Honesty

by Viola Rivard

  Copyright © 2014 by Viola Rivard

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  EPILOGUE

  CHOICES

  CHAPTER ONE

  Even through his haze of irritation and indignation, Hale had noticed how soft his brother’s female was. He had also noticed how her cheeks had turned a light shade of rose as he’d explored her upper body and the slight tremor in her voice as she’d moaned beneath his touch. But it was her softness, coupled with the maddeningly potent scent of their fucking, that had kept him awake and hard for hours.

  Hale had not fucked his brother’s female. He could have, maybe, if he’d gotten back earlier and if he had less regard for his brother. Alder apparently did not share that same level of regard, because he’d taken his female right on Hale’s furs and now Hale had to suffer not only the pain of a broken nose but also the frustration of smelling the potent scent of her arousal, intertwined with the scent of his own.

  As twins, Alder and Hale’s scents were identical. There were subtle nuances Hale had picked up on over the years. Alder, who was partial to going for runs, often smelled more like the forest, while Hale, who enjoyed digging and swimming, either smelled like earth or like fresh water.

  For the past few hours, Hale had tried to focus on the pain of his nose. Not for the first time, he resented being a wolf, because as his nose rapidly healed, the pain lessened and his awareness of the female’s scent only increased.

  Just as he was about to get up and find another chamber to sleep in, he heard the sound of footsteps approaching from the passageway. He recognized the pattern, graceful, but far too loud for a natural-born predator.

  Hale’s chamber was comprised of two levels, with his fur pallet on the flat, elevated plane. The floor sloped down to the lower level where the entrance was. To him, the chamber was nothing more than a place to sleep, and as such, it was otherwise empty and free of furnishings. He had many valuables, but they were all buried in strategic holes throughout his territory.

  Never one to rely on sight alone, Hale didn’t bother sitting up as Beka approached. He listened to her footsteps and heard her stop within the doorway to his chamber. She tapped her foot impatiently, presumably waiting for him to acknowledge her. He didn’t.

  “Having trouble sleeping?” Despite the distance between them, she didn’t have to raise her voice.

  “Fuck off,” he said, at a slightly higher decibel.

  He heard her saunter into his room and make her way up the slope. Each slap of her bare feet against the stone floor grated on his already frayed nerves.

  She stopped at the foot of his bedding, and Hale could hear the amusement in her voice.

  “Does it disappoint you to know that you’re just as weak as the rest of them?”

  He knew what she was talking about. It was something they’d spoken of often when they were younger, their shared disdain for the males of their species.

  With the intellect of humans and the strength and cunning of their animal counterparts, wolf shifters were the apex predators of any environment. Yet the moment a human female came along, with her soft, fertile body, the males lost their intellect and their dignity in favor of becoming mindless animals whose sole purpose was to breed.

  Hale had always been adamant that he would not be among them. Unlike most wolf packs, his had a range of different species—mostly fellow predators—and was predominantly male. Of the fourteen females in his pack, Hale regularly fucked eight of them. They had kept him satisfied for years and he had always assumed that if the urge to take a human mate ever did present itself, his unique and talented harem of shifter females would help him to take the edge off.

  But as he finally shifted his gaze up to Beka, he found himself woefully underwhelmed. The lamp she held cast a warm glow over her vibrant, tanned skin. Her platinum hair was unbraided and hung loose and free, the way she always wore it when she wanted his hands in it. Never one to go fully nude, she wore a lacy, crème-colored dress that hung around her upper thighs, leaving her long, smooth legs visible.

  He should have wanted to run his hands up those legs, push them apart, and bury his aching cock inside of her. Instead, he found himself absently wondering how she always managed to keep her light clothing so clean despite living in a den.

  Already forgetting her insult, he rolled over onto his back, affecting a bored look. “What do you want?”

  Setting the lamp down on the floor, Beka climbed astride him, positioning herself directly below his cock.

  “Don’t talk,” she said, taking him into her hands.

  Bracing himself up on his elbows, he watched as she began to stroke him, noting that her hands were cool. Her whole body was cool, much cooler than his brother’s female, who had been warm beneath him. In fact, as Hale had touched and teased her small body, she had grown quite hot.

  Thinking back, he tried to remember her name. As he had been leaving his chamber—forced out by his belligerent twin—he’d heard his brother say it. Or at least, what he thought was her name.

  “What kind of name is Tailor?” he mused aloud. “Does she sew clothing?”

  “It’s Tay-lor,” Beka said irritably. “It’s a common name among humans, though I’ve only ever heard it used for a boy. Are we going to fuck, or what?”

  Hale looked at her, as if noticing her for the first time. He glanced down at his cock, which had softened in her hands.

  Wryly, he grinned. “Thanks. I’ve been trying to get rid of that for hours. Now maybe I can get some sleep.”

  If looks could kill, Beka would have slaughtered him where he lay. Fortunately for Hale, she, like most other shifters, was vastly inferior to him in power and combat skill.

  “Like hell you will,” a deep voice boomed from below.

