“You’re not the leader, are you?” I asked.
“Why should it matter?”
“Yeah, I didn’t think so.” I worked to make my tone as condescending as possible. “You’re a little too eager to try to rattle me,” I continued. “Whoever is in charge of this operation isn’t here yet—but he or she will be coming soon, right? Because as the alpha, I deal only with the boss. I’m sure you understand.”
I could see my barb had hit home. Whatever was going on, this guy didn’t have any serious role in it. He was a lackey.
I’d often wondered what I would do in a dangerous situation. I was kind of pleased to discover that I kept my cool, stayed calm in the face of potential danger.
My theory that my guard wasn’t in charge was borne out moments later when the barred door slammed open and a woman swept in. She was tall and thin like the fairy who stood in front of me, and she had long, flowing white hair. I couldn’t tell if the hair color was the result of age or chemicals—or if it was a natural blonde so pale as to appear white.
Her face was carefully made up to highlight her enormous blue eyes, and I couldn’t put her age at anything more specific than somewhere between thirty and sixty. Like the other fairy, she wore contemporary clothing—but unlike his jeans and T-shirt, her long, ice-blue skirt and white blouse were obviously expensive.
While I’d been observing her, she had been examining me, too.
“Who is this?” she demanded of the other fairy.
“It’s the new alpha of the other pack—the one you want us to pick up for you.” My captor stuttered and stammered as he spoke, his anxiety in front of this woman telling me more about her status than anything else could have.
“Those chains are not affecting her at all,” she said. “This is pure silver. If she were the new alpha, she would be in agony. Why do you think we used the silver chains?”
“But she has to be the alpha. I saw her with the three wolves in the council. She’s the only one who’s been with all of them for days—I’ve been following them.”
The woman walked around me, her fingers twitching in a complicated pattern. The air around me seemed to grow thicker, harder to breathe into my lungs, full of static electricity.
“My, my, my.” With a motion faster than my eye could follow, she swept her pinky finger along my jaw, drawing blood with a sharp fingernail that I belatedly realized was covered with metal, like a blade that she wore over her finger.
She blinked and tilted her head, her brow wrinkling in confusion as she peered at the fake nail. Then she held the nail up to her mouth and licked it, her pink tongue darting out delicately to lick the blood off.
“What are you?” she asked in tones of wonder as she crossed her arms and tapped her foot. “Because my magic suggests that you are a werewolf. Your blood tastes like a wolf’s. But silver doesn’t bother you….” Her voice trailed off.
“Do we need to go back and try again, my queen?” the other elf asked nervously.
The Fairy Queen waved one hand in the air dismissively. “No, no. I think you might be right, after all.” She turned her full attention on me. “I do believe you are a werewolf who’s never shifted. I’ve never heard of such a thing.” Her attention turned analytical, and clinical, even, as she continued gazing at me thoughtfully. “Oh, the experiments I will be able to do on you.”
She spun on her heel, her skirt flaring out around her. She called back over her shoulder as she marched toward the door. “Do not tell my husband what we’ve got here. He’s busy with his own wolves and he would destroy my plans with his ham-fisted attempt at control. I have no interest in watching her die by his incompetence.”
“And if she attempts to escape?”
“Stop her any way you can. But if you kill her, you’ll be following her into the grave. And quickly.”
She left through the door and I glanced up at the fairy, who was pale and sweating and shaking.
“Your pack has a female alpha, too,” I said.
“She is nothing like you monsters.” His denial was swift and fierce.
“But she is definitely the one in charge.”
Also, she didn’t want me to die. And she and her husband—the Winter King the comitatus wolves were concerned about—were fractured.
That gave me an upper hand over my captors, even if they didn’t realize it.
I am going to get out of here.
But even as I began formulating my plan, a strange scuffling outside the door distracted me. For the second time, the barred door swung open, clanging against the wall.
11
Owen burst through the door, looking like an avenging angel, his eyes glowing bright green. He was flanked on either side by two enormous, beautiful grey wolves—Liam and Dean.
I had never been so thankful to see anyone in my life, even if my first words didn’t exactly convey that.
“I was about to start escaping,” I said peevishly.
But my words were lost in the growls of the two wolves, who leaped simultaneously, bowling the fairy guard over onto the ground. They stood atop him, their fangs bared, occasionally snapping their teeth together, barely missing his face.
Owen rushed to me and reached out to try to pull the silver chain away. A sizzling noise flashed through the room when his hand touched the chain, and he hissed and jerked back.
“Don’t bother with that. It doesn’t affect me. Just get these ropes off.” Owen nodded and pulled a pocket knife out. Some part of me, possibly a slightly hysterical part, wanted to giggle. Of course, Owen had a pocket knife and a handkerchief and probably anything else a well-prepared Boy Scout might carry. Apparently, even one who could turn into a wolf at will.
It took a couple of minutes, but he finally sawed through my wrist bindings. I shook off the ropes and flung them away from me, unraveling the silver chain from around my body as Owen released me from the ropes around my ankles.
