Chapter 6
Jude entered the dining room, where Danielle was busy going through the table linens.
As if she felt him, she turned around and smiled at him.
Since their mating over two months earlier, they’d grown even closer and were more aware of each other.
While they couldn’t communicate telepathically, their Lycan instincts invariably drew them to each other.
It wasn’t just his sense of smell that told him where in the house Danielle was, but something else, something unspoken, something that couldn’t be explained using physics and the laws of nature.
He pressed a tender kiss to her lips, then slipped his free hand to her belly. Their child was growing there, still invisible to everybody. They hadn’t announced it to the pack yet. It was their little secret for now.
“It arrived,” he said, gesturing to the envelope in his hand.
“My new identity?” Danielle asked, her ice-blue eyes flickering with excitement and relief.
He nodded and pulled three items from the envelope: a Social Security card, a driver’s license, and a passport. She reached for it and opened the passport.
“Danielle Smith Beaumont,” she read out aloud. She lifted her gaze to him. “And you’re sure that nobody can tell that they’re forged?”
“One hundred percent. You have nothing to worry about anymore.”
She wrapped her arms around him. “Thank you. I feel so much better now.”
He squeezed her tightly. He felt the same relief. With these IDs, Danielle could finally leave the past behind her. Nobody would ever know what she’d had to do to survive, nobody but the two of them.
“How about a kiss for your knight in shining armor?”
Her cheeks flushed. He had no idea how she could still maintain that innocence within her after all the intimacies they’d shared in the past ten weeks.
But he loved that about her. It made every kiss, every touch between them new and exciting.
And he still felt like the big, bad wolf, seducing Little Red Riding Hood every night.
And every night, she eagerly came to his bed, seducing him right back.
He had no defenses when it came to Danielle, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“You know full well what happens when you kiss me,” she murmured softly, her breath ghosting over his face as she leaned in.
“Can’t help that,” he answered with a smirk. “After all, I’m just a wolf in human clothing.”
He dipped his head lower to meet her halfway. Her lips were soft and warm.
“Uhm,” a voice from behind him interrupted.
Jude spun around, while Danielle gasped. Something fell to the floor and slid in Eve’s direction.
“I’m sorry,” Eve said, approaching, her hand stretched out, her gaze directed at Danielle. “I found the key you asked me about.”
“Oh, thank you, Eve,” Danielle said, her voice trembling.
As Eve took another step toward them, Jude’s eyes fell on the item that had fallen on the floor: Danielle’s driver’s license. Before he could bend down to retrieve it, Eve had already snatched it and looked at it.
“What’s that?” She stared straight at Danielle. “But your last name isn’t Smith. It should say Danielle Powell Beaumont, shouldn’t it?”
“Actually, it’s standard procedure,” Jude said quickly and took the driver’s license from her hand. “All women mated to an alpha within the Werewolf Alliance get a brand-new identity.”
It was total bullshit, but he couldn’t very well tell Eve that Danielle needed a new identity because she was wanted for murder. Nobody could ever know that, or it would put her in danger, and he’d promised to keep her safe.
“Oh, interesting.”
Eve didn’t look like she was convinced. Time to divert her attention to something else.
“Yes, just like Danielle will be getting her Werewolf Alliance tattoo.”
Eve raised her eyebrows. “The same tattoo you and your men have on your chests?”
Jude nodded, aware that the Gallagher pack members who lived on the estate had seen him and his men in the nude the night they’d fought off the vampires.
Though Eve had been locked up in the basement that night, she’d seen the tattoo on him when she’d surprised him in his bedroom, intending to seduce him just after he’d mated with Danielle in secret.
“Yes,” he said quickly. “In fact, the tattooist should be here shortly.”
“Are you saying it’s mandatory? So everybody in the Werewolf Alliance has this tattoo?”
Surprised by Eve’s curiosity, he felt compelled to give a more thorough explanation.
“Once matured, yes. The male members of the Alliance get their tattoos when they take the oath, when they turn eighteen. The females won’t.”
“Why not? Then why does Danielle get it? Are you saying it’s a choice for the women?” Eve looked at Danielle. “Do you want this? I mean, it may look cool on a man, but on a woman? I don’t see the appeal.”
“The women only get the tattoo once they mate with a member of the Alliance,” Danielle explained.
He’d told her about this rule soon after they’d mated, but had given her time until she was ready for it.
“It leaves a female werewolf born to a Werewolf Alliance family the option to mate outside the Alliance,” Jude added.
“Just like a human woman becomes part of her husband’s family, a female werewolf becomes part of her mate’s pack.
And if that pack isn’t part of the Alliance, the female won’t have the tattoo. ”
“Are you saying the Werewolf Alliance allows the women to mate outside their organization?” Doubt colored Eve’s voice.
“The Werewolf Alliance isn’t the Mafia. We don’t keep anybody prisoner. That’s why my sister and the females in my extended family don’t have the tattoo. And some of them may never get one. It’s a sign of absolute loyalty to the Alliance. It underscores the oath we took.”
Eve looked skeptical. “Are you saying that all the men who swore an oath to you as their new alpha will have to get that tattoo? Will my brothers have to do that? You should have told us that when we all swore an oath to you!”
Jude lifted his hand. “Hold your horses, Eve. It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like?”
“It’s complicated.”
Because it was. There was a whole handbook written on what had to happen for the members of a rogue pack to become true members of the Werewolf Alliance. Swearing an oath to the alpha taking over on behalf of the Werewolf Alliance was only the first step in the process.
Before he could decide what and how much to tell Eve, his cell phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and looked at the display.
“Sorry, I’ve gotta take that. Excuse me.”
He accepted the call and pressed the phone to his ear, while he left the dining room and headed for the privacy of his office.
“Hey, Dad, what’s going on?”