The Midnight Hunt

by L. L. Raand

  A faint dusting of red-brown at the waistband of the low-slung black pants she hadn’t bothered to close matched her auburn hair.

  Marissa’s gaze traveled slowly over Niki’s body. “Please tell me it’s her.”

  “No,” Jody said impassively, taking in the tightly muscled chest and abdomen, the strong thighs, the toned arms, the full sensuous lips.

  The rich taste of the Were still lingered even though she had fed from one of her human hosts after fleeing from Becca. Her bloodlust was unsated and now the memory of the orgasm this Were had induced, as hot and powerful as the essence Jody had consumed, taunted her. “No, not her.”

  “Pity. She’s an amazing specimen.”

  Jody climbed the stairs and stopped one step below Niki, their eyes level. “How is your Alpha?”

  “The medics are seeing to her.”

  “I need to speak with her.”

  “When she is available.”

  Jody frowned. “How serious is it?”

  “The Alpha is not your concern,” Niki said. “Especially considering she was shot on your doorstep when no one knew we would be there.”

  “I owe you much, Wolf, but you do not want to make an enemy of me.” Jody let the hunger rise and caught Niki’s gaze. Niki’s forest green eyes glazed. “You would do better to give me your neck again.”

  Niki shivered and fought for control. She was already close to frenzy from her fight with Drake and the constant lash of adrenaline as she worked to secure the Compound’s defenses. Seeing this Vampire, remembering her bite and the volcanic release that had stripped her of her last drop, made her stiffen and throb. She wanted teeth in her neck again and fire burning in her blood. Lust warred with her need to dominate and she growled, flashing a challenge.

  “Some other time,” Jody murmured, reading the need in the Were’s eyes that echoed her own. “I am here to see to my newling.”

  “We don’t know that yet,” Niki snarled.

  “She has not awakened?”

  “She’s been restless but still unaware.”

  “Good—then we can feed her as soon as she wakes.” Jody drew Marissa up beside her. “Dr. Sanchez has graciously volunteered to host if necessary.”

  “Come with me.” Niki abruptly turned and led them down the left wing and into a room lit by a single lantern perched atop a narrow chest of drawers. Wooden shutters had been closed to block out the emerging sunlight. Niki indicated the darkened corner where Lara lay under a thin sheet. “We can’t tell if she’s in pain. What should we be looking for?”

  Jody shook her head. “If she’s turned, you’ll know. Her hunger will be agonizing and she’ll attack any source of nourishment.”

  “But one of us can feed her, can’t we?” Niki asked.

  “How many of you have experience hosting?”

  “I don’t know. Some, definitely.” Niki’s jaw tightened. “That’s why I’m here. I’ll feed her.”

  “She’ll be difficult to control, frightened. And you cannot host again so soon.”

  “I’m a Were. We heal and regenerate quickly.”

  “I know that.” Jody nodded toward Marissa. “But it’s better she have an experienced host the first few times. After all, it’s more than just feeding, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll do whatever she needs,” Niki said with an edge. She’d never tangled with Lara, but she would give Lara her blood and her body and her throat if that was what she needed. They were centuri, oath-bonded to each other as well as the Alpha. “We won’t lose her.”

  “Even if she has turned?”

  Niki’s lip curled. “She is ours. Vampire or Were, it doesn’t matter.”

  “She’s lucky, then.” Jody studied Niki. “After sundown I can take her out to hunt. If she needs more than Marissa can give before then, I’ll use you.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  Jody cupped Marissa’s elbow and drew her close. “Are you?”

  “Very ready,” Marissa said, her eyes on Lara.

  “Leave us,” Jody said to Niki. “I’ll take care of her.”

  Niki hesitated, then reluctantly left.

  “She’s so beautiful,” Marissa murmured when Jody led her to the bed.

  Lara lay motionless, her chestnut hair contrasting sharply with her pale, gaunt face. Jody slid the sheet down and smoothed her hand over Lara’s chest to cradle her breast. Lara’s flesh was as flawless and smooth as ivory. A faint pulse, slow and distant, beat beneath her perfect breast.

  Jody said to Marissa, “Take off your dress.”

  Wordlessly, her avid gaze on Lara’s face, Marissa complied. She dropped the garment carelessly on the end of the bed and sat beside Lara.

