Wolf's Secret (Alpha's Hunger Book 2)

by Carina Wilder

  “Who are you?” I asked, clutching the journal to my chest as Mr. Enormous came stalking back my way.

  He advanced towards me slowly, his features coming into focus for the first time now that he didn’t have competition from a carnivorous lizard. I could see that he was wearing a gray t-shirt and dark jeans, as well as what looked like a pair of steel-toed boots. A thick head of shoulder-length, blondish hair framed a face coated in stubble that reminded me a little too much of Tristan’s. His chest was immensely broad, his shoulders massive. His eyes were a mixture of bright blue and green, iridescent, impossibly bright.

  The eyes of a shifter.

  Well, that answered one question.

  As he moved towards me, several other figures began to gather in the doorway behind him. He held up his hand as if to tell them to stay back. “Don’t,” he said. “She’s alone. It’s not nice to frighten a lady.”

  “No shit,” I replied. “Now tell me who you are. What are you doing here?”

  “I’m Patrick,” he said, eyes locked on my own. “Trick, to my friends.” Now he held both hands up to me, palms forward, as if to show me that he wasn’t holding a weapon. I knew full well, however, that his most dangerous weapon was on the inside. Not to mention the small group of shifters gathered by the door. “I’m a member of the Southern Pack. Well, what’s left of it.”

  “I assume you’re a wolf shifter?”

  He nodded. “Yes. Like Tristan.”

  “Are you the alpha?” I asked, not bothering to ask how he knew about Tristan just yet.

  He shook his head. “Our alpha was recently killed in battle.”

  I’d calmed down enough now to begin to notice that his accent sounded southern, but there was something else there, as well. Like Tristan, this man was a closed book, mysterious and intriguing.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

  “Thank you. It was hard to lose him…and I’d be lying if I said the situation’s created a few problems for us. There are others around who’d like to see our entire pack lying dead on the ground. A new alpha is in the works, but it’s a bit of a complicated process.”

  “I’m sure. But I’m confused. How do you even know about me? About Tristan?”

  Trick chuckled and pulled out the chair on the opposite side of the table from where I was still standing. He yanked the cloth off and seated himself, clasping his hands on the wooden surface. His forearms were ridged with veins, his biceps chiseled and defined. Whereas Tristan was lean enough to look natural in a three-piece suit, Trick looked like he belonged on the back of a beast of a motorcycle, dressed from head to toe in leathers.

  In a rough sort of way, his face was incredibly handsome, his eyes inquisitive. He was the sort of man no woman’s father wants to see invited to the dinner table, but that every single woman wants in her bed. Something about the feeling of danger that vibrated in the air around him reminded me of Krane, and I wasn’t about to let my guard down.

  “I know about Tristan because he’s famous, for one thing,” he said. “I would have thought you knew as much by now. He may be even more famous down here in than up in your neck of the woods.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  Trick studied me for a few seconds before replying. “Because he helped create the world we live in now. Plus, he’s saved our asses more than once,” he said, playing with the cloth that had covered the table. “But he’s also nearly brought our world crashing down more than once. Your lover is a bit of a pain in the ass, truth be told. Oh, don’t get me wrong—I like the guy. But every time he comes here, we brace ourselves for some massive catastrophic event.”

  “So I take it you knew we were staying in the city,” I said.

  He nodded. “I have eyes and ears everywhere.” With that, he shot me a knowing smile, and with a hot pulse of shame I wondered if he’d somehow seen me flash my breasts last night. “I even have eyes in Credence Parish. Even on this property.”

  “Then maybe you can tell me,” I said, “where is Tristan right now?”

  For a second Trick’s hands tensed into hard fists, the tendons in his wrists tightening like steel cables. “That I don’t know,” he said. “But even if I did, I couldn’t answer you. It would go against our code. I don’t usually meddle in Tristan’s affairs—present situation excepted—and he doesn’t meddle in ours. At least he’s not supposed to. I should probably tell you that he’s violating an agreement with our pack just by coming here. If we wanted to, we’d run him out of town on that fancy jet of his.”

