Growl

by Eve Langlais

  He shook his head, not really knowing what to do with her sympathy.

  “When I came back,” he continued, now since he’d started down this path, the words coming out softly, “I came home from the service and they were gone. All I had were my memories. My brothers’ playful tendencies. My dad’s quick wit. My sister’s smile and rich laughter. My mother’s words of wisdom.”

  “Blaez,” she whispered again, both her hands moving along his back now.

  “I didn’t want this. I wanted my family to live and to be there the way they’d always been. I would have done anything, everything, to protect them from him, to save them. But I didn’t know. I didn’t realize that he would come for them. So I wasn’t there to save them. By the time I arrived there was nothing I could do,” he said, finally turning to face her.

  “Nothing but continue on. My mother was a believer in destiny and for a while I’d believed in it too, but how could my destiny include so much pain and grief?” He gritted his teeth. “There are threads to our lives, you know. The Moirai made it so. They piece those threads together and so our destiny is already planned. That’s what my mother taught me. So my destiny was to form a pack. I came here and I decided to do my part, to live the way they wanted me to. But that was as far as I planned to take that destiny trail. I decided that if I was going to give up everything I’d wanted to live the way my parents and the Fates so deemed, I at least deserved one thing for myself. I deserved not to endure that type of pain or loss ever again. No emotional or intimate attachments, ever. Unlike my father and Nyktimos before me, I would never claim anyone, never bring another life into this dismal world that we’ve been forced to live in. Not ever.”

  For a brief moment Kira looked as if his words had caused her great pain; then her facial features had relaxed, her gaze softening as she said, “So instead of running like me, you’ll just hide. Here in this beautiful mountain region, you’ll stay with the pack that can fight almost as well as you; each of you will stay here with the vow to protect each other. But nothing more.” She lifted a hand to touch his cheek as she finished.

  Blaez almost pulled away, but the warmth of her palm felt too good. It felt too right.

  “I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep them, and now you, safe,” he vowed. “That’s what I was meant to do. I know that without a doubt now it’s my purpose. To protect. But I don’t have to subject myself to anything more. I won’t.”

  She gave a slight nod. “And what’s my purpose, Blaez? Am I a part of your destiny? Maybe I’m another part that you refuse to accept.”

  If he believed in praying to the gods he would have, right at this very moment. He would have prayed that his answer to her could be yes. But there was so much more she didn’t know and could not possibly understand.

  “Kira,” he began, searching for the words to end this conversation, her questions, everything, in the hopes of getting back to what he’d decided was his normal life.

  When she came closer, cupping his face in her hands, and tilted her head up to touch her lips to his, Blaez didn’t know what to do. For the first time in he didn’t know how long, he didn’t know how to react, how to proceed, what to say or feel. She kissed him again, her lips soft against his, her tongue just barely brushing across the seam.

  “Ki—” He’d been about to say her name, to tell her this was a colossal mistake, when he heard another voice.

  “Blaez,” Phelan said from somewhere pretty close to them. “We have a problem.”

  Kira jumped as if she, or rather they, had been doing something wrong. And Blaez cursed.

  He turned to face Phelan, giving Kira a moment to refasten her jeans.

  “I’ll be there in a moment,” Blaez said, glad that Phelan had turned his back to them.

  “I’ll wait up front,” the beta said.

  “No need,” Kira told them, coming from behind Blaez. “I was just leaving,” she said, moving hurriedly toward the front of the library.

  Phelan had turned around at her words, staring at Blaez when she left them alone with a knowing and disapproving look.

  “I should change that to say we’ve got another problem,” he said, and only frowned when Blaez growled his response.

  * * *

  “Headache?” Malec asked, his voice just shy of being raspy, and all the way sexy.

  Kira stopped massaging her temples, letting her fingers run through her hair instead as she sat back on one of the sofas in the living room. She had no idea how long she’d been sitting there after leaving Phelan and Blaez in the library. But as she’d walked down the hallway it had happened again and this time what she saw had taken her breath away. She’d had to sit immediately to get herself together. Only now, however long afterward, she still felt edgy, like there was something about to happen, something big that would change everything. And she had no idea what it was.

  “No. Just thinking,” Kira replied.

  She looked up slowly to see the lycan with the great washboard abs leaning with his arms crossed over his bare chest against one of the wooden beams in the living room. She flattened her palms against her thighs, keeping perfectly still as they stared at each other. Malec looked good—that was obvious—and he was powerful; his muscled legs and arms and his overall demeanor told her that. He would be one hell of an opponent to another lycan. But he was sad. That she could also see by the look in his eyes and the blurry yellow haze outlining his form. That was what had her holding his gaze so intently.

  “Are you thinking about how to tell your Hunter pack to attack us? Maybe you’re reconfiguring your original plan now that you’ve been on the inside for a while,” he said.

  She relaxed as the haze that had been surrounding him ebbed, slowly disappearing. “Is that really why you keep this place secured like Fort Knox, because you’re afraid of the packs coming to attack you?”

  “We’re not afraid of Hunters. So if you have any contact with your pack, let them know that the moment they step onto this property their asses are mine!”

