Circle of Wolves

by Jacqueline Roth

  “It would if you’d let just let me use magic,” Evan muttered and received a raised eyebrow from Kira in response. The young Wolf who stood beside Alexi actually shuddered.

  She climbed into a nearby Jeep and waved at Evan to join her. Once he was in his seat she threw a stern look at the two remaining blood Wolves and Evan’s nose had immediately told him that William was not only a blood Wolf but a part of Kira’s family.

  “Don’t let that boy drive, Alexi. I promised his father. After what happened last time…” She let the warning trail off.

  Alexi snorted. “Malcolm worries too much.”

  “No,” Kira said, frowning. “Some of the men in this family drive like lunatics.” She started the Jeep and pulled out around the truck. “I mean it Alexi.”

  Evan saw disappointment etch itself across the younger face as William realized that Kira had just issued a command. Though he wasn’t sure yet why, it had become undeniably clear that Kira held some sort of sway and when her voice held that certain tone, Alexi gave in.

  He heard the laugh that escaped her when they were clear of the men. She turned her smiling face to him and rolled her eyes. “William is more than a bit dangerous behind the wheel of a car. Last time he was here, he and Alexi’s older boy found themselves wheels up in a ditch. No one was hurt, so for the most part Alexi laughed it off. William’s father was not amused.”

  He was silent for a moment before stating the obvious. “Nico isn’t coming to help.”

  Kira’s face hardened and her lips pursed. “No.”

  Knowing he was pressing on a sore spot, Evan still went on. “Does he not help you outside the gate?”

  “In the past he has.” Her voice was hard and faintly brittle. “He is not speaking to me at the moment.”

  “Because of me,” Evan sighed.

  “Yes,” Kira replied bluntly. “It seems he was spying on us yesterday and got the reward of all little sneaks. He saw something he didn’t like.”

  “The kiss.” Evan shook his head. “I’m sorry if my impulsiveness— Whoa!” He grabbed at the dash as he was thrown forward by her sudden stop. She’d stamped down hard on the brakes sending him slamming forward into the restraints of his seat belt.

  She was looking at him with an angry fire burning in the clear blue depths of her eyes. “You’re sorry you kissed me?”

  “N-No,” Evan stuttered slightly. She was definitely angry and now that his brain caught up with what his mouth had said he understood why. He reached for her hand but she shook him off.

  “Then why did you just apologize for it? Was it such a terrible thing to kiss me?”

  “No.” Evan shook his head. The color rising in her cheeks made her face even more beautiful. For the first time he saw the similarity between her and her brother. Alexi’s stubbornness was etched across her expression. “No, Kira,” he said firmly. “I’m not sorry for kissing you and it was not a terrible thing.”

  She turned her face away and he noticed how tightly she gripped the steering wheel. “But it was not what you wanted it to be. That’s why you didn’t… Why you…” Her face was paling and her breathing was fighting her control. Finally she blurted it out. “That’s why you said nothing.”

  Evan was silent for a moment and she turned to look at him. She shouldn’t have spoken. She shouldn’t have said the words. They were childish and they were inappropriate. Because of what she had known, because they were cerieshe, it was for the male to decide if he would speak of the kiss, not the female. What was more, the words had held the sound of pleading, begging and she did not beg.

  Evan’s hand reached for her face. He laid his palm against her cheek and leaned closer to her. His breath was warm on her face and his thumb stroked her jawline. “I am not very good with words, Kira. Not words such as should be spoken to a beautiful woman while she is in a man’s arms.” His kiss was firm and his fingers slid along her cheek to tangle in her hair. She heard the click of his seat belt and felt the heat of his body as he moved closer. Suddenly she was being held tightly against his chest and his mouth was moving over hers with a fierce determination. There was no hesitancy in his kiss, no regret. His tongue pushed over her lips and into her mouth. She wrapped her arms around his neck and met his tongue boldly. The soft stroke of wet velvet pulled a soft sighing moan from deep in her throat.

