Pack Ebon Red (The Seven Mates of Zara Wolf Book 1)

by C. M. Stunich

  “Faith'll be out in just a minute,” I said, stopping Nic's pacing and drawing all eyes to me. I'd already explained the situation on the way over, told them about my relationship with Faith, about the vampire blood I'd discovered in her mother's bathroom. Although the guys had yet to take their official oaths yet, I knew I could trust them not to relay any of this information to the alphas. They all wanted to be my mate; they'd stay loyal if they wanted any chance at power.

  “You really think there's a kingdom connection in all of this?” Jax asked, slipping his phone back in his pocket and turning to face me. He met my eyes and then looked away briefly before reconnecting his gaze, acknowledging my dominance over him while still maintaining a wry sort of disinterest in the whole ritual. He was so going to give me trouble. “If the vampires were coming after the packs, they wouldn't be giving their blood to humans to do the deed. No offense to your friend or anything, but her mom's probably just another eternity chaser.”

  I felt my lips purse and took a deep breath to keep my calm. An eternity chaser was a human who had somehow managed to discover that the world wasn't quite as narrow as they'd been led to believe and was now seeking some sort of power or immortality from a non-human species. For whatever reason, most people thought that not only was it easy to become a vampire but also that somehow that meant they'd live forever.

  “We can smell a vampire from a mile away. How often do you come in contact with humans and pay them little to no attention? Everyday at school? Every time you stop at a grocery store? Go to a movie?”

  “Who says I ever do any of those things?” Jax asked coolly, tilting his head to the side. The way he was looking at me now, he was clearly more wolf than human. I could only hope that Faith, like most people, was too oblivious to notice.

  I paused and waited as I heard her feet coming down the steps and echoing through the house.

  “I'm here,” she said, stepping up behind beside me and crossing her arms over her chest. “Introduce me.” Faith had on her toughest, take-no-shit look which, if I was being honest, wasn't really all that intimidating. I smiled again.

  “Guys, this is my best friend, Faith Cassidy,” I started, noticing my friend's expression change from irritation to … mildly pleased confusion. She looked between the four guys and then over at me, reaching up to grab the sleeve of the blue t-shirt I'd thrown on in the SUV on the way over.

  “They're all …” Faith paused, like she was desperately searching her brain for the right word. “Hot.” This last part was whispered carefully in my ear.

  “Hot?” I asked, slightly bewildered as I glanced back at the guys, catching Nic's pursed lips and flashing eyes. We were all of fifteen minutes into the Pairing and he was hating every second of it. Faith did, however, have a point. They were all hot. Yay for me.

  “Shh,” Faith hissed, standing up straight and taking a deep breath. “So are you going to introduce me or what?”

  “This is Jax, Montgomery, Silas … and Anubis.”

  Faith didn't bat an eye at the name, the eyes, or the hair. Like I said, totally non-judgmental.

  “Silas,” she repeated after a second, giving him a closer look. “Love the contacts by the way.”

  “Gee, thanks,” he drawled, flicking his cigarette into the wet pine needles with a hiss. I wrinkled my nose at the smell as he stalked his way over to us and slipped the fingers of his tattooed hands into his front pockets.

  “Do I know you?” she asked as she studied his much taller frame. Faith was five foot three on a good day while Silas was pretty close to topping off at six.

  “Pretty sure I'd remember a girl as pretty as you,” he said, lifting his eyes up to give me a look. 'You said be nice to her, didn't you?' he teased inside my head, his lips curling up into a smile.

  'I'd have to argue that when Zara asked us to treat her friend with respect, she meant we should act like gentlemen.' Anubis growled low under his breath and Silas smirked, making me wonder how the hell I was supposed to deal with this crap for an entire year.

  “Silas,” Faith said again, snapping her fingers and looking up at me with innocent brown eyes. “This is the guy you had your first kiss with, right?”

  A ripple effect seemed to travel through the boys and I swear, I could see hackles going up, even in human form.

