by Amy Pennza
She bucked against his hand. “Yes.”
The finger pushed past her opening, filling her. “Here, too?”
A wave of pure lust rushed over her, and her hips undulated of their accord. Nathan never made her feel this way. “Because he’s not a wolf,” a voice in her head whispered.
“Answer me,” the Alpha demanded.
“Y-yes.”
He withdrew his finger, and her heart fell. She thrust her hips toward him, desperate to get it back.
“Turn around.”
The order sent another wave of heat rippling across her sex. She whimpered. The ache tightened to a spiral of need. The flesh between her legs burned. She bit her lower lip.
His glance flickered there. “Do it. Now.” Beneath the growl, his voice sounded different. Almost…plaintive.
Slowly, she faced the tree. Moonlight silvered the bark.
He pressed against her, his hard body pinning hers against the tree. Rough wood scraped her skin, and a bolt of fear shot down her spine.
All at once the reality of her situation flooded her. This was the Alpha. He could do whatever he wished to her. Werewolves didn’t hold sex sacred. If anything, they encouraged young wolves to experiment before entering into a lifelong bond. But Lizette was a nobody—an orphan raised by humans. The Alpha would never take her as a mate.
No, he’d just take her. She tensed.
“Relax,” he said, his voice rough, as though he was straining to lift a heavy weight. “Offer yourself to me.”
Offer? Trapped against the tree, she tried to turn.
“Stay.” He gripped her hips with hard fingers and buried his face in her neck. “Move against me.”
Her heart pounded. Something hard nudged her backside. Another bolt of fear shot through her. She tucked her arm against her side and thrust an elbow into his ribs.
He didn’t even grunt. Just dropped his head to her neck. Hot breaths ruffled her hair…then a fierce, pinching pain shot across her nape. The hot scent of blood stung her nostrils.
Her blood.
Fear. Confusion. Desire. Fear. Emotions had flickered through her mind like a movie played in fast forward. Without thinking, she turned her head and snapped at his hand.
Lizette sagged against the window. Her nape tingled. The window was smudged with her sweat.
In the clearing, the trail of blood down her neck had burned hot…
And then the spell broke.
In the clearing, Max flung her away from him.
She whirled, one hand clapped against her nape.
“Go,” he grated, blood dripping from his hand, the drops pattering against the ground.
“I don’t… What?”
He’d bared his teeth at her. “I said go. Get out of here.”
She ran the rest of the way to the Lodge without stopping.
The next morning he shipped her off to school without even looking at her. He hadn’t banished her from the Lodge—not officially. But the effect was the same. She went to Albany because he hadn’t given her a choice. Now he ordered her back. Once again, she had zero control over her own life.
She turned from the window and glanced around her bedroom. What now? If she stayed in her room, Max would find her eventually. Then he’d order her to move into his. Was he trying to humiliate her? Or just prove he could make her do whatever he wanted? Both. It was probably both.
“Because he’s an asshole,” she said out loud.
“Such language,” an amused voice commented from the hallway outside.
She went to the door and opened it.
Remy leaned against the jamb, a sucker stick between his lips.
“That’s rich, coming from your potty mouth,” she said.
He grinned around the sucker and stuck his hands in the pockets of his black Under Armour running pants, his eyes twinkling. He wore an old sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, the black “Syracuse” on the front almost completely worn away by a thousand trips through the washer. He spoke around his sucker. “Considering you met with Max, I have a feeling I know who you meant.”
“He has that effect on people.”
Remy raised an eyebrow. “Want to tell me how it went?”
She glanced down the hall. In a building teeming with wolves with hypersensitive hearing, no conversation would be private, no matter how deserted the hall looked. “Is there someplace we can talk?”
He jerked his head toward the great room. “Come on.”
Remy kept up a steady stream of chatter as they wound their way through the Lodge’s maze of corridors and rooms. Lizette saw a few familiar faces and stopped a couple of times to hug old friends and distant relatives. She could tell people wanted to ask questions about her return, but Remy kept them at bay by barely pausing for breath as he ushered her through the hallways—which was good, because she had no idea how to explain why she’d come back.
Max dragged me home, declared himself my husband, and ordered me to sleep with him? She felt her cheeks flush with anger just thinking about his heavy-handedness. He might be thirty-six but he acted a hundred and thirty-six. Someone needed to drag him into the present.
She snorted. It sure as hell wasn’t going to be her.
Remy gave her a curious look, but said nothing as he led them into the Lodge’s main kitchen. It was a massive room lined with industrial-grade stainless steel appliances that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a five-star restaurant. Although most wolves in the territory lived within a few hours’ drive of the Lodge, the Lodge itself housed dozens of young, unmated males who served as Hunters. Part army, part personal guard, they operated as an in-house security force—and they reported directly to Max.
Although every territory had a similar arrangement, New York had more Hunters than any other pack. A few years earlier, word got around that an unusually high number of latent wolves in Max’s territory were managing to Turn. It hadn’t taken long for him to be inundated with requests to take on latent wolves as trainees. Not all latents who trained with Max’s pack Turned, but anxious parents figured it was worth a shot.
