by Lisa Daniels
“What should I do then?” His panic seemed sincere. Behind that menace, that overwhelming power that emanated from his body, lingered a mind that seemed oddly... innocent. And possibly a bit delusional. What kind of rational mind would complete the ancient rite of challenge, claim his new female, only to realize that, oops, maybe it was a bad idea, sorry, goodbye?
If this guy ends up having children, they better pray they get his body and not his brains.
She repressed a wild instinct to laugh, controlling herself in the wake of his bafflement. “Look. I'll help with the whole Gregorovitch thing. Since you are now claiming territory, you need to go around to the adjacent clans to this one and, uh, explain things at some point. And we'll need dinner with my family and their closest allies to introduce you. It's been a while since anyone's killed someone around here for small territorial gain, so I bet my grandfather's gonna love you.”
The albino continued to stare at her with that edge of panic, now that the impact of his casual choice to take over a Gregorovitch subsidiary clan had kicked in.
“Might help if I know your name, too. I'm Ordri Gregorovitch.” Ordri melted back into her human form, revealing glimmering light brown hair, olive-toned skin, and a casual black top and jeans. She was showing off now – partly elated by the growing fact that she was free of her former marriage, free to pursue personal interests on a broader scale.
Maybe she could work on wrapping this chunk of rock around her finger.
The albino blinked. “Oh. Um. I'm Bronislaw. No last name.”
No last name? Exiled from his last clan, it seems. Now Bronislaw, whom Ordri had already started addressing as Bron in her mind, finally began shifting out of his werewolf form.
Into a handsome and alarmingly naked male with bright pink eyes. Silvery hair curled from his head in soft tufts, giving him a roguish appearance with features that looked as if they had been sculpted out of marble. Despite her opinion on his intellect, and his rather abrasive and befuddled attitude towards her, a further nugget of arousal deposited itself into her system. Damn, that was one good-looking man. Really packing something down there.
Not that she was looking or anything.
“Oh,” Ordri said, finally forming one syllable out of the many whirling through her mind. She should have expected that extreme nakedness, really, given that he was walking around with full fur and nothing over it, like some Jungle Book or Tarzan kid. Maybe he really was some hippy wanderer from the edges of some unknown forest in God knows where. Who had, in a clueless manner, come blundering into a world he hadn't done much research on, pushing into Ordri's sphere of influence like a car crash. A naked and handsome hippy with certain parts that seemed larger than life dangling between his thighs. She tried hard not to stare at that for too long, or she'd be going nowhere fast.
Down, girl.
“My last clothes got torn up,” he said. “I had an altercation with a bear.”
“Seriously?” Ordri this time couldn't control her laughter. Bron flinched at her amusement, unsure if she mocked him or found some other idea unbelievably hilarious.
A slight pang of guilt stopped her mirth. She should be grieving for her husband, even if she didn't care for him or his betas. Any nodes of affection had long since dried up, leaving her bereft of anything warm or positive regarding Timaeus. It was like drifting in a cold tide. Her head might be above the water, she might be living and have nice and pretty things surrounding her, but that was it. Nothing else blessed her. If he died, as she'd suspected for a while, she just wouldn't care.
Now that the event came to pass, the reality of her emotions and mindset became true. It made her wonder if there was something fundamentally wrong inside that inhibited her from feeling the emotions she expected she was meant to feel, other than lust and physical attraction.
In all those years she'd been with him, she'd never said the words I love you once. Timaeus never said them either, never showed any hint he cared for her beyond making sure her needs were accommodated, in a bid to stop her complaining to her family about him. Sure, he'd been wealthy, living in a big house in the middle of nowhere, and she had the freedom of the forests, to visit her family at any time and tell them things were going okay. She was just alone most of the time. Alone in what should have been her own home.
She believed her grandfather wouldn't understand why she'd refuse such a mutually beneficial marriage, even if Timaeus did have that small flaw of sleeping around with anything that breathed.
