by D. M. Shane
Such vulgar treatment of a woman was never tolerated in the Pack, and neither was the disrespect they’d shown an Alpha. Kane had to have known Aislin was an Aeternus. How could he not? Her scent alone was a dead giveaway. If he knew, then his friends knew. Guaranteed. That meant trouble.
If Kane got a hold of her again, he could force a bond and there was only one way to do so. Bonds were created during sex, but a forced bond was exactly what it sounded like. Forced. Bonds were for life, but a forced bond was like a prison sentence for an Aeternus. Pure pain and misery. Death, forcing a new bond, or a Soul Shadow shattering the bond were the only ways to break a bond. The latter was rare and just as difficult. Only a handful of Soul Shadows in history had ever been successful at breaking a bond.
Judging by her reaction, it was possible Kane had already tried to hurt her, and it didn’t surprise me in the least knowing his history. Fortunately, I’d reined in my wolf quickly and got rid of him. And now I knew what I needed to do. I needed to save her. Protect her. Love her. But first, I had to convince her of who and what she was.
As a rogue Lycan, Kane didn’t have a lot of power, especially without the backing of a Pack. He was young, seventy-five to my four hundred years, and he was no match for me in a brawl. I’d banished the son of a bitch nearly thirty years ago. Kane was a hothead, always in trouble, always challenging authority. Most of all, he was a fucking creep.
Kane had become infatuated with a young teenage girl in the Pack, and one evening, he took her against her will. Her parents had reported her missing when she didn’t come home for dinner. We’d tracked her scent into the woods, half an hour east of Pack lands, near the edge of Glacier National Park lands. She had been stripped of her clothing and tied to stakes in the ground. Kane had been poised above her, ready to strike, when we found them. He’d planned to force a bond. Thankfully, we’d caught him before he’d hurt the girl any further.
Kane was whipped publicly in the commons, and after the lashing, he’d challenged me for Alpha and lost, resulting in permanent banishment. No Pack anywhere in North America would ever offer him sanctuary again. He would forever be rogue.
I needed to find out more about Aislin if I wanted to keep her safe. Many Vamphyre and Lycan alike often lived decades or even centuries before finding their Aeternus. Some never did, and others opted not to wait and bonded with someone they loved. I knew that better than most at four hundred, and yet, there she’d been last night, right in front of me. It was a damned miracle, and I was still in shock.
Aislin was damaged. Fragile. That much I knew. So, I needed to tread carefully. If I scared her, I could lose her, and I couldn’t let that happen. Time was of the essence if I wanted to make this work. The downside? I was a brute. Dominant. A Lycan Alpha, and not just any Alpha. I was Arkkadian Rime, Alpha of the entire Lycan Nine. I was fierce and protective of what was mine, with zero tolerance for disrespect. I could be intimidating and downright scary when the time called for it. I had to be to control the packs of the Lycan Nine and to have lived as long as I had.
The last thing I wanted to do was frighten such a broken soul, but time was limited if I wanted to save her before anyone else found out about her. Kane was a problem, and as an Aeternus with memory loss, Aislin’s life was in jeopardy.
After she left the bar, I’d made my way around the side of the building to the alley so I could follow her and make sure she made it home safely. As I watched her silently from behind a parked truck, she exited the building and jogged up the stairs to a second-floor apartment above the bar.
At the top, Aislin stiffened, as though spooked. She must have sensed me, but having been raised human, she wouldn’t have recognized the feeling for what it was. Once she disappeared inside, I waited for the click of the deadbolt before leaving. On the walk back to my SUV, I’d scented Kane in the alley. Even though the scent had waned, my hackles stayed up. He’d been there after the scuffle inside, but I couldn’t sense him in the immediate vicinity any longer. If my instincts were correct, then Kane was stalking her, and if he was stalking her….
No, I wouldn’t let that happen again.
