Werewolves and Chocolate

by Shauna Aura Knight

  “Sorry about that, baby.” Jake took her hand in his.

  “Let’s just go get this over with.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Jake and Kyle guided her through the snow and trees to the larger meeting room. The sun was setting and the room was brightly lit with a roaring fire in the hearth. There were enough chairs around the edge of the room that all the residents of the colony could meet together. Matthew’s big frame filled up the large wooden chair on the far side of the room.

  “Seriously, a throne?” she muttered under her breath.

  Kyle made what Ellie thought of as his strangled wolf sound, and everyone in the room went silent.

  “Ah fuck,” she whispered.

  Matthew gave her a grim look. “Still not used to our hearing, I see.”

  “Not exactly.” She felt the color burning in her cheeks.

  “Have a seat,” Matthew gestured at several available chairs. Kyle and Jake flanked her, which Matthew noted with a raised eyebrow.

  She was so cranky she wanted to punch something. Between her thighs she was ripe and pulsing. At the moment she wasn’t even horny; she was just tense. Her shoulders ached, she had a headache, and she couldn’t get her heart to stop palpitating.

  Would they really try to force her to stay?

  Cassia stood once they were seated. She gave Ellie an apologetic look. “I spoke with the wereleopards. They confirmed several of the Hagalaz mercenaries were killed during a struggle with a Fae lord. Well, part Fae. What he lacked in magic he was trying to make up for in muscle. He had been embezzling money from a company, and using the money to hire the Hagalaz and other creatures.”

  “So we still don’t know why they wanted the money,” Matthew said.

  Nodding, Cassia continued. “What we do know is they were willing to die to help the Fae lord. One after another the Hagalaz fell and they kept their contract.”

  “The Hagalaz won’t run from a fight but they aren’t stupid either. The Fae must have promised them aid, or something equally valuable.”

  “Agreed. The Hagalaz were, a year before the conflict last summer, doing contract kills to allow the Fae to continue embezzling. So their arrangement was going on for at least a year, likely more. The wereleopards have a Truthspeaker who has been trying to unravel the whole plot.” Cassia sat.

  Felicia leapt to her feet. “This can only mean they plan to attack us and dominate us. It’s always been their plan.”

  The room erupted with shouting.

  “Why do the Hagalaz want to dominate the Uruz pack?” Ellie asked Kyle. He leaned over and tried to speak into her ear so she could hear him over the uproar.

  “Over the past hundreds of years our birth rate has declined. The Hagalaz had certain ideas about how to handle the situation. Uruz and Hagalaz used to be closer allies, but our Alphas fought. The Hagalaz have, on occasion, tried to force us to their way. They’ve even kidnapped a few Uruz wolves, solitaries, and even wolves from other packs.”

  “For what?”

  Jake gave her a stricken look. “Mating.”

  “Oh. But I thought that couldn’t be forced.”

  “It can’t, but it’s complicated. Those without mates get to a certain age and start to panic. And you can only tell if someone’s your mate if you have sex with them.”

  Ellie’s jaw dropped. “So what, they were just passing people around to see if—”

  “Exactly.”

  “That’s horrific. Also, I didn’t know it was so desperate.”

  “We didn’t want to worry you, sweet.”

  The shouting died down for a moment.

  “We should plan an attack now,” said Taggert. “While they are still hurting from their losses.”

  Cassia shook her head. “It’s been months, Taggert. It’s not like this happened last week.”

  “Aye, but how many of the wolves that died were mated? How many of their mates went mad or died of grief? This has to have devastated their whole pack.”

  “Then they aren’t likely to be planning any major offensive, are they?”

  “On the other hand,” Matthew said, and everyone quieted. “If they are so devastated that their backs are to the wall, they may also be motivated to attack us. Let’s not forget, Taggert overheard the Hagalaz making a deal with an unknown shifter from another pack. They could be planning something even now. Even if they simply step up their kidnappings, it’s bad for us.”

  “They haven’t kidnapped anyone in years.”

