by Odessa Lynne
Kem flattened his hand right over Devon’s sternum and pushed lightly.
Devon stumbled backward and his ass hit the edge of the bed. The bedding gave under him with a swoosh of sound.
“This reprieve from my heat will be short-lived. Your scent calls to me even now, and if you want to eat, now’s the time for it.”
“Okay, okay. Food. Where’s the—” Silverware, he was going to say, since he wasn’t supposed to eat with his fingers, but Kem had taken a piece of roast beef and stuck it right into Devon’s open mouth.
He spit it out. “What the—”
Kem’s mouth and eyes both tightened. “You need to eat.”
“The hell I’m going to let you feed me like I’m some kind of pet or something.”
“I’m trying to show my appreciation for your submission,” Kem said. “It’s my duty to care for you now that I’ve mated with you.”
“I don’t think so.” Devon reached for a cracker.
Kem pushed his hand away.
Devon glared. “You’re fucking kidding me, right? You’re not going to let me eat unless I let you hand feed me this shit?” He was mad. In fact, he was so mad he was sure he was about to do something he was going to regret. Seriously regret.
“This is meant to make you feel cared for, so you know our mating isn’t all about my needs as the stronger of our pairing.”
“Fuck you,” Devon said, “I’ll feed myself.”
Kem was giving him that cold-eyed look again, the one Devon had first seen in the woods when he’d first caught sight of him, and then again, in the basement last night. Disquiet crawled down his spine but he ignored it.
Kem took the cracker Devon had reached for and raised it to Devon’s mouth.
Devon leaned back, and had to catch himself on his elbow because Kem just kept coming with it.
“Get the—” Devon swiped at Kem’s arm.
Kem tossed the cracker at the tray and straddled Devon, a rumbling vibration starting in his chest.
“Submit,” Kem said, teeth showing in his irate expression.
“Why the hell don’t you submit? You can be my bitch for a—”
He’d gone too far and he knew it as soon as the words left his mouth.
Kem roared at him, the sound a furious assault on Devon’s nerves. Devon threw his arms up over his face and thought this is it.
The problem was that he’d been pushed back flat on the bed, with his legs bent at the knees and still hanging over the edge, and throwing his hands up to protect his face still left his throat vulnerable and he realized that about a half a second too late when the hot, wet mouth jarred his head up and teeth pricked at the unprotected column of his throat, and he sucked in his breath in a loud gasp and knew—knew—with everything in him that he was about to get his throat ripped out.
“I submit!” he yelled, because good sense had finally overrun bad and he really, really didn’t want to die after all. “I submit!”
Kem’s hot breath flowed over his skin and he could feel every moist exhale while he lay there in the sudden silence, mouth shut, heart pounding, thoughts racing like streaming bits through his head.
Kem eased up. “Only the Diviners know how I stopped myself from biting down. If I had, you would be dead.” His sweat-slicked face and the rapid rise and fall of his chest said his restraint hadn’t come easy
Devon swallowed hard. He did not like hearing that. “Look. I’m—uh—sorry. I submit. I don’t want to die.”
“No,” Kem said, accent thick, his eyes seeming to flit from one spot on Devon’s face to another, too fast for Devon to follow. “You submit, but you don’t. But I still let you defy me, and I don’t know why.”
Kem leaned in and licked a stripe along Devon’s throat, and Devon’s whole body shuddered at the contact. “I want to mate you. Now.”
“Hey, if it makes you not want to kill me, mate me. I’m fine with that right now.”
But Kem met his eyes, the green glassy and bright, his expression almost confused. The wolves had turned out to be so hard to read when it came to normal emotions. But that made a kind of sense, because although they looked similar enough to humans, they were not human, and their expressions didn’t seem inclined to convey the things Devon knew and understood from the body language of other humans. But this time, he was almost sure of the confusion written in every line of Kem’s face.
“You don’t understand,” Kem said.
“No, I probably don’t. Because we’re not the same.”
