The nails are ripped and torn up, caked with blood. Usually a shift would heal that, but the state of her hands tells me more than anything just how weakened she is for her wolf not to heal them.
Especially if she’d shifted and was running on her paws. Then, the animal instinct would have been geared towards healing her so that she could run faster without hindrance.
Looking down at her feet, I snort, taking in the chipped pink polish on her nails with disbelief. Barbie, Barbie, Barbie, how the mighty have fallen, I think, shaking my head.
I bet the little doll shat bricks when her toes started looking that way. She’s usually perfectly put together.
Turning with a shrug, I hit the little kitchen and put together a sandwich, barely chewing as I inhale the food and go back for more to replenish the energy I expended to get us here.
By my fourth, I feel good enough to lean back in my seat with a hot cup of coffee, sipping on it while I watch the female come back to life right before my eyes.
The heat of the fire has finally warmed the room, returning some of the color to her skin and lips and reducing her shivering. I should not laugh when her body starts shaking hard enough to dump her to the floor again, but that’s exactly what I do when the jolt wakes her and has her shooting up, her body swaying when she reaches her feet.
I stay still, my only movement my lips when I watch her scan the room before her eyes land on me. I almost piss myself when her eyes go wide and round, her shock palpable.
“You!”
I grin harder and shrug my shoulders, particularly enjoying the fact that her fleece has slipped off her right shoulder and is now displaying a good portion of her large breast.
It’s not exactly toasty warm in here, as yet so I get a good shot of pebbled pink nipple before she follows my gaze and shrieks, pulling the fleece back into place with regrettable speed.
“Hi darlin’.”
“Oh my God, she should have let me die.”
Chapter Three
Beebee
My body is screaming with pain, my nerve endings flashing a signal of surrender as shivers wrack my body and make my teeth chatter so hard I have to grind my jaw to stop my teeth from chipping.
I hurt everywhere, in every single cell I possess, and I am barely able to keep myself standing as I look across the small room and right into the blue eyes of a male I despise as much as I despise myself right now.
Brigger Seers.
Jeeeesus, why? I ask, swallowing the urge to cry when he grins and shakes his head, the smug look on his face bringing back each and every single encounter we’ve had over the years.
Brigger chasing me around the woods when I was little, his fierce wolf making me shake with fear as I scampered away and tried to hide. Brigger laughing at me when I walked into the annual pack New Year’s Eve party, smarting because Mom refused to let me wear pants to cover the extreme hair growth that had sprouted the year I turned fourteen.
Brigger making me cry when he walked off with that Borver female and returned an hour later looking well satisfied and replete. It all comes back to me, as do the last few years when Mr. Whore Wolf decided he’d had enough of the same tail and decided to take pity on me and try me out.
Of course, I showed him real good and kicked him in the balls a time or ten, right before I punched him for daring to insult me that way.
The fool male thought I was being a bigot, rejecting him out of turn because he’s elite and I hate all elite, but the truth is, I just didn’t want to be another notch on his bedpost when I knew nothing would come of us being together.
Sex is great and all fine and well for the sake of it, I guess. I mean, I’m not exactly innocent here, but I once felt something for Brigger that ran deeper than just body parts meeting.
Having him sidle up to me at the bar and proposition me with a lazy smile that made me hurt inside was like a match to dry kindling. I exploded. And I have hated him ever since he laughed, shrugged easily, and went off to screw another female, his parting shot of “I guess this pussy isn’t into cream” making me burn with humiliation.
Now, any time I see the oaf, I turn and walk the other way, snubbing him to the quick. How dare he refer to my cougar blood so scathingly, and how dare he make me want to go with him that night and then shrug me off so easily?
I was this close to saying screw everything I had thought and giving him a chance, this close to telling myself that he’d wanted me enough to brave the class barrier and come to me.
I almost made myself believe, for a brief moment, that what I felt for him was reciprocated and that he’d want me for longer than a one-night tumble across the sheets.
