Reclaim

by Marie Johnston

  Reclaim

  The Sigma Menace 3.5

  By Marie Johnston

  Reclaim

  Copyright © 2015 by Lisa Elijah

  Copyediting by EbookEditingServices.com

  Second Edition Edit by The Killion Group

  Cover by P and N Graphics

  The characters, places, and events in this story are fictional. Any similarities to real people, places, or events are coincidental and unintentional.

  Master Dane Bellamy was once the commander of the West Creek Guardians, a pack of wolf-shifters charged with protecting local shifter packs. Over a century ago, tragedy struck his growing family, driving him away with a fierce need for revenge. He returned to a devastated, withdrawn mate who resented him for leaving her to fulfill his obligations. Now, he’s immersed himself in training the Guardians of his pack, while he and his mate have become nothing more than roommates, until the secret life she’s been living brings danger to their doorstep. Suddenly Dane finds himself not just fighting to save his broken relationship, but their lives as well.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Epilogue

  To my parents: Thank you.

  Prologue

  150 years ago…

  “You’re leaving?” Irina Bellamy was equal parts incredulous and furious but the anger was quickly overtaking her disbelief. The audacity of her mate. Leave? At a time like this?

  “They must pay for what they did,” her mate Dane said. Grim lines etched deep into his frown.

  Irina could barely keep her eyes open. The silver toxicity should’ve killed her, and she spent most of her recovery up to this point wishing it had. Why had she lived and not their adorable little Kade, with his dark curls and impish smile? Why had she been allowed to live after having her womb and the young life inside carved out of her? Now Dane wanted to leave her, too? She had already lost her son and unborn baby. It wasn’t fair. Life wasn’t fair.

  Struggling to sit upright, Dane shushed her and tried to get her to lie back down. Her wounds stretched and burned with her movement. Being forced to recover the old-fashioned way—time and rest—unable to rely on her wolf-shifter healing abilities due to the silver knives the butchers had used, Irina still had a long recovery ahead of her.

  She stared into his determined eyes. He didn’t see her. Those sea-green eyes used to be filled with love and good humor, but now they were filled with duty and thoughts of retribution. Why couldn’t he see? She needed him, with her. She’d had most of her world ripped away and all that remained was readying himself to walk out the door.

  “Don’t leave me.” Irina barely managed the words that left her short of breath from the miniscule movements.

  Dane’s brow creased. Irina feared he didn’t get it, truly didn’t get it. “You’ll be cared for here by the healers,” he reassured her. He looked down as he fisted his hands, jaw clenched, thinking hard and choosing his words. “I’ll not depart for every mission worrying about my family while I’m gone. Me and the boys are riding out and we’ll extinguish every last one of them.”

  Leaning over to give her a soft kiss on the cheek, he smoothed her pale hair off her face. For a brief second, she saw the Dane she’d loved for centuries, before his concerned expression was replaced by one of ruthless resolve.

  She reached to grab for him, yearning for his touch, his comfort. But her weakness made her slow and Dane left, not noticing her beckon him. Her hand flopped back down onto the bed, a tear running from the corner of her eye into her hair, followed by another, and another.

  Silently weeping, because to do any sobbing in heart-wrenching grief would have been too physically painful, Irina let her tears run as she wondered about a future she didn’t want.

  She was stuck in this colony, where the healers came to her only as often as required, their eyes full of sympathy; so much so that few could bear to look at her. Laughter and play of the children filtered in through the open window, and it shattered her already devastated heart. It broke even further as she heard mothers shooing the children away from the building where Irina lay in her private despair.

  He’ll not depart worrying about his family. Irina gave a weak disgusted snort despite the pain it brought. What family? Sigma destroyed her family and made it impossible to have any more young. She and Dane had been mated for nearly two centuries before they were blessed by the Sweet Mother with a young boy. They were both over the moon ecstatic when she soon came to bear another babe. Now they were both gone and she was a mere shell of her former self. Perhaps it would be possible for her to return to some sort of life, find a new reason for continuing on. But she’d depend on her mate to do that and she feared his revenge would eat away any heart left in him.

  *****

  “No one lives.” Commander Dane Bellamy gave the order to the three shifters of his pack accompanying him on this mission. They’d rode out weeks ago, searching for the group of Sigma Agents responsible for the attack on Dane’s pack.

  Dane hadn’t approached the Lycan Council, hadn’t officially requested to hunt down the Sigma chapter that came after his pack. He’d lost two Guardians and their families, aside from his own loss.

  Dane’s heart twisted and he clenched his eyes shut, willing the swell of grief back down where it wouldn’t affect his work. Worry about Irina made him sick, but the head healer of Half Moon Clan assured him she was past the worst and would continue to mend.

  Dane and three other Guardians hid in anticipation, waiting patiently for cloud cover so they could transform into their wolves and use the shadows to silently attack and kill the group of fifteen Sigma members.

  Dane addressed the males flanking him. “Once we start, there is no going back. You still have time to turn around.”

