by Hettie Ivers
I sensed Mike trying to tap my mind to reach me. I allowed the connection, checked to make sure he was alone, and opened a link to my location.
When Mike teleported in, Kitsune began barking like mad. When he didn’t obey my “quiet” command, I growled and flashed my wolf eyes at him before repeating it. He piped down. “Good boy.”
I stood as Mike approached. Mike was head of my security detail, one of the highest-ranking Betas within my pack, and one of the first and only true friends I’d made when I’d joined our Salvatella pack over a decade ago. Although Mike shared a blood relation to our former Alpha, Gabriel Salvatella—the sadistic tyrant who’d been the bane of my existence for the past ten years—Mike was nothing like his late second cousin Gabriel.
“So …” he dithered, biting his lip and cocking his head at me.
“So,” I replied, ignoring his prompt.
“Things got a lot crazy a little quickly last night, don’t you think?”
“I held my wolf back for ten years, Mike.”
His wince was sympathetic. “I know, man. It’s just—”
“I’ll handle it. I won’t let you and the others down.”
He nodded, his gaze lowering to the ball of fluffy russet and white fur at my feet. “Her rescue pup’s an Akita wolf,” he observed with a wry half-smile. “Fitting.”
I didn’t disagree. “Name’s Kitsune.”
He chuckled. “Even better.” He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “You know you marked her, right? In addition to infecting her with werewolf venom multiple times.” Mike always cut to the chase with me. It was one of his better qualities.
“Yeah. Probably.”
“Probably? Raul, this is going to complicate—”
“It was already complicated.”
“I know, but Alpha Milena—”
“I can handle my sister.”
He nodded and dropped it. That was one of Mike’s best qualities—knowing when to back off with me. “What about Bethany’s mind?” he broached. “Any luck getting around that emotional shield yet?”
I shook my head. “I’ll figure it out. If I can’t, Alcaeus should know how to get past it.” I hoped.
Mike gave me a questioning look, but then comprehension dawned on his features. “Right. We have a Reinoso insider now.” He paused to watch Kitsune pawing at the leaf litter beneath his feet. “Alcaeus isn’t going to be happy about this, though.”
“Nope.” Not happy was an understatement. He was going to be livid. But I couldn’t waste time worrying about Alcaeus’s reactions. Nothing I ever did was right as far as that guy was concerned.
“You suppose Alcaeus had a hand in placing that shield? That’d be a lucky break for us.”
I shrugged. “Anything’s possible.” But not bloody likely.
Unfortunately, I feared Alcaeus hadn’t had much of a hand in placing the shield on Bethany’s mind. He was more of a give-orders-and-criticize-the-outcome type than a do-the-work type. I had a bad feeling that shield had been constructed entirely by Remy Bertrand—Alcaeus’s stepbrother and Alex Reinoso’s half-brother.
I’d spent enough years within the Reinoso pack as a human indentured servant to know that while on the surface Remy came across as the most harmless of Alex’s powerful siblings, Remy’s innate talent for emotional manipulation was far too similar to Gabe Salvatella’s not to be taken seriously as a potential threat. Notwithstanding, Remy had long been the most overlooked and notably undervalued member of the Reinoso pack’s reigning family.
I doubted any werelock in the Reinoso clan but Remy could’ve been capable of creating an emotional shield like the one on Bethany. Not even Gabe or his late brother, Nuriel, had been able to access Bethany’s mind when they’d set out to kidnap her ten years ago. Their plan had been to use Bethany’s life as a bargaining chip with Milena and Alex.
But when the mind compulsion tactics they normally employed with humans failed to work on Bethany, it had fallen to me—under Gabe’s orders—to charm and persuade Bethany into coming with us to South America.
Just thinking back on the time my Bethy had spent in close company with Gabe and Nuriel made my stomach turn and my wolf anxious to teleport back to her side.
“Did you get everything in place for the asshole?”
