by Leia Stone
There was murmuring among the wolves. ‘Pack,’ they told me, as they looked me up and down. Kai’s warm body pushed up against me as he whispered in my ear. “You have their inner wolves’ respect. Any one of them would die in a fight for you, but now you need to get their human side’s respect. That’s a whole other ballgame as you Americans like to say.” His breath against my neck made my stomach drop, but his words flushed cold water through my veins.
“Let’s eat! Steaks are on the grill out back,” Kai announced and motioned for us to move to the back of the house. My inner wolf was pleased with our new place in the pack. I was scared shitless.
Second
“Wow, second,” Emma squeaked behind me. I turned to her voice and she cast her eyes down slightly towards my nose. I wondered if I would ever get used to having to think before I made eye contact with someone.
Now that I had time to look around, I realized we were in a heavily wooded area on Mt. Hood. There were cabins dotting the property. But Kai’s was by far the biggest. There were no fences, just open space.
“Yeah, who knew?” I shrugged, not sure of what to say. We walked together around to the back of the house towards the smell of cooking food. I was still in shock over making second in the pack.
She smiled and grabbed my hand. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to my mate.”
That word again. Kai had said some of the men here were wondering if I was their mate.
“Your mate…” I left the sentence open.
“Yeah, Devon. We just had our mating ceremony a few months ago. You missed it.”
“So that’s like a wedding?” I inquired. I glanced around. The backyard had a large green space with four large rectangle tables and a few grills that were smoking. I wondered if they had any veggie burgers. Yeah, right.
“Kind of like a wedding, except mates are extremely rare and once a werewolf mates, they mate for life. And instead of exchanging rings, like I’ve seen humans do on TV, you exchange blood.”
My eyes must have bulged out of my head.
“Not like drinking blood! Just a little nip, a marking.” She pulled up her long shirt sleeve to reveal a teeth bite mark on her wrist. “It’s infused with magic. Devon and I are mated for life and now we can have children.” She smiled.
“Talking about me, I hope?” A tall guy with sandy blonde hair and blue eyes came up behind us.
Emma blushed. “Aurora, this is Devon. My mate and husband.”
Devon grasped my hand and bowed slightly. “A pleasure. Welcome to the pack. We are all really excited to have you. Most of us anyway.” He gestured to Sadie and a few other guys that sat at one of the tables, scowling. Emma smacked him and he kissed her cheek before heading over to tend to one of the grills. I remembered Devon being towards the middle of the pack.
“So it’s not a problem that you’re submissive and Devon’s…”
“Dominant?” Emma threw the word out there. “It’s actually the best combination for mates. Two wolves that are too close within pack rank could either be very powerful together or have underlying tension. If you have two highly dominant wolves and danger comes, who protects who? If the less dominant tries to protect the more dominant, it’s like saying they can’t protect themselves. It could start a fight. With Devon and I, we know our place. If something ever happened and he was hurt, I would protect him with my last breath, but generally, I let him take the lead.” She smiled. “Enough Wolf 101, let’s mingle. We have plenty of time to talk in the coming centuries. Did I forget to tell you? Unless killed, werewolves pretty much live forever.” She walked towards the crowd.
Okay. I was immortal. No big deal. Holy crap!
A young Indian boy that was the spitting image of Kai set a large bloody steak in front of me. “For you, my lady.” He grinned. He looked about sixteen but who knew what his real age was. I covered my nose; the smell of meat made me nauseous.
“Thank you, but actually I’m a vegetarian.”
The boy’s face fell. Werewolves must have good hearing because every voice stopped and you could see all heads turn towards me. The boy began laughing, a deep throaty laugh. “My brother’s new second in command. A vegetarian?”
I smirked back at him. “Yes. Key words, second in command.” Power radiated out of my voice. I hadn’t meant to be like that. The boy immediately stopped laughing, dropped his gaze and everyone went back to talking. Kai came over with a plate of corn on the cob and mashed potatoes and set it in front of me. He ruffled his brother’s hair.
“That will teach you to mess with a dominant vegetarian,” he joked.
His brother sulked, then turned to me. “I’m Akash. Welcome to the pack.”