  Beka quickly skittered off Hale as Alder stormed into the chamber. Hale hadn’t heard his brother coming, but he rarely did. As pups, they had made a game of stalking up on one another and Alder, with his boundless patience, had always been the best at it.

  Hale turned on his side just as his brother reached the top of the slope. He’d thought that a few hours of separation would cool Alder’s anger, but Alder looked nearly as furious as when he’d pulled Hale off his female earlier in the night.

  “Brother,” Hale said in greeting, giving Alder a guileless smile.

  Alder folded his arms across his chest. “What did you do to piss off Whiteriver?”

  Changing tactics, Hale said, “My nose is feeling better.”

  He registered a flash of guilt on his brother’s face and knew that he’d hit a nerve. In all their twenty-eight years, Alder had never struck him like that. It didn’t particularly bother Hale, as he was used to taking punches, but he knew that it bothered Alder.

  “Answer the question,” Alder ordered, though some of the bite had left his tone.

  Hale rubbed his chin, his blunt nails scratching at beard stubble. “Why do you assume that I did something to them?”

  “Because the wolves who attacked us said as much. Not to mention, Silas wouldn’t have broken the treaty without a damn good reason.”

  “They attacked me as well,” Hale said.

  He pulled the furs back to expose his hip. The claw marks we
re almost entirely healed over, leaving only three jagged pink lines on his flesh.

  Hale sighed and said, “One of their females, the small, mouthy blonde with the stupid name—”

  “Tulip,” Beka supplied, having regained some of her composure.

  Hale snapped his fingers. “That’s the one. I was tracking a deer near the foothills of Ezra when she approached me, wanting to fuck. I turned her down and she must have gone back to Silas and fed him some bullshit story, because a few hours later they were trying to run me down. Chased me all the way to Grave’s Point.”

  His brother gave him a skeptical look. “I highly doubt Silas would break the treaty just because one of his wolves claimed you slept with her.”

  “She had my scent on her.”

  Alder arched a brow. “Why?”

  “She sucked my cock,” said Hale. His brother gave him a withering look. “I know, I know. I fucked up. But that hardly constitutes war.”

  Alder considered him for a moment, and then gave a reluctant nod. “If Silas was willing to break the treaty over such a minor offense, he’s obviously looking to go to war.” He shook his head. “I just don’t see why, though. He doesn’t have the numbers.”

  “He’s being irrational,” Alder said. “Ezra’s going dry. All the prey is in the valley. And there’s the fact that he’s had his eyes on Halcyon territory since he was a juvenile.”

  When they’d left their older brother’s pack seven years ago, the valley and both mountains had been under the rule of Silas’s father, Maruk. By organizing the disenfranchised shifters within the territory, Hale and his brother had overthrown Maruk and claimed the majority of the land for themselves.

  They had tried integrating what was left of the Whiteriver pack into Halcyon, but there was too much bad blood between them. Eventually, Alder had worked out a treaty wherein Silas and his pack were given Mount Ezra on the grounds that they weren’t to hunt in the valley or ally themselves with rival packs.

  Alder took a seat on the furs, running his fingers through his hair in a familiar, contemplative gesture. “What are we going to do?”

  Beka climbed over Hale to sit beside Alder. “You mean you’re going to stay?”

  She made no effort to mask the excitement in her voice, and for once Hale shared in her satisfaction. He’d known, from the moment Beka had told him that Alder had brought a human back to the den, that his brother was going to leave their territory.

  Hale was glad the situation with Whiteriver had played out the way he’d planned, because there was now the added bonus of keeping Alder around longer. Perhaps long enough for Hale to convince his brother to ditch the female and stay.

  “I’ll help,” Alder said. As if reading Hale’s mind, he added, “But as soon as this is resolved, I’m leaving.”

  Hale lay back on the furs and stared up at the ceiling. “I understand. Domesticity always was your thing.” Before Alder could reply, he said, “We need to get to Winter before Silas does.”

  “And I imagine you expect me to go?” Alder asked, sounding irritated again.

  “He hates me,” Hale pointed out.

  The leader of the small bear clan had helped them in the previous war, but only because they’d had a common enemy. Winter was too uptight for his own good and had never appreciated Hale’s sense of humor.

  “Whose fault is that?” Alder asked.

  Hale tilted his head, giving his brother a flat look. “Are you going to go, or not?”

  Alder let out a groan.

  Placing a hand on his leg, Beka said, “The sooner you go, the sooner you can come home.”

  Hale watched with amusement as Alder gently pried Beka’s hand from his thigh. Alder had always been too nice and far too patient with her.

  Shifting his gaze to Hale, Alder said, “I’m going to get some rest before I go. Stay away from her while I’m gone.”

  Needing no clarification, Hale sighed. “I have no interest in your female.”

  Turning his head back to the ceiling, Hale listened to his brother stand and leave the room. As soon as the sound of Alder’s footsteps tapered off, Beka climbed back on top of Hale, straddling him once again.

  “I’m not in the mood,” he told her.

