by Hettie Ivers
We were leaving. Thank God! I was beyond eager to wake up already. Anxious to evict everyone from my subconscious and escape from this nightmare.
Alcaeus traded parting words with Gabriel and Raul that I couldn’t catch, as my ears had begun ringing. I felt Alcaeus approach and fall into step beside me where I was anchored to Alex, and my dream space grew increasingly hazy, signaling I was on the brink of awakening.
“Oh, and Alcaeus…” Gabriel called loudly after us, causing my waning clarity to abruptly return. Damnit.
“I understand from Raul that you’ve been holding another she-wolf captive who rightfully belongs to my pack.”
Alcaeus stopped in his tracks. Alex tensed beside me.
“We should go,” Alcaeus mumbled.
“I expect to recover her in perfect health when we come for Milena,” Gabriel announced with finality.
Alex made a noise in the back of his throat that was pure irritation as his arm slid from my shoulder. And while on the surface Alcaeus’s demeanor appeared blasé as he turned to face Gabriel, there was no mistaking the stiffening of his spine.
“Really? Is there a second vessel among us who somehow also belongs to you? A bit greedy, even by Salvatella standards, don’t you think?” Alcaeus quipped.
“He’s referring to his niece,” Raul spoke up from behind me. “And you know it, Alcaeus.”
Niece? What niece?
The look in Alcaeus’s hazel eyes promised murder. I knew even before I twisted my torso to follow his line of vision that my brother was his intended target. My eyes darted back to Alex, who softly grunted and pinched the bridge of his nose, as if terribly put out or bored by this development that was delaying our departure. But beneath the mien of ennui he attempted, his entire demeanor had swiftly altered as well. He was livid.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alcaeus snapped at my brother.
“Leave it, Al,” Alex warned, his quiet words an Alpha command I knew Alcaeus would ignore just the same.
“Oh, yes, I do. You lied to her,” Raul accused. “Scared her. The same way you and Hector lied to my father and he lied to me. The way you’re scaring and lying to Miles.”
“Ugh, good grief,” Alex mumbled in resigned annoyance.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Alcaeus yelled it this time, his eyes shifting, taking on the gold color of his wolf’s.
Whoa. My curiosity piqued, I pivoted in place, seeking my brother’s reaction. Alex’s fingers interlaced with mine, and his lips brushed the back of my ear.
“Trust me. Try to hold your emotions.”
It was a plea spoken as a directive. Only it wasn’t spoken at all, but rather communicated privately through some sort of dream-state osmosis. Hold my emotions?
“I know her loyalty lies with me,” Raul retorted. And then he smiled—that same winning grin that had always made my female babysitters swoon. The sight of it rendered me at once nostalgic and hopeful. He was still my brother.
Only … not. Because I recognized it was more of a self-satisfied, arrogant smirk than a grin, actually. He was baiting Alcaeus.
“And I know Jussara will willingly leave your pack to be with me,” Raul boasted.
Jussara?
Jussara!
I’d not heard that name since my first night in Brazil. But I remembered it well. As clearly as I remembered the voice of the unseen angry woman who’d tried to persuade Remy to get rid of me, to send me away with Felix and his thugs before Alex could find out that we were there. Admittedly, I was a bit poleaxed as my head swiveled back and forth between my brother and Alcaeus.
Who was this woman who meant so much to the both of them? How was it possible she was actually Gabriel’s niece of all things? Why had she disliked me so much at first sight? And why hadn’t I seen or heard of her since the night of my arrival?
“She was trying to save you, Miles,” Raul supplied in answer to my internal musing. “From Alex. Jussara’s my friend. And I won’t leave her behind with these animals.”
Raul grinned again, more broadly this time, as Alcaeus’s features twisted into something so dark and feral I had to resist the urge to shrink closer to Alex’s side.
“Then come and get her, pup,” Alcaeus snarled. “So I can show you just how much you don’t know.”
Wow. This rabid mama bear side of Alcaeus was something I’d not seen before. And for that bitchy woman Jussara?
“You may have her,” Alex intervened, his words directed at Gabriel, his tone apathetic. “Just as soon as I’ve given her a proper traitor’s sendoff.”
