Chapter SEVENTEEN
–Kaia–
AS MUCH AS I understood Tréan leaving me tucked away in his den when he confronted his ex, evil bitch, Blaithin, at the gates with his brothers, I couldn’t help but be a little pissed too.
He loved and wanted me to marry him, yet I was left behind?
Even though I knew I wasn’t being cast aside and he was keeping up appearances that I was being held captive, it still felt like back home.
Still felt like how men treated women.
At least in the circles I’d frequented over the years.
And most definitely in the circles Uncle Connor frequented. It was a rare sort of woman who climbed ranks in organized crime. Mostly, you had to be smart and ruthless. Willing to kill.
Willing to do just about anything.
How did I know that? Not just because I’d watched the comings and goings of Uncle Connor over the years but because I had come close to being that kind of woman if it meant keeping my cousins safe.
It didn’t matter if I was half Mohawk Indian, half Irish.
I was Irish enough, and they saw the fighter in me at a young age.
“So you were cultivated into a life of crime,”
Tréan murmured into my mind at one point, following my thoughts as he prepped his castle for war.
“Understood what it would take.
Knew you could do it if it meant keeping your cousins safe.”
“Yes,”
I confessed, still irritated at him for leaving me, but I couldn’t ignore the deep, warm rumble of his voice in my mind if I tried or forget how compassionate he’d been when I’d told him about losing my parents.
Something I certainly hadn't meant to share, but it had bubbled up out of the blue.
One more thing I apparently needed to get off my chest.
Whatever came of all this, one thing was for certain.
Everything I was, heart and soul, seemed to be pouring out to Tréan whether I liked it or not, and honestly, I did like it.
Liked coming clean to him in a way I’d never been able to with another because I couldn't risk seeming weak when I'd had no choice but to be strong for as long as I could remember.
And somehow, some way, showing Tréan my weaknesses only made me stronger.
It made no sense, but there it was.
There we were.
Opening to each other in ways I couldn't get enough of, whether good or bad, emotional or sensual. There was no denying him my memories, hopes, dreams, or even my body.
Especially not that last one.
He could bend me over the trunk I rummaged through now, demand my submission, and I’d willingly submit because I knew just how outstanding giving myself to him felt.
I squeezed my eyes shut when sharp arousal shot through me and did my best to focus on the conversation about my run-ins with the Irish mob.
“Taking part in my uncle’s business dealings when I was younger would have, maybe, if I were lucky, given me some stature, and eventually, I could’ve risen in the ranks,”
I went on, “but, in the end, I would’ve hurt too many innocent people and only encouraged my cousins to follow me through example, so I decided to go another route to protect them.”
I sighed.
“However foolish that reasoning was in the end.”
A decision that undoubtedly irritated our maker, Niall, prior to biting us, because I could have walked my cousins and me right through the front door of all he wanted from us.
Would that have prevented the eventual bites that cursed us all? Impossible to know.
All I knew was I hadn't saved my cousins when we were children, only to have them end up in that kind of life.
“Your actions were not so foolish,”
Tréan said as I opened my eyes and continued rummaging through the trunk until I found clothes that worked for me.
“If anything, turning from a life of crime was courageous.”
Thinking about the gigs I’d picked up around Boston, instead, teaching everything from boxing to karate to jiu-jitsu to various other martial arts so I could make a living and protect and teach my cousins' self-defense as well, I shrugged.
“I wouldn’t go that far, but thanks.”
“’Twas courageous to do something that took more effort and paid far less to keep your kin safe,”
he said.
“Yet again, you make me proud, mo maité.”
Despite myself, I warmed beneath his praise, liking that I made him proud just as much as I’d liked pleasuring him the night before.
Sure, I knew my way around a man’s body, but exploring his had turned me into an expert, and I’d loved every last minute, from his warm, salty taste on my tongue to his hot, hard flesh beneath my fingertips.
Having lost count of how many endless orgasms he’d given me, I should have been a quivering, useless mess, but somehow, I found the strength, the sheer need, to keep going and explore him.
It had all become one big, beautiful blur of tattooed muscles, sweaty limbs, nonstop releases, and more sensual pleasure than a million women could bottle in a century.
Yet I wanted more, again and again, over and over.
Heck, I wanted him so badly, despite how much he’d already satisfied me, I rolled my eyes at myself.
“Get over it, already,”
I muttered, not for the first time sensing weakness in how quickly I’d become addicted to him.
I had seen it time and time again with women who had married into the mob and became mindless fools because they allowed themselves to be put into the line of fire.
It wasn’t all that different than women who married into biker gangs or the cartel.
Same story.
Now, here I was, eyeing myself in a stand-up mirror Tréan had chanted into our den, looking my new clothing over, wondering how different a medieval wolf pack would be from all that.
