by Joey W. Hill
“Grey challenged Sylvan. When he beat him, he didn’t accept Sylvan’s capitulation.” Rand shook his head. “We didn’t see it coming. We’d let ourselves become too complacent, expecting all wolves to respect our pack rules, no matter where they came from. He killed Sylvan, and then ordered his betas to take out Sylvan’s pups. Four six-year-old kids.”
Rand’s jaw hardened. “In the wild, wolves, lions, certain pack animals like that, will kill the pups of the dominant female to put her back into heat, after they run off or take out the male. Don’t know if he was so messed up he thought that was what he was doing, but nobody was going to stand for that.
“We all fought them, including Sheba. Others in the pack formed a rear guard, helped Sheba and her pups get away. Because of the age of the kids, she needed at least a couple of pack members to escape with her, provide ongoing protection. That ended up being me and Dylef. It was a brutal fight, but we got lucky. None of the pups were harmed, though several of the pack were badly wounded, helping us get free. We heard later the rest of them scattered.”
He looked into the darkness of the forest. He could shift and run. Just run and leave all this behind. He didn’t know what the alcohol would do in his wolf’s system, but he didn’t really care.
“Hey.” He turned his head. How had the vampire moved next to him without him noticing? Cai slid Rand’s hair over his shoulder, his strong hand stroking tense muscles. He nudged beneath Rand’s chin, his mouth landing on Rand’s pulse to suck and nip. Rand’s hand on the empty bottle tightened, his head dropping all the way back. Too late, he realized it would be interpreted as an act of submission. Rand wanted to shove him away, but Cai caught his hand, interlacing their fingers. “Tell the rest of it,” the vampire murmured.
“Not like this. Let this…just be this.” Rand closed his eyes as Cai’s tongue teased him, down to his collar bone. He let go of the bottle to lift his hand, stroke it over the vampire’s short hair. His touch drifted to the top point of Cai’s spine, his back, over that sunburst set of scars, as Cai worked his way down his chest, his abdomen. Rand eased back to a reclining position, resting his upper body on his elbows.
“Your propensity for being naked when you shift is very useful. And yes, fucking distracting,” Cai noted, before his mouth closed over Rand’s cock, and went all the way to the root. It was an impressive accomplishment, since Rand was on the way to being fully hard. The vampire’s grip moved, one hand resting on the base of Rand’s throat, a touch to admonish him to stillness. The other wrapped around his cock as Cai went after it with a singular intensity that had Rand shoving up into his hold, strangling on a gasp.
No time for the thoughts of loss to completely flee before they were drowning in sexual desire, an unsettling mix that tore things open in his chest. “Stop…Cai.”
Did the vampire think that it would help, that somehow sex could shove the other out of the way? The loss of love and family, of connection. The only way someone could think that was if that someone had never actually had those things. The thought flitted through Rand’s mind, a revelation about the vampire, but too much of his own personal crap was swamping him to hold onto it.
So long, too long since he’d been worked over like this. And Dylef, blessed Dylef, it’d been more of a give and take between them, though Rand was top most of the time.
Cai lifted his head and brushed lips that smelled and tasted like Rand’s musk against him. He settled back on an elbow, too, but he was leaning over Rand so he could keep his hand on Rand’s chest, playing in the gleaming hair there. Rand guessed Cai liked it so much because vampires were hairless below the neck. The contrast seemed to please him. “So keep going,” Cai said, though his eyes slid to Rand’s cock, hard and high on his belly. “Tell me all of it and I’ll finish what I started.”
The arousal had been goaded by Cai’s touch, by his looks, by the experience they’d had earlier. But at those words, desire left Rand. The hard fist already squeezing him below the ribs increased its reach, bringing his heart into it. Rand rolled away and rose, staring down at Cai.
What lay behind the vampire’s eyes? They were so flat, someone without Rand’s senses would have thought there was nothing beneath. But he sensed more to Cai than that. Which just pissed Rand off worse.
