“Yeah, Molly, I have a fuckin' objection. What if he heals the cuts, then what?”
She frowned. “You know the rules—if his kiss heals her, his claim is valid even though a formal mating mark hadn't been made. In which case she belongs to him, at least for the night, and tomorrow you can issue a formal challenge if you wish to.”
“What's to keep him from marking her tonight, then?” Thrash demanded. “She's no good to me as Mabon queen if she has another wolf's mark on her.”
The priestess looked me up and down. “You're new to the pack but not to this area,” she said to me. “What is your name?”
“I am Benjamin, son of Brandon,” I said formally. “My father had rights in this pack, which I chose not to inherit after his death. I wish to claim them now.”
She nodded gravely. “So noted, Benjamin, son of Brandon. And will you swear that if you win this woman tonight you will not mate her?”
I nodded. “I swear.”
“And that you will not attempt to leave these premises until after Mabon, when the Goddess has ruled according to her will?”
I swallowed hard. My only thought had been to get Dani and go. I hadn't counted on having to stay the night. Still, there was no other way. I nodded again and said, “This I swear as well.”
The priestess, Molly, nodded back at me. “I call on all of you to witness,” she called out to the watching pack. Most of them were big men, like myself, and all had women by their sides—mates they had taken from the human world and brought into the pack.
“Heard and witnessed,” came the words from a dozen voices.
Molly turned back to me. “I knew your father well, Ben,” she said. “Your word is trusted here, though you have not chosen to be a part of us until tonight.” She touched me lightly on the shoulder. “Go to her. I can tell how much you need her.”
I pushed past the Lead Wolf, giving him a glare as I went. There was pure hatred in his yellow eyes, but there was nothing he could do without going against protocol. I just hoped like hell my love for Dani would be enough to heal her.
I dropped to my knees beside her, feeling an overwhelming, almost physical relief at being able to touch her at last. At first I thought she had fainted, but when I cupped her bruised cheek in my palm, her eyes fluttered open and she looked at me.
“Ben?” she whispered.
“Shh,” I said, stroking her hair back from her forehead. Her skin was terribly pale, and the streaks of crimson down her arms and legs were garishly bright in comparison. The white silk teddy was thin, and I could clearly see the outline of her nipples beneath it. But I didn't care about that now. I just wanted to comfort and reassure her. “I'm here,” I told her softly. “I won't let him hurt you anymore.”
“I decided not to drop the story.” She tried to give me a smile, but her mouth was hurt where someone, no doubt Thrash, had hit her. I tasted fresh rage at the back of my throat and forced it down.
“I see that.” I tried to smile back.
“How…how did you know how to find me?”
“Daryl called and told me you went looking for trouble,” I told her. “So I came looking for you.”
“I'm glad.” Her eyes were big, and the fear I saw in them almost broke my heart. But of course, Dani wouldn't voice her terror out loud—that wasn't her way. “So what's the plan?” she whispered. “Can you get us out of here?”
“I think so. I, uh, have to prove that I can heal you.” I gestured at the long shallow wounds on her arms and thighs.
Dani frowned. “Can you? Is that a werewolf thing?”
“It can be.” I looked around at the waiting pack, knowing my love for her was about to be put on the line, tested as it had never been before. My heart was pounding against my ribs. What if I couldn't do it? What if I couldn't heal her? It would be Thrash's right to continue the ceremony and there would be nothing, by pack law, that I could do about it.
If that happened, I decided, I would fight him anyway. I would fight until I changed, and then fight again in wolf form until I died. But I wouldn't just let him have Dani, no matter what.
I stroked her hair gently. “I'm going to do something now that might seem strange to you, but it's necessary. All right?”
I saw the uncertainty in her eyes. I had broken her trust once, and it was hard for her to believe she could trust me again. But she nodded her head, not saying anything, giving me silent permission to do what I needed to do.
