by E. V. Winter
She saw the door open and was only a little surprised to see Rex standing in her doorway, backlit, the light coming in through the upstairs passage window.
“Can I come in?” he whispered. “Eve’s snoring woke me up and I can’t get back over.”
She nodded and drew back the covers on the other side of the bed for him to get in beside her. Her heart already raced, and she took a breath to steady her thoughts, her nerves, her thoughts, tumbling over one another in a jumble.
He lay beside her and drew her towards him in a warm embrace. Her head rested on his chest. He stroked her hair, as he always did and it calmed her a little.
“Am I asking too much of you India? To be with me in my life the way it is?”
“I’m scared.”
“It’s all I’ve ever known, since I was a small boy, but I would give it up for you.”
She stared up at him, his face so serious. He still stroked her hair.
“You’d give up being a shifter to be with me? We hardly know one another Rex. This is a shock to me. I have no experience with men.”
He frowned “None?”
She nodded and kept her head down, a little embarrassed.
“I’m surprised,” he said. She looked at him again. What did he mean by that?
He smiled. “You’re a great kisser.”
She relaxed a little, and he took her hand in his. “And you have such expert hands.” He said stroking his calloused palm down her soft one and then back up to entwine their fingers. “Wolves know when they meet their mate,” he said. “It’s difficult to explain, and it usually includes some wolf courtship and sex but we know, all of us know.”
“Wolf courtship?”
“When you meet a female wolf, you do what a guy might do in a bar. You show off a little, you flex your muscles.” He flexed his pecs, and she smiled. “You show her how shiny your hide is,” he said, running his hands through his auburn hair. “You bay at the moon so you’re singing to her,” he said and released a small, low-volume howl from his lips.
She enjoyed the entertainment after so long under stress.
He continued “Then your first touch might be the usual respectful one of laying your snout against hers, your neck into her neck. You’re letting her know you respect her, you’re moving slowly.”
He touched his forehead against hers and kissed her lips softly. “You take in her scent, she takes in yours.” He kissed her neck and eased her hair from her shoulder kissing her there too, his other hand starting to explore the curve of her hips.
He kissed her shoulder blade and then went back to her face, tracing her scar with the slightest touch of his fingers. “You want to know every part of her, to explore her, mind, body and soul.” He kissed her scar, again and again before finally and with urgency moving to her waiting mouth. They came together softly, warmth flooding her core, his hands exploring her body. She lifted the blankets and took him towards her, he lifted the t-shirt over her head. He kissed her again, their bodies so warm together at last. She wanted him so much she could not control her breathing, brief gasps escaping her mouth when they parted.
He kissed her again, looking into her brown eyes. Those pools of chocolate kindness. “You’re sure?”
She nodded, bringing his face towards hers. When he kissed her, he owned her, she owned him and it was a perfect, delicate, passionate union between two people who truly felt love pulsing through their veins. They were together at last.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Eve made enough toast for the three of them and took his into the office only to find the bed empty. She smiled, she might guess where he might be. She threw another piece of toast on the plate and took it up to India’s room where they both lay snuggled together, still fast asleep, naked, she assumed since they strewed their clothes on the floor, either side of the bed.
She lay the plate of toast on India’s bedside table and left. Her sister was a woman at last. She’d been such a slow coach about the entire thing but everyone was different, she guessed. For India, this would be a wake-up call (with toast). There really was more to life than work.
Eve returned to the kitchen, hearing the pigs squealing in their sty.
“Greedy pigs,” she shouted out the back door. “Give me a minute.”
She let the dogs out of the kennels and released the chickens from their pen. The state of the yard disgusted her, covered in ash from all the burned hay and further down, near the vegetable patch, Juan’s blood covered a dense area.
“Ugh,” she groaned. “She gets a lie-in on the dirtiest yard morning of the year.”
She knew nobody was listening but it felt good to whine out loud sometimes. The blood reminded her that Juan was inside the porch. She grabbed her gun and went back inside to see how he was doing. She took toast and coffee.
He was crying with the pain. She lay the toast and coffee beside him. “You all right?”
“I’m in so much pain.”
“She’s still in bed but she won’t be long. She’ll get you some Ketamine I guess or morphine.”
He nodded, he was sweating.
“I’ll get you a damp towel, okay. Eat your toast, you need energy.”
He picked up the toast and took a bite out of it. He was in a handcuff attached to the metal stair rail. If he shifted, she was ready to shoot him, but he could not escape.
“You’re not calling the cops are you?”
She smiled at him. “What cops? We’ve had no police force here for months and you know that. Your dead friend there was selling heroin and coke all over the eastside until last night.”
“Drugs? Not us.”
She stared at him and saw that he did not have a clue what she was talking about.
“No maybe not ‘us’ as you say. Maybe just him.”
