3: Fera - Pack City (11 page)

Very rough, he repeated, “Born a wolf, and not very proud of it.”

That made me wince. It wasn’t true. I’d been very proud of the fact until I met him. He had me all confused.

His next oath, I didn’t quite understand. “Fuck. What have I done?”

I don’t think it was a conscious thought, on his part or mine, to be in each other’s arms. But the next thing I knew, he had his arms around me, his chin on the top of my head, and asked, “What in God’s name have we done?”

We both knew. We’d bred. We’d joined together two races. We’d done something unnatural. Something we couldn’t have helped. Something we had no way of taking back.

But Gaia help me, I didn’t want to take it back.

Many minutes passed. Gaia knows how many.

And finally, he asked, “Do you have any idea when you will shift back?”

Chapter Ten

When would I shift back?

The one question I had no answer to.

“I don’t know. This is my first time.”

He stiffened. It was an infinitesimal thing, at first, and his grip tightened to the point of pain right after that. I think he was willing me not to shift back. He said, “My first shift back was absolute hell.”

And that, of course, made me want to cry, made me afraid of what would happen. I buried my face against him, with little hope of reining in my emotions. It had been a very stress-filled night. I needed to work through them. I cried my eyes out.

Maybe it made him feel responsible. I don’t know. But, before long, he was whispering things, like, “It’s okay.”

Over and over again, he told me, “Don’t cry. It’ll be okay, Fera. We’ll work something out.”

We’ll work something out. Should have comforted me. But it actually reminded me of something I’d overheard at Pack City before a hunt--for an unnatural. The plan was improvised with that one provision. We’ll work something out. That something had been a complete and utter destruction of the offending party, the troublemaker, the nuisance. I had to wonder, did Jack suddenly think I was a problem that needed to be worked out?

Now, I have to say, paranoia is a bitch’s prerogative. Ya always gotta keep one eye on your back, else you won’t live long.

Sniffing, I pulled out of Jack’s arms, and asked, “How do you--usually--work things out. I mean, handle problems?”

He looked confused. “What do you mean?”

“In a pack, when we have a problem...well, we don’t usually have a problem for long.”

It took him only a second. I’m telling you, he’s clever. “You’re not a problem. Nah. Don’t think that.” He pulled me back into his arms. But this time, it felt different. Like, maybe, he was thinking of disposing, if you know what I mean. Maybe I was just afraid. I can’t blame him if it crossed his mind. Certainly, I thought about killing him. I even fleshed out a scenario where I went back to Pack City, cried kidnapping, rape and then murder. No one would blame me then. It would be much easier than life with him would ever be.

Yeah, I know. Horrible, horrible bitch. The world revolves around me. Making things good for me.

Well, you know what? It really is a dog eat dog world out there. Anyone who tells you any different is talking out their ass. You have to consider all the possibilities, keep your eyes open for betrayals, back biting, and, Gaia help us, unnatural things becoming acceptable. Or worse, us becoming unnatural.

I knew I was already screwed. If Hood ever caught up with me, and figured out that I didn’t slit my own throat before being had by a ‘mongrel’--Hood’s words, not mine--he’d likely kill me himself. I knew he had somebody picked out for me. Oh, he hadn’t said as much, but his protectiveness, his growls at the other males when he found them talking to me, it didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure it out.

My brother’s a doctor. Did I mention that? Not a brain surgeon, but we have some garou that do that. Lots of garou doctors. In fact, that is probably the most common occupation amongst werewolves who live in human form most of the time.

Hood wasn’t a regular doctor. He worked for a special company. Lobos International. Parent company to Wolf Enterprises. Yeah, we’ve got our fingers in some big pots. There’s a larger picture opening up for garou.

We coined the phrase New World Order before anyone else did. Distributor for those T-shirts that say NWO? That’s a garou.

Anyhow, I struggled. When to mention my brother to Jack? Then didn’t seem like the right time. I didn’t think Jack could handle the whole NWO thing. It wasn’t like that mattered much to him. He was very much living for the here and now. At least, that’s what I assumed. I mean, he’s an unnatural--somebody who bucked death, survived and knows that every day he could be hunted down.

He didn’t seem to be too worried about that, despite the fact that we had been hunted most of the night. So, if that wasn’t a problem for him, and I wasn’t the problem, and Jack wasn’t a problem, then we definitely had to face the reality that Hood was. He had nothing better to do than track me down.

And kill Jack. And maybe me, too.

Or so I thought. Remember? The world revolves around me.

If Hood had nothing better than to take hiatus from work-- which he did often, by the way--I don’t really know what kind of doctor he is, but he flies all over the world--on call. It’s very cool-- then Hood probably didn’t have anything better to do than--you can see how my mind tried to connect dots, some that weren’t even there.

