Blood Law

by Karin Tabke

  But the little bitch was not taking no for an answer. As if guided by some other force, she pulled him to her chest, then pressed him to the sheets and covered him with her body. As she rolled over with him, she tore at her shirt. Rafe swallowed when her smooth, milky breasts popped free and brushed boldly against his chest. Though her pants were hampered by her cast, she managed to get herself naked. When her essence filtered to his nose, Rafael steeled himself.

  “One more night, Rafael,” she said softly.

  He pushed away from her and rolled off the bed.

  “You can’t run from what you must do, Rafael. At least be man enough to give me a farewell fuck.”

  He snarled and turned back toward her. “Your crudeness is unbecoming.”

  She threw her head back and laughed. The laugh of a woman in complete control. “And turning me over to your brother is becoming?”

  “I cannot change the Blood Law.”

  She moved back against the pillows. She shook her head and pushed back her thick hair. His mark was plain to see on her neck. She smiled seductively. Her blue eyes burned cobalt in their intensity. She slowly shook her head again. Her dark hair swirled down her shoulders to her waist. Her tits peeked out from between the thick strands.

  She was stunning. He could not help the direction of his gaze as it followed the firm dip of her belly to her slightly flared hips. Slowly she spread her thighs. “You can change your mind and take me.” Coyly, she opened her thighs wider. He looked down at her soft, dewy pussy and imagined being buried deep. He stepped closer to the edge of the bed.

  Blood pounded to his dick. She rose on all fours and crawled to him. With her teeth, she pulled down the zipper of his jeans. He didn’t stop her. She kissed him deeply, pushing his jeans down with the palms of her hands.

  His cock sprang free, hot, thick, and wanting. Warm air swirled around his hips. She slipped her hands around to his ass and squeezed him. He moaned and pressed against her softness. She felt so damn good. Baby-soft skin. And she smelled good, too. Like the forest just after it rained.

  Her lips traced down his neck, and her fingers tore open his shirt, sending buttons flying across the bed, hitting the wood floor in a series of pings. She suckled his nipples. She nipped at his belly and licked a wet trail through the downy hair that led her directly to what made him so different from her. He was rock-hard, his desire so heightened he could not see clearly.

  He dug his fingers into her hair and arched toward her. He felt the hot blasts of her breath against the head of his cock. Jesus.

  “What is your name?” he hoarsely demanded. His sudden need to know it was almost as strong as his need for her body.

  “Falon,” she breathed as her luscious lips clamped down on him and she sucked his come right out of his balls.

  “Ah, Falon,” he cried out as he bucked against her, his fingers digging into her hair pressing her harder against his groin. Falon. She took all of him, completely down her throat. Her fingers caressed his balls. She mouth fucked his cock until there wasn’t a drop of come left inside of him.

  He collapsed next to her, his body wrung dry. His sexual satiation was short-lived. The image of his brother slowly strangling Falon as she fought for each breath stirred a violent reaction.

  Before he let that happen, he would kill her himself, swiftly taking her life to save her from the slow, torturous death Lucien surely had planned. Then he’d kill his brother.

  He opened his eyes and turned his head toward her. She lay beside him fully clothed, as was he. Moreover, her eyes were closed, her breaths even, as if she’d never regained consciousness.

  He leapt to the floor. What the hell? The ring scorched his finger, mocking him.

  He had a raging hard-on. He looked closer at the girl. She was still unconscious. What just happened? The ring flared again. Had he hallucinated the entire episode? His dick throbbed, unquenched. He shook his head and moved away from her.

  Had the vision been his subconscious’s way of warning him to stay way? To hand her over to Lucien without further hesitation? Because she held a sexual power over him that would be his and his pack’s downfall?

  It had to be that.

  She wanted nothing to do with him, much less sex. And that blow job? That was art. Art born of years of experience. She’d been a virgin twenty-four hours ago. He knew she was not experienced in the art of fellatio and that conjuring it in his mind was probably as unlikely as her being able to do the real thing. So what the hell had happened?

