by Amber Lynn
Her eyes flashed some kind of evil villain’s celebration gleam just before I heard what she’d been waiting for. It wasn’t easy to push my mate out of the way, but he seemed to be stuck reading people to figure out what was going on, so someone had to do it.
I felt the arrow pierce my side as I followed through with my push. If I hadn’t needed to use my whole body weight, I may have gotten by without getting grazed. The arrow penetrated, but passed through, which I appreciated.
I felt my wolf wanting to come to the surface, but I was able to keep her down. I wasn’t sure who to attack first, mainly because I wasn’t sure who had shot the arrow, since there were plenty of people behind me who could’ve been the culprit.
I let my teeth elongate, knowing I was going to tear into someone in the next moments. I decided Tera was the target of choice, and even managed to get a few steps taken in her direction before an electrical charge zapped through my body. It wasn’t as painful as say childbirth, but it tingled.
It only halted my steps briefly. I felt my mate back on his feet, and he wasn’t particularly happy with me. He could stand in line, because his little ex-girlfriend had finally found her backbone, judging by the shimmer that had appeared in her eyes.
I felt another jolt, maybe a little worse than the first, but still not enough to drop me. I didn’t know what was up with the jolts. It was like someone figured I wasn’t irate enough and they wanted to see what they could do to get me to my boiling point.
“You like to ruin people’s plans, don’t you? The electrodes in your body that keep shocking you were meant for Vik.”
I was too grown-up to respond by saying duh, but it was tough not to revert to the teenage girl I’d only ever seen in movies. My teenage years didn’t include a lot of juvenile talking back, whether Levi claimed I had or not.
I’d let her talk, and presumably the evil plan she’d been waiting to unleash was out of the way, so I was ready to fight. My teeth were already out, and my fingers elongated into long claws to join them.
It’d been a long time since I’d morphed into the version of me equipped with weapons without the fur that went along with a regular change. There’d been a few times over the years when I wanted to use them on my in-laws, but I managed to keep them in check.
“Anytime those plans don’t coincide with mine, I’m all for it.”
A stronger pulse rippled through me. It was obvious someone had a button somewhere they kept hitting. I assumed the button even had some kind of dial, which allowed the voltage to be manipulated.
It was an interesting concept for a weapon, if the person operating it had any idea how to use it. Whoever had the button, was an idiot for not dropping me immediately.
“If you’re thinking about helping me, you should probably go find who’s shocking me. I’m sure you can figure it out. I’ve got something more important to see to.”
I’d gotten tired of feeling my mate in my shadows. He was hovering, like he wanted to touch me and make everything all better. Short of plucking out whatever was shocking me, there wasn’t anything he could physically do to my body, so he needed to make himself useful.
He didn’t move, which was fine, because I made up the distance between me and Tera and slashed my claws through her stomach. There was a little gratification when I pushed my nails half an inch into her body.
Being closer to her, I was finally able to pick up her unique scent. With so many wolves standing around, it was hard to pick up the subtle smell of cinnamon.
She howled, a noise I relished hearing from my opponent. Some tried to hide the pain, but it was always nice knowing without a doubt I was causing a bit of agony.
“Turn it up all the way and hold the button down, for god’s sake.”
If the idiot hadn’t really been trying to incapacitate me, he or she deserved to be called an idiot. The sting was a little more the fourth, or was it the fifth time. I’d honestly lost count, and within seconds the pain was gone and a blood curdling scream echoed around the trees.
My mate didn’t like to play around. He’d flashed away from my side the second whatever was in my body started fighting against me. If I was ever going to find a way to replicate the weapon, I wanted to make sure there wasn’t a control somewhere. It needed to strike and immediately incapacitate.
“Sorry, I think someone revealed who they were. You really should’ve tested your troops’ ability to hide what they were thinking, of course I guess you don’t know what they’re thinking to see if it works.”
I sliced through her stomach with my opposite hand and curled my hand up into a fist and punched her as hard as I could in her face. Making a fist wasn’t simple with claws, being pissed off enough made it easy to overlook the stabbing occurring in my palm.
The last bit of green faded from her eyes and she started swinging. At first, her swings were more erratic than tactful. I started to wonder how in the world she’d been able to fight her way through a pack for her right to be the alpha’s mate.
Sure, I’d scratched her up, but I hadn’t even gotten to the point where I reached in and pulled on her intestines. A few semi-deep gashes shouldn’t have been an issue.
It took her six swings, dealing with my non-stop hits to her face and body, before she finally connected. I wasn’t being fed her thoughts like with Levi, but I had to guess they were pretty pathetic after the love tap she delivered.
“I’m starting to see why you were hesitant to mate with her in the first place. Was your original pack full of docile wolves?”
Granted, I was bleeding from the arrow wound, which was causing a little pain, so my pain receptors were possibly compromised. That shouldn’t have changed the fact that I thought the girls hit harder when they were play fighting.
The fight had moved away from the house and people cleared a wide space for us to battle. I didn’t remember all the movement. That’s how most fights worked for me. I zoned in and everything else faded away.
