Blood Crown

by Tamara Rose Blodgett

  “Ah, don’t look like that, Ad—great news travels fast.” Dare leans back, lacing his fingers and tucking his hands behind his head. His eyes hood, and he gives Slash a lingering speculative glance.

  Slash returns the look at full measure.

  Dare looks away first. “Quill is coming, but we’ve had a situation. I was trying to tell you earlier about this group of females that we stumbled on. One of our scouts hiding in plain sight got a whiff of her, then our group was doing our regular territory sweep, and wow—like finding treasure or something.”

  “Glad to hear security is in place.” Slash is pleased the den is guarding their territory. As soon as he was settled and Adrianna’s safety is assured, he intends to volunteer. It appears as though they need all the males they can find.

  Many fangs make light work, they say. Slash has found that to be true.

  Adrianna sits forward, picking at a portion of dessert she couldn’t finish.

  She plucks the bright-red cherry from a bit of cake and pops it into her mouth, sucking it off the stem.

  Slash looks away, wondering how she is unaware that there are small seductions in life too.

  Just then, a male comes through the floor-to-ceiling glass door. “Dare,” he greets in a deep timbre, nodding at Adrianna’s cousin, then his eyes slide to Slash.

  He stands.

  Slash will not be seated when an Alpha male is in his presence.

  Quillon’s eyes narrow. They are very like Slash’s—such a deep brown, they completely swallow the pupil, giving the illusion of black eyes.

  “You are Red,” Quillon says.

  “Yes.”

  Slash does not like that the male is closer to Adrianna than he is. But Slash wanted to watch the only doorway and sit across from Adrianna for a better view of her face.

  A face he’s fonder of each minute.

  “She smells of you”—he hikes his nose—“and she is with whelp.”

  Adrianna stands. “Wonderful observation, bright one.”

  Quillon turns, giving her his full attention. “You must be Adrianna. I remember when you were just a whelp.”

  “And I remember you being a smug asshat.”

  His good humor withers.

  Not everyone appreciates Adrianna’s gift of plain speaking. Slash moves to stand behind Adrianna.

  “I don’t envy you, Red,” he offers.

  “She is a fierce Alpha female, and I am deeply pleasured she is my mate.”

  “Yes,” Quillon says slowly, his strange eyes holding Slash’s. “She is young to be carrying.”

  “True,” Slash replies in more sigh than word.

  A sudden grins lights Quillon’s face. “But it is very good to have a pregnant female in our pack.”

  “Very good indeed,” Susan heartily agrees, coming to stand behind the couple and taking Adrianna’s hand.

  “I would like to offer my apologies that I’m late. We—” Quillon seems to pause, but Adrianna interjects, “Dare told us about the females. That they were roaming around? That’s utterly weird.”

  Quillon shakes his head, their posturing seemingly forgotten. “Not weird—dangerous. I have taken the females under my protection.” He cups his chin, bright-red hair flaming as the last tick of sunlight sinks low through the windows, swallowing the day whole and leaving only inky blackness pressing against the glass. “I’m troubled by the one female. She is so vulnerable.”

  “Why?” Adrianna asks, and her question is shared by Slash.

  “Because she was turned, not born.”

  Slash and Adrianna exchange a glance. “No,” they say at the same instant.

  Adrianna gives Quillon a sharpened look. “What’s her name?”

  His dark eyes rove her face.

  Slash pulls her tighter against him.

  “Jenni.”

  Adrianna pales before his eyes, beginning to slump in Slash’s arms. Voices whirl around them.

  He understands that pregnant Were can sometimes suffer vertigo in the early stages.

  But Slash thinks the surprise of the news has been too much as he tenderly scoops his mate into his arms.

  Far too much.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Bray

  Bray turns around, leaning his arms on where the car door window meets the roof. “Listen, fuckers...”

  He pulls a deep drag from his smoke, and Earl’s nose wrinkles from his shotgun position in the car they hoisted.

  He’s already switched plates.

  The cops weren’t going to find him easily. Hell, Bray knows how to jack cars. He saw it on YouTube.

