by Kitt Rose
“We're here now,” Papa said, his voice close.
“And we aren't going anywhere,” Ash whispered. “I'm not going anywhere. Not ever again.”
I didn't know what he meant exactly, but in that moment, it didn't matter. I was exactly where I wanted to be. With him. With what remained of my family.
My arms went around him, and I tucked my face into his throat, breathing him in deep.
8
Ash
Married. Libby had been married. My mind whirled with the revelation.
Even hours after learning the shocking news, I was still reeling. I hadn't been able to stop thinking about it and because of that, sleep failed me.
Part of it was the couch. It was too short, somehow too hard and too soft at the same time. I just couldn't get comfortable.
Some of it was the knowledge that Libby, my mate, was asleep upstairs in my bed. And that was damn tempting. But honestly, the biggest part was knowing that she had loved another.
I wasn't exactly celibate, but all I'd ever had were casual flings. But Libby… She'd given herself to someone, promised to spend her life with him, and then watched him die.
Damn.
I twisted onto my other side, yanking at the too-short blanket, irritated.
After her big reveal, she'd been shaken. Aaron had brought her a glass of whiskey, and at first, she had refused it.
Drinking, after what had happened, was probably difficult. I'd taken the chance, probing with a few cautious questions. Turned out, I had been half right.
Libby had confessed that she didn't like to drink when she would be either driver or passenger in a vehicle. My invitation to spend the night—for her and Johnny to spend the night—had been instantaneous. The house I shared with Elliot was within walking distance of Izzy's, just through the corner of the wheat field. Johnny had somehow known how much I needed Libby close, and agreed. So now, Libby was in my bed, wearing my clothing, and Johnny was in the guest room.
Which left me on this lumpy couch. Thinking.
Married. Fuck.
At first, it had infuriated me. But how could I possibly be mad after hearing her story? What kind of a monster would I be if her pain pissed me off. Because there was pain there, deep pain. It explained what I had seen in her eyes.
She had known such loss. I never wanted that for her. That I haven't been around to protect her was a knife through my heart.
A low, rumbling growl slipped from me. If my father hadn't gotten involved all those years ago, if Joshua hadn't ordered me away, she would never have had to go through any of it. But Joshua had sent me to California to learn under Pierre, another Marked Protean.
As long as I lived, I would never forget hearing Libby's tearful voice through the phone line. When she had cried because they were leaving. The panic I'd felt, the anger…
I had been living with Pierre and his family while attending a nearby college. As soon as Pierre and his family were out of the house the next day, I'd snuck away. No one had expected me to disobey an indirect order from not one but two Alphas.
My devotion to Libby had been that strong.
The trip to Libby's house had taken me ten hours. Night had fallen by the time I pulled up in front of her house. Through the open window, I'd seen her upstairs in her room packing. At the late hour, I knew her mother would never invite me in, so I'd climbed the trellis to her window.
Her eyes had been red and swollen from crying, but even so, they lit with joy when I climbed into her bedroom. Unable to stop myself, I took her face in my hands, staring down into those soft brown eyes.
“No matter where you go, you are mine, Libby. As soon as I can, I'll come for you. It doesn't matter where you go, I'll find you and bring you home. To me. Because you are mine, and I am yours. Tell me you feel it,” I had whispered to her. “Tell me you want it.”
Her cheeks had turned pink, but she had nodded, her lips curving up. “I feel it. I want that, Asher.”
I remembered the way my full name on her lips had punched through my chest. Breathing hard, I'd leaned forward. I'd kept looking between her upturned lips and her dark eyes.
The first touch of my mouth to hers had been heady. I'd wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her in tight. And the kiss deepened until she'd been panting, her chest rising to brush against mine with every breath. I hadn't been able to get enough and when my tongue dipped into her mouth, I'd groaned at her taste.
Just thinking about that damn kiss, one of only two we had shared, never failed to make me hard.
Shit.
