by K. de Long
“What specifics?” Her voice rose. “I should have been involved in this. It’s my place. How dare you go behind my back?”
Marrock’s eyes strayed to her forearms as her hands clenched to fists. They were crusted with blood, dried and drying. He could smell it on her. He wanted to lick it off her. Slowly. The absinthe that fueled his transformation had the unfortunate side-effect of sharpening his senses far beyond human. He could smell Tessa as though she were draped across his lap. The blood was but one of many intriguing aromas in his nostrils.
It wasn’t hers, though. He could smell that much. It must have been from the body she’d examined. The one she was talking about.
He couldn’t restrain an approving smile; he liked a woman who wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. That she hadn’t paused to clean up before continuing on her confrontation course was another mark in her favor. No doubt she wasn’t aware what a striking figure she was, slick with gore, eyes alight with a protectiveness that could rival any mama bear. She came from the lineage of kings, and it showed in every ounce of her bearing.
The argument continued as he took his time surveying her. At least it gave him the chance to assess what he was in for. He’d seen her from a distance, but he’d never been close enough to inspect her for birthmarks, to memorize the tawny tonal shifts as the light hit her hair. He swore he could look at her for hours as she spoke and be perfectly content.
“We’d just need to seal the deal in an old-fashioned way, for all the old timers,” her father said, earning him several glares from his own pack elders. This was really only up for discussion because they’d insisted on it.
Tessa was smart. Before her father had laid it out so plainly, she’d already latched on to what he planned. Still, she cocked her head, let him twist like a rabbit on a spit, forcing him to spell it out. Marrock liked her all the more for it. He bit back a smile of his own.
“You would need to stay with the Nefari pack, as his recognized mate, but—”
The trap she’d set up snapped closed with those words. “Since when has an ‘alpha bitch’ been a dainty morsel to be traded away? You do that with the layabouts who can’t serve the pack any other way. My place here is with you, and I’d have expected every one of you in this room to know as much. I’ve saved every one of your asses numerous times, and done my duties well.”
“And now the best way you can continue doing your duties is by accepting our will. You need to go along with this.”
Hurt flared in her eyes, inspiring a similar sting inside him. Whoever her father was used to dealing with—however he usually addressed her—Marrock knew that he would carry the weight heavy on his conscience if he let the man get away with bullying her. And she would never trust or respect anyone in that room if his father kept trampling all over her.
Still, it meant something that she had a hardened pack leader quaking in his boots. Her reputation was as a tough but fair leader. Not someone he wanted on his bad side, whether she went along with the arranged mating or not.
“A moment, please?” he asked, his voice deceptively cordial.
Alder glanced at the other elders, then nodded. “We’ll let you two speak alone.” Under his breath, he grumbled, “Maybe you’ll have some luck talking sense into her.”
Marrok refused to take his eyes off her as the room emptied. This truce, their packs’ future—it all came down to her.
Chapter 3
Tessa’s blood ran hot in her veins—this time from rage, not lust. She was not a possession or a trophy to be passed around for the men’s egos. A friend’s blood was on her hand, and her father wanted to send her away? Despite her rank, hard-earned with her blood, sweat, and tears?
A soft knock came on the door, and her father stepped back in. “Actually, it’s not proper. And it’s not your duty. I’ll talk to her.”
Her nostrils flared. He wasn’t wrong; leaving her to Marrock was cowardly, at best. But she’d have rather faced the handsome asshole willing to buy her like a cut of steak than the aging asshole willing to sell her like a cut of steak.
Marrock held her gaze a moment, then slipped through the door. As he passed, he nodded at her dad approvingly. Marrock turned back toward her as the door shut, his eyes tracing slowly over her curves. Tessa’s eyes narrowed, and she glared until the latch fell into place, shutting him from view.
“It’s the only way, Tess,” her dad said, quietly. “It’s not fair. It’s not what you deserve. But I don’t know that we can weather this storm unless you go along with it. The elders, the conservatives—they need to see proof of goodwill. Else anything else is just spit on paper, not blood bindings.”
“If things really are that bad, then my place is here. Fighting. With you. I earned that place, fair and square when—”
“When you took down Alora in solo combat. I know. But there’s more to duty than having the courage to fight. The best way you can fight for us is to work with Marrock. Be the best mate you can be. Earn his respect, and his allegiance for us. Live in such a way that his pack will owe us their allegiance, too. I wish I could toss one of the pups at him, but you know the tradition. The higher the rank of the allied mates, the more esteem the partnership’s held in. That Marrock’s the one ready to receive you speaks well of them. Now we need you to speak well of us.”
Tessa shook her head. “No—I don’t—I can’t…” She didn’t know how to articulate the mess running through her head.
Someone knocked on the door again. Tessa turned, ready to scream at the poor unfortunate who dared interrupt them, but it was only Marrock. Her dad stared at her a few more seconds, no doubt reassuring himself that it was only a matter of time before he won the argument.
“Can I have a minute with her?” Marrock asked, and her dad nodded, the motion clipped and deeply unhappy. She looked away and refused to make eye contact with him as he left.
