Chapter 4 #2
“Wanna take it out on someone?” she asked softly, facing him and sliding one blade into its scabbard. “I’m your girl. I’m always up for a heated sparring match. But you’ll regret carrying that baggage in front of the others. Trust me. I know.”
“Do you?” he challenged. “Have you killed someone you promised to protect with your life?”
“I’ve done some horrible things I’m not proud of and have a hard time living with. It’s part of the job of being a leader. I’m not saying you should suck it up and get over it, because you’re not going to get over it. That’s also part of the job—if you stop caring, you’re worthless.”
Amazingly, her beautiful amber eyes softened with something like sympathy.
“I’m just saying you can’t stand in front of your troops seething with guilt, because that implies culpability, and this was an assisted suicide.
Rachel had to know she couldn’t possibly win against you or me.
She was ready to go, and this was how she chose to do it. ”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” His friendships were precious to him. As frustrated as he was with Rachel, she was still a friend and a pack member, and he ached from her loss.
Vash shrugged. “Nothing will. But you didn’t do anything wrong. It was a shitty thing to do, yeah, but it had to be done. For her sake, my sake, your sake, and the sake of this alliance that we both really fucking need. As I said, if you wanna knock it out, I’m here. Just don’t take it in there.”
“There will be more,” he muttered, respecting her counsel and appreciating—however reluctantly—that she’d offered it. “The others didn’t know what they were getting into when they orchestrated this revolt, and many of them aren’t going to be happy with the decisions I’m making.”
“Fuck ’em. Until they’ve been in command, they can’t know what it’s like.”
He snorted. She knew what it was like, which created an unexpected affinity between them.
She smacked him on the shoulder. “Ready, puppy?”
Fuck. She was hot as hell but totally crazy.
Irreverent and unpredictable, too. Yet when he’d researched her, he’d heard the stories of her hunts—she was like a lycan on the scent when she pursued, dogged and unwavering, dependable for those who hunted with her.
And now it seemed there was a method to her madness.
He growled. It’d been better when the only thing he admired about her was her tits. “Stick close to me.”
“I’ve got your back.”
“Fine. Make it easy for me to have yours.”
She glanced at him as they entered the main cavern. Blood still stained the ground from his earlier fight, and he was trudging in more, his wounded leg leaving a crimson trail in his wake.
Throwing his head back, he howled, a purely inhuman sound. Within moments, the space began to fill.
Vash appeared startled by the number of lycans who poured in. “Jeez. Who knew so many furries could fit in one cave?”
Elijah waited until the room was so full that a mere five feet of clearance surrounded them.
He relayed the recent events without inflection—starting with Vashti’s arrival and ending with his reason for taking the life of a packmate.
His remorse and frustration roiled, twisting around his vitals, but he contained them, even as he expressed sincere regret that they’d lost one of their own.
As some of the lycans in the room shifted into their lupine forms, Vash lifted her blade and set the flat of it against her shoulder. While her pose was casual, it conveyed her battle readiness. The beasts paced, and she tracked them with her gaze.
“I’m asking you to trust the orders I give and the actions I take,” he finished, “whether you understand and agree with them or not. If you can’t, I won’t stop you from leaving and won’t think less of you if you do.
If you stay, some of you will be on the move tomorrow and working with vampires.
In either case, try to get some rest tonight.
Things will be stressful for all of us for the next while. ”
He started forward, heading for the cavern he was using as sleeping quarters. The female who’d announced Vash’s arrival the day before stepped into his path. Sarah was a young Omega—he guessed mid-twenties—and exceptionally pretty, with long straight black hair and uptilted eyes.
“Alpha.” She met his gaze shyly. “Allow me to tend your wounds.”
He almost brushed her off, his emotions too volatile to welcome company.
But her earnestness touched him. While there were many who would challenge him, there were others who needed a different sort of guidance—a soft touch and gentle words to go along with a firm hand.
It was the sort of leadership he longed to provide and hoped he could eventually achieve once their situation became less precarious.
“I’d be grateful if you would, Sarah.”
Battery-operated lights lined the passageway. Gesturing at his office, he spoke over his shoulder to Vashti. “Grab your bag.”
She muttered something under her breath, but complied.
She joined him a few minutes later in his room, entering at the moment he had his hands on his fly.
He shed his ruined pants and sat on the military locker placed at the foot of his air mattress.
Sarah sank to her knees between his spread legs and opened the first-aid kit.
“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” Vash queried tightly.
Elijah looked up at her, noting the rigidity of her jaw and her narrowed gaze.
Nudity was nothing to a lycan, but perhaps it meant something to Vashti.
Wondering if the vampress could possibly be feeling as proprietary about him as he felt about her, he reached out and tucked Sarah’s hair behind one ear.
Vash stepped closer, the hand not holding her duffel wrapping tightly around the hilt of a blade strapped to her thigh.
“Where’s my room?” she demanded. “I’ll give you some privacy.”
“You’re standing in it.”
Her gaze lifted from his cock to his eyes. “What?”
“You’re rooming with me.”
“Like hell.”
Canting his arms back, he gripped the rear edge of the trunk and stretched his wounded leg out. “It’s the one place I can trust you’ll be safe.”
“I can damn well take care of myself.”
He took a deep breath, released it. “No argument, but the odds are against you.”
“If I can’t fight off a pack of puppies, I deserve to bite it.”
“And Syre would come down on me in a swarm of vamps. How much shit am I expected to have shoveled on me?”
That knocked her back a bit. She looked at the queen-sized air mattress, clearly debating the risks and benefits of sharing it with him.
“We’re both adults,” he pointed out. Then he groaned softly as Sarah smoothed ointment over his torn skin.
He’d be healing faster if he were eating properly, but he was quickly becoming undernourished on the sparse amount of food to be found while roughing it.
“Nothing will happen that you don’t want. ”
“I don’t want anything besides you keeping your end of our agreement.”
“Then you’ve got no worries. Why don’t you show me those property specs you mentioned?”
Vash stared at him for a long moment, then muttered something beneath her breath and dug in her bag. She set it down on the ground a moment later, her hand emerging from the depths with a tablet clutched in her grip. She looked at Sarah, who was tying off a bandage. “Are you done yet?”
Sarah’s gaze searched Elijah’s face for instruction.
He dismissed her with an easy, “Thank you, Sarah.”
The lycan closed the first-aid kit and said, “I’ll get you some dinner, Alpha. Esther made an awesome venison stew.”
“I appreciate that.” Ideally, they’d each be eating their own deer, but they weren’t in a position to dine well under the circumstances. Instead, they were divvying up what they caught among everyone, which kept them alive. Barely.
“Also…” She offered a timid smile. “I’d like to stay with you when you make the arrangements to send some of us out with the vampires.”
“Aw,” Vash crooned with syrupy sweetness. “Puppy love. How touching.”
Sarah rose to her feet with graceful dignity, but the look she shot Vashti was poisonous, a rare display of hatred from an Omega.
“I’ll work something out,” Elijah answered, his decision taking into account her innate Omega gift for soothing and comforting others. She’d be best utilized in a support position, rather than on a hunt.
“Thank you, Alpha.” She left the room in a calm, graceful glide.
Pushing to his feet, he rolled his shoulders back, feeling better already. He felt Vash’s gaze slide over him, and he glanced at her with an arched brow.
“Will you put some damn clothes on?” she snapped.
“Why don’t you take yours off?”
She bared her fangs. “In your wet dreams, lycan.”
He shrugged. “Worth a shot.”