I was fairly certain the people around us hadn’t broken into a battle, but it was hard to say. I hadn’t been as focused in the club versus Levi, but I was used to him as an opponent. Tera was an unknown, and I couldn’t let my guard down. I’d done that once and already been shocked enough because of it.
She didn’t appreciate being called docile. I, on the other hand, didn’t appreciate that she’d worn a cape to a fight. I suppose that wasn’t quite right, because I grabbed on to the back of it as I circled her and yanked to bring her crashing to the ground.
She struggled to get back on her feet, but I was on top of her before she could complete the thought that she needed to stand. I hadn’t been paying much attention to the speed I was moving, because frankly I normally moved fast. There was a little extra kick in me, though.
I blamed it for making things too easy for me. We’d danced around a little, and she’d landed a punch or two, but as I sat on top of her and pummeled her face, while she wiggled around, I didn’t feel the sense of justice I thought I would.
With a last punch to the nose, effectively caving in her sinuses, I sat there and stared down at the mess that had once been a beautiful woman. It was sad how poor choices had brought her to that state.
Feeling overly tired, which was surprising since I didn’t feel I’d really exerted myself, I sat up a little and pulled her head up. With a quick twist of my wrists, I snapped her neck. More would need to be done to completely kill her, but a broken neck took a few months to come back from. I had a little time to think of a proper death for her crimes.
“It’s okay, Mommy, you’ll feel better after you rest.”
I’d never heard as sweet a sound as Selina’s voice trying to comfort me. I looked up and found Jack carrying a girl in each of his arms as Paul trudged out of the house behind them. I tried to focus on their appearances, looking for anything that would make me fight the tiredness and finish the process of killing everyone involved in hurting them.
At first I didn’t notice the woman walking behind them,
but just like I had no problem identifying Levi, my mother was easy to recognize. As tired as I was, if she’d been helping Tera plot her torture, I was up for a fight. At least that’s what my heart said, my brain and muscles weren’t so sure.
Selina squirmed in Jack’s arms, and he was forced to let her down, followed closely by Sierra. As far as I knew, it was the first time he’d ever met his nieces, and he looked reluctant to let them go. They had that effect on people.
I rolled off Tera, not wanting them to come too close to the mangled body. I didn’t think they’d have nightmares over the scene, but I was still their mother and wanted to protect them from such things. As it was, I didn’t get very far before they wrapped their tiny arms around me.
My eyes remained focused on Paul, since the girls seemed to be fine. He’d been threatened more than them, and his disheveled look led me to believe he didn’t leave the experience totally unscathed.
“Are you okay?”
Things were getting hazier for me, and I wasn’t sure if my brain processed the sight before me accurately. The fact that his hair wasn’t smoothed down and parted to the side like it always was, didn’t seem to be something disputable. The scratches I kept thinking I saw in the dim lighting were a little more questionable.
“I’m not the one bleeding, Nikki. I was told to act normal, but it’s a little difficult when your wife has blood pouring out of her. She’s going to be okay, right?”
Paul wasn’t asking Jack, who stood next to him, or the girls, who were close enough to get a good look. He asked Vik, whose heat directly behind me was keeping my body warm as my energy and my own warmth faded a little more.
“I hope you remember after the little nap you’re about to take that you did finally at least think my name. The sometimes irrational love of our lives decided to take a poison meant for me, but she’ll be fine. I’ve been helping her fight the pain and spreading as much as I can. It’d be easier if she wasn’t so hardheaded.”
I blamed my diminished brain function for the name slip. Most of his words blended together, but I did pick up something about poison. If the arrow had been equipped with more than the little jolters, someone had a more brain power than I gave them credit for.
“What kind of poison, and how deadly is it?” Paul asked. Hearing the word caused the already concerned look on his face to set in even deeper.
Kinds didn’t really matter to me. I knew my body would fight it off, at least I hadn’t heard of anything that could drop a werewolf long term. Quantity concerned me more than anything else.
I wanted to know how long I was going to be asleep.
“It’s a belladonna that in the concentrated form working its way through her system would kill a human. In a werewolf, it will just knock them out for a while. They were using electrical currents to drive it through her body faster. Obviously they didn’t understand who they were dealing with. Tera honestly thought she was going to get out of this without lifting a finger. She thought she was smart by hiding her thoughts, but that one rang out pretty loudly towards the end.”
“The arrow went right through, so it couldn’t have been that much. I’m thinking thirty minutes or so.”
He hadn’t been specific about how much he thought my system was fighting against. The calculations in my head came up with miniscule amounts, but that was partly wishful thinking. At the same time, I hadn’t fallen out during the fight, and I continued to keep my head up as I hugged the girls to my body.
“I’ll let you do the math when you wake up. If you don’t mind, I’m going to pick you up and carry you inside. I’m sure no one wants to see their queen falling asleep in the dirt.”
“Maybe you should ask them. I’m pretty sure there’s quite a few people in this crowd who wouldn’t mind the view.”
Tera’s group was still there. I could feel them, but they were mixed in with others. I assumed the blending happened during the fighting. They probably hoped I hadn’t gotten a good look at them, so they could pretend they were on my side.
