Bite Back Box Set 2

by Mark Henwick

  I could remember the therapy session where I’d visualized it as climbing out of a pit of ice.

  Diana had said everyone was being talked to. But that was three weeks ago. Three weeks.

  I shuddered. I hated the thought of not being in control of my own brain.

  But confronting the compulsion, acknowledging it, seemed to shift its foundation. My mind didn’t skitter away.

  “So how’s it going out there?” I asked.

  “Not well. Your mom is worried. Ingram is pissed. Felix and Zane? Same story. Everyone understands you were ‘injured’, as much as we told them, but we’re running out of time.”

  While I was still down in New Mexico, Agent Ingram had told me I had a day or two to make good on my promise to speak truthfully to him. Mom had asked me to drop in as soon as I got back.

  A month ago.

  I could imagine how well my absence was going down.

  “Okay.” I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to think dispassionately. “Tell me what’s happening in the Were world.”

  “The Confederation has recovered well,” he said, and stopped pacing. “Look, we made the situation better. We—I mean the Denver and Cimarron packs with help from Altau—we faced down the Wind River Pack and we killed or captured hundreds of them. All their southern border packs that the Confederation had taken over took the chance to break free—Cheyenne, Medicine Bow, Rock Springs, Black Hills. And they backed out of a confrontation with Salt Lake. The Confederation is limited to the northern Rockies now.”

  “So they’ve pulled back. Good. But you said they’ve recovered.”

  “The Bozeman pack used us as the bad guys to scare a whole load of new northern packs into allying with the Confederation against our ‘aggression’. They’ve wrapped up the Montana and Idaho packs and even pushed into Oregon.”

  “Our aggression? How did they spin that crap?”

  “Because we’re allied with Altau and Skylur went ahead with your suggestion. Every House in North America has been in contact with the packs in their area, offering alliances. Bozeman was able to twist the whole thing around into an attempt by Athanate to control Were.”

  They weren’t pushovers in the Confederation, and this was a war. There were three controlling packs in the Confederation. We’d damaged Wind River, hell, Julie had killed their alpha, but that left Bozeman and Bighorn. We’d just won the first battle and redrawn some lines on the map.

  “How’s Felix taking it?” I said.

  “The Athanate stuff he took well to start with, until he found he couldn’t get access to you.” Alex scrubbed his face with his hands. He looked tired. Like he’d been carrying this alone too long. “Look, the key is the news of the ritual: it’s gone nuclear. Felix has started to get calls from packs all over the world, let alone the US. He’s had to stall them, and that’s not going down well. That’s the only reason he hasn’t come marching into LA to demand you back—he’s trying to keep where we are a secret.”

  “Oh, shit,” I said, as I saw where this was going.

  “Yeah. One or another of those Pasadena wolves you beat up will have enough brain cells to use his nose and draw a conclusion. There’s only one hybrid. It’s already out. Everyone who wants a piece of you will know you’re in LA by this time tomorrow.”

  Confronting the Pasadena Were had been a huge mistake. Even if I hadn’t been told what the situation was, I should have worked it out for myself.

  Alex knew me well enough to read my thoughts. He stopped pacing and grabbed me. “It’s Diana’s fault, Amber. Not yours. If she’d agreed that you could be told what was going on, you wouldn’t have risked ambushing the Pasadena Were. If she’d even told Tom, he could have said something. Best of intentions, but it went wrong. Not your fault.”

  “Okay, okay.” I couldn’t blame myself for everything. “So…about the halfies. I guess there are some more now?”

  “Some? Every pack has the damn problem. They all want to send someone for you to work your magic on.” He looked unhappy. “It’s gone political. Felix wants to restrict it to packs that are allied with him. Skylur wants to include any pack that’s allied with Altau—claims it’s the same thing.”

  “No,” I said.

  Alex managed a half-laugh and wrapped his arms back around me, rocking us from side to side. “That’s my crazy woman,” he said. “You want it to be open to everyone, don’t you? Even the Confederation?”

  I hit him in the ribs. Only I am allowed to call myself crazy.

