by Susan Laine
The man grimaced and looked even sicklier. “Come now, Mr. King. Are we really playing something as ridiculous as twenty questions? I am William Adler. We have met before. Of course only one of us has had to endure the ravages of time.”
“It isn’t time that has ravaged you, Mr. Adler. That, I believe, is the result of your own choice to smoke.”
William bowed his head and coughed. “How perceptive of you.”
Gabe shifted in his position, noticing he was strapped to a metal chair with his hands behind his back in handcuffs. They were sitting in a study, a room with a heavy feel to it brought on by brown silk wallpaper and heavy brocade curtains. A rosewood desk, oak bookshelves, brown leather armchairs, and a cherrywood liquor cabinet all added to the rich, masculine ambience of the room.
In addition to himself in the chair, William Adler in his wheelchair, and Victoria Adler perched in a strikingly feminine pose against the desk, there were five other people in the room. Four of them were mercenaries—one of whom Gabe recognized as Deck, the mercenary leader—and the fifth was….
Kieran was awake and on his knees next to Deck, who stood a few steps away, out of touching range. Smart man. He tried to breathe through the panic as he saw the bruised, bleeding face of the man who was his mate. They had hurt him, badly. Gabe had the sudden compulsion to do bodily harm, even to the harmless-looking man in a wheelchair.
William followed Gabe’s gaze to Kieran who watched both of them intently with his blue-gray eyes—well, one eye since the left one was almost swollen shut. “Your, uh, savior, shall we say, is relatively unscathed, as you can see. Whether or not he stays that way is, of course, up to you, Mr. King.”
Gabe studied the wealthy old man before him. “Now that we’ve dispensed with the unpleasantries, Mr. Adler, how about you tell me why I’m really here.” His sharp gaze veered off to Victoria, but he only briefly scanned or acknowledged her. “Because I find it extremely unlikely that a man of your caliber would have taken on such a project just to find his daughter the husband of her dreams.”
Victoria looked confused. Her pretty forehead wrinkled. “Papa, what is he talking about?”
“Hush, Vicki. This does not concern you.” William didn’t soften his voice; it was all business now. He smiled, evidently pleased with Gabe’s discerning eye. “You are absolutely correct about me, Mr. King. I’m duly impressed.” He extended his hand in an expectant gesture, and one of the men in the room gave him a glass of brown liquid, from the smell of it expensive cognac. “You are here—” He sipped from his drink. “—to bite me.”
Gabe kept the surprise off his face. In nearly four hundred years, he had heard almost everything and had learned to not be too obvious with people whose motives were unclear. “Excuse me?”
“Daddy?” Victoria’s bafflement made her move off the desk and over to the wheelchair, and she placed her manicured hand on the back support, not quite bringing herself to touch him.
“Hush, Vicki,” William demanded in a tone expecting immediate obedience, and she clamped her mouth shut, but judging from the thin line of her lips, she was not satisfied with the way things were proceeding. Directing his words to Gabe again, he continued coolly, “I expect you to bite me, Mr. King, and bestow your gift of immortality upon me.”
Oh, no. Not one of those freaks.
Keeping his tone low and calm, Gabe said slowly, carefully, “Other than your death, what would me biting you accomplish?”
William tossed a hand about, irritated. “Don’t be foolish, Mr. King. All I want is for you to make me like you. Then you, and even your rebellious friend over there, are free to go.”
“Daddy!” Victoria sputtered, angry, stepping back to take a better look at the man who was her father, but who was taking away what she wanted.
Slamming his fist on the armrest, William shouted, “You be quiet now, woman! I told you this does not concern you!” While Victoria was shaking in place, undecided, William continued in a more serene voice, “You are an Alpha of your pack. Once you bite me, I will be an Alpha too. Young and strong and fierce. Immortal.”
Damn. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Mr. Adler, but I’m a Beta, not an Alpha. My father is the Alpha. And furthermore, a mere bite does not transform a human into a lycan. That is a myth and simply not how it works.” Aware that this was a negotiation for their very lives, Gabe still felt that the truth would serve best here. This man was, at the moment, misguided, but perhaps he wasn’t as far gone as his daughter seemed to be. Maybe he could reason with William. Reach the intelligent man he used to be before sickness had made him bitter and ruthless.
