ARINA'S MATE (Shifters of the Bulgarian Bloodline Book 2)

by Dalia Wright

  Maybe I was mistaken about the danger. Or maybe I wasn’t. She kept on the cautious mask, in the meanwhile switching between her conversation with the charming Danny and making sure Anna wasn’t making a fool out of herself. Thankfully, her best friend was not snogging the face off anyone yet, and had instead fallen in what appeared to be engaging discussion between her and a short-haired girl with high cheekbones and pixie-like curves.

  “Do you think I’m ignorant for never having traveled, Danny?” Tia bombed the question. In his place, she thought she would, but she wanted to know his response.

  “Well…” Danny gave a shrug. “Yes. I think those who do not see the world limit their minds. But that is not to say I haven’t seen travelers with closed thoughts as well. But, is more likely. So why? Why stay in one place?”

  The honesty was refreshing. It prompted Tia further, down the path she felt most comfortable with, but what Anna insisted was terrible social manner. Tia didn’t think her manner uncomfortable. She just preferred honesty. More honesty than strictly necessary, perhaps, but Tia strongly believed the world would be a much better place if people admitted to things more often.

  “My mom’s a druggie, my dad was an alkie, and my brother’s the biggest redneck you could ever imagine. Let’s just say that between them, I had to grow up pretty fast and snag myself a job so I could move the hell out. I’ve just honestly not given the outside world long enough thought past working my job, scouring internet at home, and dealing with my best friend over there.” Tia jerked her thumb at Anna, who was now laughing uproariously with the short-haired woman.

  The Bulgarian took a moment to process the words, before nodding. “Bad parents.”

  “Mm. Happens. Not much we can do about it growing up. They’re everything, you know.”

  The ghost of an expression flitted over Danny’s face. “Yes. We unconditionally love our parents.”

  “That’s right. We don’t see what’s wrong. And if there is something wrong, we don’t understand it. It’s only later we have a choice. You can’t always help what happens to you. You can choose how it defines you later. And I,” Tia announced proudly, taking another sip of the cherry beer, “Do not let it define me as a victim. Simple.”

  Danny nodded along to her words, apparently rapt. Hastily, he raised his drink. “Good thinking. I must say, I find you a little more interesting than expected. Is not so often to hear this for me. Is almost a shame you have not given thought to travel.” He glanced down to the pocket where his cellphone buzzed. After a moment’s hesitation, his eyes shifted into a glint of resolve. “You should explore the world. You really should. You will have time. Maybe,” he said with a soft smile, “You ever want to come to Europe, you can call my number. I show you the best places.”

  Tia sensed a dismissal in his words. “Are you going?” Disappointment flooded her. Anna was right. She shouldn’t have just launched into the topic and presented her views on attitude so soon. But honesty mattered. It always mattered. However, she wasn’t entirely sure if he was planning to depart because of her forwardness or not.

  “Yes. But not because of you. Because,” he pointed at his cellphone, tucked away in his pocket, “Someone is waiting for me. They have texted. I give you my number, though. I would like to talk to you again. If okay?”

  “Sure.” The disappointment twanged, even in spite of the offering he gave her. She didn’t want the man with the amber eyes to vanish from sight, or to lose the earthy, pine scent of his body, which relaxed and aroused her at the same time. She would have seriously considered accepting if he offered the invite to go somewhere a little more private. His pale skin, and the eyes that had turned from cold agates to something more malleable and soft, shone regret as he stood up, her number secure in his cellphone.

  “I am truly sorry. You are beautiful girl. I do not hesitate to say that. In mind and in heart.” He bent to kiss her knuckles. “I hope to speak to you soon.”

  Although for Tia, it was a little sudden for someone to suddenly be making that sort of declaration, it did lift her heart, making something flutter. Under the obnoxious noise of the music, the shifting neon glare and the sleazy press of hopefuls packed inside, Tia didn’t feel ashamed to say she wanted to speak more to this man. Instead, he retracted from the conversation, as if spooked. As if summoned.

  She watched the man with the amber eyes depart, along with the fascination and consternation he carried with him.

  She bit her lip, idly drumming the side of the table as she stared at her phone, with Danny’s number displayed. There was something suspicious about his withdrawal. She knew she had no right to pry into it, no reason to think it anything other than something normal.

  However, she always liked seeking out truth, as well.

  Chapter Two

  Danny hesitated outside the filthy alleyway, with the pungent odor of accumulating trash and rotten food, and the stain of urine on the walls. His heart thrashed in wild fear, his lips were dry over his teeth, and his limbs trembled, turning into mush. If he did this… if he dared do this, what retribution would it bring?

  Growling hatred hit his ears. Lurking further down the alley, tucked in the darkness, shone animalistic yellow eyes. The figure emerged out of the black, revealing a decrepit, dirt-stained man with a savageness to his features, a hungry, gaunt restlessness. Living on the city streets had not been kind, compared to his natural habitat in the mountains. The man hated this environment with a burning fervour, but it also offered more stability. Security. Except he had rejected the life the others had offered, and dragged his son with him.