I was afraid of my big brother. More afraid of him than any other thing in the world, except Jack leaving me: weighing me, finding me wanting, walking away from me.

Yes, I have abandonment issues. You don’t see me talking about my parents, do you? All I ever had was my brother and the Pack. Now, by choosing to be with Jack, I had given up all that, and it felt like Jack was having second thoughts. My paranoia, I know, but I was shaking through and through, scared of the conversation we were having, and horrified by my internal thoughts. Killing Jack? Just to keep Hood and the Pack happy? Don’t get me wrong, I’m a hunter. Do real well at it, but the sure knowledge that putting the unnatural down, like a bad dog, say, with a terrible disease--no one could fault me for that.

Again, I put a few inches of distance between us, backed up a step. He kept his hands on me. I looked down at the water. We were up to our chests. My breasts were just barely covered, but you could see them, distorted. I touched the nipples again, wondering where my others had gone. I felt down the length of my body. Sure enough, there were slight nubs--invisible little scars, like they’d been sucked into my body. It was an abrupt change of thinking, but I needed to stop the second-guessing, had to redirect myself.

I said, “I wish I knew how long this was going to last.” My shift. Our little romance.

And if I’d conceived during our lovemaking. And if that had been in crinos. Why did that question keep coming back?

The wolf in me knew that a crinos delivery would be horrible, worse than a human one. The best way to go was in lupus, but that couldn’t happen if he never shifted that far. And I hadn’t seen it, couldn’t remember it, felt a definite fogginess over some things.

I kept thinking...part of the night is missing. Had I endured pain in the final shift, and put that little episode out of mind?

I asked, “Did you--see me shift to this form?”

Jack smiled, “Yeah.” He tucked some hair behind my ear. The water from his hand dribbled down my cheek. “It was amazing.”

“I don’t remember it.”

He kissed me, reiterating, “It was amazing.”

“I wish I could remember.”

His hands disappeared under the water, took hold of my waist, dragged me to him. His cock was hard again, only this time, its proportions weren’t humongous. He told me, “I don’t normally like to do it standing up.”

“Really?” I would have thought humans did it standing up all the time.

Jack’s lips pressed against the skin just under my earlobe. He whispered, “Really.”

I felt myself melting at each successive little peck he placed in a trail that ran down my neck, back up, along the edge of my jaw, back to my ear, and downward. Down to the upper curve of my breast. By the time he got there, I had my hands on the back of his head, and urged him toward the shore. He wouldn’t budge, though. Not more than a few inches. Just enough to get my breasts out of the water, so that he could bend a little and suckle them. All the while, he looked up at me.

You really can’t help who you are. My eyes flashed. The feral beast in me came to the fore. I didn’t shift, exactly, but I did change. I felt a conscious urge to keep the shift from happening. Beat it down, so to speak.

Oh, my Gaia. I had never had a creature, nor any man or wolf of any kind suckling from my breasts. I could have gone on with that all day long, I think.

Jack certainly spent a fair amount of time doing it. I wonder how he knew what that would do to me?

Here’s something that bothers me a bit about Jack. It’s like he knows how to maneuver me. I didn’t even remember lifting my legs, but the next thing I remember is my legs wrapped around his waist, and him fucking me in the water, sucking my nipples the whole time, gripping my breasts, turning them upward.

Of course, I couldn’t reach orgasm like that. I don’t know why. But, when I realized how close he was, I started insisting, “Stop. Stop.” I even grabbed him by the hair and lifted his face, so I could kiss him--stick my tongue down his throat.

He stumbled backward, and somehow we landed on the shore with him flat on his back. That didn’t last long, though. He rolled me.

Talk about intensive penetration. The thrusts of his tongue mirrored what he was doing with his cock. His fingers cradled my face, and I felt him grunting into me. I think he was putting the force to me, because I’d liked it before.

Funny, but in human form, roughness seems...overdone. Too much.

I think he realized it, too, because he gentled his thrusts and his kisses, withdrew his tongue, and returned again to the little pecks, the trailing puckers that made my skin shiver. He’d withdrawn from me, and teased us both with the head of his cock knocking gently at the door of my womanhood.

My swelling lips.

I gloried in the lovemaking between that man and me, as a woman. I didn’t care that we were in the mud by a dirty stream. At least, it was dirty after we kicked up the bottom.

What I cared about was the tenderness he showed me. The sensitivity to me.

And, oh my Gaia, when his lips worked down past my breasts and nipples again to my navel, I writhed beneath him. First, I felt the abandonment of his cock from my cunt. And that, I had a real problem with. Second, the urge to feel his kissing lips lower--that simply drove me. I think I pushed his head down further.

But he obliged me. Buried his nose. Reached in with his tongue.

Had me tip my pelvis so he could get in better. Deeper.