The extra bodies meant that at any given time the Lodge was home to forty or fifty males who ate an indecent amount of food.
Lizette felt a mixture of awe and revulsion as Remy layered ham, salami, and roast beef between two thick slices of pumpernickel, pausing a few times to steady the growing tower when it threatened to tip over.
“Are you entertaining guests?” she asked him.
“It’s a leg day.”
She sighed and climbed onto one of the barstools at the butcher block island.
He set a pint of cookie dough ice cream and a spoon in front of her
“I love you.”
“I know.” He lined the outer edge of his plate with pickle spears. “How’d it go?” he asked quietly.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. She would not cry. She opened the ice cream container and dug out a chunk of cookie dough. “He told me I have to stay.”
Remy paused for a second, then resumed his sandwich-making. “It’s been five years.”
She stabbed at the ice cream, making satisfying divots in the frozen crust. “This may be hard for you to believe, but I have a life in Albany. I have friends…a job.” Shit. She hadn’t even thought about calling work. The stress of the trip home and the meeting with Max had commandeered all her brain power. She balanced on one butt cheek so she reach her phone in her back pocket.
“I don’t know how you even fit that thing in there,” Remy mumbled around a mouthful of sandwich. He cracked open a massive bottle of Gatorade and downed half of it without stopping for breath.
“What do you mean?” She scrolled through her contacts and tapped her boss’s name.
Remy swallowed and gestured to her lower half with his plastic bottle. “Those jeans are painted on.”
She typed a quick message, hit send, and put the phone down. “You’re right.” She gestured at her long-sleeved sweater. “I really should ha
ve packed a few petticoats. Can’t have you boys getting all distracted by my ankles.”
He grinned. “I didn’t mean it that way. You just have to be…conscious of that sort of thing around Max. Mated males are possessive.”
She pointed her spoon at him. “First of all, let me be the first to welcome you to the twenty-first century. I hope you enjoy your stay. Second, Max and I are not mated.”
“Lizette…”
She stuck the spoon deep in the ice cream and left it there. “What he did… Before…” She couldn’t bring herself to describe what had happened five years ago.
Anyway, Remy knew. He was there.
She pressed the cardboard edge of the ice cream container lid flat with short, precise movements. “The lux catena can’t be forced. I don’t accept it, and I don’t care why he seems to have changed his mind.” She worked her way around the edge of the lid, folding the cardboard inward. “I won’t go along with it just because he’s the Alpha. Anyway, I’m sure there are hundreds of wolf girls out there who’d jump at the chance to be Max’s chosen one.”
Remy put his hand over hers, stilling her assault on the lid. “I understand how you feel.”
“No, you don’t.”
A shadow passed over his face. “You’d be surprised. Love is a…rough thing.”
She got the impression they weren’t talking about her and Max anymore. “Are you okay, Remy?”
He gave her a lopsided smile and half a shrug. “Yeah, you know me. I’m always okay.” He picked up a pickle spear and waved it at her. “And I know a lot more about love than you might realize. I’m not a total Neanderthal. Just…give Max a little bit of a chance, okay? Or at least promise me you’ll think about it.”
“I’ve had five years to think. I don’t see anything changing.”
“We live long lives. People can always change.”
“That’s exactly my point. Forever is a long time. And I was raised a human. I’m twenty-four. Even if I was head over heels in love with Max right now, there’s no guarantee I’ll feel that way in ten years…or twenty.”
“The lux catena takes care of that. You have to trust me.”
She shook her head. “I’ve seen what the mating bond does to people and trust me, it’s not good.”
He frowned. “You mean your parents? Your real parents?”
“Yeah…” She pulled her hand away and pressed both of hers between her knees. “I don’t remember them much, which is weird since I was seven when they died. You’d think I would have more memories of us as a family. I just remember them always being together. It was like they had a secret, and I guess they did.”
“They lived outside a pack. Maybe they were just trying to protect you—help you blend in with the humans.”
“Maybe.” Lizette shrugged. “One thing was always very clear to me. Their bond with each other was exceptionally strong, even though I had no idea they had a werewolf bond. But when it came to me… I guess I sort of felt like I was in the way.”
Even when she was a child her parents’ relationship had struck her as obsessive—before she even understood what obsessive meant. It had confused and frightened her. Their deaths had shocked her, but in a way the transition to her foster family had provided her with the first stable life she’d ever known.
“You studied psychology, right?”
She nodded.
“Do you think maybe—and I’m not making excuses for them—there’s a chance your memories are distorted because you experienced the trauma of losing them so young?”
“I guess it’s possible. But feelings are different from memories, and those don’t typically get distorted.”
He seemed to think about that. Then he said, “Well, you have time on your side. I don’t think Max is making wedding plans just yet. And the Lodge is a big place. You can keep your distance if you want.”
Lizette averted her eyes. She wasn’t comfortable telling him Max had ordered her to share his bedroom. And if Max’s actions in his study were any indication, he planned on sharing the bed, too. “Yeah. I guess you’re right. I can’t picture Max looking at bridesmaids’ dresses.”
He chuckled. “Me neither. Just be glad he’s not insisting on an old-fashioned mating with a bedding ceremony.”
