by V Vee
He wasn’t able to focus on the wolf any longer, being prodded along by the still unknown ginger-haired shifter behind him. He stepped into an open room and tensed immediately at the sight of dozens of shifters. He could smell their malice, their excitement, and their bloodlust. While he wasn’t exactly sure what was going on, Howl knew that it couldn’t be good.
“Hello my friends!” Alpha Bianchi said joyfully as he stepped into the room. “Thank you for coming out tonight. I have a very special fight with two important and unique individuals.” He sniffed the air and his eyes twinkled. “A mated couple. The Beta of the Marconi pack and his mate, my daughter, Talia Bianchi, who is pack-less, will be fighting… each other. They’ll fight either to the death or until they give me the information that I want.”
He gave Howl and Talia an evil smile and Howl felt fear and horror thread themselves into his blood. The old bastard couldn’t be serious… but looking at the other man, Howl realized he was. He was deadly serious.
Alpha Bianchi walked over to Howl and gripped his face in his shifted paw, his nails puncturing the skin of Howl’s cheek.
“You can avoid this fight right now, just tell me where your brother is.”
Howl swallowed thickly and stared at the corrupt alpha silently. Alpha Bianchi nodded with a soft chuckle.
“That’s what I thought.” He shook his head then and gestured at Talia who was being dragged away. “Enjoy fighting your mate, she smells different to me… like she’s expecting… what do you think?”
Howl’s eyes widened and he jerked his head in Talia’s direction. They’d only made love a few hours before, was it possible that his seed had taken root so quickly? Before he could question the idea further, Alpha Bianchi shoved him into the center of the ring, where Talia stood, naked, on display to the lecherous gazes of every shifter in the room. Howl’s wolf growled within him, and he longed to tear out the eyes of every single man in the room, but he was unable to. A bell rang in the distance, and turning to Talia, Howl realized that if they wanted to make it out alive, they were either going to have to fight, or he was going to have to betray his brother.
“Fight!”
Chapter Seven
A Trip To Barbados
Present Day
She'd lied to her mate and now he was going to die.
Howl snarled and strode quickly in Talia’s direction where she stood outside of Joi’s home placing luggage into the car. Though he hadn’t said anything to Growl about what he’d learned regarding his new mate, Howl had absolutely no intention of letting her get away with her treachery and deceit.
He wrapped his hand around her throat, dragged her away from the vehicles parked in the driveway, and around Joi’s home, before he pushed Talia against the wall. Leaning down he snarled at her, his hand tightening around her neck, and jerked his head back when she snapped her teeth at him.
Good to know that time in her father’s clutches didn’t break her spirit, his wolf betrayed him by thinking. Howl shoved away the magnanimous thought and instead focused on the traitor he was bound to.
He lowered his free hand, trailing his fingers down over her tiny baby bulge, the one that had appeared only days after their first joining, to the apex of her thighs. He sniffed the air, growling as the aroma of her desire flooded the air. He pressed harder against her. Delighting in the evidence of her passion saturating his fingers and the sound of her choking from his grip on her throat.
He could kill her and fuck her all at the same time.
“If I could, I would rip my babies from your body, then turn you over to my brother and let him tear you apart,” he declared harshly, the roiling of his stomach and the ache in his chest called him a liar, however. No matter how angry he got with Talia over her previous actions. No matter how much shit he found himself mired in due to her betrayal. He wouldn’t let her go. He would never let anything happen to her.
He loved her. She was his mate. The mother of his unborn children.
She was his.
Releasing her, Howl stepped away and ran his fingers through his hair in agitation. The touch of her small, slender hands stroking his bare chest sent a shudder through his body. He couldn’t take it. Couldn’t bear it. So he gripped her hands with his own and tightened his grip.
“Don’t,” he whispered. “I don’t want you touching me.”
Talia stared at him. Her head tilted to the side, questioning his words. His sincerity. He should be insulted, yet instead he found her look... adorable.