  “You’re always in the mood,” she said, taking him into her hands.

  Her touch did nothing for him, and it wasn’t just because his mind was still sifting through images of the human female or because his nose was still preoccupied by the scent of her arousal.

  He sat up, putting a hand on Beka’s shoulder and pushing her back onto the furs. Her pink tongue darted out to wet her lips and he saw excitement gleaming in her eyes. It was the same excitement she’d favored Alder with just minutes before, the same excitement she always had when his twin paid her any attention.

  “You don’t get it,” Hale said in a low voice. “I’m not in the mood to be Alder. Now get the fuck out of here.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Every time she’d woken up for the past two weeks, there had been a vague moment where Taylor thought she was back in her apartment. For one fleeting instant, she could smell Patty’s Nag Champa incense and hear the sound of the commuter rail as it flew by her window at 7:14 on the nose. She would sit up, expecting to see Patty’s calico curled up between her legs, and then the reality of her situation would come flooding back to her, along with a wave of malcontent.

  Most mornings she wanted to cry. She never did, mainly because once she went down the path of self-pity there would be no going back.

  But for the first time in weeks, when Taylor woke up in the disastrous woodland cabin, she didn’t feel like crying. Sure, her life was still a mess, maybe even messier than it had been before, but now there was the faintest glimmer of hope.

  Lark had stretched two paisley sheets across the cabin, turning them into makeshift hammocks. Taylor climbed out of hers, her sore ankle smarting as she touched it to the floor. She stretched her arms and turned back to gaze at her companion.

  On the hammock beside hers, Lark snored loudly, but showed no signs of stirring. She had one arm thrown over her head to block out the dull afternoon light.

  Stepping over a busted radio and walking around a crate of scrap metal, Taylor crept over to the door. Lark was still snoring as she quietly opened the door and stepped outside onto the porch.

  A thin fog had drifted up from the lake and settled over the area. She looked up, hoping to determine what time it was, but the overcast sky gave nothing away. She remembered Lark saying that the fog usually rolled in during the early morning hours, but it had been just after dawn when Taylor had gone to bed and she felt pretty rested.

  After finding a suitable bush where she could relieve her bladder, Taylor circled back to the cabin. Two damp towels hung from the clothesline around back. She pulled them off to hang them inside where it was dry. On her way back around, she noticed a circle of weathered stones around the side of the house and in the center, what looked like the long-forgotten remains of a garden.

  Not paying attention to where she was going, she collided with a large body. A startled sound escaped her lips, but she relaxed when she saw it was Alder. Then, upon consideration, she scrutinized his face.

  Aquiline nose, dimpled chin, ash-brown stubble, rich, wavy hair—it looked like Alder. But she had been fooled before.

  He smiled at her, and then she knew it really was him. His eyes, one gold and one blue, lit up as they regarded her with genuine affection.

  “Hey there,” she said, her cheeks warming under his gaze.

  As if he couldn’t resist touching her, his hand went to her arm, tracing her frame until it came up to rest on her shoulder.

  “What are you doing out here by yourself?” he asked.

  “Oh, you know, just looking around,” she said, not wanting to admit she’d been peeing.

  He didn’t look convinced. “You weren’t planning on running away, were you?”

  The question sounded playful, but she saw the slig
ht waver in his smile.

  “Nope,” she said. “I don’t even know where the nearest town is from here and even if I could somehow make it over Mount Ezra, I’d be right back where I started, running from the cops.”

  Alder frowned. “It sounds like you’ve given this some thought.”

  “No, no, I just wanted to reassure you, honestly.”

  Honestly. The word had her cringing with annoyance. She’d never noticed that she had the tendency to say it when she lied and neither had anyone else, until Hale. In only a few minutes he’d had her all figured out.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, brushing his thumb across her cheek.

  Taylor greedily leaned into his touch, ignoring the twinge of shame. That morning, she had given a great deal of consideration to how she could escape the valley. Between her disconcerting experience with Hale and Alder’s sudden assertion that they were going to leave his home behind and start a new life together, she had been overwhelmed. But in the end, she’d sucked it up and gone to sleep.

  “I brought your bag,” he said.

  He held up her orange backpack. Taylor reached for it, surprised she’d forgotten about it. When she tried to take it from Alder’s hand, he didn’t let go.

  “You left it open,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to go through your things, but—”

  “None of that stuff is true,” she blurted, remembering the newspapers she’d been collecting. “I mean, some of it is, but most of it isn’t.”

  Alder’s brow furrowed. “I was referring to the empty bottles.”

  Her mouth suddenly felt dry. “Do you know what those are?”

  “I have a…family member who’s taken medication in the past. I don’t recognize the names, but I imagine it’s important that you take them.”

  Taylor shrugged and pulled the bag from his grip. “They’re not as important as they seem. Just precautions, really.”

  That was something she sort of believed. In the months after her transplant, she’d been on a whole slew of medications, but as the months and then years passed, her doses had been lowered and most of the meds had been dropped entirely.