I bent my head to her left wrist, which was tied to the carved wooden platform by a length of ceremonial black satin. The warm, secret scent of her skin filled my senses, and I let the love I felt for her fill my soul. Anything for you, Dani, I thought, bending my head to kiss the spot on her wrist where the long shallow scratch began. Love you so much. Please, Goddess, help me show it.
I felt a tingle, almost like an electric spark, jump between us when my lips brushed her skin. Dani must have felt it too because she opened her eyes and gasped. I looked at her, letting the love I felt fill my eyes.
“It's all right,” I whispered. “Just relax.” I kissed her again, then licked her, caressing the scratch on her arm with a soothing stroke of my tongue. The taste of her blood and skin and fear was strong in my mouth, and I could feel the moon shining down from the glass ceiling above me like a solid silver weight on my back. I ignored it. I closed my eyes, concentrating only on Dani, and continued to lick and kiss, making my way up the creamy underside of her arm, pouring out the love I felt for her, willing her to heal.
The tingle continued to grow, and I heard Dani give a little mew of emotion, but whether of pleasure or pain I couldn't be sure. I kept my eyes closed, concentrating hard. I couldn't let myself be distracted—not now, not when so much was at stake. But there was no denying that a connection was forming between us as the tingle turned into a warm, electric current that pulsed beneath my skin and, I knew, hers as well. She was so hurt, so wounded, and my urge to protect her was strong, almost as strong as my need to heal her. I wanted to cradle her in my arms and keep her safe from the world, and at the same time, I wanted to take her, make love to her, and make her mine forever. I wanted to truly claim her, not just pretend.
From behind me I heard a surprised murmur of voices, and then someone said, “It's working—he's doing it.”
“He's healing her,” someone else agreed. The rest of the pack began talking, sounding excited.
“Ben?” Dani's voice was uncertain.
At last I allowed myself to open my eyes. The long wound on the arm I had been licking and kissing was gone. Dani's skin had knitted together so neatly it hadn't even left a scar. It was as though she had never been hurt in the first place.
A fierce, triumphant joy filled my heart. She was mine—mine—and I had proven it beyond a shadow of a doubt. But when I looked up, the troubled expression on Dani's face brought me crashing back down again. Now more than ever I had proven to her that I was different, that I was other. She might be mine, at least for tonight in the eyes of the pack, but I knew the truth; she didn't belong to me and never would.
Still, I stood and faced the pack. The snarling Thrash and the priestess, Molly, were standing side by side, a little in front of the rest.
“She is mine,” I said, reciting the words my grandfather had taught me as an adolescent in case I was ever in this situation. “I claim her by the wounds I have healed and by the love I bear her.”
The priestess bowed her head slightly. “Your claim is justified, Benjamin, son of Brandon. Take this woman. Comfort her, hold her, heal her, but do not mark her. With this I charge you.”
I nodded, and four other weres came forward with knives to cut Dani's bonds. The minute she was free, I leaned down and scooped her into my arms. The white silk teddy she was wearing was smeared with her blood, and she trembled in my arms like a hurt child.
“It's all right,” I whispered, feeling like my heart might burst. God, I just needed to get her away from here! I wished with all my heart that
I hadn't had to swear we'd stay here tonight, but there was nothing I could do about it now.
Dani buried her face in my shoulder, her arms going around my neck in a gesture of trust more precious than gold. I cradled her close, breathing in her unique scent, and looked up at the priestess.
“Where can I take her?” I asked. “We need to be alone so I can finish healing her.”
She nodded at one of the men who had cut Dani's bonds. “Show them to the blue room. They can stay there for the night. Tomorrow we'll deal with the issue of who is to be Mabon queen.” She leveled a gaze at the still glaring Thrash. “And of who is to be the queen's consort,” she added.
I had a feeling Dani and I were being used as political pawns—caught in the power struggle between the Lead Wolf and the priestess of the pack, but there was nothing I could do about it tonight. I just needed to get Dani away, out of there.