“A what?”
“A bedding ceremony. You know, like in medieval times. People in the room. Hang a bloody sheet on the wall. That sort of thing.”
“C’mon, Remy.” He had to be joking. Remy was famous for making crap up and then laughing his ass off when people fell for it.
He put up his hands. “I swear. Grand-père Arsenault told me. Humans stopped doing it centuries ago, but wolves kept up the tradition until shortly before the first World War. It proved to the couple’s families that the lux catena was complete. As grand-père put it—” Remy put on a thick French accent. “—you did the bite and the vow, then you went to a room and made the wow.” He made jazz hands. “All with an audience.”
“Seriously?”
“I’m dead serious.” He popped a pickle in his mouth and crunched. “Nobody does that anymore, though. Once our birth rates started to fall, people didn’t want to turn anyone off the idea of mating. That’s what I heard, anyway.”
A medieval bedding ceremony? She’d never heard of that particular werewolf custom. Of course she hadn’t been raised on werewolf traditions. A little twinge of jealousy arced through her. Unlike Remy, she’d never known their grandparents.
“Lizette?” Remy watched her with a frown. “I promise Max won’t do that. Even he’s not that old-fashioned. Besides, it’s just an old story. Who knows? Maybe grand-père was pulling my leg.”
She shook herself. “I know.”
“I hope you’re done with that ice cream, because you destroyed the lid.”
“It’s low-fat anyway. Who’s doing the grocery shopping around here?”
They smiled at each other for a second before an alert on her phone drew her attention. She looked at the screen and saw a little red exclamation point next to the message she’d tried to send to the professor she worked for. She picked up her phone and waved it around. “I really need to let work know I’m going to be gone for a few days. Is there anywhere I can get a signal?”
Remy grabbed a paper towel from a roll on the counter, tore one off, and wiped his mouth. “Sure, but we’ll have to hoof it a couple of miles.” He reached over and tested her bicep. “You think you can hang, city slicker?”
Her pulse quickened at the thought of taking a run—a real run—through the dense forest. She hadn’t realized how much she missed it until she stepped out of the SUV in front of the Lodge.
“Do you think we can get out and back before dark?” She tried to sound casual, but she could hear the eagerness in her voice.
Remy leaned over the counter and raised his eyebrows in unmistakable challenge. “Depends how fast you are.”
“You will eat my dust.”
He slapped the counter. “You’re on.”
As they left the kitchen, Lizette tried not to think about the things she hadn’t told Remy. Like how she responded to Max’s touch in the study.
She was nineteen when she left the Lodge—an inexperienced girl. She was a woman now, with a woman’s body. But she also had a mind. Her traitorous body might crave Maxime Simard’s touch, but her mind wanted nothing to do with it or him.
And that would never change.
7
Lizette picked her way down the narrow steps carved into the side of the gorge. Remy walked a few paces ahead, his blond hair haloed by the bright rays of the setting sun.
Having spent four summers in the gorge, Lizette could have probably navigated the steps in her sleep, but she was rusty, so she took her time. A hundred-foot fall was unlikely to kill her, but it would leave her incapacitated and in serious pain.
Local werewolf lore told that the first Alphas in the New World had called the impressive gorge the “penitentiary” because it was difficult to cl
imb—even for a werewolf. Apparently they’d used the gorge to execute wolves who violated the law. The worst offenders had been marched to the edge and hurled over the side.
The water at the bottom was little more than a creek by the time it wound past the Lodge, so anyone tossed into the gorge would land on the sharp rocks below. Assuming they survived the drop, and most wolves would, they would die of blood loss or exposure.
She shuddered.
Remy stopped and looked over his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just chilled.” It was also at least ten degrees cooler in Penitentiary Gorge than Albany.
A mischievous smile lit up his handsome face. “Nothing a little run can’t take care of.” He helped her down the last few steps and over the rocks scattered around the soft sand at the bottom of the gorge. Her thighs trembled by the time they reached the other side and started the upward climb.
“Why not just take the footbridge?” She glanced at the simple swinging bridge that connected the two sides of the gorge.
“This is more fun.”
Strange. Her idea of fun consisted of lying on her sofa, streaming the latest episode of Homeland on her iPad.
Remy hauled her over the edge, and she collapsed facedown on the ground. The rich scents of grass and earth filled her nose.
He nudged her with his foot. “Are you dead?”
“Yes.”
He sighed. “Do you realize how much paperwork is involved when someone dies on my watch?”
She rolled to her back and squinted up at him. “How often do people die on your watch?”
He stripped off his sweatshirt and tossed it on the ground. “More often than I’d like, to be honest.”
“Latents?”
He nodded, his normally laughing eyes shadowed with loss. Guilt surged through her, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth. While she’d been living a carefree life in the human world, far removed from wolf politics and responsibilities, he’d been watching his friends and possibly even relatives die.
She sat up. “Why didn’t you say something?”
She’d lived in Albany for five years, but Dominic and Remy were still a somewhat steady presence in her life. As much as she would have loved to believe she was independent, she knew better. Max had sent them, along with a steady rotation of others, to check up on her.