  Yeah, crazy.

  I took a deep breath and pushed all the outside worries down. “Don’t tell me any more tonight,” I said.

  He looked puzzled, and I was worried at myself. Was this some aftereffect of the compulsion? My decision felt so reasonable, just as you’d expect from a subtle compulsion.

  No. I would go crazy thinking like that.

  “There’s too much going on,” I said, burying my face against his neck, “and to make any sensible decisions, we need more information.”

  He wasn’t getting it. I could feel it in the tension that was building in him. My Athanate was all for working this through. His Were was howling for action.

  “Listen to me, wolf. I’ll get through to Diana tomorrow and get rid of any more compulsions. She can’t say I’m not strong enough if I’m expected to do the list I’ve been given. Then I can start fixing things. Felix. Ingram. Mom. Tomorrow.” I went back to nuzzling against Alex’s neck, trying to convince him without words and arguments to drop it for now, trying to talk to his wolf in ways his wolf would understand.

  Trying to change the conversation to one that just the two of us needed to have, with no input from outside. One that could go badly wrong. “You’re unhappy, and it’s not just the problems with the Athanate and Felix, is it?” I said quietly.

  He pulled away abruptly. “It’s not important.”

  Well, I’d made him stop thinking about other problems. Now to nail this one.

  I stalked after him. “It’s very important. I need my kin happy.”

  He gave me a sideways look, full of wild wolf.

  “Both kin,” I said. “Happy with me and happy with each other.”

  His wolf was so close to the surface his lips drew back on his teeth. It was frustrating. I wanted the wolf but not the snarl.

  “I’m right, aren’t I? You and Jen still have a problem with each other?”

  He didn’t need to answer. I could see it. All I needed was to understand it.

  He wasn’t an insecure person—Alex had swagger to spare—so it wasn’t that he thought he was going to lose me to Jen. Similarly, I doubted he cared that I bit her more than I bit him; my Athanate need for human Blood was greater than my hybrid need for Were Blood. We didn’t understand it, but we lived with it.

  It wasn’t sex. We hadn’t, and he’d be well aware I hadn’t made love to Jen either during the weeks of therapy. Reliving those events hadn’t left much room for desire, not in me and not in Jen. Not in him. Alex was bound to both of us, and he cared. Whatever he showed to the world, he had unflinchingly shared the horror of what had happened.

  Was that it? I shivered at the thought that some of the stain from my strongbox had been passed to him, as if horror and insanity were contagious.

  “You care for her,” I said. “I saw it when we uncovered the memories from Longmont. That doesn’t go away because she puts you down over some business decision you can’t agree on.”

  He growled. I’d cornered him, physically at least. He’d have to jump over the bed to get away from me and that would just be plain undignified.

  It turned out to be the right way to get through to him.

  “You know what hurts worst,” he said, and there was the smallest gleam of humor in his eyes. “She’s usually right.”

  I smiled. Oh, yes. There was the hint of a way through his shell right there, but I needed to distract him while I got my message through. I tugged my shirt and bra off.

  There was a scre
ech of nerves inside, and a jumble of unwelcome images. I forced them away. I was done with that. I’d blocked them out before and now, even better, I’d broken their grip on my mind. My life was mine again.

  Trying to hide what had gone through my head was wasted on Alex. He could hear my heartbeat. He could smell the reaction I’d had. His face softened.

  Not what I was after. I wanted desire, not pity.

  I was betting the key to unlocking the three of us was to get both of them to admit their attraction for each other. Maybe the pair of them worrying about how I felt was the root of the problem.

  The rest of my clothes joined the pile on the floor.

  Alex’s eyes shaded gold. Delicious shivers went down my belly and drove any hesitation I’d had right out.

  But the man was suppressing his wolf now. He leaned back, folding his arms and making a barrier.

  The poor boy was suspicious about what I was up to. Such paranoia. Where did he learn that?

  I crowded him a little, enjoying the spike I could hear in his heart and the warmth flooding out of his body. The space between us crackled with tension.

