by M. J. Scott
“No way.” It was an automatic response. Dan’s arms tightened around me.
“Ashley, you have to let him do this,” Jase said from the opposite sofa.
I cringed. “I don’t want to.”
“You will be free of him after this,” Marco said.
“Yeah but will I be free of you?” I snapped and saw Jase wince. I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. I couldn’t piss off an Old One.
Marco pursed his lips. “I give you my word.”
“That’s what Tate said.”
“My word carries more weight than his. My word on my line.”
Jase made a choking noise.
More vampire games. “What does that mean?” I demanded.
“It means, Signorina Keenan, that if I play you false in this you are owed a debt by my lineage. An unlimited debt. You may call on us at any time.”
That won’t help me if I’m dead because you’re lying. I managed to bite my lip before I spoke the thought out loud then glanced guiltily at Marco, realizing he might just be able to hear me anyway.
“You would almost own us,” Marco continued.
My own private vampire army. Just what every girl needs.
So, Tate in my head or Marco? Marco, whose blood had spawned Tate. But it had also spawned Jase and I knew there was no evil in Jase. I wasn’t so sure about Marco but his eyes didn’t carry the same inhuman expression as Tate’s.
Maybe he was just better at hiding what he was but I was going to have to take that risk.
“All right,” I said with another shuddering breath. “Do it.”
“All will be well,” Marco said. He knelt by the sofa, reached up and put his hands either side of my face. “Now, cara. Look at me.”
I had to fight to obey him but finally I managed to meet his gaze.
This time it didn’t feel like falling, more like a cool green breeze blowing through me. I floated, surrounded by warmth and that pleasant sense of green, like lying in sunshine in a forest. It was even more seductive than Tate had been. Panic flared.
“Tutto bene, cara,” Marco’s voice whispered in my mind. “I will be done here soon.” He paused and I floated again, more relaxed.
“Hold a moment,” the voice came again. He made a satisfied sound. “I have it. Now, cara, listen to me. I can ease these memories for you . . . take them away.”
To not remember. It was an enticing offer. But I needed to remember. It was important. For me and for the case. “No,” I said. “No, I don’t want to forget.”
“Brave,” he said. “Then I leave you with this, Ashley. You are free. Of Tate and any other. You are safe.”
The greenness surrounded me, flooded through me and I sighed happily, nestled in warmth and the teasing scent of Dan.
“I release you,” Marco said, and this time it was my ears that heard him, not my mind. The green warmth washed away slowly. I blinked, feeling not quite awake.
“Ash? Are you okay?” Dan’s voice sounded loud in my ear, sending a pleased shiver down my spine.
I blinked again. For the first time in days I felt truly relaxed. Boneless almost. I wanted to melt into the man holding me. Which made me realize that perhaps I felt a little too good.
And, even though I couldn’t see Dan, I somehow knew that he didn’t want to let go of me. That he was turned on too. I straightened, pushing at Dan’s hands. He loosened his grip slowly and I wriggled free. “Yes. Yes, I’m fine. Thank you, my lord.”
Marco rose to his feet and held out a hand to help me up.
“The pleasure was mine, Signorina Keenan.” He looked at me strangely for a moment and grinned, a wicked dimple flashing in his cheek. “And should you ever decide you are willing. . . .”
I couldn’t help smiling at him, even as I shook my head. Behind me Dan made a rumbling noise and Marco looked over my shoulder.
“Perhaps not. Your wolf does not seem to wish to share.”
“He’s not my wolf,” I repeated and Marco laughed as Dan rumbled again.
***
“Well, that was fun,” I said as we drove out of Marco’s gates. I stretched my arms above my head, as far as the ceiling of the Jeep would allow, feeling loose and relaxed. “What’s next?”
Jase peered at me curiously. “Are you okay? You sound a little buzzed.”
I bounced on the seat. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” Jase said. He peered at me closely, a wrinkle appearing between his eyebrows.
