by M. L. Briers
Blake was right. The ground came up to meet their bodies as they thrashed against each other, both trying for the upper hand upon impact. Blake felt every inch of that connection with the hard earth when it came, and he rolled with his assailant, his claws ripping through human flesh as they finally came to rest on the roadway. Blake could hear the vehicle moving away at high speed and cursed that he had surely lost the battle to get Nadia back.
His beast wanted the satisfaction of the kill. To rip and tear chunks from this Mutt until he barely resembled his now form, or any form. But that couldn’t be. He needed him alive, not completely whole, but alive nonetheless. Blake tore himself away from the Were and pushed his beast back. In mere seconds he had shifted back into his human form as the Were rolled and pushed up from the ground.
Blake wasn’t about to go another ten rounds with the guy. Kicking out, he planted his foot firmly in the Were’s face to keep him down, and then he landed as many punches as it took to keep his need to rip him apart sedated within him. When he finally noted that the guy was limp, he pulled back to make sure that he was also unconscious. Sated in his desire to cause the man as much pain as possible, but not satisfied because he wasn’t dead.
Colt rolled his eyes and panted with the pain of slowly extracting the bullets from his chest. Using his claws, he dug in either side of the open wounds and had slowly ripped two of the wooden bullets from his body before the sound of heavy steps greeted his ears. He turned his head slightly to see Blake, naked and carrying a guy over one broad shoulder up the road and groaned to himself. He didn’t have Nadia.
Colt ignored Blake for a long moment as he dug deeply within his chest again. The third bullet was lodged somewhere very close to his heart and he didn’t want to finish the job that the Were had started and end his life by being reckless. With his claws wrapped around the edges, he tentatively eased the bullet away from his heart. Only when the danger had past did he yank it out of his chest.
The sound of a heavy thud next to him made him shift his stance to the unconscious Human Were, bloodied and looking like a smashed watermelon beside him, and he raised just one brow towards Blake. Blake didn’t notice he was too busy yanking the bullet that resided inside his own body out. He needed to heal quickly if he was to go after Nadia.
“You brought me a present.”Colt’s sarcasm far outweighed his amusement at the situation. They were both injured and neither of them had Nadia. That wasn’t a good outcome in his book.
“Feed, but don’t kill him. We need information otherwise he’d already be dead.”Blake yanked the bullet out and tossed it away. His body ached like never before, but his pride hurt worse. He’d gone after Nadia and lost her. That didn’t sit right within him.
Colt didn’t need to be offered twice. With one hand he yanked the bloodied form towards him, with the other he grabbed the guy’s hair and yanked his head to one side, sinking his fangs into the vein at his neck and drinking his fill. He knew just how much to take to keep the Were subdued but not kill him, and he’d take every ounce of that blood.
Blake rested down on his heels and waited for the Vampire to finish feeding. His internal clock basically counted every second as one more than Nadia was getting further away from them. But the Vampire wasn’t a slouch. He took what he needed as quickly as possible and tossed the Were back away from him.
“Now it’s your turn to feed.”Colt offered Blake his wrist and saw the Lycan’s nose and upper lip turn up in the air. “We need you whole, it’s faster this way. We need everyone to get Nadia back.”Colt hadn’t bothered to wait for Blake to refuse. Instead he gave him logic and guilt and waited a few seconds for the Lycan to take the bait.
Blake wrapped his hand around Colt’s wrist and brought his flesh towards his mouth. He bit down into his flesh and tasted the Vampire’s sweet blood against his tongue. It wasn’t as bad as he had imagined it to be.
“No really, don’t be gentle. I’m just having a bad damn day anyway so…”Colt saw the light of amusement in Blake’s eyes as he took his blood, but it was quick to pass as the Lycan remembered there was a little Fae Witch out there that needed his help. Releasing his fangs he went to reach for the Were. “I’m healed, I’ve got him.” Colt wrapped his hand around the guy’s jacket and wrenched him from the ground. Tossing him over his shoulder, he knew that time was of the essence. One Fae had been captured and the pack was in line for another Werewolf attack in a couple of hours. There was no time to ponder what came next.
