by Leeda Vada
Calli had not shifted since her rape. That vision of the animal inside of her still terrified her. She resisted admitting to herself how right and freeing it was to release all emotional control and allow the beast in her free reign, to allow it to carry the responsibility of decision making.
Ever since she could remember, Odin and Laura had drilled into her and her brothers how essential it was to their survival that they keep their shifting ability hidden. Her parents knew that if their enemies ever discovered their ability, they would be unrelenting in their efforts to capture and destroy them. They would use the triplets’ shifting ability to fuel the public’s fear that the latent animal genetics of all Were descendants would re-assert themselves, dominating the human DNA and taking over and annihilating the fully human population.
But this night, Calli was determined to be a true mate to Canaan. After all the efforts he had made throughout her life to support her, she owed him her support now. His love for her was no greater than hers for him.
As she gave her wolf permission to come out, she welcomed the transition. Her luminescent, ivory pelt shimmered under the full moon. She took a few minutes to acclimate to her lupine form, but then began to revel in the transformation as she frolicked through the forest celebrating her freedom, leaping and emitting short barks as she chased and threatened the small animals that crossed her path.
Sending out low growls of challenge for her mate, she allowed her heightened senses to lead her in his direction. Her mate bounded toward her. Sighting her as he vaulted a fallen tree trunk, Canaan’s met her wolf midair.
Forcing her down in the submissive position, he nipped below her neck, and then released her at her low growls of protest. She used the moment to leap away and run from him.
The musk of her burgeoning arousal overtook his blood as he gave chase. She’d let him get close, then leap away. She even let him catch her a time or two. She pounced, nipped, teased, imitating the mock battles of wolf pups honing the fighting skills they would need as they matured into predators charged with defending their mates and cubs.
The nashoba’s patience was short. He leapt, knocking the female to her stomach, straddled, and mounted her, sinking his teeth into the area just below her neck, forcing her submission, and claiming her in one swift thrust.
After the shock of the impalement, the female lowered her head and submitted to his claim.
In her wolf form, to her mate, she was perfection in all its forms—a desirable, beautiful female—worthy of her mate’s worship, something she had never felt in her human form. The hideousness of the scars left on Calli’s body by the Hound troopers were hidden beneath her pelt.
She was meeting the needs of her mate, providing him a vessel into which he could empty all the trials and tribulation of his daily life, all the responsibilities inherent in his role as the future Alpha of the Cumberland pack
She reveled in the power that surged through her at his release and rejoiced, as his life force flooded her walls.
Chapter Thirty-One
As soon as he entered his office at the end of the Security wing of Bakari, Apollo felt Canaan’s presence. He was standing looking out over the compound. He was so still that Apollo at first thought he was an apparition—God’s answer to his prayer to have his son back in his life—something to help fill the void resulting from Canaan’s estrangement from the senior members of the pack.
Though Canaan had never verbalized the disappointment and resentment that he bore towards them, they all felt it. Canaan held a special place in the hearts of all Canid worldwide, especially the Powhatan Council members. His birth had heralded a new era for the Canid world because it meant the continuation of their nascent bloodline. He was the symbol of their coming out to the human world.
His was the public face of the Canid community, the one with which the human population felt most comfortable. Striking in face and figure, his features were void of all vestiges of the lupine DNA coursing through his veins. What was visible were the strong line, the broad shoulders, long muscular limbs, black, silver-streaked hair that fell to his shoulders, and a physique that was equally sensual in a tailored three-piece suit and tie, open-shirt, blazer, and tailored slacks, or in a form-fitting t-shirt and ass-hugging jeans.
Though accepted as Apollo’s heir-apparent, his generation of Canid clearly saw him in an active leadership role. When he left Bakari to establish his own life—an action precipitated by the situation with his mate—they followed him. Their allegiance to him was unspoken but as tangible as the strongest link in a chain.
Apollo applauded his son’s establishing his independence, his quest to forge his own path. Canid were long-lived with a life expectancy more than double that of humans. Apollo had not yet reached his prime at seventy-five, so it would be some time before Canaan would be called upon to assume the mantle of Supreme Alpha of the North American Canid.
Before the exposure of Calli’s attack and the resulting trial and media attention, Canaan and his Mestizo League had provided worldwide assistance in the rescue and safety of Canid who were hidden and suffering from the prejudice perpetrated by the Hounds of God and other Purist groups.
Canaan’s approach was on two fronts, both political and military. Duncan’s son, Khan, along with Dakota, the son of Council members, Erol and Vesta, spearheaded the military wing. Their task was to put into operation the strategies developed by Canaan’s leadership team.
Canaan’s maternal grandfather had allowed him to occupy and refurbish Aragon—a castle on ten thousand acres on the Scottish coastline—a property that originated with Belen’s ancestors during the 1300s.
It was remote and large enough to allow security and privacy for Canid to practice their lupine-enhanced skills. And it was far enough away from the hills of Virginia, so Canaan and his followers could feel free of the familial bonds of their parents, bonds they often found constraining and untenable.
