The young man in the booth attached to the gate smiled at her, then frowned when he saw Zack. “You aren’t supposed to come back. If they see you they’ll just throw you off pack land again. If you’re lucky.”
Zack didn’t look intimidated at all. He even grinned. “Your dad has you on gate duty, Lucas? Please tell me you didn’t piss off the packmaster on my account.”
“Of course I did. What he did wasn’t right. After everything you did for me, I mean. Personal feelings aside, of course.” The young werewolf male blushed.
Zack laughed. “Mated life appears to agree with you. You’re the one who has my gratitude, Lucas. I mean it. I doubt anyone else there spoke for me.”
“Lots of people did! Everyone knows my dad lied. He should’ve let you stay.” His young face flushed a deeper shade of red. “I’m sorry he’s the way he is. It’s… it’s not right. I’m supposed to report right away if you show up.” He made no move to do so.
“It’s okay, Lucas. I understand.” Zack’s voice was gentler than Dara had ever heard it.
Dara stared with fascination at Zack. She saw with abrupt clarity his caring for others and the loyalty he commanded. He would’ve made a fantastic mate, Dara thought with a pang that went all through her. It made losing Zack’s interest that much more painful.
Zack’s voice deepened, became more official. “Please let the packmaster know I’ve brought him a gift. I found him a mate.”
Lucas’s gaze snapped back to Dara. “Seriously? Like you did for me? Wow! Then he might not kill you for coming back.”
“That’s good to hear.”
Lucas blushed. “Sorry. My dad got awfully rabid about you. But now he’ll have to let all that go. Hey, she’s pretty. She’s closer to my age though.” Lucas stared at her bare legs, evaluated her large chest. “He’ll like her for sure.”
“She has a name,” Dara snapped.
At the same time, Zack spoke. “Get Dara some clothes. Immediately,” Zack growled. His voice wasn’t friendly anymore.
Dara watched Lucas turned white and jerk his gaze from her. His throat worked as he swallowed. “Right away. Sorry. Um. Let me just…” Lucas pressed a button and the gate began to trundle open. Lucas went to obey Zack.
“Wait.” Zack’s voice halted Lucas. “Never mind the clothes. There’s no time.” His fingers drummed on the steering wheel. “Get the packmaster. Bring him here right away. It’s a long story and I can explain it to you later… but it’s imperative these mates meet immediately. It’s a special-circumstances matchmaking thing. Run!”
“You’re awfully eager to get rid of me,” Dara muttered after Lucas dashed away.
“Yes,” he said, surprising her. He pinned her with eyes gone yellow and gleaming. “That’s right. The sooner your naked legs are out of my sight, the better, since I know what’s between them and I want it more than my next breath. The sooner your silky hair, your big innocent blue eyes, your luscious curves, and your maddeningly erotic scent is gone from my truck and gone from my life, the sooner I can think straight again. Then maybe I’ll figure out how to live with giving away the woman who’s supposed to be my mate.”
“Then don’t!” Dara cried out. “I want you, too. I begged for you. And all you did was drive me crazy instead. I don’t understand all this werewolf business but I know it’s not okay to tease someone then hand them over to a buddy like she’s some kind of… some kind of…” Dara sputtered.
“Birthday present?” Zack offered. The corner of his mouth quirked up into a wry smile.
“How can you be so cavalier about this?” Dara asked, hurt. Yet hopeful. Zack had sounded passionate when he’d spoken of her ‘luscious curves’ and the rest. He actually was attracted to her.
He looked away. “I’m not handling this well, I guess. Dara, I hate this. But if you don’t get yourself inoculated by an alpha wolf, who can bring out your inner werewolf, you’re in danger. Your future will be as a Golden Retriever and you’ll lose your humanity completely. I can’t let that happen.”
Dara felt desperate. She looked around, met Goldilock’s gaze from where she stood in the back of the truck. The dog wagged her tail happily.
Dara thought of something. She spoke slowly. “Zack. What if you are an alpha? You act pretty dominant, and everyone reacts to you as if you’re naturally in charge. Lucas certainly did.”
