“Here alone?” It might have sounded like I was being polite, checking she didn't have a man on the way, but deep down I fucking hoped she did.
Despite having come here to bury my troubles deep inside some random human woman, all I kept seeing was the silken slide of dark hair, streaked with turquoise green. That fucking Veil Keeper was in my head, and ruining what should have been an enjoyable random fuck in an alleyway.
“Unfortunately yes,” the woman sighed dramatically, stirring her drink and batting her heavy false lashes in a way that was probably meant to be provocative. It only served to remind me of a certain amnesiac and her fae-damned doe eyes. This chick's watery blue didn't have a fucking thing on Ciarah's deep sapphire gaze. That woman's eyes seemed to see right through me every time she looked my way. Inspecting my soul, judging it.
Fuck it, I needed to clear my mind of the Veil Keeper and her perfect, creamy skin. Blondie would have to do.
“I was supposed to be meeting a guy, but he stood me up,” the woman continued with a sultry pout. “Maybe you want to join me instead?”
Unable to lie, due to my true nature, I simply nodded sharply and slid onto the stool beside her. Had I been human, I would've offered a bullshit line like, “I can think of nothing I'd rather do.”
But I could. I could think of plenty of things I'd rather do, and all of them involved a mysterious, sad girl who had sat naked and willing in my bed just hours ago. And I'd turned her down.
The bartender placed another shot in front of me, which I threw back quickly. Maybe the haze of alcohol might help me enjoy this more.
Reece hadn't lied when he said Le Gardien would not be pleased. New soul or not, some personality traits had run true in the Veil Keeper since the beginning of time, and she was well-known for her temper and jealousy. This might just turn her against me, so she would stop fucking tempting me at every gods-damned turn.
Was that what I really wanted though?
It didn't matter. It's what I was going to do.
“You know, it's awfully loud in here,” the woman said with a coy smile, “perhaps we should go somewhere quieter to … talk?”
She must have known how stupid that sounded. I'd barely said two words to her, and I think it was pretty obvious that no one came to Voila Merde to talk.
“Let's go,” I grunted, tossing back yet another shot and slapping down some money onto the bar.
Blondie grinned like she'd just won the damn lottery and took my hand in her small clammy palm. I didn't blame her, I was handsome as fuck. Probably ten times more so than whatever creepy mouth breather she'd originally intended to meet.
She led me down the hallway, past the grimy bathrooms where I sometimes took chicks for a quick blow job, and out to the alleyway behind the bar. Once outside, she let the door slam shut behind us and I raised an eyebrow at her.
“Your first time to Voila Merde, sweetheart? You're supposed to prop the door open, else you get shut out here.” Dumb bitch. The alleyway behind Voila Merde was gated, meaning that if you let that damn door close, you had to either climb the fence or wait til someone else opened the door again.
“Oopsie.” She blinked up at me like she had conjunctivitis or something. Clearly, it was meant to be alluring, but it just came across as twitchy. Especially when compared to the Veil Keeper's steady, confident gaze.
Fuck, there I go again. Yep, best thing to do right now is get balls-deep in this random bitch and forget all about the living goddess.
“Whatever, I'll deal with it later.” My hands fell to my belt, then paused as I looked at her with narrowed eyes. Something wasn't right here.
The grin this bitch was wearing wasn't one of someone excited to get some dick stuffed in her. It was more … triumphant? Like she'd just lured me into a trap or something.
Ah fuck.
“Well, look here, boys,” sneered a voice from behind me and I sighed heavily. Just my fucking luck. “Seems like fairy boy fell for the oldest trick in the book.”
“Tyrell,” I smiled tightly at the hairy man as I turned to face him. Hairy was an understatement. Aside from having a long beard and longer hair, he also sported a mat of dark hair down both forearms which I had no doubt continued under his clothes. Some rougarou were like that. Never quite able to shed their fur entirely. Part of what made them inferior to werewolves.
“What the fuck do you want this time?” I snapped at him with derision. “That last ass-kicking I handed you wasn't enough? You wanted to come back for seconds?”