  His lips had peeled back with that statement, his sharp teeth baring. For anyone other than a lycan, and perhaps other than a stubborn and tenacious alpha female, such as herself, that little display would have been frightening. But Kira stood up, taking a few steps closer to where Malec stood.

  “You don’t trust me,” she said when she was standing only a few feet away from him. “You think I’m here to set you up.”

  “Your pack is no match for us,” he told her. “So whatever your reason for being here, it won’t end the way you think.”

  “You know it was not my choice to stay here and yet you still think my intentions are corrupt. That tells me either you have trust issues with everyone or your senses aren’t worth a damn. Either way, Blaez should watch you closely, because in this state you may be more of a danger to him than I could ever be,” she told him.

  “Blaez wants you here, so you stay,” he told her. “But you’re right; I don’t trust you.”

  “Fine,” Kira replied. “I don’t trust you either.” Which wasn’t exactly a lie. It wasn’t him she didn’t trust per se, but more like what she could see was really bothering him instead.

  “Fine!” he snapped in return, pushing past her.

  She stumbled back because she’d been so busy trying to decipher that rapid glimpse of Malec standing at a window watching Channing with an unknown female that she hadn’t really been paying attention to the Malec that was directly in front of her.

  When she thought he had left her there alone, his voice had her turning to see that he’d stopped, looking over his shoulder.

  “You need to strengthen your inner body. One of the reasons he caught you, outside of the fact that he’s an alpha, is because you weren’t prepared. You’re not strong enough to fight on your own, without a pack. I can teach you how to fix that in the gym.”

  Each of his words was clipped, like he was being forced to say them, his body being held in that spot against his will. Yet what he
was saying was an offer, one that he shouldn’t have been offering if he really thought she was here to set them up.

  “Are you saying I need to lose weight?” Kira asked, her hackles immediately rising as his words caused unwanted feelings to surface. She’d endured Dallas and the other betas of Penn’s pack insulting and berating her because Penn had never did anything to stop them. As the alpha he should have demanded respect for his daughter. Since he didn’t, she hadn’t. Not until she’d had enough and left. This time around, with this pack that wasn’t hers, in this place where she hadn’t asked to be, there was no way in hell she was letting anybody get away with disrespecting her.

  He smirked. “That would be predictable, wouldn’t it? You expect everyone who looks at you to say that first. Not that you really care about what they think, but you expect it.”

  Again she realized that this one saw too much, at all times. It was her turn to frown.

  “Just meet me in the gym at noon. Every day. I’ll show you how to be stronger, not skinnier,” he said tightly.

  “And now that we have that settled, you wanna come into the kitchen and talk about what we can have for dinner tonight, Kira?”

  Of course that was Channing interrupting, with his sexy-ass grin and baby blue eyes. He wore jeans and a T-shirt, which seemed to be the general attire of this pack, and he’d come to stand so close to Malec that Kira had raised a brow at both of them. The vision she’d had just moments ago of Malec watching Channing had been startling as well. As for Malec, he’d continued to frown, until he figured it made more sense to walk away.

  “He likes you,” Channing told her. “So he’ll get used to having you here.”

  Kira didn’t believe the first part of Channing’s comment for one minute. If Malec liked her he sure had a funny way of showing it. “He doesn’t have to like me. I’m used to that,” she told Channing.

  “Some people are specially selected to be picked on,” Channing said, draping an arm around her shoulders. “My mother used to say, ‘You were picked out to be picked on.’ I didn’t know it then, but now I believe that meant I was special. Very special.”

  Kira couldn’t help but smile as she looked up at him. “You’re special all right,” she said, pleased that she was able to joke when it seemed like everything around her was spiraling out of control.

  “And so are you. Don’t argue with me,” he warned before she could open her mouth to reply. “Us special people are able to recognize each other. Now, like I was saying before, I think you and I should put our heads together and come up with something fabulous for dinner!”

  Kira walked with him, but before they made it to the kitchen she stopped, placing a hand on his arm, and said, “I didn’t come here to be your alpha female. That’s not what I want to be.”

  His smiling eyes sobered a bit as Channing stared at her. “What if you were selected to be something more than you ever dreamed of, something beyond what your mother or any other lycan could explain?” he asked. “Would you want to run from that too?”

  * * *

  Three nights later Blaez had been staring at his laptop for hours as he searched for the proverbial needle in the haystack. Phelan’s announcement of a problem when he’d interrupted Blaez and Kira in the library had been an understatement.

  In the days since she’d been here Blaez had searched her name not only on the Internet but also using the CIA classified networks that he, as a contract operative, still had access to. He knew everything about her—everything that appeared in the human world, that is. That’s how he’d found out about her pack. Penn Radney had been listed as her next of kin. Tora Radney, her mother, was deceased. Because that death had been so recent and Kira’s admission to him last night about her past had made it seem like most of her trouble with the pack had started after Tora’s death, Blaez had sent a message to Phelan this morning to look into the lycan’s death.