Devon rose up on his elbows, and tried to clear the tightness from his throat. Kem’s body gave off an unreal amount of heat, and he could feel it through his thighs and groin where Kem still straddled him.
“We’re all individuals,” Kem said. “We’re not all the same.”
“We’re a different species.” Devon emphasized species in a distinct effort to get his point across.
“With different cultures.”
“Yeah. Your culture is messed up.”
“Our culture is not messed up.”
“The hell it isn’t,” Devon said. “You make people submit. You think I’d be here if I had a—”
Kem’s claw-tipped finger shushed him. Probably a good thing too, considering what had almost happened earlier.
“You had a choice,” Kem said, his tone of voice cold and hard. “You had a choice and you made it when you came into our territory knowing heat season had come. Eight years, we’ve been here, two where we were welcomed and praised for all the good we’d done for your people, and then all that was wiped away as soon as our first heat season came and we discovered the terrible truth of how incompatible we really are. For six years we’ve done our best to mitigate the damages our heat has brought to your people, and yet you continue to push us and kill us, and tempt us, as if we should let you destroy us and our ways because of something we can’t control.”
Kem’s words had an intensity to them that said he believed every word of what he was saying. He was probably right. Some people had decided the governments’ acceptance of the wolves on Earth had to end, and they’d formed groups of human renegades, going against the will of their governments with the purpose of wiping out as many of the wolves’ dens as possible, male and female, adult and child alike, trying to force the wolves to leave. So far, the wolves hadn’t used their superior technology against humans, but Devon had to wonder if it was only a matter of time. Too many wolves were dying and most of the world’s governments claimed they couldn’t stop the renegades. Devon was sure most of them hadn’t tried that hard. They were too busy walking that line between pacifying a superior fighting force and their own people.
“You had a choice, Devon Fletcher, and you made your choice.”
“Worse gamble ever,” Devon muttered.
Kem locked gazes with him. “You treated your foray into our territory as a gamble?”
“That’s not—”
But it was. That was exactly what he’d meant. “I gambled and I lost,” he said. “It seemed worth the risk at the time.”
“You knew the risk, then. You knew the risk and you came anyway.” The satisfaction in Kem’s voice made Devon eye him warily.
Kem reached around him and picked up another cracker. He put it up to Devon’s mouth, and Devon glared at it for a moment before he deliberately snapped his teeth together over it. Crumbs fell down his chin and tickled his chest, and he was sure fucking on a bed of cracker crumbs later was going to be a hell of a lot of fun. The cracker was dry, bland, and not half bad considering how long it had been since Devon had eaten.
But he couldn’t let Kem’s comment stand unchallenged. “So I knew the risk. Still doesn’t mean the risk should have been there. You wolves have come in and taken over the whole area, and it doesn’t belong to you. I don’t care what the government’s told you.”
Kem stilled. “Do you know what our Diviners tell us on the day of our coming of age?”
Devon shook his head. “Since when w
ould I know anything about your—” He realized how confrontational he still sounded so he rephrased what he’d been going to say. “No. I don’t.”
Kem leaned in close again, his chest looming over Devon’s. “They tell us our fate.”
Chapter 7
“Really?” Devon thought he sounded properly impressed, and not a bit like he thought Kem’s Diviners were probably full of bullshit just like everyone else who thought they could tell the future or read a palm.
“They tell us our fate and for most of us, it’s as simple as a hint of what’s going to turn out to be the most important event in our lives.”
“Ah. Okay.” Devon nodded just to emphasize how much he got it, when he didn’t get it at all. Why was Kem telling him this?
“On the day I came of age, the Diviners had gathered in the viewing room where we could see the first planet we had ever seen besides our own that could support our biological needs.”
“Earth, I take it?”
“Yes. This Earth.”
“That’s great.”
“And then one of the Diviners turned to me and looked at me with eyes like—” Kem said a word in the wolves’ language, one Devon had no idea how to translate, “—and he said, ‘Your fate will find you at great risk to himself.’”
