The Wolf's Heart

by Jenna Leigh

  Allen stood in the doorway, his cool and aloof expression missing. Instead, he looked angry. He sniffed the air and frowned. What was with the damn sniffing?

  Apparently, her deodorant worked, because with one last sniff, he shut the door. His footsteps slowly faded into the distance and Lainie let out her breath. For a minute, she’d been terrified. She was aware he didn’t care for her, or more than likely didn’t think she was good enough for Marcus, but he’d looked downright hostile.

  At the thought of Marcus, her heart ached. What was this Lune Gene? What did it all mean? And now that she thought of it, where in the hell was Samuel?

  She scooted out from under the desk and scooped up the papers. Stopping to think, she grabbed one of the larger books off the shelf, and folding the papers in half, she shoved them inside. For now, that would have to do. She hurried to the door with the book in her hand, pressing her ear to the thick wooden surface before she opened it, intent on running out of the room before she got caught.

  Unfortunately, for her, there was someone waiting on the other side. Lainie stared up into a pair of angry eyes that seared her with their intensity. She felt like she was in a spotlight, being questioned without even a word being said. “Hi, Marcus.”

  “Hello, Lainie.” His lips twisted in a parody of a smile. “Making yourself at home, I see. Allen thought he heard someone in there printing something.”

  “Oh, but I was just getting a book.” She held up her book then squeaked, breaking off when his fingers gripped her elbow. He pulled her along with him toward the den, his mouth compressed into a tight line. “Marcus, you’re hurting me.” He jerked even harder when she dug in her heels. She tried to sit, thinking he would let her go.

  Instead, he picked her up, putting put her over his shoulder. When she wiggled, his hand came down on her bottom with a resounding crack. “Be still.” His voice was thick with menace, rumbling beneath her outraged shriek of protest.

  “Put me down.” She pinched him on the side. “I will not be—” She shut up when he practically threw her on the couch. The book fell on the floor and slid under the coffee table.

  He paid it no mind, just leaned down and caged her in with his arms on either side of her head. “Be quiet or I’ll make you wish you had.” There was something strange about his eyes. They were gold.

  A scream bubbled up inside her, but she refused to let it out. She was afraid if she started, she might never stop.

  “Sir?”

  “What?” Marcus snapped at Allen, who stood unobtrusively at the door.

  Had he seen the humiliating way Marcus had brought her in here? She took in the smirk on his face and knew for a fact he had. Her face got hotter, if possible, and she gritted her teeth.

  “You have company,” Allen said.

  “Tell them I’m busy.”

  “Is that any way to treat your one and only uncle?” David Crow stepped into the room, dwarfing Allen with his presence. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at the pair frozen in place on the couch. “I hate to interrupt this little lover’s quarrel,” his lips twisted, “but you need to know some things I’ve been putting off telling you for a long time now.”

  “You!” Marcus snarled. “You lied to me.” At that, he leapt at David with his hands stretched out toward his neck.

  Lainie never really saw them move. David stepped to one side, moving faster than Marcus did.

  Allen silently melted out of the way, leaving the two men to fight it out.

  “Elaine?” David called out.

  “Yes, sir?” she answered, automatically.

  “Okohke.” David chanted the word, and she immediately slumped over on the couch.

  Chapter Twelve

  Marcus stopped and stared in shock. “What did you do to her?” he roared and rushed David again. He quickly realized that his uncle had simply been avoiding his blows and kicks. Now, David turned on him with a snarl and grabbed his arm, wrenching his fingers in a viselike grip.

  “What does it look like?” David released him when Marcus’s foot connected with his thigh and he went down with a thump and a groan. “Boy, you need to respect your elders.”

  “I am the Lupin; I don’t have to do anything.” Marcus sneered in triumph.

  “Well, it’s about time someone beat the Lupin’s bony little ass again, huh?” David rushed him, grabbing him around the waist, their momentum carrying them against the far wall with a crash.

