This was actually something I might even chip a nail trying to break into if I hadn’t been invited. It was two hours out of New York City. We’d taken a helicopter because I hadn’t wanted to drive. Thorne thought it was excessive and argued tooth and nail that we drive the distance.
So of course, we took the helicopter.
I made Scott leave two hours earlier so we’d have a vehicle just in case we might need it. Good thing, because the drive into the kennel proper was a good thirty minutes from the gates where we’d landed—Duncan piloting—and Scott had popped his werewolf cherry. And I hadn’t been at all keen on sharing an enclosed space with the wolves who seemed to hate us on sight.
Of course we had begun with a battle, but they were being total pussies if that was the reason for their contempt. Every supernatural meeting had to start with some kind of blood or it didn’t even count.
There were dense trees surrounding the beaten track we were driving on, though the forests weren’t empty; I sensed many wolves, in human and animal form, tracking our arrival.
“I see my reputation preceded me,” I commented, nodding to the woods.
Sophie snorted. “Your reputation always precedes you, which is why everyone tries to kill you when they first meet you.”
I smiled. “I know. It’s my favorite part of meeting new people.”
I glanced to Scott, who was covered in blood, his shirt ripped. He was smiling, though. Just happy to be there, I guessed.
“You should take it as a compliment that the wolf tried to kill you when you first arrived, Scotty,” I said cheerfully. “It makes you more like me, and everyone wants to be like me.”
Thorne gave me a look at that. He hadn’t even cracked a grin since we’d taken off in the helicopter in New York, buzzkill that he was. “They tried to kill him because you didn’t inform anyone that a half-blood vampire would be driving up to their secret compound in the midst of a war,” he clipped, still obviously not forgiving me for not saving Scott’s honor.
I shrugged. “He’s alive. Chill out.”
Thorne clenched his fists on the steering wheel, turning his knuckles white. I idly glanced at the knuckles, the hands, the arms they were attached to.
He wasn’t wearing his leather jacket, and I swear it was just to torture me with his sculpted and tanned arms, to make me imagine them clutching my hips as he pounded me against the wall.
Crap, now I’m horny.
And he’d taken me roughly and beautifully on the kitchen counter that morning, us climaxing together as I bit into his neck.
Thorne was hot as hell, and he pushed all my right—and wrong—buttons, had me desperate for him every moment.
The bastard.
He glanced to me, though not in anger. Okay, there was still anger, but there was a lot of heat and desire too. Because I’d fed off him before we left, my emotions were likely to be as stark to him as his were to me. It was like an invisible string, or a thousand invisible strings attached to a thousand different emotions, and they would become more prevalent as one overarching emotion took hold.
My body shuddered with the power of his desire and mine combined.
I ached for his mouth on me, like it had been that morning when he’d teased my panties off with his teeth, pads of his fingers pressing on the insides of my thighs with enough pressure to bruise—
“Stop it,” he hissed through his teeth. His entire body was steel, but that time it wasn’t because he was furious about the danger and battles. No, it was because he tasted, vividly, the memory of what he’d done with his tongue, and what I’d done with mine in return.
I pouted, squirming in my seat and crossing my legs. “I can’t help it. You’re the one whose fault it is,” I accused.
He gave me a sideways glance filled with desire and anger. “I’m not the one wearin’ that fuckin’ outfit and driving me fuckin’ crazy,” he hissed.
I glanced down to where his eyes had zeroed in on the exposed skin of my legs. I’d decided to take a leaf out of Sophie’s slut book and wear leather shorts tucked into a lace blouse that was sheer enough to show my corset underneath. I had on my favorite thigh-high Louboutins.
Thorne’s eyes undressed me with brutal force, and my fangs sank into my lip with the mere impact of his gaze on my skin.
“You do know we’re back here, right?” Sophie asked, snapping the thick cord of sexual tension wrapping around my brain.