  Oh, yes. Long past time to get back in the saddle.

  “I love you,” I said.

  I wasn’t touching him yet. I was inches away, soaking up the heat and desire, feeding on it like a good little Athanate.

  I started on his shirt buttons. “I love you both.”

  He didn’t stop me from gently opening his folded arms and continuing. Four little buttons. Five. Six.

  I opened the shirt by running my hands up and down his chest.

  Mmm. I was doing this for a cunning reason, wasn’t I?

  “I don’t…” He stopped as I ran a tongue over his pecs.

  “You don’t have a problem with me and Jen?” I helped him out.

  “Uhhh,” he growled indistinctly.

  “I’ll take that as a ‘no’.” I rubbed his jaw with my cheek, wolf-style, and traced lines with the tip of my nose along the arch of his neck.

  Fangs pulsed lazily in my jaw, sending a little thrill through my body.

  Kiss. Lick. Bite.

  I pushed it back.

  Later.

  “So I wouldn’t have a problem with you and Jen.”

  His heart missed a beat.

  “I can’t…Jen and I, we can’t…”

  “Because it’d make me jealous? Jen has to be okay with you and me. You have to be okay with me and Jen. How can I be jealous of you and Jen?”

  Dammit. I was jealous at the thought. A little. But the Athanate needed them to be happy more than it needed me to be.

  My kin’s desires are sacred to me.

  “Tell me you don’t think about it,” I whispered. “She’s the most beautiful woman you know. We’re all bound together. You’d have to be made of stone, not to want her.”

  I had him backed up against the wall now. I reached down and got a solid grip on the bulge in his pants.

  He gasped and the eyes went all wolf gold.

  “You know, honey,” I said, deliberately drawling and using Jen’s pet name for me, “I’m tired of other alphas waving their dominance in my face. And the only alpha I really want to do it…he hasn’t tried.”

  Alphas poured out dominance. I guessed it was like the Were version of eukori, but one way and with one message—I’m the boss. I’d had buckets of it from Felix, from Zane, from Cameron. They used it when they were riled about something, when they wanted their way, or when they met another alpha. But Alex had never deliberately used it with me.

  I was the alpha on two legs. He was the alpha on four. But it was more complex than that: as an Alpha couple, our joint dominance increased; we gave each other more. We’d submitted to Felix and that’d boosted his dominance.

  So what would happen, whispered a little Athanate devil in my ear, if I submitted to Alex? Just for a while…

  Would it reinforce what I’d told him about Jen? Overcome his hesitation?

  Screw that, whispered my little wolf devil. What will the sex feel like?

  I let go my grip on his bulge and undid the buttons on his jeans. Buttons are way sexier than a zipper; each button a little battle, a little loosening, a little step closer. All the time, our hearts beat faster and faster and my insides were turning to hot mush.

  I sank to my knees slowly, planting kisses on every inch of his hard, tanned belly as I tugged his jeans and pants down, freeing him.

  Oh, yes.

  The smell of wolf and man flowing off him felt as if it was caressing me.

  Alex and I had enjoyed playing and provoking each other before, starting and stopping, pretending to hesitate. I didn’t think of that now. I didn’t seem to have time.

  However I’d done it…just by thinking about it? By kneeling? I’d submitted to him and he couldn’t restrain his increased dominance. It was like a dam bursting above me, the water pounding down on me, stealing my breath, hammering against my head, pushing me down.

  I couldn’t resist. I’d do anything to give him pleasure. I showed him how, pulling him to me.

  He groaned, gripping my head fiercely. His body seemed to vibrate with urgency, like there was a deep humming in his muscles. It all sang of his need.

  I had the first flicker of self-doubt. I couldn’t manage it, but it wasn’t the time to have second thoughts, with my eyes streaming and throat beginning to rebel.

  Sudden and irrational fear spiked through me.

  Alex sensed it.

  He yelled; a wordless sound of desire. Of love.