Gabe knew he had made a mistake the moment William’s stance changed and a hard, cold glimmer darkened his eyes. “You are in line to become an Alpha, yes?”
Hesitating, Gabe could not be dishonest. It just wasn’t his way. “I am one of his Betas, but even though I am the oldest child, these days the pack members vote for the successor. I am not automatically chosen.”
William’s face began to resemble a thundercloud. “What about biting?”
Gabe shook his head. “Wolves can bite without the bitten transforming into one of us. You see, the shift takes a ritual and a specific time to take effect.” This was both true and misleading, but Gabe was not about to admit that. “And it has to be voluntary for both participants, and it never will be on my part. I have never changed anyone against their will—or against my own. And….” Vacillating, Gabe exhaled a deep breath. “You are very sick and very old. The process is not without, um, its dangers. In your present condition the act could be fatal.”
“I would die anyway.” William gritted his teeth, and a coughing attack wracked his feeble body into tremors that died away slowly. “I am willing to take the risk. Just describe the rite, what is needed, and we will arrange….”
Now he was stalling for time. Gabe could not admit the truth, or they would die right here. But this tactic of temporizing wasn’t going to work much longer either. “We would have to wait until the next full moon.”
“Then we will wait.” William was adamant, like a diamond, and nothing was getting through. Gabe was dispirited and felt deflated.
“Bite him,” Kieran cut in suddenly, his voice gritty. “And tear his fucking throat—”
Deck stepped closer and struck Kieran on the side of his face hard, and Gabe felt the wolf within roar into life. “Shut up, thieving bastard.” Then he moved back to his former position.
“How tiresome,” William said, sighing, turning his gaze from the show back to Gabe. “Once and for all, Mr. King, will you bite me or not?”
Feeling like screaming his frustration, Gabe shook his head. “No. Not now, not ever.”
Enraged, William backed his wheelchair and said, “Then I have no more use for you.”
“What about this traitor?” Deck muttered vengefully, closing the distance between him and Kieran kneeling on the floor. “He betrayed us. We should be allowed to… discipline him in our way.”
Outraged, William harrumphed. “Do whatever you want with him!”
Deck’s grin widened, like the cat that ate the canary, as he dipped his head until he and Kieran were face to face. “Now we’re going to have fun with you, boy. And you are going to regret every wrong move—” Suddenly he sniffed the air, puzzled. “You smell weird.” Inching closer, he grabbed Kieran’s jaw and forced the man to tip his head back. His lips parted to pant a bit. Deck’s nostrils flared. “You smell of… spunk.”
Gabe felt a chill all the way down his bones. God, please help us.
Deck rose to stand upright and turned to look at Gabe with triumphant glee plastered all over his face. “Kieran here has sucked your dick. Funny. He didn’t use to be a fag before.” Deck even chuckled, and Gabe went tense all over, readying himself to pounce on the man. His vision blurred in preparation for the shift from man to wolf, his gums itched at the sting of fangs wanting to push through, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. “That
must mean he didn’t take you to get money off you. He did it because you… are his mate.” Cracking up, the mercenary laughed, and Gabe thought he would die of the hollow hopelessness within him.
“B-but… Gabriel is… is my mate….” Victoria spoke softly, whispering, confused and sad. She turned to look at her father. “You said he was meant for me.”
“Don’t be so stupid, you silly hussy!” William shook his head and gave her a look that spoke of disdain. “I honestly don’t know how you can be my child. Dumb as a doorknob.” Sighing, he looked at Gabe. “Well, if you’re not going to bite me, I’ll have to make arrangements to find another wolf to do that. An Alpha this time. No more mistakes. And I surely do not wish for a, uh, a homosexual in my household. So, as for you two….”
“B-but he will be my husband—” Victoria tried one more time, but was silenced.