I smiled at him. “Thank you. I will try to remember all of these names but remind me if I can’t, and thanks for bringing me the steak. It was very sweet of you.”
Akash blushed from head to toe… and was that a low growl I heard from Kai? Akash looked at his brother grinning then ran off to get his food.
“What part of India are you from?” I asked Kai.
“Are you assuming because I have dark skin I’m from India?” His face was blank.
“Oh. I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what to say.
He grinned. “I’m joking. I’m from Delhi and so is Akash.”
I wanted to smack him but thought better of it. “I’ve been to Delhi. Amazing food. Wonderful people.” It was then his turn to look shocked with nothing to say. Five o’clock shadow dotted his strong jaw and I couldn’t help but think again of how attractive he was.
“You have been to Delhi?” he challenged.
“Yep. Six months volunteering. I set up a domestic violence shelter there. God, I miss the food.” My mind wandered to my history with domestic violence. Snippets from my childhood rushed through my mind. I looked up and Kai’s jaw was clenched and his eyes turned from black to golden yellow. I jerked my head back in fear but he recovered and forced a smile.
“That’s nice of you to do that kind of work.” His voice was raw. Had he picked up on my thoughts, my very private thoughts? Anger took hold of me. I grabbed my plate and stood.
“I think I’m going to mingle, then you and I need to talk about my old life and what to do with it.” My voice was clipped and I stalked off. Two words came through our bond and into my head. ‘I’m sorry.’
I shook off the conversation and sat down with Emma and Devon. I spent the next two hours talking and getting to know the other wolves. I found that I could immediately tell which ones were submissive and which ones were more dominant. My inner wolf could sense it. I fell into easy conversations, letting my inner wolf instinctually guide me. This was my pack, my new family. I felt more protective over the more submissive wolves. One thing was for sure; Sadie was shooting me daggers all night. I would have to ask Emma about that later. I was in the middle of telling Luke, a mid pack wolf, about my favorite hiking spot on Mt. Hood, when Kai placed his hand on my shoulder.
“We need to talk,” he whispered. I glanced at him, and nodded.
“Luke.” He nodded.
Luke smiled. “Kai.”
We walked towards the house together and I passed Sadie with her straight black hair and muscular body. She was very pretty. I had fair milky skin and pale blonde hair. I felt plain compared to her exotic beauty. ‘You look like an angel,’ Kai told me inside my head as we reached the door to his home.
I blushed but recovered quickly. “Okay, first thing on the agenda, you need to get out of my head.”
He led me to his office without another word and closed the door. His office was nicely decorated with modern masculine colors, dark blue and grey. I sat on the brown leather couch and Kai sat on the edge of the large wooden desk. He towered over me.
“I will teach you how to keep me from reading your every thought. But I will never fully be out of your head. What’s the next thing on your agenda?” He smiled.
Okay, he was willing to teach me to keep my thoughts to myself. That was a
start.
“I need to call my mother.”
Kai sighed. “It’s best that after a wolf goes through the change, that they fake their death. I took your car off of the road and hid it under some fallen trees. One call to the police saying I found it while jogging would do the trick. Your blood… is all over it. They will think animals took your body.”
My mind was reeling. “I’m not faking my death!” I stood. “I am all my mother has.” I let images of my childhood filter through our bond, of my mother being beaten trying to keep him from hitting me. Then I stopped. “She’s all I have, too.”
Kai closed the distance between us in a second. Kai’s jaw clenched. ‘Who hurt you?’ he asked.
“Don’t,” I told him fiercely and tried to side step him. He moved in front of me.
‘Let me in,’ he pleaded and for once looked vulnerable. He stared into my eyes.
‘No.’ I pushed back into his mind. I stared back, not looking down like I should. Showing him that he couldn’t force me; he didn’t own me. Alpha or not, I had a say and I could take care of myself. He stared back unwavering. ‘Challenge,’ my inner wolf said. Shit, what was I doing? My forehead broke out in sweat. That’s when he kissed me.