  Evan fought the urge to smile at the sound. He’d never felt as powerful in his life as he felt with this woman. She was an incredible force to be reckoned with and everyone around her showed the submissive behavior he had expected to see only for an Alpha. But in his arms she molded to him willingly. Her softness made him feel a strength he’d never known. He wasn’t “just Evan” in her arms. He wasn’t the quiet one, the shy one, when her hands moved over the hard muscles of his back.

  He felt the wolf howl inside him and its pleasure as it once again began to blend into him. The fear of the creature vanished as it had the first time he’d tasted her kiss and he embraced the power the animal offered.

  A loud horn blast made them pull apart quickly. Alexi’s laugh was audible to the ears of even a curse wolf over the sound of the engine as he roared past the stopped Jeep.

  Kira showed no embarrassment, though he felt his own face flush. She simply shook her head and restarted the engine. “Great arrogant, meddling oaf,” was the only thing she said as she pulled them back onto the small road and followed the truck.

  “Where exactly are we going?” Evan asked a moment later, trying to find something to cover his embarrassment. The wolf had receded again and though it found no reason for discomfort, Evan felt like a teenager who just been caught necking in the backseat of his father’s car. He saw the main gate looming before them. A remote opened the gate and Kira passed through before answering.

  “Do you remember yesterday I told you the Arnots were expecting a child soon?” Evan gave a noncommittal grunt she accepted as a yes. “The…house they live in is quite small. Several members of the community helped raise the small structure for them when they arrived. They barely had clothing on their backs.” She grew silent for a moment as she slowed the vehicle. As she rounded the side of the compound, Evan could see a cluster of small buildings. “That’s what I love about these people, Evan. They have no Family, no pack for protection but they have created one and they’re fiercely loyal to one another.” She pulled off the road in a grassy area several yards from a small one-room shack. Several people were already gathered around the building, lounging in the grass or milling about. “In some ways they are the best and the worst of what we are as Wolves.”

  Kira parked them under a tree that had a sign nailed to it. They were a distance away from their destination but Alexi’s efforts to position the flatbed in a convenient location obviously demanded space. Here outside the gate a second scattering of dwellings had grown up. He’d seen them yesterday but from the other direction as they’d approached the school. There were ten or fifteen in all and much less comfortable and prosperous-looking than those within the gate. He examined the sign that had been nailed into the tree. It bore letters in three different languages and he was able to read only one of the words and only because he had seen it before. Damnat. It translated roughly as The Damned. He had seen it scrawled across the remnants of a burned out barn belonging to a man he met on his journey while in Romania, a man whose home had been destroyed after he’d taken in two ragged strangers suspected of being werewolves. Kira was right. Superstition ran high in some parts of Eastern Europe, even today.

  He tried to press down the anger and resentment that he felt. He didn’t want to feel angry at Kira. Althea had said she was responsible for providing most of what these people had. Still the fact that they had so little compared to the least of those within the gate grated on him. Watching William and Alexi climb down from the truck and stand next to the others, the difference in situations was glaring.

  Those who had been idle now stood and moved to gather around the truck. As if there were some
understood pattern to the activity, the men and a handful of the women began to unload the materials. At Alexi’s call, Evan joined the organized chaos. The people about him were polite but distant. They smiled easily with each other but even the banter between them seemed stilted in his presence. He felt sorry for their isolation. Sorry for the lives that had led them to fear the stranger.

  The competitive nature of the wolf took over quickly and soon three groups had been organized. Alexi led one, William a second and a rather enigmatic blood Wolf who spoke little but whose “team” filled up quickly with those seeking to work with him led the third. “Pick a side,” Alexi had chuckled to Evan. “It’s me, the children or Mr. Sunshine over there.”

  The blood Wolf looked at Alexi with his face blank. Evan was almost certain there was a faint light of amusement in the green eyes but the man shrugged and turned away.