“I will find you someone better, honey. I promise.” William’s conciliatory tone belied the cold glint in his eyes. “These men will take care of these two fornicators, and you will—”
“You can’t kill them, Daddy.” Victoria’s tone was filled with outrage, and she stomped her high-heeled foot on the fashionable rug. “If they really are mates—” She let out a hushed little sob, sniffing. “—then they belong together. It’s fate. It’s love. True love.”
William shook his head in clear disbelief of what he was hearing. “Good grief. Of all the things I have to put up with…. They will be together, honey—in death. Now off you go. I will come find you later and we can go out for brunch.” The swish of his frail hand was an indication that the audience in his majestic presence was at an end, and Victoria knew this, because her face first paled, then grew red, but then she huffed, dashed out of the room, and slammed the door shut furiously. “Women. I swear her late mother—God rest her soul—was just as much of an airhead as her daughter.”
Insulting women who sacrificed for the men in their lives was a major no-no for Gabe, who wanted to rip the man’s throat out just to stop his talking. “Do you often speak like that about your wife and daughter? You do not deserve any woman’s devotion or affection.”
William turned around with his wheelchair, and his eyes were wide in surprise. “Of all the things for you to be angry about. Don’t you think you should be more concerned with your own fate and that of your, uh, mate?” Waving his hand dismissively, William scoffed. “Some people just have no sense of timing—”
“Or common decency.” Gabe had no plan, but the words came out nonetheless. It was like his thoughts had become caged beasts, and now they broke free, when he himself—trapped by the steel titanium handcuffs and big men with automatic weapons—could not.
William’s lips thinned in anger. “You do demonstrate a distinct lack of manners, Mr. King. While you are a guest at my house—”
“I am not your guest. I am your prisoner, and since you are planning to have these men kill me, I definitely do not feel obliged to show you any common courtesy.” Gabe’s chin lifted in a gesture of defiance, and he sensed that their time had just run out.
What happened next was nothing short of chaotic.
The double doors opened with a bang, and Victoria walked in—holding a shotgun in her hands.
She fired the gun once; the recoil forced her to stumble back and the barrel of the gun jolted up and hit her hard on her forehead, stunning her. The shot blew a hole the size of a football in William’s chest. The impact made his wheelchair tip back and fall to the floor with a clanking noise. Blood streamed out of William’s wound, and the man groaned and twitched in place, but it was obvious nothing could be done.
With an almost inaudible sigh and a full-body shiver, William Adler was dead.
For the span of a heartbeat there was only shocked silence.
Victoria sniffed loudly. “No one murders true love on my watch.”
Then suddenly everyone was moving.
Kieran was the first to react.
Bouncing up on his feet, he jumped over his own arms and brought his chained hands in front of him, hit the man behind him with his elbow, twirled around like he was dancing a pirouette, and locked the handcuff chain around the man’s neck, squeezing. All of that could not have taken more than a split second. The man was gurgling, and then his neck snapped and he fell limp in Kieran’s arms.
Then the man’s gun was in Kieran’s hand.
Unlike Kieran, who had been kept in a kneeling position on the floor, Gabe was cuffed to the metal chair. Still, he pushed with his legs, fell backward, and awkwardly rolled over to get to his feet, keeping the chair before him as a weapon. The mercenary behind him locked his arms around him and tried to shove him down on his knees into a better strangling hold. Gabe lifted the chair high above his head and hit the man with it, thus releasing the chokehold around his throat.
Several shots rang out, and Gabe ducked, tossing the man behind him to the front of him while lunging for the cover of the wooden desk.
“Kieran!” Needing nothing more than a mere grunt to ascertain that his mate was alive and relatively unharmed, Gabe held his breath, frantically searching for the faintest sound from his mate.
Suddenly someone stormed over the desk, half sliding gracefully, half flinging in a less than majestic manner, and fell to the floor next to him in a heap of limbs. “Right here.” Kieran’s voice may have been strained, but it was from exertion and adrenaline, not fear. This was his battlefield, and he knew the game better than anyone Gabe had ever met.
