Cyrus let go of her and took a few steps away. She had no idea how closely this resembled a conversation he’d had with Lake weeks earlier. His sister was desperate to work in a human hospital since she was now educated to the point of being a nurse practitioner.
“You are fortunate in that you will never know what it is to live here, in New York, under the rule of Shepherd. We used to have much higher numbers than we do now. The pack was under constant attack both by other werewolves and from snooping humans. It is a lot trickier than you might imagine to arrange a life as a werewolf out there in the human world. Can you disappear from a normal job every full moon? Can you explain to your bosses why you have to? People start to ask questions.”
“Listen, I get it, I’m not arguing with you. I just became a werewolf. I’m going to have to let some of my human dreams go.” She shrugged. “You do the dishes. I’m going to go get ready to see what today has in store for me. Oh wait, I can’t.” She turned back to him. “I don’t have any clothes.”
“That’s taken care of. I sent two of the females to the brownstone to collect your clothing. It’s all put away in the second closet in my room. Also, you have a set of drawers in there too, next to mine.”
She shook her head. “Do you always think of everything?”
With a spin of her heel, she turned and headed back toward the bathroom. If he thought of everything, he’d have remembered to tell her where her clothes were before then. Of course, forgetting had granted him the gift of seeing her in one his college T-shirts.
He cleared his plate and carried it to the sink. When was the last time he’d cleaned a dish? Never eating at home meant never having to clean up after himself. He scrubbed at the dishes before going after the pan. She’d never cooked the bacon so he put that and the biscuits away. His mother would be so proud that he still remembered how to do the things she’d made him do when he was a child. It had been so many years since he’d done ‘chores.’
Always need to be able to take care of yourself…Her voice sounded in his mind, and he smiled at the memory. He almost never thought of his parents anymore. The memory of them simply didn’t fit into his daily life. Nothing about his life now resembled anything about his time with them.
Well, maybe now it did.
He turned off the water and took a deep breath. Giving up her dreams. He hated the thought of that. As soon as the Nathan problem was settled, he wanted her as blissfully happy as she could be. And then when she wasn’t, he’d kiss her back to happiness.
There really wasn’t anything he could do about her dilemma short of purchasing a restaurant for her to work in. But then he’d have to buy Lake a hospital, and he suspected that his handing them careers was not what either lady had in mind. Although that wasn’t much different than what he did at the company.
Cyrus shook his head. He wasn’t going to solve the world’s problems standing over a sink. He had to get dressed and get to the office. Alexei would be bound, by the end of the day, by a blood oath to not invade Cyrus’ territory, or there would be hell to pay. Then they would move on to Montana.
Some things he could be sure of. Cyrus had always known how to get things done.
****
Nathan quivered in the cage like a shaking leaf. Cyrus hadn’t even spoken to the pathetic excuse for a man yet, and the human was about two seconds from pissing himself out of fear.
Cyrus glanced at Jensen, who leaned up against the back wall. The other werewolf only pretended to be at ease. He could smell the tangy taste of Jensen’s vigilance across the room.
“Join me,” he called out to Jensen, and his pack mate walked over immediately.
“Yes, my Alpha?” Jensen held eye contact for a second before he looked slightly down. It was the appropriate behavior to show respect, although Cyrus had no doubt that, given the provocation, Jensen could easily meet his gaze for extended periods of time.
“Anyone abuse him last night?”
“No.” Jensen shook his head. “I was here the whole time. He got fed, watered, and was allowed to use the bathroom. He even got to take a shower this morning.”
“Fed, watered, showered. That’s good.” He laughed, and Jensen’s eyebrows furrowed downward.
“Sir, I didn’t mean that to be funny.”
“I know.” He patted Jensen on the arm, and Jensen stared at the spot he’d touched as though he couldn’t believe the contact.
“He thought your phrasing was funny.” Betsy walked up next to him and handed him the coffee she’d purchased across the street.