“I’m not going to give you any more of my story. I really can’t. You can use my dick for a distraction, but not my family. I get that you think it’s in the past and done with, who the hell cares, the wolf’s story a fun diversion between hard-ons, but it’s not like that for me.”
For him it was two seconds ago, right now, all of it flashing through his head two, three, ten times a day. Except when he shifted. God, he wanted to shift. He was starting to feel wrong in his skin.
“Stay with me,” Cai said quietly, a command but also something else. He rose and stepped back into Rand’s personal space. When he caressed Rand’s jaw with his knuckles, Rand clasped his wrist, but he didn’t push away. Just increased the pressure. A warning.
“Why? Except for wanting to screw me as a human, why do you care?”
The vampire’s gaze revealed something that surprised Rand, especially when he reversed their grips so he was holding Rand’s forearm, bringing his wrist up to eye level between them. When Rand tried to wrest away, the vampire set his feet, meeting him with equal strength.
“This bugs me,” the vampire said shortly.
The direction of his glance, the tightening of his grip just below it, told Rand what he meant. The vertical scar on his right wrist, remnants of a razor-sharp cut that had opened the vein, matching the one on his left.
“Well, don’t let it.” It took a hard yank, but Rand pulled his wrist away and stepped back. The churning emotions surged up out of the clogged drain, ready to drown everything. “That’s my business, and it’s done here. I didn’t need you to save me, hunt for me or take care of me, but you did, all for a good fuck. Well, payment delivered. I’m done.”
The vampire’s jaw hardened and Rand tensed, ready for the fight he was sure was about to erupt. Instead, Cai’s expression shuttered again, and he stepped back. “Fine. Take off, wolf.”
As Cai spoke, Rand was already letting the shift have him, reaching for it as eagerly as a meth addict. The comparison didn’t please him, but he couldn’t think of an analogy to replace it. That was fine. Only his human part worried about that kind of thing. His wolf didn’t do metaphors, analogies or self-analysis of any kind.
He plunged into the forest at a run, leaving the vampire behind, his addictive touch and toxic personality. But eventually the burn in his side and hitch in his gait, evidence of the healing still needed, forced him to slow. He kept moving forward, wanting to put as much distance as he could between him and the vampire. Rand tried to keep aware of game, but a search for food he didn’t really need couldn’t prevent the rest of the story from unfolding in his mind. Images that neither wolf nor human could escape brought him to a halt, and he stood, quivering, his mind caught up in what could never be left behind, no matter how fast he ran.
He, Dylef, Sheba and her pups had settled on a rural piece of land in the foothills of Tennessee. Rand didn’t have a lot of funds, but Sheba and Dylef did, so they’d purchased a big rambling farm house with plenty of rooms. They were close enough to a town that Sylvan’s pups, when they were old enough, would be able to attend the local school, learn about human society, develop human friends. Even preferring woods and wild spaces, most shifters knew familiarity and comfort with human society was critical to blend and have more resources to protect them.
Rand had never developed that comfort, though he was familiar enough. Dylef loved the human world, with its movie theaters, cocktail theme bars and art museums. Rand teased him about it, but Dylef had talked him into a few trips to indulge his interest. Rand hadn’t found it as odious as he expected, but he still mostly did it because making Dylef happy made Rand happy.
To pull his weight financially, Rand did highway roadside mo
wing through a contractor. Dylef was a forest ranger with the National Park Service. He never failed to stir Rand’s libido when he donned the park uniform. One night, Dylef had called him a badge bunny, joking that if he’d chosen to be a cop, Rand never would let him out of bed. In response, Rand had fucked him within an inch of his life.
Yeah, sometimes that give-and-take resulted in an outright taking. Dylef had been surprised at the roughness, but his response had said he wanted more of that from his alpha wolf. Way more. Rand wondered if they might have eventually ended up at one of those toy stores Cai had flustered him by mentioning.
They’d settled into that life for several years, and it was a nice life. Dylef and he had a wing of the house with a lockout door that was never locked, except when he and Dylef needed privacy. They didn’t want Sylvan’s young to stumble on them, since they were becoming way too curious about such things. Then one day, Sheba came to have a heart-to-heart talk with him.
