by Emma Dawn
I held still and let myself breathe him in too.
He was all sweaty and smelled like fresh coffee and the bite of flames, and under it all was the sharp musk of a very aroused man that made my toes curl in their boots. I let my hand wander up to his hip and dug my nails into the soft flesh there, anchoring us both.
He let out a growl, and before I thought better of it, I growled back. His head snapped up, his eyes wide, but he didn’t let go of me any more than I let go of him.
“This is not possible. Even if the bite were to take hold, you couldn’t be one of us so soon.” Havoc’s hand was hot on my neck and the urge to wrap my body around his, to rub against him and mark him as my own grew under my skin like a wild wind.
Havoc spun, finally letting me go, though his fingers lingered as long as possible. I stumbled back and Tarack steadied me. His scent filled my nostrils. The sharp bite of fresh ginger and hidden pine trees. I turned and stuck my nose to his neck, taking his smell, and let it trickle through me until it blocked out the rest.
A part of my brain bucked at what I was doing. I was a strong, sensible woman with only a slight fetish for vampires. But that had been when I thought vampires were not real, that they were just a fantasy lover from the books I read.
Tarack wound his hands into my hair and pulled me back a little. His nostrils flared and I couldn’t look away from him. He gave me a slow grin. “Oh, yeah. You’re an Alpha, all right. You ready for a rodeo, sweetheart?”
I blinked up at him, his smell still so heavy in me, it clung to the back of my throat in the most pleasant of ways I didn’t want to lose. “What do you mean?”
He grinned, a flash of white teeth. “Sweetheart, you are the first Alpha female we’ve had in years, which means you are about to get courted by more potential mates than you realize. We’ve had a long time to develop a roster of Alpha males.”
I struggled to swallow around the sudden dryness in my throat. Courted by werewolves.
I kicked my brain into gear, making it work even though it wanted to just revel in the new smells that flickered through me, doing bad things to my ability to string together a cohesive sentence.
“Explain that more clearly, please.”
Tarack grinned wider. “With pleasure.” He tugged me to him, his mouth on mine before I could take another breath.
A rush of sheer need spilled from him into me, and I wrapped my arms around his neck holding him to me. His hands slid down my back and cupped my ass, holding me tightly to his rather hard and demanding-I-pay-attention-to-it cock. I ground my hips against his, trying to get closer, to feel him press against my aching and already soaking wet pussy.
His lips, though, they were soft even while he took control of the kiss. Teeth, tongue, taste, there was no end, no beginning, just this moment of incredible desire that made me forget everything else.
What was this madness? Was it even real?
I didn’t think it was possible, and yet I clung to him, hoping it would not end, that we would toss our clothes and fuck like our lives depended on it.
Tarack pulled back, breathing hard, his face still so close to mine that I could nip at his mouth.
Once more, I tried to pull my brain together from the scattered pieces that the kiss had sent flying in every direction. “Okay, that was amazing, but . . . it didn’t explain anything.”
A hand dropped on my arm. I slowly turned my head to see Havoc staring down at me, his brown eyes amused.
“What it means, Cassandra, is that you are going to have a taste of the strongest male Alphas the Windrun pack has.” He yanked me out of Tarack’s arms and into his.
I gasped and slammed my hands against his chest to stop the momentum. “Wait. Stop. That’s not possible, you said it so yourself. Don’t get me wrong, I’d strip your clothes off and dance naked in the moonlight if you asked nicely, but I’m not a werewolf.” I paused and looked up into his face, searching for the answer. “Am I?”
Chapter 3
When you ask a werewolf if you, yourself, are a werewolf, you kind of expect an answer. I mean, it sounds like it would be a simple yes or no. And I knew it had to be no. I’d been bitten only minutes before, told that I was going to die from the bite, but obviously, my body was doing nothing of the sort.
Then there was the tawny goddess. I looked around for her.
