“I don’t know about you and your werefemales, and how you treat them, but nothing could be worse than to set me up to be food for a bear. Now I’m starving. I haven’t eaten, and the rabbits are gone,” she says holding her stomach which appeared to be moving. She could never get used to giving birth in eight weeks. “I’ll be dead soon the way you’re treating me. I need nourishment. Something to eat,” she shouted. Adrienne’s stomach felt as if it was tightening up and the pain of hunger was more than she could handle.
“I’ll get you something soon.” He tilted his head trying to understand this female. The werefemales never complained. They caught their food and left to have their pups. These human females are too much trouble. Why would the Samsas want to put up with such disrespect coming from a lowly human? Bane thought.
But he did know why. If werewolves were to survive as a species, they needed to breed and since the majority of werefemales were sterile, then they had to put up with such insolence.
“You promised me that you would bring me food. Now the bear has it.” Bane stood and when he did, Adrienne caught sight of his hard ass and strong legs. His muscular shoulders showed signs of healed wounds crisscrossing his hard pecks.
His waist small and his shoulders exceedingly wide. Ford couldn’t build a better body than that. For a second she wanted to think that he was Wilder, or any one of the Samsas, but he was nothing like them, and her imagination had played tricks on her for far too long.
They would never treat a woman the way he’s treating her. She had suffered in that moment she thought she would die, and she is suffering now because she needs to eat. Not for herself, but for her pups.
When Bane returned he had dressed in a pair of jeans, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt. He strode over to the bag he had setting where the rabbits were. He opened it, and there was a bottle of milk.
“Where did you get that?” Adrienne reached for the container of milk and drank it quickly.
“From a grocery store. There’s a local store near here. I brought you some of those panties, too.” She slanted her head to the side, glancing at him, not knowing what he was talking about.
He held them up, and smiled as if he had just brought her a diamond ring, and he was waiting for her to say how wonderful you are, but instead she opened her mouth and gazed at him with a scoff.
“They’re too big,” she said annoyed.
“They won’t be for long,” he shot back and walked away from her. Turning he said, “Can’t you say thanks?”
“For trying to get me killed.”
“For me not killing you. Next time you might not be so lucky.” He raised one eyebrow at her. He looked undeniable sexy. She thought he was trying to frighten her by his threats, but instead he roused her passion. Why would he go out of his way to bring her panties?
“And I might not think you’re worth the trouble you have put me through. Get ready we’re leaving here.” Bane stood gazing at her. His eyes glowing with a savage inner fire. He caught himself not believing how she is affecting him. She had unlocked the heart and soul of a man he once was.
“You want me to thank you for bringing me panties. I need food. And where are we going?”
“I brought the panties to keep from smelling your scent. It’s for your own good because if I keep sniffing you, I will have to take you hard even if you are pregnant. When the moon is full and you are the only female around I will have no choice.” Bane’s stare wanders out past Adrienne as if he’s in a daze. “It’s the moon tide. The Earth and Moon are attracted to each other, like I am to you,” his voice is low and calm.
Adrienne’s shrill voice release him from his day dream. “You have control over your body. If you harm me in any way, it’s because you want to.”
“I said I would not fuck you unless you wanted me. I said you will have to beg me to take you.”
“That will be the day,” Adrienne said with a sly smile. “We won’t be together that long. When Wilder and the others come for me, you will be a thing of the past.”
“Don’t count on it.” Bane puts his shirt on and is buttoning it up when he looks at Adrienne gazing at him.
“Those wolves of yours have been sleeping, and eating in luxury. They have gotten soft. They don’t know how to exist in the wild. I’m going to take you with me and naturally they will come for you, and they will have to take you from me, and that won’t be easy.”
Adrienne stood for a moment and watched at Bane. Could he be right? Will they have difficulty finding her before Bane takes her away with him? He walked up to her, and after she was dressed and wearing her fur coat, her strength began to fade.
She teetered side to side. “I’m not feeling well,” she said weak of voice.