Tyrell was a slimy bastard, always pushing the limits of his turf, and all of us Wild Hunt boys had tangled with him a time or two in the past. My knuckles cracked as I closed my fists, already picturing my hand meeting Tyrell's ugly fucking face.
“You caught me off guard last time, dickhead,” Tyrell growled—literally, given he was part wolf—and his eyes flicked over behind me.
This wasn't my first rodeo though, so I knew better than to take the bait and look. It was fairly obvious what I would find, anyway. Tyrell knew perfectly fucking well he didn't stand a chance against me in a fair fight, so he probably had backup.
“Couldn't handle me on your own, eh Tyrell? Needed to bring your posse to help out? Don't blame ya. We fucked you up real good last time we caught you poaching on our turf.” My lip curled at him in disgust. Rougarou were scum.
“Let's just say, I stacked the deck.” Tyrell grinned like the wolf he was, and casually swung the baseball bat he held in his hand. “Now, are you going to shut your purdy mouth and let me and my boys rearrange that face of yours? Ah, heck. Who am I kidding? Like I give a fuck.”
Without anymore dicking around, Tyrell swung his bat at me, aiming for my ribs; I just managed to jump back out of his reach before it connected.
Unfortunately, that placed me right into the path of Tyrell's backup and I felt the heavy crack of a lead pipe smack into my other side from behind.
If I were human, that shit woulda knocked me flat on my ass.
But I was far from fucking human.
Ducking low, I avoided another swing from Tyrell's bat and buried my boot in another man's gut, sending him stumbling with with a grunt and a snarl.
Shitty thing about rougarou though—they weren't human either.
The pain of a foot to the stomach didn't drop the man I'd hit. Instead, all I managed to do was infuriate him enough to cause a full shift. And once one of these piece of shit swamp wolves went, so did the others.
With a howl, Tyrell dropped the wooden bat to the ground, the other man's lead pipe following shortly after. Wasn't a relief though. Hell no. I'd much rather deal with these pieces of shit in human form. The weapons they'd be wielding as wolves were much, much worse.
Tyrell lunged at me, his body that of a wolf, but instead of paws, he still had human hands.
When he hit me full force, knocking me to my back on the pavement, he curled his fingers around my biceps and held me there, his breath reeking of booze and rotten meat. When those inch long fangs of his plunged into my neck, I let out a scream that killed the sounds of the bayou for the briefest of moments before the animals resumed their infinite song.
Another rougarou came at me from behind, latching his jaws onto my skull and squeezing hard enough to crunch bone.
Fucking shit! I thought as I heard the blonde woman I'd picked up at the bar laughing.
The acrid stink of magic punctured the air around me, swirling in the breeze of the bayou and mixing with the stale piss and garbage smell of the alley. I was flailing around next to empty bottles, bleeding out near discarded used condoms.
What a way to go.
Wrapping my hands around the second rougarou's neck, I squeezed as hard as I could, snapping bones. The creature released me with a scream, giving me a moment to refocus my attention on Tyrell.
I could hear the blonde woman—one of the swamp witch's handmaidens, no doubt—casting a spell that I knew would fuck me up a hundred times worse than teeth and claws.
>
For an immortal, I sure as hell was convinced I was about to die.
But I knew from personal experience that there were things much, much worse than death.
Grabbing Tyrell by the scruffy fur on the back of his neck, I used all my strength to chuck him against the brick wall of the bar. The bricks cracked along with his bones and dust lifted into the night air, tainted silver by the moonlight.
Scrambling to my feet, I stumbled over to it and grabbed a handful of dust and debris. I wasn't no voodoo master, no black magic manipulator, but brick dust was powerful stuff.
I threw it in the witch's face, interrupting her as she worked to conjure some sort of elaborate set of supernatural chains.
But fuck, Reece was right—I was Cernunnos, and nobody challenged the Horned God.
I wasn't discriminatory either—if a man tried to kill me, I kicked his ass. If a woman tried to kill me, I kicked her ass too.