I forced myself to get up. Sleep was obviously a lost cause tonight. Besides, it was already morning. Early, even for me, but I might as well get a shower and breakfast.
All my clean clothes were in my room—the room Libby was asleep in. I debated for a moment. While I could use Elliot's bathroom, there was no way in hell I would use his drawers. Quietly, as to not disturb Libby, I let myself into the room. The bedroom was dark, but not too dark for Protean eyes.
Libby lay on her back, arms thrown over her head. Her dark hair spilled across the pillow in soft, shining waves. She'd kicked the covers off one shapely leg. Her skin practically glowed in the darkness, a tempting beacon.
I inhaled deeply, smelling her in my room. Damn, I liked it that way.
Once I'd gathered clean clothing and a towel, I went to get ready. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought about her in my bed while I took care of my tension under the hot water.
After my shower, I took my breakfast out onto the porch. While I ate, it suddenly occurred to me that I was grinning. Sitting in my favorite spot in the world, completely alone, and grinning like a fool, all because my mate was upstairs in my bed.
With hope and luck, it wouldn't be too long before I was up there with her.
My dick twitched in my jeans, and I forced my mind away from the erotic images before I was forced to take another shower. This time, a cold one.
My dad's voice cut into my thoughts. “Asher?”
Being distracted enough to allow someone to sneak up on me was a rare thing. The interruption was startling.
My father climbed the porch steps with Joshua behind him. I didn't need Gaea's gift of prophecy to see trouble written all over this.
I put my coffee cup and plate down on the deck and stood.
Never enter into a conflict with someone who might be more dominant than you sitting down. My father was not the issue, it was Joshua. My Alpha wasn't more dominant, but he was the official leader of the Pack, so he should have been. The imbalance in dominance had caused more and more problems between us lately.
Now, with Libby back, it was only a matter of time before I could fix things in the Pack. Until I could take the Pack away from Joshua.
“Morning,” I said. There was no reason to be hostile. Yet.
“You're up early,” Joshua said, his voice smooth.
“I'm always up early.”
“Not this early,” Tobias replied.
Ah, so they hadn't wanted me to be awake. What the hell would they have done if I hadn't been up and on the porch? I narrowed my eyes at them. “What did you need?”
“We wanted to talk to you about Libby,” Dad answered.
I growled low in my throat, then said, “You don't get to say her name.”
Tobias's hands went up in a gesture of supplication. “Your mother and I didn't come to her welcome home party last night because I didn't think you would want us there. Want me there. I'm not trying to make trouble with you about her. I've learned my lesson. All I want is for you to be happy,” he said, honesty in every word. “You're my son. You can't understand it yet, but someday, I hope you will come to see that I was only trying to protect you.”
I couldn't help but snort. “Yeah, sure. Protect me by tearing me away from my mate. By ordering me not to contact her.”
“Asher—” my father started, voice repentant, but I stopped him with an upraised hand.
“Why are y
ou here?” My patience dried up, not that there had been much of it to begin with.
“First,” Joshua began, propping a hip on the porch railing, “I asked around, as you requested. There is a small pack of Protean cougar's in Georgia, one of the last of their kind. Their Alpha mentioned something quite disturbing once I got him on the phone. They have a slightly… Unconventional relationship with the local coven.”
Joshua paused for a moment, as if deciding how to continue, before picking up the story again. “One of the coven members had an altercation with an unfamiliar witch about two weeks ago. The coven witch survived long enough to pass along what had happened to her coven leader before succumbing to her injuries. Then, the Proteans hunted the attacker.”
I blinked. “Wait. Protean cougars hunted a witch for the coven?” The surprise was evident in my voice.
“Yes. As I said, they have an unusual relationship, a sort of symbiosis,” Joshua answered, running a finger over a knot in the railing absentmindedly.
Witches and Proteans, in my experience, gave each other a wide birth. While there was no hostility, witches were descendants of Hecate, a Titan goddess who turned her back on her blood to support Zeus. If war ever came again between the Titan's and the ancient gods, it was known who she would support, and it would not be Oceanus.