Should have known, I think, swallowing against the pain inside me as I stiffen my spine and face him, grinding my jaw when he smirks and gives me a long, thorough once over.
Thank you, Jesus, the mixed cougar blood inside me allows me to mask my scent to a certain degree because, if not, I’d be giving off some serious arousal right now, pain or no pain.
It’s just the way we shifters are geared. We could breed in a blizzard with one foot half attached because the call inside us is that strong. At least it is in me. My cougar and wolf breeds constantly want more, constantly have me scenting and searching for my male.
Too bad the idiots keep scenting this one.
“You done trying to think of ways to insult me now? Oh good. So this is what’s happened so far—just in case that mixed-up little mind of yours is struggling to comprehend. I found you out there, half frozen and dying. Thanks are required! See, I could have just left you there with your tits on display for those shifters to discover, but I thought…hey, maybe I should cut her some slack and save her life. That life now belongs to me,” he drawls, shocking me silent.
I can’t even blink while the words flow though me, and Brigger grins, his enjoyment of my predicament making my blood boil, turning my shivers of cold into tremors of pure anger.
“You can’t—”
“Can’t I, little doll? As far as universal shifter law states, if I saved you, you belong to me. Now I don’t really want you all that badly, mind you, but the thing is that while I wait for the scent trail to clear and for this ungodly snow to clear up, I will be here, bored, needing some entertainment.”
I should slap his face, slam his head into the table where he’s lazing without a care in the world and cut off his nuts just for giggles, but I can’t I think. My innate honor and the risk that breaking this law involves is holding me trapped in a prison of pure shock.
Shifters, all shifters, live by one basic set of universal laws that can—in no way—ever be changed, no matter what laws we adopt as separate packs. Pack law states that an Alpha rules and makes decisions. Shifter law says that all pack, Alpha included, are subject to the universal tenets set out by our forefathers.
One of those being that a life saved is a life owed. In my case, right now, I owe Brigger Seers my life, hence the “oh God, why didn’t he just let me die” feeling that engulfs me now and makes my stomach knot with fury.
And arousal. Lord, help me. It shames me, but I am as aroused by the thought of owing Brigger Seers as I am horrified that he intends to use me.
“Ah, I see you get it, little doll,” he muses, making me lock my knees to keep from collapsing.
I may be all kinds of mad and turned on right now, but I feel so weak it’s hard just to keep standing here at all. My being aches all over. I’m shaking with exhaustion, and I am starved for sustenance in a way that makes the slight scent of cheese and ham tickle my nose and have my mouth watering profusely.
“You’re hungry! Goodness, where are my manners? Come sit, doll. I’ll feed you and get your strength back up. Need you hardy for the two weeks we’ll be here,” he snickers, making me shudder.
I don’t say anything; I can’t, quite frankly, and so I walk slowly towards the little table. When I take a seat, I moan when my ass touches the hard wood, the bruised flesh sending shards of pain a
ll the way up my spine.
I will totally kill my tormentors for what they did to me, I think, vowing revenge once I get the hell out of here and think up a plan to fix what I broke.
“You okay?”
I ignore Brig, choosing not to humiliate myself further by admitting I got myself strung up and my ass wailed for disobeying orders. That would be the height of shame for me, and besides, once I eat and regain my strength, I can shift and heal myself.
No need to admit that my ass is as blue as Smurf balls.
“You know, ignoring my every question isn’t going to make our lovemaking all that fun. I prefer a talkative female to one who doesn’t know the first thing about dirty talk.”
“Fuck you, Brigger.”
“Oh. Well soon, doll. And no, I’m not ashamed of myself at all because I can smell you, doll, and trust me, I like the scent,” he purrs, making me ache to slap his perfect face.
God, why does he have to be so prefect? I ask God, taking in the almost coal-black hair, icy-blue eyes, and the face of a rugged model with just the slightest hint of beard peppering his jaw.