“Neve, you have to trust me, just as I did you when we met.” Nero growled down at his mate. Now wasn’t the time for her to go off half cocked and blinded by her loyalty to her sister. The Werewolves would be attacking and he couldn’t allow her to leave the safety of the cabin.
“Trust you?”Neve blinked in astonishment. “I trusted you to keep my sister safe and she isn’t safe, Nero.” Neve spat out her words with the disbelief in her heart. How the hell could he ask her to trust him now? Where the hell was Nadia? Not here, not safe…
She tried to sidestep him in the relative small space of the entrance hallway, but she didn’t get far. He blocked her exit with the sheer size of his body. His hands came down over her shoulders and he held her in place.
“Let them question the Were first. Then we go after Nadia…”Nero growled out with need for her to be reasonable. He could feel her emotions tail spinning in all different directions and he wanted to sooth her pain, but how the hell could he. Right now she wasn’t accepting anything from him, not even his counsel…
“Get out of my way…”Neve bit out between clenched teeth. Trying and failing to shake his hold on her body as his hands tightened into fists against her clothing. With one firm yank he wrenched her body to stillness within his grip. Her head tipped back and her eyes both accused and begged him for help.
“I’m not letting you leave here. This is what being part of my pack means. You’ll do as you’re told for the good of the pack and your own safety. Do you understand me?”His growl was all Alpha. His black eyes bore into hers. His will was pushed to the forefront of his very being and he commanded her to listen to his words. She fought against it with every fibre of her being, torn between the sense of his words and her need to find her sister.
“I can’t sit around and do nothing while Nadia is out there somewhere…”Neve felt him release one hand from her clothes, but she was still anchored in place with his other hand. Without using her magic his strength alone was too much to fight against. His hand palmed her cheek and his eyes softened as she glared up at him. Just his touch sent chills through her body and a need that had no place in that moment in time.
“I’m not asking you to do nothing. You and Natasha should try locating your sister through your magic. You can do that, can’t you?”He brushed his thumb down over the soft skin of her cheek and saw her blink a couple of times with her recognition of the mating pull between them. Her mind cleared of panic, her body unclenched from the raft of emotions that held it tightly in frustration and fear, and she felt the reality of his words sinking into her addled brain.
“I can do that.”Neve bit down on the need within her to find comfort against his body. To feel his strong arms pull her against his chest and to hear him tell her that everything was going to be alright. Nadia was out there with the Were’s and the Warlock, everything wasn’t alright.
Colt wasn’t particularly fond of torture of any kind. He’d lived long enough to see it over the centuries being perfected into an art form. For those who said torture didn’t work, they were idiots. You just needed to know the right kind of torture to use on your captive, and Colt was good at figuring that out. Be it mental or physical, there was always a limit to what a man could take, and right now, in his weakened state, this Were was fast approaching that limit.
“You want to die. You want to just give up and allow death to claim you. But that’s not going to happen yet, Mutt. You’ll tell us what we need to know and then when all of the fighting is over, the
n we’ll end your suffering.”Colt was inside the Were’s mind. The man was too weakened to shift, too weakened to deny him entry, and too damn weakened to fight back.
Constant physical pain from the barbed wire, made especially from silver that wrapped around his wrists, binding them together behind his back, kept him even weaker than the feeding that Colt had taken earlier. The pounding that Blake had given his face was starting to heel already, but the thin silver spikes that Blake had been inserting into different areas of his body to maximise his pain had slowed that healing process. Werewolves were slower to recover than Lycans or Vampires, and this Were’s body was dealing with a whole lot of damage to try to repair.