And now, this odd albino from nowhere had come plummeting out of the darkness with a red smile to shake up the order of things. Almost as retribution for her husband and his close relatives for not choosing to aid the clans in their fight against the Russian werewolves. He stood in front of her, a perfect physical specimen, pink eyes stamped on a face framed by silver hair that made him look like a ghost in the shadows of the kitchen, where the light didn't touch.
“We're gonna have a lot of work to do,” Ordri murmured. “And you need some clothes. Like, right now.”
Chapter Two
Bron stared at the female werewolf as she slept, a mix of confusing emotions raking through him. When he first chose to bring a final rest to his wandering, to settle down in a remote corner of Bulgaria and start a family of his own, admittedly by hijacking a ready-made family, using the ancient rite of challenge – he didn't expect someone like Ordri Gregorovitch to throw his plans awry.
Ever since he'd been cast out, the name of his former family burned off him forever, he roamed the wilds, living on nature, hunting in the highest mountains and the tranquil lakes, always careful to avoid detection. The moving made him lonely, made him miss the appeal of close contact, of people staring at him with adoring eyes and warmth in their voices. How long since that warmth turned to hate and ashes in his heart? How long until he finally settled down and placed that agony to rest?
Mad demon, someone had whispered. The only good place for you is six feet under the earth, buried in an unmarked grave. The memory incited a well of rage within, flamed his blood until it burned hot, and he shivered from the influx of emotion.
That same rage propelled him on the day he found that wretched little clan, with that female werewolf who smelled of repression and malcontent, and it struck him then, that maybe here lay an answer. Maybe he could simply take the female for his own, and mold her into something desirable and worthy, after he had helped coax her out of her grief... and claimed her, of course. This happened all the time, after all. Females liked strong warriors. Having the strongest mate meant the strongest children, and a good bloodline to bless their descendants afterward. Very rarely in history did a female werewolf reject the advances of a male conqueror.
Except, he hadn't realized she'd be a damned Gregorovitch.
Such strength, he thought, admiring her sleeping form, stroking at the stubble forming on his cheek. He tried not to think about how soft she looked, how it stirred the arousal in his loins and made it hard to concentrate. Oh no. He couldn't disrespect that Gregorovitch any more than he'd done already. A noble woman, of noble blood, stuck in a household where no one seemed to care for her or respect her for what she was.
And now I have to make nice with her family and vassals. And apparently learn how to treat a woman. He chewed the inside of his cheek. He still couldn't quite work out what he'd done wrong, exactly. Apart from not knowing she happened to be of noble blood. She certainly found a lot of things wrong with him, and didn't hesitate on telling him so. Stupid and ignorant were the nicest things she said of him.
Still, the more he lived with her, and found out about her stubborn, don't-mess-me-around ways, the more he liked her. The more he wanted to claim her, to keep that wild beauty as his own. Such luminescent orange eyes. Such a beautiful perk to her red, red lips. And those little spots that appeared in her cheeks when she smiled – or well, laughed at him – that caused interesting fluctuations in his heart. Yes. He had chosen well with regards to looks. In terms
of personality matching – the wisdom of that decision remained to be seen. Nobles always held a lot of bite, and a vastly inflated sense of their superiority. The sort that got on your nerves.
There was some ground to that superiority. Nobles tended to be stronger physically than the average werewolf. They shifted faster into feral. And they controlled their feral forms better.
Theoretically.
It might be nice to have her like him for who he was, rather than for the power he exhibited. She already didn't seem to care about his freakish colorings – the white tint of a runt, a child that no one believed could grow up to become the boulder of muscle he lived as today.
He just needed to survive family negotiations. Without having his head lopped off during the debate.
“I know you're standing there staring at me.”
He blinked, startled by her voice and those liquid orange eyes popping open, to fixate a disapproving stare his way.
“I'll leave.” Curses, why did he always act like a tongue-tied idiot? I'll leave. Genius. Utter genius. He might as well just roll over and expose his belly and have everything torn out of him. Some supposed alpha he was, if he couldn't even talk to a potential mate without fucking things up.