He leaned in slowly, keeping his eyes locked on mine. When I felt his breath on my lips I closed my eyes in submission and he grabbed the back of my hair and slowly tilted my neck back. He pressed his lips onto mine, ‘I win,’ he taunted playfully in my mind. A shock went through my system when our lips touched. He kissed me deeply for a few more seconds and then pulled away. I felt like I had been waiting to kiss him since I first saw him. He looked as stunned as I felt. Before I had time to think of something to say, the hairs on the back of my neck stood. ‘Foreign Wolf,’ my inner wolf said. I smelled something off, something bad.
“Shit,” he swore and bolted outside.
I ran after him and noticed the other wolves began to perk up and some of them shifted into their wolf forms. Kai stood on one of the picnic tables.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath in through his nose.
“Portland Pack just crossed our border; seven wolves about twenty miles away.” He growled and looked at me.
“Where were you born?” he barked.
I jerked back at the power in his voice. “Portland,” I answered.
A rumble went through the pack and one of the wolves that had shifted, howled. My body had chills. “What’s wrong?”
“When someone is changed, the Alpha of that pack who changed them becomes that person’s pack. That’s why you’re mine. But there is an old magic law that states that the Alpha from the pack of the changed human’s birthplace can fight to claim him or her if they can reach that person in twenty-four hours. It’s been sixteen hours since I changed you.”
My breath came out in rasps. “So the Alpha from the Portland pack is coming to claim me?”
Kai’s eyes blazed yellow. “No.” There was power behind that one single word. “He’s coming to try. I was hoping you were born in Michigan or some place a bit farther away.”
Emma stood next to me. “If it was a submissive male, he wouldn’t even try.”
Females are rare. She had told me. ‘Foreign Wolf.’ My pack sense was tingling. They were on OUR territory and there was nothing we could do because of the rules. I could feel the irritation coming off of Kai.
As Kai barked orders to the other wolves to take up positions at the perimeter, I leaned into Emma.
“I think it might be a good time for you to tell me about killing a werewolf 101,” I whispered.
Emma swallowed. “Two ways. Extreme blood loss or silver poisoning. Our power to heal is in our blood. If you decapitate or tear into a wolf enough, they will die before they can regenerate.”
I nodded. “Okay, so keep my head on. Don’t touch silver. Got it.”
Emma looked at me, shocked. “YOU don’t fight the Portland Alpha, Kai does.”
“Oh.”
“You’re the prize,” Emma told me. “And there’s something you should know about changed wolves. The Portland Alpha is a changed Wolf, he wasn’t born that way and so he has a… gift. He is immune to Silver.”
“A gift.” I let that sink in. “So all changed wolves have a gift?”
Emma nodded. “You will, too. Once you shift for the first time it will begin to manifest. The lycanthrope virus binds to the human DNA and then it activates.”
“Okay, so Kai has to fight another Alpha who only has one way of being killed, because of his gift.”
“Yes, he can only be killed by blood loss. But Kai is a changed wolf too.” Emma’s eyes gleamed with pride.
“Aurora!” Kai barked. I ran to his side. He gently took my hand and pulled me to the side yard where we could talk in private.
“I will fight for you because you’re mine. But I pride myself on doing things differently in my pack. I won’t keep you here against your will. I know you haven’t had time to learn what being a werewolf is all about and when I saw you lying in the road on the verge of death, I knew I had to at least try to give you life. Females that survive the change are rare and Dane will try to take you at all costs. If you think you would like the chance to switch packs, tell me now.”
There was a vulnerability in his look that made my heart hurt. He was an Alpha; the most dominant of wolves, and he was asking me to stay, maybe not with his words but his look. The way he said mine was possessive in an endearing way. Did I want to leave Emma, Kai, and the others that I had begun friendships with? Did I want to leave without exploring what was behind that kiss in his office? My inner wolf howled in pain at the thought. “This is my pack. I’m not going anywhere,” I told him.
The corners of his lips curled. “Good. Now if I die, the pack transfers to you as my second. That could be a disaster because you know nothing about being a wolf or leading a pack.”
“Then let’s hope you don’t die, for that reason and others.” I quickly squeezed his hand. Was I flirting with the Alpha before he was about to go into a fight to the death for me? He smirked and turned to leave.