“She’s gone for now. She cannot interfere,” Havoc said. He stared at me for a long time before he answered my first question. His arms around me were warm and reassuring in their strength. Even if the look on his face was anything but reassuring.
“I’m not sure. You smell like one of us, like the forest and waterlilies and wolf all rolled into one stunning mix that will call to all the males. Even those who are not strong enough to be considered for your mate. It wasn’t there before, which I don’t understand.”
Standing in his arms, I knew I was safe. I looked around us. The golden queen was gone, scattered away. The other females from the Windrun pack were huddled close to the water still where I’d left them. But it was the men that were drawing my eyes to them. Men built like some horny, lusting goddess had plucked the parts she liked best and bestowed them upon these men sliding through the forest toward me.
Rippling muscles, fierce eyes, every move indicative of their power and strength. Skin colors ranged from pale all the way through the darkest shade of midnight, eyes of every shade I’d ever seen and some I hadn’t. Something in me sat up and whimpered that we could have them all to ourselves. Something that felt disturbingly like a large, furred wolf. I opened my mouth to deny what I was feeling, what I was seeing.
A low growl trickled up my throat and I slapped my hands over my mouth. Horrified, I looked back to Havoc. He grinned down at me.
“Welcome to the Windrun pack, Cassandra. I think I’ll take you to Ralph. He can check you out and make sure you understand what is going to happen. Probably better to come from him than me. And maybe he can explain how this is happening to us both.”
Havoc slung an arm around my waist and half-carried me out of the clearing and into the shadows of the forest. I finally found my voice.
“What do you mean it’s better to come from Ralph?” Ralph was the werewolf healer, or shaman, depending on how you looked at it. How would it be better than the information coming from Havoc, a man I trusted already?
Havoc stepped onto a pair of downed trees and I followed. My legs were still more than a little bit jelly from Tarack’s kiss. And Havoc’s offer. And all those men and the desire burning through them and into me like a connection of sheer pleasure.
“Ralph has no stake in what you choose. I do. I am the current leader of the pack, you know that.”
“I do.” I giggled. That sounded a bit too much like a wedding vow answer.
He shot a look at me, his eyes twinkling in the dark light. I frowned. How the hell could I see that? I was human. Wasn’t I?
I sighed. “How could I possibly be a werewolf, Havoc? I mean, seriously, even I realize it shouldn’t be that easy.”
He shook his head. “To be honest, I tried not to get too close to you before. I wanted you from the moment I saw you, and I knew it would be too dangerous to try to turn you.” He shrugged. “I’m hoping Ralph will have some insight. He usually does, if you don’t mind him being a bit of a dick about getting to the answers.”
I stepped away from Havoc, taking a bit of space. That close to the powerful werewolf with the perfect jawline—not to mention the fact he was still completely naked—made it hard to think. “You aren’t bothered that Tarack kissed me, or that I kissed him back?”
Havoc grunted. “I would have done the same if I were him. He is one of the seven Alpha males here. Any one of them would make a good mate for you, but we also recognize that the process of you choosing one of us will mean we share you for some time.”
Mate for me. As if I were just going to pick one of them and spend the rest of my life in this place? My mind rebelled and I made mysel
f glare at him.
“You think I’m just going to drop my entire life and stay here in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere? I’ve done the marriage thing, it didn’t work for me.”
Havoc stopped moving and just looked at me. “I don’t think you realize yet that your wolf has a say in this too. Search your heart, Cassandra. What do you feel?”
I continued to glare at him. “Don’t stare at me like that.” Because when he kept his eyes on me I was sure I wanted to whimper and maybe even howl his name to the heavens. Something under my skin begged to be set free. Something I’d denied for longer than I cared to admit.
Maybe I would stay for a little while, just to see if they could help me control this feeling.
Yes, that’s what I told myself. And then the rest of Havoc’s words truly hit me.
My feet stopped in midair and I stumbled to a stop. “You all are going to share me?”
He was ahead of me and he looked back as a wicked, sexier than sin grin slid across his features. “Yeah, share. I think I’ll let Ralph explain the rest.”
