Once Bitten_Wolves of Hemlock Hollow

by Heather McCorkle

  “Thank you, I think.” Ty’s voice was filled with a humor that put me at ease. Hell, everything about this guy put me at ease. He had that special aura about him that some people had, the one that makes everyone around them comfortable. Unlike a lot of guys who worked that, his was easy, natural.

  He started for a closed door to the left of the kitchen. “There is a small guestroom back here. Sorry, it is not much, but at least it is private, and there is a bathroom right next door.”

  The door opened to a room with a daybed nestled beneath a bay window framed by walls of bookshelves. Sunlight spilled through the windows, giving the bed with its fluffy comforter a dreamlike appearance. Not much room was left when he stepped inside but with the ceiling that stretched up forever into open beams, it gave it a cozy feel rather than made it crowded.

  “It’s fantastic,” I managed.

  Inclining his head toward a dresser that was cleverly set back into the wall, he set my bags down on the floor. “Clean linens, of course, and you are welcome to use the dresser.”

  “Do you bring all the new varúlfur here?” I gave the foreign word my best shot.

  I tried to convince myself that I was asking just to tease him, and not because I wanted to know if I was special. Red brightened his cheeks, sending an unexpected shot of jealousy through me.

  “You are my first,” he all but whispered.

  Shock washed the jealousy away in one fell swoop. But he didn’t seem embarrassed, he seemed…shy. Pink cheeks were a very good look on him. It was adorable that he could blush over such a silly thing. “The first you’ve brought here?”

  Standing up straighter, his eyes lifted to meet mine. “No, my first nemi, student. There has not been a new varúlfur in over thirty years and I have only just been appointed a kennari.”

  “In over thirty years? Really?”

  With a nod, he left the room and invited me to follow with a sweep of his hand that was more beckoning than commanding. The stubborn part of me wanted to plop down on the bed and refuse to move, but the curious part of me didn’t dare. Then there was the fact that the nap during the ride here had left me feeling charged to the point of crawling the walls. I had the urge to go for a run, something I hadn’t done since college. Trying to keep my pace from seeming hurried, I followed him out into the kitchen, gaze fixed to his hot backside.

  “Really. The laws against turning varúlfur are very strict. Raul broke nearly every one of them when he made you.” His voice sounded hollow for a moment as he opened the refrigerator and stuck his head inside.

  “Sounds like you and Raul have a bit of history,” I prodded.

  “We do indeed. But it is more than just that. He took your choice away and that is unforgivable.” The passion in his voice sent a hot flush into my core. This time it was more than just base attraction, though. A guy that passionate about someone taking a woman’s choices away was something special. I suddenly felt very lucky he had been appointed my kennari.

  So many questions came to mind that I had no idea which one to ask first. My mind threatened to spin out of control, a sure sign that I needed to take it slow and digest things.

  “Would you like a beer?”

  I crawled up onto one of the white cushioned steel barstools. “What kind?” What could I say? I was a bartender; it had made me picky.

  He said the name but I didn’t recognize it. The look on my face must have made it obvious.

  “It is a micro-brewery out of Montana. I usually try to pick up the good stuff while I am in Oregon, but it has been a while.”

  “A man with great taste in beer. I like that.”

  He placed two brown bottles on the bar and popped the tops off with his bare hand. I gazed hard at him from beneath my brows. I knew the brand, and they weren’t twist tops. Broad shoulders rising in the semblance of a shrug, he slid one of the bottles toward me.

  “Strength is one of the perks of being a varúlfur.”

  He took a long pull from the beer as he walked around to my side of the bar.

  “Yeah, ’cause that had nothing to do with your monstrous biceps.” Oh God, had I said that out loud?

  Rather than bury my head like I wanted to, I took another long drink. The alcohol was beginning to calm my restlessness so I figured I was ready to hear some tough answers.

  “What are the laws that Raul broke?”

  Putting one barstool between us, Ty sat down and spun to face me. The way he sat with his heels up on the stool’s bottom bar, legs parted to give a nice view of the bulge at his crotch, was more than distracting.

