by Lisa Daniels
Markus had saved tabs on Google Chrome, including a tab for emails displaying five new messages, which showed up when she opened them, starting to create a new tab when she recognized the name on one of the emails: Elinor Spirova.
The older sister of Markus. Arina bit her lip. She had no right to this. No right at all, but that didn’t stop her from clicking open the email, and reading the message, scrawled up in Bulgarian Cyrillic.
Hey, brother – it was good to hear from you again. Things have been quiet over here. The loudest troublemakers have stilled themselves into silence for now, and I’m left to tend to the garden, mind the honey, and stop the triplets from trying to eat all the honey bees. I’m still irritated with Branimir for landing me with them in the first place. I was prepared for one child – not three squalling demonspawns who will never let their mother know a moment’s rest.
Arina smirked at the idea of Markus’s older sister handling three children. Good for her.
I’ve got some news for you, little brother. You remember our uncle who disappeared off the map some time back? The same uncle who we both have a certain… interest in? He’s turned up again. He wanted safe passage through my territory, and he knows that you have left. I tried to keep it discreet, asking if he wanted to come and meet with us, and that you had emigrated to America, so he didn’t need to feel threatened by you.
He declined, but he’s certainly there near the Seven Lakes, though we are yet to establish why he needs safe passage, or where he has been all this time.
I will wait for you, but if you give me the word, I will send the whole might of the Spirova clan upon his scummy, rot-infested behind. You know what they say. Mad dogs must be put down. I await your judgement, alpha.
Love, Elinor Spirova.
Arina closed the email, breathing hard and fast. Fear and hatred coarsed through her, making her limbs tremble. They’d been searching for Ricten Spirova. Markus and Elinor had hunted for Ricten – that could be the only possible person Elinor meant in her message.
Her instant thought was to email back as Markus, and tell Elinor she could hunt and kill Ricten. However, Elinor would probably want to talk to Markus in person.
The second, she could admit she read the email. In fact, she’d need to – having one new email opened and four unopened ones would look a little suspicious.
Breathing heavily, Arina considered how plausible it would be to get a week or two off work, or even unpaid leave for a month – pack off to Bulgaria, and hunt for Ricten in the Seven Lakes.
Her heart thumped painfully at the idea that vengeance lay within a stone’s throw. Satisfaction filled her as well at the evidence Markus had been digging for Ricten himself, with the intention to kill.
All that remained now, was what choice should she make? Hunt, or stay? She glanced at her Sig Sauer, lying innocently in its holster.
Did she have the skill necessary to take down a full grown, rabid, flesh eating werewolf?
More importantly – would Markus allow her into the action, or insist she stayed out, once he knew she was aware?
She closed down the laptop, having lost the desire to watch Netflix. Instead, she messaged Markus, and waited for him to answer.
Let’s see what he has to say.
There was a long hesitation, before he answered.
Markus: I should have expected you to find out. Don’t go doing that thing where you run off without thinking of the consequences. Wait for me to come back. I promise I will listen to what you have to say, and I will be honest about the danger. If you think you are ready, I will not deny you vengeance.
Arina grinned. That was good enough for her. She chewed her lip, once again reading the email, feeling the boil of hatred at Ricten’s name.
Whatever doubts she harbored, she wanted to stay with Markus. Everything just seemed to fit, being with him. Answers to questions she hadn’t been fully aware of clicked into place. Her past no longer needed to be something to flee from, something to fear. She could face it with Markus, the boy she had not forgotten, or ever stopped loving, though she allowed herself to bury it out of mind, for a while. Too long a while.
Together, they would be strong.
The End
Frey’s Mate
Shifters of the Bulgarian Bloodline
(Book 3)
Prologue:
When Frey reached seven years of age, she tried to kill her baby brother with a knife. Evo represented the pride of her parents, the bundle of joy that she should have been, but wasn't. Evo, in all his chubby brilliance stole the love that should have been for her – sucked it all up until nothing remained but ashes.
