Loup Garou

by Mandy M. Roth

  Nodding, he moved over me slowly and began to check my body for wounds. His eyes widened and he looked as though he were in pain. “Linds, baby, hold on for me, please.”

  “It’s cold in here. Why is it so cold?”

  “No, no, no, honey, it’s not cold. Don’t—” Exavier was ripped from my line of sight.

  There was a series of howls and growls and then a wet thud. I drew in a deep breath and shook my head. “No!”

  Exavier appeared next to me. He lifted me in his arms effortlessly and headed towards the offices. I felt the vampire’s power wrap around us. Exavier continued to walk through it, paying no mind to the pull the vampire was using.

  “We have no quarrel with you. Give us back the female and you may go on your way.”

  For the vampire to offer Exavier a deal, meant there was something big going on. My guess was that he was scared of Exavier. “You will not touch her again.”

  “Leave me. Go. He’s not…hu-man,” I whispered.

  “Neither am I.”

  Puzzled, I simply stared at him. The vampire increased his power, doing his best to crush us with nothing more than air. The pressure was great. Exavier held me close and seemed to radiate an energy that countered the vampire’s power.

  “What are you?” the vamp asked, sounding concerned.

  “I am the last person you should have pissed off.”

  “She is but a human with tiny powers. She is nothing to someone such as you. Stand with us and you can share in the power that will come when we bring the prince down. Killing her assures he can never have an heir and he will forever have a hole, a piece missing when his mate is dead. He will never be at full-strength and he will slowly go mad. Kill her and let the process begin. We can attack then, when he grieves and is weak.”

  Exavier came to a stop outside of my office door.

  “If you do not have it in you to kill her, then hand her to me. She is all but dead now. Allow me to finish the task. She has already begged me to end her existence. Can you not feel her sorrow? She no longer wishes to walk among the living.”

  Exavier’s eyes shifted from blue to black. I gasped as his nostrils flared. “You will not harm her, vampire. When I know she is safe, I’ll deal with you and the rest of your men. You should know that I’ve sealed the building. No one can get out. You can’t run.”

  The vampire laughed. “I am not afraid of one man. I will kill the bitch myself.”

  “My mate is not a bitch. She is a gift from the gods and I intend to see she understands that.”

  “No! You cannot be the—”

  “Oh, I can and I am. And you just made yourself an enemy you can’t run from, can’t barter with, can’t defeat. I suggest you prepare to die—again. My mate needs my attention before I kill you.” He pushed my office door open and carried me inside. The door flew shut on its own.

  The contents on my desk cleared away on their own as Exavier laid me on it. He ran his hand over my cheek and brought his face down to mine. “I’m sorry, baby. I stayed behind a few minutes longer to tell your mother to go to hell and ask your father’s permission to claim you. When I got to the parking lot, you were gone.”

  “You lied to me.”

  He smiled as he pulled the top of my dress down enough to see the panther bite. “That’s one of the things I’ve always loved about you, Linds. You can stay mad about the littlest thing.”

  I baulked. “It is not little. You let me sit there and tell you all about…umm…you. Not once did you stop me and tell me that I was right, that there was a legitimate reason why you reminded me of him…err…you.”

  He smiled again as a warm sensation came over me. “Little, little, little.”

  I glared at him. “Care to tell me how you conveniently forgot I was coming to visit you?”

  “Simple,” he said, as heat flared through me. “I was never told you were coming. I would have never picked some camp over you. There was nothing in the world I’d have selected over you, Linds. There still isn’t.”

  “Are you happy?” I didn’t add sarcasm to the question. I needed to know if he was happy in his life. That was important to me.

  “That’s hard to answer.”

  My mouth opened as a horrible thought occurred to me. “Ohmygod, I kissed you and you’re married!”

  “Lindsay.”

  “No, don’t touch me. How can you do that? You should have told me it was you. I would have stopped.” I stared at him, half expecting him to morph into a wildebeest or something. “Xavs, what happened to you?”

  “Lindsay?”