  “The creation of any new varúlfur has to be approved by the ráðið. And, the chosen person must go into the verða knowingly and willingly.”

  Glass clanked against marble as I set my beer down on the bar a little too hard. “Wait, the what now? I didn’t catch that middle word. Do your people say every other word in Icelandic? What the hell?”

  “Sorry, it is our way of remembering where we come from. It translates roughly as ‘council.’”

  My mother hadn’t allowed me to have any contact with either her family or my dad’s, so I got the need to connect, more than I wanted to admit. My ire cooled. “I can understand that. So am I going to need to learn Icelandic?”

  Already the desire to do so began to build in me. I spoke a bit of Swedish. Dad had insisted on me learning it since his parents were from Sweden. I wasn’t very good at it, but I had practiced hard because it had made my dad happy. He’d said I would do big things one day and would need to know different languages. Now I couldn’t help but wonder if he had known something I didn’t. I wish I had taken the lessons more seriously, for more reasons than one.

  Ty shrugged. “It would not hurt. Everyone in Hemlock Hollow speaks it, so you will be at a disadvantage if you do not. But there is no rush. We have a lot of other things to cover first.”

  Thoughts of Raul stirred the anger back to life in my belly. Any advantage he had over me was one I had to get rid of. Learning Icelandic would be an easier first step than shifting into a wolf. I rinsed the anger away with a long drink of my beer. At this rate the damn bottle would be empty in no time. I braced myself.

  “Why did someone from Raul’s pack come to the diner? And who were those men on the road?”

  Ty sat his beer down and looked me straight in the eye. “Because Raul thinks you belong to him now and his pack feels as if a kennari of their choosing, from their pack, should teach you.”

  The ache of my teeth told me my fangs were beginning to extend, but at that moment, I didn’t care to stop them. “I don’t belong to anyone. Why would they think that? Because he’s the one who bit me?”

  Head tilting to the side, Ty’s shoulders rose. “It is a bit more complicated than that.”

  “Tell me,” I actually growled. The sound surprised me. It wasn’t something I thought could come out of a human throat, let alone mine. But it didn’t frighten me, not anymore.

  The callused palm that settled atop my hand sent sparks shooting up my arm. Leaning closer, Ty ensnared my eyes. “Slow, deep breaths. Let the anger flow out of you.”

  I realized my lips were pulled back to bare my teeth—or more to the point, the four fangs that were now fully extended. It flowed out of me all right. Right on a wave of desire so strong that I almost leaned into him. The weathered skin of his hand against my arm felt amazing. And he smelled delicious enough to lick. Desire and anger went to war with each other, leaving me oddly balanced. Breath more controlled, I forced my lips to relax over my fangs.

  “Okay, tell me.”

  His hand didn’t retreat from mine and I didn’t pull away. The touch helped keep me grounded and not only because of the desire it stirred low in my abdomen.

  “When we bite a human with the intent of turning them, our venom comes up. That venom enters the person’s bloodstream and slowly changes their DNA until they become one of us.”

  Tingles of unease crawled across my scalp as my mind started to
put it together. “Changes our DNA, you mean to reflect that of the person that bit us, specifically? Making us almost like siblings?”

  He nodded.

  I cringed, face contorting. “That’s disgusting, considering he kept trying to get me to have sex with him. Why would he want to make me practically his sister?”

  Ty sat back. “It is an ancient way of choosing a mate and tying them to you, forcing the pack to recognize and accept you.”

  Disgust made my stomach do flips. “A…mate, after he made our DNA close enough that he could be my brother?” I couldn’t help but stumble over the word mate a bit. It sounded so primal.

  “If he had bitten you during sex, it would have been as good as marking you as his mate. No one could have contested it. Like I said, it is an ancient custom that is not practiced anymore, for that reason.”

  “Why would he do that? I’d only known him for two weeks.”