  It had to be a warning. Because he would not believe that he, Rafael Vulkasin, alpha of pack Vulkasin, who was renowned for his slow-burn temperament and unshakable will, was at the sexual beck and call of a girl who would die at dawn and a damn ring that had a mind of its own.

  Or could it be that Lucien had a hand in the vision?

  “Impossible!” he roared. He strode into the bathroom, yanked the wooden towel rack off the wall, and violently slammed it into the window jamb and locked the window by impaling it shut. It would take a jackhammer to open it now.

  He strode back into the bedroom and looked down at the slumbering beauty. It didn’t matter really.

  He was now resolved. She’d be dead in less than twelve hours.

  Seven

  RAFAEL PICKED HIS way through the gauntlet of naked, undulating bodies in the great room. It looked like a Roman orgy, but that was hardly a surprise. By dawn the next morning they would be paired. But unable to procreate.

  Fury forced him to the front doors. There would be plenty of fucking for his pack, but no child would be born anytime soon. The girl would soon be dead, and with her, any hope of his pack’s ability to breed until he found and marked a suitable mate again.

  The urge to flee, to get away and clear his head, gripped Rafael. He shoved open the two heavy metal-studded oak doors and inhaled the clean night air. As he did, he saw his brother’s black custom chopper.

  He stopped at the edge of the rough plank porch. A long, deep howl echoed through the forest, coming from the direction where he had found Falon earlier that day. Had Lucien followed her scent?

  The ring flared on his hand. He grabbed the damn thing and tried to wrestle it off his finger. It only mocked him by flaring hotter. Feeling the need to run himself, Rafael hopped on his brother’s chopper and headed out. He opened the throttle when he cleared the compound gates and gave the horses their heads. Cool air tore through his hair, but even so, the ride through the mountains didn’t clear his mind.

  Not tonight. Tonight his head was full of emotions—rage mostly—and he was damn horny. He could not remember ever feeling so out of sorts, so on edge. So off balance. His world was unfurling, and he didn’t like it.

  His pack normally worked as a well-greased unit. Now they were screwing like dogs in his living room with no thoughts about protecting the compound. He could no more command their libidos to turn off than he could keep the sun from rising each morning. It had been too long for them. They’d had sex, yes—they were Lycan, after all, and would howl at the moon twenty-four/seven if they couldn’t—but not as they were now.

  Now they were having sex not just for release but for the future of the pack. To decide who would be paired and who would not.

  It was the kind of sex he’d had with Falon last night. Profound because it had a reason. Ceremonial almost. Under normal circumstances, he would have hit and run. But there was nothing, he was realizing, normal about the girl who occupied his bed. Salene sensed it as well. Why else would he want a woman who was not of his kind? But what was it about her?

  Rafael took a turn wide and opened the throttle. Fury tore through him, then compassion. Because Falon had to know what he intended. Did it scare her? Even now, was she wondering when he would return and lead her to her death?

  Gravel took hold of the rear tire. He put his booted foot down on the asphalt, riding out of the slide. He grinned despite the near-fatal accident.

  He lived for this shit.

 
; As he gunned the engine, he came around a hairpin turn. Instead of easing up on the gas, he opened it up and took it crossed-up like a short track racer. As he came around the corner, he slammed on the brakes. The headlights of a dozen bikes blinded him.

  “Fuck.”

  He sniffed the air. The stench was unmistakable. Vipers, a local biker gang of human thugs. While the human Slayers were his nemesis, the Vipers were an abscess that kept getting bigger, pussier, and more difficult to treat. They’d been trying to muscle in on Rafael’s mountain for the last few years. Rafe smiled in the harsh light. But the Vulkasins pushed them back each full moon. He threw his head back and laughed. It was great sport watching them flee in abject terror. Those big badass mofos. Rafael sobered. But like a cancer, they came back, infecting deeper and deeper into Rafael’s territory. He knew the Slayers powered them. And because of that he had been able to hike up his own damage. On the cusp of the Blood Moon rising, Rafael took every opportunity he could to eliminate one more Slayer. It was why he had been prowling the streets of Sacramento.

  “Sons of bitches,” he cursed, then accelerated and charged them in a dangerous game of chicken. Normally he’d stand and fight them off the old-fashioned way, but right now he wanted speed. And the only person he would stop to fight was his brother. And then he’d tear him apart.