I hit the blonde in the face with the force of a Mack Truck, sending her stumbling back and slumping to the ground, just before teeth latched onto my ankle, another set taking hold of my bicep.
Two different rougarou spun me around, dragging me back to the pavement as several more rushed through a brand-new hole in the chain-link fence.
Shit, the whole MC is here …
I knew then that I was screwed up the ass.
Three, four, even five rougarou, I could handle. But twenty? Thirty? Plus a couple of witches?
Several more of the men latched onto me, dragging me back through the hole and out toward a waiting line of motorcycles.
A woman sat on one, looking down at me with eyes the color of ice.
She said something in French that I couldn't quite hear, too much blood sloshing around in my skull, too many broken bones. I hurt all the fuck over.
Letting my glamour crack into pieces, I reached into the earth and pulled strength from the ground, sending the long, wild limbs of a nearby angel oak ripping into the cluster of rougarou.
But the witch on the motorcycle, she silenced my magic with an easy wave of her hand.
The world around me went silent and this time, the animals did not resume their song.
Fuck.
I wasn't looking at another handmaiden.
Right now, I was looking at the swamp witch herself.
Oh blessed Morrígan.
The rougarou backed away, leaving me bleeding and broken on the ground. I struggled to sit up, my ribs shifting inside of me in a way that wasn't natural. My head was swimming and all I could taste in my mouth was the copper burn of blood.
“What the fuck do you want?” I snarled, red misting from my lips.
The witch didn't respond, dressed in leather, her mouth curving to the side in a terrifying semblance of a human smile. She stood up off the motorcycle as I watched, making her way toward me. In the human world, a woman riding her own bike, being the president of a motorcycle club? It was pretty slim, unless it was an all female group. And even then, there were those out there with views older than my goddamn grandpa's. They wouldn't like it.
But then, they'd never met a fuckin' swamp witch before.
She said nothing as she made her way over to me, kneeling low and reaching out a hand that I promptly slapped away. With a slight gesture of her head, she summoned several rougarou to take hold of my arms, pinning me in place. The most disturbing part of the whole situation was that one of them had the body of a wolf … but the head of a man, his all too human fucking mouth latched onto my arm.
If I survived this, I was going to need a friggin' rabies shot.
The witch reached out again, and I dug my fingers into the earth.
I was the youngest incarnation of the Horned God, the warrior aspect. I should be able to fight, and I should be able to use the earth as my weapon.
Instead, I was powerless.
For the first time in my life, I was fucking powerless.
The swamp witch licked her lips.
“Quel animal de compagnie adorable vous ferez,” she told me in French, still smiling that strange smile of hers. What an adorable pet you'll make.
I clenched my jaw hard and waited to see what she might do.
A low, rolling snarl broke the silence and the forest burst back into brilliant, melancholy song.
The witch whipped her head around and snapped something low in French that I couldn't quite hear, rising to her feet as a large wolf stalked out of the shadows, the size of a fucking pony.
A werewolf.
Not a goddamn lousy rougarou, a human twisted into lycanthropy by magic.
The creature I was looking at, he lived and breathed by the moon.
Shifting into human form, the man stood well over six feet tall, his hair a brilliant and shocking silver, like liquid moonlight, his eyes a bloodred shimmer that radiated power.
He blinked several times before pulling his lips back in a wild snarl.
The fuck is this? The hell does the local alpha give a shit about my ass?
Behind him, several more enormous wolves prowled up, staying in animal form and flanking their leader with the flawless synchronization born of their ability to mind speak.
“This doesn't concern you, Raphael,” the swamp bitch—I mean witch—snarled at the silver-haired man. He wasn't old, despite his unique coloring. Wolves simply carried the color of their pelt over into their human forms, and the Louisiana Pack Alpha was a rare silver wolf.
“Rosinée,” the Alpha rumbled in a voice like thunder and danger, “how very lovely to see you out and about. And with your whole club too. My invitation to this party must have been lost in the mail.”