  “Is she alive?” Marissa whispered.

  “Yes.” Jody stroked Lara’s angular jaw, running her thumb over her full lower lip. “Lara. Lara, wake up.”

  Lara’s eyes snapped open and rolled wildly. She lurched upward, snarling, no sign of reason in her whiskey-gold eyes.

  “Listen to me,” Jody said firmly, grasping Lara’s face in both hands, capturing Lara’s gaze with hers. “You will do as I say.”

  Lara writhed, struggling to break Jody’s grip. “Pain. Have to stop the pain.”

  “I know.” Jody tightened her hold, her fingertips digging into the angle of Lara’s jaw, forcing her mouth open. Lara’s incisors slid from their sheaths and her eyes flickered like flames against a midnight sky.

  “Marissa, touch her.”

  Marissa pushed the sheet completely aside and stretched out next to Lara’s naked body. She caressed the arch of Lara’s hip and pressed a kiss to the inner curve of Lara’s breast. Sliding her thigh between Lara’s, she took a nipple into her mouth. Her eyes glazed as she sucked and stroked her, her hips undulating slowly.

  Lara’s face was savage as she gripped Marissa’s hips, pulling her closer. Panting, she struggled to break Jody’s grip. “I want her.”

  “Your hunger is her pleasure,” Jody whispered, slowly releasing Lara. “Take what you crave. Give her what she needs.”

  Marissa looked up at Lara, her face dazed with desire. “Please.”

  Lara stared into Marissa’s dark, eager eyes and then at the pounding pulse in her neck.

  “I want you to taste me,” Marisa whispered, tilting her head to one side. “I want to feed you.”

  Lara plunged her incisors into Marissa’s neck. Marissa cried out, her back bowing. Jody knelt beside them, caressing Lara as she fed in wild, savage gulps. Lara thrust her thigh between Marissa’s legs, her powerful hips churning.

  “Oh, God, she’s so strong.” Marissa clutched Lara’s hand and pushed it into the cleft between her legs. “Touch me. Oh, please.”

  Growling, Lara rolled Marissa under her and straddled her thigh.

  She buried her hand inside her and fed voraciously, her arm pumping in sync with the convulsive waves in her throat. Marissa clutched Lara’s back, her pelvis lifting and falling, faster and faster.

  “I’m coming,” Marissa whimpered. “I’m coming.”

  Lara’s hips spasmed and she released, burying her incisors even deeper.

  Jody clamped her hand on the back of Lara’s neck and pulled her mouth away from Marissa’s neck. “Enough for now.”

  “No,” Lara snapped, the bones in her face moving beneath her pale skin. Part Were, part Vampire. “I want her.”

  “You’ve fed enough,” Jody insisted. “Feel her heartbeat—how fast, how thready. She can’t give more right now. Let her rest.”

  Lara struggled against Jody’s iron grip, rubbing her still erect clitoris over Marissa’s thigh. “Need more.”

  “Let her take me,” Marissa pleaded to Jody. She licked Lara’s neck and caressed Lara’s breasts with trembling hands. “Please. God. She feels so good. I’m on fire.” She worked her hand lower. “She’s so swollen still. She needs me.”

  “In a few minutes,” Jody repeated. Lara needed to learn to tolerate the hunger, control her bloodlust, or she would never
be safe around a host.

  Lara growled threateningly. Her face contorted in fury. “I want her now.”

  “Look at her,” Jody ordered. “She gave you life. You cannot take hers. Satisfy yourself another way.”

  The wild hunger in Lara’s eyes retreated and she braced herself on her arms over Marissa’s shivering form. Gently, she licked the puncture marks on Marissa’s neck until they closed. “Will you let me taste you later?”

  “Yes, oh yes,” Marissa cried, twisting her fingers in Lara’s hair.

  “Oh God yes, yes.”

  Lara moved lower, swirling her tongue over Marissa’s erect nipples until Marissa writhed. When Lara kissed her way down Marissa’s abdomen, Marissa reached fitfully for Jody.

  “Kiss me,” Marissa begged, pulling Jody down with a hand behind her neck. “Your eyes are so hungry. Let me feed you.”

  “Another day,” Jody whispered, kissing Marissa as Lara pressed her mouth between Marissa’s legs.