  “No, but they have used any excuse to harry us.”

  “If the mating situation is so desperate, why did they try to kill you, Kyle?” Ellie asked it softly, but Matthew turned to her.

  “You’ve articulated the difficulty with the Hagalaz, Ellie. They don’t always make good sense. Bane, their Alpha, argues for bloodline purity but they kidnap humans who don’t agree to a mating and force them into it. They didn’t like Kyle in part because he’s Uruz. And he’s perhaps not pureblood enough for their standards. Though, if he and Kara had mated, they’d likely have gone the other way and forced him to stay at their clanholding whether he wanted to or not. The real problem is they put us all in danger. Hiring out as mercenaries, kidnapping people…there’s a tremendous risk of them blowing our cover, and that we do not need. It would help if they were at all predictable, but the only thing predictable about them is we know they’ll do something to put us all at risk.”

  “Which is why we need to stop them before they do something stupid, Matthew.” A wolf Ellie didn’t know spoke. “We’ve never had as much muscle as they do. Their losses last summer even up the odds a bit.”

  “I am opposed to an all-out attack,” Cassia said. “These are our cousins. We should not be killing our cousins without dire need.”

  “Not as if it ever bothers them to kill one of us.”

  “I’m inclined to agree. They’ve taken potshots at us the past years and we’ve never had the strength to do anything about it. They’ve kept the neutrality…mostly. But if we strike now, we have a chance to end this conflict and bring our groups together.”

  Cassia smacked her hand on her chair arm. “The losses we will suffer will be devastating!”

  Matthew let out a growl “In the long run our losses will be worse if we don’t.”

  Everyone started shouting again, and Kyle and Jake both looked stricken. “What does this mean?”

  “Basically, war.”

  “A stupid war.”

  “It’s not a conflict I want any part in,” Jake said.

  “Then we leave,” she said. “We don’t need to get wrapped up in this.”

  The room fell quiet again at some gesture Matthew made, and his gaze focused in on her like a laser. She noticed his eyes were glowing and his teeth were already a little run out, and he wasn’t the only one. “That’s not a decision you get to make, Ellie. When you mated Jake and Kyle, you became part of the pack. And if the pack does this, we do it together.”

  Ellie found herself standing, her fists clenched in anger. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. I’ve been in that position before and it’s not something I’m ever going to do again. This war of yours sounds ridiculous. You don’t even know what the Hagalaz are doing. You haven’t talked to them, you’re just making assumptions. Yes, they’ve been assholes in the past, but before you go and try to kill a bunch of people and get killed in the process, you should perhaps try to talk with them first. I bet Moira would be happy to mediate and help keep the peace if you asked her.”

  Matthew made a dismissive gesture. “Moira has no say. She has no power over us—”

  “Moira makes bolts of lightning fall from the sky, and the Hagalaz mostly respected the SpiralStone boundaries. She could enforce the peace.”

  “If the Hagalaz would ever talk mediation would be useful, but they won’t.”

  “Try it again. It’s better than killing each other.”

  “Your little bitch is pretty mouthy,” said Taggert, his face gone a
little feral. “Particularly mouthy for someone who isn’t doing her part.”

  “My part?” Ellie asked, genuinely confused.

  “Your bracelet,” said Felicia “Do you know how long my mate and I have been trying to conceive? Decades. We’ve been trying for decades. And there you are, actively trying to prevent pregnancy. It’s disgusting. You revolt me.”

  Ellie blinked. She had no idea, and she was stunned by the pain in Felicia’s voice. But she also was appalled at the idea of being pressured to have children when she wasn’t ready for it. Before she could stop herself, she said, “Well, you’d kind of be like the Hagalaz if you tried forcing me to have kids, wouldn’t you?”

  The woman launched at her and Jake barely caught Felicia around the middle in time. Kyle put Ellie behind him until the shifter had calmed down.

  “Lay off me,” Felicia finally said, and Jake released her.

  “I had no idea it was that bad,” Ellie said, looking at her bracelet.