  I swallowed hard, guilt tearing at my chest. “It’s not his fault. He’s only here because of me,” I said. “Because he wanted to show me where he grew up. It’s my fault.”

  “The guy lived here an awfully long time ago. This isn’t his domain, not anymore.” Trick’s voice had gone cold. For the second time the enormous man was making me shake with fear.

  “I’ll tell him that we need to leave,” I said. “I don’t want to be here anymore, to tell you the truth.”

  Trick shrugged. “Don’t bother. I’ll call it a favor. Maybe he can return it someday.” He rose to his feet and stared down at me, a slow smile spreading over his lips. Great, so the guy was amused by my discomfort. “I won’t hurt you,” he said, nodding to his companions, who still stood in the doorway. “Neither will they. The thing is, Tristan’s a good guy, which is why we’re bending the rules for him. I don’t wish him ill.”

  My heart began to calm down. So, like so many others of their kind, Trick respected my lover. Of course he did. I’d all but forgotten that Tristan was one of the most powerful shifters on earth. “I’ll be sure to tell him that you said so,” I promised. “I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.”

  “Thank you. Tell him that he should probably stay away from New Orleans, though. Things might get rough before too long, and he doesn’t want to land in the middle of it.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Trick’s jaw locked as he looked at me, those fierce eyes of his brightening like my lover’s so often did. “It’s nothing you need to worry about. You’ve got enough going on. Just…keep him safe. He’s important. So are you.”

  I nodded slowly. “Thank you,” I said, my voice a wire-thin rasp. I was grateful that the wolf shifter had spared me any more bad news, but the fact was that nothing had been solved. I was still as miserable as I’d been a few minutes ago.

  Trick stood up and turned to walk towards the door, but he stopped before reaching it.

  “You can fix this, you know,” he said, turning his head so that I could see his striking profile.

  “Fix what?”

  “The problem you and Tristan have—what they call the curse of the Seven.”

  “How did you…?” I asked. But there was no point in inquiring how he knew; it was obvious that Trick had been serious when he’d said he had eyes and ears everywhere. “I was told that he can’t marry a mortal, or even be with one,” I said. “The Seven will punish him if he stays with me. That means I have no choice but to leave him.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s true,” Trick said, turning to look at me again. “He can’t be with a mortal.” With that, he bowed his head briefly, reverentially. The act seemed like a throwback to a time long ago, and suddenly I wondered if he, like Tristan, was ancient. “Give him my regards,” he said. “And look after yourself. You’ll find that danger follows you, Ariana. Keep an eye out for it.”

  “Wait!” I blurted out as he took another step towards the door. “You said I can fix this. Please—what do I need to do?”

  “That’s for you to figure out, Valkyrie,” he said, his tone all-knowing. “But I will tell you this—if he’s not allowed to be with a mortal…”

  “Yes?” I breathed, hope threatening to stir itself up inside my chest.

  “Then maybe you need to see to it that you never die.”

  A moment later, he was gone.

  Chapter 29

  January 10 1809

  N
ew Orleans

  At times the pain of the change is almost too much to bear. My flesh burns with agony, the wounds healing slowly. But nothing is as horrible as this feeling, this constant, unrelenting lust for blood and flesh. I see another person and I want to tear his throat out. I smell a woman and I want to possess her.

  I’m no longer human.

  I’m an animal, a beast.

  Trapped inside the tortured flesh of a man.

  When I’d parked the car outside the hotel I trudged up the stairs to our floor, still trying to get my mind around everything that had happened over the last few hours. So many questions had been answered. But there were still so many left that I wasn’t sure if I’d done more harm than good. Our already strained relationship was about to undergo its most brutal test yet.

  Inhaling a sharp breath, I slipped my key card into its place and pushed the door open.

