White Wolf (Sons of Rome Book 1)

by Lauren Gilley

  The cot creaked and scraped across the floor. She clawed at his back, his shoulders, his ass, holding him to her.

  He pressed words into her skin, told her how good she felt, how wonderful she was. Shifted his weight to one hand so he could pull her leg higher against his waist; so he could touch her, stroke her belly, reach down to where they were joined and tease her until she was frenzied again, gasping and coming again, stars bursting behind her eyelids.

  His thrusts grew irregular, his breathing hitched. He pulled out of her and took his wet cock in hand, groaning, expression rapturous, and came, hot jets across her stomach.

  He was like a drugged animal afterward, and she wasn’t any better. He managed to wipe her belly clean with a corner of the blanket and tip onto his side, pull her to him with clumsy, sex-heavy arms.

  “God,” he said against her mouth.

  “Yeah.” She listened to his heartbeat slow, content to think about nothing but the amazing way he’d made her feel.

  ~*~

  The oil lamp had burned down when he woke, a rosy glow in the corner, the rest of the room in shadow. He thought, briefly, that he ought to slink back to the bunkroom, but dashed it almost at once. Fuck it. He was warm, and the covers smelled like sex, and Katya was making the sweetest little whimpering sounds in her sleep, her lips moving against his shoulder. It would have taken an air raid to get him out of this bed, he decided, and relaxed back against the pillows.

  He’d moved enough to wake her, though. Or maybe it was just the novelty of realizing, like he had, that she was naked and pressed against someone, a stolen moment of luxury she didn’t want to waste.

  She stirred, yawning against his collarbone, hand drifting lazily across his stomach. “Are you leaving?” she asked, sleep-heavy, possibly disappointed.

  He patted her hip. “No. Just need a smoke.”

  It was a sad feeling to climb out of bed and leave her behind, even just to cross the room and fetch his crumpled pack of cigarettes and a book of matches from his coat pocket. But worthwhile when he turned back around and saw her waiting for him.

  She’d turned onto her side, propped up on her elbow, the covers around her waist so he could see her breasts, full and unrestrained, nipples pebbled in the cool air of the room. The ribbons had worked loose of her hair and it fell in crimped streamers down her arm, across the pillow. Her gaze was unembarrassed, but soft, as she looked him over head to toe in the low amber lamplight.

  Something like hope burst to life in his chest. It had been so long since he’d dared to want anything personal and selfish; at least for now, the world shut outside the door, he allowed himself to hope for a future beyond the war and his great White plans, one that included her, and more nights like these.

  He crawled back into bed and lit them both a cigarette, lifted his arm so she could duck beneath it and snuggle in against his chest.

  She sighed, breath warm against his throat. “Will it make me horrible if I say I want to go with you?”

  “Well. I can’t say I’m very noble company.”

  “Hmm. You’re not.”

  “Hey.”

  “But that’s not what I meant.” She took a long drag and he swore he could hear her thinking. “This is – being a soldier – it’s a way to…to avenge my family.” Her voice grew faint at the end. “I don’t want to abandon them.”

  “You won’t be.” He rubbed what he hoped were soothing little circles on her shoulder with his free hand. “I want you with me, but I know what it’s like to feel that way, so I won’t ask you to come. Not if you think you can’t.”

  Her hair rustled as she turned her head, and her gaze landed on the side of his face. “You want me to come?” A bit of that hope he’d felt sounded like it had found its way into her voice.

  He turned so he could look at her. She was disheveled, her lips swollen and red. Impossibly lovely. “I do.”

  She looked at him a moment longer, eyes tracing over his features. Then nodded and settled again. “I’ll come.”

  It was the closest he’d felt to truly happy in a long, long time.

  25

  NORTHBOUND

  Their steamer was called the Rebel, which Sasha thought apt. Though, in a country ruled by rebels, they were in the distinct minority of rebellious-minded individuals. His papa would have tsked and shook his head about their whole business, made a remark about trading one set of autocrats for another, but it wasn’t Sasha’s business to worry about that. He was just the attack dog here. Attack wolf.