  “Alright, time to get in the SUV,” I said as I met Silas' gaze, watched as the sun caught on the scar across his eye. He turned away suddenly as Nic stalked angrily over to the driver's side door and got in, slamming it shut behind him.

  “Isn't this the guy?” Faith asked innocently as I hustled her into the front seat and decided it'd be best if I sat in the middle—just in case. Anubis looked like he was getting ready to take Silas' head off his shoulders.

  I sat between the two of them while Jax and Montgomery settled into the back.

  Good thing my mother filled the pack's fleet with nine-seater SUVs.

  I'd need one just to transport me, my best friend … and my new boyfriends.

  The vials of vampire blood and the syringes were gone when we got back to the house.

  So was Faith's mom.

  “How many vials were there?” Jax asked me, kneeling down in front of the bathroom cabinet and closing his blue eyes, breathing deep to try and catch Diya's scent.

  “At least a dozen,” I told him, crossing my arms over my chest and leaning against the doorjamb as I watched him work. If I scented the air, I could just barely catch the faint apple and mint smell clinging to the room. “I considered taking them with me, but I didn't want anyone to know I'd been here. Do you think you could follow the scent?” If he couldn't, I could, but I wanted to get to know these guys, see what kind of talents they possessed. For better of worse, these boys—plus the Alpha-Sons of Violet Shadow and Amber Ash that I hadn't met yet—were like my own miniature pack. I needed to know exactly what they were capable of.

  “Sure,” Jax said, standing up and yanking his white t-shirt up and over his head. He tossed it to me and I caught it easily, my eyes taking in the smooth muscular contours of his chest. He noticed me looking and quirked up the right side of his mouth in a bemused half-smile. “I walk well on a leash, too,” he added with a wink, kicking off his blue and white Chucks and dropping his jeans to the floor.

  He wasn't wearing any underwear.

  Not surprising. Most werewolves didn't. Well, except for Nic—he sure loved his boxers.

  I felt this hot little thrill run through me at the sight of Jax's naked body, this sensation that made my skin feel tight and achy all at once. I sucked in a deep breath, surprised at my reaction, watching as he melted forward into a seamless shift.

  I supposed that for someone who'd never seen a werewolf change before, it might look a little weird. The entire body seemed to go completely liquid, like the molecules were no longer bonded together, flowing in a loose wave until they reached their newly desired shape. It wasn't painful or messy or loud; it was who we were, something we could do as early as the start of the second trimester. Werewolf pups shifted in the womb. Sometimes they were born looking like human babies and sometimes, like wolf cubs.

  Jax stood before me in a thick, white-gold winter coat, teased through with streaks of brown and gray, his blue eyes bright in his pale face. He was huge, too, like all werewolves—the same weight he'd have been in human form. It's all conservation of mass, people.

  I waited as he took in Diya's scent, hoping like hell that Nic had Faith and her dogs under control downstairs. I did not want to have to explain why I was holding Jax's clothes in my arms—and following a gargantuan white wolf through her mother's bedroom.

  'I'm not picking up any vampire scent,' Jax said inside my mind, using the tight connection of pack to communicate with me. It wasn't English he was speaking although I sort of naturally translated it in my head. It was hard to explain exactly what it was, but even if they didn't speak the same language in human form, two werewolves could communicate with each other in this silent spe
ech. 'And only three humans.'

  “Faith, her mom, and her dad,” I said aloud with a slight nod, watching as Jax squeezed his way out of the bathroom and toured the bedroom, pausing a few times to sniff at one of Diya's dirty t-shirts I'd dug out of the hamper. It was kind of gross, I know, but in order to isolate her smell from the others, he needed a reference point that was clearly Diya's scent.

  I opened the bedroom door for Jax, tempted to reach down and run my fingers through his fur. It was thick and lush, like sunlight over snow, the shadows of trees making the dark splotches across his back. I managed to keep my hands to myself, but there was no doubt in my mind that Jax—and all the other boys—would be able to smell the pheromones radiating from me.

  Great.

  I'm sure Nic would be thrilled about that.

