Chapter 8 #2
“You whelps are going to be in the way if you don’t do as you’re told,” Rex says. “But you’re welcome to come. My pack may very well educate you.”
“Don’t touch them. If anybody so much as disturbs a hair on their heads, I’ll fucking shank them,” I snarl.
“You could shift now and stop having such brutal things coming out of your human mind,” he says. “Those are animal thoughts.”
He says that in the same way someone might remind a child about an inside voice.
I do not enjoy being condescended to. I lunge at him and bite his neck.
He catches me and grips me tightly, letting out a guttural moan of pleasure as he holds me tight to his body.
Passion ignites between us, and I am suddenly so fucking desirous of his cock I can hardly stand to breathe without it inside me.
I know the meaning of the word crave in all new ways.
“Not here,” he snarls. “I am taking you home, and then I am taking you to the reserve. If you’re going to resist your shift, I’m not having you act out your animal self on the human world.”
I bite him again, harder. He shivers and I know I am starting to diminish his self-control as well.
I can feel his cock hardening against me as I wrap myself around him and latch on with my teeth.
There is an impulse in me to yank and chew, but I don’t follow that.
That is a hunting instinct, and I know better. For now.
“Fuck,” he curses, pulling me off his neck and instead tossing me over his shoulder. I kick furiously, but I can do no real damage while dangling over his back.
“Come on, the lot of you!” he orders the others. “I may need help with this one, and sacrificing my men when she can chew on you lot makes sense.”
“Come, my entourage!” I call out.
Maybe they are hesitant, maybe they are willing, but they all come with us. Rex’s car can barely fit us all in it. He puts me in the rear between the boys, tells Laura to get in the front passenger seat, and drives.
“I’m relying on you boys to keep her in the car,” he says over his shoulder.
Just as he says that, I lunge for the window. My instincts are becoming increasingly feral. The open space in the otherwise closed interior calls me.
Several hands grab me, and the window, which had been partially lowered, is immediately returned to its fully closed state.
“The hell is she doing?”
“Getting caught between human and wolf,” Laura says. “Just shift, boss. Maybe not here, but once we get to a wooded area or something. You’ll feel so much better.”
“If you pull anything like that again…” Rex starts to threaten me, but it means nothing because I am nursing a broken hand and barely feeling it in this state.
* * *
I settle down eventually and we drive out of the city. I thought we’d be going to his penthouse apartment again, because that’s what he said was going to happen, but I thought wrong.
“Where are we going?”
“I’m taking you to the reserve,” he says. “Laura is right. That’s where you need to be.”
“How do you know my name?” Laura asks suspiciously.
“I’ve known all your names for quite some time,” he replies. “I do my research.”
“Not enough to know that Nicky Love wasn’t a man,” I pipe up from the backseat. His eyes sear into mine in the rearview mirror. I feel a pulse of arousal.
He does not reply to me, instead, he places a call to his manservant.
“Fescue, prepare rooms at the reserve for guests. We will need a ladies’ quarters, and shared accommodation for three young men. And, of course, I will need full accommodations for my mate, including clothing.”
“Of course, sir,” he says. “Anything else?”
“A doctor for Nicky.”
“Very good, sir,” he says.
“Very good, sir,” I repeat, then giggle. A couple of the guys give me a concerned look. I’m acting like a little shit. They’re used to me being an inspiring leader. I guess it’s weird.
A lot of things are weird.
I can feel the animal inside me getting bigger.
It’s like she’s shifting under my skin. She wants so badly to take over.
I can’t have that happen. I promised I would never, ever take my wolf form.
The fact that these people keep trying to push it telling me how natural and beautiful it is just means they don’t have any idea what they are asking for.
There’s a reason I ended up outcast. It’s because my father was outcast. My father was outcast because the type of wolf we turn into is dangerous. Actually, dangerous is far too small a word for what my bloodline becomes.
* * *
Thirteen years ago…
I am crying and I cannot stop.
There is so much blood. There are so many bodies.
They’re everywhere, strewn about like, well, bodies.
I wanted to think of something more poetic, but there’s nothing else to compare this to.