Devon’s heart took up a too-fast rhythm. “That’s supposed to mean something special? I call bullshit. That could mean anything.”
“You’re right. It could. And even though your smell is—” Kem curved his head into Devon’s neck and his warm cheek brushed against Devon’s collarbone. Devon resisted dropping his head back, but barely. He was in the perfect position to let Kem kiss him under the jaw, to work his way up to his ear and around to his mouth. He might not be happy with his situation, but he knew what he liked, and Kem knew how to fuck.
“Your scent is—it’s—” But Kem seemed to be having trouble pulling his thoughts back around to whatever he’d been going to say.
Devon’s stomach grumbled again and he decided to hurry this up. “I smell like that soap you had in the bathroom.”
“No. You smell—the deeply appealing scent that lingers everywhere you move, on the things you touch, it’s riveting.”
Kem pulled himself away, and he sat there for a moment, his hands flexing on his thighs. But then he turned to the tray and dragged it across the table and onto the bed. Glassware clinked and plates clattered, and orange juice splashed onto a few of the crackers.
Kem offered Devon a piece of cheese. Instead of taking the whole piece into his mouth, Devon bit it in half. He grimaced. It wasn’t the kind of cheese he’d been expecting and he didn’t like it but he forced himself to eat it anyway.
Kem pressed his lips together, then ate the other half.
He’d heard the wolves were allergic to cows’ milk; the rumor might have some truth to it. He’d also heard they couldn’t eat peanuts and chocolate. Overall though, the wolves seemed to have adapted very well to human food sources.
As Kem continued to feed him, Devon made every effort to avoid Kem’s fingers and Kem made every effort to offer smaller and smaller bites.
Devon looked at a particularly tiny piece of roast beef and realized it was going to take half the morning to get enough food in him to make him feel like he’d eaten anything. “You’re doing this on purpose.”
“It’s my duty to care for you even though you’re making this more difficult than it has to be. You submitted to becoming my heat mate and you deserve to be respected for that.”
“This isn’t respect. This is ridicule. You’re treating me like I’m your dog or something. I had a dog once. I fed him just like this—one goddamn bite at a time.”
Kem’s nostrils flared. Devon could tell he’d taken offense at the suggestion.
“You aren’t a pet,” Kem said harshly. “You’re my heat mate. Do you think I would put myself through this if I didn’t feel the need to show you how much I appreciate your submission? My heat cycle has risen to the point where caring for you is the only reason I’m not fucking you. So if you want larger bites, then take all that I’m offering.”
Devon narrowed his eyes on Kem. He leaned up and wrapped his mouth around the entire piece of roast beef and half of Kem’s three-fingered grip on the meat.
Devon used his tongue to lick right between those fingers, feeling the weird sensation of a claw against the tip of his tongue with one swipe. His arms relaxed again as he lowered himself back down onto his elbows.
Kem offered the next few bites carefully, his eyes never leaving Devon’s mouth.
“This isn’t meant to ridicule you,” Kem said, his tone softer but somewhat unsteady, as if the words weren’t easy to get out.
Devon didn’t think the comment deserved a reply. His ire was up again and he knew he needed to get it under control but he was pissed. He hadn’t gotten his way with the food, and no matter what Kem said, the feeding didn’t make him feel special. It made him feel like—like—like Kem owned him or something. And he didn’t like it one bit. “I’m thirsty. Do I have to let you pour a drink down my throat too?”
Kem cupped his hand under Devon’s chin, his fingers curling around Devon’s jaw and Devon swallowed nervously. “It’s our way.”
“I like the human way better.”
Kem stared into Devon’s eyes. “This is how we remind ourselves that strength and power don’t give us the right to abuse our heat mates. Those reminders are important and we’ve done it this way for the equivalent of thousands of Earth’s years. We fight for the right to mate but once we’ve gained that right, it’s our duty to prove ourselves worthy of our mates’ submission.”
