Alpha Curves (Paranormal BBW Shifter Romance): Wolf Clan Book 3 (5 page)

"Honey, you're a wolf," Esme sighed. "I remember rumors that'd you'd never shifted, even though you were about eighteen when you left. My mother visited you once, didn't she? Camille Foster, she has the same coloring as me but rail thin--"

"With beady eyes and a shriveled heart," Dana interrupted.

A sliver of a frown crossed Esme's face, but Iris recalled the woman and had to agree with the witch's mate.

"She tried to treat me," Iris snorted. "Crystals and chants for most of a day...like there's a cure for not shifting. That was--"

"Two weeks before you left," Cade finished for her. "Did Camille say anything to you? Was that why you left?"

Esme rubbed at her eyes, witch light crackling from the fingertips. "I don't even want to think about the possibility, but Camille could have spelled her."

Taking a seat, Iris lifted a brow in Esme's direction. "What do you mean?"

Standing next to her mate, the witch reached down and stroked the black hair of the little boy. He looked up and smiled softly at her, his eyelids offering a sleepy dance of dark lashes before his head settled against the big wolf's chest.

Iris frowned at the exchange. She didn't mind Esme using the boy as an excuse to delay answering the question. Something else about the cub's presence made Iris itch. She could feel her skin get hotter from head to toe and her fingertips buzzed with the need to release energy. But even the smallest zap of magic would be suicide around the witch's overprotective mate, more so with the cub in the room.

Pressing her palms flat against the seat cushion, Iris returned her attention to Esme, both brows raised this time to prod the witch into responding.

Esme rolled her lips a few times before her head dived in a short bob and she started to blink.

Six years working homicide had imbued Iris with an innate sense of when a woman was about to cry. Looking at Esme, she forced her expression and her voice into something softer and far more understanding than she felt. "Please, I need to know what your mother might have done to me."

"No telling." Esme shrugged, her hand briefly erasing a stray tear. "No asking her either. She escaped while being transported to the Witches Council for breaking her blood oath."

Iris let the news roll over her. Breaking the blood oath usually meant death.

"We don't know what happened. The two wolves guarding her were..." Esme let the words fall away. She glanced down at the cub, ensuring his eyes were closed and his face relaxed before she drew a finger across her throat.

Iris leaned forward, her professional interest awakened despite the day’s events.

"We know she was spelling me for a long time," Esme continued. "Weakening my magic so I couldn't help the clan as effectively and keeping me in a coma at one point so I couldn't heal Dana after the Hunters captured him."

Esme nodded at her mate. Iris looked at the gingery wolf. The topaz eyes glittered with frost, sending a chill down her spine and forcing her to look away. Her gaze landed on Cade, the last place she wanted to look.

She couldn't read his expression, only felt the intense heat rolling off him despite the distance that separated them. Part of her wanted to join him on the other couch, his warmth offering a façade of safety. Truth was, next to him was the most dangerous place for her to be. Basking in his energy, she would come undone. He would want to know why she left.

And why she hadn't come back.

Forcing her attention to the witch, Iris tilted her chin up to keep at bay the tears that threatened. "That sounds like it could have just been personal. Why do you think she would have done something to me a dozen years ago?"

"There were Hunter artifacts hidden in her home. Some writings and energy crystals to assist her in communicating with them, I think. I can feel the passage of time in her handling the stones and see it in the notes she wrote in the margins. I think she joined them before I was even born." Esme moved from standing by her mate to sitting on the couch. Her hands captured Iris's arm, one thumb rubbing against the sleeve and flesh below in a comforting gesture. "I've never felt a she-wolf with energy anything like yours, even without the magic. If she was working with Hunters and sensed what was waiting to bloom inside you--"

"Why did you leave?" Cade interrupted. "It can't be coincidence that she visited and two weeks later you were gone."

Iris closed her eyes. Images swelled inside her head as pain and fear clawed a familiar pattern through her gut.

Hank Mercer.