“I recommend you get yourself dressed up,” Ordri said, glancing at the clock situated by the side of her bed. “Because I'd say you have about twenty minutes before the family delegation arrives to see what threat you pose.”
Right. The family “dinner.” Even while they were fighting an invasion of Russian werewolves from the borders, they managed to find time to see the new werewolf in their midst. He really didn't like talking, or being forced into that kind of situation. Something in his mind stirred from long ago, when he still possessed a name, a family to fall back on when the going got tough, and the snows piled up outside their doors. When he wanted to find a new home and a different name, Gregorovitch certainly hadn't been the one he had in mind.
Twenty minutes later, as a perpetually amused Ordri Gregorovitch stood by his side, lips curled up in a breath-taking smirk, arms folded over her substantial, incredibly perky chest, which had a navy blue jacket zipped up over it – the others waltzed into the house.
Not just Gregorovitches, either. Fucking Spirovas, too. Bron immediately started sweating profusely, seeing his life flash before his eyes. Fucking Spirovas and Gregorovitches. He was up to his ass in nobility, with nowhere to run.
He grunted out a greeting. “Good day, noble ones. I am Bronislaw, no last name.”
The female Spirova who emanated authority out of every pore examined him with her cold, startling eyes. Yes, this one was every inch the alpha. He imagined if you even dared breathing a contradiction to the fact, bad things would happen. Of the intestine unraveling kind. “Not a Russian. That's a good start.” And, completely ignoring him, Elinor Spirova went over to Ordri and hugged her. “I see what you mean. An impressive male specimen.”
Aghast at being completely ignored by an alpha, Bron turned to the next, a Kostya Gregorovitch. According to the mouthy Ordri, this was her brother. Kostya gave him a wan smile. “You really killed Timaeus? You look like a pup that can barely tell its rear end from its front.”
Bron growled at this insult, fangs beginning to emerge from his thin lips. “Why don't you challenge me, then? Then you'll see how much like a 'pup' I am.”
“Relax, man,” Kostya said, patting Bron on the chest, forcing him to take a step backwards. “You're not going to get anywhere if you threaten the brother of your new bride. Or, well, anyone she knows, really. Oh boy, you got yourself in a mess.”
He skipped past Bron with barely suppressed glee, wearing the exact same fucking smirk Ordri had stamped on her lips. After the two alphas came a small delegation of others that Ordri had conveniently neglected to brief him on. And, was that an Armanev? A fucking Armanev as well? Jesus Christ, had he aggravated every single fucking noble in the country?
Bron felt positively ill as he followed the delegation of six new werewolves to the living room, with a table carefully prepared with drinks and eight chairs, some filched from other rooms. The place itself stank of grandiosity, with walls over two hundred years old, holding residual decorations of a place once ruled by the Ottoman Empire. A pattern of eyes lined with blue dominated one wall.
Seated at the table next to Ordri, Elinor Spirova started the barrage of questions, drilling his character into oblivion.
“What's your purpose in choosing to settle at the base of our mountains, and conquering one of our allied clans?”
He glanced to Ordri in slight desperation. She mouthed to him: truth.
“I wanted to settle down. I had been cast out by my former family, whose name I have been forbidden to reveal.” The name danced in his mind for a moment, before it crisped out, retreating to a murky corner, where he locked up everything else he wasn't supposed to think or feel. “My only aim was to give myself a name again. I... did not intend it to be Gregorovitch, however. That came as a slight surprise, when your sister kicked me in the balls and proceeded to declare her nobility.”
Kostya snorted, grinning like an imp. “Seriously? You did that, Ordri?”
“Uh huh.” Ordri nodded. “He seemed to think that I was his property, to do with as he wished. Don't worry. He's keeping his hands to himself now,” she added, as a spark of anger coated her brother's expression.