Mike’s face split into a broad grin at my inquiry. “I assume you mean the plan for Gregg? Oh, yeah,” he said with a chuckle and a nod in the affirmative. “I’m rather looking forward to watching that play out.”
“You and me both.”
“Not to brag, but it might be some of my best work yet on short notice.”
“Thanks for that, by the way.” I meant it, too. Mike was a wiz when it came to hacking.
“My pleasure.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Always more fun to torment the deserving.”
“Speaking of … what’s going on up in Washington with Kai and the seer?”
“More of the same.” Mike knelt to pet Kitsune. “You, my little friend, are going to love Argentina,” he assured the puppy.
I felt myself frown. “What’s happened? Did Kai see something in one of the seer’s visions? Something about Marib—I mean Sloane?”
“You’ve got to stop slipping up like that around Avery, you know,” Mike admonished, his eyes on Kitsune as he scratched behind the dog’s ears. “No mother likes having her ten-year-old referred to as the reincarnation of a werelock renowned for harvesting souls as an undead being.”
“Sloane is nine years old and eight months,” I corrected him. “And I’ve only slipped up and referred to Sloane as Maribel once around Avery. Quit avoiding my questions about the seer.”
“It was twice.”
“Once. But it’s been twice now that you’ve avoided my Washington question. What’s happening with Kai and the seer?”
“Her name is Lauren.”
I felt my jaw unhinge. “I—wait, are you serious right now? Please tell me you’re not crushing on Kai’s coed.”
“Of course not,” he huffed. “Since when does calling a person by her given name mean—”
“When you know we’ll probably have to kill that person at some point, and yet you’ve started identifying her as a human being rather than the threat to Sloane’s safety that she is.”
“We don’t know that she’s a threat.” He abandoned petting Kitsune and stood to face me. “Her abilities are novice, Raul. She’s confused. She’s had no guidance. Besides all of that, there’s too much fear in Lauren’s heart for her to be able to—”
“Did you sleep with her while Kai was on his pouting tour of Greenland?”
“No,” he balked, his face flushing.
“Shit. You did. You slept with the seer.”
“We kissed—by accident. It was one time.”
“By accident? What, like you fell onto her and started making out?”
“I was in her dream, all right? She doesn’t even think that it was real. Besides, I made sure she wouldn’t remember. And for the record, yes, Kai was away in Greenland when it happened.”
“Jesus, Mike.” I shook my head, cracking up. “What the fuck, man? C’mon, she’s not that hot. You couldn’t allow her even one week of peace from Kai invading her dreams and making creepy sexual advances on her? You had to take advantage, too? See what all the fuss—”
“I did not take advantage of Lauren. It was a lapse in judgment—a rash decision. I needed to come up with a distrac—oh, quit being such a dick. It’s not that funny. And she is hot. Even Avery agrees.”
“Please, you can’t trust a woman’s opinion on whether another woman is hot.”
“Well, you certainly can’t trust a mated man’s opinion.” He crossed his arms over his chest.
“Fair point. Guess it’s settled then. You have a crush on the seer.” I wiped the laughter from my face. “And I’m pulling you off seer watch and putting Avery on full-time.”
“What? You can’t—Raul, that’ll never work. For one, Alcaeus will find out what we
’re up to if Avery is on the mission twenty-four-seven. And secondly, what if Avery sees something in Lauren’s mind that connects Sloane and Maribel?”
“She’ll find out sooner or later.”
“Better if it’s later.”
“It’s not going to change anything. You just admitted that your judgment’s been compromised.”
“Avery’s still learning how to invade minds and cover her tracks. Kai will be onto her in no time.”
“Kai already knows you’re watching the seer. What’s the difference?”
He groaned and yanked at the roots of his hair. “He doesn’t know the extent.”
“Mike, your emotions are involved. You know this is the right decision. You’d pull any one of our guys off a job for less.”
“She had this crazy vivid vision, okay? But it ended too soon. I needed to try and keep her dreaming. I was trying to find a way to guide her back to the same vision.”
