“Drag your sorry-ass wolves back onto those bikes and get the fuck out of Missoula. Tell your alpha if he sends anyone else into my territory, I will kill them,” I said, letting the desire to do that fill my voice.
The man nodded quickly. Grunting in disgust, I tossed him to the ground and turned to Sonya.
“Just for the record, Isak didn’t send us,” the man said as he got to his feet with as much dignity as he could.
Ignoring the man, I put a hand on Sonya’s back as we started to walk to the Jeep. Blood flowed from three deep gashes on her left arm. She opened her mouth but didn’t say anything, so I did not take my hand away because I knew what was coming. From the time of my first change as a child, I remembered the verða all too well. Her knees gave out and she collapsed. Before so much as her jeans could brush the ground, I swept her up into my arms and cradled her against my chest. Long black lashes fluttering, she let out a little moan that did things both wonderful and terrible to me. Then she slid once again into unconsciousness.
Chapter Nine
Sonya
The crunch of a gravel road woke me. Blinking away the haze of sleep, I yawned. The almost sweet scents of spruce and lavender drifted through my open window. Their smell mingled with Ty’s in a way that was close to heaven. Evergreen trees rose up to the sky on both sides of a winding road. Around a bend, I saw a house peeking through the green needles.
“You are awake just in time. I was afraid I might have to carry you in,” Ty’s deep voice came from the driver’s seat.
Stifling another yawn, I sat up and stretched the kink out of my neck. “No such luck.” While I made it sound convincing enough that it was him who was missing out, tingles of a very naughty kind worked their way through my abdomen at the thought. His deep chuckle made the damn feelings spread lower. Glancing over, I noticed he was shirtless. Damn, if that didn’t make me ache with desire. Pressure on my left arm made me look down. A strip of his blue T-shirt was wrapped around my biceps. Dried blood darkened it. Only a twinge of pain remained.
“Your shirt. I’m so sorry. Told you I wasn’t a very good fighter,” I said through a half smile.
He waved the comment away. “Not to worry. It served a better purpose in halting your bleeding. And you did splendidly, considering you fought off a seasoned varúlfur.”
Talk about being able to charm the pants off a nun. Raul had nothing on this guy. “Thanks. Where are we?” I asked.
The Jeep rounded a bend as I spoke, revealing the little house that had been peeking through the trees. A mixture of an alpine-style A-frame and stone siding insured the place was well-equipped to handle harsh winters. At least ten feet off the ground, a raised deck wrapped around it, creating a dramatic entryway to the wooden door inlaid with a huge oval of stained glass. The place couldn’t be over two thousand square feet, especially not with the extreme angle of the roof, but that still made it at least a thousand square feet bigger than anywhere I had ever lived.
“Home,” he said. The conflicted tone of his voice made me curious, but the closed-off look on his face told me I wouldn’t get any further info out of him at the moment.
“Wow,” I murmured as the Jeep rolled to a stop.
Without a word, Ty stepped out of the Jeep and went around to open the back. Realizing he was getting my bags for me, I jumped out and hurried back there. The songs of at least half a dozen different types of birds serenaded me and I thought I smelled water of the lake variety. It would have been relaxing if I weren’t freaking out about arriving at a werewolf’s private cabin. A hot, intriguing werewolf, but a werewolf nonetheless.
“I’ll get those.” I tried to take them from him but he tossed them over his shoulder, which was way out of my reach. Not that I didn’t want to climb up there and get them. I wanted to. Oh, did I ever.
“That is all right. I have it.”
The argument died on my lips as he strode off toward the house, leaving me standing alone. The view of his backside in those jeans was well worth losing the argument, and then some. Left with little other choice, I closed the Jeep’s tailgate and followed him up onto the porch. Electronic beeps broke the mountain retreat stillness, followed by the metallic sound of a deadbolt disengaging. He opened the solid wood door and strode inside. The door alone had to cost as much as all my first year med books combined. Standing on the cedar deck, I hesitated. This place was so far beyond anywhere I had ever lived that I was reluctant to cross the threshold in my off-brand hiking shoes. Not only did I feel a bit like out-of-place trailer trash, but entering that house felt like the point of no return. Stupid, considering the bite had been that point, but knowing that didn’t make it feel any less real. I had little choice. Even if I did, I wasn’t sure I’d choose anyone else to guide me through this. And he had my worldly belongings slung across his back, so what else could I do?
Marveling at the tile entryway, I stepped inside. The tile floor continued into a large, open floor plan filled with far more modern furnishings than I expected to see in such a place. Beyond the foyer stretched a long marble bar that separated the kitchen from the living space, which boasted some kind of dark fur rug—real from the smell of it—and a gathering of furniture around a tiled fireplace. Above it all hovered a loft with a steel cable and glass railing. The place smelled like wood, leather, stone, and a diluted pine cleaner. Not a bad mixture of scents, really.
“Wow,” I said again, feeling completely inarticulate.
“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 too hard, his was easy, natural.
I checked the coat rack, the shoe bench, but didn’t see any signs of other people. I tried not to sound hopeful as I asked, “Do you live here alone?”
“I do.” A slightly guarded undertone hid beneath his cheer.
I decided to press a bit. “No Mrs. Werewolf or pups frolicking in the woods out back?”
He laughed, but it was a strained sound. “No. Lone wolf, remember?”
“I do, just clarifying what that means exactly.”
Without the further explanation I’d been hoping for, 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.”
Whatever was in this guy’s past, it was clearly painful. Nice as he was being to me, I didn’t want to cause him any pain, so I decided to let it drop, for now.
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 recessed in 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 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. “Yes, and 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 starting 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 me. 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 me 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 a name I didn’t recognize. 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 could tell by the tops of the bottles 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 feeling away with another 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? Why did they attack us?”
Ty sat his beer down and looked me straight in the eye. “To answer the first one: 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 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.” Before he bit me I’d been about to let him into my apartment—and my bed. I had to swallow down my revulsion before I could go on. “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.” Insta-love was something I so did not believe in.
A nasty mixture of embarrassment and that ever-present fury 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 and exploding through my body. Not because I was “the one” or even because he c
ared 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 outrage at all I had been through. 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.
Bitten & Beholden (Children of Fenrir Book 2) Page 9