  A nasty mixture of embarrassment and anger worked its way through me, making my skin burn. Caring what Ty thought about me before I really even knew him was horrible, but I couldn’t help it. He was the first person that had cared to help me in…well, ever. Creases formed between his brows, making me think I was going to like this next bit of information even less than the last.

  “I am almost certain it is because he is engaged to be married to someone he does not want to marry. Changing you into varúlfur pretty much guarantees he does not have to marry that woman. And those men on the road are from the pack his intended belongs to.”

  The words struck me like grease from a fryer, igniting my anger and sending it exploding through my body. Not because I was “the one” or even because he cared about me. He had flipped my life over into the crazy lane because he didn’t want to be forced into an arranged marriage. The bottle of beer in my right hand suddenly exploded, sending shards of glass flying everywhere as well as stabbing into my palm. I didn’t feel it until blood began to drip from my clenched fist. The pain took the edge off my anger, but not enough to stop my skin from feeling like hornets were crawling under it. My breathing sped and my stomach churned. The world swayed.

  Suddenly Ty stood over me, his hands taking mine. Slivers of more pain stabbed through my hand as he began to pick glass from it. The world swayed and I ended up in his arms. I tried to look up at him, but he was no more than a blur.

  “What’s happening…?”

  I tried to stand and only ended up pressed against Ty’s hard, broad chest.

  “You are losing control of your anger and it is triggering your body to shift, a defense mechanism.” The worry in his tone was far from comforting.

  “Will I shift so soon?”

  “Yes.” The certainty even less so.

  Panic wrestled with the anger. Aches the likes of which I hadn’t felt since my last growth spurt during adolescence echoed through me. An out-of-control feeling, much like the dizziness of being truly good and drunk, grasped me. I hated it. It was one reason I never drank to excess.

  “But I’m not ready,” I murmured.

  Holding me back at arm’s length, yet still holding me up with ease, Ty stared hard into my eyes. “No, you are not. Focus on me. Take slow, deep breaths.”

  Those gorgeous, glacial-blue eyes made it easy to comply. The hint of a blond five o’clock shadow shimmered across his cheeks and chin, making me forget my anger. I didn’t just focus on him, I became captivated by him. Comfort and concern radiated off him, but I realized it was more than that. It was almost a physical thing, like the wind, or the feel of water, only this wasn’t an element. This was power, his power. I knew that beyond a doubt. It wrapped around me like the warmth of a fire on a cold night. I never wanted it to let go. My vision cleared and a bit of strength returned to my legs. I remembered the second part of what he’d said and forced myself to draw in a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “Good, now match my breathing,” he said.

  My gaze dropped to his lips. They were just full enough with a distinctive raised edge separating the sensitive pink skin from the cream-colored skin of his face. The desire to press my own lips to them doused the last of my anger. The crawling sensation beneath my skin faded away but I still couldn’t get my fangs to retract. I breathed as he instructed, trying to find a calm center that simply did not lie within me and never really had. Eyes dropping to watch the rise and fall of his chest, I tried to focus harder. Realizing the distraction of looking at him was no longer helping, I closed my eyes. A few breaths later, my fangs retracted.

  Ty’s grip on me relaxed and I opened my eyes and leaned back against the bar. Concern pulled his brows together.

  “I take it shifting right now would be bad?” I asked, acutely aware that he still held my arms—and really hoping he wouldn’t let go.

  “Yes. You must be in control of your emotions first. Emotions and instincts are tied together. If your emotions are out of control, your instincts will be as well. If you do not know how to control them before you shift, you will have a very hard time shifting back, among other things.”

  Still working on my breathing, I gave him the toughest look I could manage while being so frazzled. “Other things?”

  “With your instincts out of control you are more likely to kill, or worse, go mad. New varúlfur are supposed to be prepared before they are changed. It is part of why they must be approved by the ráðið.”

  I swallowed hard. “Can you prepare me before I change for the first time?”

  He dipped his head. “If you are strong enough. The full moon is about three weeks away. We have until then and the urge will be so strong that you will need to change, prepared or not. Come on, let us get that hand cleaned up.”

