by Christa Wick
"Fuck...I..." Taron swiped at his thick jaw then bounded to his feet. Without asking or giving me the chance to object, he scooped me up and carried me back to the rocker, sitting down with me on his lap.
I wanted to protest, but he'd just knocked all the fight out of me with his dumb teasing. He was right, I had always felt that it wasn't too late to at least try to reverse the effects of the blood transfusion. My father had always paid lip service to the hope that I would "recover" when the greatest chance of my recovery had rested in his hands.
"Here," Taron said, his hands working to spread my legs so that they fell to the outer side of his. "Lean against my chest."
I didn't resist, let him mold me as he wanted. I had seen my father deal with such things as troubled pregnancies in much the same position, although my mother and the she-wolf's mate were always on hand to assist.
Or chaperone given the jealous nature my mother had always displayed.
Taron laid one of his big hands across my belly, the fingers gently exploring my flesh.
"Close your eyes and relax."
I did, and then his hand slid a little lower and I tensed immediately.
"I'm just following the pain, wolfling," he chuckled. "Although I should get an award for the reserve I'm showing."
Did he just say what I thought he said? He wanted to touch me more intimately?
I dismissed the idea before it could fully form.
I had cooties -- human cooties. That's what the kids in the pack had started taunting me with six months after the accident when it finally leaked that something in me had changed. My blood was testing human while the rest of my cells tested as shifter. And I still hadn't successfully shifted after the accident.
I always suspected Eric of telling everyone, probably to deflect the heat of not watching me like he was supposed to have done. Sadly, his ugly little plan worked. The kids soon graduated to calling me "freak" and "strainséir" -- a foreigner, outsider, stranger. When they found out I was no longer as strong as them, the hard bumps, furtive punches and vicious kicks had begun.
"Right here?" Taron asked, his palm resting gently just above the line of my hips.
Heat flowed into my body, not just where his hand was but where my back pressed against his chest and from the top of his thighs to the back of mine.
"Yeah," I rasped, fighting the urge to tense up. Forget the fact that Taron looked like he'd just walked off a movie set, I was ready to crumble from his mere kindness.
Tilting forward, I wrapped my hands around the end of the armrests.
"Stop fighting it," he ordered. "Lean back and let me heal you."
My head bobbled but I obeyed. I chewed at my lips to stop the quiver and pressed my eyelids together as tight as I could.
"Just what do you think you're healing?" I bit out, sounding like a snotty little brat who thought she was smarter than the adults around her.
"Your estrus shouldn't be causing you any pain, for starters."
I growled, wanted to punch him in the face. "I am not in heat -- I bled all over the damn bed at the Crocker's ratty little hotel. And my metabolism seems to have slowed down, not sped up like it would have if I were in estrus!"
A guilty itch crawled along the back of my neck just as Taron asked the question I had unwittingly offered up.
"What's that mean?"
Angrily, I reached between us and dragged my hair over to one side, revealing the eight matching wounds on my neck. "That's more than forty-eight hours ago and it hasn't healed."
His hand left my stomach and I tried to get up.
Fingers closed around my throat, my effort to escape his lap instantly ceasing.
First he sniffed at the area, his nose skimming over each mark, the rough brush of his unshaven chin against the sensitive area of flesh sending tingles shooting across my flesh. The heat he had already put in my belly with his healing touch slowly built towards an inferno.
"Ouch!" I jerked as his free hand probed at the rawest of the wounds. "Dude, what are you doing?"
His lack of response infuriated me. I wasn't some fly who could have her wings plucked off -- which would have been totally fucking wrong even if a fly was all I was.
"That fucking hurt!" I growled as he repeated his examination on the next break in my skin. "I'm not a shifter and I'm not impervious to pain!"
"Newsflash, sweetie," he growled. "None of us are impervious to pain."
As if his inspection couldn't get any worse, I felt his tongue, warm and wet, push at the first wound.
