by Alisa Woods
He’d gone after Isabel, trying to smooth things over and explain how he was just helping Julia tame her wolf, but Isabel insisted it was fine. It was obvious she really didn’t want to talk about it. He couldn’t tell if he had hurt her feelings or not—if she trusted him or not—or really anything at all. She was a locked up tight, completely closed off to him, and he hated that—the idea that she might be jealous twisted him inside out. He couldn’t tell if the feeling tormenting him was guilt… or fear of losing her… or what. Nothing had happened between him and Julia—but not for lack of desire on his part.
Given twenty seconds more time, he would have been kissing her.
Jesus H Christ. He was so messed up with this.
He’d hidden in his room for an hour, sorting this out, but it was mid-afternoon already, and Stefan had the patrols set up and running. Marco needed to be out there, showing his pack that he was on top of this new plan to keep everyone safe with a constant, vigilant monitoring of the territory.
He’d decided to take Julia with him as he ran a perimeter patrol, just to have some normal time with her clothes on, for God’s sake. And hopefully, a chance to explain the situation with Isabel. But for the last half hour, as they strolled his territory, passing boarded-up businesses long closed down and seedy tenements filled with his pack members, Julie was the opposite of chatty—she’d barely said two words since they left the shelter, just stared around her with wide eyes and sent him occasional, jittery looks. He slowly realized that his home wasn’t the kind of place someone like her would want to visit, much less live. And that stirred up another whole bubbling set of emotions deep inside him—mostly anger that his people had been pushed to the margins of society. They lived like this because they had to, not because they wanted to.
And he was damn proud of what they had accomplished, in spite of that. Society cast off shifters, fired them from their jobs, abandoned their children… and he and his pack worked hard to keep the people society rejected safe and fed. It wasn’t easy—at all—but it had to look pretty meager in Julia’s eyes.
It disturbed him that he actually wanted to impress her.
Marco gestured to Meredith’s grocery store—really her mate, Tom’s now. “This is one of the few businesses still going in our territory.” He left out that Meredith had been killed basically for having a shifter-run business.
“So, did you talk to Isabel?” Julia asked, completely ignoring his attempt to give her some kind of a tour and diving right into it.
He snarled, not quite able to keep his frustration in check. “Yes, I talked to her. Not that it’s any of your business.”
She gritted her teeth and stared forward. “Yeah, well, you made it my business when I was the one you were caught messing around with.”
He pulled her to a stop near a four-way intersection with the main road. They were skimming the edge of his territory, right where it met up with Cruz’s. “Messing around? We were not messing around.”
“Really?” She leaned back, folded her arms, and gave him a skeptical look that had him flushing hot and cold. “So I was just imagining all that sexual tension and nakedness?”
The flushing heat found a home on his face. Was all the attraction he felt for her one-sided? He clenched his fists. “I was trying to help you tame your wolf.”
She softened her stance and flung her hands out. “And I appreciate that. Really, I do. But you could have outsourced that little task to one of your pack members if you wanted to. This girl thinks you’re supposed to be her mate, so what are you doing with me?”
It was a seriously legit question—and one he couldn’t answer without admitting things he didn’t want to admit.
He looked away, staring back at his territory, with its dilapidated exteriors and crumbling lives inside. None of that was any excuse for not doing right by Isabel. The opposite, really—she had helped him build everything they had here. He debated just blowing off this entire conversation, not to mention the patrol, and heading back to the shelter, but Julia was a wildcard—he didn’t know what she might say or do there, either. And he didn’t want her storming off and confronting Isabel, or God knew what else. This was on him, and if he didn’t face it, things might get even worse.
He turned back to her.
She was examining him carefully, calmly waiting for his response.
“Isabel is my friend,” Marco said. “She was one of the women was forcefully mated to the prior alpha. That asshole abused her, for a long damn time.”
“And then you killed that guy,” Julia said, encouraging him to go on.