  What Phelan had found out—through his own research and from another Devoted pack that lived in the Seattle area—was that Tora Radney’s death had been ruled accidental, although no autopsy had been completed. That was no surprise to Blaez, since the alpha of the pack would have been certain to ensure that there was no chance of the humans finding out about their kind. Penn Radney would have declined any investigation and he immediately buried his mate nine feet beneath the earth’s surface, three feet deeper than a human body in the hopes of avoiding anyone mistakenly stumbling across the body.

  So Tora Radney had been shot dead in the forest, her body found by Dallas Muldron, one of Penn’s pack mates. Dallas, the beta who had attacked Kira. Blaez had immediately stiffened, rage brewing just beneath the surface.

  Phelan had not noticed the flaring of Blaez’s nostrils and clenching of his fingers as he’d continued to talk once Kira had left the library. “When Penn Radney reported this incident to the authorities he said his wife had been accidentally shot and blamed it on possible illegal hunting in the area. You know about the conservation and management of the gray wolf species in the northern Cascades and Eastern Washington regions.”

  “The Radneys lived on a houseboat in Seattle. What was she doing all the way out there running?” Blaez asked, trying desperately to keep his voice steady, his mind focused on receiving all the information before reacting.

  Only minutes ago, Kira had sat right beside him telling him how she believed that her father had lied to her about her mother’s death and that she could never forgive him for that. And now Phelan was confirming that the documented circumstances surrounding Tora Radney’s death might well have been a lie.

  “Penn claimed she loved it in the mountain region and would often take weekend trips there, alone. He called it her ‘me time’ in the report written by the forest rangers.”

  “How did you get a copy of that report?” Blaez asked Phelan.

  “That Devoted lycan I mentioned before, he works in the ranger’s office as a janitor and was able to scan and send me a copy this morning.”

  Blaez nodded. “I presume that Penn would have sent one of his betas to watch over Tora on this trip. Since Dallas was the one to find her and brought her back to Penn, I’m assuming that was him. So how did the rangers know about the shooting at all? And why would they travel all the way to Seattle to question Penn?”

  “This is how,” Phelan said, pulling a folded sheet of paper from his back pocket and handing it to Blaez.

  Blaez accepted the paper as Phelan slipped his hands into his front pockets.

  “What the hell is this?” Blaez asked after reading the words of what looked to be a photocopied letter.

  “It’s an anonymous tip that the ranger department received about the murder,” Phelan informed him. “The same Devoted lycan that’s been helping me actually witnessed the murder, and even though they were Hunters, or maybe because they were, I’m not sure, he wanted the rangers to know the truth.”

  “So he sends a tip to the human rangers that Penn Radney killed his wife? But Radney wasn’t even there.” As Blaez spoke, more facts began to click into place. “Dallas was with her. Dallas is Penn’s second in command. So did Penn tell Dallas to kill his wife? Why would he do that?” Blaez wondered.

  “That’s a good question,” Phelan had said. “Another question I had for the lycan was why he wanted Penn Radney picked up by the human police. Didn’t he know that a Hunter in captivity—for whatever reason—wasn’t going to turn out well for the lycan breed? He said it was one less Hunter for them to be on the lookout for. No regrets there and not a lot of common sense when it comes to how lycans react to things like bars, handcuffs, and restrictions.”

  Blaez had agreed, but as he’d told Phelan before leaving the library, their priority was to figure out why Penn would have wanted Tora dead. An alpha could no more kill his mate than he could kill the members of his pack. It just wasn’t what they did. They were leaders through thick and thin and killers only when they needed to be. Had Penn found a reason to kill his mate? And if so, how wou
ld all of this affect Kira when she found out?

  For the next few days Blaez had thought a lot about alphas and their mates. About the selection process and the probability of whether it was true or not. And even though he’d told Kira about what had happened to his family in the hopes that she would understand why he’d made the decisions he had to live the way he does, he still couldn’t stop thinking about being with her. About how soft her lips had been on his and how tempted he’d been to fold her in his arms and take that kiss deeper, to take whatever was happening between the two of them further.

  Keeping his distance from her for the past days had been one of the hardest things Blaez had ever had to do, but he felt like he owed her that much. After all her father and his pack had put her through, Blaez had no business messing her life up even more with his desire for her, the desire that he could never act on. That distance had come to an end earlier tonight as they shared a meal alone because the others had gone into town for the evening.

  Do you like it?” she’d asked as she was taking her seat at the large table in the dining room.

  It was made to seat up to ten people, with Blaez always sitting at the head with his back facing the steps. The guys usually sat on both sides when they shared meals. Since Kira’s arrival, Channing and Malec had each moved down a seat, allowing her to sit on Blaez’s right side. Tonight, however, she’d set her place at the opposite head of the table, where the alpha female would sit, but Blaez suspected that was because of the distance he’d been putting between them.

  For endless seconds he’d watched her there, picking up her napkin and placing it in her lap. Moving her glass just a little farther away from her plate. Then picking up her knife and fork, holding them in hand as she waited for his response.

  “Well?” she prompted him. “The food, Blaez. Do you like it?”

  With a frown he snapped his own napkin in the air before letting it fall to his lap. He picked up his knife and fork and cut through the meat and noodles, putting a bite into his mouth and chewing.