  Marcus grunted and tried to break out of his uncle’s hold. The man was built like a linebacker, much larger than he was. Physically there was no contest between them. However, Marcus was the smarter of the two, at least he hoped. If not, his uncle was about to kick his ass. He brought both fists down on the other man’s broad shoulders; there was a grunt, but no other reaction. David kept him pinned to the wall, slamming him repeatedly against the hard surface. Marcus saw stars, then he growled and shifted his hands until claws formed. He used them to nail David in the sides, and this time, the other man moved just enough for him to use his feet for leverage. He kicked out, hitting the man in both knees, and heard them breaking with a satisfying pop.

  David went down with a pained groan. “Fuck that hurts. You sneaky little bastard.”

  Marcus bent over with his hands on his knees, winded. “You tried to kill me.” After a minute, he held out his hand and waited for his uncle to take it.

  “Nah, just a little harmless maiming.” David took the proffered hand. “That was a good move. Who taught you that one?”

  With a grin, Marcus pulled him to his feet. “You.”

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot.” His uncle put his hand on the wall to hold himself up. His knees began to straighten, instantly repairing themselves before he took another step. “Damn.” He cracked the vertebrae in his neck by tilting his head back and forth. “I’m too old for this shit.”

  “Why did you leave me?” Marcus’s voice was soft, but the other man turned at the plaintive sound in it.

  “Because, with me there, you would never have become the leader you could be. You would have relied on me to advise you, and I wanted you to stand alone. Plus there was Lainie to think of.” David winced as he hobbled over to the couch across from her and sat down.

  Marcus straightened Lainie from her slumped position before he sat and placed her feet in his lap. She hadn’t moved the whole time he and David had fought, which he found weird as hell. “How did you do that? And what did you say?”

  “I said a word that doesn’t come up in everyday conversation. It means crow. It’s a posthypnotic suggestion, she will only do it at mine and one other’s commands, so don’t worry.”

  “Joanna, I presume?”

  “You got it in one, never said you weren’t a smartass.” David grinned, then sobered. “I had to get her away. There was a treaty of sorts between your father and me, but if I insisted on keeping her out of the pack much longer, it would have been war. So, I faked my death, placed the blame on Jo and we took Lainie off to the wilds of Canada.”

  “What do you mean, in the pack?”

  “Lainie is a Breeder, Marcus. Surely you knew that. Remember, we saved her from that facility.”

  “Yeah, I remember, but she doesn’t. I guess Joanna did that too. Mind telling me how?”

  “Jo’s psychic abilities were enhanced by your father’s so-called genetic therapy. He wasn’t at all pleased with the results in her case. Imagine him creating a woman that can lift a Volkswagen with her mind. A little out of character for him, huh?” David’s opinions about Marcus’s father were well known, and as Marcus shared them, he didn’t bother to disagree.

  “So, you took off with her. How come they didn’t find you? I mean, we are trackers, it’s what we were made for, really.”

  “Joanna always had her feelers out for the pack, and she’d leave before they were even in the area, most of the time anyway.”

  Marcus thought on that for a minute. To give himself time to adjust, he rang the maid for some
tea, not the hot variety, but ice-cold sweet tea. The drink always made him think of the summers he’d spent back home, a time of innocence. He had a feeling that he was about to lose even more of his innocence tonight.

  His uncle had something he wanted to get off his chest, though Marcus wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it. However, as the leader of the pack, he had to be sure that he was informed about these things. He also thought it was connected to this investigation Lainie was involved in up to her eyeballs.

  The two men waited until the tray was brought. It was a testament to the way Marcus lived that Carrie, the maid, didn’t bat an eye at Lainie stretched out on the couch. “Thanks.” He smiled at the girl and she looked shyly at David before sashaying out of the room.

  “You remember when you snuck in the back of the truck I drove into the facility that night?”

  “Yeah.” Marcus remembered it with some pride. He’d gotten one over on his uncle and it made him feel like a man. David was hard to trick. It was a game they played. That night, it almost got him killed.