“You were meant to be a pack leader, Rand. What happened that day with Grey…”
Sheba had dark eyes and shiny ebony hair. She was tall and slender, and her wolf was likewise light-bodied, long-legged and sleek, her fur a dark brown. When she and Sylvan had hunted with the pack, she’d been the fleetest, the one most likely to get in front of a deer, dart in and clamp down on the nose to help bring the meal down.
She was gentle with her pups, and a loving and firm matriarch to their family, small and unorthodox as it was. But Rand would never forget the brutal savagery she’d showed when they fought Grey. She had the heart of a warrior. She and Sylvan had been life mates. Rand had no doubt she’d shed a waterfall of tears for him, but except for right after they’d gotten away, she shared them with no one. She was the strongest female he’d ever met.
“You were meant to be a pack leader,” he told her in amused response, but it was true. She could have been, if not for the simple fact that alpha male wolves were physically stronger than alpha females. No matter how much their human sides embraced tolerance and diversity, wolves were guided by practical animal instinct toward black and white decisions.
“You jumped into the fight the moment Grey…the moment he didn’t accept Sylvan’s capitulation. Same as I did.” A shadow moved behind her gaze. “If you hadn’t responded so quickly, the full pack might not have gotten involved, and we might have lost…more.”
She removed her light wrapper against the evening’s chill. He sat on the bed, so she surprised him by kneeling on the floor, tilting her head up toward him in a submissive gesture. “I know you haven’t pursued a pack because you are too honest, and you don’t want to put a female into the position of being your mate, when you couldn’t love her as you believe you should.”
Rand’s brow furrowed and he took her hand, resting on his knee. “Come sit with me, Sheba. What’s this about?”
She shook her head, remaining on her knees. “I’m petitioning you as my pack leader, Rand, because that’s how I see you, and how I defer to you.” A light smile touched her lips. “You may not recognize it when I’m scolding you about wiping your feet before you come into the house, but there it is. We’re not mated, but you’re the alpha now, to me and to Dylef. I won’t love another again like I loved my Sylvan.”
Her fingers closed into a fist on his thigh, her face becoming resolute. “I will be your mate. You, Dylef, my pups, and whomever we conceive together, will be our pack. Your pack. We need to form a strong family here, one that someone like Grey will never be able to threaten again.”
He and Dylef had talked it over, and yeah, it made sense. He loved her and Dylef, as well as Sylvan’s children. Yet he hadn’t understood how much, or how such a love could etch grief on one’s face and heart in permanent grooves.
After she’d lost Sylvan and they left Colorado, those lines had appeared on Sheba’s face. Like a painting that had been redone over the original, so subtly that only someone who understood it would notice. But when they did, when they recognized it because they’d been there themselves, there was nothing subtle about it.
Rand broke back into a run, no matter the burning in his side or the pain in his leg. Maybe it would help. But the memories kept coming.
She’d become pregnant almost immediately, and Dylef had teased him about his virility. He’d offered Dylef the honors before it happened, but Dylef had only rolled his eyes. “You’re the alpha,” Dylef said dryly. “That’s truth and instinct. I lay a paw on that female and she will rip off my dick with her teeth.” He’d sobered then, nudging Rand. “It’s you. You’re our leader.”
As Rand looked back at himself through that lens, he saw how young they’d all been. How fucking stupid. But none of them wanted to be at anyone’s mercy again, and it had seemed like the smartest way to do it. They had time. Right? Wrong.
His children had been born the spring after she had that discussion with him. Four pups. It had been a remarkable blessing, her carrying Rand’s first litter to term. She’d had three miscarries with Sylvan before it took.
Five years later, Grey found them again.
Through various communications with old pack members over the years, they knew that Grey had tried to pull the Colorado pack back together. He’d succeeded somewhat, through sheer brutality, and built the pack up, but his methods caused ripples of reaction from other packs. To most wolves, a pack was about family. To Grey, it was about conquest. Dylef had once called him Napoleon with fur, with grim humor. Given that a pack’s territory was usually large, his ability to run afoul of trouble with other packs exceeded all expectations. When the area packs banded together and gave him the choice of execution or exile, he chose exile.