She had fled the clan because of Cade's father, but she couldn't tell Cade that. Couldn't tell him what his father had tried to do or that he'd had a gang of two other wolves from outside the clan helping him.

Shaking her head, she extracted her arm from Esme's light grip and stood. She didn't want to remember that day, not alone, not with the too sympathetic witch next to her and definitely not under the accusing stare of her childhood sweetheart.

Standing, she wanted to head for the door but knew they wouldn't allow her to leave. She had nowhere to go if they did. She snorted, angry at the rock and the hard place she was stuck between. Spinning on one heel, she glared at Dana.

"You said Hunters took out my partner?" Ignoring Cade's soft growl at her calling Harper her partner and the way the vibration in his throat made the fine hairs on her arms stand up, she waited for Dana to nod.

"Give me the Hunters," she continued. "I can turn them over to my superiors. I don't need to expose the clan."

Dana offered his own snort, its tone derisive. "If we had them to turn over, they'd be dead already. And who's to say any captured Hunter won't talk about the clan? We already know they kill any of their own in danger of being taken. The bastards have no sense of loyalty."

Lifting a hand from where he cradled the cub, Dana scratched the stubble on his cheek. "But you do have methods of finding them that we don't. Help us locate the Hunters that shot this other cop of yours, and I'll see what I can do about you leav--"

Cade jumped to his feet. Just as fast, Dana stood and pushed the cub he held into Cade's arms. Dana’s move shocked Iris, but an instant later and most of the fury had vanished from Cade’s face. Cubs were too precious to the clan -- that would never change. The little boy's presence had a calming effect on everyone but Iris.

Dana put his hands on Cade's shoulders and forced him down onto the couch. Smirking, he settled on the armrest next to Cade, one hand remaining on the subdued wolf’s shoulder.

Eyes flashing murder, Cade glared up at him. "We should discuss this outside, you and I."

Dana grinned at him before shaking his head. "It's much more fun to stay inside and cock block you than to shred your ass outside." Poking his chin in Esme’s direction, he chuckled. "And less distressing for the ladies and Oscar."

Closing his eyes, Cade slowed his breathing. Watching him, Iris knew he was searching out the energy of the warm bundle of cub Dana had so purposefully placed in his arms. Somehow, the boy had remained calm throughout the exchange. Iris glanced at Esme, her suspicions confirmed as she saw the witch's lips wordlessly moving.

Finished with her spell, Esme met Iris's gaze. Her mouth turned down, the expression sad and seeking forgiveness as she shook her head. "Even if we found the Hunters responsible for today's death, we couldn't let you go. You don't understand the energy you're giving off. It's like pointing a laser the size of a baseball diamond at the sky. And it will get worse with each unfulfilled heat cycle you go through. More Hunters will come. They'll kill you, but only after they torture you and steal your energy to fuel their magic--"

Iris stopped the witch with a raised hand. "What do you mean, fuel their magic?"

Esme's gaze sharpened and she stood. This time, when she sought Iris's arm, there was nothing light or gentle in the way she captured it.

"Yes, their magic. We've known about Hunters as long as they have tried to kill us." She pushed Iris's sleeve up. "But only since you've been gone have we discovered how they find us and some of the things they do when they catch a wolf...or a witch. These are Hunter wards you're carving into your skin. I recognize them from documents we've only recently discovered."

A rustle of clothing and light snarls erupted from the couch. Iris risked a glance in Cade's direction to find Dana pushing a little more forcefully on his shoulder.

"Steady," Dana warned.

The warning came too late as the cub stirred and opened his eyes. He looked at Cade's face, his own expression narrowing in apprehension. Esme began to whisper, but the boy crawled off Cade's lap and approached both women. Releasing Iris, Esme extended her arms in the boy's direction but he bypassed her to tug at Iris's hand.

She tried to pull away. He stubbornly fisted the edge of her shirt and placed his head against her shoulder.

"Please," Esme whispered. "I don't want to send Oscar back to the van with Jet and Colt. They swear too much and talk about all the gory details of their worst runs..."