“Tell us what we want to know and the pain will be bearable, just the silver around your wrists as we go off to hunt your Warlock master and retrieve our friend. It’s simple Mutt. How much pain do you wish to endure for your master?” Colt pushed further into the man’s mind. Reading his thoughts as he growled out with the pain of another intrusion of a silver spike into his abdomen, the man’s mind reeled. Colt found what he was looking for as it finally dawned on the Were that his master had no real loyalty to him, that he was just being used as a foot soldier in the war with the Lycans and was expendable.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?”Colt nodded his head towards Blake. He had the location of the Were’s, the Warlock and hopefully Nadia.
Colt’s eyes locked with Natasha’s as he turned to leave the barren room. Barren except for the bloodied and battered human Were that sat tied to a chair in the middle of it. He saw himself in her eyes and didn’t like what he saw. Guilt twisted his gut for probably the first time in his life as he wrapped his hand around her upper arm and turned her away from the scene, half pushing and half lifting his mate before him, to get her back out into the open air and away from his handiwork inside that groaned in pain.
“I wished you hadn’t of witnessed that.”Colt felt that statement deep within him. He didn’t want his mate to think he was a blood thirsty bastard that enjoyed inflicting pain. That wasn’t him, at least not anymore.
CHAPTER SIX
Natasha went without question. She couldn’t think of a reason to stay and she didn’t want to be in there anymore than her mate obviously wanted her there. The information had been gathered and hopefully he knew where her sister was.
“Do you think I would reject you for doing what needed to be done to save lives? The computer trace turned up empty, locating my sister by magic isn’t working, am I supposed to feel badly for that man?” Natasha felt him turn her and she didn’t protest. Her back came up against the outside of one of the cabins, and he used his whole body to cage her there. She didn’t object to that either.
“Is that how you see it?” Colt wanted to make certain that his mate was speaking the truth, and when he pressed her mind, all he found were her shields in place protecting her from his scrutiny.
“Yes.”Natasha felt his mind against her shields. She knew what he wanted, maybe even needed, but she felt that he should trust her word. Maybe this was just too damn important to him for that. His eyes said it was. His body was tense.
“Drop your shields little Witch.” Colt half demanded and half begged that of her. She didn’t see any reason to keep them in place around him now. They had been there partly out of habit and partly so that she hadn’t distracted Colt from his interrogation of their prisoner. She let them slide away.
Colt pushed into her mind and found out all he needed to know. There was no repulsion, only relief. There was no fear of him, only attraction, even now after what she had witnessed. He couldn’t help feeling his own relief at her acceptance of the situation. He rested his forehead against hers and closed his eyes for the briefest of moments as he drank her proximity in.
“Told ya.” Natasha’s eyes flashed with an amusement that rolled through her. “Mistrustful, little bloodsucker, aren’t you?”
“I guess it’s only right that I should be mated to a mischievous, bloodthirsty, little Fae then.” Colt offered the statement with an air of sarcasm and a wry smile. “And while I’d like to do devilishly insane things to you right now, we need to take this information to the Alpha.” He turned away from her and she felt the loss of her body instantaneously. Following hard on his heels, as he walked with purpose towards the main cabin and the occupants inside, Natasha couldn’t help but try to lighten his mood even more.
“He already knows you’re a mistrustful, bloodsucker, I’m sure.”She informed him, smugly, a little too smugly. He turned in a flash and grabbed a hold of her around the waist, yanking her body against his he brought his lips down over hers and demanded entry with his tongue. She was helpless to do anything else but grant him his desire and he claimed her mouth, however briefly, with a passionate devouring of her senses.
“But I’m your mistrustful bloodsucker and don’t you ever forget it.” Colt informed her on a grin of satisfaction as he grabbed two handfuls of her backside and hoisted her against him. Her legs wrapped around his hips and he set off for the cabin again. Not ready to deny the contact between them, but eager to deliver what he had learned to the others.