  I gasped. “Sex was brought up, Exavier. I would have had sex with a married man. Wonderful, I’ve reached whole new lows. Gee, I’m curious to see what’s next. Will I do a lycan train? How about a den of vampires? I can’t believe I felt bad for hitting you. I am such an idiot.”

  “Lindsay, stop!” He gave me a hard look. “I’m glad to see you still have a flare for the dramatics. For one, I am not, nor have I ever been married. Kissing and making love to you would not have qualified as cheating…”

  My jaw dropped as I huffed.

  “Lindsay, hear me out!” His face hardened. “Before I explain let’s get one thing straight. You are in no way, shape or form doing a train or a den of anything. Understand me?”

  Before I knew it, my power had lashed out at him, giving him a hard shove. “You jackass! I’m not worth your time of day so even if you were married I wouldn’t count? Am I the token fuck? Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. And I will do anyone I want to. You are not my keeper. You are a childhood friend who showed up out of the blue after twenty years. You obviously have a life and I have my own. Go on your tour and take lots of pictures. Maybe, in twenty more years you can stop by and show them to me.”

  His eyes flashed back to black as he moved his body over mine again. “Lindsay, you are not a token anything. I am way more than just a childhood friend to you.”

  “Mmmhmm.” Letting out a very unladylike snort, I looked away from him. “What’s up with the spooky eyes thing? You didn’t do that when you were little.”

  “And you didn’t dance on poles or sleep with my best friends.”

  “You have to be kidding me. You were engaged. I also had no idea Eion was your best friend.”

  Exavier’s eyes widened and a low growl emanated from the back of his throat. “Eion? Eion was your first? You slept with my cousin? I can’t believe you spent a summer screwing him. And for the record, I was never engaged.”

  I wanted to pummel him. Lucky for him, I was a little injured at the moment. “Hey, asshole, I spent more than a summer with him. We had a good number of years under our belt.”

  “What?” He dragged his hands through his hair and over his face.

  “I was with him while I was choreographing for Tim.”

  Exavier’s face paled considerably as he stood there. “Please tell me you didn’t sleep with them both.” He groaned. “Oh, shit, they’re the two men at one time the women in your morning class were teasing you about.”

  “Maybe, we were all too drunk to remember. We woke up on the beach in a tangled heap. Who knows?” I was fucking with him but he didn’t seem to catch on to that.

  “Who knows?” His eyes blazed with onyx fury. “Any more surprises for me? Though, it’ll be hard to top the fact that you didn’t seem to care that you had a husband waiting for the right moment to come for you.”

  “Are you a virgin?”

  Exavier jerked back slightly, clearly surprised by my question. “No.”

  “And of the two of us, you knew that you’re supposedly my mate. I didn’t. Tell me, Xavs, how many women have you been with? I’m guessing the numbers would blow me away. After all, you’re the one on tour in a different city every night with women throwing themselves at your feet. Yeah, preach to me some more, jerk. You knew every time you sank your dick into another woman that she wasn’t your mate.” Turning my head, I huffed and clenched my teeth tight. “My
mate, my ass.”

  “That is it. You are impossible to deal with.”

  I smiled wide. “Great, does this mean you’re done asking me to handle that tour issue of yours?”

  “No. That means you’re coming whether you like it or not.”

  Laughing, I sat up as fast as I could and held my shoulder tight. “Uhh, you can’t force me to do anything, Exavier. Now go away before one of the things trying to kill me actually gets you.”

  “They’re trying to kill you to hurt me, Lindsay. Why in the hell didn’t your dad go to the council about this? They would have come to me and I’d have gotten here long ago.”

  “Why did you wait so long?”

  He looked down a minute. “My mother told me you were married with children of your own now. She also said you were happy.”

  I hopped off the desk, expecting pain to move through me. None did. Glancing down at my shoulder, I found it was completely healed. “Exavier? What did you do?”

  “I healed you.”

  “You don’t say? Wow, I would have never guessed that. Thank the gods you’re the prince or we’d all be lost.” I stopped and thought about what I’d just said. “Oh shit, you’re the prince. Of course you are. You’re an asshole now. It makes perfect sense you’d be a royal one.”