When he’d finished, I stood, and he eyed the chains I now held.
“Once you take the bite, your immunity to silver will disappear,” he warned.
I frowned. That means no more silver jewelry, I realized. I shook the thought away. That was a minor issue now.
“How did they even get me?” I asked.
“They poisoned the doorman with silver. It took hours for him to regain consciousness. But once he did, he was able to help us follow the fairies’ scent to this building.”
“Please, don’t let them kill me,” the fairy who’d been guarding me begged.
“What should they do?”
Liam and Dean glanced back at me.
“Alpha?” Owen’s question froze me to the ground. If I was going to be the pack’s alpha, I realized, I might be taking the werewolves into war with the fairies.
And it might be a war that the fairies were actively trying to provoke, I realized.
No. I won’t strike the first killing blow.
I might finish a war they started, but I wouldn’t be the one to start the killing.
“Bring him with us,” I ordered. “We need to find out what this guy knows. There’s something going on in the Winter Court—something between the Fairy King and Queen. She’s the one who ordered my kidnapping, not him, and this fairy is loyal to her.”
Owen didn’t say anything, but I saw the gleam of something like approval in his eyes.
“Wait here.” Owen swept out of the basement room and returned in a few moments carrying a chain of his own.
“Iron,” he answered my question before I asked it. “Fairies are as allergic to it as we are to silver.”
He approached the fairy, who began whimpering when he saw the iron chain. “No one who is willing to chain a wolf with silver should be worried about what iron chains might do to him,” Owen said callously.
My jaw clenched at the sound the metal made when it touched the fairy’s skin. That kind of sizzling made my stomach hurt in sympathy. But then I remembered the vicious smile he gave me when I’d woken up,
and I shoved my sympathy down hard.
As we left the room, we filed upstairs, where several more pack members were waiting, some in human form, some in wolf form. One of the pack members glanced at the fairy stumbling along in iron chains and took off his hoodie to drape over the fairy’s shoulders, hiding the chains from any casual observer.
“Do we have someplace to keep him?” I asked. Owen nodded.
“There’s a containment room in the basement of your building,” he said. “We’ll have to fit it with iron to make sure he stays contained. But we can do that.”
He glanced down at the other two comitatus members, then back to me. “We’ll need to figure out where to keep him during your full-moon shift, though.”
“The containment room is for wolves who are shifting for the first time?”
Owen turned out one hand in a half shrug. “That, and for members of rival packs taken prisoner—though it’s rarely used for that these days.”
I nodded thoughtfully. “But as soon as I’ve shifted after taking the bite, we can move him back into the containment room?”
“Definitely.”
I stepped up beside the fairy as we reached the door that led out of the building. I wrapped my arm around his waist and pulled him in tight next to me. I felt the chains clanking together under the jacket, and the fairy winced.
“If you cooperate,” I said, smiling up at him as viciously as he had smiled at me when I had woken, “I will allow you to live. Someday you might even get to go back to your court—though I don’t know if you’ll want to since I plan to let my pack do whatever it needs to get information from you.”
The worst part of that moment was that I didn’t even know if I meant it. I’d started my threat is just that—a threat. But once I said it, I realized that it might be true.
In any case, the fairy believed me. The tremor that ran through him was a very real.
I dropped back again and let the wolves herd him out to the car.
I watched as the three werewolves I had to choose among arranged to eliminate one threat to me. Owen stopped long enough to make sure I was with them. And as we walked out to the car they brought, I began to worry about something entirely different from my recent kidnapping.
It was early morning still, and in the next few hours, I was going to have to choose which of these wolves I would take as a mate.
I had hoped to make my decision after a full night sleep.
Instead, I was going to have to make it after the three of them had mounted a rescue to save me. I had no idea how I was going to choose.
I didn’t love any of them—how could I with only a few days’ acquaintance?
But I had seen something of their true natures—the kindness, their loyalty, their willingness to step into danger to protect their alpha.
I could fall in love with any of them, I realized.
I simply hoped I would be able to keep from falling in love with the other two, no matter which one I chose.
“Once we have this prisoner settled,” Owen said, “Dean and Liam and I would like to speak to you alone, if possible.”
We were in the car, on her way back to the apartment building. The wolves were in the back seat, one on either side of the fairy captive, while Owen drove, and I sat in the front passenger seat. I glanced at Owen out of the corner my eye. “I still haven’t made up my mind,” I warned him.
“That’s what we need to talk to you about. We have some additional information that might help.”
“Additional information?”
“He nodded. “Don’t make a decision until we had a chance to talk to you, okay?”
I frowned, but I agreed. I didn’t know how to make the decision, so any help they wanted to give would be more than welcome. Though I feared—and suspected—that they were planning to make a final attempt at convincing me to choose one of them.
I guess hearing from each one of the werewolves why he might be the best choice might help me.