“How so?” Jensen followed the conversation. .
“It’s like you were talking about a dog, sort of.” Betsy shrugged. “If you’d said you let him outside, it would have fit perfectly.”
Cyrus smiled into his cup. Betsy understood his sense of humor perfectly. Bizarre, really. Very few people ever followed the direction of his thoughts.
“Sir, if I may say, the whole pack is thrilled by your true mating. We look forward to your moon ceremony.” Jensen smiled broadly. Cyrus wasn’t entirely certain he’d ever seen that particular expression on the other man’s face before.
“Thank you.”
“What’s a moon ceremony?” Betsy sipped her drink.
“Kind of like a wedding. But better.” He’d get into the specifics with her later. Someone would have to preside over it since he couldn’t do it himself, and she’d have to be comfortable with the nudity.
“My mate is looking forward to the movies tonight,” Jensen continued.
“Movies tonight?” Cyrus regarded at Betsy. “This is the first I’m hearing of it.”
“Oh.” Betsy shook her head. “Lake asked me if I’d like to get together with some of the women sometime to do something. Very vague. I had no idea she’d planned it for tonight. This is a lot sooner than I expected.”
“Sounds like my sister.” Cyrus grinned. Leave it to Lake to disrupt the evening he had planned. “You should go. I have Alexei to deal with and this fool here. You’ll be safe with the pack, and after the movies, we’ll meet up back home.”
“Oh. Okay.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder, and it was everything he could do to not to tug at her shirt to look at his mark there. He salivated to see it. Betsy turned to Jensen. “What are we seeing?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know, ma’am. I didn’t think to ask.”
“You,” Nathan called out from his cage noticing Betsy for the first time. “You’re with them now. I should have known it. A leopard can never truly hide his spots. My father warned me you’d always be mostly animal, even if you hid it better than the other abominations. You’re an animal. We should never have thought to save you.”
Betsy jerked as though he’d struck her. “What did you say?”
Jensen growled, launching himself at the cage. Nathan screamed like a woman and darted to the back of the bars. “You will not insult the Alpha’s mate.”
“Oh, the Alpha?” Even as he shrieked, Nathan continued his insults. Stupid boy. “You’re fucking the Alpha, you slut. Can’t you ever keep your legs closed?”
“I never slept with you.” Betsy sipped her coffee, and he could smell her fighting for calm. It burned his lungs. He hated to smell her so stressed out. “Then again, I’d never sleep with a rat like you.”
Cyrus walked toward Jensen and nodded for him to get off the cage. This was one of the reasons he hadn’t left her within talking range of Nathan the day before. The pathetic excuse for a life form couldn’t be trusted to not hurt her in some way.
“How did you know she was a werewolf? How did you know when she didn’t?”
Nathan laughed, a hysterical whiny sound, but it did little to disguise the disgust in his gaze as he focused on Betsy. “Oh, everyone knew. We kill your kind. We do it when you’re babies.”
Cyrus almost gave in to the urge to claw out the man’s eyes. The human shouldn’t be allowed to look at Cyrus’ mate. Instead, Cyrus held onto his calm and took a sip of hi
s coffee. It wasn’t time to kill Nathan…yet.
“But you didn’t change, and neither did your sister. So, even though we knew you had animal parents, my father—who is a great man—said it was our duty as true believers to give you the chance to be saved from the pit.”
Betsy had gone very pale. “So you all knew I was a werewolf this whole time? And my sister too? What did you do with her? Send her off to another true believer?”
“I don’t know anything about where your sister went. I just know what I know. My father saved you from the pit, and I was supposed to save you the rest of the way. Until you went and started sleeping with him.”
“Cyrus.” Betsy’s voice was very low. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
He put his arm around her. “Take some deep breaths. Jensen, go get my sister.”
“Yes, my Alpha.” Jensen shot Nathan a look that could have scorched the earth before he ran from the room.