He shook his head. He did not understand Blaine’s behavior. Where was his dedication to the pack, to brotherhood? He forgot the codes, he forgot that tradition counted for everything.
“He didn’t care about the pack,” he said, sniffling.
Eve frowned. These guys were difficult to understand.
“You climbed over our back fence yesterday, ready to kill me and my sister. Where was your care then?”
She left him there to think over that. Where were those two lazy bones? There were animals to feed and a body to bury.
*******
Xander rose from bed, feeling refreshed. Last night was a unique experience for all of them.
It was a shock that they survived at all. Wolves understood the hunt, they loved to hunt animals, and they protected their territory from predators, big and small. They did not understand humans wanting to do the same. The Brunholme pack were dutiful boys, college-grads, raised differently to most people, but with the universal morals most others possessed.
Wolves lived by tradition and moral code. They all understood it. It was innate, in their blood.
Shifters wanted to kill one another in that house. They wanted to take the lives of two girls, one of whom had saved his king. They were good people.
Maddox was eating breakfast, Rafe was still asleep. Xander made coffee and sat down.
“Quarry Hills pack will be different.” Xander said.
Maddox shrugged. “Kyle will need to build from omegas but he’ll do it. He knows it’s for the best.”
“You think Rex will be back in a few days?”
“Yes.”
“He won’t run away with the vet?”
“No because he understands the rules of the pack, and he knows he has a line to protect, a birthright to carry on.”
“He looked goofy for her to me.”
“Yeah, I noticed that too. We’ll wait and see what he decides when his stitches heal.”
“He looked good.” Xander said. “I thought, maybe, on the night it happened, he might not make it.”
Maddox nodded. “Yeah, she worked some kind of miracle there.”
Xander sipped his coffee. “We could use someone li
ke India here.”
Maddox raised his eyebrow. His eyes latching onto Xander’s.
“I just mean for us guys, me, you and Rafe. He has his own doctor, we have nobody.”
“She’s a vet.” Maddox said.
“Yup, but when do we get injured?”
Maddox considered this and realized Xander was right. They never got injured when in human form, apart from the odd injury after playing squash together. It was in wolf-form they needed help.
“I’m surprised she finds Rex attractive with all his scars.” Xander said.
Maddox nodded. He was cogitating Xander’s idea and remembered what Rex said about walking away from his life to be with India. This was the perfect solution. He slid off his stool and walked out.
“Where are you going?”
“I have work to do. I need to go over to India’s.”
Xander yelled after him. “Her sister is gay, you’re wasting your time.”
Maddox snickered. What was it with those guys? They always thought he was looking for sex.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
When Maddox arrived his king was nowhere to be found. Eve was outside tending to the animals and India was in her living room, in tears and devastated.
“So explain again,” he said. “He was in your room and then he came down here and he just left?”
“Yes,” she said, reluctant to say more. She felt sick to her stomach. She felt used.
“Did you,” he said. There was no straightforward way to ask. “You know?” It was the best he could come up with.
She nodded, once again sobbing into her tissue. “He said things to me about you all knowing your mate when you meet them and I guess I’m not his mate.”
He could not argue with that, but he was no saint. Several times he’d mated with she-wolves and felt a powerful attraction, yet he’d ignored it.
“It’s just not like him to leave like this.” Maddox said. “He’s a royal and he can do what he likes but he doesn’t. He’s a good guy.”
Eve came in and offered coffee. She sat beside India again and gave her yet another hug.
“Can you explain this? Is it a shifter thing?” She asked Maddox.
“Being a shifter and being an ordinary man is different. I don’t want to guess what he’s going through…”
“What he’s going through? What the hell, Maddox.”
“Eve, I’m sorry. I just mean, maybe he’s confused or something. Maybe he’s sick again?”
“He wasn’t sick last night, was he?” Eve said, looking at India, who knew she meant the sex.
“He was fine. It was lovely.”
Maddox squirmed a little. He wondered how women described sex to one another and lovely wasn’t hitting the right note for him.
“He told me he loved me.” India said. “He loves me, I know it.”
Maddox sipped his coffee. In his head he was thinking ‘we say what we need to say to get what we want’ but he kept it to himself and felt a little disgusted with his gender, that it was the truth sometimes.
India stood up. “Any way, Maddox, thanks for calling but I need to get on. I have stuff to do.” She left the room, not even shaking his hand.
Eve sat down beside him. “What’s this about? Is he a straight up guy or is he like this with other wolves and women?”
Maddox shook his head. “He’s my king. I can’t denigrate him. All I will say is, he is not promiscuous.”
He left soon after and drove a few neighborhoods in search of Rex but didn’t see him. Maybe he transformed and went over the fence? Maddox returned to the cabin where Xander and Rafe were playing pool.
