With a chuff of breath, he fell to his back and rolled as the big wolf leaped on him and forced him over. He thought he would feel its teeth digging into his throat, but the wolf stood over him, its sides heaving for breath. This wolf had protected him—had come to his aid along with the smaller brown wolf when the others attacked. Could it be the silver wolf meant him no harm? The huge wolf bent over his snout and gently placed its teeth around it, staring down into his eyes. He never bit down, just held him in place until his heart stopped its wild thumping. Then with a final little shake, the wolf released him and transformed back into a man.
The wolf inside the human relaxed for the first time that evening, thinking he should allow the human to call him back inside. The big silver wolf could have killed him so easily. Why hadn’t he? He gave the man one last look of confusion and sank down deeper inside the human than he’d ever gone before.
* * * *
As Marco watched, Nicky’s body returned to its human form. Nicky blinked his beautiful eyes up at Marco, disoriented, his brain perhaps still not fully human. When he finally recognized who it was that hovered over him, he held up both arms to him and spoke in a soft voice, still hardly more than a whisper.
“Marco.”
Whatever tattered fragments of control he’d managed to gather together since he’d shifted back to his human form blew up in Marco’s face. He fell down beside his mate, his only thought to care for him, to make love to him, to hold him close and never let him go. He spit on his hand and eased first one and then two fingers inside him carefully, stretching him as Nicky moaned and writhed beneath his hand. Suddenly Marco’s incisors were back, brushing his sensitive lips as he ached to bury them in his mate’s neck.
He stretched him as carefully as he could, fighting for control. When he was satisfied that he wouldn’t hurt Nicky more than he had to, he eased his big cock inside his mate’s tight, soft hole, gripping his hips and pulling him back toward him. Nicky cried out and he waited for Nicky to adjust, feeling his heart beat steadily along with Marco’s own. They were one body now, one soul. It was when he was joined with Nicky like this that he wondered how he survived the other times without him. It seemed like an amputation to be apart, like losing a part of himself that was the best part, the essential part. Easing in farther, he pulled Nicky’s hips onto his lap and angled upward to brush against the spot inside him that would make this easier for him. Nicky groaned with pleasure mixed with pain and pushed his hips down toward him.
“Harder,” he cried, panting for breath. “Take me harder. I need you.”
Marco sank his cock deeply into Nicky then, and at the same time he buried his fangs in the soft flesh at the side of his neck. After only a few hard thrusts Marco felt his semen flooding into Nicky, and the fierce possessiveness swept over him again. This man was his. No one would ever take him away or be allowed to come between them.
Easing out of him and panting for breath, Marco pushed Nicky’s limp body gently off his lap and back onto his side on the ground, then spooned Nicky gently as he curled up beside him. He looked down at Nicky and tucked a curly lock of hair behind his ear. His breathing was steady, though a little fast. Pulling him closer, he wrapped an arm around his waist and finally allowed exhaustion to overtake him. Just before he’d claimed him, Nicky had cried out to him, “I need you.” Marco closed his eyes and let those words sink deep inside him, bringing warmth and comfort.
* * * *
As soon as Jax saw Nicky’s wolf running down the trail toward Mountainwood with Marco right behind him, he sagged in relief. This might not be quite the disaster he feared after all. He heard a noise behind him and whirled to see Cade, in his human form crouching on the ground, looking a bit disoriented. The moon was still high overhead, exerting its strong pull.
Jax wasn’t as affected by the full moon as Cade was, maybe because his transformation wasn’t anything he’d been born with. At any rate, he was the first to recover and knelt down beside his mate. “Are you all right?” he asked, trailing the back of his fingers along Cade’s cheek.
Cade nodded and pulled Jax down beside him. “Where’s Nicky?”
“He ran toward home. Marco went with him.”
“Zack? Casey?”
“No idea. They ran off that way,” Jax said, pointing into the woods.
Cade nodded again and Jax sat quietly beside him, giving him time to get his bearings. After a few more minutes, Cade glanced over at Jax. “You’re angry.”