The thing was, I had a pretty good imagination. I might not be a writer like my bestie, Ally. But I loved to read, and that meant I could come up with some hot damn scenarios all by my little old self.
Sharing. Just like Ally was shared between five amazing, gorgeous vampires.
I drew a quick breath. “And there are seven of you?”
Havoc laughed and held his hand out to me. “There are.”
I took his hand, mostly because my knees had gone all jellified again. Seven men, all for me.
Giddy-the-fuck-up. My brain tried to come back online to help me out.
“Is it safe? Can you knock me up, or give me a disease?”
His hand tightened on mine as we came out of the thicker part of the forest to the small hut that was Ralph’s home and place of healing. “Yes, to the first, no to the second. There is only one disease that werewolves can get, and it’s a sickness that is a result of too much contact with silver.”
He knocked on the healer’s door. “Ralph.”
“Go away. I’m playing with a friend.” He sounded a bit out of breath.
Havoc grimaced. “Put your friend away. This is serious.”
Somewhat horrified and unable to stop the laughter that went with it, I glanced at Havoc. “Does he mean . . .” I waved a hand at my crotch. He didn’t mean that Ralph was masturbating, did he?
Ralph jerked the door open, his wrinkled cheeks flushed and his pants still hanging open to . . . “Oh, shit.” I looked away. Not because I was a prude, hell, I’d seen my share of dicks before. But seriously, why didn’t Havoc just let him finish?
“It can’t be that serious,” Ralph grumbled, and I gave him another few seconds to cover himself before I looked back at him.
The healer arched an eyebrow. “Figured out she was a wolf, did you?”
Havoc’s jaw dropped. “You knew?”
Ralph pushed past us and motioned for us to follow him. “’Course I did. But she buried her wolf a long time ago, put her to sleep, which makes it harder for us to tell right away.”
I was already shaking my head. “Not possible. I think I would know if I were a werewolf.”
“You like danger?” He glanced at me and I thought about my draw to extreme sports.
“Maybe.”
“And fighting?” Ralph kept moving ahead of us.
There was that love for karate. I hunched my shoulders. “Maybe.”
He barked a laugh. “Sure thing, sweet cheeks. Come on up to the Haven.”
I glanced at Havoc with an arched eyebrow. He gave me a wink. “It is where most of the pack lives. We don’t like huts like Ralph here. He’s old school.”
I made myself reach out and put a hand on Ralph’s shoulder, stopping him. “Tell me what is going on. Stop walking away, stop jerking me around,” I had to fight a smile with those words considering what he’d just been doing, “and explain what is happening to me. Right. Now.” Those last two words snapped out of me with the voice I used in the karate dojo. This time, though, I felt an actual power in them that attached me to Ralph.
His eyes widened and then he smiled. “Look at that. You got the jam already. Here’s the deal. You were made a werewolf when you were younger; that’s the only answer. Was there a time that you were sick, or fell very ill? I’m betting you haven’t been sick since.”
I frowned. “When I was nine, I was in the hospital for a week or more. A dog bit my shoulder . . .” I trailed off as I touched the now-healed bite mark from earlier. Ralph yanked my hand so I went to one knee. He inspected the shoulder carefully and nodded.
“Yup, those are old bite marks under the new ones. So, you made it out of the hospital and then what, did you ever shift?”
Horror flickered through me. “No.” The word was hard and sharp.
Ralph shrugged. “You buried your wolf. It’s possible, only with a very strong will.”
I thought that was something of a compliment, or at least I chose to take it that way. “Keep going. What’s the rest about choosing a mate?”
“You accept that you’re a werewolf, just like that?” Havoc asked. “Most people have trouble with the concept.”