“By tonguing her?”
“Fuck you. I’m calling the whole plan for Gregg off.”
I busted out laughing. “Okay, okay, what was the vision that threw you so far off your game?”
He let out a sigh. “You and Kai were fighting.”
“Really?”
“In wolf form.”
Huh. “So I’m meant to kill Kai then,” I processed out loud.
Mike cleared his throat. “Well, I didn’t uh … didn’t get to see the end of the fight.”
“But I was winning. Right?”
He winced. “Mm—not exactly.”
9
Raul
I was going to burn in hell.
I’d always quietly anticipated it, but now it was for certain.
For over a decade, I’d stayed away to protect Bethany, living in constant fear that Gabe would find out about my innate mating bond connection to her and exploit it in order to gain absolute control over me. Or worse: use it to kill me by murdering Bethany—just as Gabe’s ancestors had done to my great-aunt Sofia and her mate, Joaquin Salvatella.
I’d come so close to giving myself away when I’d stood on Bethany’s parents’ front porch in Santa Cruz ten years ago, gaping at Bethany in disbelief—my heart caught in a vise and my newly emerged wolf clawing me apart from the inside with his need to possess her.
Fortunately, I’d had Maribel inside my head at the time to guide me. She’d helped me conceal my initial connection to Bethany from Gabe and Nuriel. And she had ultimately set me on a path to believing that if I stayed away from Bethy and denied the mating bond connection long and hard enough, I could thwart it altogether.
But it had become harder and harder over the years, and Gabe had grown more suspicious over time as to what was always drawing me back to San Francisco. He’d been well on his way to figuring it all out, and thus I’d been diligently plotting to kill him, when little Sloane had done the job for me.
As I fingered the marks I’d left on Bethany’s golden skin, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d made the mating bond pull worse—stronger somehow—through my efforts to reject it for so many years. The evidence of my wolf’s desperation, his overriding need to irrevocably establish and reinforce a mating bond, was everywhere I looked as I canvassed what was visible to me of Bethy’s gorgeous naked body. I itched to inspect every inch of her, but refrained, not wanting to risk disturbing her peaceful slumber by moving her.
What had I done?
Why hadn’t I stopped after the first bite?
Or the fourth?
How was it I was only now noticing all the damage I’d inflicted? Purple bruises were beginning to form around the areas of broken skin.
I was a monster.
My brief trip to Big Basin with Kitsune had served to clear my lust-clouded vision. I felt sick as I took in the damning evidence of the aggressive, excessive manner in which I had gone about marking Bethany.
And yet … a deeper, darkly possessive part of me was rejoicing in what I was seeing. Judging by the size of my erection, my inner Neanderthal was positively reveling in it.
Yep. Hell it was. If they’d have me.
I was an asshole. I didn’t deserve Bethany.
I forced myself to pull a sheet up over her. Then a blanket. She was passed out cold and didn’t so much as stir.
God, she was beautiful. So sweet and perfect.
And a perfect fucking freak in the sheets.
But I couldn’t keep her. I would only ruin her life and make her miserable. She was probably going to hate me as soon as she woke up and discovered all the bite marks I’d made.
I’d fucked up big time giving in to my suppressed desire last night. I had to find a way to reverse this for Bethany’s sake.
And my own. I couldn’t handle Bethany hating me forevermore. It would be better to give her up now and walk away than endure seeing her unhappy—watching her grow to despise me more with each passing day that she was tied to me.
I had to fix this.
I dialed Avery’s number as I walked from the bedroom. Normally, I’d have simply tapped Avery’s mind to reach her, but I knew how much that irritated Alcaeus. And I was going to need Alcaeus’s help today.
“Really?” Avery answered on the fourth ring.
“Have you ever fucked up so badly with something that was critically important to you to the point that you felt driven to keep going with it? You know … like you wanted to be able to stop and fix it, but instead, something inside you compelled you to keep fucking it up more and more, and digging the hole you were already in deeper and deeper?”