The rest of him is all male as well, from the tight sculpted globes of his ass where his jeans are lovingly contoured to the curves all the way up his massive, muscular trunk and arms that are so big he could rip a male apart with them.
I have always found Brig attractive. Even when I was little and too young to understand, I would look at his face and sigh, thinking of the angels that Mama would tell me about sometimes.
He is definitely handsome enough to be an angel, if that angel was evil and decided to fall from grace.
“You’re a pig.”
“I’m a wolf.” He laughs, placing a plate in front of me piled with two sandwiches and a glass of milk. “A pureblood wolf.”
The reminder serves to make me stop my hand midway to the plate, and I look up at him, swallowing against the old hurt his words always caused. Still do cause.
“You’re a bigot to boot. You know, Brig, we mixed breeds aren’t to blame for the decline of the pack, or however you elite see it. It’s your constant stubborn refusal to change with the times that do that. My mama and daddy couldn’t help being Fated as much as your mama couldn’t help being sold to your daddy as a brood bitch,” I tell him, ignoring his snarl as I lift the sandwich in shaking hands and force myself to take one slow bite after another, the control needed to eat slowly and not devour like a pig making my entire body tremble.
“Leave my mother out of this.”
“Then stop insulting me because I’m mixed. And stop reminding me of your high and mighty pureblood status. You and I both know you are no better than me, even if I am just a ‘dirty little pussy’,” I snap back, hating that the words still hurt me.
Brig winces, the reminder of what he once threw at me hanging between us as the room falls silent and I eat, watching him intently for any movement.
“I didn’t mean those words, Beebee,” he says quietly after a long silence, his use of the old nickname making me shift and look away.
See, this is the problem I have always had with Brig, one minute he smiles at me and can be so sweet, even giving me a nickname, and the next he’s calling me a filthy breed and offering to slum it with the half blood.
I can’t tell you how many times I fell for his shit when I was young only to have something vile thrown at me while his friends all laughed themselves sick.
Is it any wonder I hate him and myself for wanting him?
“Yeah? Well, it sure sounded that way to me. Let me tell you, Brig, it was not fun having an entire group of males laugh at me constantly and call me that name for months afterward. I had to go to school with those friends of yours offering to sully themselves with me. It sucked,” I admit, recalling my teenage angst and the tears I would shed silently at night, alone in bed while my parents slept.
I’d muffle the tears against my pillow and live with the overpowering smell of Mama’s Chanel because it masked the smell of my pain. If not, Daddy would have scented it and gone nuts, something I didn’t want because even then I knew my daddy making a ruckus at school wouldn’t do anything but make it worse for me.
And that is all on Brig.
When I turned seventeen and just couldn’t take it anymore, I convinced Mama that I could take my finals and graduate early, that I wanted to go to a human college and spread my wings.
It scared me to death walking out of the pack and going away to a place where I couldn’t shift but for twice a month when I could drive out to the forests of Washington and run for hours.
I did all that, changed my whole life, to escape it all—and that was Brig’s doing, not mine. All I wanted then was to forget that I liked a male who made my life hell.
That conflict has lived with me for years and only intensified when I came back to the pack, an economics degree under my belt and a belly full of determination.
Shit didn’t last very long, considering I walked slap bang into Brig my first night back and all those old needs rushed back at me so fast I would have jumped him if not for his ironic smirk and the cocky drawl of his voice.
“Oh ho, my little cat has returned to the fold. You ready to walk on the wild side and feel a real male?”
I still recall my need, the way I felt my body respond and open, getting ready for him to do just that. And I would have. In that moment, all the anger and resentment faded away and I wanted, needed, to go with Brig and feel it all.
Thank God Jules was there with me, her support and snarl of fury waking me up long enough to look into his eyes and shake off the lust. I shook it off fast as hell when he licked his slips and treated Jules to the same long perusal.