  “Well, boy? I don’t see anyone tagging behind you. But I smell the scent on you. Are you going back in?” His father limped over, his emotions betrayed by the enlarging of his canines, the intense glimmer of the twin suns in his stare. Danny knew he caught the scent of fear as well, knew his heart traitorously pumped the sound to his father’s enhanced ears. The mild inflection of his question betrayed the knowledge bubbling within. He merely waited for Danny’s new excuse.

  “There was cop presence, and no one was alone. We can’t be suspicious. We have to pick and choose, if we do this at all.”

  His father, Nikolai Lubova, shivered indignation, but kept the rage in check. A slice of moonlight cut through the clouds, hitting the open corner where the buildings widened out. “You’d have me eating rats again, boy? You’d reduce yourself to that level, too? I thought you would be more proud of your,” he started coughing, clamping a liver-spotted hand over his mouth, “H-heritage. Proud of who we are. You disappoint me every time.”

  Danny had no idea what to say. Every option led to ruin. His father hated how he refused the flesh, rejected the attempts to indoctrinate him in the noble way their ancestors had lived. Yet, Danny still assisted his father with kills, still lured people out whenever the craving of flesh became too strong for Nikolai to endure, even after he lost the advantage of his once handsome features, and the strength in his arms. The move to America had reduced that assistance, almost as if Danny was trying to wean his father off the flesh – but at least four more women would never find their way back home to their families.

  How did you tell the man who brought you up that you didn’t want it? How could he explain that there was so much more to the world than the Bulgarian forests and mountains, and the flesh-eating branch of the others he knew?

  The ones he had met here were different. They averted human flesh, for the most part, taking rigorous training to immunize themselves to the craving. They didn’t go on rampages in small, isolated villages, spreading infection like the Slavic brethren. His father, hoping for glory in the new land, was disgusted upon finding this out, and refused the offer of a job, a chance for security.

  Unbidden, flashes of memories assaulted Danny’s brain. Whole villages erased from the mountains. Howling laughter, as many dived into the living skin of pleading, crying humans, content with their nature, the sinew stuck in the gums of their teeth.

>   “They just live different here, father. They learned to cope without it.”

  “Ridiculous. Oppressing their nature. You know,” Nikolai said, giving his son a disapproving glare, “I know you will flake out again. You’ve always been soft. Nothing like your older brothers. They made me proud. I wish you were strong, like them. I still wish.”

  And they’re dead, Danny thought, with savage, bitter satisfaction. He thought once more of the woman inside the club, the dark haired, blue eyed beauty that had a way of looking into you, of saying words that struck somewhere close to home. She would have been the perfect target. He knew she would have followed him out the club, he could smell the arousal coming from her skin, no matter how hard she tried to hide it. He might have even taken her to a motel and screwed her under the blankets, but then Nikolai would be lurking nearby, waiting for the morsel that was promised.

  Everywhere, at each turn, all roads twisted and bent into Nikolai, and the memories of the killings, the promise that blood was thicker than water.

  “You should have taken the offer, father. We wouldn’t be like this. They wouldn’t be looking for us. We would not be skulking criminals. This is not pride. This is foolish stubbornness.” Shit, Danny thought, even as he forced the words out from his constricted throat. He won’t listen. He never does. The pride kills him.

  His father lashed out with clawed hands. Danny flinched as the sharp nails tore into his cheek, leaving bloody furrows. “No Lubanov will bow down to the demands of weak-willed, shameful inheritors of our blood. I would rather live in shit and piss than bend the knee to the softness that infects our whole society.”

  Danny breathed hard, the fear pinching his heart, fogging his brain. He hated his father’s anger, dreaded it. Still, the words kept escaping. “No Lubanov ever got exiled from their own community before,” he spat. “Even your appetite was drawing too much attention.” Guilt pounded at Danny as well. For failing his father. For having taken so many lives. For not being able to stop. It was always luck, or a certain word someone said, that spared them. Not because he was a morally correct person.

  He might try to take the righteous stance, but he was every bit the monster he believed his father was. And monsters stuck together, so the stones didn’t hurt them.

  Nikolai snarled, before falling silent. The tentative slap of footsteps perked Danny’s attention. Fear iced every cell. No. It couldn’t be. His father backed deeper into the shadows, growling softly. To Danny’s relief, the peach odor of the blue-eyed girl didn’t permeate his nostrils. It wasn’t her. He slid further into darkness as well, heart palpitating fast.

  One, two, three people trotted into the filthy under stain of human society, where Danny and Nikolai lurked. A new worry punctured his brain, when he recognized the distinctive scent of his species.

  The others, who hunted.

  “Run,” Nikolai hissed. “Son, get behind me. You are faster.”

  “Father…”

  “Run!” Nikolai snapped. The noise drew the three others, though they had long since detected the scent, probably from when Danny had entered and left the club. Or maybe they had been following for days, tracking old smells.

  “Father, I’ll help…”

  “Run!” Nikolai howled, swiping at his son. “Abomination of blood you may be, but you are still my son! I will not have you die! Not after everything that has happened. Obey this, if nothing else!”