“A little, yeah. Nicky was right—that was like some kind of stupid gang fight. It wasn’t what I signed on for.”
“It got out of hand, but it had the effect I was looking for.”
Jax laughed bitterly. “What effect would that be? To drive a wedge between Marco and the rest of you? He won’t forgive what happened, you know.”
Cade turned his head to gaze into Jax’s eyes. “What exactly do you think happened?”
“You and the others jumped on Nicky. Casey and Zack were about to attack him, damn it.”
“No,” Cade replied, shaking his head. “Casey and Zack pushed Marco into taking a stand alongside his mate. Now maybe the wolf inside Nicky won’t look on him as an enemy anymore. Hopefully, he’ll begin to rely on him as an ally, and then they can work toward becoming a true alpha pair.”
Jax angled a skeptical look at Cade. “Oh really? And you had this figured out all along?”
Cade smiled and shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Liar,” Jax said, leaning over to brush his lips against Cade’s.
Cade laughed and the sound was like a balm on Jax’s frayed nerves. “Well, maybe it did kind of occur to me right in the middle of things when Casey started to get belligerent. It all worked out in the long run, though, right?”
“Lucky you.”
“It’s skill, baby, not just luck.” Cade pulled Jax closer to get a proper kiss, his hand gentle on Jax’s cheek, his fingers trailing down Jax’s neck as he pulled away.
A noise coming toward them from the woods made Cade get to his feet and pull Jax along with him. They were standing in the moonlight facing the trees when Zack and Casey, back to their human forms, came out of the woods.
Both men were winded, as if they’d been running under the moon, but Zack actually looked unwell. He was pale and his hands shook as they came closer.
“What is it, Zack?” Cade asked. “Did something happen in the woods? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I think I have,” he said, shaking his head. “Nicky’s wolf? I’m almost positive it was Tim.”
“Tim?” Jax said blankly. “What do you mean? Who the hell is that?”
Zack glanced over at him miserably. “Tim was my cousin. I killed him myself over two years ago. He’s buried behind my lodge.”
* * * *
Marco paced up and down the length of his office, upset and angry. He still hadn’t forgiven the other alphas for what they’d put Nicky through, and he wasn’t sure he could even trust them anymore. He sure as hell didn’t want them in his office so early in the morning, before he’d even had breakfast.
They sat at the long table he set up as a conference table and all of them looked uneasy. They had reason to. All of them, with the exception of Jax, had aligned themselves against Nicky. That meant they had aligned themselves against Marco too.
Marco glanced over at Nicky, who sat beside his desk in an armchair, looking much calmer than Marco felt. This latest story Zack had come up with was insane, and Marco wasn’t sure he even wanted to listen to any more of it.
He stopped his pacing and fixed an angry gaze on Zack. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. I think this is just another attempt to discredit Nicky.”
“I’m telling you, that wolf is—was Tim’s. The minute I saw him last night, I knew him. He was my cousin. We grew up together, damn it.”
“You said he was dead.”
“He is. And buried on my own property. I told you. I killed him myself.”
<
br /> “Explain to us all again what happened, Zack,” Cade said quietly. “Maybe it will help us to understand better.”
Zack sighed and ran a hand over his face. “Tim and I were first cousins, on my mother’s side, so you probably wouldn’t remember him. We were raised together, both alpha males. We always knew, I guess, that one day we’d face each other in the ancestral ring. A pack can have only one leader, after all. Whichever one of us didn’t win would have to go out and start a new pack.”
“Like you did back in Louisiana, Cade,” Jax spoke up for the first time. He’d been standing quietly beside Nicky, leaning up against the wall, showing solidarity with his nearness.
“Yes,” Cade said, “but you mustn’t think it’s easy. All wolves love their pack land, and all have a close emotional attachment to it, so starting up a new pack is not only difficult, but almost unthinkable. And that’s pretty much what Tim and I did when we were younger—we just didn’t think about it. Neither one of us wanted to think about leaving our home. It’s not that either of us would have made the other one leave, but it’s just too hard to accept the domination of another alpha. That’s why there are so many young rogues roaming the woods at any given time. Sometimes they’re literally left homeless until they can either find a new pack or swallow their pride and go back home.”