I turned and grinned, blinking away my desperation to regard my bestie in the back seat. “How could I forget?” I asked sweetly. “The wet dog smell is kind of hard to ignore.”
I pointedly ignored the werewolf sitting beside Sophie, silent and scruffy and even more intense than Thorne.
That was a feat in itself.
Though I’d never give him any credit for it.
I wasn’t too keen on giving him anything. If I could find a way not to give him oxygen, I would. Though that would likely piss off Sophie, since it seemed whenever we rode into battle—which was every other day for us—he was there, attached to her side. Like she wasn’t some badass witch with a potentially world-ending power within her. Yes, that power might end up turning her into a really bad witch—not in the good way—or maybe even kill her, but it also made her powerful and almost indestructible.
She didn’t need a man to protect her. And she certainly didn’t need a wolf.
But there he was all the same.
“I don’t get why the dog continues to exist in our little circle,” I whined. “Or you know, at all.” I raised my brows at Sophie, in a reminder that she’d managed to dodge every single conversation pertaining to what in the fuck was going on there.
Not that we’d had much time for girl talk, but I had taken time out of my busy schedule of almost being murdered to demand she tell me what was going on. And she didn’t. I knew her better than anyone, and she definitely knew me better than I knew myself. When things with Thorne got legit, she had called it. And I was afraid I was going to have to call this bullshit with the werewolf legit. The way he looked at her like she literally hung the moon he howled to. The way she scowled at him.
Creatures like Sophie and me, we ignored males who weren’t of consequence. And when they pissed us off, we killed them. We might flutter our lashes at the odd empty head with good bone structure and decent muscles, but only for the purposes of warming our beds.
No, the scowls we treated our respective alpha males to meant something akin to lovelorn glances in those insipid human movies.
In other words, Sophie had it bad.
She narrowed her eyes. “You don’t need to know everything, Isla,” she snapped, her voice holding a bite to it that further cemented my theory.
“Truth,” I agreed, regarding the tight way she held her hands in fists. “I’d rather know basically nothing about basically everything. I’d rather know completely nothing about him”—I jerked my head in the direction of the wolf—“but it’s kind of being forced upon me, and I think I deserve to know why I’m going to have to set my car upholstery on fire, or just buy a new car altogether.”
I wasn’t being theatrical. But I had been planning on buying a new car anyway; now I’d just get to set fire to the current one and have an excuse.
The wolf stared straight ahead at the approaching large estate that looked far too regal for the dogs who owned it. His entire form was tight, not unlike Thorne’s, pulsating with fury and intensity. Something twinkled in those eyes that, for a moment, made me kind of get why Sophie hadn’t killed him.
Even I had to begrudgingly admit that he was kind of hot, if you liked that wild, scruffy, almost homeless and totally insane type of thing.
Oh, and the fact that he changed into a fucking beast. No thank you.
He was doing really well at ignoring me. That was annoying it itself. I couldn’t be ignored. I was far too awesome. Or annoying, depending on who you talked to.
People tried to kill me, kiss me, torture me, fuck me, kidnap me, and
crown me. But no one had yet to ignore me.
Until the wolf.
I would’ve hated him for that alone, but he was a wolf who was involved with my best friend—who was way too good for him—so I hated him doubly.
“He’s here because we wouldn’t have been allowed on this soil without him,” Sophie snapped, her voice gaining an edge that she’d never really had with me ever before. “He’s taking a great risk coming here, vouching for us. If anything goes wrong, it’s on his head.”
Something shook in her eyes, something imperceptible, knowledge that she hadn’t shared with me—which pissed me off in itself. But it was also knowledge that scared her. Not because she was in danger, because she was never scared for herself. I got the sense that she was scared for the wolf.
Which meant she was fucked. The second you started caring about whether the man giving you orgasms lived or died, there was no going back. I worried about Thorne every second of the day—though I’d never admit it—and fuck, was it irritating.