  And speaking of wolves, his were terribly unhappy to be onboard a ship headed up the Volga, howling in their steel crates below deck. Sasha wanted to go to them, but Monsieur Philippe was in a teaching mood. Again.

  Their entire ragtag group was crowded around a bolted-down table in the mage’s private cabin, crammed in like sardines, shoulders overlapping. The lantern overhead swayed a little and was the only indication that the ship was plowing up the river rather than sitting still. Sasha could feel the vibrations of the water, but knew the others couldn’t.

  Katya sat wedged between Nikita and Sasha, and Sasha could sense a new contentment in her. She smelled like Nikita, like lovemaking, and Sasha wanted to smile every time he looked at her. Good for them; they deserved a little happiness amid all this chaos. And Nikita had a distinctly relaxed look about him that Sasha had never seen before.

  Nikita had always been in charge, the quiet authoritative presence in their midst, and certainly the strong captain they all turned to. But today he was playing the leader with something almost like relish; still cool and composed, but very much aware of his role now. If Katya was responsible for that, Sasha wanted to hug her.

  “I don’t understand why we’re taking him all the way back to Stalingrad before we wake him up,” Nikita said, frowning across the table at Philippe.

  “You see,” Philippe started, and then paused, tilting his head. “I’m afraid there might be ears listening.”

  Ivan heaved himself up with a sigh and went to the cabin door. When he opened it, he revealed a cabin boy loitering just outside, one who jumped and yelped when Ivan shoved his big shoulders through the small doorway and said, “Can I help you?” in a tone that suggested any help forthcoming would involve fists.

  “N-no,” the boy stammered, and hurried off.

  Ivan looked left and then right before he closed the hatch again and wedged himself back into their ring with much elbowing and grumbling from Feliks.

  “Shut up,” Kolya said.

  Philippe cleared his throat. “Yes? Well, the trouble is that Our Friend Grigory is very distinctive looking, and he spent his years as friend to the royal couple in Petrograd. Doubtless there are those who would know his face, and we can’t afford that, not so soon. So I think it best if we take him back to the Ingraham Institute and, like we did with Sasha, allow him a moment to gather his wits and regain his strength. He will be very weak at first, and this way we’ll be afforded absolute privacy.”

  Nikita sighed, but said, “Fair enough. Will he recognize you?”

  “If not by sight, then by scent, certainly. To my knowledge, I’m the only mage he ran across in society.”

  A low, mournful howl echoed through the ship, and Sasha whined in automatic response, fidgeting in his seat. Everyone turned to him, Katya’s expression openly sympathetic.

  Feliks said, “Maybe this is a stupid question, but what are we going to do with the wolves when we get there?”

  “Take them with us, of course,” Philippe said.

  “Yeah, because that won’t look suspicious,” Kolya muttered.

  “I’m not leaving them behind,” Sasha said, more forcefully than intended.

  Kolya’s expression softened a fraction. “No. I know.”

  “We need to discuss logistics,” Nikita said. “We’ll have to hire a truck, get our hands on some tools. This isn’t going to be easy.”

  “No,” Philippe agreed, “it certainly won’t.”

 
Another howl shivered through the hallways.

  “Do you need me?” Sasha asked. “For the logistics.”

  “No, you may see to your wolves,” Philippe said with a smile.

  Sasha didn’t wait for anyone to make room, simply hopped over the table and was out the door in a blink.

  The wolves were being kept with the considerable cargo of ammunition and guns that had been quickly and cheaply manufactured in Stalingrad. The steamer’s captain had insisted that the wolves be caged, and so they were, all of them whining and whimpering behind their bars as Sasha approached.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, babies,” he crooned as he sank down to sit on the floor in front of them. He threaded his fingers through the bars and his alpha girl licked them. “I’m so sorry you’re locked up.”

  They quieted some in his presence, still distressed by being locked up, but feeling safer with their alpha there.