There was dead silence on the other end of the line as I paced Bethany’s living room. “Avery? You there?”
“Gimme a sec. It’s barely eight a.m. My coffee hasn’t fully kicked in.”
“It’s four in the morning here in San Francisco.”
“And that’s my fault? I didn’t tell you to wake up early and dig yourself into a big hole.”
“This is serious, Avery. I need your help. I feel out of control, and I don’t know how to fix this.”
“Ugh, don’t pull that sad little brother shtick with me. Not when you’re cutting in on my morning sex time.”
“I’m not messing around. I need you to teleport to San Francisco. And I need you to bring Alcaeus with you.”
“You need Chaos, too? Damn. That’s some fuck-up.”
“I can make it an order.”
“You’re so cute when you’re needy and vulnerable.”
“Avery.”
“Okay, okay. Chill the Alpha vibe. What’d you do this time, Boss Man?”
The stunned look on Alcaeus’s face when he turned to me wasn’t reassuring. Neither was Avery’s sharp intake of breath as she peeled the covers back.
“Are you kidding me?” Alcaeus shouted, stepping into my space. “What the hell do you think I can do about this?”
“I don’t know. Just find a way to fix it,” I ordered, waving a hand at the bed. “Undo it.”
“Undo it? With what? A time machine? There’s no undoing this, Raul. What the hell were you thinking? I told you last night to stay away from Bethany.”
He looked dead serious. This couldn’t be happening. There had to be a way to fix it. “Come on, man, you’re centuries old. You have to have seen a fix for this kind of thing before.”
His eyes shifted. A growl rolled up his chest. I got in his face and growled through my teeth, “You’re supposed to be my head Beta. It’s your job to fix this.”
“And I live for the day when I get to kill you and call myself Alpha, you little shit.”
“Chaos!” Avery spun around and stepped between us, pressing her palms to Alcaeus’s chest. “Down, boy.”
“Why are you taking his side in this? You’re always taking his side,” Alcaeus whined. “Why are you laughing? This isn’t funny, Avery.”
Christ, he really couldn’t fix it. I was royally fucked.
And Avery really was laughing. Hysterically. She looked about ready to double over with laug
hter where she stood, wheezing and shaking, leaning into Alcaeus’s chest.
“What the hell is so funny?” I snapped.
“Don’t talk to her like that,” Alcaeus fired back.
“You marked,” Avery managed to get out amid wheezing laughter, “Alpha Milena’s”—another wheeze—“childhood BFF.” She turned away from Alcaeus and flung her arms around me, squeezing me in a hug. “You’re so much more fun than I ever thought you’d be.”
“Wait—” I pulled back to see a look of wicked triumph light her features. “No.” I shook my head. “No, no, no, it wasn’t like that. This wasn’t about revenge against my sister. It was an accident. I never meant to mark Bethany. I just got carried away.”
“Carried away?” Alcaeus balked, tugging Avery away from me. “You think?”
Avery snorted. “Whatever you say, Boss Man. But you should know, this kind of thing starts to look a lot less like a heat-o-the-moment mishap and more like a crime scene after about ... oh, the twelfth bite.”
“I did not bite her twelve times.” It was more like seven.
Or ten.
“Well, I counted eight without checking her ass.” Avery patted my shoulder. “And I don’t have to look to know you marked her hiney. That’s such a surfer-Alpha thing to do.”
“I did not mark her ass,” I denied.
Fuck, I definitely remembered biting her ass. More than once.
“I don’t understand how any of this could have happened. How the hell did things get so far out of hand between you two last night in the first place?” Alcaeus’s eyes cut to the bed where Bethany still lay unconscious despite our loud bickering. “Just how drunk was she? Last I heard, Bethany was engaged to some loser who was cheating on her.”
“Whoa—wait, what did you say?” My inner animal stirred at the mention of my mate’s cheating ex. “How did—you knew Gregg was cheating on Bethy? And you never told me? How long have you known?”