You are so fucking whipped, he chastised himself internally.
“You don’t want my hands on you?” Talia asked.
Howl shook his head. “No.”
“What about my lips?” She stepped closer to him, pressing her mouth to his sternum, before dragging her tongue over to his nipple, biting down hard on the pebbled nub.
Howl hissed, then groaned, his hips jerking forward as lust exploded through his body.
He swallowed thickly and shook his head. “N-no.” He wanted to curse that she could bring him figuratively to his knees so quickly.
No sooner had the thought crossed his mind that Talia swept a leg behind his knees, gripped his shoulders, and before he could blink, he found himself kneeling before her, a smirk on her lips. “If you don’t want my hands or my lips on you...” She lifted up the hem of the shirt dress she wore with a lascivious grin on her face. “Maybe you want another part of me touching you?”
Howl couldn’t speak, his erection so hard, so thick, it was causing him physical pain. He merely shook his head, then moaned as Talia lifted a leg over his shoulder. His mouth already watering as he prepared to feast.
“Liar,” Talia teased, her words cutting off on a groan as Howl gave into the need that assailed him.
His need for her taste. Her lust. Her moans. Her whimpers.
His need for her.
He could feel his children growing inside her. Could feel the thread binding them together. The tug that tried to stop him from leaving. That wanted him to stay. But he knew he couldn’t. Knew that if he did, he’d regret it.
Because if Howl stayed, mate or not, pregnant or not, he would kill Talia for her betrayal.
They’d spent days fighting each other, drawing blood, wounding each other, while in her father’s clutches. Only when Talia confessed to him one evening that she wanted to tell Alpha Bianchi where Angelo and Joi were, if only to prevent the man from killing Howl himself. Howl had been able to smell not only the guilt that permeated the skin of the woman he was mated to, the woman he’d reluctantly fallen in love with while locked up in a cell with her, while fighting her—though neither of them had done too much damage to the other, they’d both released their anger at their situation, at the secrets Talia had been forced to keep to save her mother, at Howl’s unwillingness to completely forgive her, on one another, drawing blood from scratches, and marking each other’s arms, legs and torsos with bruises.
Howl had finally relented, asking Richard, the red-haired shifter, to go and get Alpha Bianchi. He’d told the man what he knew, with Talia offering up the rest of the information as to their precise location. Howl had felt extreme guilt, especially when he and Talia were given clothes to wear, loaded up into vehicles, then onto a plane, and taken with Alpha Bianchi and others from his pack, as they went to find Angelo.
He’d been tied up and forced to listen as Alpha Bianchi taunted and lied to his brother, in order to get Angelo to come outside and face him.
So that he could take him by surprise and shoot him in cold blood.
“Aahh, Alpha Growl Marconi,” Alpha Bianchi said with a smile and a wink at Howl. “I do hope I haven’t disturbed you. I know that you and the missus must be sleeping, but I’m afraid that you and I have urgent business to discuss,” Don Alpha Bianchi’s voice slithered like a snake, and Howl grit his teeth.
“Anything you and I have to talk about can wait until I am back in my office. I’m afraid I’m busy at the moment.” Howl could hea
r his brother’s voice vibrate with anger through the phone and he jerked against the rope that bound him.
“Ah yes, your mate’s home is lovely,” Alpha Bianchi said in a considering tone. He looked around, an evil smile coming to his face. “I must say, I was surprised to hear that she’d run off to Barbados to escape you, so shortly after you began the bonding process, but I knew you would track her down and mate with her fully.” Alpha Bianchi chuckled darkly, and the noise made Howl long to rip the man limb from limb, especially knowing the part his mate had played in helping Angelo find Joi.
Was her hesitation to help all a part of Bianchi’s plan?
There was a long, pregnant pause, and Howl tried to use his connection with his brother, their familial bond, in order to let him know that it was a trap.
“I can tell that you’re wracking your brain trying to figure out how I found you, but you see, I have no problem whatsoever telling you. Your brother Howl told me. Once I gave him a little… incentive.”