She watched Zack close his eyes, hiding their yellow gleam. “I would give anything to be an alpha, but I’m just a lone wolf who’s unwelcome in packs. I was thrown out of this pack less than a day ago. And, I’m too emotional. A real alpha acts like a packmaster: strong and cold and willing to keep control of any situation. Willing to fight for what he desires. I teared up just at the thought of losing you, and I’m giving you away. It’s to save your life, I tell myself, but there it is. The thing I want most, I’m ceding to a real alpha.”
“Don’t, then. Just don’t.” Dara was onto something, she knew it, but Zack seemed convinced of his beta-ness. In the end it didn’t matter.
“I have to. Stop making it harder than it has to be. You’ll be mated to the packmaster. Look, he’s coming. He’ll save your life. You can do this, Dara.”
Her eyes filled with tears. He was being gentle and encouraging. Too bad the thing he was being gentle and encouraging about was her upcoming mating with another man. “Damn it, Zack. Why did I have to meet you, only to lose you?” She couldn’t be around him anymore. She climbed out of his truck.
Goldilocks growled.
Dara blinked her tears back. “What is it, girl?” She turned to look at what the dog growled at.
A grizzled older man stood a distance from the truck, glaring at Goldilocks. Dara could see he’d once been attractive, very tall with still-broad shoulders and thick pale-brown brows over flashing blue eyes the same shade as hers. He wore a bright patterned sweater that should have looked cheerful. On him it seemed wrong, too jaunty, as if he belonged in grays and blacks. His short, grayed hair was perfectly styled, which also seemed off. It was too precise for such lined and weathered skin. His scowl didn’t add to his appeal. Something about him struck Dara as familiar, but she couldn’t say exactly what it was.
Another low growl emerged from Goldilocks. The hair on the dog’s back stood straight up, and the pointy tips of her sharp white teeth showed from where her lips had skinned back. Even as Dara looked, Goldilocks erupted into a paroxysm of barking, all directed at the man.
“Get that dog off pack land or I’ll shut it up for good,” the man demanded. “You might or might not be an acceptable mate but dogs don’t belong here.” He smiled, a smarmy stretching of his lips. “It’s for their own good that they aren’t allowed, you understand.”
Zack suddenly stood near her. Not beside her as Dara wished, but close enough to provide a much-needed sense of comfort. “That’s not exactly true anymore, Packmaster. I’ve travelled quite a bit and there’s at least one other pack that accepts pet dogs. Have you heard of the new werewolf Chrissy’s pet Labrador, Digger? That’s quite a story...”
“Shut up.” The packmaster could have sounded dominant, cutting Zack off that way, but his aggressive tone didn’t achieve dominance. It was posturing, transparent as glass. Yet Zack obeyed.
Dara looked at the older man with new awareness. So this was the packmaster? The alpha she was supposed to sleep with to save her humanity? She suddenly felt like barking at him too. She put a protective hand on Goldilocks. “It’s a package deal. Either you let Goldilocks stay, or I leave.”
The man looked her over for an insultingly long time. Finally he shrugged. “Feisty. I like that. Zack, keep an eye on the dog while I’m busy with my new mate. What’s your name, honey?” He oozed closer to Dara, his nostrils flaring as he took in her scent.
Dara didn’t like him. The idea of sleeping with him made her skin crawl. But maybe her skin crawling heralded another shift and she should sleep with him as soon as possible. At least Goldilocks had stopped growling. Dara looked at Za
ck, uncertain. She wished he’d save her.
She saw Zack’s nostrils were flared too, as if scenting her and the packmaster. She remembered his claim to be a matchmaker based on scents. What did Zack’s look of resignation mean? Why was he nodding? Why didn’t he stop this and rescue her? She could die happy if only Zack would take her for himself.
Zack lowered his head. “Packmaster, may I present your mate, Dara.”
“If it weren’t for your reputation for successful matchmaking, I wouldn’t have believed my luck. She’s so young. So young, succulent, and innocent.” He inhaled slowly as if savoring the scent of a fine wine.
“Be good to her.” Zack’s threatening tone made both the packmaster and Dara start, cocking their heads identically to the right. It disconcerted her that they’d moved in tandem. As if they truly were mates and well-synched at least physically. Maybe they were meant to be together, Dara thought with dismay.
