by M. L. Briers
But the law hadn’t been written with pack members turned into bloodsuckers in mind, and it wasn’t fair. She hated the pack elders, she hated the vampire who had changed her brother into a bloodsucker, and she hated the thought of losing him from her life.
If that witch could give her brother his wolf back, it was a loophole that the elders were willing to take into account. But everyone she’d spoken to about it had doubted it would work. She wasn’t getting her hopes up, and it looked like Joe wasn’t either.
Courtney had to wonder if the witch had just told him that there was little hope?
CHAPTER FIVE
~
Joe stood on the porch and gazed out unseeing at the woods in the near distance. His broad muscled shoulder propped up the wooden brace of the overhead canopy, his arms were folded, and one ankle was crossed the other as he thought about how simple his life would be now if his brother hadn’t run into that damn vampire and challenged him. But then Nathaniel had always been headstrong and unthinking, and in an alpha that wasn’t always a good trait.
Joe was the alpha now, yet he still had to bow to the council of elders and their perceived wisdom where pack law was concerned. Nathaniel had proven himself at every turn, with every request, and they still found new barriers to throw up in his path.
This time it was his wolf. The poor beast was trapped for all eternity inside a vampire cage that it couldn’t escape from unless the witch could free it. The elders believed that eventually, the wolf would go rogue, and that would impact the man.
Joe knew him to be stronger than that – he’d curbed his bloodlust, had shown full control around his pack, and hadn’t taken a human life – but the elders still wanted a cast-iron guarantee where there was none.
The witch was the last hope of keeping Nathaniel with the pack. He wouldn’t do anything to get in the way of that.
“Penny for them,” Catherine, one of the council of elders, said as she appeared at his side with a large carry bag hooked over her shoulder.
The woman was a good foot shorter than him, her long silver hair had been tossed up into a loose bun, but it was her piercing green eyes that always held him to the spot and kept him honest, even when he was a child.
Joe had been startled out of his musings by the one woman who had been on the brothers’ side in this whole frustrating saga. He dragged his gaze away from the woods and to the elder. Her kind eyes pulled him all the way back. “Let me take your bag,” he said, reaching out and lifting it from her shoulder.
“There’s extra for the witch in there, might be a bit spicy for her though, so you might want to warn her,” she said.
Joe could smell the spices right off. “You’re famous flame-grilled chicken,” he said and nodded appreciatively. That smell and the thought of the taste on his tongue did set his stomach rumbling, but he wasn’t interested in food right then.
Of course, Catherine was right, he would need to feed Kirsty, and his idea of cooking was a tin of beans on toast with a couple of eggs thrown on top – not really a four-course meal.
“There’s a peach cobbler for after, and I made it extra sweet in the hope it might lighten the mood of the females in there,” she said with a twinkle of amusement in her eyes. “How are Courtney and the witch getting along?”
“Courtney’s being Courtney and Kirsty hasn’t come out of the attic since I took her up there,” he replied.
“You know this isn’t your fault. Nathaniel challenged the wrong person this time and …” She left it there with a sweeping hand to fill in the blanks of what he already knew.
“Yeah, but I was hoping I’d be able to change the councils' mind.”
“Those old farts,” Catherine said and snorted a chuckle. “Set in their ways, and the law is the law.”
“Then why do they keep moving the goalposts?” Joe asked, the anger rising within him.
“I’ll tell you this,” Catherine said, moving in closer and whispering. Wolves had good hearing, and she wasn’t about to be overheard. “This is the last rule they could find. If you can get the witch to crack this one – there isn’t a thing those old fools can do to take Nathaniel from his land.”
Joe liked the sound of that. Now if only the witch could come through for them – no pressure there. “She’s working on it,” he said and hoped that she found what she was looking for.
“Well, if the old crone said there was a legend then you can guarantee it came from her sister and is in those books,” Catherine replied, holding out the hope he needed. “Let’s just give the new witch all the help we can in finding it,” she said and tapped the bag. “Don’t forget to feed her.”
“I’ll take good care of her,” Joe promised, and strangely enough, it was a thought that didn’t seem like a chore to accomplish.
Catherine tilted her head to the side and eyed him for a long moment. When she looked at him that way, it took him right back to when he was a kid stealing apples from the tree in her yard and made him feel just as guilty as he had back then.
A small smile picked at the corners of her lips, and that damn twinkle was back in her eyes. “Yep, something tells me you will,” she said and turned on her heels.
Catherine was humming when she walked away, and she seemed to have a little spring in her step. “And send little miss dimples over for a cooking lesson sometime soon,” she called back, chuckling.
Joe had no idea what that was all about, but he was damned glad she was on his side. He might have been the alpha, but even he couldn’t overwrite the law. But with Catherine’s help, and a witch’s spell, maybe they could rewrite the law.
As for Courtney’s cooking lesson, that was going to be a test of wills on both sides, and he wasn’t putting money on the winner.
~
When Kirsty heard the footsteps, she looked up from the stack of books she had open in various places that were spread across the desk and realised that the sun was fading and she hadn’t actually moved in hours. Sure, her hands had turned pages, and her eyes had a feast, but her backside was kind of numb, and her legs might just be asleep.