Frey grew up, enduring her father's disappointment, her mother Kalina's sadness when she thought Frey wasn't looking, but Frey saw everything, and understood her parents hated her for being normal. For not having the magic blood. She had failed her family bloodline, defiled their purity by coming into the world as a pathetic human baby.
She did strange things without love warming her up. Once, she had stared at the midnight skin of her mother, and the snow-pale contrast of her father, Lazarus Radev, then stared at her own walnut toned mix, hating the fact she was neither dark or light. It marked her out as broken from the start. She took a knife from the drawer and peeled into her skin, thinking it would be like an onion, and paler flesh would reveal itself underneath. It didn't work out that way, and her mother had caught her, screamed hysterically and rushed her to hospital in one of the few times she exhibited concern.
The doctors treated her like she was stupid and disturbed, but she wasn't. She just didn't want to be Frey Radev. She didn't want to be a failure.
When her mother fell pregnant and gave birth to Evo, with startling ice blue eyes gazing out of his dark skin, her parents rejoiced. Evo had the magic blood. He would transform, and carry on the legacy of his forefathers.
And Frey, well – she was a human in a world of werewolves, a nothing in her father's eyes, and a source of guilt and shame for her mother.
Evo had taken the little love Frey had left. Maybe if he was gone, she could find it again, and her mother would return it without the distraction of little Evo. One night, when her mother slept, and her father was away on personal business, Frey took the knife, went into her brother's room and crawled into the cot with him. She stared at his peaceful sleeping, knife poised in hand, trembling from fear and adrenaline.
Her heart bubbled in hatred, anger and frustration, and tears ran hot down her cheeks.
At that moment, Evo opened his eyes, and looked at his big sister, with the metal object glinting in her hand. Unafraid, thinking it was a game, Evo reached to his sister's free hand and squeezed it with pudgy fingers, gurgling in happiness.
Frey's heart crumbled some more. Her fragile defenses fell, her rage dissipated. The knife dropped from her grasp, tumbling onto the bedsheets. She watched Evo for a while as he made those contented sounds, before quietly getting out, returning the knife, and clambering into the cot to sleep with her little brother.
Maybe her parents didn't love her. Maybe they saw her as nothing but a burden, a reminder of their plans gone awry.
That no longer mattered.
She had her little brother, and she would protect him with all her heart.
Chapter One
Howling jerked Frey awake. Rubbing her eyes, she rolled out of bed and groped for the light, turning it on to reveal a mess of a room, with empty Winston cigarette packets piled on the dressing table. I need to get around to throwing those away, she thought vaguely, before opening the window and peering out to the town road below.
Sapareva Banya usually resembled a ghost town at this time of night. Sometimes, in the silence, you heard the spit and hiss of the pipes processing the geyser that had erupted from the thermal springs under the town. You didn't hear howling, however. She strained her eyes, trying to make out shapes in the darkness. The howl came again. It made the hairs on Frey's neck rise. Desperation, loathing and agony satur
ated those calls.
Evo burst into the room behind her, ice blue eyes already gleaming. “Sis! Be careful. Me and the other guys think there's been some kind of fight. We're gonna check it out.” He spoke in English, solely out of the desire to practise Europe's international language, and Frey responded likewise, though her English accent was thick, laced with Bulgarian vowel crunches.
“We're not expecting any travelers.” Frey groped for her Taurus PT111, and checked the chambers of the handgun to make sure it was fully loaded. “Could they be after the Belgian wolf we've got?”
Evo shook his head, his fangs and nails elongating slightly. “Tas wolves doesn't have any known enemies. Might be a conflict from Rila. Heard there's a hunt going on for one of them Spirovas.”
Frey backed from her window biting her lip as she ran her thumb over the grip of the Taurus. She screwed on the silencer tighter. “I'll alert the Belgian.” She strode out of the room behind Evo, ready to fire, even in her blue and yellow pajamas, out of place on a grown thirty year old woman.