“And that’s what Tim did?” Jax prompted.
“Finally, yes. Being alone is an almost foreign concept to wolves, you know, so most of the so-called rogues eventually go home. They need the pack. Tim was gone for over a year. We’d tried to find him, but it was as if he’d disappeared off the face of the earth. Just when we had almost given up hope, he reappeared. He said he’d been living as a wanderer, doing odd jobs and just drifting. Finally, he said, he couldn’t take being away from his family and his home any longer, and he asked to be allowed to come home. I welcomed him back with open arms. I truly did. He was my best friend as a boy, and I made him my lead gamma, giving him a place on the council. I tried to help him fit back in, but all of us could see how different he was. Not just quiet and moody, because he was that, for sure, but…off. Growing up, Tim was my best friend. My closest companion. But he was changed. He couldn’t seem to assimilate back into pack life again. He’d go off by himself for days at a time. We were all worried about him, but I thought if I gave him enough time, he’d be okay.”
“But?” Marco asked abruptly.
“But he wasn’t. When I brought Gabe home, he began acting even more hostile and strange. The whole thing culminated when he tried to poison me and then brought trumped up charges against Gabe, accusing him of having done it. When I refused to believe him, he lost it, grabbed Gabe and held him at knifepoint. He admitted to being the one who killed Gabe’s mother and who bit Gabe and turned him feral. He was interrupted before he could rape Gabe, but he was obsessed by him, claimed he was his mate.”
“Oh my God,” Jax said softly and glanced down at Nicky. He didn’t appear to be surprised at the story of how Gabe was turned, and Jax wondered if it was because Gabe had already told him or if there was another reason altogether.
Marco was looking from Nicky back to Zack. Finally, he perched one hip on his desk. “So if you killed this Tim and buried him, then how the hell do you account for his wolf being inside Nicky? Are you saying you believe in ghosts now?”
“I don’t know what to think, but I know Tim when I see him. And that was Tim’s wolf. As for his wolf being inside Nicky, I haven’t a clue how that happened.”
“It would kind of make sense in light of Nicky’s obsession with Gabe,” Jax said.
Marco bristled. “I wouldn’t say he was obsessed.”
Nicky leaned forward to put a hand on Marco’s arm. “I am obsessed with him, Marco.” He squeezed Marco’s arm when he glared at Nicky for a moment and then tried to turn his face away. “No, babe, don’t do that. I love you more than anything. You know that, but I can’t get Gabe out of my mind. It’s like a sickness. This theory would account for that—and the feeling that I’ve got two separate people inside me all the time.”
Marco’s voice was gentle as he replied. “You and Gabe are good friends, that’s all. You’ve just been a little confused.”
Nicky shook his head. “There’s more to it than that, Marco. Gabe and I have been good friends, but this is different. I’ve been having trouble controlling what I want to do to him. And I never felt any kind of attraction to him before.”
“But how does any of this explain how a dead man’s wolf wound up inside of you? What the hell did Tate inject you with?”
“Heartsblood,” Cade said softly and everyone turned to stare at him. “Remember that old book my father sent to us, Marco? Detailing the legend of the bloodlust?”
Marco made a scoffing noise in his throat. “It was only an old legend.”
“But what if it wasn’t?” Cade continued. “What if there was some truth to the legend?”
“What are you talking about?” Jax interrupted.
“When all this happened to Nicky, and Dr. Cornsilk explained that he had the Bloodlust from whatever Tate injected him with, we contacted my dad in Louisiana. He had some of the books and papers the D’Alisandes brought over with them when they emigrated from France. According to one of those books, there was once a necromancer who lived in France, near the Pyrenees.”
“Oh my God,” Marco said impatiently, getting up to turn his back on them and stare out the window behind his desk. “Really? Once upon a time?”
“No, listen to me. According to what the book said, this necromancer…”
“What the hell is a necromancer?” Casey asked.