Alex’s threat set both my brother and Alcaeus growling at him.
“She’s not a traitor,” Raul contended, fists clenching and unclenching in time with his heaving shoulders. “You lied to her! You kept her from her own pack while treating her like a second-rate member of yours. Just like you did me.”
“No,” Alex calmly corrected, “I protected Jussara as one of my own. The same way I protected you, until the moment you betrayed me and earned a traitor’s fate. Just as she has.”
“Spare me your narcissistic delusions.” Raul huffed. “You use everyone for your own selfish purposes. But blind with arrogance as you are, even you had to have foreseen Jussara would discover the truth of her ancestry one day. Surely you considered the consequences?”
“Of course. But I expected her to have more common sense and certainly more gratitude for the fact that I saved her mother’s life as well as her own. She’s earned her execution for her shortsightedness and stupidity alone.”
“Observe, Milena”—Gabriel bade, his voice a monotone that belied the outrage I sensed bubbling just beneath his still-waters façade—“as the monster reveals himself for the heartless destroyer of innocents that he is. See how easily your captor and would-be boyfriend callously justifies a young girl’s execution simply because of her loyalty to your brother and her blood relation to me? A girl his own brother Alcaeus calls his ward, no less.”
Jussara was Alcaeus’s ward? That explained the mama bear act.
“Jussara is nearly fifty years old,” Alex said with an air of cold dismissal, even as he squeezed my hand reassuringly. “Hardly a girl. Hardly an ignorant innocent unaccustomed to the laws of my pack. She dies a traitor’s death. Unless … you’re willing to make a trade for her life?”
Alcaeus started to object, but stopped when Alex shot him a silencing glare.
Gabriel burst out laughing. “Please, do go on. This I must hear.”
Undeterred by Gabriel’s mocking censure, Alex offered, “I’m willing to deliver Jussara to you unharmed in exchange for Raul.”
My eyes popped wide. I didn’t know who the hell Jussara was, but given that my only memory of her was an unpleasant one, I was willing to trade her ass to Gabriel in a heartbeat for my brother, no matter how fond Alcaeus was of her as his ward. I gripped Alex’s hand tighter, both in nervousness and appreciation.
“Mm … intriguing offer.” Gabriel pretended to consider it a moment, his eyes crinkling with amusement. Meanwhile, Raul appeared to be on the verge of exploding from his skin in obvious affront over Alex’s proposal. Gabriel laid a restraining hand against Raul’s chest. “But … no. In the first place, Raul is not mine to trade. And in the second, I won’t have the annihilation of your pack weighing on my conscience should you try to take Raul on as a prisoner again.”
Alex and Alcaeus chortled in unison at Gabriel’s warning.
“We’ll take our chances,” Alcaeus openly insulted my brother’s abilities.
“No. You won’t.” Glacial cerulean eyes replete with disgust swept Alex. “You’re a lousy bluffer, Alpha. While I’ve no doubt you’d kill my niece without a second thought, I know too much of your older brother’s greatest weakness to believe he’d ever allow you or anyone else to lay hands on Jussara.” His glare of revulsion shifted to Alcaeus with that assessment.
I was so lost.
Alex shrugged next to me
. “It’s a nice theory, but Alcaeus’s weaknesses don’t particularly concern me. Neither did they stop me from laying hands on your niece throughout her first heat cycle over thirty years ago. And for years to follow whenever the mood struck me.”
My jaw dropped. Alcaeus rolled feral eyes and ranted a few choice obscenities, while Raul swore up and down that this was a lie, that Alex had never touched Jussara. Gabriel forced an embittered smile. And silently seethed.
Alex didn’t pause to meet my questioning gaze, but merely squeezed my hand again and forged ahead. “And if you think Al will be able to stop Alessandra from ripping your niece’s entrails out when she discovers Jussara was fucking her boy du jour, well … good luck with that gamble.”
“That’s bullshit; I never cheated on Lessa,” my brother was quick to deny.
“My sister’s a real crazy bitch in a fight.” Alex shook his head. “I’m disappointed in your lack of foresight, Raul.”
“It’s never been like that between me and Jussara,” Raul professed to Gabriel. “I swear it.” And then to Alex, “Don’t you dare twist things to Lessa!”