He hesitated. Maybe he could tell her—this girl from out of nowhere—the thing that had been troubling him. The thing he couldn’t tell anyone else in this pack. Because she wasn’t in his pack… and probably never would be.
“Yes, I killed her mate, and that released Isabel from the magic that held her bonded to him. The mating bond forced her to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. And that makes me… responsible for her.”
Julia frowned. “Seems to me like you already did her a solid. I mean, if it were me, I’d be super grateful, but I wouldn’t figure that you owed me something more. Definitely not being my mate.”
“It’s not like that.” Marco shook his head, frustrated that he couldn’t articulate this very well. “I killed her mate, but I told her up front that she did not have to mate with me. That’s how it worked in these packs, traditionally, at least in the shifter gangs around here. You killed the male, you took the females he’s mated to. It’s barbaric and something I didn’t want to continue, so I told her explicitly that I would not take her as a mate. But then…”
Julia’s eyebrows lifted. “Oh. I see. Then things got complicated.”
Marco nodded, embarrassed because in retrospect it seemed like he should have kept Isabel completely off-limits at all times. Like he had with the rest of the unmated females. “It just happened, okay? I didn’t really mean for it to, but… at the time…”
Julia smirked. “It seemed like a good idea?”
Marco huffed a small laugh. “Yeah. It seemed like a really good idea at the time.”
Julia laughed, and something squeezed tight deep in his belly. Man, he really liked the sound of that. Way more than he ought to.
“So how often was it a really good idea?” She was smiling, and he liked that, too.
He cringed a little. “We only made out a few times—really, only a handful—and it became this sort of strange relationship where we were friends most of the time, and then every once in a while…” This sounded worse the more he explained it.
But Julia just nodded. “Every once in a while, you needed to let off a little steam.”
Relief was like a flood through him, draining away some of the guilt. “Yeah. Exactly like that. Like I said, she’s my friend. And I love her… as a friend. I just don’t know how to tell her that.”
She scrunched up her face. “Jesus, Marco, is she really your friend? Then tell her. She should know.”
His shoulders dropped. She was right, of course. “Yeah, I know. I just…” He peered into Julia’s earnest gaze, her pretty brown eyes. Could he say it? Was it the right time? “I’m just feeling a lot of conflicted things right now.” Even just calmly talking to her—about Isabel of all fucking things—made him want to pull Julia into his arms and kiss the hell out of her. Did she not feel it? Was this all his own misery in his own head?
Julia nodded. “It’s this thing where you have to pick a mate, right? That’s what makes it complicated?”
Not exactly. She was what made a complicated. “Julia, I’d really like to—” But he was cut off by Julia’s gaze wandering to something over his shoulder.
Something in Cruz’s territory.
Marco twisted to look—a male shifter was dragging a woman by the arm. Marco recognized the gang tat on his shoulder, a snarling wolf with his fangs bared—it was Henry, Cruz’s beta. The woman resisted briefly, and the man hauled back and
smacked her straight across the face, hard enough to send her to the pavement.
Fuck. Marco’s wolf surged under his skin, but before he could do anything, Julia shifted into her wolf form and bounded after them.
Right into Cruz’s territory.
Holy crap.
Marco took off after her, but her wolf had a head start and was faster than his human form. He didn’t want to shift unless he had to. Before he got there, she leaped up and attacked the man. She’d taken him by surprise, so she had a fighting chance, but the man quickly recovered, shifted into wolf form… and then she had no chance at all.
Fuck.
Marco shifted and launched himself into Henry’s hulking black wolf before he could sink his fangs into Julia’s side. Marco knocked Julia aside, and he and Henry wrestled and tumbled across the pavement, snarling and digging claws into each other, tearing out flesh and going for the throat. Cruz’s beta had every right to kill Marco on the spot—he’d crossed the boundary line into their territory, and that meant fair game for anything—but if Marco lost this fight, he wouldn’t be the only one who would lose. Julia would get sucked into Cruz’s pack as spoils of the fight, and her treatment would be no better than the woman still sprawled on the pavement next to them. Probably worse. And he knew the depths of horror that could reach.