  He was alone with them a few moments, feeling his own blood pressure ease as he visited with each, letting them lick at his fingers and scratching at the bits of fur he could reach. Footfalls announce someone’s arrival, too light and quick to be part of the crew.

  Katya appeared around a stack of crates and hung back, asking permission to approach the pack with a deferential head tilt. “Are they alright?”

  Sasha smiled and waved her forward. “A little upset, but otherwise okay.”

  She came to sit beside him, no longer nervous, close enough to touch, her posture relaxed. “Poor things.” She reached out a hand toward the alpha girl, offering the back of it to the bars. The wolf sniffed her, then gave one wag of her tail and licked Katya.

  Katya smiled. “Hi, beautiful.”

  Sasha felt suffused with happiness, the pride of a parent watching someone approve of his child. “They like you.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course. You’re kind–”

  She snorted.

  “–You are! Being a soldier – a sniper,” he amended, “and being kind aren’t mutually exclusive.”

  She made a face like she was startled, tried to cover it with a snort and said, “I didn’t know you were a philosopher.”

  “You’re a soldier,” he pressed on, “but you’re also kind. And you’re honest, and brave. The wolves respect that. And respect is the thing that turns into love in wolf language.”

  Her brows lifted, surprised but pleased. “That…might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.” A blush came up along her cheeks and she turned away, looking at the wolf through the bars. “But you don’t have to flatter me.”

  “Wolves don’t lie. Animals are a lot more honest than people.”

  She sighed. “You’re right on that.” She reached careful fingertips through the bars, and the female licked at them. “Sasha,” her voice became careful, too. “You weren’t born like this, were you?”

  “A wolf? No.” And somehow his own words surprised him. He frowned to himself. “Remember what Philippe said? But sometimes it feels like I must have been. I remember my life, what I’ve done, and who I knew. But it’s hard to remember what it was like not to feel this way.”

  She turned back to him, openly curious now. “What’s it feel like?”

  “Like…” He’d never had to put it into words before, and for a moment he worried he couldn’t, but then they came, settling in his mind as the right ones. “Every smell, and sound, and everything you see? It’s that times ten. Maybe times a thousand. Before – it was existing inside the world. But now, it’s like the world’s gotten inside of me.”

  “That sounds…intense.”

  “Yeah. But it isn’t strange. It’s…like this is how I was always supposed to be. If that makes sense.”

  “It does.” When he glanced at her face, he saw understanding there. And nervousness. She wet her lips. “When I think about before, when I was with my family. God, I’d do anything to have them back. But…”

  He nudged her shoulder gently with his, encouraging.

  She flicked him a smile. “But I don’t know, now that I know what I am, if they’d have me back. I’m not their sweet little girl. I’m a killer.”

  Sasha snorted and she looked surprised. “She kills,” he said, nodding to the wolf currently licking at Katya’s fingers. “To feed her pack. You killed to protect yours. Killing for fun might be evil, but killing for your family isn’t.”

  “There are probably some in the church who’d disagree with you.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t care what other people think.”

  Her eyes fell to her hand, the gentle, steady movement of the wolf’s nose as she snuffled her fingertips. “Killing changes you, though.”

  “So does loving.” He smiled when she glanced up at him through her lashes. “But I think you already know that.”

  “Sorry. I don’t mean to use you as a sounding board.”

  “That’s alright. That’s what pack’s for.”

  She sighed, and then laughed a little. “You’re very strange, and that’s a very good thing.”

  “Thank you.”

  She leaned against him, and the water slapped quietly at the hull of the ship, taking them toward new dangers…and undoubtedly more death.

  26

  A WARM BODY

  Monsieur Philippe had known it as Petersburg, in his time as advisor to the royal couple. Nikita and the boys called it Petrograd, the more Slavic name that Tsar Nicholas had given it as the Revolution loomed, and the citizenry grew more resentful of its Western-seeming monarch. Its name now, in the year 1942, was Leningrad.