Though Tréan hadn’t gone into the logistics last night about how the Wolves of Ossary worked, I had still sensed the primal undercurrent that ran through the people at the celebration.
I wasn’t just talking about their wolfy sides, either.
There had been a line of succession stemming out from our central table.
Females and males who took precedence sat at tables closest to the alpha, and lower-rung wolves sat at tables further out.
Granted, everyone had been treated equally, but I knew I wasn’t wrong.
“Yet the more we merge, the more you’ll understand ‘tis more a matter of longevity in the pack than anything,”
Tréan said, right there in my thoughts, making sure I understood he wasn’t one of the monsters of my past.
He wasn’t some ruthless mob boss with bad intentions.
“And their level of contribution to the pack,”
I said, eyeing myself in the mirror, liking my new look more than I thought I might.
I’d chosen a snug black leather tunic cinched at the waist, pants that fit just right, and fur-trimmed knee-high boots with such good tread, hugging my calves perfectly, that I’d be able to sheath multiple blades in them and drop-kick someone in one fell swoop.
“Don’t think I haven’t figured out how medieval wolves work,”
I went on.
“Those who’ve been here longer have better standing, but those who hunt and fight best rise in rank, too.
Those who excel at killing.”
“Kill to nourish our people, not harm them,”
he replied, setting things straight.
“Not criminals who kill ruthlessly to better their standing and make more money.
Do I reward wolves that go above and beyond? Yes.
Does that make them better than any other? No.”
Busy dealing with his warriors and preparing his castle, Tréan went silent after that, but I still followed him, and it made all the difference.
Showed me far more than he could tell me about the kind of man he was.
Following his thoughts over the next few hours while he prepared his people for potential battle set him apart from the assholes I’d been surrounded by my whole life.
He was stern but kind, ordering them to do this or that but still taking the time to talk to them.
Find out if their family was well or if they’d taken a new mate.
They respected him for it, too.
I felt it in the way they smiled at him or how pride swelled in them that their alpha cared so much because he did. It wasn’t just for show. They were almost as much his kin as his own blood brothers and sister.
In fact, he cared about them almost as much as he cared about me.
There was no jealousy in that but gratefulness.
Hope.
Truly, outside of Uncle Connor, I’d begun to think all the good guys had died out.
A lost breed of humanity. Gone in evolution and technology and predators.
Yet there Tréan was, appearing back in our den later that day, more handsome than ever but tired in a way I felt bone-deep when he yanked me into his arms from where I’d been pacing.
I had become restless and worried about him.
Worried about just about everything at that point.
Yet when he kissed me like it was our first kiss, desperate for it, my worries melted away, and everything inside me lit on fire.
Just like that, despite my growing frustration that I’d been holed up here all day, I was home.
He was home.
And I understood what he needed.
There was little time to give it to him before we had to go, but I would because we both craved it too much. Craved it since the moment he’d left my arms that morning.
So I broke the kiss slowly and walked backward, my gaze locked seductively, knowingly, on his eyes until I turned and braced my hands against the dirt and stone wall, letting him know I was just as ready for him as he was for me.
Seconds later, he was on me, against my back, yanking my pants down, breathing hot heat in my ear as he stroked my clit and ground out hoarsely how much he needed me.
Wanted to be deep inside me always.
Holding and loving me.
Filling me with seed.
Although that last bit of medieval terminology should have turned me off, it did the opposite in combination with the orgasmic edge he already had me hovering on with his talented fingers.
With the way he nipped down the side of my neck, biting a little harder every so often.
Testing how much I could take.
How much I truly wanted.
“All of it,”
I managed, throbbing with need.
“All of you.”
I was so turned on that my legs gave out, but he caught me around the waist and shifted us until I was bent over the edge of the bed, and my cheek rested against the soft fur.
Holding on tight, I fisted its plushness and half yelped, half groaned when he filled me with one sharp thrust that drove my cheek deeper into the furs.
“Tréan,”
I gasped hoarsely when he lowered the top half of his body over mine and licked the overly sensitive flesh beneath my earlobe, then bit harder than he had before.
When I moaned in pleasure and bucked against him, that was it.
All he needed to take me how I’d been waiting to be taken my whole life.
Fast, furious, and primal as he locked his hands over mine and slammed into me roughly before his movements slowed to a circular grinding thrust that pushed me over the edge so fast I came hard.
Almost too hard because it hurt before it expanded, and pain gave way to blinding pleasure.
So much pleasure I barely heard his roar of release or felt him letting go inside me for the umpteenth time since we’d first slept together.
Barely felt anything but the intense pleasure he’d brought me until, eventually, I was on my back, and he was adjusting my clothing.
Until I saw the raw fear in his eyes, I knew he hadn’t wanted me to see because a blink later, it was gone.
“What is it?”
I whispered, not trusting my voice just yet.
“What was that look I just saw in your eyes because I can’t quite feel what it means...”