He’s already killed one alpha because of it.
Julia’s wolf had pulled back at first, but now she kept coming at them, snarling and nipping, trying to insert herself into the fight.
Stay out of this, he sent the thought to her, angrily. She would just get them both killed. But he could tell by the wildness in her eyes that she wasn’t entirely under control—her wolf had gone after this guy because he was an asshole abusing a woman, and Marco couldn’t blame her for that. She had great instincts. She was simply no match in this fight, and he wanted to get them both out alive.
She finally pulled back, so Marco could focus on taking down Cruz’s beta. Marco was strong—he had the submission bond of hundred wolves feeding his magic and his strength—and it was precisely this sort of thing that kept him in power. He could have easily taken this guy if he wasn’t distracted. Now that he could focus, he ripped a large chunk out of the man’s side with his fangs, then went for the throat, clamping down hard around it. The beta’s growls of anger quickly turned into yelps of pain and fear as Marco squeezed with the intent to kill. The beta struggled against him, but he was quickly losing.
Marco yanked hard, and he tasted the man’s blood in his mouth.
Henry’s body went limp.
Marco growled his triumph, then released the man to step back.
He shifted human again, his naked body now covered with the man’s blood. He wiped his face and stared at what he had done. Cruz’s beta wasn’t dead yet—but he sure as hell was on the express train to getting there. Within minutes, he would bleed out. He needed a healer.
Fuck.
They were on the wrong side of the line, and he had almost killed a rival pack member.
Julia managed to shift back to human and was scrambling to get her clothes on, but she was horrified by what lay in front of her.
Marco had killed a man.
The man was sprawled out on the pavement in his wolf form, covered in blood and not moving. Marco had shifted back to human, but the man’s blood was all over his face and chest, as he stood naked in the street. The girl that Julia’s wolf had gone nuts over, trying to save her, was still cowering on the sidewalk, looking in horror at the dead man. Or maybe he was just dying, not completely dead. Julia couldn’t tell which—there was so much blood—but if he wasn’t yet, with all that blood loss, he had to be dead soon.
The muscles in Marco’s shoulders rippled as his claws came out and retracted again. He stood over the man, staring at him. Then suddenly, he turned and ran towards Julia. She gasped her surprise, but she wasn’t afraid, just wondering what the hell he was doing. Only he wasn’t looking at her at all—he was going for his clothes. When he got there, he didn’t even pull them on, like Julia had, in her silly horror at being outside, naked in public, even if a man was dying in front of her. Marco simply dug through his clothes until he came away with his phone.
“Stefan? I need you to grab Maria and get your ass over here.” Marco’s voice was half growl. He glanced at Julia. “No, I’m fine. Julia, too. But we’re in Cruz’s territory, and I may have just killed his beta.” Marco held the phone away from his ear for a split second, then brought it to his mouth and shouted into it. “Well, he’s going to be dead for sure, if you don’t get your ass over here with the healer. Corner of Duncan and Noboru. Now.”
He swiped the phone off.
Then he went to the woman who was still on the ground. She was starting to whimper, holding the back of her hand to her mouth. She flinched away from Marco as he approached. He held out his hands to show he wasn’t going to hurt her.
“Are you injured?” he asked.
She shook her head rapidly and scuttled backward. “He… he’s going to kill me. He’s going to kill me for this.” She pointed a shaky finger at the man on the ground bleeding to death.
“You’re under my protection now,” Marco said with a growl. He held one hand out to her but waited for her to decide whether to take it. “I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.”
But the woman just shook her head. “He’s my mate,” she whispered.
Marco dropped his hand and cursed. Then he turned back to glare at the man on the ground. “That’s not how a mate should be treated,” he growled.
Julia didn’t know if he was trying to convince the dying man or the woman.
