by Lucy Lyons
“No, I’m just a witch.” She sat on the leather sofa closest to her and motioned for me to take a seat as well. “But the alpha for the pack here was held up at class, so he’s running a few minutes behind. I figured I was a good neutral party to referee, in case you were itching to get your ass handed to you by the alpha here, or were deluded enough to think you could take the pack from him.”
I shook my head and sagged into the leather chair behind my knees. “No, nothing like that.” The wolf pressed against my mind with increasing urgency. My mate was nearby, closer than I’d ever been to her, and the beast would not be ignored. “I must go to her, before the wolf takes me and I can’t come back.” I thought I’d said it to myself, or muttered it under my breath, but in an instant, the witch was off the seat with knives in her hands. I laughed aloud, pressing my hands to the sides of my head. I hadn’t even realized she was armed.
Panic washed over me as she lowered her shields and released her magic over me, adding to the electricity that sparked over my skin, prickling and weakening my control. My shielding fell apart completely and I saw the room and the witch for all the power she had, more than I’d ever seen in a human before. She held her knives at the ready and pushed at me with her energy and my beast responded, tearing at my insides with metaphysical claws as I tried to push it back enough to make her stop.
I slid my palms over my eyes and groaned aloud as the beast ripped into my thoughts and memories, laying waste to my sanity and leaving nothing but shreds of thought behind. The pain of my wolf fighting to get free tore a gasp from my throat and I went to my knees, as he strained to slash me apart and burst out of my skin.
“This place is too much. Stop. Stop witch, or I can’t be responsible for what happens next.” I hissed the words, my mouth already feeling too full of teeth for a normal human face.
“You don’t have much control, for an alpha,” she replied, and the press of magic on my skin eased up by half.
I nodded and shuddered, pushing my palms to the floor and releasing my own power in increments as she pulled back hers. The blue sparks that floated behind my eyes began to dissipate and I took a dee breath through my mouth, releasing it through my nose. “I don’t have enough control to be in a place like this, but I must find my mate. Surely you understand the severity of my situation.
“I think I do, but I had no idea it was anything more than a legend,” the wolf named Steven gasped. “You’re going feral, aren’t you?”
I nodded and struggled to my feet and Steven patted the leather easy chair, motioning for me to sit. “I hadn’t found my soul mate, and the beast began to take over. My pack isn’t safe from me until we hunt together. Steven coughed and nodded toward the door, where a broad-shouldered man with a wide grin was watching us.
“My God, you look terrible man,” he said, crossing the room in a few strides. He took my hand and shook it enthusiastically before releasing me. “Sorry, I’ve never seen a full grown royal alpha before. I’m kind of excited.”
“A royal?” I managed to ask, and he laughed. “The only werewolf born to our pack is only a toddler, even though she’s adorable, and my own mate is pregnant with twins, but they aren’t due for a few more weeks, goddess willing.”
“Your pack is entirely made up of survivors?” my mind whirled. Even the wolf was quiet for a moment. “Well, that’s . . .sobering.”
“Your pack isn’t?” The wolf leaned on the arm of the sofa next to the witch. “I thought we were doing something so unheard of, and there’s entire packs made of royal blood . . .”
I shook my head. “What you’re doing is unheard of, alpha. My pack stays hidden from most of the preternatural world for a reason.”
“Clay,” the wolf replied, and I started.
“What?”
“My name’s Clayton. You can call me Clay. I only go by alpha on formal occasions, or if I don’t like you.” I laughed and nodded then stood on shaky legs, reaching my hand out to him.
“Orson. But you might not like me much when you fully understand why I’m here.”
“I am curious how your mate could be among us, when you’re the first new wolf to visit in ages.”
I paused, choosing my words carefully. “You seem to know something of the curse of the royals already.” He nodded in agreement and I continued. “I almost killed my younger brother, a wolf who can’t shift, can’t heal wounds he received in a terrible accident just before his first shift was to happen.”
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry. Is he . . .?” The witch began and then cut herself off and waved in apology, gesturing me to continue.
“I was able to stop myself in time, only ‘cause he’s my brother, my responsibility since the same accident killed my parents.” The alpha’s eyes widened. “Yeah. It must have been some accident, right? They were burned up in a bonfire I could see from my room two blocks over.”
The witch came to my side, looking past me. She placed her hand on my arm and I felt some of my pain leak into her. “Sh, don’t move. This is just to make the telling easier, Cajun.” I breathed in shakily and continued.
“I dreamed of my mate, but my pack is divided by suspicions and an alpha who is, ah . . . unwilling to admit his growing weakness.” I laughed and the sound was harsh in my throat. “He’s over a hundred years old, you’d think he’d be happy to retire.”
The two wolves in front of me exchanged a glance. “We’ve experienced alphas who have lost their sense of ‘the greater good,’” the giant called Steven interjected. His alpha nodded and huffed, pushing himself off the arm of the couch and paced.
“You dreamed of your mate a female from my pack, and you want to take her back to a dangerous situation?”
“I don’t know that I can go back to the pack, but at least I have to retrieve my brother . . .”
“Because you left him behind.”