“Thank you,” I said to the priestess, who bowed her head regally.
“Tomorrow I will speak with both of you. For now, the Goddess grant you peace, rest, and healing,” she said.
I nodded, but privately I doubted I would get any of the three.
Chapter Thirteen
Dani
The whole thing was like a nightmare, and I kept waiting to wake up. I'd fought them tooth and nail when they tied me to that damn stone altar, but when the guys tying you down outweigh you by about a hundred pounds apiece, there's not a whole lot you can do. All the self defense classes I'd taken were worth exactly squat, and I found myself spread eagle in the skimpy silk teddy they'd forced me to change into before you could say black belt.
I'd had no idea what to expect, but when Thrash Savage pulled out a knife and started talking about “claiming me,” I lost it. I writhed and screamed until I was hoarse, but it didn't do me a damn bit of good. He was going to cut me, and there was nothing anyone was going to do about it.
Then the priestess, I think her name was Molly, came and whispered something in my ear. I don't know what she said but her words acted on me like twenty milligrams of valium. Suddenly, I felt calm, or at least, not hysterical. I had closed my eyes, trying not to see as the wicked silver blade sliced my flesh; the cuts had been shallow but stinging. Savage had been saying something as he did it—some kind of ritualistic incantation that made my skin crawl.
I began to realize that after he finished carving me up he was going to rape me right there on the altar, and that was the worst of all. I'd assumed that he had something like that planned for the ceremony tomorrow night, but I'd talked myself into believing that I could somehow escape by then. But tied and helpless as I was, I had to acknowledge that I had been lying to myself. The sight of him looming over me gave me sickening memories of Mitch again—the things he'd done to me—the way he'd forced me, and I wished with all my heart that I'd just let them kill me in the back room of La Bella Luna. Better to be dead than go through that again.
When Ben's deep voice rang out across the echoing room filled with what I supposed were pack members, I thought at first it was a dream. Only in romance novels does the handsome hero come to rescue the damsel in distress right at the penultimate moment, right? I fully expected his voice to be an illusion, created by my own fear-crazed mind out of nothing.
Only when I opened my eyes and saw him striding toward me, his brown eyes lit from within by protective rage, did I begin to let myself believe. He had come for me—he would save me. Despite the anger and disillusionment I'd been feeling toward him earlier, I was more than happy to see him. Delirious might be a good word to describe it. I couldn't follow everything that he was saying to Savage and the priestess, but when he finally came to me, I knew everything would be all right.
I wasn't prepared for the whole strange healing ritual, though. It was hard enough to believe that Ben could heal himself so quickly—but when he started to lick and kiss my wounded arm and I healed too—well, it kind of blew what was left of my mind. And it wasn't just the fact that he had healed me either, it was the way my body reacted to the process.
I kept feeling all these little electrical tingles and shivers running through my body as he licked and kissed my arm, caressing me with his tongue so gently I thought I'd go crazy with the sensation. It made me hot and cold at the same time—the same way I'd felt when he was touching and kissing me the night before, even though he wasn't doing anything overtly sexual this time. But since the results of his attentions were a healed arm and the fact that they cut me loose from that damn altar, I didn't feel I had a right to complain.
In fact, I was past complaining about anything. When he scooped me up, all I could think was that I was safe, finally safe. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed my face against the side of his throat. Like every other male in the room he was bare from the waist up and the heat of his chest and the feel of his skin against mine comforted me in a way that went deeper than words.
He carried me into another part of the big, gloomy house, murmuring soothing nothings in my ear. I wanted to beg him to get us out of there, but I vaguely remembered him swearing not to leave in order to get to me in the first place. We were trapped here, and the burly men who escorted us to our room weren't about to let us forget it.