No. No! He knew that the implied threat to Howl would cause his brother to react. And sure enough, Angelo became “Growl” and Howl could hear his brother’s angry snarl reverberate through not only the phone, but the house. Alpha Bianchi chuckled.
“What have you done to my brother?” Growl snarled into the phone.
Alpha Bianchi gasped. “Me?” he asked with false incredulity in his tone. “I have done nothing to your brother. Some of my pack members may have been a little too… enthusiastic when trying to obtain information about whether or not you’d actually gone and found your runaway mate in Barbados, but I assure you Alpha, they have been thoroughly punished for their… exuberance.”
“Where. Is. My. Brother?” Growl questioned with rage in his tone.
“Why, he’s with his mate, Talia… the very bit of incentive he needed to sell you out,” Alpha Bianchi laughed and Howl felt bile rise up in his throat.
“I am coming out. Do not touch my brother or his mate, Talia, do you hear me?” he snarled.
“Talia?” Joi’s gasp could be heard through the phone. “Who has Talia and your brother? Angelo!”
There was silence on the other end and Howl watched as Alpha Bianchi stroked Talia’s hair absentmindedly, causing Howl to fight against his captors, and Talia to whimper. Suddenly the sound of a loud slap caused everyone to pause. Alpha Bianchi chuckled and shook his head.
“Those human females are so… dramatic, don’t you think?” he asked rhetorically.
“Why you do keep hiding shit from me? The wolf shifter thing, the fact that you knew we were mates when you offered me one billion dollars, money that would essentially still be yours once we bonded, and now this? You’re involved with a mob boss?” The sound of stomping and drawers opening and closing had Howl’s eyes widening. Joi wasn’t going to come out with Angelo, was she?
“Gorgeous? What are you doing?” he interrogated and Howl realized that his brother had completely forgotten that he was on the phone with Alpha Bianchi.
“Really?! I’m going with you. That fucking maniac has my friend and your brother. I’m going to help you get them back.”
“No. No fucking way are you coming,” Angelo said.
“Did I ask you?” Joi mocked. “I don’t remember asking your goddamn permission if I could go or not. I believe I told you I was going. It’s just a matter of if I go before or after I kick. Your. Ass,” she hissed.
“You can’t go,” Angelo replied.
“Why the fuck not?” Joi’s voice was filled with exasperation.
“Fucking tell me right now Angelo or I swear to God I will march out there and leave you here by yourself.”
“Yourepregnant,” Angelo muttered.
“What?”
“You’re. Pregnant,” Angelo stated firmly and Howl’s eyes widened. His brother’s mate was expecting also? He looked over at Talia and found his own gaze drifting down to her midsection. He had to figure out a way to get them out of this, before anyone died.
Moments later, when Angelo and Joi stepped out on the porch, Howl knew his time to come up with a solution had ended.
“Alpha Marconi, I have come to you today with a bit of a conundrum,” Alpha Bianchi started. “You see, you and I had an agreement. One that I entered into with complete trust and faith that you would uphold your end of the deal until such time as we decided to come to a mutual parting of ways.” He pulled out a gun from the back of his pants with his right hand.
“Bianchi,” Angelo said. “I ended our partnership for a number of reasons. Once you began to involve yourself with trafficking, I told you I wanted out, and not only that, I have a mate now, a family. I have to think of them,” Growl shook his head. “Not only that, I did my pack a disservice by exposing them to your practices and allowing them to be vulnerable to you.” He slashed his hand through the air. “No more.”
“Well, that’s really too bad, Alpha Marconi. I shall give my condolences to your pack after I kill you and take over,” Alpha Bianchi raised his arm and aimed his gun at Angelo’s head, but before he could get off a shot, a brown wolf leapt into the clearing and latched onto the man’s arm.