Gross!
Grabbing the hand he had around my throat with both of mine, I started to twist on his lap. His sudden release sent me sprawling onto the floor.
"The person who hurt you wasn't just part of your pack," he started, the ominous tone of his voice causing me to scoot out of reach. "It was a male in your bloodline."
Taron brushed a finger tip against his tongue then extended the digit in my direction so I could see what he had removed from one of the wounds.
Eric had sunk his claws into me so fucking deep he left part of one behind.
"Not an alpha," Taron observed, tongue rolling in his mouth like he was tasting wine and remarking on its vintage. "So not your father."
Trying to stare him into silence, I said nothing.
"Tell, me, Onyx. Who did this?"
I rolled once, snatched the folded blanket on the floor and stalked off toward the front door. Sliding down the wall and onto my ass, I wrapped the blanket around me and glared at my host.
"I don't care if someone runs a chainsaw through my chest," I hissed. "Don't try to heal me again!"
********************
Taron didn't argue my stubborn choice of sleeping upright against the wall. He moved quietly around the cabin, cleaning up after the meal he had cooked for me and shutting off the lights. He crawled, alone, into his giant's bed, his big body curling beneath the heavy quilt as the fire died down and I began to shiver.
At some point, I managed to doze off. I woke an unknown number of minutes or hours later to a dozen or more engines revving in the clearing outside. No howls, no yelling, just a bunch of loud motorcycles without mufflers from the sound of it.
Taron sat up, the quilt around his waist doing nothing to conceal the fact that he had stripped off his clothes at some point in the night to sleep more comfortably. Stretching one muscular arm out to draw back the curtains, he swore.
"Son-of-a-bitch cubs."
"Sounds like more than three bikes," I said, a cold sweat starting to break out all along my body. Apparently, being in heat -- an idea I was now willing to entertain -- without a male protector in Night Falls, Wisconsin, was a pretty bad idea.
"Yeah," he agreed. "They must have cried to their daddy because it's almost every damn male in my pack who doesn't have a mate, including a few alphas."
He looked at me, humor dancing in his golden brown gaze before he looked down at the quilt shielding his most private parts and then at me again.
"You might wish to avert your gaze, beautiful," he said before flashing a whiplash smile. "Or not."
I averted my eyes, listened to him clamber to his feet and slide smoothly into the jeans he'd been wearing the night before. More fabric rustled as he pulled on his shirt and then he padded softly past me in search of his boots.
"Please tell me you're the pack alpha," I groaned as he reached down near me and lifted the bottom railroad tie that barred the door. I had no idea how large his pack was, but my ears were picking up about a dozen bikes. Unless there were only a few mated males, Taron's pack was a decent size and there could be several alphas in waiting.
"Well, I was yesterday," he answered and reached up to remove the top tie.
Cheeky bastard! Sweat was leaving my body so fast it was starting to leave damp spots on the borrowed shirt and he wanted to make jokes.
"But it is definitely a competitive position," he added. "Most of the males are wanderers who settled down here. Plenty of
strong shifters with the alpha strain running through them and looking to pass it on to offspring."
"Maybe if some of you had decided to settle closer to a few malls and nail salons you wouldn't have such a shortage of shifter pussy," I shot back.
He stopped moving, his hand on the door handle but his eyes locked on me and slowly drifting down my body.
"You might want to avoid the 'p' word, baby. At least while my crew is still hanging around outside."
Another motorcycle joined the mix, its addition changing Taron's expression from one of hungry interest to mild relief.
"That would be Braeden," he volunteered. "My second."
"So two against an army," I sniped. "You good with those odds?"
He nodded, then laughed. "Assuming Braeden's with me on this one. But he is single and an alpha wolf, so it's kind of iffy."
Taron extended his hand, offering to help me stand.
"You're not suggesting I go out there, are you?"
He shrugged. "Might dissuade a few."