“The witch's scent led them to the airport, where they learned they had just missed her. She had boarded a plane. To Grand Forks.”
I sucked in a breath. Grand Forks was the closest coven in the state. That was a hell of a coincidence.
“Oh, it gets worse.” Joshua frowned, a deep line forming between his eyebrows. “You know the cougars don't have our sense of smell, but it certainly is better than a human's and more than adequate. The Alpha told me three of his pack, some of their best trackers, swear the witch smelled of Protean wolf.”
My heart began to pound in my chest, knocking hard against my ribs.
“One of the trackers swears it was a mating bond he smelled. This tracker's mate is human. He had difficulty explaining it exactly, but he said once they mated, her natural scent blended with his. This sort of melding of scents was similar to what this witch smelled like.” Joshua sucked on his teeth for a moment, the noise loud in the quiet morning. Then he said, “It would be reasonable to assume that this witch is mated to a wolf in this pack. And if this is the case, knowing that you believe Libby to be your mate, then it would be wise to address this as a threat against you.”
Tobias went rigid. “You think that this is all an attempt to do what exactly?”
Joshua turned his piercing gaze from me to my father before answering. “Ash cannot take over the Pack if he does not have a mate. Whether or not I believe that Liberty Dahl is his mate, he believes it.”
“She is my mate,” I said. “And if this is all somehow about me, about keeping me from becoming the Alpha…” Heat built deep in my gut and spilled into my veins. The burning urged me to shift, to hunt. To rend and tear until all my enemies were destroyed. Until all those that threated Libby were exterminated.
“If anything happens to her, I will hold you personally responsible, Joshua. We have no idea what that hex bag was meant to do. But I can't help but think if you had believed me, if you hadn't forbidden me to even speak to her, I would have brought her back home the moment she was eighteen. She would have been safe then.” I settled my gaze on Joshua, feeling the fire burning in my eyes. No doubt they would be glowing with the power of my wolf. “No one would have dared touch her if I'd been able to claim her, as was my right,” I roared.
Joshua pushed off the railing, straightening. Menace crept into his stance as he stalked closer to Ash. Through gritted teeth, he said. “Watch how you speak to me. Marked or not, I am still your Alpha. Stop behaving like a sullen child. I tolerate a lot from you, your constant insolence and disobedience, but my patience wears thin.”
I matched his posture, poisonous black fire boiling in my veins, threatening to consume me. “I have only ever disobeyed regarding that which is my right to have. That which you have tried to keep from me—my mate.”
“So you claim,” Joshua spat.
It was an old argument, but no less powerful. No less infuriating.
“So I know. You will never understand. You cannot. You are not Marked.” I snarled, poking at the sore spot—that I was somehow more of a Protean than my Alpha. It was what everyone seemed to believe being Marked meant. “It's only a matter of time before you are no longer Alpha.”
My threat was clear. It hadn't been planned, but once it was said, there was no turning back. With a snarl that rang out in the still morning, Joshua shifted. His form shimmered, his clothing shredding and falling as his shape twisted itself into that of a tawny wolf, as large as a man. The change was swift, fueled by the ancient magic in his blood.
A cruel grin spread across my face as I let the flames take me, embracing the wolf within. My human shape dropped away in a blaze of exhilaration. The world around me simplified as my animal instincts took hold. My shift was barely complete when Joshua attacked.
9
Libby
A sound woke me from a deep sleep. For a moment, I hovered in the place between dreams and waking. Angry voices, too faint to make out, came from below. Groggy, I dragged a hand across my eyes and sat up, taking in the darkened room around me. Ash's scent surrounded me. He was everywhere in this room, in the sheets, the air, and the t-shirt I had slept in. Maybe that was why I'd slept so deeply.
Another sound, something an animal might make, came much louder.
What was that? A growl?