Sighing, Iris let Oscar crawl onto her lap, finally understanding why the cub had made her skin itch and burn. Where she was at in her cycle, the presence of a cub would trigger her den instinct.

She shook her head. The motion caught everyone's attention but she was not about to explain herself. If she tried, Cade would argue with her. But, regardless of what he claimed, she didn't have a den instinct. Wolves did and she wasn't one, had never shifted. No fangs or claws or hair had ever sprouted from her flesh. Whatever was going on with her body since Cade's arrival at the strip club didn't involve dens or mating or the ridiculous notion that she was in heat.

"Cubs are drawn to it," Dana said, intuitively grasping the argument raging inside her head. "They know you're fiercely protective when you're in heat."

"At least when you're not fucking," Cade interrupted.

His eyes bored into her skull. Lowering her gaze, she saw his fists pressing down on his thighs, the knuckles white with the force he exerted to control whatever urges ran through him.

"I'm not--"

"Just stop," Esme pleaded. She gave Iris's shoulder a squeeze as she looked at Cade and Dana. "The three of you!"

"We don't have to deal with why you left tonight," she told Iris while pausing to glare at Cade the second his lips parted to disagree. "But it will be a long time before you can leave the clan's protection."

Esme’s gaze dropped to Oscar before she lifted it to Iris and nailed the she-wolf in place with the tears shimmering in her eyes. "And, since you're here, you should know that there are lost cubs that need your help."

Iris looked at Cade, her grip around Oscar reflexively tightening. Victory glittered in Cade's dark brown gaze as he saw her hug the cub tighter. A smile crept up one side his mouth, only to die a second later when Esme continued.

"That's why I want you to come back to Tennessee with us. It's lost cub central." Esme raised a calming hand toward Cade at the same time Dana put a restraining one against his chest. "You know I'm right, Cade. There aren't enough resources here to protect her--"

"She only needs one resource," he growled. "Me."

Fresh heat and need washed over Iris. Cade may have been talking at the witch and her mate, but Iris knew he had meant the growl for her alone. He had pushed his wolf at her, warming her belly and thighs with its dominance.

Warning bells ringing in her ears, she slid the cub onto Esme's lap.

"I won't stay here," she said, looking at no one. "But I'll go with you."

Chapter Six

"I don't need your potions or charms, Ems." Sitting at the kitchen table in Esme Foster's former home, Cade glared as the witch stirred more ingredients into a boiling pot. "Didn't I behave the entire drive?"

She rolled her eyes at him then shook her head. "Cade Mercer, don't think for a single second you weren't spelled on the ride here."

Shock spread across his face before he dismissed the assertion with a wet snort. "You didn't. I could feel her through each and every mile, Ems, smell her...taste..."

His eyes drifted shut and he drew a deep breath as if reliving the drive to Dana's lands in Tennessee, Iris's flavor coating his tongue so that he grew hard all over again.

"I spelled your reactions, not your ability to sense her." She tapped the side of the pot with her silver spoon, her nose crinkling as she offered a wry glance at his crotch then rolled her eyes. "This will hopefully remove, or at least dull, what you can detect of Iris as your mate."

His hands rubbed against the denim covering his thighs, the tendons on his arms raised from the pressure he exerted. "I don't want dulled. I want to smell her, feel her wolf running just beneath the surface of her skin."

"It's not about what you want, Romeo." Leaving the pot to simmer, Esme came around the kitchen island and placed her palm against the back of Cade's neck. "You're just lucky Jet and Colt went a little crazy or your fine ass would still be in West Virginia."

A growl surfaced with the memory of the two wolflings pushing and snarling at one another the second they stepped from the van to greet Iris. Whatever she had done with the silver piercings and the marks she had made in her arm to ward herself, the protection lost most of its power over an unmated male within touching distance, especially younger males stuck somewhere between feeling her pull as a potential mate and as the mother figure all alpha females presented.