  “It’s all right,” Kyle took her hands in his. “We have plenty of time. There is no pressure from me or from Jake for kids. None. I swear it. You said you might want kids someday, and that’s great. And if you don’t, we’re fine with that too. Truly.”

  “Kyle,” Matthew growled. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this. There are so few of us mated…how could you betray us like this?”

  Ellie’s heartbeat thundered in her ears. “What I do with my life and my body is my choice, Matthew. It’s not Kyle’s decision for me, so don’t talk to him about my choices.”

  Matthew took a step closer and she felt Kyle’s muscles tense. Jake moved closer on her other side. “You mated them which means you are a part of the pack, and it means you will obey the will of the pack.”

  “I didn’t make that vow. I promised to protect the pack’s secret. And I promised to love both of them. And I’ve done that. What Jake and Kyle and I do is a conversation for the three of us. If Jake and Kyle decide to join you in your fight, I’ll still love them. I’ll disagree with them, but I’ll still love them when they come home. But I won’t join it. And if they die in your fight, then I’m left alone and insane, unless I am mistaken. I don’t know if the lot of you are brainwashed or what, but this sounds like a really bad idea. But hey, I’m just a physicist.”

  “Silence your mate,” Matthew growled, looking at Kyle.

  Kyle growled and she felt him on the verge of shifting right there. She could feel the ache, the urge, almost under her own skin. Ellie trembled in rage. “Do not speak to me like that. I am not anyone’s property.”

  “You will stay here if I order it.”

  “No, Matthew, we will not,” Kyle said, growling. “I made a promise to Ellie. To my mate. I am going to honor my promise.”

  “Kyle, you do not want to do this. Not here, not now. You are Uruz and you will do as I say.”

  “No,” Jake said. “We won’t.”

  “We’ll leave the pack, if you require it. Though that is not what we want. But our vow to our mate comes first.”

  “You’re making a mistake. This is where you belong, with your tribe.” Ellie felt his low rumbling growl and he stepped closer.

  Kyle pushed Ellie back, his claws lengthening.

  “You want to challenge me for Alpha right here, boy?” Matthew bristled, getting into Kyle’s face. Kyle’s claws and teeth ran all the way out and he let out a low growl.

  “Kyle,” Jake whispered.

  Ellie held her breath, stunned. She’d never been so furious in her life. Her skin tingled with the hot, livid surge through her blood. After a moment, she snapped into focus and found she was dead calm though her heart hammered in her chest.

  “I won’t be a part of this,” she said quietly. They didn’t even look at her. She stepped closer. “I won’t be the cause of this. You fight out whatever you need to, but I’m going. None of this has anything to do with us. Or with me.”

  Ellie strode to the closest door and went outside, and then began to run.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was freeing, somehow, to run in the snow. She now knew what Kara’s mate David had meant when he told her there were times when she’d wish she could turn into a wolf like her mates. With the subtly enhanced senses she got from being bonded to the two of them, she could see well enough in the gibbous moonlight even in the forest. She ran until she was out of breath and then stopped, gasping out puffs of mist.

  Having found a fallen tree Ellie sat down, contemplating the moon through the trees. It was really beautiful out here. If it weren’t for the conflict and the asshole behavior, she’d really enjoy this place. It reminded her of SpiralStone.

  Finally hungry, she pulled out the sandwich her lovers had made for her and began eating it. She thought about when she had first moved to the SpiralStone retreat center.

  In the first weeks, she had wondered why there weren’t more classes or devotional services. Everyone there practiced varying types of alternative spiritual paths which made that somewhat difficult. Moira followed a more Druidic path, Angel was devoted to Aphrodite, and there were dozens of other staffers. Jake and Kyle, like most of the shifters, were more animistic in their spirituality. She hadn’t really known what to call her own spiritual path when she had moved there, and she’d hoped for more direct guidance from Moira or some of the other teachers.