When he pulled away and adjusted his clothing without answering, I frowned.
“You promised me there would be no secrets between us, so tell me.”
He poured two glasses of water from a pitcher on the table, one presumably for me, and downed the other in two long swigs before he raked a hand through his ebony locks and stared with frustration at the flames on the hearth.
“You make me vulnerable, and I can’t afford that,”
he finally said softly.
“More so, you bring forth the darkness I soaked up when I helped the Vikings.
Call to it in a way that makes no sense.”
His resolute yet tortured gaze finally found its way back to my face, and he gestured at the bed he’d just taken me on.
“I’m not usually that rough.
Most certainly not with a newly made wolf who’s my fated mate, destined to be my queen.”
He shook his head.
“There was disrespect in my actions.
A need to make you submit in a fashion that nearly went one step too far...that I wanted to go too far.”
At first, a chill raced through me at the look in his eyes, but the longer our gazes held and my wolf felt him out, the more I relaxed and understood.
Eased into whatever this was developing between us because I understood it.
After all, I liked it rough, too.
And I said as much when I went to him and wrapped my hand around the side of his neck, loving the cords of muscle beneath my fingertips.
The sheer masculine strength pulsing through him.
“I get the two of us are all wrapped up in curses, but did it ever occur to you that your curse might be built for my wolf?”
I wrapped my free hand around the other side of his neck and searched his eyes, no longer seeing the devil in him but my savior.
“Could it be whatever turned your hair black and gave you a dark edge might just be my type? A bad boy with a heart of gold?”
“I think that would be a lot to ask of a curse,”
he murmured, pulling me close and locking me against him as if he couldn’t help himself.
“But I’m listening, mate.
Tell me more of what you sense...what this is beyond the Fated Mate Cycle.”
He seemed awed as he looked at me.
“Why I don’t just feel stronger but more vicious than usual? Vicious in a way I need to be?”
“Because you can be with me,”
I managed, trying to fight how aroused he made me.
Even if his dick hadn’t grown wonderfully hard again in a heartbeat, gazing into his golden eyes, looking into his soul, was a serious power trip.
I’d never met anyone so strong inside and out.
Never been so humbled that he asked this of me but, at the same time, honored. Stronger because I knew he genuinely trusted my response.
“Tréan, I’ve been around bad people nearly my whole life, so I know what evil looks like.
Feels like.”
I pressed my hand against his heart and shook my head.
“It’s not in there.”
Then I fingered his hair.
“But maybe a little there.”
Not entirely sure why I did it, but certain I was right, I touched the area just above and between his eyes and suddenly felt different.
As though I understood something I shouldn’t because the words—and they were right—just tumbled out of my mouth.
“And maybe a little bit there, too, because it needs to be.
Because you’re going to face some serious shit that might require not just light to lead the way but darkness. A seedy underbelly that’s gonna cut close to home and start a war you never saw coming.”
“What war?”
Tréan said, alarmed.
“What do you mean, Kaia?”
When he cupped my cheek, I felt like I snapped out of a spell...sort of.
I’d meant every word but had no idea where they came from.
At least, partly.
“I’m not sure,”
I murmured, my voice not quite right as the Viking blade sheathed at his back suddenly warmed in a sheath at my side, once again a small dagger.
“Other than somehow, whatever curse you soaked up when you helped the Vikings has turned into a strength and weapon because of us hooking up.”
I leaned my cheek into his palm, never so glad I was there for him.
There when he faced whatever lay on the horizon.
“Whatever darkness you soaked up doing a good thing and protecting others is the edge we’ll need with what’s coming.”
He was about to respond when a rap came at the door, and Bain called out it was time.
Hadn’t we heard his telepathic message, he wondered? The sun was an hour from setting, and everyone had gathered in the courtyard.
Bain’s and Callum’s warriors were here and awaited him.
Them.
“Yet not the way it should be just yet, mate,”
Tréan muttered, clearly hesitant.
He kept me close and ran his thumb over my lower lip as if he would much rather kiss me than do what he must.
“No, but that’s okay right now.”
I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him softly, flicking my tongue over the seam of his lips so I could keep his taste with me, then turned and locked my wrists behind my back.
When he kept hesitating, I shot him a flirtatious, promising look over my shoulder, meaning every word.
“Someday, we’ll do this for fun, and I’ll love every minute of it just as much as you will when I do it to you.”
His eyebrows shot up, and the corner of his mouth hooked in amusement.
“You think I’ll let you tie me up?”
“If I make it worth your while.”
I winked at him.
“Now get busy tying me up so we can go save a girl—”
I licked my lips and let my gaze drop to his groin— “then get back to doing what we do best, mate.”
A strange feeling rolled over me before I went on and said something that surprised us both but probably shouldn't have, given how his brothers had reacted when their wolves first met me.
Something that made clear there was more to all this than met the eye.