A Wolf's Pride (25 page)

Chloe nodded,
slightly dazed and stepped back from Ryan. Her eyes widened as a
man came careening towards her but her feet seemed rooted to the
floor. Their gazes met before the man’s eyes wandered towards Ryan.
He spun abruptly, just missing her before speeding off once
again.

“
What on earth
is going on here?” Chloe demanded. “Since this morning, everyone
has been rushing about like mad, not just here but at your home as
well.”

“
They’re
preparing for the full moon feast,” he explained
casually.

“
Full moon
feast?”

“
We’re not
human Chloe,” he reminded her gently. A look of horror came over
her face and Ryan rushed to reassure her. “Nothing bad is going to
happen to you. We don’t turn into those great big slobbering beasts
of legend I swear. You’ve seen me change; you know what I look
like. I wasn’t that terrifying was I?”

Remembering
the sole occasion she had seen Ryan in his wolf form, she had to
agree with him. “You were just as stupid as you are now. Standing
in the middle of the road?” she scoffed. “I should have just run
you over, it would have saved me a lot of trouble.”

“
Ah Chloe, you
know you couldn’t have run me over, you care for me far too much to
do that,” he joked.

“
I didn’t even
know it was you at that point and besides, who says I care for you?
I’m not even sure I can stand you, let alone care about
you.”

His eyes
narrowed. “Has any one ever told you that you lie?” he paused, “a
lot.”

“
No,” she
answered quickly. “Why would they? I’m an honest
person.”

“
Chloe, you’ve
been lying to me constantly since we first met but you keep
forgetting that I can smell you, I know if you’re being honest.
Maybe that’s why the people who think you’re honest don’t know the
truth. They don’t know you as well as I do, they can’t smell the
changes in your scent, the changes that tell me the whole
story.”

“
Ryan, we
haven’t even known each other a week, how could I possibly care for
you, especially given our circumstances.”

“
I’ve noticed
that you do that a lot too,” he commented cryptically.

“
Do
what?”

“
You lie to
yourself as well. The circumstances surrounding our meeting aren’t
important. Don’t try to convince me otherwise,” he tapped his nose
lightly. “I know better.”

The look in
his eyes was predatory and Chloe’s heart stuttered in response.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re arrogant and
insufferable?”

His smile was
unrepentant. “If I don’t hear it at least once a day I feel as
though my formative years were wasted.”

“
You genuinely
have no sense of shame do you?”

“
I don’t see
any reason to.”

“
I didn’t
understand why your own mother was suggesting that I hit you upside
the head before, but I understand now. You’re impossible to deal
with reasonably.”

“
And you’re in
denial love. You may fool everyone else but you can’t fool me. I’m
your mate after all.”

Their eyes
locked and she had to force herself to look away, nothing good
seemed to come out of staring into those honeyed depths. Making a
tactical retreat, she took a step away from him, turned on her heel
and walked very quickly in the direction that she thought the
bedroom was. Ryan’s hand whipped out at an astonishing speed,
pulling her back towards him and turning her in the correct
direction. Her frustrated growl only served to widen the smile on
his face.

“
Instead of
being such an insufferable moron, why don’t you do what you told me
a mate should do? Help me. I still don’t know what’s going on. I
asked you a question and instead of answering me properly you’re
just aggravating me. Either help me or just leave me alone and let
me figure it out.”

His smile
momentarily died in the face of her genuine distress. “I didn’t
mean to upset you.”

“
Well then stop
being so insufferable and help me. The full moon feast?” she
prompted, continuing to stroll down the hall.

“
As you might
have noticed, we wolves are very sensual creatures,” he began
calmly.

The rich
timbre of his serious voice crept up Chloe’s spine and she
stiffened against it, unwilling to show Ryan how much he affected
her when she had finally extracted a degree of compliance from him.
“I thought that was just you and your wandering hands,” she
retorted, extremely proud of herself when her voice came out steady
and even.

“
No,” he
laughed, “it’s a trait of my species and one that I generally enjoy
very much.”

“
Don’t deviate
Ryan.”

“
Well under the
full moon, we become driven by our inner wolves and the need to
sate your senses takes priority. The full moon feast developed as a
result. If we’re busy partying and sating our senses among others
of our kind then we don’t attract unwanted attention.”

“
Oh, is it a
formal thing?”

“
Not really.
You wear what you want to wear, whatever makes you feel
comfortable. Formal isn’t advisable. You never know what will
happen to your clothes when under the sway of the moon.”

“
Still,” she
sighed. “I’m glad that my things are here and that I can choose
what to wear.”

“
Chloe,” he
rumbled. “We’re not going.”

Her face
flushed red in embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” she stuttered. “I
shouldn’t have assumed that we’d be….Well of course we’re not
going! After everything that I heard the other day it only makes
sense that you wouldn’t want me around other people, especially at
a celebration. If I were there I would just make everyone
uncomfortable.”

“
Chloe, love,
you make it sound as though I’m ashamed of you. I’m
not.”

“
Then
why?”

“
You and I have
far more important things to be doing during the full
moon.”

“
Like what?”
she asked innocently.

His eyes
flashed amber. “The claiming, love.”

Her brows
furrowed in confusion. “I don’t understand. What’s this claiming
thing?”

He stopped
and she realised that they were in front of the door to their
rooms. “We’ll talk about this after you’ve finished packing and
before you ask, no, we can’t talk about this while we unpack. I
want your full attention when we talk about this.” He opened the
door and waited for her to respond.

Her eyes had
widened as soon as she had seen the sheer number of boxes that
covered the floor of the entry room and when she craned her neck,
she realised that there were more in the bedroom as well.
There’s too much stuff here. Where did they get
all of this from?
“Ok Ryan, we’ll talk
later,” she mumbled absentmindedly, walking into the
room.