After claiming and marrying Calli, Canaan felt the castle was the perfect place to take his new bride and shelter her from the notoriety that now pervaded her life. It afforded not only privacy and security, but also the solitude Calli needed to heal, that they both needed.
#
“I don’t know what to do with these feelings that are locked inside me,” he began, his knuckles white as he gripped the window ledge. “I’m so angry with her. And I feel guilty that I am so angry with her. Why didn’t she come to me? Why didn’t she call for me when she was hurt?”
Apollo didn’t answer.
“What is it about her that keeps her fighting our mating? I know she married me because she had no other acceptable choice. Prison or marriage. That was her choice.” He laughed ruefully. “The irony is that in her eyes, either choice was incarceration, a physical, claustrophobic hell in a steel cell or a spiritual, emotional one with me. At least with me she’d get to run free in her Canid form, so I should be grateful for small blessings. Tell me, Apollo, how can she be my destined mate and not want to be with me, not need me as I so desperately need her? Tell me, dad. Make me understand, so when I hold her at night, I can relax and let her feel what I feel for her. I dare not now. I can’t allow her to sense the rage, anger, and resentment that are clogging my pores. They are suffocating me. I want to hurt her, to kill Sebastian. He was there when she had to have been in unimaginable pain. He was there. At her side where I should have been. He took my place and still has my place. She relaxes when he is around her in a way she never does with me. I need her. Dear God, I need her and I don’t know what to do to reach her, to make her want me, to turn to me.”
Canaan slid to his knees. He buried his face in his hands as he shook with the sobs that wracked his body.
Apollo waited, allowing his son to throw off the Alpha-in-waiting mantle and simply be a man. A Canid man, true. But still a man—vulnerable, needing love and comfort—as any sentient being.
Apollo was grateful that Canaan had come to him. Canaan was giving him the gift of trust tha
t Canaan himself so desperately needed Calli to give him—entrusting him with her heart—secure in her faith that he would keep it safe.
Canaan had not come to his father to solve his problems. Instead, his son had come seeking a safe place to speak his thoughts and verbalize his feelings.
Going to his desk and taking out the half pint of corn liquor that two of his Shielders had procured during their last sojourn into French territory, Apollo dumped the pens from the mug that Tamby had given him the Father’s Day she was in the third grade. He filled it with half the remaining brew. Walking over to stand behind his son, he reached around and offered Canaan the cup.
Canaan downed the burning libation in one gulp, swore one of Duncan’s famous expletives, and gasped.
“Thanks, I needed that,” he wheezed.
“Anytime,” Apollo smiled.
Canaan turned and walked out of the office. Apollo took his son’s place in front of the window and watched as Canaan passed below and boarded the waiting Wolf Star.
#
Canaan’s one aim in life was to retrieve his mate’s lost soul and restore it to her. His love for her was all-consuming. It was not something that time with its many trials and tribulations would lessen.
He would not fail her again. No one, not his family, not the rest of the Canid community, would get in his way. Not even Calli herself. No matter how much she resisted, how hard she tried to hide, he would not allow it. Not anymore.
He would teach that to his mate and to any who would seek to interfere with their relationship.
#
When Apollo arrived home, he went into his study and locked the door. He retrieved the disk that Zuri had secured from one of her operatives deep undercover in the Hounds and slipped it into his computer.
He wanted to watch the whole thing again and more carefully this time. There was something needling at him, hiding just at the edge of his consciousness.
He began the video, then after a few minutes, stopped, and rewound it.
#
“Dirt bags!” Calli called, as she stepped into the circle. “Five to one. A coward’s odds,” she added. “You strut the stage like buzzards, scavenging and gorging yourselves on the carrion of grave dwellers.”
Enraged at her words, the leader turned and lunged for her.
Using the butt of his rifle, he slammed it into Calli’s right temple, deflecting her attempt to grab the barrel of his weapon.
Dazed by the blow, Calli staggered and lost her balance as the side of her foot slipped into a ditch that had been obscured by the growth of uncut grass.
Apollo froze the video footage then re-wound it a few frames.
Starting it again, he paused at the scene that showed Calli sliding her right hand along her inner thigh. She pushed the area under her skin that held the comm that Laura insisted her daughter replace before agreeing to her placement with the Scythians.
Had she just signaled someone?
Selecting and enlarging the area and focusing on her fingers, he watched closely as she punched in letters and numbers.
He hit the “stop” button, and stood, stunned, letting the shock of what he had just seen work its way through his psyche.
He had to have misread the screen.
He ran it again.
There was no mistake. Calli had sent an emergency call into Bakari, undoubtedly to Canaan. What had happened to it? Did the call not go through? It must not have. There was no way Canaan would not have answered Calli’s call.
If it had not gone through, why not?
And if it had gone through, who had answered it? More to the point, why was no one sent to her aid?
He moved to the console and opened the archives to pull up the record of incoming calls that covered the twenty-four hours before and after Calli’s assault.
There it was, Calli’s emergency signal, direct to Canaan’s secure comm link. Why hadn’t Canaan responded?