“Of course I’ll be good to her, dear boy,” the packmaster said with a small smile. “I’ll be better than good. You’ll hear her howl all the way across the compound and inside the common room, where Lucas will accompany you and your canine companion. Goldilocks, wasn’t it?” He looked at the dog, a smile playing across his lips. “It’s good you have a bitch of your own.”
Dara glanced at Zack, desperate for a reprieve, but he didn’t even react. He stared over the packmaster’s head as if the silly antics going on around him were beneath his notice.
Dara slumped. There’d be no reprieve. “Let’s get this over with,” she muttered, stepping forward. She tugged the edges of her shirt down. The sooner she got herself stabilized and inoculated, the sooner she could get rid of Zack’s shirt. She knew forgetting him would take more than that, but it would be a start.
“I’m ready whenever you are. I’m always ready,” the packmaster boasted.
Dara rolled her eyes where he couldn’t see. Was he for real? “What a relief,” she said. She shuddered when she felt his hand on the small of her back, but she went where the packmaster steered her. What else could she do?
8
“There’s something about her,” Lucas mused.
Zack started. He’d forgotten the packmaster’s son was standing there. “Yeah. There is.” Dara still wore his shirt. She was tugging it down modestly over her curvy backside as she walked away. Her long blonde hair and sexy legs disappeared around the corner. She was gone.
He kept himself from running after her and claiming her for himself only with the greatest effort.
“No, seriously. Nearly naked, willing, and half his age? My dad was looking at her like he died and gone to heaven. He usually has to wait till the moon frenzy to chase down a female, and some of those aren’t willing to accept him. No wonder he didn’t try to kick your ass. Maybe he’ll even let you live on pack land now, but he was really angry about how you almost challenged him during Judgement. Some people were sorry the challenge didn’t happen.”
Zack scowled. Pack politics annoyed him, but even he could do better at leadership than the current packmaster. A stronger alpha would have handled Zack differently. A real leader wouldn’t have felt threatened enough by Zack’s mere presence that he needed to lie. For the second time, Zack seriously wondered whether he might be an alpha. Maybe a weak one, at least? There was really only one real way to find out: Challenge an alpha and win.
Lucas was still talking. “You must’ve scented Dara real close by, to get back here so quickly. It’s lucky for you, finding Dad’s mate. Did you see how they had the same exact eyes? Like mine too. And they moved together the same way. It’s like you found a long-lost relative or something.”
Unease tickled at Zack. Something disturbing replaced his thoughts of challenging the packmaster. It had bothered Zack when he’d scented Dara and the packmaster together. They smelled similar to a match, but it wasn’t exactly a match. The strangeness about the mingled smell of Dara and the old alpha was that their scents unexpectedly harmonized in a mate-like way. It spoke of compatibility.
But might that not be all it spoke of?
“Lucas,” he said slowly. “I have a strange question for you. Do you happen to know if your dad ever mounted a human woman in the forest? It would’ve been around twenty years ago.”
Lucas’s mouth dropped open. “Oh, wow. Um. My dad didn’t tell me about it, but a wolf he confessed to about it did. The answer is yes. He’d taken a woman for a bitch in human form during the moon frenzy, and things got way out of hand. The woman didn’t know how to signal disinterest, and you know how a lot of us get during the frenzy – liking it when females protest, it heats things up. But it went poorly then. Afterward, he carried her to the closest town for medical help. I remember thinking it was pretty shitty, what he’d done to her.” Lucas’s eyes asked the question.
Zack nodded. “Dara’s mother was impregnated. She died during childbirth.” Zack stared at Lucas, horrified at his realization. The packmaster was Dara’s father? Her father?
That would explain the strangely aligned scents those two shared. It wasn’t because they were mates. It was because they were related.
Zack became aware of a deep groaning sound. He realized he was making the sound.
Lucas looked shellshocked. “She’s my half-sister?” He blinked. “I was checking out my sister?”
“I’ve done something terrible,” Zack said, leaping to his feet. “Where does the packmaster usually mate with his females?”
Lucas hesitated. “It’s probably too late, as fast as dad works. I’m not sure... I can’t wrap my mind around this. He gets mad when--”
Zack grabbed him and shook him. “Enough!” he roared. “Tell me where he is!”