Chloe’s hands
reached for the box nearest to her, opening it, scanning its
contents before moving on and repeating the procedure. By her
fourth box it became abundantly clear why there were so many boxes.
Not only had the contents of her apartment been emptied, it
appeared as if the wolves had cleared out her family home of all
her possessions as well. She turned to Ryan with a smile on her
face. “You guys are very thorough.”

“
We try,” he
grinned, though the smile wasn’t genuine and unbeknownst to Chloe
his hands were curled tightly into fists, sharp nails shredding the
skin of his palms.

Outwardly he
was smiling, inwardly he was seething and his anger grew with each
box that Chloe opened. She couldn’t smell it but he could and with
each new item she uncovered, with every box opened, the scent of
aged wolf blood saturated the air. There was so much of it filling
the room that when he glanced in the boxes he was surprised at the
absence of a dead werewolf body. He coughed and sneezed, trying to
rid his sensitive nostrils of the stench of decay. It was so easy
to forget, when surrounded by Chloe’s purity and innocence, of what
her family actually was but there was no escaping it now. The
crimes of her family, the hunters, were there in plain sight.
Breathing deep, he tried to stop his stomach rolling but it was to
no avail. The blood was everywhere. His fellow clansmen had
died.
Murdered,
his mind corrected and he was expected to surround himself
with the knowledge on a daily basis?

“
Ryan,” Chloe
grinned as she rushed towards him. “I can’t thank you enough. There
are things here that I didn’t expect to see again. I only heard you
tell Sebastian to clear out my apartment. I didn’t expect to see
things from my family’s home here. Oh my gosh,” she cried, rushing
over to an open box. “Mum’s jewellery box, the necklace dad got me
for my sixteenth birthday. You even brought the silly photomontage
that my brother’s made for me. I left all of these things back at
my dad’s because I thought they might get lost in the move. I can’t
believe you got them all here and in one piece as well. Some of
this stuff is really old, it’s been passed down through both sides
of my family for years. You guys aren’t just thorough, you’re
careful as well. Thank you Ryan,” she gushed.

Or disgusted
and unwilling to touch it,
his mind
retorted though he smiled as he spoke, “You said it yourself, we’re
thorough. The people Sebastian and I sent probably scented you and
looked for other things that had your scent strongly embedded on
them. It’s what I would do.”
Although I’m
not sure how they stomached scenting Chloe through all this blood.
If it were me I might have destroyed everything in a fit of rage.
I’m not sure I could have made myself touch this stuff on another’s
behalf.

“
I love this
picture,” she beamed moving swiftly away from him and lifting a
picture frame from one of the many boxes that littered the floor.
“Look,” she instructed lifting it upwards so he could see. “It’s
one of the few pictures that have us all in it including
mum.”

The scent of
blood on the frame was especially strong, the scent assaulting his
nose as though the wolf had just been killed. His eyes narrowed in
on the small object, quickly filling with amber when he saw the
minute flecks that spattered the wooden frame. The miniscule
droplets were so small that they would have been invisible to the
normal human eye, explaining why Chloe was embracing the frame
rather than recoiling in revulsion. His feral gaze narrowed further
as he briefly scanned the numerous boxes that covered the
floor.
There’s probably blood all over her
things. There isn’t enough of it to make her suspicious though.
Bastards,
he cursed.
Touching her things with their blood stained hands? What the
fuck was wrong with them?
He took a deep
breath, hoping to calm himself.
Hold it
together Ryan,
his mind counselled.
Just hold it together a little longer.

The tenuous
control he had over his anger snapped as soon as he took in the
contents of the photograph. Two adults and four smiling children
looked back at him, but even though the picture was small, the
distance between him and it relatively large, he could still make
out the tattoo embossed onto the skin of her mother and
father.
For the wolf?
Wild amber eyes wandered to the tallest child in the picture
and there on his skin was the tattoo, the mark that branded him as
Ryan’s enemy. The other two male children were staring up at him
with adoration in their eyes.
Their
parents have probably been contaminating their minds since they
were babies. Those kids grew up and killed my people. They’re
probably off doing it again right now!

Get rid of
it!
His wolf snarled loudly.
Don’t let their bad influence contaminate our
mate or our home. Get rid of it NOW!

“
Enough!” he
growled, stunning Chloe with the loudness and sharpness of his
demand. “I can’t take this any more. You can’t have these things.
You can’t.”

“
Ryan, what are
you talking about?”

Ignoring her
he lifted the closest box and moved toward the door, dropping the
box to fling the door open. His hand stretched out and when he
pulled it back, a young man was being held by his collar as he was
dragged into the room.

“
Lord Ryan,” he
croaked.

“
Get some men,”
Ryan snarled, his hot breath feathering over his captive’s face.
“Tell them to come collect all that I stack outside of this door
and then I want them burned. Do you understand me?”

“
Yes
Lord.”

“
Here, take
this box first and deal with it.” The box quickly exchanged hands
and the unsuspecting man left the room.

“
Ryan, what do
you think you’re doing?” Chloe shrieked, rushing towards him and
grabbing his arm to keep him in place.

“
These things,”
he hissed, “can’t stay here. The smell is driving me crazy.”
And if it’s driving me crazy, I hate to think
what it’s doing to those outside.
While
Chloe’s protection and safety was his number one priority, it
wasn’t the concern of anyone else. The smell alone of fallen
clansmen was enough to inspire violence in others. There were
already people within the clans that wanted to harm Chloe, bringing
evidence of her link to the hunters was simply asking for trouble.
Shrugging out of her grip, Ryan moved on, opening another box and
inhaling briefly. His nose wrinkled in disgust immediately so he
lifted it and placed it outside the room in the hallway.