“Relax,” Dan said. “Her metabolism is doing some weird things right now. It can have some odd effects. And the full moon is only six days away.”
That sobered me for a moment but then I started humming Blue Moon under my breath, swaying softly. Dan was wrong. The buzz I was riding wasn’t the moon or lycanthropy. It was a combination of whatever Marco had done to me and my getting too close to Dan for too long. Contact high.
“She needs coffee or something,” Jase said.
“She needs pack,” Dan said shortly. “Ani will calm her down.”
“Like a good little doggie,” I said solemnly, then laughed as the car seemed to spin a little. “Bad dog. Woof.”
“Oh, this is going to be fun,” Jase muttered. “How long to Ani’s?”
“We need to go to my place,” I said. “I have no clothes.”
“Fuck,” Dan said. “Can’t you manage?” He twisted in his seat to look at me before someone honked at us and he turned back.
I pouted. “No. I’ve been kidnapped, rescued and then done over by an Old One. I want clean clothes. I want my stuff.” My happy bubble burst and I heard my voice quiver.
“Hell, don’t cry,” Dan said. “We’ll get your damn clothes.”
I sniffed. “Don’t swear, it isn’t nice.” I sounded so much like Bug it made me laugh again.
“Why don’t you try and rest?” Jase suggested.
“Not tired,” I sang. “We should go out. We should go to Plasma.”
“It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. Plasma’s closed.”
I pouted. Then brightened as we passed a familiar green and red sign. Krispy Kremes. My stomach rumbled. “I’m starving. I want a donut.”
“Yes, a sugar high is so what you need right now,” Jase said, shaking his head.
“Get them while they’re hot. Krispy Kremes. Krispy Kremes.” I bounced on the seat.
Dan swore again and pulled into the drive-thru. I spent the rest of the trip munching on glazed heaven, marveling at just how good they tasted and annoying Jase by singing Food Glorious Food in badly mangled snatches.
At my house Dan tossed most of my wardrobe into the three suitcases I owned at record speed. I managed to sneak the bottle of Reservo into my favorite tote while I watered the plants in the kitchen. I figured alcohol might come in handy over the next week or so.
My buzz had faded a little by the time we arrived at Ani’s. Which, to my relief, turned out to be a perfectly normal sprawling ranch house. A kid’s bike lay on the front lawn.
“Ani has kids?” I asked.
“Several,” Dan said. “Noisy little . . . darlings.”
Ani opened the front door and I wondered what he’d really been going to say. As far as I knew, Dan liked kids. We’d talked about having them one day, once upon a time.
Now any kids I might have were almost guaranteed to be werewolves. God.
“How did everything go with Marco?” Ani said, ushering us into the house. She studied my face for a moment when we reached a large living room stuffed with sturdy leather furniture and scattered with toys. It looked comfortably messy. Normal.
“It was fine,” I said, the words tumbling a little too fast. “Just fine.”
The alpha’s lips curved in a smile. “You look . . . better,” she said.
“She’s high,” Jase said.
Ani’s expression flipped to a frown. “High? Drugs?”
I shook my head. Now that I had almost two hours distance from Marco and Dan’s touch, the sensa
tion was wearing off rapidly. I still felt better than I had in the hospital but I wasn’t giddy anymore and the fear was returning now that I was in another strange place. Not as strongly as before, but I was edgy, alert. “Shifter buzz. Plus whatever Marco did to me.”
“You feel shifters?” Dan asked.
I nodded. “Always have.”
“Why didn’t I know that?”
“It’s not like we hung out with a lot of werewolves when we were dating.”
Ani looked from me to him with amusement playing around her mouth. “Do you get buzzed just from being around shifters?”
I wondered why she was asking then it hit me. For the next few weeks I was going to be surrounded by them. 24/7. Shit. I shook my head. “No. I can feel them if I’m close to one but usually I have to touch one to get a buzz.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Really? You’ll have to tell me more about what happened at Marco’s then.”