I was afraid that in the end, though, it would only serve to confuse the matter more.
Two days ago, my fear had been that I would meet someone new, someone other than one of these three, and fall in love with him. Now my biggest fear was that I would choose one of these three and fall in love with one or both others, as well.
I didn’t have long to worry, though. The fairies had taken me only a few blocks. Back at my apartment building, we pulled into the garage. Unlike the basement where I’d been kept, our holding room had private access, shielded from prying eyes out on the street.
I followed the wolves inside and watched interestedly as Dean and Liam stopped to shift back into their human forms. I stared, unabashedly admiring their muscular human shapes. Pure lust shot through me at the sight.
The other wolves who had helped free me pulled into the garage in the car they’d used to follow us back. They to piled out. “Owen, Alpha,” one of them trotted up to us. “I called ahead, and the on-duty staff here has been outfitting a second room in the basement with iron. We don’t have to use our normal containment room at all if we don’t want to.”
“It does have better soundproofing than any of the other rooms,” Dean said, having pulled on a pair of jeans that left his muscled chest bare.
“We can keep him quiet if we need to,” the pack member assured us. I shuddered a little at the thought of what that might entail.
“Take him in,” I said. But I placed my fingers on Owen’s arm to keep him and Dean from following. “Tell them I said no torture. Nothing like that without my express order.” They frowned, but they nodded.
“We’ll deal with him after the ceremony,” I said.
I didn’t know exactly what I would do, or how we would deal with him, but I did know that I couldn’t stand the thought of torture enacted in my name—not unless I knew we had exhausted all other possibilities first.
“Yes, Alpha,” Owen said, but I could tell he wasn’t thrilled with the idea.
Still, it bought me some time.
And with my choice and then the ceremony looming, that was something I had very little of.
12
“Before the three of you tell me whatever it is you have to say, I have some questions about an alpha and his or her mate.” The four of us were in my apartment alone. They all nodded solemnly, again doing that weird in-sync thing they sometimes had going.
“What does being the alpha’s mate mean? What does he get?” I asked.
They traded smirking glances.
“Besides that,” I said impatiently. “What is it that you get out of it? Other than sex,” I added, forestalling any more significant glances.
“Officially, the pack alpha’s mate is supposed to provide physical, emotional, and all other forms of support to the alpha.” The other two nodded at Owen’s description.
“And what does that mean in practical terms?”
“It means that the alpha’s mate is the first in the line of advisors. The alpha is expected to choose a mate who can act as a sounding board,” Liam said.
“Someone who can offer sound advice,” Owen added.
“And someone who can be sure the alpha understands which issues matter to the pack,” Dean said.
“So, what you’re saying is that the alpha’s mate needs to be able to help the leader with intellectual, emotional, and social issues?”
It sounded more and more like a traditional marriage.
They all nodded. My gaze skipped from one to the next, taking them in. That pretty much encompassed the three of them. Owen would be the best at helping me with intellectual issues. He knew the history, the rules, all the details about running a pack.
Liam was certainly the one who could aid me in social situations. I thought back to how he’d handled Tara in the bar the first night.
And Dean was all emotion. He would help with any emotional decisions I might have to make.
My uncle had put together the perfect comitatus.
How was I ever suppo
sed to choose just one of them as a mate?
The three of them did that thing where they stared at each other. Then they turned their gazes toward me. “What is it? What’s up?” I asked.
Liam took a half step forward, opened his mouth, and then shook his head as if at a loss. As usual, it was Owen, ever the diplomat, who came up with the right words. “We have up with a plan that we like—but we’re not sure how you’re going to feel about it.”
“A plan for what?”
This time it was Dean who spoke. “You’re having some trouble choosing among us, right?”
I shrugged. “It’s a bizarre situation all the way around. On a personal level, I mean. Under normal circumstances, I would never be making a decision like this at all—much less based on three days and one date each. I know that I have to, but yeah, it’s a problem. You all have your strengths and any one of you would make a perfectly good advisor if we were talking in terms of politics—though each of you would be better for certain issues.” They were all nodding as I listed the reasons I was having difficulty choosing just one of them. “But I’m not merely choosing a pack advisor.”
Finally, Liam spoke up. “Then why choose?”
I blinked at him. “Because I’m required to have some kind of fight to the death if I don’t?”
“No. I mean, why choose just one of us? Why not choose all of us?”
An image flashed through my mind of the three of them kissing me all over, all at once. I shivered as a spear of hot desire flashed completely through me, finally centering itself right in the pit of my stomach.
Something clearly gave away my response, as all my potential mates’ eyes darkened. I could practically taste the lust swirling through the room.
I was pretty sure my mouth had been hanging open for several long seconds before I realized it. “But … is that allowed?”
“There are stories,” Owen said. “It’s not common by any means, but we are not human. There’s no reason we have to abide by human morality.”
“What would that mean for us?” I stammered. “I mean, I thought whoever gave me the bite was my mate in this circumstance.”
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