For the entire four-hour drive back to Eagle Ridge, I’d not been able to get the alluring, yet fragile woman out of my mind. I didn’t sleep a wink after I’d arrived home, and I’d had a raging hard on all night. Aislin was a beauty. Tall. Slender. A little too thin to be honest, maybe from running herself ragged at work, but she was still gorgeous. Her long, wavy auburn locks were pulled up into a ponytail, and her soft silver eyes were edged in black, much like my blue. She wore no makeup to cover her smooth alabaster skin. High cheekbones accentuated her delicate features.
Those hips, though, they were luscious. Those were hips for making babies. Perfect for holding when making love. Perfect for grasping during a hard fuck. Despite clothes that were long past well-worn, she’d looked damned sexy in that t-shirt, denim jeans torn at the knee, and worn-out cowboy boots.
Aislin had smelled of cinnamon and spice, with hints of vanilla and citrus. The heady scent was a compliment to my own cinnamon, clove, and musk, another sign that she was my Aeternus.
All night long, I’d tried to avoid touching myself, but by morning’s first light, I couldn’t deny it any longer. The scent of my Aeternus excited the beast within, rendering my wolf unable to think of anything else except ravishing what was ours and forming the bond. The magnetism was impossible to ignore. From this point forward, I would have to do everything in my power to harness my wolf because it would be hell-bent on forging that bond.
I kicked the covers off and wrapped a hand around my hardened cock, sliding my hand up and down its length, fingers grazing across the sensitive tip of my shaft. Precum soaked my hand as images of Aislin flashed through my head, spurring the urge onward.
Up… down… up… down…. I gripped myself firmly, imagining her naked body splayed before me upon my bed, with legs wide open and her center glistening with need. The more I fantasized, the faster I stroked. I quickly reached a feverish pace when I imagined tasting and licking her soft center until I drove her over the edge.
A hot shiver raced through me as my orgasm drew closer. I slammed my fist up and down with reckless abandon. The tingling sensation in my spine spiked higher, possessing my body with a ferocious fire, the embers burning hot within. With one final stroke, every muscle in my body clenched, and I shuddered with the last aftershocks of my release.
Damn, I thought to myself as I climbed out of bed and headed for the shower. I’d barely met the woman and already, I was scorching hot.
“Fuck.”
I knew the only thing that would sate my wolf was to claim my mate, or the beast would consume me and never let me rest. Neither of us would be satisfied until she was ours. In all of my life and all the women I’d had, I’d never felt anything like this blazing desire burning inside of me now.
How I’d break the news to Aislin, I didn’t know. She would think I was insane, just like that bastard, Kane West. How would I convince this beautiful but broken angel that she was my mate? I could try all I wanted, but she had to come to terms with everything in her own time.
While in the shower, I ran every detail I could think of through my head. Lycan. Violent. Protective. Alpha. That alone would be enough to scare the woman. And how did I explain our immortality? Or that she was my Aeternus? We were fated mates. Destined. Aeternus were for life, and there would be no other mate for either of us as long as we were both alive.
What about the Pack? Lycan Nine? Or that she’d have to leave her whole life behind? Nine packs of shifters and she would rule by my side as Alpha. She was immortal royalty and didn’t even know it.
Lastly… the rules. Rules kept the order. There were Pack rules, and there were my rules. I thrived on control. I thrived on submission. I thrived on respect. The Alpha beast inside required my mate to submit, to trust in me. It was essential to our immortal life. It meant protection. Safety. In all things. Follow the rules, and every
thing was well. Break the rules, and suffer the consequences.
I stood under the hot stream of water, thinking back to the night before when I’d scented her in the bar. It had been all I could do to stride carefully across that hardwood floor without rushing the young woman. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
Scenting her again only assured what my wolf had known all along, that she was mine. The beast beneath had nearly exploded forth at recognizing her essence. Given half a chance, the wolf would have taken her right there, its desire to bond that desperate. I’d nearly dropped the leash keeping the beast at bay. In public, no less.