I closed my eyes, searching my feelings, doing what I could to be honest. “I don’t know if I fully believe it, but I don’t ignore my body when it tells me things. I can smell you, Havoc, and I could smell Tarack. I could pull you both out of a crowd with my eyes closed. I’m sure of it. The urge to separate the fighting women couldn’t be stopped. And then when that female Alpha from the other pack showed up, I wanted to get her away from all of us. That’s not normal for a . . .” I stumbled over the next word, “human.”
I opened my eyes to see both men staring at me. Ralph was the first to recover. “Yup, Alpha female. That’s why you can accept this so easily. You know what you’ve got to do, and you’re going to do it. Here’s the deal. You’re going to have one week to choose a mate. One Alpha male will be with you each night, but not during the day. At the end of the week, on the night of the full moon, you will pick your soul mate. Badda bing badda boom, we’ve got us a new mated pair to lead the pack.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. Mostly because it sounded too easy, and if my bestie’s journey into the vampire Hive had taught me anything, it was that there was rarely an easy way of doing things.
“What aren’t you saying?”
Ralph and Havoc shared a glance that made me want to smack their heads together like a couple of melons. “Tell me,” I said. “Don’t leave me in the dark. That almost got Ally killed, and in the end harmed her relationship with her men. Tell me the truth or I will walk away, right now.”
The words were not an empty threat. And I think Havoc, at least, knew it.
Ralph let out a noisy, spluttering breath that was all frustration. “Damn bitchy Alpha females. The deal is simple. Our pack is on the verge of a breakdown. If you don’t pick your mate on the night of the full moon, the Bloodfire pack will take us over and the law states that is fair game.”
“A merger?” I frowned, trying to see the downside. “How is that bad? I mean other than the obvious in having to deal with that woman.” I was doing my best not to call her names. I barely knew her, after all.
Again, the two men shared a glance, this one longer. Finally it was Havoc who spoke. “You know how in a lion pride, when a new male comes in, he kills all the cubs? He does it to put all the females into heat, so he can mate with them and produce his own bloodline.”
My skin chilled. “What are you saying?”
Havoc didn’t look away from me. “The Alpha female will kill all the females in this pack, to cement her bond with us, to force the men of this pack to look to her.”
Chapter 4
I stood in a hut in a moonlit forest with two werewolves while my brain tried to absorb what Havoc had just said. “Let me get this straight, that . . . that bitch will kill all the females of this pack?” My blood was
singing hot and angry just thinking about it. I’d seen the females picking on the one submissive girl, and I couldn’t just walk away, I’d stepped in to help her.
That had been pure instinct, and I couldn’t understand how someone, anyone could possibly just wipe them all out. Even the ones who’d been bullying the other girl, they had the look of women who didn’t know their own worth.
Havoc shook his head. “We will try to stop them, if that is the case. But it will mean we will lose more than just the females. We’ll lose men too. Bloodfire is not known for being a pack of kindness. Bianca rules through fear and iron control.”
I rubbed a hand over my face, uncertain at how me fucking a large number of men—seven to be exact—and enjoying their pleasure for the next week was going to change anything. “Can I meet the seven Alphas before I have to strip down in front of them? Or is this a ‘surprise’ look who you are fucking tonight kind of deal?”
Havoc nodded, his lips quirking. “Yes you can meet them first, and you’ll be given a bodyguard through the process. He will not be an Alpha, but he will help you understand what is going on and answer any questions you might have as we go along.”
We started walking again, and on the far side of the clearing, we stepped onto a path that led through yet more trees. In the distance was the constant babble of water. I tipped my head. A small river, or creek maybe?
The path was clear of the snow that covered the trees and made it feel like I was walking through a fairy wonderland. I could believe I was dreaming if not for the occasional bite of cold wind on my cheeks, or the smell of Havoc’s skin as it swept up my nose and gave me a rush of longing so intense, I was pretty sure my panties were already soaked.
Ten minutes later, the path opened and the scene in front of me did not dispel the sense I was in a fairy tale, not for one bit.
A large structure that could only be called a castle stood at the edge of a cliff surrounded by the encroaching the forest.