by Viola Rivard
Meadow stuck her tongue out at Clover before sauntering from the room.
The teenager didn’t budge, and gave Cain a sullen look. “That’s not fair. Why do I have to help? She never does anything.”
Cain didn’t respond to her. He simply folded his arms over his chest, affecting a resolute stance. Clover muttered something under her breath and followed Meadow, dragging her feet as she went.
For the first time, Sarah noticed lines of fatigue beneath Cain’s eyes. She had a feeling that between hunting and dealing with his pack members, he hadn’t had any time to rest.
Before she could ask as much, she heard Clover’s voice from the passageway.
“It’s about time!” In a sing-song voice, the girl said, “You’re in so much trouble.”
Cain’s lip curled, and he stepped away from Sarah, heading towards the passageway as Clover reentered the room. She was skipping alongside two men, and Sarah had to do a double take when she saw them.
Given what Lotus had told her, they could only be Hale and Alder, Cain’s wayward brothers. From across the room, Sarah couldn’t make out their faces, but she could make out blonde hair and recognized that they shared Cain’s tall, muscular build.
The male on the left was swatting playfully at Clover’s head as he looked up to see Cain stalking towards him. Sarah didn’t have to be able to see the alpha’s face to tell that he was pissed, but she was still surprised when Cain pulled back his fist and punched his brother square in the jaw.
In a thunderous voice, Cain commanded, “Outside. Both of you. Now.”
* * *
Cain paced in front of his brothers, who wisely sat silent and waited for him to begin speaking.
Since the twins had been pups, Cain had adopted the policy of allowing his anger to cool before he dealt with their antics. He had never struck them as pups, or even as juveniles, though he had wanted to on many occasions. As they had matured into adulthood, Hale in particular could no longer be reined in with a long speech and a firm tone.
The object of Cain’s ire was sitting on a large stone, gingerly rubbing his jaw. Unlike Alder, who had adopted a slumped, submissive posture beside him, Hale sat with his spine erect. Catching Cain’s hard stare, he matched it defiantly.
Cain said, “I told you the last time that if you ran off again, you were out of the pack.”
Alder’s head shot up. “Cain…”
Hale held up a hand to silence his twin. “You don’t speak for me,” he told Alder. Fixing Cain with a glare, he said, “Are you even going to ask me what I was doing, or are you just going to assume that I was fucking off?”
His words did nothing to sway Cain’s anger. “Fine. Tell me what was so important that you saw fit to leave the pack—to leave my son and Snow unprotected.”
“The females were here to watch after them,” Hale protested, though his voice lacked some of its earlier conviction.
Cain did not bother dignifying that with a response. The females, Clover and Meadow notwithstanding, were capable hunters and each could hold her own in a fight. They were by no means weak, but if another pack, or even a capable alpha male had come along, they could easily have been overpowered. There were no laws in the realms of werebeasts, as the humans referred to them. Nothing stood between the dangers of the wilderness and Cain’s small pack, except for him and those whom he trusted to keep it safe.
“I’m sorry, Cain,” Alder said, remorse in his eyes. “When Hale left, I was supposed to stay and guard the pack. If anything, you should be mad at me.”
Alder always knew the words that would ease his older brother’s fury, and right now, it wasn’t what Cain wanted. He wanted to be angry and to fight, but he knew that this was not the time.
Between the humans encroaching on his territory and the possibility of having a pregnant mate, he could not afford to lose Hale. While he could not be relied on to always be there, when he was, there was no one Cain trusted more to defend the pack.
To Hale, he said, “Speak.”
Hale sighed with annoyance, but complied. “After I made sure that the pack was secure at Greystone, I went back to scout the hills.”
His eyes became unfocused as he thought back. “I followed a few trails, but didn’t find anything. Just when I was about to turn back, I ran into one of the foxes who live in the eastern lowlands. She said that their forest is being leveled by some logging company. Everyone is heading for the western mountains and we should probably do the same.”
“We do not have a den there,” Alder said, stating the obvious.
“Well, if it’s true, we can’t stay here,” said Hale.
Cain tuned them out as he considered all of the new information his brother had given him. The western mountains were already a highly-contested area. Large packs of various species were constantly embroiled in territory wars over the limited hunting grounds. Moving his small pack there would be dangerous, even if they had the security of a den.
Rubbing at his temple, Cain decided he would wait until later that night to decide. He was far too drained to be making such a major decision.
“Go inside,” he told them. “We will discuss this at length later.”
Hale stood and left, not needing to be told twice, but Alder lingered. Once his brother had gone inside, he asked, “Who is the female?”
Cain sat beside Alder, giving his brother a weary look. “My new mate, though she does not yet know it.”
Cain recounted the events of the past few weeks, from meeting Sarah, to the mating thrall. It had not been his intention to divulge his mistakes, but if Hale was the brother he could trust in a fight, Alder was the one he could trust with his indiscretions. Alder listened stoically and without judgment, and that was exactly what Cain had needed.
When Cain finished, Alder simply asked, “Do you care about her?”
“It would be much easier if I did not.”