“Because he’s trapped in his wheelchair and I had to run, Clay. What was I supposed to do?”
He stopped pacing and sighed. “Well, shit. OK then. Who was the woman you dreamed of?”
“You’ll help me?” I asked, holding my breath.
The witch laughed. “That’s kind of what we do around here.”
“But,” I hesitated. “The vampires will let you help a wolf? I won’t stay captive here.”
She laughed aloud, throwing her head back before the grin faded from her face and she gaped at me. “You’re not kidding, are you?”
“We destroyed the vampires of Louisiana long ago, before my parents’ time, but I felt them. I saw that female at the door . . .” The wolf was pacing in me again and I fought to keep my temper, too close to finding the woman of my visions to blow it. “This is a Venus flytrap, isn’t it? A sweet trap for humans to be consumed by your vampires.”
A chill crawled down my spine and I glanced at the door to see a pale face with eyes that burned black and emerald beneath jet black hair. “I certainly hope not, sir alpha,” he drawled with a smirk. “Killing the patrons is very bad for business.”
“Business.” I scoffed. “And what business do you have with me, vampire?” Automatically, I stepped in front of the only human in the room, even though she was probably more powerful than us all. Even powerful humans are bound in fragile skin, and she’d been kind to me.
“Perhaps you can let go of my wife, and we can discuss both my business, and yours.” His eyes narrowed in warning, but his tone was calm. “The world you are in now, is nothing like the one you’re from, boy. Don’t base your judgments on the prejudices of your ancestors.
The witch patted my arm as she stepped around me and I glanced to see red fingerprints on her wrist. I blanched, and the vampire arched an eyebrow at me. “You must be in a world of trouble to have come so far without any idea what you’re doing,” he sighed. He spun on one heel and disappeared through the doorway, and Clay motioned me to follow. But if I did, would I find the mate I was searching for, or just a slow death at the hands of a vampire cult?
; Clay paused at the door and closed his eyes, reaching out to me with one hand. “Your power is fluctuating, violent and unpredictable. Let me help you.”
“You can control the beast of another alpha?”
He laughed abruptly. “Not one as strong as you, but I can do what Caroline did, and take some of that violence from you, make it easier for you.”
“Mon ami, do what you can. I can’t lose control, not with all those tasty humans smelling like a banquet just outside that door.”
I clasped the hand he offered me and felt magic that wasn’t wolf but called to my beast all the same. It calmed and soothed my wolf with promise of a good hunt, and was able to reign myself in more completely than I had in days.
“Better?”
“It’s good to feel normal,” I admitted. “But boy, you gonna have to teach me some of that, or at least tell me how you did it. Our Vaudun can’t even do that.”
“Voodoo isn’t the same, neither is herb witchery, which is what our pack witch practices. Caroline and I were vampire hunters. They breed their hunters to be psychic, to have certain abilities that help them track and kill revenants.”
“Y’all kill bad vampires?” I gasped, and he chuckled.
“We do when we can, but we have a sort of a truce with the hunters, we let them hunt the murderers among our people, and they leave us alone.”
I shook my head, still avoiding the last step that put me outside the door. “I don’t know how you can forgive the vampires for the murders of our kind, making them slaves . . .”
“Nicholas’s clan doesn’t practice those archaic and horrendous traditions, Orson.” He sighed. “Ancient human clans practiced human sacrifice, werewolves sometimes go feral, vampires are still learning how to coexist with all of the rest of us. It’s evolution alpha.” He jerked his head toward the pulsing lights and music in the club. “Welcome to the future.”
CHAPTER FOUR
I checked my guards, making sure the wolf was going to mind his peace and stay quiet for the moment, and then rubbed my damp palms on my khakis and followed Clay to the club’s main floor, jostling and bumping into humans who were already well on their way to the hangovers of the next morning.
“I can’t do this. With my wolf so separated from me, I feel like I’ve lost one eye,” I admitted to Clay as he ushered me through the crowd.
“Just a hundred feet more, and we’ll take you below, where it’s a lot quieter, and you can meet the members of my pack, or at least the ones who are working tonight.”
“Working. As in, jobs, that they get a paycheck for?”
“Well, yeah. We’ve got a lot of mouths to feed between the wolves, the wererats, the vampires, and the lesser Fae who’ve joined us. Everybody pitches in here or at Sanctuary.”
“The warehouse down by the water,” I mused to myself, and he nodded.
“Yeah, that’s the place.”
“There were children there, and strong magic . . .” my mind caught up to what he was saying. “Fae. Fairies? There are fairies in the human plain?” He grinned as we passed the stage, where vampires, ethereal in their beauty, gyrated in burlesque costumes for the humans. We stopped at a heavy wooden door and the smell of old death got stronger, forcing me to take shallow breaths to avoid taking in too much at once.
He gave me a look and I nodded, and he knocked on the door. As it swung open on iron hinges too ancient to have been hung when the club was built, my heart sped up. Among the aromas floating up from below was the perfume I’d followed from the docks to the club. I stepped through the door and raced down the steps, not bothering to wait for Clay. There was another door at the base of the staircase and a werewolf with an automatic weapon guarding it. My beast lashed out, raking my insides in frustration as I skidded to a halt and scented the air. She was close, and so was more magic, not death magic like the vampires, but the hot, living magic of shifters, at least a score of them, if not more.