Marrock quietly cleared his throat. She bit her lip to keep the words in. How dare this handsome, cocky asshole think she’d be convinced if he just came and fluttered his eyelashes at her? Maybe if she asked nicely, he’d flex those coiled muscles, too, just to show even more deeply how stupid and shallow he must think her.
God, the ludicrousness of it.
They thought she’d play house with him. Dance in the kitchen, whipping up eggs for him after the hunt, winking and bopping his nose with the spatula, pretending she couldn’t see every inch of flesh he’d left exposed, but leering from under lowered lashes. Bringing cookies to meetings for him, so he wouldn’t get hungry as whatever council he sought kept him there long into the night, talking, while she just flittered around like a regular Susie Homemaker for a perfect goddamn stranger whose pack had been nipping at her ankles all of her life.
Like hell.
Like hell she’d accept him as her mate, live in his home, share his bed…wrap her arms around his solid waist and bury her face against his chest. She harbored few illusions about love, but she sure as hell harbored a few about autonomy.
Like hell she’d wrap her fingers around his thick manhood—in her mind it was thick, anyways—and…
“You’re staring,” Marrock said drily, and her cheeks warmed.
“What else am I supposed to do? I’m just wondering what exactly the problem is, that you’re still single. Looks don’t seem to be an issue, so what is it? What’s wrong with you? I can see it being a personality thing, but then I’ve known you for five minutes, so maybe I just don’t know how bad the problem really is.”
The moment the words left her lips, she clamped them shut. What had possessed her to say that? If her father was right, if this was the only way, and she’d pissed Marrock off...
Instead, he laughed. “We’ll pretend you left it at ‘my looks aren’t the problem.’”
Her cheeks burned even hotter, for him to be being so easygoing about the whole thing.
“I’ve got better things to do than trade barbs with you,” he continued, “as enjoyable as I’m sure the expe
rience would be.”
She raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
Marrock dipped his chin and continued. “This bloodshed’s gone on for far too long. I’ve lost cousins, friends, brothers, to Elias’s deflection. This can’t continue. If I have it in my power to end it, I will.”
“Brothers?” she asked, hesitantly. Marrock’s clan was notoriously close-lipped, and she couldn’t resist probing him for information that might prove useful later.
“Brothers,” he said firmly. “A half-brother of mine was one of the earliest deflectors, when shit hit the fan.” His jaw set. There was more to the story than that, but she knew he wouldn’t offer her the missing information if she asked. “And two second cousins were among the sentries and patrols who’ve gone missing. One of them turned up, hands and feet chewed away but left alive to die crawling for safety... The other? I can only fathom he suffered the same fate and his body is decomposing somewhere in the mountains or along a hiking path.”
She wrinkled her nose. If he was in the mountains, perhaps the Kumori's hunters would stumble across him. She’d have to leave a note with the quartermaster, just in case.
He continued, “It’s a helluva way to go. The activity would only accelerate the blood loss, and no makeshift tourniquet could stay in place while you moved: stay still and die, or move and die. Catch 22.” His voice caught, and her fingers twitched with the urge to brush them across his adam’s apple and his jawline to see the tension ease.
He was right. It was an ugly way to go.
“Of course, I think that’s always been Elias’s problem.” For a moment, his gaze dipped before returning to hers. “He’s the most catlike wolf I’ve ever encountered. He likes to play with his food, torment it. I have no doubt he would have sat by for the majority of his victims’ suffering until he was sure they wouldn’t wake up. Just watching.”
Tessa’s lips twitched. “The road he killed Samus on isn’t heavy traffic, but someone would have noticed. And the wounds were severe; there is no way he was living, even with prompt medical attention and rations of the healing poultice. But the trail of blood seemed to indicate that Samus was healthy enough to walk. Maybe he was trying to get back to—”
She drew a ragged breath. She’d said too much.
If her father was right, if there was a chance she could help this, then that was what she had to do. And Marrock was treating her like an equal; she doubted he’d have shown that much emotion talking to his council—or hers. But he’d sought her out privately. He’d put forward a good-faith effort to talk to her. She’d heard she was an asshole, and had been determined for her initial impression to uphold that, but she was hardly one to dig her heels in the ground when others might suffer for it. Enough had died already. Too many.
She should tell him her decision, but he was still talking. “Elias was once not just my closest friend, but my family. However, he cost me many of my pack. I want him dead just as much as you do. I showed mercy once, and many have died for it.”
He swallowed, tension in his jawline, and again she was consumed with the desire to nestle in beneath his chin, to feel it drain from him.
Wait. Family?
Her eyes narrowed, and it didn’t escape him.
“Yes, family. He is the brother he cost me. Half brother, anyway. Same mother, different fathers. I don’t think that part is common knowledge.”
She shook her head, taken aback at his transparency. “No, I should think not.”
“Well, it’s true.” His lips tightened. He took a deep breath and shook his head. The look on his face made her insides ache. It wasn’t, like, man-tears or anything, but it relieved her to know that there was someone under his skin. Someone reasonable. Someone who would set boundaries with her, so that they could figure out a way to make it work, for both their packs’ sake…
Someone that she could consider mating with. Just for convenience. Not for pleasure, though he might try to make it pleasurable for her.