  “Lindsay.”

  “What?” I wrinkled my nose at him.

  “You’re even sexier when you’re mad.”

  I threw my hands in the air and stormed towards my office door. Tossing power at it, I forced it to open. “I don’t know if I want to hit you or hug you!”

  Stomping into the hallway, I headed straight for the gymnasium. My hopes were to find the ass who had caused all the trouble and annihilate him. I rounded the corner and found Myra, Gina and Jay engaged in battle with the bad guys. As Jay moved, his arm muscles flexed, and his entire body rippled. Watching his caramel-colored skin as the lights reflected off it, I couldn’t help but notice just how sexy he was. The wolf within him gave him even more mystic.

  “What in the hell are you doing, woman? You almost died. You don’t go…” Exavier stopped in mid-sentence and stared at everyone as they fought.

  Gina’s mouth fell open a second before she lobbed a were-lion’s head off. “He’s still around? Do you really think he should be here right now, Lindsay?”

  “No. I think he should go.”

  Exavier growled and stood close to me in a protective stance. “And I think you should keep your ass in one spot, stay safe and let someone who knows what they’re doing, do it. Gina was right. You weren’t created to have to fight for your life. That’s my job. You were made to look pretty and stay safe while I do it.”

  My jaw dropped. “Look pretty?”

  A shifter charged at me and Exavier moved to cover me. Tossing my hand up, I let my power out. It circled the shifter, lifted him high off his feet. As I clenched my fist, his body twisted and contorted, smashing into pieces. He dropped to the floor and I stared at Exavier. “Make yourself useful. Make sure he’s dead.”

  Grabbing my arm lightly, Exavier gave me a stern look. “Lindsay, this is ridiculous. You have to be the most stubborn woman ever to walk this earth. Would you please just stop and acknowledge that you’re happy to see me? That you missed me? That you still love me?”

  A vampire came swooping down at his head from behind. I aimed my magic that way and let it loose. Exavier’s eyes widened as he ducked down. “Lindsay! Killing me is a bit extreme don’t you think.” The dead vampire fell at his feet. “Oh, sorry. Thought that was directed at me.”

  “I’m not only too low to count as cheating, I’m an attempted murderer too? Great. Care to add to the list or do you think you’ve screwed yourself enough, Xavs?”

  Exavier sent several bad guys hurdling into a wall as he continued to stare at me. “Think about it, Lindsay. You are my mate. If you and I do anything, how is that cheating? You’re the spouse! I can’t cheat on you with you.”

  He had a point. I’d just been too upset to realize it. “Oh.”

  “Oh?”

  I laughed. “I hope you aren’t expecting me to apologize. I have been hunted, beaten, tortured and so many things I don’t even want to talk about, all because some jackass upstairs thought I’d make a great Eve to your Adam.” Tears flowed down my cheeks freely as I glared at him. “I can’t have children now, Xavs. I can’t give you that heir the vamp was so quick to bring up. Do you want to know why?”

  He closed his eyes and tipped his head down.

  “Do you?”

  “Lindsay, don’t do this. No one can change the past,” Gina said, between killing bad guys.

  “You wanted to kill the prince guy earlier.” I motioned to Exavier. “Have at him.”

  “Lindsay.”

  I glared at her. “I can’t have children because I spent four days having my insides ripped from my body repeatedly, Gina! They would let my body begin to heal itself and do it again and again, each time demanding I give the prince over to them. It’s his fault! His fault she’s not here, now.” I swallowed hard, not wanting to go into further detail. “Where was he when it was all happening? Huh? I’ll answer that, probably fucking some woman who wasn’t his mate! I can hate him all I want.”

  Exavier swung his arms around and a loud, ear popping boom occurred. I didn’t take my eyes off him. Everyone else gasped.

  “Holy shit, he killed them all with one magikal blow,” Myra said, sounding more than surprised. “He’s a prince all right.”

  He moved towards me and wrapped me in his arms, tight. Pressing his mouth to my ear, he whispered, “I will never be able to say sorry often enough, Linds. Never. I will never be able to prove how much you mean to me. I’m just asking for some time. I want to get to know you all over again. I want to have you back in my life. I have loved you from day one. Let me show you.”

