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

by C. M. Stunich

  Tidus pressed up against my leg and I dug my fingers into his fur. I might not know him personally yet, but like with Anubis in the witch's lair, the touch of another pack member was enough to soothe, to protect, to ground. We were connected, like all werewolves are. Our species was one of sociability and closeness; we were never meant to fight alone.

  “I'll admit,” she continued, folding her arms atop the car door and smiling at me over them, flashing fangs. Her dress was long and black and sleek; it hugged her curves in shimmering satin and pooled around her feet. “I did not expect to see the Alpha-Heir running around town killing vampires.”

  “You'll notice we didn't actually kill a single one,” I responded carefully.

  “No?” she asked and then paused as one of her companions moved from the bushes and tossed another body to the ground next to the pile.

  This one had purple skin, ink black hair, and a pair of small indigo wings.

  The faerie girl was as dead as the Ironbound vamps, her head no longer attached to her body.

  “Just here to cut deals with the fae? Or is it simply witches you're interested in?”

  “I'm just trying to answer some questions about certain members of my pack,” I said, trying not to look at the fae girl's corpse. Maybe she was just a messenger; maybe she was something more. As soon as the Unseelie Court found out that she'd been killed, they'd be looking for answers. And if that girl had been sent here specifically to talk to me, I'd be the first one they'd come to question.

  A living vampire in black jeans and boots dragged the revenant's corpse around the corner and added it to the growing pile of death.

  “I imagine if I killed you right now, your pack would not be pleased.”

  “I imagine you're correct,” I said, feeling my heart rate pick up, my tongue slide across my lower lip. Subconsciously, my body was getting ready for a fight. I knew I would lose if one started, but I'd fight like hell to protect my mates. I could probably create enough of a hassle that they could escape … although I doubted Nic would ever leave my side.

  The Blood Queen stood up and stared me from ice blue eyes for several long minutes, taking my measure, maybe even trying to roll me. Like I said, werewolves aren't particularly susceptible to ambient magic. Her red painted nails clicked against the glass of the car window as several more vampires exited the house. I noticed that one of them was carrying a box of black vials under his arm.

  “Enjoy the full moon,” she said finally, her painted mouth mimicking the shape of a smile. Thing was, there was no warmth there, just the cold calculating sense of threat.

  The queen of the Crown Aurora vamps climbed back into her limo and slammed the door.

  The boys and I waited while the remaining Bloods loaded up the bodies into the back of a pickup and used big, blue barrels of industrial bleach to spray off the stains on the road. It was so … routine. I felt sick to my stomach, just fucking sick.

  Either the dead fae's glamour was holding strong, or the vampires had used a trick of their own to keep the neighbors at bay. Nobody drove down the street; nobody came outside to investigate or let the dog out. Still, no sirens.

  The remaining vamps didn't talk to us, didn't even look at us. And they made sure to keep their distance. When they were finished, they loaded up into their respective vehicles and left.

  “We need to clean up the house,” I said, my voice hollow.

  Crown Aurora may have shown up because Ironbound killed Diya, but how did Diya get involved with vampires in the first place? And why had Ironbound shown up here tonight? Because of Diya? Or because of me?

  I couldn't think about that right now.

  Instead, I let myself in the back gate and retrieved the piece of Ebon Red flesh from the shed, tucking it into my jacket pocket next to the faerie mushroom. I could still use it to call on the fae. It would probably be to my benefit to contact them before they came after me.

  “Are you okay?” Montgomery asked, standing at the door to the shed and watching as I leaned against the wall, dead eyed and empty inside. I'd just had my Bonding—and Nic had been a part of it. Last night, I'd lost my virginity. By Monday morning, I'd be able to go back to school and pretend everything was okay. But it wasn't. Diya was dead and somehow, someway, I knew it was my fault.

