealed where we were, another part had felt...what? It was hard to pinpoint the sensations that had rolled through me.
Fear? Sure.
But not as much as there should have been.
Vulnerability? Yup. Any modern woman who traveled back over a thousand years in time would feel that way. But both emotions were backburnered by the excitement that had rushed through me. The pure exhilaration. My heart had sped up, and I relished every step forward.
So it was safe to say something about this place spoke to me.
Stranger still, something about it felt more like home than my actual home.
“Why do I get the feeling the change that’s upon you, as you call it, is going to have to do with me?”
I kept my eyes on Tréan’s because that’s how I gauged a person.
The truth was always in the eyes.
“Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like what you say next?”
“Because you’re not, mo maité.”
His eyes never left mine.
“But unfortunately, at this point, there’s no turning back.”