“Woah there, bud, we take our security seriously here,” Clay said, placing his hand on my shoulder. “Just as we keep the humans above safe from magic-users and preternatural creatures, we keep our clan safe from hunters and enemies.”
I nodded and managed to force the wolf back but not as far as he had been, and now the smell of the redhead filled my nostrils, blinding me to almost every other smell in the place.
Perhaps if it hadn’t, I wouldn’t have reacted the way I did when the door was opened. But I was full of need and the only cure was suddenly less than a handful of feet from me, wrapped in the arms of another man. When he looked up at me with red eyes glowing with hunger, I lost my tenuous grip on reality and the beast rose up.
My skin split and reformed around longer limbs and my muzzle protruded from my face as canine fangs descended and I snarled, leaping at the vampire and knocking the female aside.
She cried out in alarm, and it was the same cry as my dream when she’d realized we were wrapped in the same vision. The distraction was brief, but I glanced back to see her staring on in shock and dismay as that thing in us, just like the something in me that knew she was mine, recognized me. Then, a fist met the side of my face and pain bloomed in my jaw. Before I could snap at the hand, several more grabbed me from behind and forced me to the floor. The last thing I saw was a booted foot coming down. Then I felt pain and saw darkness.
When I came to, I was in my human form, shirtless and chained to the wall of a cell, complete with a toilet and sink and a cot. Outside the bars of the cell Clay and the witch he’d called Caroline were leaning against the far wall, watching me. As I shook the chains and growled, Caroline pushed off the wall and approached the cell, a curious look on her face.
“How you feeling, big fella?” she asked, her expression not changing. It was one of curiosity, and concern, but not fear or anger.
“I’ve been better. Who do I get to thank for the boot to the face?”
“That would be Josiah, Orson,” Clay chimed in. “For what it’s worth, the claws across his throat left a gash that’s still healing, whereas you look good as new already.”
“Head hurts.”
“Yeah, buddy, it will for a bit. Caroline had to sedate you to keep you down until you changed back on your own. We couldn’t force the wolf down, not even with our combined power. Not even with Nick’s help.” Clay rubbed his hand over his face and sighed.
“Your affliction is every bit as terrifying as the stories make it out to be,” Caroline added.
I sat with my back to the wall, the chains rattling as I lowered my hands to my lap. “Did I hurt anyone?”
“Aside from Josiah, no, you didn’t. But despite what your feelings about vampires are, we care that he was almost killed.” Caroline’s voice went hard. “You don’t get to come into my kingdom and flout the peace we’ve worked so hard for.”
“It was never my intention to hurt anybody,” I sighed and hung my head. I’d arrived needing help, and ended up in a cell, chained like I had been by my own people. “Can I speak to her before y’all put me down? Make sure she doesn’t suffer for it?”
Caroline glanced back sharply and stepped out of the way for Clay to approach the narrow doorway. “Two things. First, we don’t put our own down for misunderstandings, or for being sick. We make them well, and we make them understand.”
“Sure thing, boss. And number two?” I asked, my throat tight in relief at not being on the list for execution.
“Do you think it will do her good or more harm to see you?” I shrugged, but his eyes were glued to mine, waiting for an answer.
“She was aware of my presence in her dream, and she recognized me, even after shifting. I saw it in her face,” I finally confessed, the ringing in my ears making it difficult to think clearly. “I don’t know how long it would take for the sickness to take her, but eventually, if she’s a royal, she’d succumb and become feral.”
“She’s not a royal. She was attacked when she was a child, but it was an attack.” I started and glanced between them.<
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“Are you sure? The curse only affects royals. It was the price our warriors paid to rid our territory of vampires forever. She can’t be my mate if she’s not a royal.”
I felt the power spike as Caroline stiffened and her nostrils flared. “Perhaps even the curse understands that your pack needs blood that’s a little less royal,” she huffed. I stared at her for an eternity before I understood why she was angry.
“Royal doesn’t mean worthy, witch. It simply means less human. The wolf from my dream was more beautiful and desirable than any female I’ve ever seen. I meant no disrespect.”
Clay nudged her and nodded. “We need to talk to the master of Seattle and my wolf and figure out what we can do for you, if anything. You just stay calm and I’ll try to get you out of those chains. No promises if you can’t get a handle on that wolf, though. I can feel it straining against the sedatives and your control from all the way over here.
I nodded, fighting the hopelessness that washed over me. Clay had looked me in the eye and told me he’d do what he could. The she-wolf had to come to me, didn’t she? She had to be feeling the same desperate pull that I felt, even in my cell. I closed my eyes and reached out for her across the iron and stone that separated us. Just like before, I saw where she was, as though I was standing behind her. She was alone in front of a mirror, and I as I watched her reflection in the mirror, she raised her eyes and looked back at me.
“Whatever you are, get the hell out of my head,” she hissed. “My alpha will protect me from you.”