  Grinning, he blasts the smoke over the roof of the car. “I’m gonna go in there with this pic of my kid.” He holds up a photo of his little girl. With dark golden-blond hair and large dark eyes, she kind of looks like his cunt-ex.

  Oh well.

  He knew she was his—she smelled like him.

  And one thing he’s learned being a werewolf is that his nose is always right. Sometimes, if he really wants to know the truth, he just closes his eyes and lets his nose tell him the story.

  Right now, they’re parked in front of Devin’s parent’s house. They’ve never met him. Don’t know him.

  He and Devin just got high together, and when she was really hosed with coke or whatever he shot her up with, he would fuck her.

  Worked awesome.

  Until she got clean.

  That pissed Bray off. He liked fucking her. He especially liked it when she wasn’t really aware of being fucked. Kind of rapey. That’s one of his primo kinks.

  He doesn’t even feel bad that he nailed her when she was barely eighteen and got Devin hooked on the prize as fast as he could manage.

  He’d finally gotten over her abandoning him and had even kind of forgotten all about her. Then fliers of her started showing up with the word “reward” on them, and Bray had watched her parents freaking out over her “disappearance.” He’d carefully fed them false info, sending pictures that confirmed their worst suspicions, but were no longer true.

  It was just that entertaining.

  Devin was alive and well, looking goth and working at Mickie D’s. Not anymore, he bets.

  Nope, she ran.

  And he was chasing.

  Bray drops the burning cig on the ground and crushes it with the toe of his boot.

  The check is due, and her parents are going to pay.

  Bray strides to their front door, his lips twisting into an ugly sneer of disapproval.

  Devin must have been one of those white-privilege bitches who had to rebel or some shit.

  Her parentsʼ digs are fine. Sort of McMansion style. He had to climb a million fancy poured-concrete steps to arrive at a tall double door with etched-and-frosted-glass doors with leading bordered, beveled diamond shapes.

  Inside, a crystal chandelier that weighed more than him, Earl, and Billy put together, hung on a shiny silver chain, dripping with a gazillion crystals.

  Bray stabs the subtly lit doorbell, and a loud chimes sound.

  Come on, come on... He all but taps his foot.

  He’s managed to score some coke, and he’s feeling high, crisp and bright, like a new penny just shot out the ass of Fort Knox.

  Yeah, Bray is ready.

  An older chick comes to the door, gazes through the sidelight, and opens the door.

  Classy bitch.

  Not like Devin, but maybe how Devin would’ve been had she not dyed her hair emo black, stabbed her earlobes with spikes, and worn ten pounds of eyeliner.

  Bray just liked fucking her. But seeing her mom made him realize Devin could be pretty without all the crap.

  “Hello?” she says with the voice of the elite.

  Bray is hell on wheels at bringing that down a notch.

  Her eyes travel his outfit and find him lacking. No problem. He’s got the ace in the hole for her hesitation.

  Whipping out the picture of Ella he snagged from Devin’s apartment, he holds it up in fron
t of her face.

  Devin’s mom scrutinizes it.

  He knows when she sees the resemblance. When she puts together that she’s looking at her flesh and blood.

  “Please come in,” she says finally. Not like she wants to let his ass inside, but because she must.

  Devin’s mom doesn’t know she’s just let in her killer.

  Bray smiles, and he bets if he were to look in a mirror, it’d be slightly wolfish.

  “Lots of roosters around, Bray,” Earl says nervously.

  Bray bestows a brain duster on the dumb fuck. Wow, the shit I put up with. It amazes even him.

  The hair at the back of Earl’s head now stands on end, giving him the ridiculous look he deserves. Trying to flatten his hair, Earl grumbles, “I fucking hate those.”

  “Then stop telling me shit I already know. I got that there are other werewolf dudes running around.”

  “They smell like ass,” Billy comments, picking his nails with a knife.

  Annnddd... here they are. Bray always knew there were two packs. One up there on the Olympic Peninsula, which he steered wide fucking clear of since the MacKenzie bullshittery, and one down south by the Tacoma-Narrows bridge clusterfuck.