Her mind raced through possibilities, even as she banged on the door of where the Belgian werewolf currently slumbered. Evo with the two Americans who helped run their werewolf hotel. A bleary faced man with light pink eyes answered, purple shadows sunk into his cheekbones.
“What?”
“There's something going on outside. Might be werewolves, a fight. Be alert in case they're not friendly.”
The Belgian werewolf nodded, rubbing at his rose tattooed arm. “Need me to help?”
“Well. Got any enemies you know of who might want to track you down?” Frey said, patting him on the shoulder.
The werewolf merely grinned under his mop of blonde hair. “I doubt that. See you at the bar.”
“Don't die,” Frey advised, sidestepping and heading downstairs, turning on the light of the bar and watching her colleagues and friends shrug on jackets, ready to inspect the scene outside. Frey tossed on hers as well, and hastily tied back her frizzy hair into a bun. Her heart pulsed rapidly, hoping that her fears were misplaced, that the old clans hadn't started their slaughter of the humans in Sapareva Banya.
She watched her brother lope off into the empty street, his face lengthening into a bestial snout, his normally deep voice grating into rumbling snarls. Emma and Horace, the American couple, sped after him, their forms a light silver compared to Evo's iron gray. Frey wished in that moment she could assist as well and let the wolf burst out of her body, but she had to remain content with watching her friends morph.
She did, however, pack some expensive vanadium laced bullets. That material did some interesting things to werewolf blood. She stood at the entrance of the hotel, noting the Belgian prowling behind her, and stared into the darkness, where the howls wrought the atmosphere.
She felt sure Lazarus Radev would be cursing her from his scattered ashes if he knew his corrupted daughter had taken Evo completely under her wing, planting liberal notions in his brain and turning him against the old ways.
The thought made her smile, though it came bitter and spiteful. The smile dropped when she caught a flicker of movement in a black corner, past where several dilapidated buildings crumbled into ruin. Johan's warning growl next to her ear made her aim her gun at the disturbance and wait, trembling in fear and exhilaration at the same time.
“This one smells like bones,” Johan said, joining her by the door. His pink eyes narrowed in distaste. “Bones and meat stuck between teeth. A savage.”
“Thanks.” The shadow moved, and Frey caught a glimpse of a shaggy human, with a strange lurch to their gait. He staggered toward where Frey stood, and she could quite clearly see the whites of his eyes, the foam bubbling at the corners of his mouth, and the cracked, bloody hands and face, as if he had been tearing at his own skin.
“Fuck,” Frey said, along with Johan's exclamation of disgust. “It's a human.”
“Infected.”
“Let him come inside. Easier to clean the mess,” Frey said, her emotions glazing over in an icy film. She didn't like killing, but with an infected human, she had no choice. They were a hazard to everyone. All that remained in their minds once the infection struck was a boiling pool of pain, and a ceaseless urge to kill.
The human grunted, and staggered closer, now snapping his teeth at Frey, who moved aside. Johan, nervous at the sight of insanity, snarled softly, claws developing on his hands. Finally, the human, ravenously driven toward the lure of fresh meat, tripped into the hotel. The stench of rotten meat covered his skin, along with the acrid tang of filthy clothes and dried, unwashed sweat. His broken nails scrabbled at the floor and he looked so pathetic there, exactly like a flopping fish, stranded on the linoleum of their clandestine hotel. Frey crouched near him, aiming carefully as he gibbered and cackled, dribbling foam on the floor.
“Rest well,” she said to the suffering man, and pressed the trigger.
Johan helped her drag the body into a small kitchen, where she would clean up the remains later, along with her brother and the Americans. She didn't feel bad for killing the man – only that it needed to be done in the first place. Why would she feel bad in putting something suffering to rest?
Her brother came bounding into the hotel a few moments later, in full feral form. Gashes and scratches covered his furred form. He shuddered at the blood of the dead human, nostrils twitching. “Bandages,” he rasped through his throat. “We have a badly injured girl and a hysterical sibling with her. We...” His muzzle twisted in a grimace, and he clutched at his side.