Devon wasn’t in the mood for a lesson in wolf culture. He twisted his head in Kem’s grip and looked toward the tray with the food. “God Almighty, just give me something to drink, okay?”
Kem sighed. His fingers tightened briefly on Devon’s chin, claws extending enough to see beneath his dark fingernail material, before he gently released his hold.
Devon watched silently as Kem picked up one of the glasses and raised it to Devon’s lips.
Devon drank slowly, and Kem took care not to spill the drink or force it on him too fast. Still, Devon noticed the fine tremors racing through Kem’s hand and he frowned.
“Are you okay?”
“This has taken longer than it should have and I’m reaching the end of my control. You test me too much but I made my choice and I can’t regret it.”
Devon was silent for a moment, but then, abruptly, he said, “I’ve had enough,” and he wasn’t even sure why he said it. He didn’t care about Kem’s needs, or his control, except in the sense that he didn’t want to end up clawed or bitten—or dead.
But Kem said, “I can’t let you eat less than you need just because I want to mate you.”
“That’s where this is going anyway, you might as well do it before you get so caught up you don’t have any control left at all.”
“When you submit, I’ll regain some of my control.”
“God Almighty! What is this if not me submitting? I’m letting you feed me like I’m some kind of pet, and I let you stick your dick up my ass—although we both know I couldn’t have stopped you if I’d tried unless I was willing to die for my—what?—my right to fight? What the hell does that even mean?”
Kem lunged forward and Devon’s arms slipped on the bed and he fell flat on his back, his blood rushing behind his ears.
Kem’s face loomed and his straddle of Devon’s thighs became uncomfortably heavy. “You’re not my ideal fate,” Kem said, and it took a moment before Devon understood that he was referring to their earlier conversation and the Diviners’ words.
Devon’s breath actually stuck in his chest for a second when he made the connection, and then he just got pissed. “Thanks, assho—”
Narrowed eyes stopped his comment. One of Kem’s hands landed on the center of Devon’s chest, and he could feel Kem’s fingers flexing and claws poking five little inden
ts into his flesh.
“Lies wouldn’t change the truth. But you must be my true mate. There’s no other explanation for how I feel.”
“Uh. Sure. Whatever you say.”
“When heat season ends, we’ll have plenty of time—”
“What?” Devon said, voice cracking. “Heat season ends and I’m out of—”
“We’re going to mate,” Kem interrupted, patience gone in an instant.
“The hell we are if it means you’re going to try to keep me here! Get the fuck off me!”
Shut up, shut up, what the hell was he doing?
Devon shoved Kem backward and the bed rocked hard but Devon kicked out and rolled to the side, finally dislodging Kem from his thighs. A hand came down on his shoulder and claws poked at his skin, rougher than before, and for the first time, Devon felt the crushing power in that grip and realized how much strength Kem had to have been holding back. His shoulder wrenched and he gasped, almost a whimper at the sudden sharp pain that flared through him.
He kept rolling but the edge of the bed was too close.
Devon hit the floor with a loud thump. “Ow! Shit. Goddammit!”
He grabbed for his elbow and rubbed vigorously where it had jammed into the hardwood, teeth gritted against the fiery sparks of pain shooting through his forearm and hand.
Kem’s leap to the floor startled Devon, his entire body jerking when Kem straddled his waist.
“I submit!” Devon said, loud and quick, his common sense finally winning out, and he could only hope it wasn’t too late. “I submit!”
“Your arm,” Kem said, eyes narrowed, gaze focused on Devon’s arm where his hand still clenched around his throbbing elbow.
“Oh.” Devon exhaled and closed his eyes for a moment, the relief he felt like a rush of sweet release. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”
Kem ignored him and took Devon’s arm in his hands gently.
“You’re so fragile,” Kem said, and he sounded odd, his accent thick and ragged and his words almost too low to hear. “Ashikid was right about you. I should have listened. You’ll get yourself killed before this heat season’s over.”
Devon breathed out and licked his bottom lip. “I don’t want to die,” he said.