  And then she’d mated Jake and Kyle and things were crazy for a while. But then there was a night where she’d followed them out into the woods. They’d both shifted, and of course, she couldn’t follow them running. Instead she sat in the warm, moonlit forest looking up at the sky and she’d felt what she could only call the spirit of the place. She wasn’t separate from the land, she was a part of it. The moon, the sky, the trees, the ground. There wasn’t her and other, there was just connection.

  She looked at the moonlight on the snow and wished she felt the sense of peace and connection now. She wished for the resonance, the hum in the center of her chest.

  And as she so often did when distraught, Ellie wished she could see the stars.

  She’d been obsessed with astronomy since she was a kid. Every time she looked up at the sky, every time she saw a shooting star, she was lit up with questions. She wanted to know how it all worked, how light could take a million years to reach Earth.

  Of course, the work she was doing at the University was a little less thrilling than she’d initially imagined. Currently she worked whatever data and physics equations her physics professors put in front of her. Eventually, she wanted to do research on light. Not long after Jake had found the amazing purple couch on Craigslist, he’d also found a 10-foot whiteboard for her. He’d installed it in the spare bedroom for her and she’d used it to explore some of her own theories about light. She had so many plans for when she had her Ph.D. and was able to run her own research.

  Her dream, though, was still long years away.

  Thinking about her career wasn’t calming her down any. Her heart was still thudding. She hadn’t been this pissed off since her former boss at her last school had harassed her. When Ellie had spoken up, she hadn’t had any proof but her word. People had believed the professor who had been her boss.

  They’d said, “Oh, he couldn’t possibly have done what you say, you must have been mistaken.” Ultimately speaking up had cost her the office job she’d relied on to pay for tuition. For a long time she’d been furious at the injustice of the situation. It had cost her not only her job but it had forced her to quit school. She didn’t regret speaking up then, and she didn’t regret speaking up to Matthew now, but both situations had placed her in a completely untenable situation.

  Would Jake and Kyle be forced into some hopeless battle? She couldn’t bear the thought of them getting hurt.

  And yet, she could feel the fear of the Uruz pack. She had certainly seen the ugliness of the Hagalaz wolves; they’d tried to kill her and Jake and Kyle just out of spite. She understood why Matthew was afraid, but she knew that attacking the
Hagalaz was a bad idea. Maybe it was just because she hadn’t been embroiled in the conflict her entire life, though Cassia seemed to have a cooler head about things as well.

  Under her own skin she could feel the tension Jake and Kyle were feeling. She assumed the pack would be arguing for some time about what to do. Part of her was a little bitter Jake and Kyle hadn’t followed her out. But then, she also trusted them to do what they needed to. She especially felt for Kyle, who wanted to honor the traditions of the pack. Jake had always been more ambivalent. He cared about his family and his pack, but he also wasn’t going to do anything stupid just because he’d been told to.

  Kyle, for all his occasional cockiness, wanted to be respected by his pack. And she knew he struggled with his relationship to the other wolves because he sometimes had a harder time shifting than Jake did. Or at least, he had a harder time controlling it. Jake could shift between forms fairly easily including returning to human form with all of his clothing intact. Kyle often griped about the metaphysics of shifting and how his clothing sometimes vanished when he returned back to human form. Often enough he was able to shift again and find his clothing in that energetic whatever-it-was that facilitated his transformation.

  As a physicist, she was fascinated by the transformation and the disappearing and reappearing clothing, and the intuitive mastery the shifters had over the conversion of energy and matter. As his mate, however, it had become clear to her now how much the other wolves probably judged him for it.

  How much they might judge her own children for it, if she and her mates ever had any. Would they have trouble shifting? Worse than Kyle did? It wouldn’t bother her in the least, but would it put her children in danger with other shifters? Or at least, cause them social problems within the pack?

  She wasn’t opposed to having children. She had occasionally laughed at the fantasy she’d concocted while she was still mooning about Jake and Kyle before the three of them had gotten together. “Little physicist on the prairie,” she whispered. Back when she’d been lusting after them, she’d started imagining living out in the woods with them, having their babies. She thought she’d gone mad, wanting two men.