  Marissa jolted and came in Lara’s mouth, crying out her pleasure against Jody’s throat. Bloodlust carving away her reason, Jody snarled and struggled not to bury her mouth in Marissa’s neck.

  Before Marissa’s orgasm waned, Lara rocked to her knees and parted Marissa’s sex with one hand and her own with the other. Panting, she thrust her clitoris into Marissa’s center and pumped in short hard strokes.

  “Oh my God.” Marissa bucked in Jody’s arms. “Oh God, she’s making me come again.”

  Lara’s pelvis jerked and her face contorted in rage and pleasure.

  Groaning, she fell onto Marissa and bit her shoulder. The bite plunged Marissa into another convulsive orgasm and Lara spent herself in a series of hard thrusts between Marissa’s legs.

  “God, oh God,” Marissa murmured, stroking Lara’s damp hair.

  “You’re amazing. Incredible.”

  “I don’t know what I am,” Lara said bitterly, pushing herself up and off Marissa. Her eyes bleak, she stared at Jody. “I can feel you, like I feel the Alpha. What does that mean?”

  “I turned you,” Jody said. “We’re connected.”

  “Was I dead?”

  “Does it matter? Now you’re a living Vampire.”

  “No.” Lara pushed unsteadily to her feet. Naked, drenched in sweat and sex and blood, she said desperately, “I’m a centuri. I’m Pack.”

  “Yes, you are.” Jody fixed on Lara, and Lara, moaning softly, swayed toward her. Jody kissed her. “You are also mine.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Moisture dripped into Drake’s eyes and she rubbed her face against her upper arm. Her blurry vision wasn’t from the sweat running into her eyes, but from the tears she barely held back.

  The wounds in Sylvan’s chest and abdomen were like nothing she’d ever seen before. Far worse than Misha’s had been. Even the worst cases of gangrene had never been so completely destructive, so relentlessly nihilistic. The beautiful wolf was dying before her eyes.

  “We have to get the rest of the silver out of her,” Drake said. “Now. We’re out of time.”

  “I don’t know how,” Elena said desperately.

  Drake and Elena had probed the wounds for an hour, trying to locate and remove the silver bullets that were poisoning Sylvan. They hadn’t been able to find a single one.

  “The Alpha has always been the one to do this,” Sophia said from the head of the operating table where she monitored Sylvan’s vital signs. “Her fever is still climbing—I’ve never seen one so high. If we don’t do something, we’re going to lose her.”

  The leash Drake had kept on the beast inside of her snapped. Her wolf roared to life—part of her now, not some foreign being, but an intimate, integral part. Her very essence. And her wolf knew, just as she knew, as surely as she breathed, that Sylvan was hers, and she would not let her die.

  Drake didn’t see Sylvan lying on the table. She didn’t see the Alpha. She saw her own heart. And she saw an enemy. An enemy threatening to take from her everything that mattered. She would not surrender Sylvan to that enemy while her own heart beat. With a wild cry, she plunged her claws into the wound. The poison deep in Sylvan’s body, festering and vile, drew her like the feral scent of an intruder in her territory. She attacked without mercy, defending what was hers.

  Protecting the one most precious to her.

  She found the first bullet and ripped it free. Bright red blood bubbled out in her wake and Elena quickly pressed a clean bandage to the wound. Drake didn’t hesitate, but tore into the wound in Sylvan’s belly. She found a second bullet, then a third nearby.

  “That’s all,” Drake gasped. “How is she?”

  When no one answered, Drake looked up from the wounds and found Elena and Sophia staring at her with shocked expressions. She followed their stunned gazes and found that her arm had shifted again.

  She hadn’t felt it or intended it. She should probably be frightened, but she didn’t care what was happening to her. Sylvan was dying, and with her, Drake’s every reason for being.

  “Sylvan? How is she?”

  Sophia jerked back to awareness and quickly scanned the monitors.

  “Her fever is coming down. So is her heart rate.”

  “Look,” Elena said in amazement. “She’s healing!”

  Drake turned back to the gaping holes in Sylvan’s chest and abdomen. The necrotic tissue was receding, and healthy skin and fur were growing back. The wolf was healing. Sylvan would live. Drake’s vision dimmed and her legs trembled, and for a moment she thought she would fall. She gripped the table to steady herself.