  “Keep laughing old man,” William snorted as he dropped a handful of nails into a pocket of the tool belt he’d fastened around his waist. “We children will have our side done long before your arthritic old bones even get warmed up.” He nodded his blond head toward a curse wolf that Evan had been told by Kira was a friend of the young man’s. Kelan Walsh was an inch or two shorter than Evan but a bit taller than William. His long black hair was pulled back off his face and his slate-gray eyes were more than a bit unsettling as had been his reaction when introduced to Evan. His eyes had widened momentarily at something William had whispered to him. Cerieshe. The word had been almost imperceptible and filled with soft shhing sounds. He still wasn’t sure he’d heard it correctly. It had sounded like share-eesh. He had no idea what it meant, the word did not translate. Perhaps it referred to his curse wolf status, or possibly to his role as a mage.

  “I guess I’d better choose your side,” Evan walked toward where Alexi was setting up a couple of saw horses. “You look like you could use the help and with my help the children just might stand a chance of beating you.” The laughter from the big man and the rest of his family went a long way to decreasing the tension among the group.

  An hour later Evan was again brushing his hair out of his face as he crouched down to help Alexi nail together supports that would form an outside wall. “Hold on,” he heard Kira’s voice beside him. Her hands were in his hair and she used her fingers to brush it back from his face. “This will help.” She wrapped an elastic band around the light brown strands forming a tail.

  “Thank you.” Evan grinned up at her. Her own thick curly hair had been pulled back by a scarf and was braided down her back. “It was getting to be a problem.” She moved away and resumed her task. She wasn’t sitting by doing nothing. She picked up the level and the square and resumed double checking their joints and corners to make sure they were correct.

  The blood Wolf, whose name Evan still didn’t know, finished his side of the structure first. The outer frame was done and ready to be raised but he didn’t rest. He walked over and began to unload the boards that would make up the outer walls.

  When all three sides were finished and a fourth group had finished removing the outer wall of the existing structure, everyone took a brief break to rest and eat quickly. Evan was certain the job they were doing would look crude to most people and said so.

  “It’s the way we have been raising houses and barns for as long as we have been building them.” Kira shrugged. “The main house was built similarly but by a larger group including those who had studied architecture and engineering in human universities.”

  “Kira,” he lowered his voice, “this looks a bit rough, won’t it leak?”

  “No,” she said, shrugging again but her voice held an odd quality as if she were hesitant to answer him. “When we come together like this it always works out and the homes never leak.”

  “That sounds a bit fantastical.” Evan took a long draw from the bottle of water he’d pulled from the ice chest.

  “Your people work together to accomplish greater things, do they not?” Kira said quietly.

  “Yes. But that’s magic. Are you saying this is a type of magic?”

  “There is no magic here,” the green-eyed blood Wolf practically snarled from where he stood behind them. Like the two of them, he was standing at the edges of the gathering, leaning against a tree watching the others. His voice sounded angry, as if Evan had muttered an obscenity. In a way, he guessed he had.

  “Zev,” Kira spoke to him quietly but firmly. “Evan was not suggesting anyone here was using such a thing.”

  The blood Wolf continued to glare at Evan before turning his eyes to Kira. Evan noticed he did not lower his head as the others did but neither did he meet her gaze. Instead he seemed to be looking somewhere in the vicinity of her chin. “It’s best he not speak of such things at all.”

  “It is different in his world, Zev.”

  The Wolf turned his jade eyes back to Evan. He stared at him in silence for a long moment. His hands were shoved into the pockets of his jeans. He stood with one knee bent, foot resting against a tree. Evan wasn’t sure if the man was angry at him or if it was more fear that stood behind his words.

  Zev held his eye for a long moment before pushing away from the tree and striding past them. “He’s not in his world and he’d do better to remember that.”

  When the man had reached the others and called his work group back to the job, Evan turned to Kira. “What is his problem?”

  Kira was still watching Zev. Her eyes were sad and her breath caught a bit as she spoke. “Zev came to us from far away. His pack is very isolated. They don’t accept outsiders or those who are different. He’s seen things done in the name of preserving the Wolf that no one should ever see. To say that his family was fanatical is an understatement. They refuse to follow Father because they say he is too liberal. Zev’s grandfather actually believes my father to be the Wolf equivalent of the Christian anti-Christ.”