“He’s not there,” he told them. “He slept with her last night but he’s not there this morning.”
“She okay? Poor thing.” Rafe asked.
“No, she’s very upset. It’s not like him.”
“Maybe the sex was…”
“Xander, don’t say it.” Maddox said.
“Where could he be?” Xander asked.
Maddox shrugged. “This is his mess, we need to keep out of it. It’s just not like Rex to behave this way though. He’s a royal. He behaves like a king, not a louse.”
*******
The transformation exhausted Rex and for hours afterwards, he lay in a ball in the woods, thankful it was daylight and there were no predators around. It was a long way back to his ancestral home. He needed to make good time but his body was not in the right place yet. Leaving India, without so much as a goodbye that way felt wrong but he acted on instinct. He needed to do something first, before he could commit to her. He was a royal, from a strong bloodline and he could not deny that bloodline or trample on tradition just because of India. He felt the need to deal with things quickly and act without delay. He hoped she understood.
He caught rabbits and ate them like a snack but it gave him enough energy to push on. His father’s home was in view and he sung to the moon when he got there. It was late, almost midnight but he knew his parents would recognize his call.
He rested in the woods for an hour until his parents followed his scent and found him. They led him, with their pack back to their mansion on the edge of the mountains. The pack all laid down in deference to him on the way there. He touched each forehead with his own. It was an onerous task but a tradition his father would expect.
“You’ve come in person, this must be serious,” his father said when he’d showered. He could see he was keeping them from their bed, but this couldn’t wait. His mother gave him soup and bread and he ate heartily.
“I want to marry. I’ve come for your blessing.”
“You mean you’ve come for my permission.” His father asked.
His mother smiled at him gently, warning him to be cautious with the old man. He knew that.
“There’s a snag though. I’ve fallen in love with a human.” Rex said.
His mother’s hand went to her mouth. His family line was of shifters who always followed the wolf mating ritual, never the human one. The human one was lesser in morals, there was too much room for error. Wolves knew their mates when they met. They understood the law of the woods that nature provided the best mate.
“Well you can’t do that.” His father said. “You must marry a wolf shifter mate. You’ve never found a mate yet? Daniel, you’re twenty seven, you’ve had plenty opportunity, surely?”
“I found her but she’s a human. I know you will love her too. She saved my life, she’s a vet.”
“Saved your life?” His mother asked, her voice filled with fear. She went to him and held him. “What happened?”
She saw the dressing on his neck and pulled it back. She saw the tiny white scar and the stitches. “Your artery? How did she save you? You’re lucky to be alive. Oh, my son, my wonderful son.”
His father pulled his chair away from the table. “No wolf can marry a human. You must marry another shifter. You know that.”
“Then I will give up my pack. I will give up everything for her.”
“Do you love her son? So much you’d give up everything you’ve ever known.”
He nodded. She smiled. She wanted him to marry India. She knew he had found the love of his life.
“I gave you freedom. I abdicated my leadership in your name and now this.” His father said. “I gave up everything for you.”
“You wanted to do that,” his wife argued. “For us to spend more time together, remember. More human time.”
“I regret it now that this has happened.” He said.
“So who is she?” His mother asked. She watched as he talked about this girl and saw the love in his face. His eyes lit up when he talked about her kindness, her goodness, her beauty. Her son was in love.
“I came here in person and with respect for you father, because I understand the rules of the pack and the law of the woods but I know, in my soul, that she is my perfect mate. I know she’s not a wolf but she is my true mate.”
His father admired his son for doing things th
e right way but he needed time to think. Rex’s suggestion to marry the girl would undermine the Linney name. It was pure in wolf blood.
“I’ll talk with you in the morning after I’ve slept on it.”
His father left the room, leaving him and his mother huddled together on the sofa.
“You know what you’d be walking away from, Daniel?”
It was a long, long time since he’s heard his real name. Once a wolf became king, he took on the name of Rex so others knew his standing and importance.
He nodded. “I’ve felt nothing like this before. I know I want her to be my mate, even if it means I’m just an alpha and not a royal anymore.”
“Let him think about it.”
“You two have been happy, haven’t you? Since he abdicated? He chose the human side of his life because of all the fighting, the scars, the broken bones and late nights.”
She smiled. “I wanted him to give it up. I see your scars and I wish for something else too.”
“My time isn’t over. I still love the pack, the hunt. I love the land Mama, more than ever before, but I love India more.”
“Then you must have her,” she said, and she hugged him again. He was a good son, and happiness was more important than status, or the pack or the stupid marriage rules.
*******
He left at first light, his father relenting after a long drawn out conversation about the place of royalty, its expectations, blah, blah, blah. Too tired to get back to Hale County, he pushed on as far as he could, until sleep took over and he found a cave in which to rest.