The scent of food in the air made her stomach rumble, and whatever it was smelled delicious. “Found anything?” Joe’s deep tones were another wake-up call to her sense, but those senses were totally different from the ones that involved food.
Kirsty swivelled the chair and got a great view of him coming up the stairs, head and broad shoulders first, then the rest of him. She didn’t know what was on the plate, but she hoped it was as good as he looked.
Holy smoke! That wasn’t a thought she wanted floating around in her brain.
Sure, she was man-starved, not having dated for a nearly a year, but come on – a wolf shifter? That would take some explaining to the little angel sitting on her shoulder telling her to be good – although the little devil on the other shoulder would have been cheerleading her on.
“I found a lot, but not the legend,” she replied, trying to kill off the last thoughts of any kind of a fling-thing with him.
Then he turned those sad, expectant puppy dog eyes of hope on her and even the angel on her shoulder had second thoughts – she could totally get lost in those soulfully sexy eyes.
Joe almost tripped up the last step but caught the toe of his boot from wedging on the wood just in time to stop him face-planting the floor and looking like a total idiot, and all because she stared right at him and jolted something deep within. “You need to eat,” he said and headed towards her with the plated food that Catherine had brought over.
“Would that be keeping up my strength for performing the spell when we find it, or fattening me up for when I’m on the menu?” she asked and noted the sudden gobsmacked look on his face.
Kirsty guessed she wasn’t on the menu – unless he was worried because she called him on his dastardly plan.
“I guaranteed you safe passage…”
“I know,” she said, shrugging, but I just wanted to see if I could get that goofy look you had a
t the bar back on your face.”
“I have a goofy look?”
“All men do, but you usually only see it during sex,” she said and heard a low rumble like thunder that came from his chest.
For the life of her, she didn’t know why she’d said that. It was like every time she saw him she had sex on the brain.
Erin was right – she needed to get out more, but then the sex on the brain part was probably also Erin’s fault. At least that was the story she was going to tell herself from that moment on.
All that talk about mates and hot hunky guys, was it any wonder she was visualising him naked? Oh, goddess, now she was picturing him naked – this had to stop.
“Hungry,” she rushed out, fearing the awkward moment between them was going to stretch to an eternity, and the word sex was going to sit in the air like a stink bomb, and she reached for the plate.
Joe’s brain had been somewhere else entirely, and the fact she was holding her hand out for the plate had been lost on him.
“You kind of need to hand it over, unless you intend to feed me,” Kirsty said, and mentally rolled her eyes when he cocked just the one eyebrow back at her.
Damn, that sounded wrong on so many levels she wished she was able to take it back. First sex and now hand-fed – what was her brain doing while her mouth was busy putting her in the poop?
On the plus side, he hadn’t growled for a second time, but he did have a strange look in his eyes like he was considering changing his mind about snacking down on her.
Brain in gear and then speak, she told herself, but it didn’t seem to be working out that way so far. “Can I have my food?” she asked with a hopeful look up at him – she hoped he would leave it and go so she could crawl into a hole and bury herself in regret.
Maybe she’d get lucky and choke to death on the food, but she wasn’t counting her blessing just yet. It seemed that Erin and the devil were winning this round.
Joe jolted as he tried to make his brain stopped thinking about her naked, being hand-fed by him, and realised that he looked like an idiot waiter holding her dinner hostage. “Yeah,” he managed to spit out, and as he bent to put the plate on the desk, she leaned in to move the books.
Clunk – their heads bumped together, and they pulled back fast, but not fast enough that Joe didn’t feel the tingle to his skin from the contact.
Joe’s wolf rose up within him. The beast either wanted out or he wanted him to take her scent – either way, Joe knew he was in trouble.
CHAPTER SIX
~
One moment Joe was there and the next he had gone. Kirsty didn’t quite know what had hit her, except for his hard head of course.
The plate was sitting on top of a pile of books, but there was no wolfman in the room with her. She rushed to snatch the plate up and put it in the space she’d made for it, just in case, there were any spills.
Those books were more valuable than her empty stomach, and she wouldn’t allow them to be soiled.
Kirsty turned and eyed the space where he’d been. It hadn’t seemed so vast when he was there, but then his large frame had blotted out most of the view to the other end of the room.
Strange that he had left like that, but then wolf shifters were strange.
Kirsty lifted her hand and ran her fingertips over the spot where their heads had knocked together. There was no bump, but there was a little pain and some tingling. She put that feeling down to hitting a nerve – maybe she’d hit a nerve with him, and that was why he’d taken off so abruptly – but she hadn’t said anything to cause him to run away.
Wolf shifters did have excellent hearing; perhaps there had been an emergency that he needed to deal with?
Did the word goodbye not feature in a wolfman’s vocabulary?
Kirsty shrugged as her stomach rumbled once more. The scent of the food tempted her to remove the foil covering, and boy did her mouth water when she got the full package of looks and scent. Yum, it smelled spicy – and that was just how she liked it.
