by Hettie Ivers
“If I’d said no—”
“You’d have gotten them killed sooner.”
“You don’t know—”
“Yes,” he growled, allowing his irises to lighten further and his canines to elongate as he charged forward to stand next to the bed. “I do know. Nahuel was a jealous, covetous bastard, and he wouldn’t have wanted to share you with your human family.”
Cautiously, she began to scoot backwards on the bed, away from his glowing eyes and enraged expression. And sharp canines.
He pursued her, climbing atop the mattress. “Obviously, he never meant to lose his head and murder them right in front of you in such a messy, gruesome display of embarrassing werelock incompetence,” Kai disparaged as he slowly crawled closer. She backed up until she was huddled against the headboard. “But neither was he planning on letting them remain alive for much longer after you’d both departed for Argentina.”
He cornered her upon his knees, placing a hand on either side of her petite frame against the ornate, wrought iron headboard. “He would’ve sent someone else to do his dirty work, and he would’ve made it look like an accident, but he’d have gotten rid of them.”
He was too close for her comfort, his mud-streaked arms caging her in. He smelled of earth. Of sweat. Of man.
“And you’d never have been the wiser. You might’ve loved a man who had murdered your parents for the rest of your life without ever knowing it.”
“I—I can’t believe that.” She squeezed the soft flesh of her thighs with restless, clammy hands, hoping to ground herself.
He leaned closer, his biceps flexing, his chest and shoulder muscles rippling beneath his smooth, filthy, bronzed skin. His gaze was far too feral-looking for her to meet, so she lowered her eyes to the lace trim on the bodice of her nightdress. But then his penis—now in her line of vision—moved. And her terrified emerald eyes shot back up to his face.
Because he was semi-hard.
“Why not, Lupe? I’m telling you, I knew him, and he would’ve wanted your heart and devotion all to himself. That’s who Nahuel Salvatella was. Why won’t you accept it?”
“I don’t know!” she bleated, not knowing where to look or how to escape as he inched nearer still.
“Why?” He tilted his face level with hers. “Why blame yourself for what that asshole did to you?”
“He killed them because of me!”
At her wailed outcry, Kai pounced, and Lupe found herself flat on her back, the wind knocked from her lungs, her legs pinned beneath his, her arms secured on either side of her head in an iron grip.
“Wrong,” he rasped, his face inches from hers. “He killed them because he was a murderous asshole with no talent for controlling his temper.”
She squirmed, her heart racing, her breaths coming too fast. “But I fell for him! Was so sure I was in love with him—a murderous asshole!”
“I know.”
“I let him touch me.” She panted for air. “Let him come inside me.” She couldn’t move. No matter how much she wriggled.
“I know.”
“There were signs.” She couldn’t breathe. Yet somehow she was still talking—saying more than she knew she should. “So many signs! But I didn’t know they were signs.”
“How could you have known?” His voice was calm, while she was becoming hysterical.
“And I liked it—the way he touched me. I liked him!”
“I know. I know.”
She’d stopped struggling, because it was futile. “Thought he was my fairytale come true.”
“I know. It’s okay.” Kai licked the side of her face. She was too distraught to question why.
“Thought we’d live happily ever after.”
“You couldn’t have known.” He licked the other side.
“One minute we were holding hands—and it was the happiest moment of my life, and the next, there was blood everywhere.”
“I’m sorry, Lupe.” His mouth found her neck, his tongue lapping at the underside of her jaw. It was warm. Soothing.
“My mother … she was in pieces …”
“So sorry.”
She tilted her head to give him better access to lick her throat. “There was so much … ”
“I know.”
“So much blood … comes out of bodies.”
“Know it. Seen it.”
“Blood and pieces … my parents everywhere.”
He lapped at her cheeks. “It’s okay.” He licked her eyes. “You’re not crying.”
“On furniture …”
“I’m sorry it happened.”
“Walls. Me …”
“You’re okay now.”
“Me. Their blood was in my hair.”
“You’re safe here now.”