Out of the corner of his eye, Gabe saw Victoria seeking shelter behind the same wood desk barricade as they did—and she no longer had the shotgun in her hands. She looked frantic and disheveled, and yet there was a strange emotionless coherence about her. Gabe ignored her.
“You miserable coward,” Deck called out to them, apparently also having found cover from the bullets flying—though that had ceased for the moment.
“Leave now, Deck, and take everybody with you,” Kieran shouted back, recovered in full and leaning against the pullout cabinets. “I don’t want to have to kill you.” Kieran opened the magazine, checked how much ammo was left, and shoved it right back in, cocking the weapon.
“The client’s dead, but we still got you and your pansy-ass boyfriend.” Blazing with wrath, Deck had clearly decided there was no other end to this scenario but the death of Kieran and Gabe. “Don’t even for a second fool yourself into thinking we’re just going to pack up and leave. We’re not going anywhere without what we came here for. Your lily-livered boy-toy is our ticket out of here, and there’s no way in hell—”
“Slade’s already dead,” Kieran cut in. “You wanna join him, Deck? ’Cause you gotta know by now I’ll do whatever it takes to kill you if you cross me again.”
“Me cross you?” Deck was pissed and he must have gotten up because his voice came through clearer, unobstructed now—and he was coming closer. A shot was fired into the desk, but it was just for show. “I’ve had your back for years. And what do I get for it? You betraying me and running off with the asset.”
“I had no choice, you gotta know that.” Sweat droplets were popping up on Kieran’s forehead, and Gabe wanted only to hold him in his arms and tell him everything was going to be all right. Not that he knew if it was true or not.
But Deck did not get an opportunity to reply in any meaningful way before something light and metallic slid across the floor—Gabe heard it distinctly—and then a flash of blinding light shot out of the device. As a lycan, Gabe recovered instantaneously, and before he could stop himself and listen to the voice of reason, he had closed the distance between himself and Deck, knocked the gun out of his hand, punched him in the gut, and restrained him on his knees, yanking Deck’s arm behind his back, almost twisting it out of its socket.
“Jesus, Gabe,” Kieran’s chafing voice scolded him, and then Kieran was pointing two guns at the two remaining mercenaries in the room who weren’t unconscious. “Nice and easy, fellas. Put down your guns or I blow holes thro
ugh your pretty little heads.”
The two men seemed to think it over, glancing at each other.
By then it was too late as the study was suddenly swarming with big guys in black combat wear and with even bigger automatic weapons. One of the mercenaries yelled “Keepers!” and tried to fire, but was shot in the chest and fell back against the bookshelf. The last mercenary readily put down his gun and raised his hands in submission. Prison would undoubtedly be a cakewalk for him and his unconscious compatriots, Gabe surmised, with their skill sets.
But he was too busy wondering what he should do while being held at gunpoint for the umpteenth time in twenty-four hours.
“You can put down your weapons, boys, ’cause I’m in the house.”
Gabe wasn’t alone. Both he and Kieran, and the mercenaries, turned to watch as the wall of armed men divided, like the parting sea, to reveal Erin sauntering into the room, all cool and petite and powerful. Gabe was pretty sure he was staring at her totally dumbfounded, and he could have sworn he heard the audible click of Kieran’s jaw falling open in surprise.
“W-what…?” Kieran mumbled.
All of a sudden Deck broke loose of Gabe’s distracted hold, dug out his knife from his ankle holster, and lunged at Kieran.
Everything happened at once.
Kieran turned both guns toward Deck and fired.
The armed men with Erin shot their weapons.
And Gabe transformed and burst into action. His wolf was out before his brain had the chance to process the shift. Faintly, he heard the rip and tear of his clothes, felt the fur push through his pores, and his claws and fangs pop up. Then he was on Deck’s back and, howling, he attacked the man with his canines, biting into the soft flesh of his neck. Blood filled his mouth and a high-pitched scream deafened his heightened sense of hearing.
Someone was shouting “Gabe, no!”, but Gabe couldn’t focus on the sound. His claws shredded the hard vest, thick clothes, and yielding flesh under him, and he kept biting and gnawing, unable to let go of the man who had hurt and tried to kill his mate.