“Like a magician, only they sometimes summon the dead to use them in their spells,” Cade said. “Anyway, this guy made an elixir from the heart’s blood of a wolf. He mixed in other things—”
“That the book conveniently didn’t mention,” Marco said, breaking in, his hands gripping the windowsill.
Cade shot Marco an irritated glance but continued as if he hadn’t interrupted. “And the necromancer called it the Bloodlust. He was working with a group of people the book calls the Hunters.”
Nicky leaned forward in his chair. “The Hunters!”
“Right. No idea if it’s the same group, but the name is very coincidental, to say the least. He told them the compound would make the wolves more vulnerable to attack, but he lied to them. He had a whole other purpose for it. He killed the alpha wolf that had been attacking the village and drained its heart of blood. Then he made his elixir and drank it himself. He turned into one of the wolves, and since he had taken on the characteristics of the alpha male whose blood he drank, he was able to find and mate the Alpha female. The book said that she became his virtual love slave.”
“So you’re saying what? That Tate somehow made this magical elixir from the heart’s blood of Zack’s cousin?” Marco shook his head. “That’s crazy.”
“What about this isn’t?” Nicky said softly. “We all accept that you and the other Werekin aren’t human. That you can turn yourselves into werewolves and that your bite can infect human beings and turn us feral. Then these humans have to drink your blood to stay alive. Is this really such a stretch?”
“But Tim is dead,” Zack said. “And we buried him right away. I watched the burial myself. How could Tate have gotten any of his heartsblood?”
“You said Tim disappeared for a while when you both younger. When exactly was this?” Nicky asked.
“When I took over the leadership of the pack. About six years ago. He disappeared for over a year.”
“About the time the Hunters were rounding up rogue wolves to use in their experiments, isn’t that right, Marco?”
He nodded. “Yes, that’s right. We found documentation of their experiments on rogues when we overran their compound and killed Elias Winters.”
“Oh my God,” Nicky said, getting to his feet. “Jeremy Tate is a heart surgeon. If he was working with them some even back then…” His
face was so drained of color that Marco came immediately to his side.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“When Tucker and Gavin got married in Tennessee and Tate took me and Gavin prisoner. You remember?”
“Of course I remember, damn it. I thought I’d go out of my mind before we found the two of you.”
“Tate talked a lot to Tucker. Bragging, mostly. He thought I was too drugged out of my mind to know what he was talking about, but I wasn’t. He didn’t realize how high my tolerance for drugs was after—well, after I took off that time.”
“I remember. Go on.”
“He told Tucker that the Hunter scientists got it all wrong by experimenting on the wolves, because wolves are too difficult to manage, too strong, too arrogant.”
Cade nodded and said, “That proves they’d been experimenting on the wolves they captured.”
“What if Tate had access to the old books too? Only from the other side of the coin—from the Hunters themselves. They must have documented all of it as well. And what if he had some of the blood the scientists had taken from an alpha? Some of its heartsblood? What if he wondered what would happen if he made the necromancer’s elixir and injected some of it into a pet?” He looked up at Marco with a horrified expression on his face. “Into me?”
Zack spoke up quietly. “Some of the heartsblood they took from Tim.”
“Well, it makes sense, right? What was it you said, Cade? That the necromancer took on the characteristics of the wolf he killed? What if it wasn’t just the characteristics or the essence, but the wolf itself?”
“What do you mean, Nicky?” Jax said, looking puzzled.
“Let’s assume Tate made his elixir with a sample of the heartsblood he found that belonged to Tim. We know that Tate got away with some of their samples and equipment when the compound was destroyed. What if he made his elixir and shot it into me to give me the bloodlust? And Tim’s wolf started to grow inside me. But that wolf was defective—crazy from whatever else they might have done to him while they had him in their cages. We know they did something to him to make him so violent and murderous. Look what he did to Gabe and his mother. And that’s why my wolf is so obsessed with Gabe and hates all of you so much. You said he tried to kill you, Zack. And there’s a strong family resemblance among the three of you, Marco, Zack and Cade. Maybe it’s not Marco my wolf hates so much, but Zack. He killed Tim, after all.”