All joking aside, even from my half-dead position on the ground I still saw the swamp witch pale at the alpha's words. Raphael LeRoux was not the sort of man who joked around. Nor was he one to walk away from a fight. His wolves were vicious, bloodthirsty and merciless. The rougarou stood no chance against a pure blooded pack.
“Raphael,” the swamp witch tried again, licking her lips nervously. “Leave us be. This is nothing to do with your pack.”
“I disagree, Rosinée. This very much concerns my pack. I'm giving you one chance to leave with your pathetic pets intact, and then I let my people off the leash … so to speak.” There was no mistaking the threat in Raphael's voice as his burning red eyes speared Rosinée.
For once, I stayed quiet. The wolves were saving my ass, but why? What interest did they have in whether I lived or died tonight?
The swamp witch clenched her fists at her sides and for a hot second, I thought she might actually be stupid enough to challenge the strongest alpha wolf this side of the Veil.
“Fine,” she eventually ground out from behind clenched teeth. “But I'm not fucking done with you, fairy.” This last part was directed at me as she turned her venomous glare to my face.
“I look forward to it, bitch,” I sneered back at her, unable to rein in my smart mouth for even a second longer.
“Ticktock, Rosinée,” the Alpha rumbled and the witch snarled. Throwing her leg back over her bike, she flicked a hand signal to her club and they all peeled out of there with the throaty growl of engines and exhausts.
In the resulting quiet, as the sound of the swamp queen's MC faded into the distance, no one spoke. My bones were broken in several places, and I was bleeding profusely where I lay on the gravel, but Raphael LeRoux just stared down at me. His face was blank, totally unreadable, as were his enforcers on either side of him, still in wolf form.
“Uh, thanks, I guess.” I broke the tense silence with my pained voice.
“We didn't come to help you,” the wolf's alpha replied in a carefully neutral tone which made it damn near impossible to work out if I had just jumped from the frying pan and straight into the fire.
“Well …” I winced, pushing myself up to sitting and feeling the ache and burn of all my many injuries. “Thanks anyway.”
Those old legends about never thanking a fae only applied to humans, and my
mama had raised me with manners.
“Keep your thanks.” Raphael shrugged. “Saving you from that old hag served a double purpose. One, it pissed her off. And I do love to piss her off.”
He paused and I watched him curiously. “And the other reason?”
“Wait for it …” The scary ass motherfucker lifted a finger, his head tilted like he was listening for something. Seconds later, the familiar sound of motorcycles came rumbling from down the road toward us, pulling up where the rougarou had just departed from.
“Arlo!” a distinctive sultry sounding woman's voice exclaimed, and that damn Veil Keeper collapsed to the ground in front of me. “What the hell happened here?”
My lips tightened and I considered just saying nothing. Why should I? I owed this girl nothing. Goddess or not, she was no one to me.
Yet when my eyes met hers, and her vivid sapphire blue gaze screamed of such pain, and desperation and fear … How the fuck could I contribute to that?
“Rougarou lured me into a trap; the wolves here showed up just in the nick of time.” I nodded to Raphael over Ciarah's shoulder. It had not escaped my attention that the second my boys had shown up, the wolf alpha had eyes for no one else but our Gardien du Voile.
“Oh.” Ciarah turned her head as though she'd just seen the handsome silver-haired man and his two accompanying wolves flanking him. How she could have missed them though, was totally beyond me. Those wolves were the size of large donkeys, not to mention their inhumanly handsome leader.
I wasn't blind. Just as I could appreciate my own good looks, so too could I appreciate them in other men. And women.
Once again my attention had been drawn back to Ciarah. She picked herself up from the ground, wiping dirt off on her jeans and pushing her long hair over her shoulder.
Whatever she said next was lost as Killian took her place in front of me and clasped his palms on either side of my face.
“Hold on tight, brother. This will be a bumpy ride.” He met my gaze with his own cold blue eyes and the familiar sensation of his magic began crawling through me, blocking out the world around us and deafening me to whatever was happening between Ciarah and Raphael.
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