Bane thought that Adrienne was using a ploy to slow him down. He took her hand and pulled her out of the cave. “I need to rest for a few seconds.”
“This is not a game, Adrienne, and you can’t manipulate me like you have done the Samsas. I don’t live like they do with their estates. I live out in the wild. And I’m bound by the laws of the wild. If you aren’t strong enough to walk, I will leave you here for wolves, or I will put you out of your misery. What will it be?”
Adrienne couldn’t tell whether Bane was serious or frightening her. And if it was the latter, she was good and terrified. “I’ll walk. But how much further will we have to go?”
“You don’t have to walk. This is what we’re riding in,” he pointed to a rusty old beat up Chevy truck with some remnants of red paint still visible. “We’re heading north where I will test those werewolves of yours. You want to know where we’re going,” he said standing looking down on her with an emotionless expression. “We’re headed for Alaska.”
“I can’t go.” Adrienne backed up, her feet falling deep into the soft snow.
“You will go. Now get in the truck. There’s no use resisting. You will go, or I will make you.” Bane’s face turned from smooth to a furrowed brow and his thick eyebrows meeting together every time he had a disagreement with Adrienne, and every time she tested him in ways he found objectionable. And every time she refused to follow his orders she offended him with her human behavior. As a werewolf, the most feared animal in the forest, she was making a mockery out of him by not obeying.
Her disrespect of him was more than he would take any longer.
The thought of what had happened to her with Paul’s frat friends that night he lay past out, and his friends were drunk out of their minds, came back to her as she watched at Bane’s face. The whole sickening recurring nightmare stayed with her every day she lived with Paul, and that’s why she left him that fateful night when she would enter the world of werewolves and fall in love with Wilder. But Wilder was different. He was patient with her. He understood her and he loved her.
She reminded herself that the werewolf standing before her didn’t love her. Bane’s voice and words recaptured that night which changed her destiny. If she didn’t obey him, she could be in mortal danger. His words paralleled Paul’s friend’s words, “If you don’t lie still and close your mouth, then we will make you,” they had said to her as one held her mouth and the other opened her legs all the while Paul lay passed out in the next room.
A chill came over her. If she resisted Bane then he could force her, and she would be taken eventually and broken. She couldn’t push him to the point where that would happen, so she quietly walked to the old Chevy pickup, opened the door, and climbed in.
Bane glared at Adrienne with a satisfied grin crossing his face as he climbed into the truck. For once she listened to him. Maybe she could be broken after all, he thought. Maybe she’s understanding that she will have to put away the notion that she will be back with the Samsas. Maybe in time she will love him if he treats her with care. But that’s not his way. He could do this for a short time, but it wouldn’t last long because it wasn’t in his nature. His nature was wild and uncontrollable, and he knew it. He alone had convinced himself that she could love
him after what he had done.
Looking to her he put the key in and started the motor, a loud bang came from the exhaust pipe, Adrienne jumped from the noise, he glanced at her, and they took off in the truck heading north.
Chapter 13
“Father, what do you need us to do?” Hunter said as he crouched near Wilder. He was on Wilder’s left and Devin stooped on his right.
“I just want you to observe. You’re too young and too inexperience to fight these seasoned werewolves.”
“When will we have enough experience, if not now, then when? Our mother has been kidnapped and is in that place with that animal, and all you say to us is we don’t have enough experience.”
Wilder’s blue eyes turned dark and they narrowed. He twisted around quickly to Hunter who could see the anger in his eyes. All Wilder had to do sometimes was to look at them with his changing blue eyes when they fail to follow instructions, and Devin would tremble in fear. But not Hunter. He was more like his uncle Lycell who was fearless. Not because Wilder was any less daring but because Lycell acted from emotion, but not Wilder. He was serene and patient even when he hunted. That is the lessons Wilder knew Hunter needed. Hunter had to learn patients.
“That is precisely why I don’t want you two in there. You will let your emotions rule you. When you are as young as you are, your emotions will get you killed, or all of us,” he whispered harshly to Hunter. Wilder turned to his right looking to Devin.