  “We need to get her somewhere quiet. She might be disoriented when she wakes up.” Drake saw Sophia and Elena exchange worried glances. Sylvan had survived the fever, but would she emerge undamaged and in control of her wolf, the deadliest wolf in the Pack?

  Drake wouldn’t believe otherwise. She wouldn’t lose her now. “Get her ready to move. I’ll tell the others.”

  Drake stripped off her coverings and went out into the hall. Niki and Andrew crowded around, enclosing her. They needed contact, and she realized that she did too. She slung her arms around their shoulders.

  Their unyielding presence steadied her.

  “The Alpha?” Niki asked gruffly.

  “She’s healing. Now we just have to wait for her to wake up.”

  “Has she shifted back?” Andrew’s face was creased with fatigue and worry.

  “Not yet.” Drake knew they all shared the same unspoken fear. A rabid wolf could not shift form. “I’ll stay with her until she does.”

  “That’s dangerous,” Niki protested. “If she wakes up rabid—”

  “Would you have her fight this fight alone?” Drake asked softly.

  “She’s not alone, she has the Pack.”

  Niki’s eyes were tortured and Drake doubted she could survive Sylvan’s loss. The Alpha and her second weren’t mated, but they were bound almost as strongly. She caressed Niki’s face. “And your strength will help her. Hold on to your connection to her—” Drake scanned their faces. “She needs the Pack with her. It’s you she lives for. It’s you she needs.”

  “Not as much as you,” Niki murmured.

  “All of us,” Drake repeated. “Is the Compound secure? She’ll want to know.”

  “Yes,” Niki said, her voice stronger. “We’ve had a few reports of incursions in our Northern Territory, but that’s not unusual. The Blackpaws test our border defense regularly.”

  “What about Lara?”

  “She’s most likely turned,” Niki said, her eyes and voice devoid of inflection.

  “What will happen?” Drake asked.

  Niki shook her head. “I don’t know. She might lose some or all of her Were traits.”

  “Her turning could prevent her from shifting again?” Drake couldn’t imagine what that would do to a dominant Were like Lara, whose very purpose in life was to fight and protect her Pack.

  “She hasn’t shifted again since the Alpha called her wolf, rig
ht after she fed from the Vampire. She didn’t hold her wolf long, even then.” Niki hesitated, and then revealed a secret only a very few Weres knew. “Some Weres voluntarily blood-bond with Vampires. Most lose their ability to shift when they do.”

  “You mean they mate with a Vampire?”

  “Yes.” Niki grimaced. “They trade their most powerful gift to live with the dead.”

  “Maybe their love is stronger—more important—than even that,” Drake suggested gently.

  “It’s not love.” Niki couldn’t block out what was happening in Lara’s room, even though she’d retreated to another part of the building when she’d heard the human female’s cry of ecstasy and Lara’s roar of release. Her sex had tightened with a rush of pleasure and she was still ready. When Jody had fed from her, she’d burst more ferociously than she ever had before. The intensity was exquisite. Addicting. Even now she couldn’t think of it without needing desperately to release. “The Vampire is with her now. Let me help you with the Alpha.”

  “Yes.” Scenting Niki’s call, Drake said, “Once we’ve moved her, you should get some sleep. And take care of your other needs.”

  Niki’s eyes narrowed and her lip curled. For some reason, she thought of Sophia and quickly abolished the image. If she let Sophia feel her call, she could seduce her and Sophia would not resent her for it. But Sophia rarely tangled and when she did, she always chose a nondominant Were. Niki wouldn’t draw Sophia into a liaison she would not willingly have sought. Anya, on the other hand, was always willing.

  Niki’s clitoris twinged at the image of Anya’s mouth on her. “I won’t be far, if you or the Alpha need me.”

  “I know.” Drake started back to the treatment room when Niki grasped her arm.

  “When she wakes up, her hormone level will be astronomical—from her injury, from the danger to the Pack, from Lara. She’ll be in need.” Niki grinned ruefully. “You know what I’m talking about. The same thing is happening to you right now.”

  Drake couldn’t deny it. Her hours of fear and anxiety had kicked her entire system into overdrive. Her heart raced, her pulse pounded, her clitoris was stiff and throbbing. “Whatever she needs, I’ll take care of her.”