“I could do you too, little lady, though I had my heart set on going half blood. I suppose your purity may add a certain familiarity though.”
Huh. As if I would ever be with a male who looked at me like some experiment while offering to screw my pureblood friend, who also happens to be the Alpha’s little girl.
Sonofabitch.
That’s the first time I ever hit Brigger Seers, and trust me, I was as shocked as he was before he chuckled, patted my ass, and sauntered off to his table where the elite females all but fell on him.
Broke my heart hard enough that I drank myself drunk. It took five hours of pure determination on my part, and one two-minute vomit break, and then I chose the first hot enforcer I saw, took him home, and had the best first-time sex ever.
Never, ever will I forget what Clarke Kilter made me feel. Never will I forget that for the first time in years a male made me feel beautiful and treated me like a female and not a mixed breed.
For a long time, I was convinced that Clarke was perfect for me. He is a cat-wolf mix just like I am, he’s sweet and sexy and playful, and if I overlook the playboy in him, he’d be my perfect mate.
That’s what I wanted to think, but I couldn’t just forget that I thought of Brig when Clarke slid into me the first time and took my innocence. I didn’t forget, even to this day, that the face that flashed through my mind when I orgasmed was Brig’s, and worse, that afterward Clarke held me while I cried, assuming that my emotions were overwrought from pleasure.
The truth is, that I hurt. My heart hurt because my stupid teenage fantasies still lived strong within me and I wanted…Brig. I don’t know why! It had been years since we were kids and he’d smile at me and teased me.
And come on, it’s not as if his kindness outweighed the rest because the summer I turned seven and saw Brig, the eleven-year-old boy as…someone I would love one day, he changed.
That’s when he started chasing me into the woods and terrorizing me to the point that some days I wouldn’t leave the house.
“It wasn’t all my fault. You kept following me around and making shit impossible,” he grates, making me blush.
“I wanted to talk to you, Brigger, that’s all.”
“And say what, Beebee? We were from different places. I’m an elite; you’re a mixed bree
d. I’d have never lived it down if everyone thought we were friends,” he says softly.
I nod, chewing my sandwich and try not to take it personally. I mean, he’s right. His side of the tracks hates us and my side doesn’t exactly look at elite as shining examples of who we want to be around, or with.
To be honest, the pack has been so torn apart by these prejudices lately that I sometimes wonder if there’ll be a pack left in the future.
“I wanted to say thank you to you for helping me when that Banes boy caught me in the woods and cornered me in that tree. I wanted to thank you for helping me even when I know you had to take shit from him for doing it,” I say softly, pushing away my empty plate and rising to fill a cup with coffee.
When I sit again, it’s to see him staring down into his own, his shoulders tense.
“You should have chosen an animal and stuck with it. It would have made your life a lot easier if you’d just become wolf and let the cougar go.”
“It’s not like I had a choice, Brig. I didn’t get to transition one day and have it laid out so easily for me. I just changed one day, and I woke up with two sides of me,” I say in defense, huffing when he scowls.
“Well, then you should have only shifted wolf. You fucking might as well have stuck a bull’s eye on your back and asked them to torment you,” he says and snarls.
“I can’t not shift both! I can make sure I am one or the other, but I can’t ignore one indefinitely. My cougar is as strong as my wolf, Brigger, as much as they may offend you purebloods.”
“It doesn’t fucking offend me! It pisses me off that you could be that stupid and your parents could be that blind! You were always small and weaker, no! Don’t argue because we know it’s the truth. Your size was a disadvantage that you couldn’t overcome and that made them slaver at the fucking mouth because they loved to single out the weaker ones. You made it so much worse ignoring me and shifting cougar in broad daylight. Hell, that Banes boy was so turned on by the thought of hurting you I almost didn’t get to you in time. And for what, huh? Do you mixed breeds have so little impulse control over your animals that you couldn’t wait to shift until after you got home?!” he yells, slamming a hand down on the table.
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