Finally a door shut behind us and we were alone. I looked up long enough to see that we were in some kind of bedroom that was done completely in different shades of blue—the bedspread, the pillows, the walls, ceiling, even the carpet was all blue. Somebody had a weird idea of decorating, but at that point I didn't care what color the walls were. I just wanted to go home.
Ben sat on the bed carefully, still holding me close, and I felt his warm hand stroking my back, which was left mostly bare by the blood-stained, white silk teddy. Maybe it was the fact that we were finally away from everyone else, or the warm feeling of relief in the pit of my stomach at having escaped a fate worse than death, I don't know. But whatever the reason, the knot of tension that had been like a closed fist inside me all night finally let loose, and I began to cry.
The tears didn't last long, but while they had me in their grip I was helpless, completely undone by emotion. Ben held me close and stroked my hair, letting me cry, letting me get it out. His skin had a warm, spicy fragrance that seemed to fill my senses, and it was immensely comforting somehow, as comforting as his warm hands on my back and the heat of his skin against mine. I knew that as long as he held me, nothing else bad could happen to me because Ben would kill or die to keep it from happening. I still didn't know if I trusted him completely, but this was a gut feeling that went deeper than any intellectual idea of trust or betrayal. It was something I just knew—a conviction more solid than words.
“I'm so sorry, Dani,” he whispered into my hair as my tears finally trickled off to sniffles. “I should have been faster—should have gotten here sooner. I shouldn't have let him cut you.”
I looked up at him, at the pain in his warm brown eyes, and wiped my own eyes with the palm of my hand. “Not your fault,” I said. “You didn't know—”
“Yes, I did,” he interrupted me, a fierce light in his eyes. “I did know what might happen—what these people are capable of—because it's exactly the kind of thing that made me decide I didn't want to have anything to do with them in the first place.”
I sat up in his lap some more, trying to get a better look at his face. “I don't understand. I thought this was your pack.”
He frowned. “Dani, I've never even seen most of these people in my life before, if you don't count the ones at The Cloven Hoof yesterday. This is not my pack. I don't have a pack, and I don't want one.”
“But…but I thought you said you were a werewolf.”
“I am.” He sighed. “But that's a small part of me—a part I try to forget about most of the time. I haven't even changed—shifted form from human to wolf, I mean—in the last three years.”
“But how…?” I shook my head, trying to understand. “I mean, I thought werewolves had to change every full moon.”
He went on to tell me all about the Hunger Moon and the Pagan beliefs about it, and I began to see what had been going on with him.
“I get it,” I said. “So that's why you were having so much, er, trouble…I mean, the reason you haven't been exactly, um, acting like yourself lately.” As the words left my mouth, I remembered exactly how unlike himself he'd been acting lately—the way he'd kissed me and touched me the night before until I felt like I might explode.
I became suddenly aware that he was still holding me in his lap and that I was wearing next to nothing. They hadn't even given me any panties to wear with the skimpy silk teddy, and now that I was over the worst of my fright and tears, I begin to feel very uncomfortable being so close to him with so little between us.
“I know this is a lot to take in on such short notice,” Ben said, apparently unaware of my discomfort. “And I'm so sorry, Dani. I never wanted you to find out this way.” He pulled me closer, his muscular chest brushing against the thin silk that covered my breasts. I felt my nipples getting hard and struggled to sit up and away from him.
“Ben,” I said, starting to slide off his lap. “It's all right, really. I'm just glad you weren't leading some kind of double life. I mean you were, but not in the way I thought. I mean…” I was babbling and I couldn't seem to stop.
“Hey, where are you going?” He pulled me back into position on his lap. The jeans he was wearing felt rough against my bare bottom.
“I…I'm better now,” I assured him. “I mean, I really appreciate you coming to get me and thank you for carrying me up to the room because I was in no shape to walk, but you can let me go because I'm completely better, really I am.” It came out in one long breath as my nerves started getting the better of me. What was wrong with me, anyway? I had never minded being close to Ben before, but now it felt dangerous somehow—like playing with fire.
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