No. She had to put her foot down. Hard. He might be handsome, but the thought of him touching her, the thought of recognizing him as her mate, with all the intimacy that implied…it wasn’t something she could stomach.
“I’ll do it. But—”
He cut her off. “It’s purely a mating of convenience. I won’t touch you, and if you want to do your own thing, well, we all have needs.” Despite the sensitive words, there was a predatory glint in his eye. “So long as you’re discreet, I won’t say a word if you find something more fulfilling in the shadows.” She couldn’t make herself believe him. Not when he looked at her like that. But which part was the lie? The promise not to touch her? Or the promise to turn a blind eye to someone else pleasuring her?
The idea that he wouldn’t care upset her more than she cared to admit even to herself.
“I can’t promise to have any kind of love for you,” she said in as cool a voice as she could. Perhaps the words were cruel, but if they were going to do this, they needed to do it with open eyes and clear hearts.
“Nor I you,” he echoed, through there was a wistful tone she didn’t like.
Did that mean he had someone else he loved, whose companionship he’d foregone to be able to make the treaty with her father? She swallowed at that foreign pinching feeling in her throat.
“But I’ll endeavor to take care of you,” he continued, “and all I ask is the same. We’ll do our best to keep each other’s people alive. Nothing more, nothing less. Deal?”
Tessa glanced down, uncomfortable with the bleak truth in his eyes. She knew it was echoed in her own, and that knowledge hurt worst of all. Could this, moving forward, be her life?
Her downcast gaze landed squarely on her bloodied arms. How much more blood could she clean up, before this was all over?
He put out his hand, and she placed hers in it. His palm dwarfed hers, folding over hers easily. When he released his grip, the blood stained him, too.
That seems fitting, she thought, with a shudder.
“Deal,” she whispered.
Tessa regretted the words the moment they left her lips. Marrock was smiling. Spread across his angular face, it made him appear even more the predator. She opened her mouth to take them back, say there must be some other way to help their packs...but her father opened the door again. If she said it now, he’d know that she’d considered it. And then he’d perhaps seek allies elsewhere, and her whole life would devolve into dodging a carousel of prospective mate-alliances.
But if she didn’t, the deal was done. Marrock flashed her a lopsided grin, but kept silent. Was even he giving her a chance to rethink the rash decision?
“While you’re here,” her father said, “we’ll be having a wake for Samus. In honor of the truce between our packs, you’re welcome to come, pay your respects to the dead.”
Tessa’s eyes widened. He had to be shitting her. It was an inter-pack event, and a solemn one at that. And even if she went through with this alliance and he became her mate, it still wouldn’t be his place to witness the widow’s grief, his children’s search for answers. She had no doubt the wake would be full of tears and shared secrets that Marrock had no business being privy to.
It would be a struggle to articulate everything wrong with her father’s invitation without gravely insulting Marrock. But she had to at least protest.
“It’s not for outsiders,” she said.
Her dad rubbed below his eyes. His face was too thin, his eyes too sunken. “Let it go, Tessa. It’s time we fostered solidarity, not division.”
Her eyes narrowed. He was really sold on this whole unified front thing, wasn’t he? Wait ‘til the upstarts heard about it. And as much as her pack’s alpha needed his ass kicked, she knew that she wasn’t the one to do it.
Alder kept talking to Marrock, regardless of his daughter’s seething anger. Her jaw tightened to be brushed aside so easily. It was as though her father had already begun distancing himself from her in preparation for sending her off. It made the arrangeme
nt all the more real. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach and rose to into her ribcage to throw themselves against the walls of their bone cage. She didn’t dare open her mouth, for fear of what would come out.
Her father glanced her way and caught her eye. Her shoulders straightened. He looked so...weary. Worn down. Like he was counting down the days ‘til another young upstart would take him down and assume his alpha role in the pack.
She shivered. What she would give to have been born a boy.
The elders would never tolerate her challenging her father and taking his place. When that day came, if she was still here, she would have no choice but to swear fealty to the new leader. And for all she knew, he could be worse than Marrock; there were a few young prowlers who’d had their eye on the gig, who’d sought to flirt with her as though her support might help them achieve that elevated rank. She had no patience for it.
Could her dad really be planning for his retirement by sending her away? Did he really think this was what was best, for her family, for her pack?
At least Marrock was making the right noises to make her think it wouldn’t be a horrible situation, her being his mate. But her instincts were on edge. Her dad had long suspected that Marrock was working with Elias, not just turning a blind eye to the Malvati’s doings. If that was the case, her father was sending her into hell, with his eyes open.
Or, what if that was why he wanted the treaty to happen? So that she could be his eyes. If he welcomed Marrock now, Marrock would never suspect that she was a spy embedded in the heart of his pack. Her heart thudded with the danger. She wasn’t sure if she was capable of it.
But she’d have to try. She’d keep her eyes open, and maybe she’d see something worth warning her father about—even though she didn’t think he deserved it, for allowing her to be bartered away.