It was decided among them with the Alpha having the final say over proceedings. Colt and Blake would go after the Warlock and get Nadia back, while the Alpha would stay on pack land and defend the pack from any attack by the Were’s. Hopefully the Warlock would be either totally unprotected, or have only a small force with which to rely on should he come under attack. Cutting the head off the beast would also mean that the Werewolves would be like blood thirsty headless chickens again and easier to kill off.
“I’ll stay here and Natasha can go with Colt and Blake.” Neve put in from the far side of the room just as proceedings were coming to a close and people were readying themselves for the fight ahead. Silence fell over the room and nobody moved an inch as Nero’s head came up and his eyes locked onto his mate.
“Natasha stays here under the packs protection.” Nero stated and saw the fight that rallied itself within his mate to argue against it. He felt like sighing, but he held onto it. Why could his mate not just see that everything he was doing was for the good of her sister’s?
“The Warlock may have wards around his property. It makes sense that one, or both of us go with Colt and Blake. But I would stay to keep the wards that we have in place here active.”Neve was offering him everything that he could possibly need or want. In her mind it all made perfect sense. Yes, she’d prefer to go to the rescue of her sister, but she didn’t want to leave the pack unprotected by their magic. She also thought that Natasha being with her mate and Neve staying under the watchful glare of her own mate would be more acceptable to the Alpha…
Nero heard her reasoned words. He under stood what she was staying. He realised that she was even forsaking her own need to be out there with the rescue party for his benefit and that of their pack, and he tossed it over within his mind. It did make more sense. If colt and Blake came up against magic they would need a Fae of their side. He took a long moment to consider it and then nodded.
“Agreed.”He saw the light come on in his mate’s eyes. There was a sense of relief that he wasn’t going to fight her on this. Hope that her mate was a reasonable man, and the knowledge that she would be listened to when she became part of his pack. He liked the way she looked at that moment.
Turning he took a look at Colt and an unspoken question passed between them. It was Colt’s mate after all that they would be sending out against the Warlock should the situation arise. Colt tensed for a long moment, considering all of his options, but one flick of his eyes towards Natasha and he knew that he had little of those. To deny her this wouldn’t go as smoothly as her witnessing his interrogation earlier, this was her sister’s life that held in the balance, how could he not allow it?
“Works for me.”Colt responded and the Alpha nodded his head in turn.
“Then it’s settled.” Nero didn’t like it, but he understood it.
Nero wrapped his hand around Neve’s wrist and pulled her with him into the darkened bedroom. Even in the half light from the hallway outside Neve could see exactly where they were standing, and for one long moment the bed called to her feminine side like a beacon shining out in the darkness. Then reality hit her and she frowned up at him.
“Do you really think we have time for this now?”Neve heard his gentle growl. It was a cross between longing and acceptance of their situation and she couldn’t help but feel the same way.
‘Mine.’
“I need to mark you as mine. If we’re caught in the middle of a battle, my pack needs to know to protect you…” Nero was already closing the bedroom door as his words rattled around in her head. There were so many more pressing things that she needed to think about, but when he moved in front of her again, pressed his body against hers, she was damned if she could hold onto one of those thoughts.
“Nero…”There was a lack of conviction in her voice for denying his intent. Her hands were already palming the hard muscles of his chest and she couldn’t help but notice the way they moved under his shirt in conjunction with her eager fingers to know him.
“Normally I would bring you pleasure before I brought you pain…”Nero nuzzled into to warmth of her neck and took in her scent.
‘Mine.’
His tongue stroked out to taste her skin and he groaned with an ache for her that raged at his groin. Damn, but he wanted to be buried inside her. He wanted this to be the start of his claim on her, knowing every inch of her body before he sunk his fangs into her flesh and tasted her blood for the very first time. His lips closed over the pounding pulse that was beating in her neck for him and he sucked hard against her heated skin, feeling her hips push against his as the need for her throbbed that little bit harder against her stomach.