I ignored her as I intended to ignore any wolfish attempts to get Dan and I back together. Not gonna happen. “Is it going to get better or worse with the lycanthropy?”
“Everyone’s different leading up to the change. But I’ve never met a werewolf who gets shifter highs, so you’re probably going to be fine.”
Probably? I didn’t like the sound of that. “Well, this is going to be an interesting week,” I said brightly and let Ani lead me away to meet Samuel.
Chapter Seventeen
Turns out it was fun, kind of. Apart from those moments when I seriously freaked out about becoming a werewolf. But the counselor the Taskforce set me up with helped with that a little, even if I had a long way to go.
But I liked Ani a lot and Samuel was nice too, once I got over the fact he was tall and blond like Rio. I guess the fact that he favored jeans and faded basketball team tees rather than black and knives helped.
And their three children were normal, healthy, well-adjusted kids, as far as I could tell—not having been an entirely normal kid myself once my family had gone. None of them seemed perturbed by the fact they’d be werewolves one day. And all three of them had an innate talent for mayhem.
The first morning, I woke thinking a riot had broken out downstairs but it was only the kids screaming in delight over some game. And my increasingly sensitive hearing as it turned out.
The lycanthropy virus was having its way with me and I spent the first few days wincing at noises or smells I would never have noticed before. Jase and I scrambled to catch up on work after the impromptu week off and Ani and Sam tried to prepare me by stuffing me full of werewolf lore. There were a lot of rules to being a werewolf. Lots. And I was only getting the Cliff Notes crash course version.
The smell thing made it hard to be in the same room with Dan. He smelled better than ever and he didn’t even have to be agitated or mad for me to notice the wild wolf scent now. I avoided him as much as possible, which wasn’t as much as I would’ve liked. He lived only a few blocks from Ani and Sam and they insisted on letting him into the house. And he was still Agent in Charge on the Tate investigation. It helped that most of the time I still wanted to knock him on his ass for putting me in this situation in the first place.
Scary thing was I’d probably be able to once I’d changed.
Two days before the full moon, I walked into the kitchen, picked up a mug to pour myself a coffee and it shattered in my grip. Ani was at the sink, washing dishes. She jumped at the noise then looked at the mess and then over at me, her expression strange. I had the sudden urge to flee. There was a sort of wild triumph in her eyes.
“I think it’s time to go to the Retreat,” she said and turned back to her dishes as if nothing momentous had happened.
The Retreat.
It had assumed almost mythical proportions in my mind. The place where the pack celebrated and hunted under the full moon. Where they guarded and guided werewolves going through their first changes. Where they buried those who didn’t survive.
The reality of my situation suddenly sank through me like a stone. In less than forty-eight hours I’d be a werewolf or I’d be dead.
If you’d asked me in the hospital, I would’ve chosen the latter. But now I wasn’t so sure.
***
The Retreat made Marco’s house look like a shack. The main building was built along hotel lines and there were ten or so smaller guest houses scattered about the grounds. The grounds themselves were several hundred acres of forest and woodland, stocked, though I didn’t want to think about that bit, with deer and other animals.
Plenty of room to run.
Plenty of room to die.
Ani, Sam and I stayed in the Alpha’s house, which wasn’t part of the main building. Apparently I would be easier to control if I wasn’t surrounded by too many wolves just now.
Up to a hundred were expected to arrive for the full moon. There were more than that in the pack, but those who had been wolves for a long enough time were trusted to keep control and they didn’t have to attend if they chose not to. Younger wolves came unless there was some reason for them to be away. And in those situations, arrangements were usually made with whichever pack whose territory they were in to provide a guide.
Not-quite-yet wolves like me were kept under close surveillance.
Which didn’t sit well with the increasing edginess I had about the whole thing. I felt like ants were crawling under my skin when I thought about changing. And I was filled with a restless energy that made it impossible for me to relax.