21
Things fell into a comfortable routine at Greystone. The wolves slept in the mornings. In the afternoons, while most of the pack was preoccupied with hunting and chores, Sarah took on the job of minding the ‘pups’, which had previously been Clover’s responsibility. Clover was overjoyed at finally being able to join the hunt, and Sarah was pretty sure that the only reason the girl wanted her to stay was so that she no longer had to be the pack babysitter.
Sarah really didn’t mind watching the kids. Cain’s son always went hunting with his father, which left her with Sable and Snow, who couldn’t have been more different. Sable, a cousin of Lotus, was loud, forceful, and prone to spectacular tantrums when she didn’t get her way. Only half Sable’s age, Snow was quiet, amiable, and even-tempered. Having to watch them both, it was easy to see how many of the adults in the pack overlooked Snow. With such a mellow nature, she was often ignored in favor of the more demanding children.
Although Lotus would throw a fit at being called a pup, her sisters regularly left her in Sarah’s care while they hunted, which Sarah thought was a little unfair, considering Caim could go, and he was half the girl’s age. Lotus thought so too, and she would often spend the whole afternoon getting herself in a lather over being left behind and bragging nonstop about her hunting prowess as Sarah chased the pups around.
Sarah’s favorite time of day was the hour before everyone returned, when the sky was just starting to darken. After tiring themselves out all afternoon, the three of the girls would lie down for an early-evening nap. In their wolf forms, Lotus and Sable would fight over Sarah’s lap, pawing each other in the face until they ran out of energy and passed out. Snow slept in Sarah’s arms, cradled against her chest. While Sarah didn’t want to play favorites, there was a muted vulnerability about Snow that drew her in, and with each day that passed, Sarah found herself growing more and more attached to the little girl.
When the women returned for the night, if it wasn’t too cold out, they built a big bonfire in the moon room. While they cooked and ate dinner, the women loved to socialize, mainly
in the form of storytelling. Jewel, one of Lotus’s older sisters, and Fern, a boisterous olive-skinned beauty, were the best company. They both had an outrageous sense of humor, and the hours seemed to melt away as they stayed up till the early morning hours, laughing and joking.
In the morning, everyone retired to their respective rooms to sleep. Snow’s asthma was always worst in then, and instead of going to sleep with Cain as she wanted to, Sarah usually found herself nodding off in the little girl’s room. Snow usually woke several times in the morning with labored breathing, and Sarah was uncomfortable leaving her alone.
Cain, as well as his brothers, was almost always away from the den. During the short intervals in which Sarah saw him, he looked tired and stressed, though he tried to hide it. From what she had gathered from snippets of conversation, there was some concern that the soldiers who had invaded their territory in the hills would breach their mountain territory as well.
That concern was simply an extra weight on his shoulders, on top of the day-to-day challenges that came with being an alpha. Whether they realized it or not, his pack was reliant on Cain for nearly everything, from solving their quarrels and mediating the division of food, to ensuring that their territory was secure. To Sarah, it seemed unfair to place so much on the shoulders of one man. Not wanting to put any more strain on him, she did everything she could to help out and keep things going smoothly while he was away.
On one such afternoon, a week and a half into her stay, the females broke off from the hunting party early to bring back a large buck. Meadow decided that it was too cold out for her to help clean the carcass, and before things escalated between Meadow and Jewel, Sarah volunteered to help in her place. Leaving the pups in Meadow’s care, she and the other females set out for the nearby stream to tend to the gruesome task.
Sarah nearly lost the meager contents of her stomach when they split the carcass open, which everyone seemed to find uproariously funny. Feeling bad for her, the women let her hang back and watch as they stripped the deer. She felt guilty, seeing as how Cain had already more or less showed her how it was done, but she decided since that had been a rabbit, it didn’t really count.
While the others set to portioning the meat, Grace took Sarah to the bank of the stream and showed her how to scrape the hide. Sarah liked Grace. She had a plain, round face and wasn’t as interesting as Jewel or Fern, or as quirky as Clover, but she had a pleasant countenance that made her easy to talk to.
“So tell me, Sarah,” Grace said while preening the pelt, “how are you enjoying your time with our pack?”
It wasn’t a hard question to answer. Although things out here weren’t always easy, Sarah found that the only thing she really missed was her eyeglasses.
“I’m really happy here,” she answered sincerely. “I never thought that you guys would all be so…”
“Human?” Grace supplied, smiling.
Sarah smiled sheepishly. Eerily intuitive, Grace had the uncanny ability to finish any sentence.
“I guess where I come from, people think that werewolves are monsters,” Sarah said sadly. “I never thought we’d have so much in common.”
Not seeming offended, Grace said, “They often forget that we are all half human.”
“Your mothers, right?” Sarah asked, dipping a piece of the hide into the stream. The water was frigid, and she had to pull back to warm her hands before she had finished.
Grace nodded. “All of our mothers are human, and our fathers, wolves.”
“How did your parents meet?”
Grace and Jewel always spoke openly about their pasts, so Sarah didn’t feel that the question was too forward. She knew that Grace and her small family had been with Cain’s pack for several years, though none of them shared any relation to Cain’s family unit.