“Brother, you must sit! Don't move around and don't be dumb. Are the others okay?”
Evo shook his head stubbornly. “I have to go back out. The others are fine. We had to put down a werewolf. He was... chasing the two we're bringing in now. He... bit some humans. Which I think you're aware of.” Her brother's light blue eyes slid over the human. “I have to go clean up. Check no one else saw.”
Before Frey could add to the matter, she heard the entrance door clang open again. She strode into the entrance to see four werewolves, with two new additions to the family.
One resembled a bloody rag, and lay unconscious in human form. Her green dress hung in tatters, and her skin mottled purple, red and black from whatever horrors inflicted upon it. Her puffed up face lolled to the side of another werewolf, also in human shape. He clung to the unconscious female as if she was the most precious thing in the world, and whispered into her ear. Emma and Horace flanked them, both sporting crimson muzzles, the thick liquid dripping onto the floor.
“I'm gonna need a cigarette,” Frey said.
Chapter Two
Yanus held vigil by his sister's bed, refusing to leave. It tore him up inside to see her as a shell of her former beauty, to have her lie in a small bed breathing pain, waiting for her werewolf healing to kick in and to swallow up the injuries that would kill a normal human twice over.
I'm so sorry, Luelle. I'm so sorry. He raised a shaky hand and stroked his sister's matted black hair, soul shriveling as he examined the extent of her injuries.
When his sister had gone all those years ago to be married to a Russian werewolf, he never imagined seeing her again like this. That cheerful little Armanev girl, a member of one of the proud noble families, reduced to a battered slip of a creature, a shadow of the laughter she had once been.
“You're safe now. You're safe. He'll never have you back.” He crooned the words to his sister, but she lay deep in unconsciousness, oblivious to his comfort. How many years had she endured, with that horror of a man, who had been all sweet smiles and promises to their family, exchanging children – only to then ensnare her in a domestic hell?
The black woman sauntered into the hotel room, tucking away a lighter into her pocket. Yanus examined her, detecting a strange odor emanating from her skin, a mix of honey and peaches. It also came with something else – the faint tang of rust under her skin, not quite wolf-like, but not quite human either.
Light brown irises stared
from her face, accentuated by wide cheekbones, a gently sloping curve to her chin, and long eyelashes over hooded, lazy eyelids. The woman smiled, and dimples pinched in on either side of her mouth. For a moment, Yanus found himself distracted by the unexpected display of beauty.
“Hey,” she said, in a husky voice, folding her arms as she approached the bed and scrutinized his sister. “Welcome to the Springmoon Hotel. Anything you need, we'll try to help with. Though I suspect your sister just needs time, food and drink.”
“Thank you.” Yanus examined the girl with the peculiar smell for a little while longer. What was it about her? He knew she wasn't a werewolf. She didn't have the eyes, or the scent – but there was something different. He turned back to his sister, immensely annoyed and ashamed of his focus drifting onto the woman instead of his sister. After everything Luelle had gone through, she at least deserved his love and care.
“I'm Frey Radev.”
Radev. Have I heard that name before? “Yanus Armanev.”
He saw Frey's expression darken at the mention of his ancient family name. “Ah, yes. My father and mother thought highly of the Armanevs. Then again, my father used to go pretty crazy over anyone of noble heritage.”
Now Yanus thought he realized where the odd displacement of Frey's scent came from. “You were born to two werewolves?”
Frey smiled at this, but it was a thin, loveless curl of her lips. “Yes.”
“Oh.” She didn't need to say anything else. A history of resentment and discrimination lathered itself in the tone of her voice. “I had no idea that was even possible.”
“Neither did my parents.” Frey's fingers started twitching, a nervous habit Yanus often identified with smokers. Frey then studied Yanus for a long time, her eyes searching his body, lingering at his exposed collarbone. He felt as if he was standing in a spotlight, ready to talk to an audience of spectators, and his heart thudded a little faster.