My bottom lip started to quiver. I wasn't sure whether it was waspish rage or a silly young woman's vanity. I'd heard time and again since the accident how "undesirable" I was, but I had never hated the image my mirror threw back at me.
"You mistake me, she-wolf." He kept his hand extended, but I rolled away and onto my feet.
"Those dumb shits didn't know what they were smelling last night," he said, his tone going lower in something resembling an apology. "Few of the shifters out there could ever dream of handling you once you're fully healed."
Fully healed? Did he mean able to shift?
I tried to push the question away as I inched one of the curtains open and studied the group outside. The men had formed a loose horseshoe around the front of the cabin with their bikes. One of them, Braeden by the sound of his ride, had broken the pattern and waited with his back to the cabin door, his bare, muscular arms folded resolutely across what looked like a broad chest from behind.
All of them wore leather riding vests. I couldn't see the backs of the others, but Braeden's had the head of a fierce looking, bearded male with an axe behind him. There was a top rocker that read "Woodsmen" and a bottom one with "Night Falls, WI." A third patch, just below the blade of the axe had "MC."
None of the shifters were close to Taron's size, but some of them looked sufficiently formidable and -- I took a quick count -- fifteen, not counting Braeden, would be a problem for any shifter to handle alone.
"Why is your pack dressed like some kind of outlaw biker gang?"
"Can you think of anything more outlaw to humans than a biker gang?"
Coming up behind me, Taron opened the curtain wide then stood, his hand against the small of my back. I felt the heat radiate into me immediately and then a woozy rush of something else.
"I told you," I growled. "Don't try to heal me."
His hand didn't move from my flesh as he turned his head and met my gaze. Looking into his eyes only made my woozy rushing feeling intensify. Staring at the full lips didn't make things any better.
"My question was serious. What's the deal with looking like bikers?"
"There's no local police in Night Falls," he answered, his thumb rubbing absently at my back. "Makes the town vulnerable to real outlaws. Make sense?"
Numb from all the goose bumps racing across my flesh as he continued to stroke my skin, I nodded then forced my attention back to the problem outside. "Who are the ringleaders?"
"See that old graybeard at twelve o'clock?"
I nodded and tried not to lean into Taron.
I really needed him to stop touching me. That hand on my back and the mesmerizing rub of his thumb was doing crazy things to my concentration. I could feel the heat moving through me in every direction, down my legs to my toes, across my arms to my fingertips, even the hair on my head seemed to be getting fed by his energy.
It wasn't sexual -- at least most of it wasn't. Certainly a little of it was, the sensation between my thighs and across my breasts multiplying exponentially if I thought about it.
But mostly it was ... restorative?
Maybe telling him to never try healing me again had been a bad call. It had certainly been hot headed.
"Graybeard," he continued and moved a little closer, "is Axel. He's the father of last night's hunters, who are not present this morning. He thinks he's alpha because he has three wolflings he can boss around. But he's just the troublemaker, not the real problem. That would be the shifters at nine and three."
I looked at the man standing beside his bike in the nine position. Another wolf, he wasn't as old as Axel, but I could see the silvering that was starting to take hold of his black hair. Turning my attention to the shifter at three o'clock, I released a small gasp.
"You have a cat in your pack?"
"More than one, but the rest are all mated or had the good sense to stay home. That is Joshua, he's a cougar. Of course, he'll get pissed of if anyone refers to him as anything other than a mountain lion, but he's pissed off most of the time anyway. The other is Mallory."
I looked down at the ridiculous fall of Taron's clothing on my body, the lack of a bra that meant my full breasts would be swinging with every step I took, all while I was supposedly in heat.
"You really think it's a good idea for me to go outside." I gestured at my get-up. "Especially like this."
His gaze swept down my body, the motion stuttering when he reached my breasts and again when he came to my hips.
"You're not really hiding because of clothes -- or is that what's become of city wolves?"