“No?” Alex challenged. “You didn’t fuck Jussara through numerous heat cycles yourself over the past seven years?”
Gross. I was unable to mask the disgust that instantly crumpled my features.
“As a friend,” Raul blustered defensively, his face flushing under the weight of Gabriel’s piercing stare. “Years ago. It’s been years since I … goddamnit, she trusted me, all right? He’s distorting things, like he always does. It wasn’t like that …”
Ugh, double eww! Nausea roiled through me at Raul’s admission, and I tried to disentangle my fingers from Alex’s to no avail. He held fast, tugging me closer instead each time I attempted to pull away.
My brother and Alex had slept with the same woman? There was something so inherently wrong with that.
“Trust,” Alex projected to me.
I proceeded to pout, but ceased pulling away.
“Unfortunately, I might’ve already told Lessa,” Alex informed my brother, his impish shrug implying he found the situation anything but unfortunate. “She could be tearing Jussara limb from limb at this very moment.”
“She’s not,” Raul dismissed Alex’s words, even as he paced in place in a half-circle, dragging restless fingers through his hair, revealing his mounting anxiety. “She’s not …”
“How would you know?”
“Jussara’s not even in Brazil,” Raul blabbed.
“Enough!” Gabriel broke his controlled, icy silence.
“Yes, I know,” Alex assented with a rumble of laughter. “But that doesn’t mean Lessa can’t teleport to wherever she may be.” I suspected his amusement had more to do with Gabriel’s sudden outburst and growing discomposure than Raul’s. “I had Jussara removed from my sight days ago so I wouldn’t be tempted to kill her before at least attempting to trade her for you, Raul. Sorry excuse for a brother that you are, my mate Milena seems partial to having you around.”
“She is not your mate!”
Smoothly maneuvering my back against his front, Alex took Raul’s objection as an invitation to wrap me in a showy, possessive embrace. And although his hold on me wasn’t exactly inappropriate, my face still heated with embarrassment at our audience.
“Relax, angel. Everyone here knows you haven’t done anything wrong. Not one damn thing,” he emphasized.
I closed my eyes, fully aware his gentle words were meant to simultaneously settle me and chasten my brother for his malicious tirade earlier. Alex was right. Why should I always be the one to feel guilty? Alex was the slut.
So I banished my embarrassment as best I could and allowed myself to relax into Alex, even baring my throat when he nudged me to, granting him access to kiss and nibble his way up and down my neck. Although I was more than a little confused, still disgusted over Jussara, and at heart loath to upset Raul further, I tried to have faith in Alex’s intentions and strategy, reminding myself he’d already attempted to trade Jussara for my brother. If Alex was willing to trade a woman he’d apparently slept with on numerous occasions over the past thirty years and who Alcaeus clearly valued in favor of a man he despised, the least I could do was lay my jealousy issues aside and play along, right? Not that I was jealous.
It wasn’t because his arms felt so divine enveloping me or because I was comforted by the gesture. Certainly not because I’d missed his touch so much in the recent space of time he’d been gone. It had absolutely nothing to do with the lavish praise and affection he wordlessly projected as I acquiesced, or the fact that I was growing more and more aroused with every “mine” he whispered aloud against the column of my throat in order to taunt Gabriel and my brother.
“Stop it!” Raul’s hoarse protest jolted me from my too-brief respite of bliss. “My sister will never be yours. Quit pawing at her.”
“No offense to Milena, but I don’t actually care what your mate wants, Alex,” Alcaeus stated, placing irreverent emphasis on the word mate—presumably for Raul’s benefit. “I won’t agree to trade Jussara for Raul. What kind of a shitty deal is that?”
“She’s not his mate!” Raul refuted.
“Seriously?” Alex balked at his brother, disregarding Raul’s outcry as he withdrew his mouth from my skin. “You’re the one who wanted to abort her in the womb, Al. Remember all those times you called Jussara an abomination? Or is this because Remy and I fucked her off and on for thirty years behind your back that you’d rather sentence her to death by Tasmanian Alessandra?”
I tensed as the bucket of cold Jussara reality smacked me yet again. Fuck it, I was jealous. Because what the hell? Who hadn’t my boyfriend slept with?