  Tristan was standing in the suite’s living room, his back to me. His slim, muscular body was framed by the window like he’d morphed into the immortal subject of an oil painting. His face was pointed towards the street below, so he’d no doubt seen me arrive.

  “Where have you been?” he asked quietly, without turning around.

  “I could ask you the same.”

  “Like I told you this morning, I was trying to secure our future,” he said, pivoting to face me, his eyes all but glowing the penetrating blue that always reminded me that he was the most complicated man I’d ever met. “I was meeting with an old acquaintance.”

  “Our future…” I said, my voice desperate to crack under the weight of a thousand different emotions. “I’m not sure anymore that we have a future.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Instead of answering, I held up the journal, showing it to him before setting it down on the narrow table next to the door.

  For a moment he just stared at it as though he was trying to figure out what to say in response. But I knew as well as he did that there were no words that would make things better. There was no point in denying what I’d seen, or in pretending that he wasn’t a man deeply scarred, deeply afraid of love. He was a man who had suffered the tortures of the damned, and there was nothing I could do to heal him.

  “So,” he said, “you went back to the house to look for the answers I never gave you.”

  “Yes,” I said, “and I found some of them.” I crossed my arms, waiting to see if he’d offer me some kind of explanation. “A lot of the pages were torn out. Was that your doing?”

  He shook his head. “Not mine,” he said. “I haven’t seen that journal in over a hundred years.” He let out a chuckle that was cold enough to send a chill down my spine. “I’d almost forgotten it existed. If I had, I would have burned the whole house to the ground to get rid of it. Not to mention everything else that reminds me of those days.”

  I swallowed, bracing myself for the fight that must be coming. There was no way Tristan would just accept the fact that I’d gone snooping around his childhood home. He’d accuse me of not trusting him, of going behind his back. The truth was, I wasn’t sure I had the energy, or even the right, to argue.

  “Look, before you yell at me, I’m sorry if I was out of line,” I said. “I came here first, looking for you, but you were gone. I thought I’d go nuts if I didn’t get some answers.”

  “It’s fine,” he replied, his voice as exhausted sounding as my own. He didn’t seem angry, even. If anything, he sounded depleted, as if something had knocked the wind out of him. “Though I was hoping to find you here when I got back. I was hoping to talk about our plans moving forward.”

  “Moving forward?” I asked, stupefied. He didn’t seem to register what chaos our future had become in the last few hours. “What about your past? What about the woman you loved, the life you wanted to live back then?”

  A look of pain crossed his face so quickly that I would have missed it if I’d so much as blinked. “You said it yourself last night. That was a long time ago, Ariana. It was another life. Revisiting it is like opening up a closet filled with ghosts whose sole purpose in this world is to torment me. Maybe you understand now why I can’t—won’t—talk about it. It’s painful in more ways than you can possibly imagine. Let it go.”

  “How can I let it go?” I asked, my voice quaking. “Are you so sure it’s all in the past? Because it seems to me that everything that happened then is still with you every single day. Which means it’s with me, too. It’s like a shadow that hangs over both our lives, Tristan.”

  “I’m well acquainted with the shadow.” His right hand curled into a fist, his lips setting into another hard frown. “Don’t you think I’d give anything to erase all of it? To make it go away? All I want in this entire fucking world is for you to be happy, and I know that’s impossible when I have so many scars, literal and otherwise.” He stared at me, his impossibly blue eyes rimmed with moisture. I’d never seen him look or sound so emotional, so desperate. “I would part with all my wealth, all my power, to be able to give you what you need. I would give up my life to ensure your joy, if that was what it took.”

  My chest ached at once with a delicious fullness and a profound, echoing emptiness. In that moment I loved Tristan more than I ever had before. To hear him express such a generous sentiment—to know how much he cared—it was all I’d ever really needed.

  For the first time, I felt loved. Truly loved.

  But I also knew it couldn’t last, and I supposed that he did, too.