His hand had surreptitiously moved to my hip and I shoved it away before walking over to the front door and waiting for him. Calling me a city wolf was a low blow. He could level that insult at my vapid, Vogue devouring, mall hopping little sister or my vicious, marijuana dabbing, steroid shooting older brother. They were both fully wolf and treated as such, but had become more human than the blood flowing through my veins by immersing themselves in everything that represented the worst the human world had to offer.
Moving past me, Taron caught me glaring at him and chuckled.
"Got you to the door, didn't it?
He stepped outside, confident that I would follow him. I did after a second's hesitation.
Taron waited just past the bottom step of his porch. Shoeless, I stopped before my feet hit the gravel. Braeden got off his bike and approached, a patient smile on his face but his gaze flitting in my direction.
"This is Onyx," Taron said, his voice curt. "She already knows your name."
Braeden offered a little head nod that I returned.
"I noticed you were last to the party," Taron criticized in a low voice.
"They didn't exactly tell me where they were going or why. I just saw a bunch of them heading out." He glanced in my direction, a faint smirk ghosting his mobile lips as his nostrils flared. "I guess I know why now."
"Nothing like the smell of napalm in the morning, right?" Taron joked loud enough for every shifter in the clearing to hear.
Seriously, was he really referring to the scent of whatever in the hell was going on in my body as fucking napalm? He already had me out in front of them in what amounted to clown clothes and now this?
"Stay with her," he told Braeden as he moved into the center of the horseshoe.
Slowly, Taron spun a circle, stopping to look each shifter in the eye, his shoulders bunching with an aggressive tension.
"Some of you," he said, when he had finished eye-fucking every last one of them. "Some of you are here because you're curious. You had a fly buzzing around your ear, telling you things."
Heads swiveled, most of them facing toward Axel, but a few toward Mallory.
"The rest of you," Taron boomed, his narrowed gaze quickly jumping from the cougar to Mallory to Axel. "Are here because you're fucking idiots!"
That earned him a few chuckles and made the three shifters he was talking about squirm for a second or two.
; "Yes," Taron continued, with the unwelcome addition of pointing directly at me. "A she-wolf was alone in the forest last night."
He laughed once, but there was no humor in the sound. "In estrus in case your noses haven't already alerted you to that fact."
Words and grunts were exchanged among the shifters, the sound signaling that the relative ease most had fallen into as their pack leader talked to them was fragile and about to disappear again.
Taron shut them up with another booming admonition. "But that's no excuse for three wolflings trying to terrorize her."
My lips curled at his choice of words.
Trying? I was pretty damn sure they had succeeded -- but maybe now wasn't the time to play the wilting damsel-in-distress.
"The she-wolf claimed sanctuary on my doorstep."
The buzzing voices and grunts resumed, too many at once for me to be sure who was saying what, but I could sense confusion in some and discontent in others.
That's when Mallory stepped forward.
"Sanctuary? Really?" He looked around at the rest of the gathered males to find a few nodding ominously. "We shed those relics of the past decades ago, back when you were still a cub, Taron."
More nods, my stomach growing tight as I counted just how many of the shifters seemed to agree with Mallory.
"Maybe we did, but we never shed simple decency," Taron answered with a menacing growl, fingers twitching lightly as his claws threatened to erupt.
I stared at him as the rough shadow of facial hair multiplied and grew coarser.
Dismissing Mallory with a curl of his lip, Taron faced Axel. "Apparently some of the pack needs a reminder about decency."
Unwilling to be ignored, Mallory took a few steps toward me, his back to Taron by the time he stopped talking. "You should have let Axel's sons keep their quarry."
With Mallory's approach, Braeden moved in front of me, shielding me but also blocking my view.
A roar full of an alpha's power and unlike anything I'd ever heard come out of a shifter threatened to fold me to the ground. Fisting the back of Braeden's jacket for support, I peeked around his broad shoulder to see Taron receding from his alpha state to his human form.