“So, you have no affiliations? No allies, no one who might be looking for you, and no ambition above receiving a name?” Elinor kept the relentless questioning up. Her mouth twisted obnoxiously, though her eyes remained calm, and her scent undefinable. Excitement radiated off Kostya and the Armanev man who dropped his name as Yanus, and pride from the ancient Gregorovitch codger, Filip. How old must that one be? He looked about a hundred. And who were the other two, again? A Spirova – Markus, someone said. And... Sebastian. Another one of Ordri's brothers. God, how many brothers did she have?
“No affiliations,” Bron admitted, though it grated him to do so. Announcing his lone wolf status triggered those low-lying strands of pain, the echo of the things that once were. No one wanted to be alone. Not really. Werewolves, like humans, were pack animals. Loneliness drove them peculiar, mad. It ate at souls until nothing remained.
“Interesting,” Elinor said. She drank out of the glass in front of her, which sparkled with white vintage wine. “You don't smell of deception. You are afraid, though.”
“Wouldn't you be?” Bron muttered. “I made a choice with unintended consequences. I only picked this abode because Ordri smelled like misery.” Okay, she was hot as well, but they didn't need to know that. “I had no clue beyond that.”
“Misery...?” Elinor glanced sharply at Ordri. “Is there something you haven't been telling us?”
Kostya and Sebastian glared at their sister, the same question written over their faces.
Under the penetrating glares of three families, Ordri nervously shuffled her feet, some of that former confidence gone. Filip blinked rheumy eyes, one white eyebrow raised in an approximation of unhappiness.
“Yeah, about that,” Ordri almost whispered, and Bron watched the guilt creep onto her face. He didn't understand what she needed to be guilty about, but observed her expressions anyway, enthralled by her beauty. “Timaeus and I hadn't been getting on for a while. He slept with women in brothels, and he only really made sure I was catered to, because he enjoyed the honor of being granted the Gregorovitch family name.”
Kostya and Sebastian simultaneously hissed. The brothers shared virtually identical expressions of anger at this point, and Bron admired their protective attitude towards their sister. This was good. This was how families should be.
“Is this true?” Filip's voice came out, querulous, his brows now furrowed in question. “If so, then, dear child, why not say anything?”
Ordri shrugged helplessly. “I didn't think it would matter. He was not technically mistreating me. He never said a bad word, or anything that would give yo
u cause to disengage him from our alliance. And he did contribute a lot to Gregorovitch business.”
“Apart from the little slight of not bothering to assist us in the clan shitfest going on at the moment,” Kostya pointed out.
“Child,” Filip said, glaring at his granddaughter's stupidity, “I don't know what impression you have of me, to even think of comparing me to those treacherous Armanevs – no offense,” he added to Yanus.
“None taken.”
“But I do harbour some problems with the idea of infidelity. I might be a stuffy old man, but I'm not that stuffy an old man. We're your family. All of us. We do have interest in your personal wellbeing.”
“Aw, shit,” Ordri said. Was that a tear forming in her eye? “Well. I actually... thought you would be angry at me for even suggesting divorcing him.”
Filip appeared sad at this, his watery eyes staring at his glass. “I did not live my whole life to have my children, and my children's children, afraid of me. I know what it is like to not have choices. All I saw was that you went into that marriage willingly, and you never said a word on the matter. How are we to know the truth if you don't speak?”
Now, somehow, instead of the family dinner turning into a grilling of Bron and whether he might be fit enough to wear the mantle of Gregorovitch, it instead seemed to have reverted to an emotional flaming of Ordri, regarding her implicit silence over the years for a marriage she didn't care about. Bron wondered what would keep someone stagnant for so long, until they smelled like the despair he had discovered. Surely there came a point where you held your head high and said, no more. Surely a noble wouldn't have stood for it.
But she did. A wave of purpose injected him. He had saved her from that. Inadvertently. And she was right. He needed to take responsibility, instead of flee this family madness. He needed to somehow make this work.
“I'm sorry,” she said, shame burning her cheeks. “I summoned you happily to deal with Bronislaw over there, but not to examine the shambles of my own marriage. I'll be honest. I forgot about it most days. It was easier just to not think about things, and to accept that things could always be worse.”