  Normally, the Vipers backed down, but as Rafe sped toward them, he realized that wasn’t going to happen tonight. They formed a tight gauntlet.

  He could drop the bike, shift, and get his speed fix on all fours, but he wasn’t in the mood for running or messing up a perfectly good Harley.

  He grinned in the harsh light. So it was a fight they wanted? Then a fight he’d give them.

  Rafe hit the rear brake and came to a skidding stop inches from Gordo, the heavyweight leader of the Vipers, who were second only in ferocity to the Vulkasin pack. The two groups had a long and bloody history. Pack Vulkasin stayed in the black the good old-fashioned way—real estate and Wall Street—but the Vipers made their living cooking and selling meth. Rafael had a big problem with that. He’d had an even bigger problem when several of his pack got hooked on the shit. And then his problem had become the Vipers’ problem.

  Rafe had single-handedly destroyed the lab.

  And that’s when the shit really hit the fan. The Vipers had doubled their efforts to get drugs into Rafe’s pack, forming new labs faster than Rafe could find them. Then the economy collapsed. That, coupled with the pack’s longing to procreate, had weakened many. The pack had been forced to take on more blue-collar type work. Protection runs and supply runs, so long as it wasn’t contraband, he was good with it. They did what they had to, to keep the compound running and the pack fed.

  The Slayers had tapped into the Viper gang, as well. Methed-out Slayers were twice as deadly and unpredictable than those that were sober.

  Rafael certainly had his hands full.

  He needed to give the pack back their reason for being. And he had to defeat the Slayers once and for all. To do that, all of the North American packs would have to unite. But too many of them had allied themselves with Lucien, who refused to look at the bigger picture: their survival as a race. United they could have a chance; divided they were doomed.

  In seconds, he was surrounded by twelve bikers, each of whom he’d taken more than a pound of flesh from over the years. He wasn’t worried about their numbers. Tonight, he was more powerful. He not only had the ring, but his will to survive was at its zenith.

  Rafael was easily a head taller than any of the Vipers, and that was saying a lot. They were some big dudes. Even so, he stood his ground.

  “Lupo,” Gordo called, his face split in half with a grin. Although the Vipers didn’t know for sure the power of the Vulkasins, they correctly suspected they were Lycan.

  Rafael looked up at the waxing moon, then back to Gordo. “You picked a good night to die.”

  The dirtbags surrounding him laughed. One shoved him from behind. Rafe didn’t budge. His anger simmered. Not enough to force a shift, but if he wanted to, he could hike it up a notch.

  He felt those behind him move together. He jumped and kicked back with his right leg, knocking two down. As he turned, he cut Gordo off in mid-word with a karate chop to the larynx. Gordo screamed and grabbed his throat. As he came down, Rafe smashed his boot into the leathered biker’s face.

  Eight hundred years of persecution was unleashed. Rafael was so angry, so damn pissed off at the last twenty-four years of his life that, one by one, he disabled the Vipers. But he didn’t escape without injury.

  Someone stabbed him in the kidney from behind. The shock of the hit stopped him in mid-punch. He grunted in pain and quickly recovered, his adrenaline kicking into higher gear. He whipped around, grabbed the hand wielding the knife, and bent it backward. As bones snapped, the Viper howled.

  The knife fell to the ground. Rafe grabbed it. The surrounding Vipers backed away.

  Slowly, Rafe tossed the large skinning knife in his hand. Then, grabbing it by the point, he chucked it at the downed man, impaling his broken hand to the dirt shoulder.

  A gun cocked behind him. He turned to a loud snarl erupting from the forest edge behind him. Bloodcurdling screams rent the air just as Lucien, in all his wolf glory, leapt out and proceeded to rip apart three of the Vipers. Stunned, Rafael watched the last person he ever thought would have his back tear apart his enemy.

  Gordo leveled his nickel-plated .357 at Lucien’s back. Rafael hesitated in his mind. If Lucien died tonight, Falon would live. He did not hesitate in body. Lucien was his bother. He leapt high into the air and kicked the gun from Gordo’s hand, then punched his bloody face, this time smashing it to pieces. The Viper leader hit the ground with the velocity of a three-hundred-pound brick and didn’t move.