Howl’s shift took over the moment he saw the bullet slice through his brother’s shoulder. He leapt into the fray to help his brother and the brown wolf fight when he heard Joi call Angelo’s name, but Angelo barely spared his mate a glance as he jumped forward, shifting into his wolf as he did so. Chaos reigned as Alpha Bianchi’s pack members all shifted and fought against Angelo and the brown wolf who’d come to his rescue.
The sound of an SUV backing up reached Howl’s ears. He lifted his head with his brother and noticed Alpha Bianchi and another pack member inside the vehicle attempting to get away, Talia kicking out with her feet as she attempted to free herself from the rope around her wrists. Howl moved over to help her, shoving her towards the house where Joi waited, then took a step to give chase to Alpha Bianchi’s car.
Angelo’s roar caused him to stop and Howl made a move to go and help his brother when the head of the female wolf who’d clamped down on his ankle exploded, blood splattering and matting Angelo’s fur. Howl looked back up at the house and was surprised to see Joi standing there, a determined expression on her face, her smoking rifle held up to her shoulder. Three shifters lay at her feet, giant holes in their heads. Talia stood up on the porch watching, her eyes wide. Before he could congratulate his sister-in-law on being a great shot, he found himself being attacked by two members of Alpha Bianchi’s pack and had to turn his focus on fighting the two wolves.
Angelo jumped past one of the wolves Howl was fighting towards the unknown brown wolf who was helping them, tearing out the wolf’s throat as he went. Another gunshot went off, and a window shattered. Howl figured Joi was shooting at the escaping Alpha Bianchi.
Once Howl finished with the shifter he’d been fighting, he glanced around, blood filled his mouth and he spit it out, taking note of the one wolf who was left. The wolf looked around and, no doubt realizing it was outnumbered, slashed its claws across the unknown, helpful shifter’s face before it took off into the woods.
Angelo tossed back his head and howled in triumph, and Howl, along with the now bleeding brown wolf followed his lead.
He heard Joi speaking to Talia and he smiled at her words.
“I don’t know why they’re letting out a battle cry like they actually did something. I killed four of those fuckers by myself,” she scoffed.
“You sure did,” Talia agreed, and while Howl was proud of the fight, he felt a surge of rage rush through him.
When his brother and Joi had gone back inside Joi’s home, Howl had sought out Talia, which had led him to where he currently was.
On his knees, smelling Talia’s arousal, his mouth watering for a taste of her, his wolf desperately wanting to claim her again, and his mind rebelling against it all. Shaking his head, Howl shoved Talia away from him and stood, rising up to his full six-foot-four.
“We may be mated, bound togethe
r by the gods, but it’s not something I would have chosen, knowing everything that I know now.” He held up his hand when Talia opened her mouth to respond.
“No. I don’t want to hear your excuses again. I’ve heard them already, but your secrets? Your deceit? They almost cost me my brother, and you a woman you claimed was your best friend.” Sighing, Howl ran his fingers through his hair.
“I will be there for my pups, and I will see you as often as I need to in order for us to both stay alive and to keep our bond strong so that neither of us dies from neglect, vomiting blood and having our bodies turn inside out from abandonment and rejection… but other than that?”
Howl stepped close to Talia and leaned down to speak definitively and clearly, allowing his rage to shine through his words and stiffen his body and face.
“I never want to see your lying, treacherous face again.”
Chapter Eight
The Brother
Angelo
Weeks Later
He walked past Howl’s office and waved for his younger brother’s mate, Talia, to follow him. On and on he went, grabbing his other brothers, cousins, and friends: Snarl, Thunder, Grumble, and Rumble to follow him. His heart twinged as he looked around at them, none of them questioning him, as they waited for the elevator. Howl had decided to return to base earlier than he was supposed to, due to issues with his mate, Talia, and though Angelo hadn’t wanted to push, at this moment, he wished he had. He needed his brother with him. He had that feeling in his bones. And while Talia had been welcomed into the pack with open arms, not only as his sister-in-law, but as his mate’s best friend, she was also pregnant and half-human. He wasn’t even sure if she could shift.