  He and his boys have done just fine in between the two hot spots for the last four years.

  In fact, he hasn’t been back to downtown PT since the MacKenzie thing and the werewolf shit. Bray figures he’s lucky to be alive, even if he is a fucked-up... whatever he is.

  Now Bray is doing the opposite of what he and his boys have been doing to remain on the down low all this time—driving toward his kid like a freight train.

  No bitches are going to keep Bray from what’s his. Even other male werewolves.

  He’s going to pick her up.

  “I don’t know, Bray,” Earl says with his hair still standing straight up.

  ʼTard. Bray jerks a pack of smokes out of his jacket pocket. One slides out, and his lips capture the butt. He lifts his lighter. Flame on.

  After a deep drag, Bray shoots the stream of smoke into the air.

  “Why don’t you fucking announce us?” Billy says, mouth agape.

  Bray gives him the eyeball once-over. He’s a skinny guy, but he’s wiry as fuck and ready to roll with his fists. Billy is one crazy mofo who will commit to anything, no matter how ugly, no matter what.

  “I’m masking our scent, bright one.”

  Billy’s grin is sudden. “Nice. Thought you’d lead ʼem right to us.”

  “How can you stand doing that. It’s like ash in my nose.” Earl cups his elbows, looking around the parking lot.

  A beat up sign that reads Arletta Store swings in the breeze. The letters are so faded that even with his enhanced vision, Bray has to squint to make them out. It juts out from a crappy 1950s building that probably was the only gas station for the whole town seventy years ago.

  Now that they’re in Gig Harbor, there’s every chance they’ve lost the element of surprise. Smoking’s easy when weighed against getting another pack of wolves on their asses. Like Scarface. A few of them, and they would lose more than the fight.

  They would die.

  Bray doesn’t lie to himself. He knows that his two buddies are loyal, and as crazy as Billy is, he did get his clock cleaned by a box of tampons.

  He licks his lips, remembering the scent on that bitch at Denny’s. God damn was she ripe. Like food, pussy, and a freshly snorted line all on two legs.

  Bray wants in. Female werewolves are like the best bump on the planet. He has to find a way to get him a slice of that pussy pie to go and grab his kid. Multi-fucking-task.

  “I’m fucking starved,” Billy comments, flicking his knife closed and eyeing up the establishment that has neon signage blaring the beer brands, pressed against the grimy glass windows.

  Bray’s not interested in beer. He likes drugs, food, and pussy. Everything else is just shitting and sleeping. Hell, he did that career-style when he was human. He isn’t that anymore, though, and Bray’s going to make the most of things.

  He’s an opportunist. The order isn’t important—he’ll take any of those three according to how circumstances pan out.

  Clamping down on the cig, he stuffs his hand down his front pocket and pulls out a wad of money.

  “Love the way Devin’s parents coughed up the bank,” Earl says, eyes on the cash.

  Bray does too.

  They were unfortunately swimming in a pool of their own blood at the moment. Fine by him, though. It was great to do Devin’s parents, especially the mom.

  She fought like a wildcat.

  But really, it was a lost cause. He was strong before, but sometimes subduing the bitches he wanted to bang took some effort.

  Not anymore.

  Being supernatural has its bennies.

  Unleashing his anger on somebody felt fan-fucking-tastic.

  Especially after Denny’s.

  Hiking a chin in Earl’s direction, he says, “Make yourself useful. Get some grub.”

  “Damn,” Earl mutters, “you don’t like the shit I get. Ever.”

  Bray chuckles. “Don’t make dumb choices. Like those fucking pink coconut things. They taste like ass, and they don’t give us the fuel.”

  Small complaint: Bray isn’t a health freak. But his body demands decent food. Junk food and sugars burn down in fucking seconds. Food from a dump like this needs to be jerky, nuts, and sometimes a protein shake. Sucks.

  The fucking constant fuel grind. Food is now king.

  “Yeah,” Billy says, inserting his unnecessary agreement. Last time Earl bought the food, he spent it on Slurpees and cake shit. Not only did it taste bad—because now he can taste chemicals inside anything, including water—he was hungry ten minutes later.