Her whole face was damp from his licking, not from the tears she wasn’t crying.
“Can’t forget.”
“I know.”
“Don’t want to forget!”
“You shouldn’t.” His tongue passed over her mouth.
“Thought I was a good person.”
“You are, Lupe.” He licked the corner of her swollen lower lip.
“Why then? Why’d I get him for a soul mate?”
“Fuck, I wish I knew.” His tongue glided over her lips again, and then it slipped inside.
His tongue tasted salty in her mouth, and she welcomed it. She welcomed his lips, firm but soft, hungry, but not demanding. His hands still restrained hers, his legs still pinned hers, but his lower body weight didn’t touch her. And now she wanted it to. She wanted his touch to progress, while at the same time, she never wanted his sweet kiss to end. Because there was so much hope in that kiss—hope for them both that they weren’t simply living out a death sentence. Hope that two fractured souls might merge and mend as one.
When it finally did end and Kai lifted his mouth from hers, his breathing was erratic, and his blue irises were bright, bleary bands rimming his dilated pupils. An unanswered question pulsed to life within the vein that throbbed down the midline of his forehead. She knew her own flushed face projected the same question.
And she felt the weight of Kai’s stare the way she wanted to feel his cock pressing between her thighs in that moment: hard and heavy.
“Yes,” he answered. “Were I still alive inside, Lupe, I’d be inside of you right now.”
Her belly fluttered at his words, warmth pooling within her core.
“But we can’t,” he told her. “Because I’m not. We’re not.”
He watched the regret that played over her features, followed by understanding, and resignation. “And because I want to bite you, Lupe. I want to feel your fragile skin tear open beneath my canines.” It wasn’t an apology. It was just a fact. “I prefer to come with the taste of blood on my tongue—with the sensation of broken flesh in my mouth. That is who I am.”
The girl from Jussara, young though she was, understood. Accepted Kai’s preferences more easily than most humans might have. Her mother had taught her to believe that they were all God’s creatures, and that although God’s initial creation was always central, it was primitive, not perfect, as others often believed. Because what God made, life experience was meant to form. So the end product, which some might view as warped, or misshapen, was always, always the true perfection of a being.
Even Nahuel. Knowing her mother in heaven had already forgiven Nahuel for being who he was—even for doing what he had done—didn’t make it any easier for Lupe to.
“You don’t smell afraid anymore.” Kai’s assertion was an understatement. He was sure the whole house—perhaps even the forest around them, smelled of her arousal … and fifty years’ worth of his pent-up, unbridled animal lust.
Lupe thought he might kiss her again. Maybe just once more. He looked like he was about to as he dipped his mouth to hers, but before their lips touched, an explosive sound like something akin to a sonic boom shook the house, rattling the windows and blasting Lupe’s bedroom door clear off its hin
ges.
A startled Ines screamed from the guest bedroom, Jussara commenced crying in her crib from the nursery, and Kai groaned, “Fuck,” as Alcaeus’ sister Lessa, her royal majesty herself, burst into the room with Kaleb to catch them in their embrace on the bed—Kai’s dirty, naked body and rock-hard dick hovering above Lupe’s restrained, scantily-clad form.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“You really think Nahuel would’ve killed her parents regardless?”
Kai shrugged. “What does it matter? He did kill them. It’s fact. Contemplating what if’s and alternate endings will only torture her unnecessarily for the rest of her life. Better that she think it was a foregone conclusion with him that was beyond her ability to change.”
Kaleb nodded. “Sage healing advice, Doc.” His big palm landed on Kai’s shoulder with a thwack. “Might want to apply it to yourself someday.”
Kai’s eyes narrowed at the beefy hand affixed to his shoulder, causing the man attached to it to grin and raise both of his hands in a gesture of mock surrender.
“You do realize Lessa’s going to tell Alcaeus about this, right?” Kaleb checked.
“Yep.”
“And he’s not going to believe the story we sold to Lessa, either.”
“Nope.”