  The cryptic words soaking in slowly, I allowed him to lead me to the kitchen sink and hold my bloody hand under the cold water. For several moments I watched the silver-hued liquid run from the arched neck of the tap, transfixed. Some of the cuts were deep enough they looked like they needed stitches, but I couldn’t feel more than a dull ache.

  “Do not worry, you will be healed by morning,” he said.

  I wasn’t as concerned by that as I was fascinated that I’d had the strength to shatter a beer bottle in my hand. My thoughts caught on something he had said.

  “Why would going mad be worse than killing someone?”

  His eyes grew hard with a new depth of seriousness. “Because then you would not stop killing. New varúlfur that go mad have to be put down.”

  I swallowed hard. “How often does that happen?”

  That power I had felt in him stirred, grew anxious. It made the hairs on my arms rise.

  “From what I am told, at least a third of all new varúlfur go mad.”

  Head dropping into my hands, I groaned. Ty’s fingers wove through mine. “But they were not as strong as you are, and they did not have me as a kennari.” The softness of his voice was almost intimate.

  “What makes you think I’m strong?” My quavering voice sort of drove the point home.

  His free hand stroked my left cheek. Unable to resist, I leaned into the warmth of his skin.

  “Your power is as bright as Odin’s lightning. I have not encountered a varúlfur that felt this powerful, not even the Alphas,” he said.

  He might just be trying to make me feel better, but it was working. More than that, it charmed the hell out of me. I fought the impulse to lean toward his hand as it withdrew from my face. Desperate to retain a touch of the distance I had been trying for, I stood up straighter. After all, I had to focus now more than ever. Going insane wasn’t an option.

  “Mad doctors aren’t exactly all the rage right now, so let’s definitely try to avoid that happening. I take it we aren’t immortal then?”

  Glancing sideways at me, he grinned. “No, just very hard to kill.”

  “So we don’t live forever?”

  “No, but we do live a very long time. And we do not start to really age until our last decade.”

  I forced myself to pause
a moment so I didn’t sound too eager. “How long?”

  “About five hundred years.”

  Knees going weak, I had to grab the counter with the hand Ty didn’t have a hold of. Considering that I had expected to live to maybe eighty, five hundred might as well be immortal. I had no idea what to do with the short lifespan I’d had, and now this. Not only could I be a psychiatrist, I had time to go into orthopedics, or hell, I could even be a brain surgeon. With the time I had, maybe I’d even cure cancer. I could really, truly help people. If I didn’t go insane and be put down first.

  “I think I need some air.”

  Blotting at my hand with a paper towel, Ty turned off the water.

  “That is a good idea. We will go for a walk in the forest, it will help you ground and center.”

  He folded my fingers around the paper towel and relinquished my hand. Instantly I missed the feel of his skin against mine.

  “That may as well have been in Icelandic,” I told him.

  Deep laughter rumbled in that hard chest of his, making me miss his touch all the more. He started for the door.

  The glass all over the floor and counter made me pause.

  “Do not worry, we will get it when we come back,” he called over his shoulder as if he had noticed my hesitation without even seeing me.

  Of course he had. The guy was like Yoda. Only problem was, watching his muscular back and perfectly shaped ass as he walked out the door, I realized control was the last thing I wanted him to teach me.

  Chapter Ten

  Ty

  The scents of spruce and pine flowed down my throat, soothing me and helping me focus, as I knew they would do for Sonya. Beneath my feet a pine needle–strewn path provided a cushion that made it feel like walking on exercise mats. Trees reaching over two hundred feet high rose up on both sides of the path, stretching their feathery boughs across it overhead here and there. From them came a gentle energy that soothed the wolf inside. Sunlight poured through the branches, dappling the path—and Sonya’s lovely face—with promises of warmth. Birds chirped and sang overhead, some musical, others urgent, as if they knew predators walked below them. Each sound, smell, and sight eased my mind, helped me center. Whether she realized it or not, it would do the same for her.