  In Katya’s eyes, it was hell on earth.

  Moscow had been bleak and soot-smudged, eerily empty of civilians, its streets ringing with the throb of tank and truck engines. But there had been a certain sense of accomplishment: the Germans had been beaten back. The capital was secure.

  But in Leningrad, the blockade was still in effect. The Germans still bombed. According to their boat captain, a grim-faced man of forty, a citizen brave enough to risk the bombers, the citizens unable to evacuate the city had eaten first the zoo animals, then their pets…and then each other. The police had established a unit specifically dedicated to combatting cannibalism.

  Katya shivered hard and ducked down into the collar of her coat. If it boiled down to only two choices, she’d take a bomb over being eaten by starving refugees any day. Jesus.

  Nikita appeared beside her at the rail, a comforting hand settling at the small of her back, his gaze fixed on Leningrad across the wind-chopped waters of Lake Ladoga. The once-dazzling pinnacle of the empire loomed dark and jagged on the skyline, the vast Asiatic sky blurry with smoke.

  She was so afraid her teeth were chattering.

  “The captain says we have three hours,” Nikita said, speaking quietly despite the whine of the breeze across their ears. “He’s nervous as a cat. Philippe managed to magic him into taking us aboard” – before the mage had stepped in, the captain had been adamant that he wasn’t taking any “fat police” across, and especially not any with eight live wolves in their company; Philippe’s powers were the only reason they were aboard now; Katya thought the purse Nikita had tossed him might have had something to do with it too – “but we won’t be able to get him to stay. Three hours to dig up a body and get back to port, or else we’ll be stuck here.”

  Stuck. With the starving masses, and cannibals, and air raids.

  “We’re gonna go at a run,” he said.

  “I’ll be ready.” She hitched the strap of her rifle a little higher up her shoulder.

  The rest of the guys joined them. Ivan tall and imposing at her back. One of the wolves nudged his way forward and asked to be scratched behind the ears.

  She wasn’t doing this alone, she reminded herself, and took immeasurable comfort in their proximity.

  Nikita leaned in close to say, “When the war’s over, I’ll bring you back one summer to see the Nevsky Prospekt. Lunch and shopping and the best hotels.”

  She shiver
ed a little – not because she believed the fantasy, because the city was bombed to hell and would take years to regain its glory, but because he’d said “when the war’s over,” and that meant he expected them to be together still, then.

  She closed her eyes and said a little prayer, as the scent of ash and dust drifted across the lake toward them.

  The barge turned into the Neva River, and here the destruction became more visible: great craters in the earth where the Germans had tried to bomb supply ships and trucks. The smell of put-out fires intensified as they got closer to the city itself.

  The trip up the river seemed to take forever, the tension onboard silent and stifling. And then, suddenly, there it was. Leningrad, a sad shadow of itself, the shoreline crouched defensively, unlit, unwelcoming.

  She felt a hand close around hers, cool and rough: Nikita. He laced their fingers together and gave her one fast squeeze before he let go and unslung the carbine he carried. They were here.

  The barge fetched up to the dock with the help of a handful of skinny men in patched clothes who waited on the dock, eyes sunk deep in their heads, gazes wary as they noted the Chekists who waited to depart.

  Then they caught sight of the wolves.

  “Shit!” one of them shouted, leaping back and dropping the rope he held.

  One of his comrades cuffed him on the back of the head. “Tie up the boat, fucker! You want to starve?”

  “Three hours,” the captain reminded Nikita, and his look suggested he hoped they didn’t come back.

  “Right. We’ll be here.”

  Katya imagined a stopwatch, the click as it started their countdown.

  Three hours wasn’t a very long time to dig up a man.

  Ivan got off first, and Katya let him lift her out and set her on the dock. He did the same for Philippe, guiding the old man with a hand at his elbow, and then the others jumped over, wolves included. The tie-up crew staggered back, exclaiming.

  The bravest of them scowled and said, “You could’ve at least butchered them before you brought them over.”