Chapter 3
Ace
Her warm hand in mine felt right. I don’t know why, but it was akin to the perfect key in a lock.
And boy, did I want to try my “key” in her lock in every position my filthy brain could imagine.
I don’t know if it was the Blood Moon, the fact that I’d been working for the Club so much lately that I hadn’t had any time for fun, or this hot little blond next to me, but I was about ready to combust.
She didn’t put up a fight as I guided her out the back door where our bikes were parked.
My skin pricked and burned as soon as we moved into the warm night air.
The moon called to me now, and I wanted to call right back to her.
My inner wolf was so close to the surface, he was practically visible behind my eyes.
Domino, under the same spell as I was in the presence of a nearly full moon, tossed his head back and howled. The sound wasn’t quite all the way human and his low bay stirred up a deep longing inside of me to join him.
Before I could give in to the temptation, a group of bikes began to stream into the parking lot. Unfortunately, they didn’t belong to the Night Stalkers. They belonged to our Club’s most hated rivals, the Los Lobos, another shifter MC a few counties over from Mercy.
The men banked their rides along an empty row as I glanced at Domino, silently communicating with my brother what we were both thinking. We had to get the women away from here immediately or things could turn bad quickly.
No women were safe around Los Lobos members.
The last thing I wanted was the two with us to be exposed to them.
As much as I hated to do it, I was going to have to send them away for their own safety.
Preferably before any of the bikers caught sight, or a whiff, of them.
Especially Cat, whose hand had begun to tighten and tremble in mine the second she spotted the others advancing.
The way she smelled, even if we’d been on good terms with Los Lobos, I would have had a fight on my hands.
With my greatest enemy, it might spell a full-on war.
Though I’d protect Cat with everything I had, I didn’t want to put her in that kind of vulnerable position. She was an innocent who had nothing to do with my MC rivalry. I wouldn’t drag her, or her friend, into my violent world.
“Where are you parked?” I demanded, my tone hard and menacing. There was no room for soft right now.
Cat tensed and tried to slip her hand free of my grasp, but I wouldn’t let go. “In the front parking lot,” she answered, her voice quavering the slightest bit at the end. Those big amber eyes of hers were practically circles as she awaited my next instruction.
“I want you to cut back through the bar and head directly to your car. Get the hell out of this place as fast as you can. Got it?”
I could feel Cat’s body begin to hum like a tuning fork as she absorbed the seriousness of the situation. “What about you guys?”
“Yeah, we can’t leave you two alone with all of those rough looking men,” Anna bravely added. “Do you want us to call the cops or something?”
Domino gave a deep chuckle. “That’s fucking sweet of you, babe, but we got this covered. Just get your fine ass back to your car and don’t, whatever you do, call the cops. You got me?”
Both women nodded dutifully. “Good, now go. Don’t look back,” I ordered sharply.
Running for the bar door, they opened it but came to an abrupt stop when Kane, the president of the Los Lobos, exited.
“Where are you two fine looking ladies going?” Kane questioned, roughly snagging both of them by the arm. His eyes lit up as he caught a whiff of Cat. “Now that is interesting,” he fairly purred, nuzzling the woman close so he could take it all in. “I never smelled anything quite like you before.”
A lust-filled glaze shuttered over his predatory icy, blue gaze as he registered the sensual notes that were Cat’s personal perfume.
Enraged, I snarled a feral sound and advanced on Kane. My long legs ate up the distance between us. “Get your fucking hands off of her, asshole!”
Kane took in the sight of my murderous glare, as well as that of Domino right beside me, and slowly dropped both women’s arms. “It’s not like you to be the jealous sort, Ace. This girl must mean something to you.”
There was no good way to answer that query. No matter what I said, I exposed my hand to this deceitful mongrel, and I had no intention of doing that to my worst enemy.
“Did I stutter?” I growled, ignoring his point altogether. “Get the fuck away from those women. If you want a fight, you can have one. I’m right here. Unless you’re even more of a coward than I realized and want to drag two innocent women into what should be dealt with between two men!”
Like most wares, or most men for that matter, I knew the way to get under Kane’s skin was to hit him in his weakest spot. His pride. My targeted comment didn’t fail.
When he took a threatening step toward me, and away from the women, the fist seizing my heart relaxed just the smallest bit.
Kane seemed to catch onto my misdirection faster than I would have liked, though. “She is special to you, and I can smell why.”
I noticed Cat and Anna exchange terrified and confused expressions at the biker’s mysterious words.
“You know what that means, don’t you, Ace?” A dark smile crept across Kane’s lips. “She’s an omega… And I want her.”
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t realized it sooner.
God damn it, Kane was right! Cat was a sleeper omega.