Ani took me for long walks through the grounds and I spent time working out in the gym, and running with Jase—I’d nearly had a panic attack at the thought of Jase not being there so Ani had relented—but it didn’t help much.
I wanted space and distance and freedom.
I wanted to howl at the moon, I realized with some shock as I sat staring out my window on the night before full moon.
The moon hung low in the sky. Not quite full but I could feel the silvery light gliding over my skin like a caress, calling me out to play. I wanted to tear off my clothes and feel that light on my naked skin.
And that wasn’t all I wanted. Desire snaked through my veins under the cool light, burning deep in my belly. Ani had explained this to me too, that the energy of the moon awakens other energies. But her explanations hadn’t quite prepared me for the overwhelming force of my hunger for skin on skin.
I didn’t know whether it was because this was my first time, or because I had been single for a while or because I was surrounded by the scents of male wolves but I hadn’t felt like this in a long time . . . maybe never.
I wanted the weight and feel of a man. Salt and heat and touch. I wanted someone to fuck me senseless.
I couldn’t have anyone.
Ani had forbidden Dan to come anywhere near the house and she was keeping the other unmated male wolves away. Intellectually, I knew she was right to do so, that I wasn’t in any shape to be dealing with sex right now, let alone sex that was driven by desire not entirely of my own making.
It was too soon after Tate.
But my body didn’t understand that fact. My body burned.
My body made me open the window and sniff the night air deeply, seeking something I didn’t quite understand. And the air in my room was heavy with my scent, touched with an unfamiliar edge. A hint of the same wildness Dan carried.
The wildness growing within me.
It was a long night.
I only managed to fall asleep when the moon sank below the horizon, easing the longing. The rest of the night I’d paced, taken a cold shower, even taken matters into my own hands. None of which helped particularly.
I slept until noon, only to wake feeling gritty-eyed, muddle-headed and more on edge than ever.
The underlying fear of what I was about to go through only worsened my temper.
I snarled at Jase, snapped at Ani and broke another mug before I’d made it through my breakfast or lunch or whatever it was. At which point I burst into tears.
“It will be better after tonight,” she said soothingly.
At this point I was willing to concede that almost anything had to be better than how I felt right now. “I can’t see how it could be worse.” I scratched at my bare forearm. I was wearing a tank and shorts, the lightest clothing I had. Anything else made me feel too hot. And even the thin cotton made me itch today.
“Think of it as going through puberty in a few days,” Ani said sympathetically as she gently batted my hand away from my arm. “Your body chemistry is changing radically. There’s bound to be a few side effects. You’ll find an equilibrium again.”
Puberty, huh? At least I wasn’t covered in zits but I had to agree with Ani. The bored, restless, weepy feeling did remind me of being a rebellious teenager. I wanted to pick a fight. I wanted to run.
I wanted chocolate.
Or sex.
“This isn’t fair,” I said, sounding whiny even to my own ears. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“Many of us don’t. But we adjust. Does my life seem so terrible to you?”
I shook my head. Ani and Sam had a good marriage. And great kids when they weren’t wreaking havoc. But my head still couldn’t reconcile ‘happy’ with ‘werewolf’.
“Daniel is worried about you,” Ani said, changing the subject before I could get any broodier.
“So? He should be. This is all his fault.”
Ani sighed. We’d been through several iterations of this conversation already. “You’ll have to forgive him eventually.”
“No, actually I don’t. I never have to forgive him.”
“Never say never.”
I pushed away my mug and empty plate. I was already starting to feel hungry again, even though I’d just eaten three times what I normally had for breakfast. “I’m going to call my aunt.”
***
At sunset I stood in a small clearing near the edge of the forest. Only just standing. Shivers rippled through my body despite the fact I was burning up. Little twinges of pain kept spiking at me in different places. The knob of my right wrist. Halfway up my left thigh. The nape of my neck.