“Please trust me?” Alex projected, even as his arms tightened, restricting any possible movement, much less escape.
“You’re lying,” Raul charged. “I know Remy never touched Jussara.”
“Do you?” I could hear the evil smirk in Alex’s voice as he pressed a kiss to the top of my head. My poor brother was clearly out of his depth, and a wave of guilt assailed me for my collusion in his present torment.
“Alcaeus strictly forbade his brothers from ever touching her,” Raul insisted to Gabriel. I noticed he was sweating, breathing harder now. And he’d grown oddly pale. “Jussara told me so. Besides, she hates Remy. She would never.”
I should’ve been singularly concerned for my brother’s well-being in that moment, yet to my shame I found I was more focused on wondering whether Raul’s statement about Alex and Remy might actually prove true.
Alex laughed. “And that would have dissuaded us how? We took it as a direct challenge.”
“He’s lying! They’ve always treated her like a kid sister.”
“I thought we treated her like a second-rate pack member?” Alex countered, throwing Raul’s earlier assertion back at him.
“You did …” Raul faltered. “Fuck, stop twisting things.”
“I’ve always treated her like a daughter,” Alcaeus said. “And you damn well know it, Raul. I’ve looked after her as if she were my own child.”
“Except for maybe that period during gestation when you referred to her as Satan’s spawn behind her mother’s back?” Alex pointed out.
“Alex,” Alcaeus scolded with a smile. “Quit being a dick. Let’s not forget Satan is Gabie baby’s late little brother.”
They were in this together, on a mission to push both Gabriel and my brother to their boiling points, it seemed. It was working.
“The truth is we only spared your unborn niece because Al was so taken with her mother,” Alex divulged to Gabriel, as if sharing a great confidence. “Incidentally, Jussara has grown up to be quite a lovely woman herself. Resembles her mother and looks nothing like your brother Nahuel. As I’m sure you’ve seen through Raul’s memories? Or perhaps you’ve abused Raul’s emotional connection to her in order to invade her private dream space and visit with her firsthand, as you’ve done with Milena?”
“She is my blood!” Gabriel shouted at Alex, his blue eyes taking on an iridescent, alien glow. “She belongs to me.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Alcaeus scoffed. “I’m told your dead brother made a similar claim to Jussara’s mother once upon a time.”
“Speaking of blood and your tool of a brother, I heard a rumor Nahuel was castrated moments before his head was lopped off,” Alex added, to be cruel and tempt Gabriel’s wrath as far as he could.
“Ah, yes, I believe that’s true. Ever hear that one, Gabie?” Alcaeus prodded with a broad grin. “It’s possible I know someone who can substantiate that rumor, actually.”
“Stop,” Raul begged, his eyes flitting nervously between Gabriel, Alex, and Alcaeus. “Don’t say it. It’s not true. He can’t … we can’t get too angry while we’re in Miles’s head …”
What?
The fuck?
What on earth did that mean?
Alex’s exaggerated sigh was wistful as he hugged me closer, resting his chin on top of my head. “Mm … sure wish I could’ve been there to see it. But I suppose having Jussara in my pack for almost half a century while you never even knew of her existence has been vastly more satisfying on multiple levels.”
“Please, stop?” Raul pleaded with Alex and Alcaeus. “This can’t happen like this. Miles,” he beseeched me directly. “Please wake up? Listen to me, you need to wake up now.”
My mouth fell open at the sight my brother presented. His composure had deteriorated to full-on shaking and twitching. He looked like an anxious crack addict who couldn’t abide being in his own skin a moment longer.
“You had no right to keep her from me!” Gabriel raged, his placid pretty-boy features and urbane sophistication falling away as he teetered on the edge of embracing his inner animal.
The ground shook and darkness fell over my dream sky, grey clouds blocking out every last ray of sunlight.
“I had every right!” Alcaeus exploded, his deep bass harsh. Unforgiving. Any trace of humor and teasing had vanished completely from his rigid features. “Your brother had no fucking right. Jussara’s mother was sixteen. Sixteen! Nahuel had no right to touch her. To take everything from her! And I’d give my right hand to be the one to dismember him all over again.”