  “They're still outside,” Silas said from the bottom of the stairs, posted there as my lookout. As soon as we'd shown up here and found that Diya still wasn't home, Faith had had a sort of blubbery breakdown and raced into the backyard to call her dad, who was out of town on business. I'd tasked Nic with making sure she stayed outside, sending Anubis and Montgomery with him as backup. If they managed to get Faith talking, they could probably keep her out there indefinitely. “She's on the phone with her boyfriend now. Sounds like a total douche.”

  I paused and listened carefully, wishing I was in wolf form so I could tilt my ears in the right direction without having to turn my whole head.

  “When are you coming home, baby, I miss you. Things aren't good here. My mom's missing.”

  “Ah, come on, Faith, I'm sure she's fine. She's a grown-ass woman and so are you. You don't need me there to hold your hand. Don't be ridiculous.”

  I pursed my lips.

  Yep, total douche.

  Jax did a round of the upstairs bedrooms and then headed down the steps, nails clicking across the wood floor. I motioned for Silas to join me and grabbed one of Faith's leashes from the hook near the door, looping it around Jax's neck and then letting it trail on the ground next to him. You'd be surprised at how much easier it was to get people to relax around a 'dog' that's wearing a pink leash—even if he was just dragging it along behind him.

  “What are you expecting to find?” Silas asked me as Jaxson did a round on the driveway, stopping where Diya usually parked her car. That was what I'd been afraid of, finding out that her trail ended at her vehicle, leaving me with zero leads.

  But then Jax's ears perked up and he lifted his head, staring out towards the street.

  Faith had said she'd looked out her window the night before last and saw a strange man staring at her from the road.

  I waited as Jax made his way onto the pavement and paused, nose to the ground.

  'Vampire,' he confirmed before I had a chance to answer Silas' question. 'And something else,' he continued as he inhaled, tail wagging slightly as he edged along the road with his nose pressed to the cement. He looked wildly out of place in the middle of suburbia, a thick coated snow beast with long legs and lean muscles sliding beneath his winter thick fur. 'Werewolf.'

  A chill chased down my spine and I felt my hands curl into fists at my sides.

  Without bothering to wonder how it might look, I strode forward and squatted down next to Jax, running my fingers along the cement and lifting them to my face. I closed my eyes and breathed in deep, the smell of oil and grease and car exhaust almost obliterating the sweet mixture of pine and honeysuckle just barely clinging to the spot.

  Ebon Red.

  That scent, that was from one of my pack members.

  I rose to my feet and glanced over at Silas, finally answering his question.

  His gold eyes met mine and held there as I dug my fingernails into my palms, the dual edges of excitement and anger crashing over me.

  “I was looking for a clue,” I told him as I realized what this meant.

  I had two choices: keep the matter quiet and try to investigate under the radar.

  Or I had to make an appointment with a vampire queen.

  I sat on the floor of Nic's bedroom and played tug-of-war with Hugo, shaking the fuzzy little lamb toy back and forth as he growled at me and wagged his tail in such a rapid fashion that it was nothing but a brown-gray blur. Despite the circumstances, I couldn't quite keep the smile off my face. Hugo was pure innocence and joy, completely unaware of pack hierarchy or dominance displays or ancient rituals. He just was. He lived in the moment and that's the thing I liked best about him.

  “We're basically on the edge of two major vampire territories,” Nic was saying, enjoying our brief moment away from the alpha-sons. Even with such a morbid topic of conversation, it was almost like we'd managed to steal a few moments back from the Pairing, sitting together in the room across the hall from mine, the one Nic'd been living in since he was eleven years old and assigned as my guard for our first year of public school together.

  I crinkled my brows as I looked up, our matching sloe-eyed gazes meeting, sending a hot spark zinging through me. It was followed by a heap of guilt—guilt for putting Nic through this, for checking out Jax earlier today, for kissing Silas when I was sixteen. I relinquished the toy to Hugo and leaned back, putting my palms flat on the floor behind me.

  “Faith's house is firmly Ironbound's turf,” I said, trying to ignore thoughts of romantic entanglement. That was less important than this … even if it felt twice as urgent.