I grinned, masking my fear for my best friend, and more importantly myself at becoming somewhat compassionate. “And I thought this was going to be a giant bore and I’d have to do something wrong just to make sure it was an exciting Tuesday,” I said sweetly. “Now I get the added benefit of the wolf’s execution.” I clapped with mock glee.
If the wolf died, then Sophie would likely be upset—maybe even heartbroken—and as much as I liked teasing the witch, I didn’t want her upset. Ever. I’d have to go on a rampage to kill everyone responsible for it. And right then, there wasn’t much room on my calendar for a rampage.
Sophie obviously didn’t note the emptiness of my tone.
Magic filtered within the stagnant air of the SUV. It wrapped around me, not hurting me but warning me. I was shocked silent. Sophie had never used her magic on me in defense, or offense.
Never.
Not even when I told her purple didn’t suit her.
“You won’t do any such thing, Isla,” she said, her voice thick and foreign.
Thorne’s energy turned wired as the truck screeched to a stop outside the large main building. Various trucks that had served as our escorts stopped too.
But the werewolves surrounding us weren’t the current danger.
Thorne’s hand went to the back of my neck, like he could shove me out of the path of the magic should Sophie decide to strike.
But it didn’t work like a pesky bullet. You couldn’t merely dodge it.
Not that kind of magic.
There was nothing either of us could do should she decide to unleash the thing hanging in the air.
Death.
“Dude, chill,” I said, forcing my voice to be light, ignoring the tightness of Thorne’s hand at my neck. “You’ve really lost your sense of humor since this ancient and potentially world-ending magic took up residence in your cells.”
Her eyes were slightly glazed over, vacant in a really creepy way. Nothing in her moved; not even her heart beat. It was like she had temporarily died, or at least gotten really bad alcohol poisoning.
The wolf had been on alert since the moment the magic had started to seep out of her pores. Well, he’d been alert much before that, as he always was, but now he jerked into action. His hand went to the side of her neck, gripping tightly and yanking her gaze to him. And it was a yank. It looked like he was using all his strength to even slightly turn her head. Beads of perspiration erupted on his forehead.
“La mia luna,” he demanded, voice thick and deep as he called to Sophie in Italian, his rasp brutal around the soft words. It wasn’t something I was used to because the beast rarely ever talked, but it was rough against the air.
A meld of man and monster.
The roughness of it seemed to scratch at whatever was holding onto Sophie. She stared at him vacantly for a beat, and then she blinked. Once. Twice.
Something hung in the air as they stared at each other, something that had all of us holding our proverbial breath as we waited to see whether witch or wolf would prevail.
Never in my undeath had I thought I’d be cheering for the wolf. But that one time, I was. Because I suspected that my life might depend on the hairy bastard.
Sophie blinked again, then shook herself out of his grip.
She glanced around at all of us, glaring as if we had been watching her get changed without permission. “Okay, so now that we’ve got that sorted, let’s go meet with the wolves and stop sitting in here staring at me like idiots,” she snapped, eyeing everyone who was gaping at her. “What? Haven’t you seen a witch with PMS before?”
She leaned over Scott to open the door and he damn near toppled out, catching himself from eating dirt at the feet of one of the wolves standing outside our vehicle.
The jolt of his hopeless, clumsy landing shook me out of my stupor and forced me to ignore what had just gone down. I gave Sophie a pointed ‘this ain’t over’ look before I glanced down at Scott.
“Well he just pissed all over whatever kind of entrance we made starting with a battle,” I moaned, pushing out of the car and deciding to have a little chat with Sophie later. With a lot fewer werewolves who wanted to kill us. And a lot more booze.
Fury and hatred for us saturated the air as soon as I set my heeled feet on the dirt. I sucked it in. “Ah, I love the fresh country breeze.” I glanced around. “Especially when it’s tinged with murder.”
Silence.
Thorne’s heat hit my back. Sophie came to stand beside me, Scott behind her, and Duncan barreled out of the vehicle he’d been sharing with our escorts since there wasn’t enough room for everyone in ours.