Any sort of scene would have exposed the existence of our kind. To humans, supernatural beings were things of legend. Myths. Scary stories you told children to keep them in line. Lies those in power used to keep populations from rising up. As much as we hated the myths, we preferred to keep it that way. Myths kept us safe.
Upon realizing Aislin hadn’t recognized me as a shifter, I’d grown curious and attempted to shadow her memories. Only I’d been shocked to discover some things, like the fact that she had bounced from foster home to foster home for most of her childhood. There were no memories of her biological parents, but a single moment stood out, that of a woman explaining they had been killed in an accident. She was maybe six or seven. Everything before that time was blank.
I knew without a doubt that the accident was a lie. Memories didn’t just go missing. Her parents were dead. Else why would an Aeternus not know what she was? How else would she have landed in foster care? If whoever had killed her parents had known about her, they either would have taken her or killed her. Or they’d tried to kill her and failed. You didn’t put a memory block in someone’s mind unless you needed to hide something. The block left me with more questions than answers. If the girl’s parents had been killed, then it could only mean one thing. They were rogue, living outside of Coven or Pack. But why?
The memory block had prevented all attempts to dig further into her mind. I wanted to know what secrets were hiding there, but she had dizzied too quickly. I’d had to pull out of her mind before I made her pass out.
Once again, my thoughts drifted back to the young woman while the water streamed down my body. She’d felt so soft when I’d held her against me. I pictured her kneeling in front of me, her lithe body naked and wanting. Hands on her knees, legs spread slightly, her bare center silky smooth and slick with desire. Oh, the things I wanted to do.
With one hand against the shower wall, head bent and eyes closed as I fantasized, I grasped myself with the other and slowly stroked again. It had only been minutes since I’d last sated my hunger, but I was already rock hard again. I’d never been this aroused before, and I desperately wanted to stoke the fire again. I moved slowly and deliberately at first, but the more I thought about what honeyed rewards lay between her legs, the faster I stroked.
I wanted to kiss her in all the right places. I wanted to taste her. I wanted to fuck her mouth and see how much of my length she could take with my hands tangled in her hair. I wanted to bend her over the bed, ass in the air, and slide my cock into her sweet, succulent heat.
Faster and faster, my hand slid up and down my hot length. Like a roller coaster, I climbed up and up, all the way to the top of the track. And then, just as I tilted over the crest, the track gave way, taking my breath with it. I erupted with a growl, and my legs nearly gave out from the force of my climax.
With this last release, I knew that the longer I waited to claim her, the more profound my need for her would become. I needed to claim her soon, but I needed to know even more about that block in her mind. Knowing she wouldn’t return to work until Saturday evening, I did a little research first to see what I could dredge up. Done with my shower, I donned my usual black t-shirt and my favorite pair of faded blue jeans before wandering downstairs barefoot.
I didn’t know Aislin’s last name, but I’d guessed her approximate age to be about twenty-three, give or take a year. Normally, birth and death records, passports, and various other identifying documents were forged to hide our immortal existence. Aislin, however, was raised in foster care among humans. If her parents were rogue, they would have hidden among humans anyway, so foster care wouldn’t have been a far stretch if they were dead. Being rogue would have given them limited access to anyone among the Pack or Coven who could have provided them the proper documentation to disappear. That meant there was a record of the girl somewhere in the human system.
I searched for local birth records and came up empty. Then I tried the entire state. Zilch. Nothing that stood out anyway. One last search in a national database found a few dozen results for baby girls born with similar names… Ashley, Ashleigh, and Aislin.
I narrowed the list down to surrounding states and picked through them one by one until I’d eliminated all but three. Bingo! One of them had passed at birth, and a second was alive and well and living in New York State.
My jaw fell when I saw the third record. What the fuck? Shocked, I leaned back in my chair and stared at the name on the computer screen. You’ve got to be kidding me. She couldn’t be. I pictured her again. Long auburn hair, silver eyes edged in black. Minus the raven locks, she was the spitting image of her mother, but she had her father’s silver eyes. I’d only met Wren and Alaric once, years ago, but I never forgot a face. How did I not see it before? And how did Aislin hide for so long under her real name? Dammit. This was a clusterfuck of epic proportions.