She’d eat fast and get back to the books. There was no time to waste and a million pages to look through. Time wasn’t on her side unless she felt like becoming a permanent fixture on pack land, and that wasn’t happening.
~
Joe was halfway out of the backdoor when Nathaniel appeared in front of him. He almost swung a fist out of sheer surprise and the scent of the vampire in the air, but it was his damn vampire and not a stranger. His wolf was so close to the surface that it took him a moment to rein the beast in.
Nathaniel eyed him with suspicion. “Did you kill the witch already, brother?” he asked.
“Huh?” Joe’s mind was still back in the attic with Kirsty, and his wolf didn’t take kindly to the thought of her lying dead on the floor.
Nathaniel couldn’t judge his brother’s mood. Before he’d been changed into a vampire, he could have spotted Joe’s emotions a mile away. Now, it seemed, he needed more than visual aids to do the trick.
His brother was hot-footing it from something, but then having a witch around was probably reason enough for his haste.
Nathaniel raised his hands and clawed the air. “Is she that irritating you couldn’t help yourself?” he asked with an air of amusement.
Joe was the one person he knew was on his side in all of this, even Courtney had turned her back on him, and he wasn’t entirely sure there was an elder that was going to give him the time of day – perhaps Catherine – but nothing was certain. The only person he could rely on now was Joe.
“I can’t touch her!” Joe blurted out before he’d put his brain into gear and the curious look that he got from his brother told him he’d put his foot in it. “We need her,” he added, shoving his hands in the front pockets of his jeans as he tried to sidestep his brother and make it out into the cooling night air.
“That we do, well, I do, you still have your wolf,” Nathaniel said, sounding just a little bitter to his ears. “And I don’t think I have time to train a stand-in wild wolf by the next fool moon.”
Joe was lost. His brother was talking, smiling, smirking, and giving him some curious looks, but all he could think about was Kirsty. He’d been on his way for a run, hoping that would appease his wolf back into some kind of normal, but he didn’t give it much hope. Still, it was the best he had.
There was a horrible, wonderful, strange, guilty feeling within him that he might have just found his mate, but to test that theory meant that he might spook the woman and have her running for the hills.
Now wasn’t the time to follow his selfish needs. He needed to find a way to keep his brother home where he belonged, and not spend the witch’s time either running from him or using up the valuable time they had with wooing. That could come later if his suspicions were born out and she was his one true love.
“That was a joke,” Nathaniel said, wondering why the easy banter between them was one-sided tonight.
“Yeah,” Joe said, hooking his hand around the back of his neck and feigning fatigue. “It’s been a trying day…”
“Witch that bad?” Nathaniel asked, grinning widely at the thought of his brother having to deal with the tantrums and weirdness of a witch.
This time Joe did manage to sidestep his brother, and he walked to the wooden railing, palmed it, and stared out at the tempting sight of the woods at the end of the garden. Damn, but he did want to run, but now that Nathanial was there, he couldn’t very well leave Kirsty unprotected.
Joe didn’t think his brother was going to go bloodlust crazy, but he hadn’t taken the scent of a witch yet, and their blood was supposed to be a vampire’s favourite. He couldn’t take that risk, and frankly, he wanted to put his fist in his brother’s face at the thought of it.
“You don’t trust me?” Nathaniel said, joining him by the railing and staring longingly at the view. If only he could shift into his beast and run free – he’d give anything for that once more. He envied Joe that honour.
Joe gave his brother a sidewa
ys look, his jaw was set, his gaze focused on the same place that Joe longed to be, but he held himself taut like he was caging in his anger. “What are you talking about?”
Nathaniel raised his hand and tapped his temple. “You forget I have a new trick and can read your thoughts,” he said, not looking at his brother.
“I asked you not to do that.”
“Well, I’m learning to turn it off, but it’s broken,” Nathaniel admitted.
Joe didn’t like the sound of that. His brother broken – that wasn’t a good sign. What if his control on his bloodlust was also fleeting? That would put the pack in danger.
“Heard that,” Nathaniel said, turning to eye his brother.
“Should I just stop talking and you can just snatch what you need from my head?” Joe growled.
“It would be easier, but no,” Nathaniel said, turning and resting his backside against the railing, and he folded his arms on a small shake of his head. “We didn’t ask for this…”
“There you go again, getting that vampire broody thing on,” Joe replied, cutting him off before he started getting too deep into the mire of self-loathing. They’d been through that already, Nathaniel had even offered him a damn stake to drive through his heart – that wasn’t going to happen.
“It comes with the black-on-black ensemble that is regulation for all vampires to wear…”
“Bloodsuckers in black – it might catch on as a movie,” Joe tossed back and was relieved when his brother cracked a smile.
“I’ll write the book, I have a millennium to get it finished,” Nathaniel replied.
“You writing a book? I think you’d still need a ghostwriter for that…”
“Maybe your witch could find me a ghost floating around to help,” he said.
“My witch?” Joe said, and frowned.
That was the big question he needed an answer to – was Kirsty really his mate.