Canaan had accused Calli of not turning to him for help. But in front of Apollo was evidence that she had. It was inconceivable that Canaan would lie. Or that he would have ignored her call.
Calli was Canaan’s mate. He would have had no choice, either physically or mentally, to deny her aid. He would have answered.
So what happened?
Keying in his Alpha security code—accessible only to him, and after his death to Canaan—he transferred the video and the call record to an encrypted private file. Then, pausing for only a moment, he deleted the two pieces of data from the system.
Someone was out to destroy Canaan’s mate, which meant destroying Canaan. Destroying Canaan would lead to the extinction of the Powhatan Canid nascent line.
Apollo put in a call to Duncan and Odin to arrange for a meeting. The three of them needed to take steps, not only to ferret out the saboteur, but also to nullify any additional plans already in place.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Apollo watched his mate sleeping peacefully, not a hint of discord or deception in her countenance. Belen was everything to him. She had stood by him during the territorial wars, through his efforts to establish dominance in the Powhatan pack, and then in his outreach to the other clans who dominated the Southeastern region. She helped him forge an alliance with clans from coast to coast, ultimately forming the largest conglomerate of Canid packs in the Northeastern Hemisphere.
Belen had taken the bitterness and hatred of the seemingly endless battles that had blackened Apollo’s soul—the acts of brutality he had committed to keep his people safe—and used her love to temper his heart and created space for compassion and generosity.
As his Lupa, she had bridged the gap between the human world that wanted the destruction of all things Canid and his species that demanded its inalienable rights. Her tenacity and charm had been instrumental in paving the way for understanding and tolerance.
His mate had not hesitated to take into her body the alien part of his biology and allow it to mold and forever change her anatomy. She bore those changes with courage and fortitude as they altered forever the way she would interact with members of her human family. She had been and was still the public face that was a target for the Purists who felt she betrayed her race.
Belen, as Lupa of the Powhatan Canid, was a woman forged in the battles all women fought who dared to love Canid.
So how could he—her Alpha, her mate, the father of her children—believe her capable of an act of sabotage?
She had borne his four children and was a consummate mother. She had committed her whole existence to the survival and insurance of a better life, for not only her Canid children, but for all Were descendants and their children.
She was the one who had insisted that the Canid children be allowed to attend school with human children, and was adamantly opposed to the Canid community being a closed one.
How could he even entertain the idea that this woman—a woman of bone-deep integrity and honor, a woman who had given so selflessly of herself over the years—could have done an about face and turned against every principal in which she believed?
But then again, Apollo had to concede that Belen was different where Calli and Canaan were concerned. As soon as the Assembly suspected Calli might be Canaan’s mate, her attitude toward the young girl had changed. She had vehemently fought the suggestion.
Belen and Laura, Calli’s mother, had been best friends since the beginning of Bakari’s formation. Belen had worked alongside Laura to develop Bakari’s Canid Rehabilitation Center into one of the best in the world. Rescued Canid came from as far away as Russia and China to recuperate at the facility.
But over the years, as Calli moved from puberty to young womanhood, Belen and Laura’s friendship had become so strained that only a thread of civility held it together.
Belen did not feel that Calli had any of the attributes she wanted in Canaan’s mate or the mother of her grandchildren. She was rebellious, independent, aggressive, and spoiled. Odin had trained her with her brothers, Nathan and R
and, and Laura’s feminine influence had only played a small role in Calli’s development.
In fact, Laura had applauded her daughter’s independence. She did not aspire to a future for her daughter that involved babies, charity committees, and decorating. She had supported Calli’s Warrior training, even encouraging her in her application to intern with the Smoke Team.
Belen had believed Canaan would come to see things as she did, that Calli would not be the appropriate female to succeed her as Lupa of the clan. But Canaan hadn’t agreed. His fascination with Calli seemed to increase with each outlandish scheme she perpetrated, from her outrageous hair colors to the scandalous clothes that left little to the imagination. Her insistence that she be allowed to practice and travel with the male soldiers, and finally, her refusal to complete her rotations in housekeeping and culinary arts.
Calli had demanded an audience before the Council where she argued and won her case, citing sexual discrimination because males were not required to complete the same two rotations. Belen had been one of the Council members who argued the other side. She was furious when they lost. The incident was the first public salvo in the contest between Calli and her perspective mother-in-law.
Canaan was caught in the middle, as were most of the Canid of his generation. Calli symbolized that inherent part of youth that questioned, struggled with, and tested the restrictions imposed upon them by the previous generation.
Though most would not follow Calli’s example or publicly applaud her actions, many wistfully lived vicariously through her exploits. And they—both male and female Canid—admired her daunting spirit, her loyalty to her friends, and her unfailing commitment to the victims of abuse and torture.
Her work at the rehabilitation center was the one aspect of her den assignments that she fulfilled enthusiastically. Even Belen never questioned her commitment there. Calli had an affinity with the young teen and preteen victims. She had a way of reaching them, making them open up and exorcise the guilt and self-loathing that were part of childhood female abuse.