It’s like if you tipped out a drawer of cutlery, but all the spoons and forks and knives were people who had been alive and were now dead…
My father is in the middle of the lot of them. He is covered in blood, too. There is so much of it, it almost looks like it has been painted onto him.
I wasn’t supposed to be here for this. I wasn’t supposed to see it. But I did. All of it. I am too small to understand. Too scared to run. So when my father slides from his wolf form and turns back into the man I know, I just stare at him.
“Oh, shit,” he says. “Weren’t supposed to be here, kid.”
He picks me up and I scream because I don’t want the blood to touch me, but then I look down and it’s already all over me. There’s no escaping it.
My dad carries me away from the blood and from the dead people who look like rag dolls who got chewed on too hard. We go out into the sun, where a light rain shower starts to make the blood on him and now me go all dappled.
I get the courage to ask a question.
“Why did you do that to those people?”
“I didn’t want to,” he says. “But when I get my dog on, there’s not much that can stop me. I never wanted you to see that.”
“Am I gonna do that?”
“No,” he says. “You’re a girl. You’ve got protection against this. Just as long as you never take a mate. And even if you do one day, and you get the urge, you suppress yourself. You hear me?”
He grips my shoulders tightly and looks into my eyes with his wide, desperate orbs. “You don’t have to shift if you don’t want to. Fight your nature. There’s nothing good that comes from it. You gotta trust me.”
* * *
That memory of my father exhorting me not to ever shift comes to mind. There’s a faint coppery tang in my mind mixed with iron as I blink and find myself in the car with my packmates and Rex. They think I am bad now. They wouldn’t be able to start to deal with me if I actually shifted.
“Can we get snacks?” I make the suggestion as we pass a gas station. “I’m hungry. I could go for some jerky or something like that.”
“We are not on a road trip,” Rex growls. “I am taking you for your own good.”
“So it has to suck? And be snackless?”
“Little brat, if you keep talking back to me, I will stop this car, take your pants down, and spank you on the side of the road.” He growls the promise at me, making it infantilizing enough to scare me out of keeping up my bullshit.
Good for him.
It takes three hours to get to the reserve. It’s a chaotic three hours. I try to get him to stop for snacks several more times, but Rex has pretty much stopped talking to me. I’ve become too obnoxious. Instead, my boys make polite conversation with him. They’re quite awed by the man.
I’ve heard about the reserve. Never been here. It’s massive, apparently. More land than most ranches, and all of it for the Regent pack and their special guests. I suppose that includes us.
The gate is less imposing and impressive than I thought it would be.
Just two stone pillars and an iron gate with a sign that says Private.
Then there’s a driveway. Gravel at first, but after a few hundred feet it becomes paved.
Like they wanted it to not stand out as being anything in particular.
Interesting. For all the flash of the Regent brand, this place is under the radar.
I heard that it was very fancy, but aside from the smooth asphalt road running between trees, I’m not seeing anything particularly, oh… no… there it is.
We sweep around a corner and I find myself looking at a sprawling multistory building that looms out of the earth.
It’s been architecturally designed to look sort of like a den or cave, I think.
Lots of curves and awnings and jutting out parts that are also curved and very big windows.
It has a lot of cedar on it, and the organic shapes are rife.
As we pull up in the big circular driveway outside the main building, I see that our arrival has been very much anticipated.
There’s at least a dozen men in suits ranged outside the front verandah, hands clasped respectfully in front of their bodies.
Behind them, slightly elevated, is a man who arrests my attention.
It’s Fescue. I realize. He is wearing tweed, while everyone else wears black.
None of them look like they’re particularly enjoying chilling in the wilderness.
They look, I realize, like guards. The sort of guards who are charged with keeping someone in. Someone like me.
“Get her out, please,” Rex says as he gets out of the car.
My guys end up helping me tumble out of the car into what feels like a very formal, very male-led reception. Oh, no, one of the guards is a woman. I missed the cut of her suit because of the uniformity of the line.
Laura is unconcerned too, I notice. She looks interested, alert.
A place like this is going to impress my pack of runaways, and it’s going to have particular interest for the unmated females like Laura.
She thinks the guys in our little pack are too immature.
She’s right. But the men in front of us, and the lady, are all the opposite of immature.
The boys are looking at Rex’s security too, but for different reasons.