Kaleb had somehow convinced Lessa that it was her heat cycle that had thrown Kai into such a state of arousal that Kai had attempted to seduce an innocent Lupe in her bed. The Alpha female of the Reinoso pack was far from stupid, but neither was she without pride. And vanity had always been her greatest Achilles heel. Just as Kaleb’s unassuming, seemingly uninspired persona and intellect would always be his most valuable asset.
Jussara squealed with delight from the other side of the bay window of Alcaeus’ living room, and both men turned where they stood to watch a laughing Lupe twirling in place outside, a giggling Jussara held high above her.
“She and Alcaeus”—Kai sighed—“will never work.”
Kaleb nodded in agreement, adding, “And Alcaeus has been around long enough to know better.”
“Like that’s ever stopped him before,” Kai muttered. “There can be no happy ending to their love story. I should know.”
Kaleb laughed. “You worried she’s bound to break big Al’s heart?”
Kai didn’t answer. Didn’t tell Kaleb that he worried Lupe and her daughter might break more than just Alcaeus’ heart.
“Heard from Remy this morning,” Kaleb broached.
“I’m sure. Let me guess? Alex couldn’t wait to break the good news to him that he had taken it upon himself to make the progeny of our Salvatella enemy a permanent member of our pack?”
It was Kaleb’s turn to withhold commentary.
“I suppose it’s better this way. I actually feared he might kill her last night,” Kai admitted after a pause. “Use the soldier beheading as an excuse to justify it to Al.”
“Me too.”
They were speaking of Jussara, the Salvatella baby. Lupe posed no threat to Alex or to the Reinoso pack. Moreover, she had rid the earth of one of their most hated enemies. She was a confirmed ally. Keeping her alive and outside of the Salvatellas’ reach was a triumph for Alex and the Reinoso pack as much as it was in the best interest of Lupe’s safety and survival.
But Jussara … Jussara was a complication that would no doubt prove riskier over time. And the fact that Alex had just orchestrated events to ensure that Jussara remained a permanent, official member of their pack was a potentially dangerous play indeed.
Remy Bertrand, Alex’s older half-brother, vehemently disapproved of what Alcaeus and Kai had done in allowing Lupe to keep the Salvatella baby in the first place. It would’ve required very simple magic to abort the fetus early on, and Remy was angry that they’d neglected to make that choice for Lupe, arguing that it was ultimately for her own good as well as theirs. And Remy had stubbornly remained at his ancestral home in France, sulking over their decision, refusing to visit them in Morumbi for more than a year now—ever since Alcaeus had informed him about Lupe’s presence and the situation with baby Jussara.
Remy believed that the bond between Lupe and Nahuel Salvatella’s departed soul, while not the same as that of a marked mate of their own species, was strong enough to keep her broken, beating heart tethered for the remainder of her human life. And because of this bond to Nahuel, her daughter Jussara would ultimately be drawn to her own biological pack—permanently casting her loyalty into question and presenting an uncompromising risk over time to their entire pack.
Alcaeus insisted that Remy was wrong. He believed that through killing Nahuel to avenge her parents’ horrific murder, Lupe had officially renounced any claim Nahuel or the Salvatellas might’ve had on her and her daughter. Kai tried not to roll his eyes whenever his friend presented such unfounded logic, knowing that Al was blinded by his own infatuation.
“Remy’ll get over it once he meets them,” Kaleb predicted with a smile. “Juju’s adorable. Cutest Salvatella enemy that ever was.”
Kaleb was American, and he’d only been with the Reinoso pack for the past forty-three years. His history with their greatest enemy was limited to recent interaction and factual information as it pertained to past events. It would never be as personal for him the way it was for the rest of them.
Alex viewed this as an advantage, because it meant Kaleb was more likely to take a strictly analytical approach to the Salvatellas, rather than have his judgment clouded by preconceived notions, his decisions colored by emotionally charged personal experiences.
“Besides, if you can accept Jussara after losing Maribel to that Salvatella attack in Madrid, I should think—” Kaleb stopped short at seeing Kai’s baleful expression.