Twenty-four years had passed since the daughter of Arden Vane, the Vamphyre leader, and her Lycan mate had gone rogue, and now it seemed as if a child no one knew existed, their child, had dropped right into my lap. This was dangerous knowledge. It could destroy lives. One word to the wrong person and the fire of a thousand hells would rain down upon the Pack. This could endanger the entire Lycan Nine if I wasn’t careful. Arden Vane would go to war. He would kill everything in his path to find his granddaughter and destroy her.
I wouldn’t put it past Vane to come for Aislin himself while trying to keep her existence quiet so he could save face. That was always a possibility. Everyone knew he wasn’t exactly stable and had become a lot more paranoid and psychotic over the years. If the truth of Aislin’s existence was ever revealed, it would make Vane look weak, and he wouldn’t want that.
I pondered over the information I’d just learned about the young woman destined to become my Aeternus. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. If I didn’t tamp down the beast, there would be trouble. A shift and a long run were in swift order. It was the best way to calm the wolf when sex wasn’t an option, and sex definitely wouldn’t be an option for a while.
What were the odds the very woman I was fated to spend eternity with would also turn out to be the granddaughter of Arden Vane? From here on out, I needed to remain rational and steadfast, but I worried I wouldn’t be able to. One wrong move could mean death. A lot of death. I ran a hand through my hair and chuffed in frustration before continuing with my research. My run would have to wait.
Another search resulted in a birth record and an old article about a seven-year-old girl abandoned in an ER waiting room in Seattle. The article correlated with the date of the fire that destroyed Wren and Alaric’s home. The child’s clothes were bloody and torn, and she cowered away from everyone. A nurse had found her with a note and a birth certificate pinned to her shirt. The note said to find her a safe home and that her parents had died in a fire. No one had seen who had left the child there, and she’d burst into screaming fits upon the nurse’s approach. For privacy’s sake, the article had not named the child or her parents. I suspected the child was Aislin.
The doctors and nurses had had to sedate the distraught child to examine her for any wounds. The left side of her torso was sliced up and stitched from neck to hip, dredging up thoughts of a long forgotten foe, but I immediately dismissed the possibility. The cuts were fresh, and the wounds were stitched with near surgical precision. The girl had no memory of how the woun
ds had happened, how she’d gotten to the hospital, or who she was. She only knew her name and shouted hysterically about a fire. She was clearly traumatized.
They admitted her for a few days until they deemed her stable enough to be placed with a foster home. Social services had been called when no next of kin could be found.
All the records were sealed, however, so I couldn’t trace where she’d gone or how many homes she’d been in after the hospital. The memory block had to have been put in place before leaving her in the hospital. Smart thinking, considering memories could be read as far back as infancy if one had the skill. Those of us who did, like me, were known as Soul Shadows and very few Lycan or Vamphyre had this skill. That explained the block. Whoever had left her at the hospital had needed to conceal sensitive information, including her identity. They knew who and what she was, and whoever they were, they had saved Aislin’s life.
The little girl in the hospital had to be Aislin. The timeline fit. If the scar I’d noticed peeking out of her shirt collar was any sign, I’d know for sure when I saw her naked. Scars like that would take years to fade on their own, but a bond could drastically increase the speed with which they’d heal. The hospital story definitely explained her penchant for panic if any of this were true. I had plenty of time over the next couple of days to plan, but first, I needed to talk to my Beta.
4
Aislin
“Golly, girlfriend, you look like a raccoon. You need coffee,” Paige said.
“Har har.” I rolled my eyes at my best friend. I hadn’t slept well, so the bags under my eyes were darker than usual this morning. “This smells divine. I’m starving.”
I piled eggs, bacon, and fried potatoes on my plate. As usual, Paige had put her magical culinary skills to good use, and I was glad for it. I hated cooking, but Paige loved it.