  “Didn’t you hear me? I can’t have…”

  Stroking the back of my hair, he held me tight to him. “I heard you and I still love you.”

  “Pfft, you don’t even know me anymore.”

  “Then say you’ll come with me. Show me who you are now.”

  I couldn’t stop myself, my rage was too great. Twisting, I slammed the back of my fist into the side of his head and made sure to slap a hefty dose of power behind it as well. Exavier jerked backwards and I went at him. “You son of a bitch! How dare you ask me to go anywhere with you?”

  Coming at me fast, he took hold of my wrists and brought my hands to his chest. I could feel how quickly his heart was beating. He nodded. “Yes, my heart isn’t carrying on like that because we were fighting evil. It’s carrying on like that because of the way I found you—the shape you were in when I got here tonight. I thought I was going to lose you, Linds. I swear to you, I honestly thought you’d married someone else. Had I known different, I would have been here ten years ago! I have loved you from the first day I met you. Nothing will ever change that. Nothing.”

  “Exavier,” I whispered, my voice caught in my throat.

  “Come with me. Get to know me. You said it yourself at the hospital when I was holding Lucy. You said we’d officially bonded. Don’t tell me you didn’t mean it. I saw it in your eyes.”

  The shock of what he’d just said sank in. “You healed her. You healed Lucy!”

  “I didn’t heal her so much as I strengthened her. It was her choice to fight to live or not. She chose life. So did her brother.”

  I eyed him suspiciously. “Did you do that just to make me happy?”

  “I would move heaven and hell for you. You love those babies, Linds. They love you. I love you. The choice was simple. It still is. Come with me.”

  “Fine.”

  His body stiffened. “Is that a yes?”

  Was it a yes? Could I really just pack up and go traveling with him? Could I really watch him walk away and not know if he’d ever be back? My stomach clenched tightly. “It’s a yes, Exavier. I’ll come with you on one condition.”

 
“Anything.”

  “You agree we’re nothing more than friends. If we move past that on our own, fine. If not, we part ways on good terms.”

  “I am not going to agree to let my wife walk out on me.”

  Backing up, I laughed softly. “I’m not your wife yet. Agree or I never will be.”

  “You’re asking too much of me, Linds.”

  “No, I remember the doll situation. You pulled through there. Pull through now, Xavs.”

  A wide smile broke over his face. “It’s a deal, if you agree to give it a hundred percent, Lindsay. I know we’ll be perfect together. You know it too. You told me you were going to marry me when you were five. And you told me you loved me then.”

  Laughing, I stepped closer to him. “And you fell off the park bench and acted like I had germs.”

  Putting his hands on my hips, he pulled me to him, pressing his forehead to mine. “Let the record state I was a moron.”

  Gina cleared her throat. “Umm, not to interrupt this feel good moment, but we’re still missing a master vampire and two weres.”

  Exavier shook his head. “No, they aren’t missing. I saved them for myself.” Touching my chin, he moved his thumb up and ran it over my lips. “You don’t need to see what I’m going to do to them so I put them somewhere to wait for me. They’re trapped between two realms. I’ll be back in a little bit. I can’t leave you alone tonight. I’ll go crazy with worry. I know you’re physically fine now, but I’ll still need to see it with my own eyes. I can help you get ready to go then.”

  “Hold up,” Myra interjected. “Where exactly is Lindsay supposedly going?”

  “On tour with me and, gods willing, she’ll stay with me from now until eternity.” The black which had been in his eyes faded away fast, leaving blue in its place. He stared down at me. “I’ll bring some of my people in to help run the rec center. Plus, Brook and the girls will still be here to keep things running smoothly.. Any one of the people I send will be able to get them to you in seconds if you need them or just want to see them, Lindsay. I want you to be happy.”

  I looked at Jay, Gina and Myra. All three of them nodded. Jay winked at me and it suddenly felt okay. Having their seals of approval meant a tremendous amount to me.