  “Then why is he here?” Evan gave the young man another appraising look. He saw the scar that ran up from the collar of Zev’s t-shirt over his right jaw and into his hairline just in front of his ear.

  “Because the only person Zev’s grandfather hates more than my father is Zev.” The words were spoken matter-of-factly. Before he could ask more questions, Alexi called them back to work.

  At day’s end the motley crew of curse wolves and the few blood Wolves had raised and roofed an addition to the Arnot home. Anton Arnot had further promises of help from more hands than were needed to paint the outside and finish the interior of the new room the next day.

  Evan was surprised to see if not a smile, then at least a softer look on the face of the stoic blood Wolf. “Don’t worry, Anton,” Zev clapped the small man on the back. “We’ll have this ready for the little one before he arrives.” He gave a brief nod to Kira and turned and walked away from the gathering, not toward the compound where the rest of the blood Wolves lived but toward the woods.

  He didn’t even have to voice the question. “Zev doesn’t live inside the gate.” Kira said flatly. Evan noticed how tightly she controlled her voice when speaking of the Wolf. It was as if she believed he could hear her and would be angry at her for her sympathy and compassion. “He chooses to live alone away from the others. He wouldn’t even let us help him build the house.” She slipped her hand into Evan’s with a sad sigh. Even he could see the loneliness and self-imposed solitude of the blood Wolf was so unnecessary. Everyone here respected Zev even if they didn’t know him well enough to actually like him. And no one seemed to call him friend but it was obvious no one here counted him an enemy.

  “He was only seventeen when he came to us. Althea’s grandmother took him in. That’s why she is the only person who can get close to him. ’Thea’s grandmother was the one who named him.” Kira smiled at the memory.

  “He didn’t have a name at seventeen?” Evan watched as Zev’s broad back disappeared between the trees before they started walking back to the Jeep.

  “He had one but he wouldn’t tell us. Sai
d that he was dead and as far as he cared we could call him what we liked but don’t expect him to answer to it.” Kira actually let out a small chuckle. “So this tiny Greek woman snatched him up by his collar, an impressive sight since she was all of about five feet two inches and he was more than a good foot taller than her even then.” Zev was the only Wolf she’d ever known to be as tall as Evan. “She gave him a shake and told him no matter what he might think, he wasn’t an adult yet and he was damn sure not her Alpha and he’d mind or she’d take a bite out of his backside.”

  “If she was anything like Althea, I can easily picture her doing that.” Evan laughed at the image and the sound warmed Kira’s heart. She loved the sound of his voice but his laugh was even better.

  “She was. They came after her husband was bitten. They had their children here. She started calling him Zev. He tried to fight her on it at first but once she told him what it meant, he grabbed on to it. It means ‘wolf’. Something in him likes the generic quality of it. He’s no longer who he was. Now, he’s just a wolf.” Even better than the feel of his hand enclosing hers was the feel of his arm as it looped around her shoulders. A soft happy little whine slipped from her and he pulled her closer.

  She felt the hardness of the Jeep’s metal against her back as Evan pressed into her. She didn’t wait for him but cupped her hand around his neck and pulled him down to her. She felt the kiss all the way from her lips to her toes. Damn this man could kiss. His tongue teased hers in a way that made a dark warmth settle at the core of her. Her body reacted to his hands moving slowly up her rib cage. She ached for him to move his hand higher, to cup her and touch her. Darkness had settled over the area and most of the people had gone to their homes.

  But not all. “Some people need to get a room,” said a chuckling voice causing Evan to pull back quickly. William and Kelan were standing with Alexi near the truck. The two blood Wolves were grinning at them but what Evan noticed more was that the curse wolf wasn’t smiling at him. His face was filled with anger that bordered on hatred and he turned quickly and began to walk away toward the school. Kira had told him earlier that Kelan was staying there as he wasn’t allowed inside the gate. Friend of William’s or not, he was a curse wolf and he was not permitted beyond the walls.