  “I try to be … I want to be perfect all the time,” I said, my voice a near whisper. I didn't want Nic to hear me crying. He worried enough as it was. I knew though, that he'd be inside the house, trying to clean up as much of the mess as he could before I joined in. “But this, this all could've been avoided if I'd just … I don't know, done something different. I knew Diya was an eternity chaser days ago. If I'd put more effort into finding her—”

  “You and I are actually pretty similar,” Montgomery interrupted with a long sigh, his trench coat blowing in the cool night breeze. He crossed his arms over his chest. After what I'd been through tonight, the fact that he walked around almost daily with an arsenal strapped to his body didn't seem so ridiculous. I touched my badass tool kit and felt the empty spot where the wooden knife had been. I'd have to get a new one made. “You feel like the whole world is relying on you to make things right, to fix things, to keep life running smoothly.”

  “The whole world is,” I said, feeling tired, wishing I could just throw off my clothes, shift into wolf form and take off through the woods behind Faith's house. I thought about going for a run when we got back to the Pairing House, but I knew without a doubt that I'd be too tired to do much of anything except fall asleep. “I'm the Alpha Female—and not just of Ebon Red. Ivory Emerald, Amber Ash, Violet Shadow, Crimson Dusk, Obsidian Gold, Azure Frost … they're all going to look to me for guidance.”

  “You don't have to do it alone,” he told me, stepping forward, his boots scuffing against the rough poured cement floor. I remembered when Faith's dad had built this shed, Googling each step on his phone as sweat poured down the sides of his face and Diya yelled at him in Hindi. “That's what we're here for, to help.”

  I laughed and the sound was not a pleasant one. I scrubbed a hand down my face and realized that I was covered in vampire blood. Speckles of it tainted my lips and I had to be very, very careful not to ingest too much of it. For a werewolf, vampire blood was pure poison.

  “Tell me when you learned to accept help,” I said, because I could sense he was right, that we were the same. Perfectionists. Leaders. Montgomery said he didn't want to be alpha male, but he had all the makings of one. “Tell me when you learned you couldn't do everything by yourself.”

  “When I woke up in a cage in the back of a truck,” he admitted, his green eyes dark in the shadows of the shed. His grassy, floral smell swept over me and helped keep me calm in a moment of near panic. Pack, wolf, safety, his scent told my subconscious. I lifted my head to meet his gaze. “I came to the Pairing because I knew I couldn't find my family on my own; I need your help.” Montgomery glanced back at the house. From here, warm gold light glowed from every window, making it look homey and lived-in and normal. You'd never know it was a bloodbath inside. “And it seems like you could use mine just as much.”

  I took a deep breath and reached into an inner pocket of my jacket for a hair tie. I used it to bundle my long, red hair into a ponytail. Usually, I liked that my hair was red-red-red, so bright that there wasn't a human being alive (not even Faith) that believed it was natural. Tonight, I hated that it looked so much like freshly spilled blood.

  “What's the little girl's name?” I asked after a moment because I knew, I just knew, that I had to show the flesh to Montgomery. But first, I wanted to hear something normal, something that would give me strength to fight through the rest of the night, scrubbing blood from the walls of Faith's home. “The one you brought with you to the Hall?”

  “Patience,” Monty said, his long white braid hanging over one shoulder. He smiled when I raised my brows at him. “My little sister,” he explained with a small laugh, “her name is Patience. She's just one in a litter
of seven. I think my parents named her in that in the hopes that hearing it enough would give them a little patience.”

  “Let me guess: your omega is a nervous wreck?” I asked, because no matter what pack a wolf was from, one thing remained consistent: either the omega male or the omega female was used as a nanny.

  “My parents caved and let both omegas work in the main house, just so they could get away from their pups.”

  I laughed, but the sound quickly died away, stolen by the wind sweeping through the trees and curling into the open door of the shed. Before I could think twice about it, I slipped my fingers into my jacket and extracted the blue plastic bag. Since it'd been sitting out since yesterday, the smell was … rancid. Even with all the competing scents—dog and human blood from inside the house, the Douglas firs lining the backyard, the vampire blood splattered across both of us—it was easy to recognize that something awful was in this shed.

  “Montgomery,” I started, taking a long, deep breath. “There's something I need to tell you.”

  His face was pale as he stared at the small package sitting in my hand.