I slipped on my jeans and rushed down the stairs, bare feet nearly silent on the carpeted stairs. The voices had been replaced by something that sounded like animals fighting. Dogs, maybe.
As I turned the corner and entered the living room, a familiar voice I couldn't place yelled, “Stop.”
Whatever was causing the ruckus didn't stop, but what I saw through the patio door made me freeze.
Halfway into the room, I skidded to a halt. Two huge dogs, or wolves maybe, were fighting. All fangs, fur, and fury. As I watched, they spilled down the stairs of the deck to land in a pile of writhing forms. One bit the other, and a pained yelp filled the air. Tobias, Ash's father, rushed to the top of the steps and yelled for the animals to stop.
Ah, that's why the voice I'd heard sounded familiar. Why Tobias thought yelling at the animals would help was insanity. And he was getting closer to them, crazy man.
One of the canine creatures broke free from the pile, stumbling a few steps away. It was terrifying and beautiful. Huge, with silver fur. Black tipped its legs, tail, and ears. Bloody furrows ran down the animal's ribs, oozing red into that pale fur. The second animal staggered to its feet. That one's tawny fur was streaked with blood along its shoulder, a hank of fur and flesh hanging. It favored one leg, limping to circle the other animal.
My God, these wolves or dogs, or whatever they were, were huge. What were they?
Slowly, they both backed away and something in their posture told me that the fight was over. I couldn't tell which had won. They both seemed fine, though a little battered. The space between the animals grew until they were at opposite ends of the long deck. Then as I watched the silver one, something happened.
Blue-black light, almost ultra-violet, seemed to shine from within the creature, beneath the flesh and fur. The light pulsed and grew illuminating muscle and bone, organs and blood vessels. For a moment, the shimmering eclipsed the light of the dawn. It was hardly more than a flash, over so fast I could almost believe I'd imagined it. Except…
In the wolf's place stood Asher.
My hands flew to my mouth, stifling a gasp. I blinked and rubbed at my eyes, but he was still there, turned slightly away from me.
His naked body was marked with a network of lines. Glowing veins under the surface of his skin shone in that same blue-black. The glow pulsed once, twice, then faded away, leaving smooth skin, taut muscle, and
a perfect body.
I could see everything. Everything. And despite the shock and disbelief, I couldn't help but appreciate the view. Ash was even better looking without clothing. The man was gifted, beautiful.
I saw a flash in my mind, imagined what it might be like to have that naked body moving over mine, in mine.
I flushed, my face a flash-fire of embarrassment. There was something wrong with me. I had just watched—
Well, I didn't know what I had just watched, but I shouldn't be thinking about Ash naked. No, I should be thinking about what the hell was going on.
What the hell was going on?
As I stared, a second naked man approached Ash, bleeding from a deep tear in his shoulder. The tawny wolf?
Tobias stepped between them, as if he hadn't just watched giant wolves battle, then turn into men, his son one of them. He clasped Ash on the shoulder, leaning to examine the furrows in his ribs that left narrow streaks of blood trailing down to his thigh.
A memory, hazy and dim, rose in my mind. Something I had always discounted as my imagination, or a dream. I had seen these creatures before.
I had seen the silver one, Ash, I was sure of it, outside my house as a teenager. And there had been a white one, with blue eyes. That one I remembered from very early childhood. It had slept at the foot of my bed when I'd had nightmares. In my memories, I had written it off as a pet, or perhaps my imagination. But now I wondered.
My God, how many of these… whatever the hell they were… were there? What were they?
Hands shaking, I backed out of the living room, retreating to the kitchen. I dropped into one of the chairs, cradling my spinning head in my hands.
Ash was a werewolf? Is that what he was? Is that what I'd just seen?
Things about this town I'd always wondered rushed through my mind. There were no dogs, strays or pets. Cats either. No one here kept animals in their homes. It hadn't seemed strange when I was young, but after moving away, I realized how strange an entire town without pets truly was.