  Tristan didn’t make a move towards me. Didn’t try to touch me, to lay a hand on my cheek as he so often did. Something—some invisible force—was holding him back. Maybe the thought of coming close was too painful.

  “I need to know what happened to you,” I said. “Please, tell me once and for all, so I can understand.”

  “Understand?” he laughed. “What is there to understand? Even if you only read part of the journal, you’ll know I was a wide-eyed idealistic idiot who thought he could make something of himself. Well, it turns out I was right. I made something of myself. I became rich beyond my wildest dreams. I built an empire of shifters, an empire of wealth.” Tristan combed an aggressive hand through his hair and breathed out an exasperated sigh. “The irony, of course, is that I’m the man I am today because of what they did to me. I’m successful because of everything they stole from my life. If you really want to hear about it, I’ll tell you.” He let out another chilling laugh. “Who knows? It might be good to get it off my chest.”

  I bit my lip, holding back the tears. My heart was breaking all over again for him, for the pain he’d endured. I felt cruel asking him to revisit it. But it seemed like the only way to get him to release the darkness that lurked inside him.

  “The entries stopped when you talked about the Marquis taking you away and tying you up,” I said. “Why did he do that?”

  Tristan grabbed the chair next to him, spun it around and sat down, his shoulders slumped. “It was the price I had to pay for what I’d done.”

  “With Elodie, you mean,” I said.

  He nodded. “With Elodie,” he repeated.

  “You were going to run away with her,” I said, my insides torn up at the thought of it. “You wanted to marry her.”

  He nodded and pulled his eyes to mine, pausing for a few seconds as though reading my expression. “I never loved her, you know, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he said.

  “I didn’t ask you that,” I said. “I don’t want to hear…”

  But he interrupted before I could finish.

  “Not like I love you, Ariana. You have no idea how much I love you.”

  As he spoke, I reached a hand out for the console table to keep myself from falling to my knees.

  I love you.

  I’d never craved anything like I’d craved those words from him. I’d never fully realized the extent of my need until the moment he uttered them.

  But I couldn’t tell him that I loved him. Not now, not like this. Not while he wa
s telling me about the woman he’d once planned to marry.

  “I assume that she left,” I said, struggling to maintain control over my voice. “You and she broke up, right?”

  “Broke up…” The color left his face as he stared at me, an expression close to pity taking over his features. He winced as he replied. “You told me that some pages were torn out,” he said. “I didn’t realize…I thought you’d seen it…I thought you knew…” He looked away as if it was too painful to make eye contact with me just then. “Oh, Jesus. I’m so sorry, my beautiful Ariana. I’m so sorry that I have to tell you this.”

  “Tell me…what?” I asked, a whole new kind of terror setting into my bones. “What am I missing? Did you…” I choked. It was too much. Maybe they’d run away together after all. Maybe they’d…

  “Demarche wasn’t only angry because I planned to marry his daughter,” he said, his eyes locked on a landscape painting that hung on the wall. “Oh, that would have irritated him. He would have fired me, kicked me off the plantation. But that wasn’t what set him off.”

  “Then what? What was he so mad about that he’d punish you so severely? What happened?” I wanted to scream. To cry. To run at him and beat my fists against his chest until he told me.

  Tristan shut his eyes and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyelids, hiding his face as he said the words that I’d never wanted to hear.

  “Elodie was pregnant…with my child.”

  Chapter 30

  I crumpled to the floor, my heart throbbing brutally in my chest.

  “Pregnant…” I gasped.

  That Tristan had had a child with another woman was, without question, the last thing I’d expected to hear. “Oh God…”

  He was off the chair in an instant, on his knees, arms reaching for me. But I shoved him away, snarling in some incoherent language. It was all I could do not to unleash a primal scream that could shatter glass. “You’re a father!” I sobbed. “At least you were. Even if it happened eons ago, how could you not have told me that?”