What they didn’t know was that, in his frustration, Grey decided that all his problems had started with Sheba’s snub and Dylef and Rand’s defiance. With nothing to hold them in Colorado, he and his betas had started tracking them down.
Rand had underestimated Grey’s hatred, how it fueled his willingness to travel all the way across the country to express it. While he already knew that Grey followed no protocols but his own, this time he broke almost every rule, using resources no honorable wolf would to resolve a dispute.
The only rule he didn’t break, the one that allowed Rand to take him out, came far too late.
Rand couldn’t outrun it. He skidded to a halt, swung his head and hit it against a tree trunk, hard enough to knock himself insensible. He didn’t want to see it again, couldn’t. The pups. God. His young. Sheba’s. Dylef.
He was whimpering as he struck himself again. He couldn’t do it hard enough. If there was a cliff nearby, he would have flung himself from it.
Rand, don’t. Sshh…Easy.
The voice helped, but he couldn’t identify it. There was a sense of someone nearby, coming closer. A comfort, though he told himself that was an illusion.
He dropped to the ground, panting, his body quitting on him, overcome by too many different types of pain. Too much.
Make it stop.
They set the house on fire. Grey and his males had shifted to human, something wolves didn’t do during a challenge. There was a ritual. Grey had challenged Sylvan and fought wolf to wolf. Not this time.
Grey’s wolves had come in downwind. They used the guns they brought to shoot Sheba as she was coming out of the front door. That was where Rand had found her. She’d been distracted, Rand guessed. His four offspring, now shifting randomly between human and wolf, were a lot to handle. Everyone helped, including Sheba and Sylvan’s children, the three now in high school, but Sheba was most involved in their care.
Dylef apparently burst from his woodworking shed when he heard the gunfire. They shot him in the chest. Rand had imagined the blood blooming there as he fell to his knees, his eyes confused, hazy. Then vacant. Gone in a blink, no time for good-byes, last words. Nothing. The last thing he’d said to Rand had been something ridiculously innocuous like, “I’ll be out to help you after I put a coat of finish on the table.” The scent of the finish had also
masked the approach of Grey and his pack.
Rand was out in the back field, working on the tractor they used, because they sold crops on the side to supplement their income. The engine was running, so he didn’t hear the gunfire, but an uneasy feeling had him cutting off the tractor to listen, scent the wind. That was when he smelled smoke.
Running; he was running, hearing more gun fire. They were torching the house when he got there. Two of Grey’s betas came out of the kitchen door. They carried bats. Bloodstained bats, the baseball bats he’d bought for Sylvan’s boys, who were on the team at their high school. They practiced in the backyard with Dylef and Rand some nights while Sheba made dinner and watched with a smile out the spacious kitchen window.
“Not worth wasting a bullet. Easy as taking out water balloons,” one of the betas had laughed.
Rand hadn’t realized the soul could be destroyed by laughter. Sometimes the heart didn’t have the strength to comprehend—or survive—the cruelty of the soulless.
His children. Maple, Teague, Cira. Shy. His little girl, frailer than the rest, but gaining strength every day. She should have grown up to be teased by her brothers and sisters about being the runt of the litter.
But realizing they were gone, putting together those bloodstained bats with the unthinkable, had come later. At that second, Silas and Slate, Sylvan’s boys, exploded out of the attic windows with a shower of glass. In wolf form, they ran across the roof line and launched themselves onto the shoulders of the two males.
The attic was their hangout, where they listened to music and did their homework after they finished their chores. Sheba usually gave them a couple uninterrupted hours to do that before she had them take over babysitting, while she and Mischa prepared dinner.
They’d probably had the music up so loud, and hadn’t realized the intruders were in the house until it was too late. The young males came out of the windows with the single-minded ferocity of their parents, not hesitating to launch themselves at the men armed with guns.