  “When I visited Coven Triad,” I began, feeling my heartbeat start to pick back up, “they … tricked me into eating something.” I looked up at him and saw that his eyes were wide, his jaw clenched tight. But he was a leader and he was ready to hear whatever it was that I had to say, ready to face it. I thought of his kiss to get through the moment, how soft and romantic it had been. Did that really just happen a few short hours ago? It feels like days. “This is the flesh of a missing Ebon Red wolf.”

  I put my palm on top of the rotten meat, knowing that when I got back to the Pairing House tonight, that I would spray it with Anubis' witch hazel and bury it deep in the roots of a tree. That was where it belonged, back home with our pack. Now all I had to do was figure out if the werewolf it had come from was still alive or long dead. I couldn't quite decide which fate was worse.

  “Thank you for telling me, Alpha,” he said, his voice ice-cold and deadly. I knew that if any member of Coven Triad had been around in that moment, that he would've killed them. Montgomery started to move away as I tucked the blue plastic back in my pocket, but I stopped him by reaching out and grabbing his wrist.

  He paused and looked down at the spot where my pale white fingers curled around the sleeve of his trench coat.

  “Like you said,” I told him, sniffling back the last of my tears and steeling myself for whatever it was that would come next, “we need each other's help. Do you want to try starting with a hug? I think we could both use one of those, too.”

  Montgomery spun in a swirl of black leather, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me close, squeezing me so tight I couldn't help but close my eyes and relax into him. He hugged me the way I was sure he wished he could hug the missing members of Pack Ivory Emerald. I hugged him right back, trying to embrace the idea that this man was now my mate. I curled my fingers in his coat and breathed in his smell, smiling as I realized he was doing the same to me.

  When we finally pulled apart, I wished I'd clung on for just a few more seconds. Already, I missed Montgomery's warmth. But we had a ton of work to do tonight … and a ton more ahead of us.

  The idea that we were still in the middle of the Pairing Ceremony did not escape my notice.

  Today, I fought vampires. Tomorrow, I'd fight wolves.

  Cleaning that house took the eight of us all … night … long.

  And it was awful, so freaking awful.

  We buried what was left of Notch and Mila in a grave with the Ebon Red flesh, dousing the hole with the last of Anubis' witch hazel and covering it up with cold, damp earth. Mother nature took our offering into her embrace and sunk it beneath the dirt, tangled it up in gnarled roots and hid the evidence of last night's horror in a shady spot about a hundred feet from the Pairing House.

  I vowed that even if I eventually told Faith the truth about what happened, I would not share the gruesome details. When I closed my eyes, I saw it all over again—the red walls, the sopping bed, that syringe sticking out of Diya's arm. If I could've buried her body here, too, I would've. But getting a revenant's corpse back from Crown Aurora would be virtually impossible. If it wasn't properly disposed of, even worse things could happen. I knew it was in the kingdom's best interest to make it disappear for good, so I decided to let them have it.

  Trudging back to the house in the early morning light, I paused, looking up at the sunlight sparkling on the limbs of evergreen trees, dripping like crystals to the quiet forest floor. The Pairing House was settled in a natural clearing, far enough from the Hall that it felt private but close enough that a wolf could run the distance in minutes.

  Last night's horror aside, it really was beautiful—the home my mates and I would be living in for the next year, the trees, the mountains, the sun, the sky. I closed my eyes and breathed in the scent of earth and wild things, letting it soothe away whatever personal demons I'd picked up last night.

  “If we talked to Nikolina—” Nic started, but when I opened my eyes he stopped abruptly. Our ebon eyes met and held each other.

  “I'd rather spend all day in Coyote Creek than sit around in a Convocation explaining everything that happened last night. And anyway, we still don't quite know what's going on. If we investigate it, we can take our time, move in slowly. My mother will round up the cavalry and go charging in to burn Coven Triad and Ironbound off the face of the earth. Even if we're right about all of this, how many wolves will die?”

  Nic sighed and ruffled up his dark red hair. I still couldn't quite believe we'd had sex the other night. The idea that I was no longer a virgin hadn't quite caught up with me yet. I think I'd need a squealing oh my god, you didn't?! from Faith before it would really sink in.