  “Remember how you found Lainie?”

  Marcus closed his eyes and swallowed the bile that rose to his throat. “Yeah.” His hands tightened reflexively on her feet, touching her as if to reassure himself that she was fine. Nothing had happened. He’d saved her.

  “She’s a Breeder. Joanna was the prototype, you know. A little bit of me, a whole lot of her and way too much of your ignorant father’s blind faith in science,” David explained.

  “I know some of that from the files. My Daddy’s a Mad Scientist 101.” Marcus waved his hand. “I want to know why and how they got her in the first place.”

  “He always claimed mother agreed to the experiment. Some of those women did get paid to birth those kids. Most of the Breeders are women, but not all. There are male Breeders too, but, with the females of our species, it isn’t as hard to breed with a human male.” He shrugged.

  “Yet another case of the female of the species being better than the male, so? I can tell there’s something else you aren’t telling me.” Marcus leaned forward.

  “Lainie was to be your father’s mate from the first. He contacted her birth mother and made all the arrangements. He was already plotting Diana’s demise when he had Lainie’s mother inseminated with the Breeder sperm.”

  “Ick.” Marcus grimaced. “Wait. He wanted to kill my mother when I was three, why?”

  “Because of me.” David’s eyes turned bright red. “She wasn’t my sister; she was my granddaughter.”

  Marcus was too tired to even be angry at the lie, because in the end, it didn’t matter, David was still family and he still loved him. However, he did want to know one thing. “I still don’t get why he wanted to kill Mother because of that.”

  “You had brothers and sisters.”

  “Yeah and they’re all dead. I read that part in the files I managed to hack from his computer. Even if he called it experiment failed or terminated it means the same thing.”

  “That’s not all. Some weren’t born human.” His uncle, no he had to stop thinking of him as that, his grandfather put his glass down and took a deep breath.

  “What’re you saying? None of us are human, we’re more than that.”

  “I mean, they were born as wolves. Only, they’re different from the average wolf, caught between two worlds, unable to shift to human, but able to think like one. Your father thought of them as abominations and he blamed Diana for it. You were the only one born as a human.”

  “How many are there?” Marcus rubbed his face with his hands. He would have never guessed this, not in a million years.

  “Over a dozen, I’m not sure how many are left. He tried to kill most of them, but some escaped and are more than likely scattered across the United States and parts of Mexico.” David sat back and drank his tea while Marcus assimilated the new horror his father had set loose on the world.

  “Shit.”

  “That about covers it. The point is, when he found he couldn’t make any more like you with Diana, he decided someone else would give him the children he wanted. And that’s where Lainie came in. He gave her that jacked-up serum at the age of ten so she’d be his, and only his, or so he thought.”

  “How did you find out about it in the first place?” Marcus had always wondered how he’d known to turn up on that night, just in the nick of time.

  David gave him a wry grin. “Who’s the one person that would know your daddy’s secrets?”

  Marcus sat back and thought about it, until it dawned on him. “Mother?”

  “Yeah, the sick son of a bitch told her all about it, thinking she couldn’t tell me while stuck in wolf form.” He scratched his head. “Well, he never counted on Jo being able to pick up her thoughts on that subject. Diana was frantic to stop him. She wasn’t jealous of him by then, she just wanted to protect innocent people from being hurt.” David sighed. “Too bad your mama was smarter than me.”

  “Let’s hope I take after her.” Marcus couldn’t resist the jab. “This serum, what the hell does it do?” He didn’t really understand that part.

  “He invented it especially to for Elaine. It imprints a certain male’s genetic code in her subconscious. She can find him by not a sense of smell but the physiognomy of that particular male.”

  A cold chill raced up Marcus’s spine. “She was programmed to respond to my father?”

  “Yeah. After that he planned to start visiting her. Not sex,” he hastened to add when Marcus gagged. “Gifts, visits, making her used to his presence in her life.” David laughed.

  “What’s so funny? That’s just sick.”