The girls loosened their hold at the same time I felt strong arms wrap around me. The heat that continued to pour off him was welcome, even though it caused me to shiver.
“Jack will explain the error of their thoughts while I get you tucked in. If anyone questions that we’re the par lupu, we’ll just tell them that they’re welcome to fight you so they can see for themselves the power the werewolf queen holds. Everyone who came with Tera knows that you shouldn’t have been able to fight after being shot.”
Once I was in his arms, I went ahead and shut my eyes. I was still battling against the sleep. It seemed weak for me to let a little poison knock me out.
“You really are a warrior. Do you know how honored I am that you’re my mate?”
I hoped I was turning delusional, because I didn’t want to consider sentimental thoughts. Love and honor didn’t belong in the werewolf world. I left that world to find out what those words really meant, and it felt wrong that they were being discussed in context with what I’d been running my whole life to get away from.
“I don’t want to go into that house.”
I should’ve said that before he picked me up and started walking. As my consciousness continued shutting down, it was probably a little late to let my feelings be known.
“Don’t worry. I will always know what you want, Nikki, and I will do everything in my power to make sure you get it.”
He must not have gotten the memo about putting an end to the sentimental crap. I didn’t bother telling him to keep the thoughts to himself. Ever since he found his way into my life, he seemed to have issues doing what I said.
As far as I knew, we’d left Paul and the girls surrounded by a pack and a half of wolves they hadn’t met. My mind should’ve been focused on that and making sure they were safe. I wanted to vocalize my concern, but I couldn’t make my mouth move.
I don’t think I made it to whatever bed he decided to put me in before falling asleep. The last thing I remembered was the pine forest closing in around me.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I didn’t dream. I’d never been sure if that was a werewolf thing, or just a me thing, but I didn’t think the fact was important enough to bother others with questions. When my mind started working again, I didn’t believe it was a dream, so I assumed someone had come in while I was sleeping and killed me.
That would’ve explained why the first sight my eyes saw was a glowing woman. In human society I’d heard the talk of an afterlife, but it wasn’t something werewolves really believed in. We also didn’t believe people generally went around glowing, so something that went against the general beliefs I had was going on.
Her eyes were green, which I’d seen on most of the people I knew, so that didn’t surprise me. What did was that I felt like I was staring in the mirror when I looked into those eyes.
Nothing else about her was familiar. She had long, blond hair that reached down to her knees. It wasn’t totally straight, there were a few curls to it, which I imagined took a while to get just right.
Her skin was fair to match her hair color. She was sitting in a chair, so I couldn’t get a sense for her height, but I did notice she only had scraps of clothing to cover certain areas of her body. With only those simple scraps, she gave off more royal vibes than Tera had in her getup.
“I’ve been waiting for you, Nicole. I thought we’d meet long before a drug induced sleep settled your brain enough to allow me to speak to you.”
“Not to seem rude, but you seem to know me, but I have no idea who you are.”
“We both know you have no problem being rude, so don’t worry about being diplomatic. There’s nothing about you that I don’t know.”
She kept a smile on her face as she spoke. I’d been so busy trying to figure out who she was that I hadn’t really noticed the odd look of pride she had on her face.
“Is there a reason why you just skirted around the question of who you are?”
“Not
particularly, but I also don’t think I have to tell you who I am. You’ve known me all your life, whether you’ve consciously accepted it or not. Viktor told you he could explain why you always felt like you were different and didn’t belong, but it’s something you have to realize for yourself.”
I got the feeling I’d hit my head at some point, maybe Tera’s punches were a little more potent than I’d thought. First I dreamed up some angel-like woman, and then I supplied her with the inability to answer a simple question.
“Do you have a name?”
Time to take the complexity of the question back a peg. Maybe she was an angel or something and thought the question of who she was wasn’t something my mind could comprehend.
“In my day, they called me Ece. Look, I know you didn’t sign up to take on our roles, but the world has lived long enough without a par lupu. It saddens me to see how different things are since my time.”
I couldn’t argue about the world being a sad place, but as with most things about the par lupu, I didn’t understand her reference. I highly doubted accepting that I was some kind of queen and Vik was my king would make any difference to the world as a whole.
“He’s not your king. He’s your equal. Rajan and I would never have become the legend we pass on to you if one of us had more power than the other.”
“Great, you can read minds. I should’ve known.”
I was glad I’d never had any dreams before, because I made them unbelievably unrealistic. She was still glowing, which you would’ve thought my mind would have the decency to tone down a little once she caught my attention.
“Your Viktor has an uphill fight with you. That’s good. It’s always good to keep your mate on his toes. He’s met with Rajan already, and they’ve been confidants while he waited for you to accept the gift you’ve been given.”
“I’m sure you know I have no idea what you’re talking about. Is this dream going to be over soon, or do we have to talk around in circles until I can wake up?”
As I tried to look around the world my mind created, I found I couldn’t. I couldn’t even tell if I was sitting or lying on a bed. There was only her in her chair.