  Mercury, a male Dane rescued from living as a wolf with a pack of natural wolves, wore a perplexed expression. Dane had explained to him that there was no time to approach the council for permission for his personal vendetta. And if they’d had the time, Dane doubted the council would have approved. Those ancient shifters were too out of touch with the reality packs were facing in the world today.

  “I’m in.” Mercury shook his head as if he couldn’t believe any of their team would leave.

  And none of them would. Rhys Fitzsimmons, his second in command, and Benjamin Young shook their heads also, retribution shining in their gazes. Though Rhys was closest to him in age, the three Guardians felt almost like sons to him.

  With sad resignation, Dane realized that was the only way he would know what fatherhood felt like. The few fleeting years he’d had with Kade were the best in his life and in his matehood, and now they were gone, with no opportunity to experience them again.

  Dane outlined how they would attack, how they would kill, and how to hunt down any who got away. When Dane’s vendetta was complete, he would return to the clan and gather Irina. They would move on to their next post—if the council didn’t execute him outright.

  With a final nod, he regarded each of his shifters and repeated, “No one lives.”

  Chapter One

  Present day, West Creek

  Irina leaned back and stretched her arms over her head before going back to the screen in front of her. It all looked good. Time to hit the enter button. This was the most satisfying part of her work. The final moments, when all her hard work was getting sent out to the masses.

  She’d gathered quite an audience over the years. Western Romance was still a popular genre, only now the women were saucier, the male’s more virile, and today’s technology let Irina write more than sh
e was able to in the past when she had to snail mail manuscripts and have multiple phone calls with her publisher. No more middleman. Irina pumped the stories out and readers gobbled them up.

  Glancing outside, Irina saw it was a beautiful day to run and she could think of no better way to celebrate a new book release than to strip down and run the woods she’d grown to love so much.

  Though she could work anywhere, Irina hoped they weren’t assigned out of West Creek for at least a century, maybe two. She liked it here and she liked being able to set down roots even more. Assigning Guardians permanent headquarters, instead of being nomadic lawkeepers for their species, was one of the few good decisions the stale, geriatric Lycan Council had made.

  Well, that along with not executing her mate all those years ago for defying Guardian procedure. At the time she wouldn’t have been able to survive Dane’s death, but now it was as if he’d been gone to her for years. They were strangers breathing the same air. He didn’t know of her work, they didn’t talk, they didn’t touch…

  With a heavy sigh, Irina shed her yellow sundress and stepped outside, transitioning to her fair-colored wolf to run.

  The air was fresh, the sun high, and Irina felt free. The council sought ways to punish Dane and his pack over the last hundred-some years, like sending ill-tempered, inexperienced Guardians for training. Their placement in West Creek, known for its rougher crowd of shifters and humans alike, was probably meant as another dig, even though Rhys Fitzsimmons had been pack leader for decades. But the joke was on the council.

  West Creek had been a boon to the pack. First, they recruited Jace after helping him rescue his mate, Cassie. The couple joined the pack. Then Mercury, her dear Mercury, discovered his mate, Dani, already carrying his child. She had belonged to Sigma and was looking for a way out when an experiment gave her the means to leave and run to Mercury. Dani was now their security expert, Mercury’s powers were developing nicely, and from what Irina could tell, their little Dante was quite a beloved handful.

  Then there was brash, broken Benji, wait, Bennett. She still thought of as him Benjamin, but he had changed his name after a horrible betrayal before the turn of the previous century. Bennett discovered his destined mate had been living almost on top of them. Sarah was in hiding, and he protected her and figured out a way to fake her death, buying the Guardians time to find out why Sigma wanted her dead.

  A hybrid, Irina mused. She wasn’t surprised Sarah carried human, shifter, and vampire genetics. They’d been on this planet too long to not procreate together. Many shifters had forgotten the days when shifters never found human mates. Now, even though human-shifter offspring maintained dominate shifter traits, they were not nearly as strong as the Ancients.

  Irina’s father was an Ancient who took a human mate, but both of her parents were slaughtered in the Extinction hundreds of years ago when their race was almost wiped out. After that, human mates were much more common. It was that or die out, and she imagined it was the same for the vampires. Vampires and shifters could only war so long before they either killed each other or copulated with each other.

  Irina was close to the little waterfall Dane liked to hang out in. Downwind, he shouldn’t sense her, still she approached cautiously. A part of her wondered if she would ever run here, find her mate swimming, and dive in to wrap her body around him. They hadn’t had sex in…Oh well, who’s counting?

  Dane trained the Guardians and lately he’d been busy with the new addition, Parrish, a Guardian boy Mercury rescued. Irina worked all day in her office, and he only came home to sleep. In the cabin they shared, like estranged roommates, he slept in the spare room and she in the main bedroom. He’d fill her in on pertinent news and she’d offer no further conversation.