  By the time it was over, twelve Vipers were either moaning and groaning on the mountain road or dead. Rafe looked over to his brother. Lucien was breathing as hard as he was. He ignored the pain in his side and the seepage of blood down his waist.

  “I didn’t ask for your help, and I didn’t need it,” Rafe said, angry at himself for his weakness. He’d saved his brother’s life. Why?

  Lucien growled and looked at his bike as if to say, “Fuck you, it was my bike I was protecting.”

  It occurred to Rafael that, even though he hadn’t needed Lucien’s help, his brother had still given it. Even odder, while he doubted Lucien had saved his life, he had saved Lucien’s. He looked up at the waxing moon then down to the ring on his finger that softly glowed. What was the world coming to? The blood feud raged but brothers united against a common enemy. That was it, Rafe thought. Lucien finally got it. Blood was thicker than revenge. His heroic act was nothing more than his need to protect his pack from the virulent biker gang. Rafe wasn’t fooling himself though. Lucien would not stop until he personally destroyed his only brother. And he would be prepared.

  Rafael looked at the bodies strewn across the road. There would be hell to pay. There were lots more where those came from.

  He strode past Lucien and hopped on the bike, started it up, and without looking back, continued his flight down the mountain.

  The cool air shredded his hair and stung his eyes. He didn’t care. The attack by the Vipers was nothing, but his and Lucien’s actions bothered him on every level. There was no way he could have known whether Gordo had a silver round in the Magnum; if he had, Lucien would have certainly died. Otherwise, he’d have been wounded, but he’d have survived. It took more than a regular round to kill a Lycan. Rafe’s actions indicated not only was he willing to save his brother’s life, but he was even willing to insure he wasn’t injured.

  He was a fool! He may have prevented the girl’s end had he just let nature take its course.

  It was the Blood Law—survival of the fittest.

  There was no room in their world for weakness. Not weakness of character, weakness of spirit or, he thought contemptuously, weakness of the heart. But Lucien was his br
other, his only blood family . . . his nemesis and the only person standing in the way of the packs’ unity. How could he convince him to set his vengeance aside for the greater good of the Lycan nation?

  Rafe set his jaw and made a quick U-turn. He headed back up the mountain to the hidden road just down the way from the compound. To the Amorak. His mother’s people. It was long past time that he got over his temper tantrum. It was time to make peace and get answers.

  Five minutes later, the Amorak’s permanent campsite came into view. It was an eclectic combination of small structures, large trailers, and rambling tents. Quiet faces stared at him in surprise as he rode down the dirt road to the last cabin at the very end. The Amorak camp was once a place of savory scents, cheery laughter, and industrious energy. Now, sadness and apathy hung over the encampment like a dark, moldy cloud.

  He was shocked at the condition of the people and the place. It reminded him of a refugee camp. The death of his mother followed by the clash of her sons had taken its toll. The fallout had been the systematic destruction of the Lycans by the Slayers and the insidious drugs supplied by the Vipers. The Amorak, the human spirit keepers of the wolves, had apparently suffered, too.

  Guilt washed over Rafe. He’d wrongly neglected these proud, giving people. He had ignored their attempts to placate. Both his and Lucien’s pride had done this. Reduced them to the shadows of their former selves. A prideful people who respected the wolf above all other creatures, including themselves. With them, the secrets of the Lycans were buried deep. With them, the Blood Law was enforced.

  With the realization of what his pride had cost these people, Rafael felt as if he had the weight of the entire Lycan race on his shoulders alone. And in many ways he did.

  From that moment forward, Rafe would set his anger aside. He would do everything in his power to mend the broken fences, and then together with the Amorak, he would prepare for the rising.

  He stopped just outside of the dilapidated cabin. The remaining glass in the windows was in shards; threadbare curtains fluttering in the late night breeze caught against the sharp edges of the glass. Rafael lifted his nose and sniffed. The familiar scent of mint and beeswax mingled with the surrounding pine in the night air.