This meant that she hadn’t officially “activated” but that she surely would once she spent some time in the presence of her own kind.
That’s why I hadn’t picked up on her humanness in the bar: she wasn’t human at all.
She was a dormant ware. But she was, without a doubt, my mate.
Every nerve and instinct in my body was screaming that fact loud and clear. MINE.
An omega is the most prized mate an alpha can hope to pair with.
They’re rare and considered the most desirable of all women to our kind.
Their scent drives us crazy, and shifters are known to fight to the death over the chance to be with one.
As a sleeper omega, Cat had never been through a change.
Hell, she probably didn’t even know she was one of us.
She was a latent, a late bloomer, so to speak.
Latents were rare, but they did crop up from time to time, though I’d never met one personally before.
A ware that developed later in life was most always raised by humans.
It had something to do with the lack of proximity to our pheromones.
Once she was exposed to them though, she’d be primed and ready to pop.
I was willing to bet if Cat wasn’t adopted, that somewhere in her family tree there was a horny, irresponsible ware who’d graced the bed of one of her ancestors.
The ins and outs of Cat’s lineage, as fascinating as they might be, didn’t matter right now.
Getting these women to safety did. I’d deal with the rest later.
What was paramount was protecting the omega from Kane, a very dangerous ware who couldn’t be trusted with a pet snake, let alone such an important female shifter.
However, getting the women away from the members of Los Lobos was going to be easier said than done. Kane’s brothers were already swarming us. Scenting blood in the water, they were all breathing hard and edging closer by the second. I couldn’t let that happen. Not with Cat’s very life on the line.
Concentrating hard, I tuned-in my pack, sending the mental signal that there was trouble.
I could read that Mad Dog was already inside, doubtlessly trying to pick up Kierston.
It was plain as day the man had the biggest hard-on for the little witch, though he wasn’t ready to admit it yet.
If I was lucky, my tough-as-nails brother had come with backup.
Either way, three against nine was significantly better odds than two.
Wares didn’t have the typical kind of telepathy you see on TV.
At least, not when they weren’t in wolf form.
That was when our bond was strongest and clearest. However, when we were in our human bodies, we could still communicate with one another.
Though not with exact words, we could express a wide range of emotions: anger, fear, or, when necessary, a call to arms.
Immediately, I felt my brothers light up my circuits with their answering battle cries. They were on their way. Whether that meant minutes or hours, I couldn’t tell. Lucky for me, Mad Dog busted out the back door right then, his meaty fists clenched meaningfully at his sides.
“What the fuck do we have here?” My intimidating brother shouted, his teeth bared openly to our aggressors.
Kane’s gang closed ranks, and the arrogant man smirked with satisfaction. “Three against nine. I like those odds.”
“A piece of shit coward like you would,” Mad Dog fired back.
Kierston poked her head out the back door then. “You boys need some help?”
Her arrival made the men think twice about pouncing.
Though a ware could easily overpower a witch, they were, in general, incredibly leery of them.
It was their unknown abilities and spell casting prowess they feared.
The members of Los Lobos were no exception to that rule.
The men began to shuffle nervously in place, waiting for their leader to give them their next instruction.
“Go inside, Kierston,” Mad Dog bellowed over his shoulder. “This has nothing to do with you!”
Kierston huffed dramatically at his overprotective reprimand. “This is my bar, Nathaniel!” she said, using Mad Dog’s given name instead of his road name, as she always did. “Have you forgotten that small fact? A fight on my property has everything to do with me.”
“See these two get safely into their vehicles. Pronto!” I commanded, leaving the women in Kierston’s capable hands.
Kierston tightly bobbed her chin. “Will do, Ace.”
Cat gave me one last wide-eyed glance before Kierston led them back into the safety of the bar. I could tell my girl wanted to say more, but she was savvy enough to realize how dangerous the current situation was and so kept her mouth shut.
Once the women were gone, we focused our attention fully on Kane and his crew. I’d find my mate as soon as I’d painted the pavement with the fresh blood of these bastards.
“You’re not supposed to be on Night Stalker territory, Kane,” I growled, as I watched Mad Dog and Domino begin to bow up, getting ready for a fight.
“Oh yeah?” Kane did a quick visual sweep of his men, scattered in a horseshoe around us. “What are you going to do about it, Ace?”
I heard them before I saw them. In the distance, the sound of one, then two, then several more howls rent the night. They must have been only a few miles away when they’d gotten my “message”. Over the horizon, I saw their headlights like torches in the dark leading the way. My pack had arrived.
I grinned at my enemy then. “It’s not what I’m going to do you, Kane. It’s what my pack is going to do to your pack. And it’s been a long time coming.”