Sitting back on the bank, Grace affected a comfortable position, which Sarah was coming to recognize as a storytelling stance. She mimicked the pose, eager to take a break from the chore.
“My former pack was situated around a large human territory. It was a very rural area, mostly farmlands, and the growers and ranchers relied on my pack to protect their lands.”
Sarah asked, “Like a treaty?”
Grace gave a slight shrug of her shoulders. “Nothing formal, more like a mutual understanding,” she explained. “When my grandfather died, my father took the position of leadership. In return for the continued protection of the farmlands, the humans provided him with a mate, the young daughter of a poor farmer.”
“That’s…”
“Terrible, I know,” Grace said, her eyes downcast. “Such things are common, though, and much preferable to the alternative.” Her gaze flicking back up, she elaborated, “I am sure you have heard stories where you come from, about kidnappings and rapes. While I would like to say humans are wrong for fearing our kind, not all wolves live as we do. Many of them are slaves to their instincts.”
It was an unexpected turn in the conversation, and Sarah couldn’t help but pose the question, “What about Caim’s mother?”
She was referring to Dawn, whose name she’d occasionally heard mentioned, though no one had ever spoken about her at length. Whenever the subject of her came up it was quickly changed, and Sarah got the impression that she hadn’t been well-liked.
“Dawn wasn’t bartered to the pack.” Grace paused long enough for Sarah to think she wasn’t going to continue, but then said, “From what I recall, she had been married to a boy for a few months and wasn’t happy, so she ran away. Hale found her in the woods and brought her back to the pack.”
“And she and Cain…”
Grace smiled, giving her a knowing look. “Cain allowed her to stay, under the condition that she become his mate, but they never cared for one another. She regretted her decision, missed the comforts of her human life and missed her husband, but by then Caim was already on the way.”
It was strange to think that there had been a woman who couldn’t fall madly in love with Cain. Sarah had only known him for a few weeks, and the prospect of leaving him was so daunting that she’d had to completely put it out of her mind.
Unable to resist one final question, Sarah asked, “How did she…”
“She passed shortly after Snow was born.”
Sarah blinked rapidly, her mouth going dry. “Cain said that Snow wasn’t his daughter.”
Grace gave her an apologetic look. “It’s really not my place to talk about it.” She took in Sarah’s crestfallen expression and frowned. Inclining her head, she said in a low voice, “Snow is not Cain’s daughter. She is Hale’s.”
22
It was noontime when Cain finally returned to his den the next day. He had spent the night, like every night, circling the wide-ranging borders of his mountain territory. From time to time, he caught the scents of other creatures: bears, cats, and even wolves, but as Hale had reported, they were all just passing through on their way westward.
As he entered the den, Hale slunk past him, leaving to take up his post as the afternoon watch. Alder had been dispatched to the lowlands to gather more information. Once he returned, Cain would take his words into consideration when deciding how to proceed with the movement of his pack.
He would also have to take Sarah home.
It had been over two weeks since the onset of the mating thrall and her scent had yet to change. It was largely a relief to Cain, as he was not in any position to have another pup. With Sarah, however, he had an unnatural selfish streak, and if he was being wholly honest with himself, he was also slightly disappointed.
Although he was unable to see her often, when he did, Sarah seemed content. She got along well with the females, and the pups were always fighting for her attention. Cain had imagined that if she were carrying his pup, while she might be initially angry with him, perhaps if given time to cool off, she might actually come to like living in his pack. Maybe, he could have made her happy.
But without anything to bind them together, he could not in go
od conscience ask her to stay. With the future of his pack more uncertain than ever, the best thing he could do for Sarah was take her back to her own kind, though it would not be easy for him.
As he rounded the corner of his room, Cain caught Sarah’s scent in the air. Light and floral, it tantalized his senses, appealing to the beast inside of him like nothing else did.
She lay on his pallet, only her head sticking out from beneath his furs. Her eyes were closed, but as Cain approached the pallet, they fluttered open. Giving him a coy smile, she sat up, her messy, golden-brown hair tumbling over her shoulders. Yawning, she stretched her arms out, letting the furs fall to reveal her bare torso, complete with a perfect view of her generous breasts.
Unconsciously, Cain wet his lips as he took in the lush globes. The chilled air hardened her pink nipples before his eyes, and he longed to take them into his mouth.
Although he had told Sarah they would have plenty of time for coupling during her stay, he had not lain with the human since bringing her to his den. He had been spared from having to make excuses by Snow, whose illness kept Sarah preoccupied during the few hours in which he rested. When he was not resting, one of the advantages of being an alpha was that Cain always had a valid excuse for being away from the den.
The truth of the matter was that Cain did not want to complicate things further. He had grown far too attached to Sarah, to the point where he considered her to be his mate, a part of his family. But with the upheaval facing his pack, as well as a young son to raise, he could not afford to be crippled by the loss of her, and that was precisely where he was headed if he continued to be near her, to touch her, to share his bed with her.
“I hope I’m not intruding,” she said, scooting over to make room for him.
Having shifted just before entering the den, Cain had not bothered putting on any clothes as he made his way to his room. He joined her in bed, if only to hide his growing erection beneath the heavy furs.