  He snatched me up and threw me onto the bed, and suddenly I had two hundred pounds of hot alpha male on top of me, pressing me into the mattress and smothering me in kisses, biting me, licking me, probing me; fingers, hands, tongue, lips and teeth, all over me, completely claiming my body.

  I could feel his lust boiling out from him. He wanted nothing more than to bury himself in me right then, and he would have come a moment later. But he didn’t, the frustration driving his caresses to the point of pain, until he held back everything except his relentless tongue.

  I’d been still quivering inside from the shapeless fears of my memories, and he somehow caught that and used it to excite me quicker than he’d ever done before. I felt the first pre-shocks of a powerful orgasm and then, then he was inside me, thrusting ferociously while I hung on like a shipwrecked sailor in a typhoon, screaming into the heart of the storm.

  Oh, my God.

  That was an answer for the Were: the sex was mind-blowing.

  Afterwards, I lay in utter contentment. I hadn’t been completely ready for the little dominance game I’d tried, but it hadn’t mattered. With this man, it wouldn’t matter. We were bound. We were secure in each other.

  And if I hadn’t completely lost the message in the medium, maybe I’d even moved a step forward to making peace between him and Jen too.

  ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

  Desert. Night.

  Two huge leathery wings fall from the sky and fold me into an embrace.

  Real or dreaming?

  The border between?

  But I’m in bed, being held. Not by Alex or Jen. By Diana. I know it’s her. I know her marque—the scent, the feel of her presence.

  And her voice: “What were you dreaming of?”

  She’s speaking quietly. It’s like the brush of desert wind against the walls of a tent.

  “The desert,” I whisper. “The Sahara at night, then something else. Wings? Kaothos?”

  “The desert is the dream of a song that a long-dead sea used to sing,” she says. “Tell me about the Sahara of your dream.”

  “A memory. Ops 4-10 mission. Sandstorm overtook us from the south. Had to pitch tents and wait it out. Took forever.”

  “Ah, the khamsin wind,” she says, her words no more than her breath against my ear. “Hot and dusty. The Tuareg say the khamsin brings dreams and fevers. That spirits talk across the veil of death when the khamsin sings.”

  If you were insid
e a tent listening to it for a couple of days, you’d believe that too.

  I don’t say that aloud, but she seems to know. I can feel her smile.

  I’m lying in her arms with my head tilted back. My neck is bare to her. It feels loose and I’m tingling with expectation. I want her to bite me. I want the gift of Blood between us.

  But the touch against my throat is lips and not fangs.

  “No one will bite you until you’re sure of yourself, and sure that you aren’t being compelled.” She’s speaking Athanate now.

  I am sure. And I thought I broke the compulsions earlier today. Or was that a dream?

  But I can feel her brushing the remains of them away.

  Does that mean I am done with therapy?

  She still doesn’t bite me.

  “So many problems,” she says. “So little time. Skylur can trip Ibarre and turn that attack to his advantage. Huang is different. While he looks for Tullah and me to track down Kaothos, he will not be looking for you, but eventually, you will have to deal with him. Like a game of Dominion, he will not trust the first move, but he may believe the second. You need to prepare for that. Just once more, Amber, you need to be the blind player in the great contest of Dominion, and to release me from my oath which I cannot keep.”

  I don’t understand.

  She speaks and I’m still not sure I understand, but I will do this for her.

  There is a moment of clarity when I see it all, then I seem to doze because then she’s talking about my therapy, and Bian, and what I need to do next for myself. I must decide what to do about Forsythe. Whatever I do, Skylur will support me. My therapy, my resolution.

  Resolution. I could simply kill him. Or pass the case to human justice. Or walk away. But I must decide how I will be free of this thing. No one else can.

  “Then Skylur and Tarez will speak to you tomorrow,” she says, “but you must be the syndesmon and listen to your heart.”

  “I will have no guides but myself,” I whisper.

  “Yes.” Her voice catches.

  “The desert is in all of us,” she says, in English again. “A place of faith and truth that lives on when the song has become the sound of sand in the night. Beloved, you are the flower in my desert and the promise of rain, long looked for.”