  “The thing is, if nothing else, you look a lot like Samuel Bei.” He ignored Marcus’s scowl. “Enough to fool a ten-year-old brain into thinking that you were the one she was looking for. You stayed around her just long enough for her to imprint onto you, and then, well, the rest is history.”

  “She’s imprinted on me? Like baby ducks on their mamas?”

  “Basically, yeah. She likes you, and only you. Everyone has a type, Marcus. Lainie’s just happens to be tall, with dark hair and eyes and a nice smile, if I say so myself.” David preened.

  Marcus knew very well what he was talking about, because his mother had told him countless times when he was a little boy that he had his uncle’s smile. He couldn’t resist teasing him. “Ew.”

  “What do you mean, ew? There’s nothing wrong with my smile, or yours for that matter.” David sounded indignant.

  Marcus sobered. “It’s just that when we were kids, it was sort of sweet the way she always acted like I was her hero.” He knew it sounded stupid, but it had mattered that Lainie looked up to him, especially when his father seemed to hate his guts.

  “It stuck in your daddy’s craw that she chose you.” The older man chuckled at the memory. “He was upset when she went missing from the lab, and got madder when we showed up at the house with her. Not that he could do a damn thing about it without the elders of the pack knowing what he’d done. He deserved me rubbing his nose in it though. The son of a bitch shouldn’t fuck with nature; it always fucks you back in the end.”

  “I got fucked by nature, Uncle David!” Marcus gnashed his teeth. All this time he’d thought maybe, just maybe, he and Lainie had something special. Now, come to find out, it was all genetics. They’d both been blinded by science or some crap.

  “What are you bitching about? The woman likes you.” David indicated Lainie’s prone form. “Do you know how rare that is?”

  “You just told me that she has to like me.”

  “No, I said she is predispositioned to want to have sex with you.” David frowned at him. “I didn’t say she wanted to be in the same room or even the same state with you. In fact, with a lot of them, that frightens them so much, they run.”

  “Like she did when she was a teenager?”

  “You screwed up.” His uncle pointed a finger at him. “I came to get her that day and she was shaking like a leaf. It took al
l I had not to come beat your ass, boy.”

  “Yeah, I wish you had. It would have saved me from beating myself up for the past decade about it.” Marcus watched his uncle closely when he asked his next question. “You never uh—” He stopped speaking when the other man lifted his head and glared at him.

  “No. And I never would. We’re not animals. Besides, she was just a baby to me, she still is.” He paused. “She was Joanna’s baby chick to hover over and coddle. I just provided the muscle to protect her.”

  “You love her.”

  “Of course I do. She’s funny, smart and she’s not scared of a damn thing. She takes no prisoners when it comes to her job. She’ll ferret out any and all information she wants, any way she can.” The last was said with some pride.

  “Yeah, she got into my files today, I think,” Marcus admitted.

  “What did she see? Anything incriminating? If so, I can have the memories blocked. We’ve had to do it a few times.” The big man pushed a long strand of raven hair out of his face. “Once or twice, your father’s men have snuck up on us, and I’ve had to take care of them. It hasn’t happened in a while.”

  “Yeah, was this before or after I took over?” Marcus spoke with a hard, flat tone in his voice.

  “Before you took over, a lot. After he left the pack, once or twice.” David spread his hands. “Look, I know you’re pissed because I left, but you had all this support, she had nobody. What was I supposed to do? I always kept my ear to the ground about what happened after you moved down here. I was proud of you.”

  Marcus shrugged. “It all came to a head when I turned twenty-three or so.” He folded his hands in his lap, trying to pretend his nails weren’t getting longer. “I found out he was testing some of the younger Weres, including Jordan, to see if he could figure out why they changed into the Wolfkin form.” He swallowed hard and closed his eyes, trying to regain control. It helped, a little. “Me, Jordan, Ben and Stephen killed most of his supporters one by one until he was forced out. I wanted him to challenge me, but he didn’t. Instead, he ran with his tail between his legs.”