Maybe he would just let the man die.
Julia shuffled up to him, hesitating, especially given that he was still naked and covered with blood. She kept her eyes on his face as she tried to get his attention. He blinked a little, like he had forgotten she was there.
When he turned fully to her, concern was written all over his face. “Are you all right?” He scanned her body with a scowl like he was looking for injuries. “You were in there, fighting with him, long enough that…” His gaze met hers again. “I was worried.”
Julia cringed. Her wolf had lost it and put them in danger—and possibly got another man killed. “I’m so sorry, Marco, I couldn’t help myself—I mean, I couldn’t stop my wolf. She just… she kind of lost it.”
Marco’s face softened, and he stepped closer. This time, when he touched her, there was no hesitation. He took her cheek in his hand, and holding her that way, pulled her closer. It was a possessive gesture, and her wolf was surging under her skin, responding to it.
He was close enough to kiss her, but he was covered in blood. “Don’t you ever apologize for doing the right thing.” His voice dropped to a husky whisper. “But I need to fix this now. I want you to stay back, cross back over into my territory, just past the edge of this corner, and stay there. No matter what you see or hear, I don’t want you coming back over that line. Understood?”
She nodded, even though she wanted to protest. She had gotten him into this mess—she would do anything he said to get them back out.
Marco dropped his hand from her face. As Julia moved back across the street, back to the corner Marco had indicated, two things happened at once—Stefan, a short woman, and three more pack members came running down the main drag from the direction of the shelter; and from the opposite direction, down the same street only in Cruz’s territory, a hulking wolf flanked by four more equally muscular men stalked toward them.
Marco was still in Cruz’s territory. Still naked and covered in blood. He went to stand next to the man’s unmoving body as Cruz and his men approached.
“I thought you were smarter than this, Marco.” The leader was older—Julia guessed maybe thirty-five—but he had a cruel set to his dark eyes. “But I see you on my side of the line, and that can only mean one thing—you’ve got some kind of death wish.”
Marco didn’t budge. “I had cause to
cross over, Cruz—one of your men was attacking an unmated female in my pack.”
Cruz arched an eyebrow as he looked at the downed man. “Are you saying my beta crossed over into your territory to snatch a girl?”
“You can’t tell me that surprises you,” Marco said calmly, then nodded in Julia’s direction. “I had every right to defend her. Your beta put up a good fight, but he was no match for me. We ended up on this side, a technical breach, but not one with intent. I’ve summoned the healer if you care to try to save his life.” Marco gestured to the short woman next to Stefan. The two of them, as well as the other three members of the pack, had formed a protective blockade in front of Julia, with Stefan and the healer in the lead.
Cruz squinted at the short woman, then glanced at his beta. “See if your healer can save him.”
Marco nodded to her, and she hurried over. She bent down and went to work right away, opening her black bag and pulling out what looked like a needle and thread and going at the man’s neck.
“I’m willing to overlook the incursion your beta made on my side,” Marco said calmly. “If you’re willing to overlook the fact that he might die for it.”
Cruz looked unimpressed. “Maybe my beta just liked what he saw.” He leered at Julia, and she felt the ugliness of it, even behind four massive shifter men protecting her.
“She’s not up for negotiation.” Marco’s voice was ice cold.
The healer stood up, hands covered with blood. She shook her head in Marco’s direction. Even from behind, Julia could see Marco’s shoulders tense.
Cruz noticed as well. He lifted his chin for one of his other pack members to check out his possibly-dead beta. The man loped over and kneeled down to the body, checking for a pulse. He shook his head back to his boss.
Cruz said, very slowly, “So. You killed my beta. On my territory.”
“He was on my territory first.” Julia could feel the tension in Marco’s voice like a live wire inside her, sparking alarm. She had done this—her lack of control over her wolf had set these two men, these two packs, against each other. Even if her wolf were doing the right thing, as Marco said, it wouldn’t mean much if it got Marco killed.