“Betsy, listen to my voice. You aren’t going to give this man the satisfaction of seeing you throw up.” She raised her now red-rimmed eyes to look at him. He would make Nathan suffer tenfold for the pain Betsy endured. “And we don’t know what is true. He is a stupid asshole.”
He’d said the last part loud enough for Nathan to hear and was rewarded when the other man cried out. Good, Nathan should know how lowly Cyrus viewed him. The man was nothing more than a coward pretending to be a tough guy.
“We’ll find out what is true and what isn’t. Then, I promise you, Nathan and his like will know the pain of crossing us. I give you my word.”
Betsy nodded, giving him a small smile that broke his heart for its bravery. Jensen rushed back in the door, followed by Lake. His sister must already know the situation because she walked right to Betsy and placed a hand on her arm.
“You feel sick? Like you might lose your cookies?”
Betsy laughed, a shaky sound. “Great phrase.”
“Thanks. I use it with the pack pups. It always makes them laugh. I think you’re doing better. I can feel some of the pain leaving you, and I think we can credit my brother for that.” She nodded. “But I can help the rest of the way.”
Lake placed a hand on Betsy’s arm, and Cyrus let go of his mate. Betsy needed the healing, not he, and he wouldn’t suck any of Lake’s magic touch from his mate by accident. He never thought about his own healing abilities. His pack’s Healer happened to be his family, and he used her whenever someone needed help, but Alphas could heal with their touch. There was no kind of magic to it, just plain old comfort in being held by the person who was responsible for the person’s care. It went along way to relieving fear and angst.
He didn’t know that he’d done that for Betsy. Their relationship would never be entirely Alpha and pack member. She belonged to him differently. Maybe his holding her would be more effective because of that. They’d have to find out together.
Cyrus walked to cage, where Nathan trembled. “You have a venomous mouth for someone so terrified.”
“You’re just an animal.”
That had clearly become the human’s standard reply and ultimately what all true believers said when they found themselves in this kind of situation. Lucian had held a policy of not dealing with them at all. His last summer with the Alpha Prime, Cyrus had witnessed him beheading two of them. Cyrus could remember that day vividly, not because of some kind of horror associated with it—beheading was certainly a brutally effective way to send a message back to the other true believers—but because he hadn’t felt anything at all about what he’d witnessed. Not one damn thing. They were humans who wanted to kill his kind; they needed to die, like removing a wasp’s nest before the creatures inside could sting anybody. Death was the only answer.
“You’re right.” Cyrus nodded. “I am an animal, sort of. But I’d never do to a woman what you did.”
Nathan spit from the cage, almost hitting Cyrus’ two-thousand-dollar suit.
“Spitting is a dirty habit.” Cyrus set down his coffee. “It spreads disease, and your fragile little bodies can take only so many encounters with illness before your hearts stop beating. If I were you, I’d be more careful, although I suppose it doesn’t matter. You aren’t going to live long enough to get sick again. When I’m done with you, I’ve decided to give you to my friend Alexei. I hear he likes to play with his food before eating it. You’ll beg for death before he’s done.”
Nathan cried out, big fat tears streaming down his face. The man wasn’t a true believer—he was a bully.
“Jensen, see that he calls his father for his daily report. He’ll be leaving with Alexei later and get the plane all set up for a trip, will you? A bunch of us are going to be visiting Montana tomorrow.”
Chapter Twelve
Betsy sipped her strawberry daiquiri and regarded the other women who surrounded her. They were all members of her pack, and they were all talking at once. She smiled at one who had said her name was Liana before she took another sip. The whole evening was different than she had imagined it.
“This is our version of the movies.” Lake laughed, taking a large swig from her pink-colored drink. Betsy had no idea what it was. In fact, she had no clue about what most of the women were consuming. She’d never been to a bar before. She’d ordered her own drink because she’d seen it in a movie once, and at least she had something to order other than the whiskey her father preferred. She hated the smell of that and detested the taste even more.