  Wasting no more breath on words, Nikolai’s teeth distended, the claws thickened, and strands of hair began developing on his face. His throat rumbled in a series of growls, and he lunged at the three intruders.

  Danny groaned. If his father had fed in the last three weeks, he would be so much stronger. He would cope. But he was too addicted to human flesh – he refused all else. Stubborn, foolish man.

  Screams, yelps and growls flooded the tight, narrow space.

  Now, as his father fought the werewolves, Danny knew he had a real chance at freedom. He could leave the old man to his fate, and escape without a murmur. Maybe he could slink off to a distant state, and try and join the companies down there under a different name.

  Maybe. Just maybe.

  But, even after all this time, with the knotted rope of hatred, misery and guilt squeezing his guts, he couldn’t.

  He just couldn’t leave the old man. Besides, he would be chased to the ends of the earth, anyway. No werewolves accepted the Lubanovs anymore. Whatever noble dynasty his father claimed of their lineage, had fallen to scraping out scraps from the bottom of a barrel. There was nothing left in the world but to run, hide, and kill.

  Danny took off the restrictions placed on his mind, giving into to the animal side. Power flooded through his muscles, twitching every nerve. With a bone-grating howl, he dove into the pack of American werewolves alongside his father.

  Too late as well, he realized, there was a scent of peach there, just a short distance behind them. The warmth of her. The human he had tried to spare from the ravenous teeth of his father, and the craven heart that could not resist those demands for long.

  Danny felt the world collapsing around him. The death he had tried so hard to avoid decided instead to follow him, as if hungry for it, mocking his attempt of goodness.

  I deserve this, he thought, despair seeping. I deserve this.

  Chapter Three

  Horror wedged into Tia’s soul. One moment, the world had been perfectly sane, or as near to sane as you could get in a world that routinely indulged in war, suffering and strife, and where people still abused one another on a daily basis. The next moment, after following Danny out of the club, things had taken a drastic shift into madness. She saw him cut into a corner of town notorious for drug dealers and sexual assault, and decided right there and then that she wouldn’t be stupid enough to go there alone, and she wondered what on earth had possessed her to even contemplate following the man outside. If he had grabbed a cab, that would be the last she would see of him. If he turned out to be as dangerous as her instincts screamed at her, then that would maybe become the last of her.

  Nope. Insanity averted, she began to venture back into the club, texting her friend again to say she wasn’t going to stalk the guy – except a hard, rough hand clamped down on her shoulder.

  In shock, she whirled around to face four men, all with eye colors varying from deep brown to sickly yellow. Her bowels turned to water when the tall, chestnut haired one grasping her shoulder then spun and shoved her forward.

  “She can be bait,” he said. “The target was interested in her, enough to actively leave her alone instead of use her for happy fun snack time.”

  Target? Bait? Snack? “What the hell is happening?” Tia said, trying to break out of the man’s steel grasp. “Why are you doing this? Let me go!”

  “Nuh uh, sweetheart,” the man growled. “You’ll be taking a little trip with us downtown. No harm, well, very little harm should come to you… in theory.”

  The other three strode ahead, grinning, leaving Tia with the far stronger, amber glare of the man, who now clamped a hand over her mouth and bustled her along the street. She bit his palm viciously, but all it brought her was a sharp thud to the side of her head, and temporary unconsciousness. When she recovered from the inky blackness, the man was ready for her. “You can scream all you want now, sweetheart. No one here will hear, or care. If you do scream, though, I can’t guarantee your safety. Just saying.” He gleefully squeezed her throat, making her choke and gasp, making a mockery of the notion of safety.

  Confusion and fear flooded Tia. She struggled to think, to understand what was happening. Sweaty, rough hands grasped at her flailing limbs. The stench of sweat and rotten food made her want to gag. “Why are you doing this?” She managed to force through her throat. Every time she raised her voice, the man’s grip became harder. He could quite easily snap her neck without a second thought. Tia sensed the strength under his skin, knew that there was absolutely nothing she could do, even though her body involuntarily
kept fighting, thrashing like a fish trapped in a net.

  “Never you mind why. But if you keep asking stupid questions – well, if you keep talking, really, I’ll kill you.”

  Tia immediately bit her tongue. Fear and rage burned, along with disgust when she felt a distinctive boner pressing against the back of her thighs. Even if the man wasn’t planning to rape her here and there or kill her, he obviously enjoyed her struggling, the sheer power he had over her. He made audible sniffing sounds next to her ear, and laughed quietly.

  “I can smell your fear…”

  Of course you fucking can, fucker, Tia thought savagely. Who wouldn’t be afraid? She swallowed her mind-numbing panic and tried to manage the shaking in her limbs, even as he moved her closer to what sounded like the stirrings of a fight. Shrieks, yelps and howls ripped the atmosphere.

  Fear intensified. It sounded like a pack of dogs fighting. Is he going to feed me to dogs? She frowned at the thought. The man has me in a vice grip and that’s the first thing I think of? Her thoughts shot in all directions, fuelled by terror and the vain attempts to calm down her racing heart, to remind herself that panic was what got stupid people killed.