  He was already shaking his head, raking his fingers through dark red hair and kneeling down on the floor beside me. Nic put a map between the open 'V' of my spread legs, his knuckles accidentally brushing agains the inside of my right thigh.

  My breath caught and we both froze, looking at each other; our faces were close enough to kiss.

  Hugo yipped and tapped his front paws on the floor, inviting us to play.

  Nic sighed and sat back hard on his ass, scrubbing a hand down his face.

  “Look at the map,” he instructed, keeping his gaze on my little brother, purposely avoiding my eyes. Whether he looked at me or not didn't matter. Our bare upper arms were touching, just below the shirtsleeves of our tees and neither of us had the heart to pull away.

  I took a deep breath and pushed strands of loose hair back from my face, studying the fraying old map between my knees. It showed the state of Oregon, divided into thirty-six counties and washed in two different shades of red. The darker crimson color was—according to the map's key—representative of Ironbound territory while the pale, pinkish tinge was indicative of Crown Aurora. The last time I'd looked at this map, Ironbound had nearly three quarters of the state under their control. Now, Lane County—the seat of Pack Ebon Red's power—was bisected right down the middle. The map itself was a treasure whose origins were steeped in mystery, a rare and valuable vampiric artifact that used old magic to keep track of the vampire kingdoms and their current boundaries. Since the last Oregon county, Deschutes, was established in 1916, I knew the map had to have been made sometime after that, but Majka refused to discuss how she'd come across it. In order to make something like this, royal blood from both kingdoms would have to be shed and imbued into the paper. And if either ruler died, their peoples' color would fade from the map—regardless of territory.

  This meant that not only were the current heads of either vampire kingdom—Ironbound and Crown Aurora—still alive but that they'd been in power when this map was made. I imagined that Majka had stolen it once upon a time, but whenever I brought it up, she simply started to curse at me in Croatian until I got tired of being berated in a language I didn't understand.

  “Ironbound's lost a lot of territory—and they're losing it fast,” I said as I trailed a finger across the surface of the map. The fact that it pictured the state of Oregon and its counties at all was curious to me. My people paid as much attention to human drawn boundaries as vampires did. It simply didn't matter to us what they thought of the world. Their world and ours … were two different places.

  I sighed and sat back, looking up
at the skylight in Nic's ceiling. Through it, I could see the distant twinkle of stars.

  “So not only do we have possible Blood involvement,” I began, using the term that vampires preferred for themselves, “but also a turf war.”

  “Still want to contact the Ironbound Blood Queen?” he asked me as I closed my eyes and took a long, deep breath to calm myself. If I let it, the anxiety and the expectation would wash over me and I'd choke on it. No fucking way that was going to happen. I was the White Wolf, the next Alpha; I could do this.

  “I don't know,” I admitted, because Nic and Hugo were the only people in the world I could admit that to. “What do you think?” I asked, tilting to my head to look at him. After all his angry words and his fits, his knowledge that no matter what, he'd never be my mate, here he was trying to figure out how to help me with the Contribution.

  “I think that if the vampires are the ones kidnapping our people, then letting them know we're onto them would be a pretty terrible idea. Besides, at this point, we don't know which Kingdom is responsible. Revealing the fact that we're letting wolves get pulled away from the pack right under our noses to the wrong group could be devastating.”

  I nodded; I'd been thinking the same thing.

  But if I could come up with a ruse to meet with each kingdom separately, then maybe I could pick up on something—a werewolf has three times as many olfactory receptors as a vampire. In short: no matter how hard they tried to clean up, if they'd been in recent contact with one of our people, I'd be able to smell it.

  “What about Julian?” Nic asked after a moment, turning to face me.

  “Julian?” I asked, blinking myself out of my thoughts to look at him. “From our wildflowers class?”

  “Like I said, I don't trust that guy. He reeks of vampires and yet, he doesn't smell like he's been bitten.” Nic was right; vampire saliva had a way of making a human being smell like they'd been dipped in peppermint schnapps for about three days afterward. If Julian had been bitten anytime soon, we'd be able to tell.