“Didn’t I tell you to wait in the brush for Lycell and Drayton? Why aren’t they here by now?” Wilder looked behind him into the thick woods.
“I thought you would need me so I came,” Devin answered.
“Another lesson. If you don’t follow directions, how can I trust you two? Now you know why. You both are impulsive and hotheaded like your uncle Lycell.”
“Our uncle is one of the fiercest werewolves around. Everyone who knows him fears him,” Hunter answered.
“Not enough. They know his weakness and they know his weakness for your mother. Bane guessed he would come, and rush into the compound without thought of his safety or Adrienne’s. When Lycell found out what Bane had done, his single focus was to destroy the entire pack. You can’t do that just because one Alpha has done something unacceptable to us and to the laws we live by.”
Devin and Hunter exchanged glances with each other. They were willing to forget the werewolf’s creed. It was their mother that Bane would destroy. They felt as Lycell felt—destroy the entire pack. Scorched earth. Leave nothing and no one who disrespected the Samsas. They were the strongest pack now and the wealthiest, what did they have to fear from anyone? This was their young inexperienced thoughts and Wilder knew their minds. His mind was once like that—reckless and impulsive.
Once Wilder was just like Lycell, but experience taught him tolerance and patience.
“Go back into the woods and watch for Lycell and Drayton, and don’t come out until I signal you,” Wilder said to Devin. His voice commanding and strong but his thoughts not as strong as his resolve.
As Devin prepared to head back into the thicket, Drayton came running out into the opening, and stopping only as he neared Wilder and Hunter. “Where is Lycell? It’s not like him to linger back.” Wilder kept his ears waiting and his eyes focused on the trail leading out of the forest.
“That’s what I wanted to tell you.” Drayton eyes shifted to Hunter.
“What is it, Drayton?” Wilder asked.
“Lycell was mauled by a bear.” Wilder showed no expression, and he asked no questions. He knew once Bane took Adrienne that there would be causalities. He loved his brother, but he was thankful that it wasn’t his sons. He couldn’t handle losing Adrienne and his sons. He would be broken.
“He’ll be okay. Robert remained behind to take care of him,” Drayton said watching at Hunter. Hunter let out a sigh of relief. Wilder nodded his head. He felt a sense of relief as well, but he never showed it outward. Wilder felt that a leader didn’t have the luxury of showing such emotions, or weakness.
Robert was a good man, but Wilder didn’t think that they would need him when he suggested that he stay. “Robert made me promise to bring Mena back,” Drayton said looking at Wilder for approval.
“I hope we can keep that promise,” Drayton said considering Wilder. Wilder gave nothing away. No nod in agreement or promise. With a wave of his hands, Wilder signaled for Hunter and Devin to follow along.
They jumped a large freshly built log fence. It was a fence that a man couldn’t scale, at least not without a ladder, and a bit of difficulty and preparation, however, it was nothing for a werewolf to climb or jump over something that height. And they did. All four leapt at the same time. And landed on their feet in the deep snow in the back of a large log cabin.
The snow drifts had covered Wilder’s tracks from his previous visit.
“This is Bane’s cabin. It’s dark and cold. There’s no way anyone could be in here,” Wilder said muffling his voice and looking in a window. They moved around cautiously, making their way to the front of the building, where they met ten large werewolves congregating around a fire.
“Were you waiting for me?” Wilder said in a commanding voice. The wolves looked up in surprise. Only another werewolf could get past werewolves without them knowing. The Samsas had disguised their scents. They took on the smells of the forests; pine trees, squirrels, and bears with a host of other animals to confuse the werewolves.
Although the Samsas were rich and appeared soft, they had the teachings of their father, an ancestral line of generations of cunning wolves to keep them hard and a force to contend with among all the animals of the forest, and especially the werewolves who they oversee.
“Where is your Alpha? Where is Bane?”