  “And water bottles,” Billy says.

  Bray hikes his palm, and Billy high-fives him. “Yeah, fuck the city shit.”

  Earl looks around. “Doubt it’s city, too rural.”

  Maybe, but Bray doesn’t want to chance the acrid smell and taste of chlorine and an animal that died half a year ago bleeding through the supply via tap water.

  Hard pass.

  “I can smell water,” Earl says.

  Probably, interestingly enough, they were all different with their sensitivities. Sure, they all had keen fucking noses, but Earl, they’d found, was in another category.

  He was their own personal water witch.

  He knew where water was, how clean it was, and what the source was. Same with food.

  Earl told them when something wasn’t safe to eat for the weirdest reasons.

  Like the time when they were going to get free steak. Earl had said no, because the meat was filled with adrenaline from when it was butchered. Said it wasn’t pure enough to eat. That meat tainted by extreme fear was bad for them.

  Billy and Bray thought he’d lost it.

  Then they had a taste—and puked for hours later.

  Made them believers. But the dumb fuck would sometimes want to get the fucking shit dessert treats. Earl logic.

  Bray holds up a palm. “I believe ya. But right now, I could lick the sweat of Billy’s balls here.”

  Billy scowls.

  Bray guffaws. When he gets control of himself, he says, “Just get the water. We’ll figure out a permanent water source after.”

  And a bank.

  Bray had a lot of money to deposit. And he had a feeling he was going to be hanging around in these parts for a while.

  Even if there were other wolves.

  No. Fucks. Given.

  Leaning against the beater they lifted, Billy and Bray smoke cigarettes, waiting for Earl to get groceries or whatever shit they offered in a small store like this one.

  Bray tips his head back, smelling the sea not too far away. Beneath that, he smells the werewolves.

  Suddenly, his head jerks up.

  Billy’s head whips to his. “What?”

  “I think...” Bray shakes his head as though clearing it. “I smel
l that bitch.”

  Billy’s smile is slow, brows dropping. “Which one?”

  He holds back from slapping the back of Billy’s head like he did Earl’s. Billy is not Earl. There could be an issue.

  Bray gives Billy the “you’re dumb” look.

  “What? Is it the bitch that beamed me with the twat corks?”

  Bray cracks a laugh. Billy was entertaining for sure. “Um, I don’t know.” He tosses a perfect smoke ring in the air just as his gut lets out a howl of protest.

  “Damn, you are starving.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think I’m past starving. My stomach’s digested its own spine by now.”

  Bray grunts assent. “Naw. It would be a stroke of luck if we hit all the bowling pins in the same area. But I’m smelling my kid—and Devin. That Jenni cunt is hard to scent.”

  “Probably because she was just turned. Hard to scent turned.”

  Bray agrees. Born werewolves smell strong.

  They haven’t run into too many females. But female Were always scent like the best drugs ever.

  He and his buddies are on their own, so they don’t have the werewolf bible or something. It’s all been guesswork, trial and error, and speculation. He and the boys don’t know dick about this species they’re now a part of.

  Bray’s not dumb, though, so he knows that females of their kind are rare. Bray figures the females are guarded closely. And those fuckers that turned him and killed his other two buds, they took exception to them taking turns on MacKenzie even though she was a human.

  Bunch of fucking werewolf cock-blocks.

  Earl exits the store with a bunch of goodies and a big grin on his face. With his typical non-discretion, he shouts,

  “Guess what?”

  “Why don’t you fucking alert the media, huh?” Billy says.

  He holds up the bags of food, ignoring their agitation. Handing him a fill-up ticket from the gas station, Bray digs his hand around the bag and finds some jerky. He takes it out and tears off a hunk, chewing thoughtfully. “Scented the bitches,” he remarks between stuffing his craw.

  “Yeah, I know,” Earl says, shoveling Planter’s peanuts into his face.

  “Speak, fucker,” Billy says before downing a half bottle of water, Adam’s apple working up and down.