He was the one I reasoned had the most chance of surviving the ride with murderous werewolves. Obviously I would’ve, but Thorne wouldn’t have allowed that, and neither would Sophie’s wolf, so that left it between Scott and Duncan. We all knew Scott would’ve been puppy chow in the first five minutes. Though he had handled himself rather well so far, it was better not to push our luck.
Duncan sauntered over to us, glancing around at the almost snarling men and women forming a rough semicircle around our motley crew.
“Well, I can’t say they’re the most talkative bunch,” he announced cheerfully, grinning, “but we’ll see who can make the dogs bark before we leave.” He gave the closest female wolf a wink.
Maybe I was looking too much into it, but that wink didn’t seem as genuine as it had before the human slayer.
Her response was a grimace followed by a growl and showing of sharp, pointed teeth.
He grinned wider.
That did not help the overall atmosphere, but it did really improve my mood.
“So, I don’t know who out of you glaring wolves trying real hard to be badasses is in charge, and I’m kind of on a time crunch. I’ve got a facial at four,” I said after a few more seconds of silence.
No one responded, which was just plain rude. Did they not know how important it was to take care of your skin?
There was movement as the doors in front of us opened and a familiar man strutted down the entrance steps.
He was wearing ripped jeans, black Doc Martins, a hoodie, and a denim jacket over top. His hair was long yet groomed, beard wild yet trimmed. The whiteness of his hair was stark against his many dark-headed kin.
Werewolves were traditionally brown- or black-haired. It was incredibly rare to see one with fair hair. There was some legend attached to it, but I didn’t like blond guys, especially blond guys who turned into animals, so I never bothered to care about such things.
“Liake,” I greeted with a grin, shaking my head. “You’re moving up in the world if you’re the leader of the pack these days.”
He stopped in front of us, the corner of his mouth moving slightly upward. “I’m not the only one moving. Peace talks on behalf of a king, Isla?” he questioned, voice deep and masculine, directly in conflict with his douchebag dress sense. “Oh how things have changed. You were more likely to behead a monarch than work und
er one the last time we saw each other,” he continued, gazing at me with a teasing glint in his eye.
“I’m never under anyone,” I replied with a purr to my voice. “Except in the bedroom, but that’s for my pleasure only.” I gave him a look. “And I’ve changed. Evolved. It’s a thing.” I shrugged.
“I can see that,” he said, eyes moving up my body and then pointedly to Thorne.
Obviously Thorne responded to the familiarity in his gaze and tone, because he was a caveman who was probably at home with all these alpha wolves. Liake and I had history—not the biblical kind, I’d never sunk that low—but he’d been involved in a few fights I’d battled in, and started. On the other side, obviously, but he was a worthy adversary, and we enjoyed somewhat of a cordial feud. Even having beers together once in a century, trading insults.
“It’s so good to see you’re matching your asshole personality with a style that suits you. Hipsters usually live in Williamsburg, though,” I shot at him, ignoring the fury that was rippling from Thorne in waves.
He shook his head, not smiling but not glaring either. Well, not until he caught sight of the wolf standing close to Sophie. It was rather obvious there were ‘sides’ and that wolf was not on the same one as his pack.
Well, I assumed it was his pack. I hadn’t taken the time to learn about him because I had just expected—and hoped—he’d be killed somehow before it got to this point.
But the mutt kept surviving all the death matches we had gotten into.
The good thing about that was we had a lot of death matches coming up, and the way Liake was looking at him gave me hope. Then again, I remembered Sophie’s reaction in the car.
It would not be ideal to have the witch kill the biggest pack of wolves in the country during a supposed peace talk.
It would be ideal for me, of course, but the king and everyone trying to fight the rebellion wouldn’t likely agree.
“Conall, you’re standing with a witch, and a vampire,” he spat with venom I hadn’t even known he was capable of. “Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”