Lucas looked awed by Zack’s rage. Awed and cowed. “In the meadow near the guest cabin, by the bend in the river. You stayed in that cabin when you were here. You remember where it is? I can take you there if you want.”
But Zack was already shifting, hair sprouting and snout lengthening. He leapt from his jeans and landed on four legs, the better to run faster.
And to bite and claw. If that beast had already taken Dara, the packmaster’s own daughter, Zack would rip him apart.
9
As the packmaster pressed another kiss down onto her lips, Dara could feel his hands eagerly working her shirt higher over her hips. The man walked her backwards, his clothed legs again her nude ones, until the soles of her feet met soft grass.
“Lay down,” he commanded, as if it was perfectly natural for anyone to use the grass as a bed. Dara flashed back to how she’d writhed in the dirt under Zack. A pang of loss shot through her. It had felt right with Zack.
It didn’t feel right with the packmaster. And yet, Zack had given her to him and assured her it would serve as her much-needed inoculation. As crazy as it would have sounded to her even one day ago, the fact rang of truth to Dara. An unwelcome truth.
She sat on the grass, curling her legs modestly around herself.
The packmaster pulled off his sweater and started to remove his belt. When she hesitated, he scowled. “You’re my mate. Mine to do with what I wish.”
Zack hadn’t acted like that, Dara thought unhappily. Her heart squeezed in anguish as she realized Zack was actually letting this obnoxious stranger have her. This arrogant packmaster who liked to intimidate people. Was this how normal mates acted in werewolf packs? So callous, so cruel?
As if to answer her unspoken question, the packmaster grinned. “You can expect bruises and scrapes and blood. It’s unavoidable, I’m afraid.” His gleaming blue eyes, so much like hers, sparkled with eagerness. “If you’re very nice to me, I’ll make it worthwhile.”
She doubted it. She didn’t dare look down to where his hands were fumbling. “I’m not sure about this. Can’t we just talk for a while?”
He laughed with genuine mirth. He knelt before her, and she thought for a moment he was going to respect her wishes to talk first.
Then he pushed her onto her back and lay atop
her. “I haven’t had a virgin in ages,” he murmured, saliva from his mouth smearing against her cheek as he licked her ear, then he throat. He bit her, not gently. She cried out.
His breathing sped in response. He flopped and thrust against her thigh as he wriggled out of his pants. His chest was sunken and patchy with the same color gray hair that was on his head. His rounded belly swelled out far enough to hide his obvious erection. She angled her body to the side to protect her sex, but she knew it was a temporary reprieve. “Stop!” she shouted.
“Yes. Struggle against me,” he groaned, thrusting harder. He forced a fist between her legs to pushed one of her legs to the side. “I love a good fight!”
“Then you’re about to have a great time. Just not the way you’d thought,” Zack said, then planted one foot on the packmaster’s rump and shoved him off Dara.
Beautiful in his nudity, Zack was the most welcome sight her eyes ever beheld.
“Zack!” A cry of relief broke from her.
The packmaster sputtered. He leapt to his feet. But instead of attacking Zack right away as Dara would have expected, he brushed dirt from himself and looked worried. Furtive. His gaze darted from Dara, to Lucas and the rest of the pack who approached at a run, to Zack. “What’s the meaning of this?”
“That’s up to you.” Zack managed to loom over the taller packmaster. Even naked, Zack didn’t seem vulnerable in the least. Maybe it was a werewolf thing to wear nudity like animals wore fur. Dara was actually getting used to seeing him naked, she mused, admiring him despite herself.
Dara could see all the muscles in Zack’s glorious torso taut with tension, the gleam of moonlight on his belly scars, his fists clenched and his teeth bared at the packmaster much as Goldilocks had earlier. Zack did everything but growl. His control visibly strained. “Get dressed and get out of here. You’re not welcome on Cascade Pack’s land anymore.” Zack’s voice was smooth, but insistent.
“You must be joking. Lucas! See that this troublemaker is evicted immediately.” The packmaster sounded firm, but his eyes kept darting around to the gathering pack worriedly. Many more were arriving at a run.
Howl & Growl: A Paranormal Romance Boxed Set Page 5