“They’re coming,” he told his wolves. “Emma, don’t shift. I need you to be able to communicate with Aurora.”
I smelled something then. Whisky and cigarettes, rain and wood. ‘Portland pack. Foreign Wolf.’
Three large men came walking through the clearing behind a thicket of trees followed by four wolves. One of the men smiled and his teeth shown in the setting sun. They were capped in silver; all of them. Oh shit. This must be Dane. Silver immunity.
“Excuse the intrusion, Kai, but I believe you have something that belongs to me.” His eyes roamed over my body and Kai let loose a growl.
“She’s mine,” Kai said, barely containing his humanity. I could see patches of fur rippling over his body.
Dane flashed his silver-pointed teeth. “I was hoping you would say that.”
Our pack began circling them and opening up an area for them to fight. My wolf was itching to come out. I felt the need to shift, to fight instead of Kai, to protect him. I didn’t even know how to shift but I wanted to. No one should die for me.
Dane stood in the center of the circle and bowed. “I enact the right to fight the Mount Hood Alpha for my wolf, a human that was born in my territory. A female. According to rules, this fight ends in death or forfeit.” The word female sounded dirty in his mouth.
The words barely left Kai’s mouth before he began shifting. “I accept.”
In a blur of motion, Kai was human one second and wolf the next. He lunged at Dane while he was mid-shift and sank his teeth into the meat of Dane’s thigh, coming away with a chunk of flesh. Something between a howl and a human wail cut through the night. Kai was fast, really fast and he had the most beautiful markings. He was all black with a white star on his forehead and white socks on his paws. My wolf approved. The vegetarian in me wanted to close my eyes. There was blood and flesh flying everywhere, but the wolf in me stared. My hands were c
lenched, my breath coming out short.
Compared to Dane, Kai was a blur of motion. Dane had just finished fully shifting and Kai has already torn off most of his leg meat.
I leaned into Emma. “So is that Kai’s gift? He’s fast?”
Emma nodded and kept her voice low. “He can shift instantly, and he can move faster than anything anyone’s ever seen.”
I watched as Kai dodged Dane’s silver jaws and ran from left to right in a blur of motion. Then, he swiped a claw at Dane’s belly and Dane used the close proximity to bite Kai in the shoulder. A howl ripped from his throat as Kai darted to the other side of the clearing. He was still fast but slower than before. The silver must be affecting him. Emma let out a low growl. Dane’s wolf grinned and blood glistened on his metallic teeth.
Kai came closer to Dane and lunged, biting right into his neck. He shook Dane like a rag doll until his body stilled. Kai’s wolf relaxed for just a second and Dane jerked violently, loosening himself and grabbing Kai’s left front paw in his mouth. He bit down hard and we all heard the crunch of bone. I made a move to run into the circle, not sure what I was going to do, but someone grabbed my arms from behind.
“Easy there.” It was Devon, Emma’s mate. Kai was limping away, getting slower by the moment when Dane stalked after him. Dane’s leg, I could see, was already healing.
“Why isn’t Kai healing like Dane?” I asked Emma as Devon loosened his grip.
“The silver. One more bite and he will probably be poisoned beyond repair.” Tears shown in her eyes. That’s when I realized I could stop this fight. I just needed to tell Dane I would transfer to his pack and stop this. Kai said he wouldn’t keep me against my will. Two yellow eyes caught my attention and I stared at them. ‘Mine,’ Kai said and lunged at Dane with more speed and strength than he had before. Dane was slow, too slow, and Kai landed on him as they both rolled. Kai had Dane’s head in his jaws and he was chewing. Oh god. I was going to see someone decapitated.
The muzzle of Dane’s wolf began shifting into human lips. “I forfeit!” he croaked in a half human voice that would haunt my dreams forever. Kai held his jaws over his throat. A man stepped forward from the Portland pack. “The rules say you can forfeit and still walk away with your life,” he reminded Kai firmly. My wolf recognized that this man must be Dane’s second. Kai released Dane’s head from his strong jaw.