  Irina dreaded the next evening. Bennett and Sarah were getting officially mated by Commander Fitzsimmons. She had gutted her way through making an appearance at Jace’s and Mercury’s matings. Now, there was to be a third mating in a little over a year. She should be ecstatic. The shifters she loved were finding happiness, but that meant she had to pretend her life wasn’t in shambles.

  Creeping noiselessly over an incline, Irina peered through the growth to see if it was all clear for an afternoon swim, though deep down she sensed Dane beat her to the location.

  What she saw made her pulse hammer and her irritation flare with it. That male should not make her feel like this after all these years. Seeing the sunlight glint off water droplets as Dane strode out of the water made her memories of the passion they once shared all too clear.

  He reached up to run a hand through his hair. Water drops glittered as they flew from his dark hair that held just a hint of gray, giving him a distinguished appeal. His body, Sweet Mother, his body made her feel like a young, passionate female all over again. The daily training kept his muscles ripped and hard. To a human, he might look like an exceptionally fit fortyish-year-old man, while she might be considered a youthful mid-thirties. The reality was that they were both hundreds of years old.

  Now that his senses weren’t dulled by the water, he might hear her stalking away. It was excuse enough to wait it out until he left, hopefully in the other direction. Irina really wanted to swim. At least that’s what she told herself to keep her belly planted on the ground, spying on her mate.

  Irina waited for him to change into his wolf and trot off, but instead, he sat on a large boulder on the shoreline of the little pool the falls made. Stretching out in the sun, his magnificent body on display, Irina couldn’t take her eyes off him.

  She should leave, she really should.

  With mounting interest, she watched as a certain body part of Dane’s she was once intimately acquainted with lengthened. Her eyes wide, Dane languidly stroked himself.

  She should leave, she really should.

  The strokes gained in force and momentum. Irina’s mind went back to the times she would do that for him before settling herself down on top of his length. She would ride him, watching his face like she was doing now, see him grit his teeth at the pleasure, his breaths coming quicker until the final push took them both with in a simultaneous explosion.

  A grunt and a curse could be heard as Dane came into his hand. Desire drained out of Irina’s body as she watched him rinse off in the water. He seemed less relaxed and more irritated than before. Did he wish to lie with someone else? He was a virile Guardian and it was always said there was none more true than a mated Guardian. But they had their drives and needs. Where had he been getting his met? And why did he quit coming to her?

  Finally, Dane flowed into his dark wolf and ran deep into the trees. Irina waited a few minutes to make sure it was all clear. After her voyeurism, she didn’t feel like a swim anymore, but it was better than running into Dane out in the woods, or even worse, at their cabin.

  *****

  Dane ran back to the lodge. After his swim, he’d circled the area around the falls and perched where he’d sensed Irina had watched him bathe. She probably thought the falls had masked her scent, but he’d been without her for so long that it didn’t take much to alert him to her presence. Obviously, it was why he got hard and in a move so uncharacteristic of him, stroked himself off in front of her.

  Okay, so maybe he hoped she’d drop down and join him; let a starving male sate himself on her luscious body. Nope, she’d just watched him. Was she even moved by his desire?

  He spied on her, thinking maybe he’d inspired her to satisfy herself and he could watch. No, again. She walked out of the water, her lithe body shining like a water goddess in the sunlight, and glanced at the large rock he’d reclined on, shifted, and left.

  That female had him worked up in knots. The night they’d lost their children, and her ability to bear any more young, he feared he’d lost her, too. When he’d returned from his hunt for revenge and informed her the murderers had perished, he’d been met with a despondent mate who’d merely shrugged. Left with no other ideas of how to improve his mate’s depression, he’d backed
away and thrown himself into his duty to allow her room to heal. It had taken years of minimal conversation and very little physical contact, but eventually they’d become nothing but an empty mating bond.

  Purpose riding Dane the last bit of distance to the lodge, he vowed that would change. Irina would either open up to him or they were done. For good.

  Snatching his robe off a hook inside the doorway, Dane made his way to the locker rooms. Parrish should be ready and waiting for him. They always sparred before supper, mostly to work up a hearty appetite in the kid.

  Only seventeen, Parrish had been severely emaciated when Mercury brought him to the lodge. After he’d healed from the torture Sigma doled out, the boy had mentally withdrawn and it showed physically. Now that Dane was drawing him out of his shell during training, he was eating better and packing on muscle.

  The kid still didn’t talk, only used sign language. His other senses were fine, and Dane suspected so were his vocal chords. They needed to know not only why he wouldn’t talk, but why Sigma captured him in the first place. He knew way more than he was letting on and the trick would be to get him to open up without mentally shutting down.

  It’d probably be easier for Dane than getting his mate to talk to him.

  Parrish hopped up as soon as Dane entered. He nodded and they both headed to the gym. It was empty this time of day and Dane worked the young male through the series of moves he’d been taught.

  They sparred, no padding, taking the brunt of each other’s hits. Parrish had been timid at first, afraid to hurt Dane. Once he got past that, he became entranced, like each hit he got on Dane was one he dished out to his captors. It kept Dane on his toes, because, damn, the kid was getting stronger.