  Faith.

  I had no idea how I was supposed to face her today, what I was going to say, if I was going to say anything at all. If I told her that her mom was dead, then I'd have to explain how I knew, and why she couldn't call the cops or have a funeral. Anyway, wasn't it kinder to let her think Diya had simply run off and taken the dogs with her? Would that make it hurt less?

  Nic stepped forward and wrapped me in his arms. It was nice, to be able to stand out in the open and hold him like that, let him tuck my head under his chin and rock me slightly in the sunshine.

  “Hey.”

  We both paused and I glanced over my shoulder to find Tidus holding several pink boxes. I'd noticed him slipping off just after the burial was over, but I guess I hadn't realized how long I'd sat by the grave, staring at a tree and doing nothing. Long enough, apparently, for the Amber Ash Alpha-Son to go out and get fresh doughnuts.

  “I thought you could use a little normalcy in your day,” he said, spinning one of the boxes around on his right hand. “And I figured since we'd never met but, you know, are supposed to be lovers and whatnot that maybe I could charm you with some … glazed doughnuts?”

  He raised his eyebrows and blinked those ash gray eyes innocently.

  “Keep trying,” I said with a small smile curving my mouth.

  “Damn, okay,” Tidus said, walking over and trying to hand one of the boxes to Nic. He refused to take it so Tidus just sat it back on the stack, peering in the flimsy plastic peephole for inspiration.

  “Chocolate?”

  “Not even close,” I told him, crossing my arms over my chest as I studied his amber colored hair and the generously curved shape of his biceps. Now that I wasn't bleeding profusely into my own eyes, I could see that the tattoo on his upper arm was actually some sort of stylized keyhole with a heavy gray skeleton key lying next to it, casting a long dark shadow. Interesting.

  “Maple?”

  “You're getting warm,” I told him, pulling the top box back off the stack and starting toward the house with Nic on one side and Tidus on the other. I could still smell that sandalwood/amber/sweet sunshine scent on him. Whatever spell Majka had cast—or maybe not cast—on me to make me so hot and bothered du
ring the Bonding had worn off during the horror of collecting the dogs' heads from Faith's living room floor.

  Still, Tidus smelled warm and yummy and inviting anyway.

  Or maybe that was just the doughnuts?

  “Ah,” he said, like he had it all figured out already. I watched those gray eyes flash triumphantly. “You're a werewolf, so … maple bar with a slice of crispy bacon on the top?”

  “Damn, you're good,” I said, thoroughly impressed. Nic growled, but Tidus just laughed.

  “Delivery, boys,” he said as we walked into the living room and turned left toward the dining area. It'd been furnished with a table similar to the ones used during the banquet breakfast, a nice thick, knotted piece of wood that had been sanded and polished and varnished until it shone. “I can't remember, like, any of your names but here you go: breakfast. You can thank me later.”

  “Thank god, I'm starving,” Anubis said, appearing in the archway between the kitchen and some back hallway that I'd forgotten about. I think it led to the garage? I had no idea. The house wasn't very big—remember, most alphas that stayed here only had one mate—so it wouldn't take long to get reacquainted with the floor plan. “Milk?” he asked, peering into the stainless steel fridge and emerging with a pair of glass milk bottles.

  Yes, Ebon Red was that old-fashioned. There were a few families on the property that raised cows and thus, milk in bottles. It was also unpasteurized, totally raw, delivered fresh to my mother's house every morning on the porch, like it was the fifties or something. I imagined we'd be getting deliveries here, too. At the very least, the fridge and cabinets were currently stocked with food, the house furnished, and the Wi-fi ready to go.

  “Should I reintroduce you guys?” I asked as Tidus pulled out a chair and offered me a seat. I politely took it and let him push me in, kicking my slippers off and tucking my bare foot up against the inside of my thigh. As soon as we'd gotten back, the downstairs shower—this massive tiled area with several showerheads and tons of body jets—had been turned on and we'd all crowded naked in there together, desperate to be clean but also at risk from poisoning via vampire blood.