The blond wolf who had help kidnapped Adrienne stepped out of the circle in his human form to answer Wilder. He showed little respect to the greatest Alpha of all. His white hair whipped in the wind of spring, and his arrogance of youth showed on his face. Wilder recognized the blond werewolf’s youth and unseasoned experience, because his sons Hunter and Devin wore the same smile and had the same overconfident walk. He strode over to Wilder with his head erect, chest puffed out, and wide shoulders carrying a pair of long arms.
The blonde was taller than Wilder and his arrogance saw no bounds.
The Beta wolves quickly lowered their heads out of respect for the Samsas and especially for Wilder. They had no heart for fighting an Alpha such as Wilder. They had heard of the Lone Wolf who traveled around policing the packs. They had heard how he hunted his own food and spent his time in Alaska and Russia hunting crazy rogue wolves. Tracking them through deep snow where no man or animal could survive. Yet he survived without food and water.
These Beta wolves had heard of him, but maybe the blonde wolf hadn’t.
Bending with their eyes and ears to the ground, but still observing that he had two young pups with him, and his brother Drayton. There was no way they would fight Alphas without the head of their pack. Bane had disappeared and left the blonde wolf to take over for him. Bane didn’t have the authority to give the blonde the title of Alpha. That was something he had to earn.
And so now he was ready to earn it.
When the blond wolf saw Wilder he showed no regard for him. “So you are Wilder Samsa. I was hoping we would meet.”
“You didn’t have to wait long. Where is Bane?” Wilder said his eyes searching and his ears listening. He hadn’t taken in Bane’s or Adrienne’s smell. He could smell her hundreds of miles away. She was his one true mate, and he wouldn’t and couldn’t rest until he had her once more in his arms, and in his bed.
“He took off with your human female after I kidnapped her for him.” The blond gazed at Wilder with a sly smile. Wilder did all he could to calm himself. He raised a hand to hold Hunter and Devin back because he sensed what they were apt to do. Their show of emotions was causing Wilder problems. How could he prevent them from attacking and antagonizing the other
wolves? If they decided to fight, it could go bad for all of them. Even the least that they would do would prevent him from following Bane, and with Lycell gone, it had become imperative that they find Adrienne soon, and they not provoke the whole pack.
“Move back Hunter, and take Devin with you,” Wilder said his voice strong not wanting an argument. Hunter and Devin listened and walked cautiously to the rear. Drayton stayed up front with Wilder watching and waiting.
“I will ask this question only once more,” Wilder said, his eyes narrow and his blue eyes burning like two hot coals. “Where is Bane?” The Beta werewolves began thrashing about and some were moaning and groaning because they weren’t up for a fight.
“You can ask all you want, and I won’t tell you. He’s planning on fucking her and the next time you see her, she will be filled with his pups, and then I will get my turn at her.” Wilder closed his eyes and passed his hands across his mouth. But before he could change, Drayton had shifted into a fierce large wolf with a long muzzle. When the other wolves saw Drayton, they lowered their bodies to the ground cowering in fear.
Drayton leaped at the blonde wolf and he shifted in a quick second as Drayton pounced on him. Drayton knew that the first blow counted. He aimed for the blonde’s neck, taking out a large piece of his shoulder then spitting it out. The blonde stood in shock bleeding profusely.
He had provoked Wilder to fight. The blonde had anticipated Wilder, but Wilder wouldn’t take the bait. Words wouldn’t prevent him from carrying out his mission. But a calm Drayton who took being married to Adrienne serious, felt that it was his fault that he didn’t protect her, and had allowed her to go when he knew the dire consequences. So he was full of guilt and anger and it served him well.
The blond wolf wasn’t blonde when he shifted. He had gray fur and his eyes blazed black like two pieces of coal. His thick matted fur was covered in blood.
Wilder gazed at the blond after Drayton leapt in his direction. He watched knowing that he didn’t need to intervene, but if he had to, he would. At first they walked around each other sizing the other up. There was no doubt that Drayton would rise to the challenge.
Insatiable Box Set: Books 1-4 Page 31