“Not. Today,” Kai warned him in a low voice.
Kaleb had never known Kai’s mate, Maribel. He’d joined the Reinoso pack seven years after her passing. And while Maribel was considered a taboo subject that most avoided with Kai, Kaleb didn’t seem to know any better. Or he pretended not to know better.
Kaleb was one of the few who didn’t regard Kai as a freak for surviving his mate. Instead, he’d commented once to Kai that he thought it “best not to look a gift horse in the mouth.” Which proved to Kai that Kaleb, an unmated male werelock, didn’t have the first clue what kind of torment Kai’s survival meant if he thought to view it as a “gift.”
But Kaleb was young, and he had no idea the burden Kai bore. No frame of reference for the guilt and the agony that perpetually haunted him. And Kaleb only knew the “legend” that was Maribel. He knew the story of how she’d rescued Alex and Lessa from certain death when they’d been attacked in Madrid that fateful night. Kaleb knew the tale of how she’d teleported them to safety and then bravely insisted upon going back to look for more survivors of the massive explosion.
That was the story they all told of Maribel’s end—the swan song of a selfless, pure-hearted hero. Kai wanted to believe it, too. But in his quieter, darker moments of reflection, his heart knew different.
Perfect as she was, Maribel wasn’t one to easily accept defeat. She loathed mistakes—and none more than her own. As much as Kai wanted to believe Maribel had teleported back into a blazing inferno with the sole intent of searching for survivors, he feared that she’d been driven by another purpose—to search for Nuriel Salvatella’s residual trail of magic. Nuriel was the eldest of the Salvatella brothers, and he was believed to have been the mastermind behind that massacre in Madrid.
Maribel wasn’t the type to give up, to leave well enough alone and walk away. And though she might’ve even convinced herself that she was going back to seek out survivors, Kai knew the truth, like a heavy anchor in his soul, that what she’d really gone back seeking in her final moments were answers. And revenge.
***
Time passed and Lupe settled in at the compound in Morumbi. She did stop being afraid around the wolves, and eventually, she came to be an integral part of the Reinoso pack, earning the admiration and respect of werelo
cks and human pack members alike for her fearless attitude and her straightforward nature. Alcaeus only grew to adore her more over time, and although the pair never managed to achieve a romantic union in the traditional sense, theirs was a friendship and a bond of true love that transcended the constraints of conventional classification.
Lupe’s bond with Kai was a darker one. The two shared a pain that few others would ever know, and most could never fathom. Theirs was a bond of mutual understanding and shared empathy. Theirs was an unspoken pact of survival. And Kai’s somber compassion served to balance Alcaeus’ perpetually jovial, optimistic outlook for her.
For while she did come to laugh and be merry quite often living under the same roof with Alcaeus, Lupe’s happiness was always on borrowed time. The memories of her past and the reminder of her future were always there—lurking in the shadows of her mind, waiting to attack her in her weaker moments. Because her long-term outlook was still bleak. Her daughter’s future remained uncertain.
Lupe prayed long and hard for a miracle—for a merciful reprieve from the nightmares of Nahuel and his family, and for a divine pardon that might sever her connection to Nahuel.
So a few years into her twenties, when a mysterious and beautiful violet-eyed woman began appearing in Lupe’s nightmares and ultimately ended her ritual, nocturnal torment, a torch of hope was ignited that Lupe’s prayers had finally been answered.
The exquisite creature told Lupe that she could help her. She said that if Lupe chose the hero’s path that the woman had laid out for her, then together, they could vanquish Lupe’s demons forever—and the woman would permanently sever Lupe’s connection to Nahuel!
The dream woman said that they would have to be patient, though, because she required the right source of magic to accomplish what this particular spell required. The woman didn’t have it yet. But she would.
She assured Lupe that in due time the tides of fate would turn in their favor and deliver a savior with enough power to change the course of both of their destinies. She promised that one fine day, their ship would come in.