It was loud, and everyone in the place seemed to be having a good time. Her group had a table in the corner.
“We can’t admit we go to bars.” Lake shrugged. “Or the men send a representative to guard us. What point is it having a ladies’ night out with them watching over us like we need babysitters? We’re female werewolves. We can take care of ourselves.”
“Here. Here.” A redheaded woman on the other side of the table saluted with her beer. Betsy tried to recall the woman’s name. Rachel? Raquel? There were fifteen women with her, and, if she was lucky, she’d remember the names of five of them by the end of the evening. It might be a year before she could remember the name of every wolf in the pack. She sighed, stirring her drink with the little plastic umbrella someone had stuck in it.
“So,” Lake continued, holding her hands over her head as though she was stretching her arms into the sky, “we say we’re going to the movies, and we all meet here. No harm, no foul. For some reason, bars seem more risky to the men.”
Betsy tried to digest her words and found she couldn’t ignore the twinge they gave to her insides. “I don’t think I’m comfortable lying to Cyrus.”
The whole table fell silent. The women seemed to be making eye contact all around her, as if they were silently communicating in a way she couldn’t follow. Wouldn’t anything ever be easy? Couldn’t she just make friends? No. She bit down on her lip. Not if it meant betraying Cyrus. That felt wrong.
“They don’t understand.” One of the women, who had been quiet most of the night, whose name she could actually remember since she’d met her briefly in Cyrus’ office building as Kyra, smiled at her kindly. “They’re not in a true mating. You and I are the only ones here—actually, the only ones in the pack—to find a true mating. The others have mated with men who are not their true mates, which is fine and their decision, or they are still single. They don’t understand what deceit feels like to us.”
Kyra had brown, shoulder-length hair and kind blue eyes. She was slightly on the chubby side, with ten pounds she might not need hugging her hips and breasts. Betsy liked her tremendously, and she’d never exchanged more than hello until that moment.
“Who are you true mated to? I’ve met only a handful of the werewolf pack members.” Actually, she’d spent most of the day closeted away in a room with a man named Luther who was about ninety and who’d given her a history and mysticism lesson about werewolves. By the end of it, her head ached, and she wondered if she’d made a mistake thinking she could get her high school diploma since
she obviously could not retain information the way she needed to.
She still couldn’t figure out the difference between all the moon cycles and why they had anything to do with the chemistry inside of her body.
“I think you’ve met him several times actually. And talked to him. His name is Jensen.”
She brightened at that, letting go of the breath she held. Yes, she knew Jensen. He’d come to Brooklyn and thrown himself on the cage today. She could see them together. They fit in the way people seemed to do on television, as though they’d been cast to be together by some authority that knew these things. His dark hair would complement her lighter brown, and he’d gaze into her blue eyes adoringly every morning.
Like Cyrus had looked at her when she’d fed him the eggs. She sighed at the memory. What was she doing in a bar when he was not with her? She was making friends. Or blowing it so the whole pack ended up hating her
Liana, who sat next to her, spoke. “Let’s not make it seem like those of us who fell in love with our partners are somehow slumming it, because we aren’t true mates. We met someone, fell in love, committed, and have families—like the humans do. It’s a commitment, and I won’t have it dismissed because you smelled your mate and it happened to work. Our unions are just as sacred.”
Kyra nodded and bit down on her bottom lip before she spoke. “I would never disparage your relationship or anyone else’s, sister wolf. It’s that while you might choose not to lie to spouse, and I commend you for that, it’s physically painful for me to do it, and I don’t blame Betsy for sensing that she doesn’t wish to give that a try.”
“Then how do you come here when we do this? How do you lie to Jensen?” Lake took another swig from her drink. How many had Cyrus’ sister had?
“I don’t lie. Jensen knows where I am and what I’m doing.”
A hush fell at that response. Finally Lake spoke again, this time with temper in her tone. “How do you know he won’t tell the Alpha and Cyrus will put a stop to this whole thing?”