Bad Blood (4 page)

Blaine was exhausted. He hadn’t been able to sleep for longer than a few minutes since Kerrick had been shot, and his mind kept returning again and again to what happened. He fiercely hoped Kerrick hadn’t been badly hurt—he had been conscious and on his feet afterward, so that surely had to be a good sign. The idea that he could have killed Kerrick didn’t even bear thinking about, and again Blaine wondered at his strong feelings for the man.

Was it even possible for Kerrick to be his mate? They were different breeds, after all, and it didn’t seem right, though he’d heard of wolves finding their mates among humans. It wasn’t such a stretch then, to find a mate among another breed of wolf, surely.

The fact that he was a man was the most disconcerting—not that Blaine would ever again have to worry about mating him. Kerrick probably hated him now, if that look he’d given him after he’d been shot was any indication.

Blaine passed a weary hand over his face and nodded to one of lead gammas, Robert, to continue his report. Colby had taken a group with him to the stream earlier to try to replenish their water supply.

The gamma straightened in his chair. He looked as exhausted as Blaine felt. “Sir, as you know, the first attack of the Dire Wolves came at sunset a few hours after the shooting. They attacked us at twilight, which seems to be their favorite time to come at us. The visibility is at its lowest point for us, of course, with not enough daylight for our human eyes, nor enough darkness for our wolves. It doesn’t seem to affect those bastards either way. It’s funny, though. They don’t seem to be trying to kill us, which is the strangest thing.”

“What do you mean?” Blaine asked sharply.

“Well, they can move faster than anything I’ve ever seen, and they taunt us more than anything else, to draw our fire and make us waste out ammunition. They hide behind trees and dart back and forth from one to another. For big guys, they move like nothing I’ve ever seen. They hoot and whistle—hell, they even bark at us.”

“But they don’t use any weapons?”

“Not so far. Nothing other than the rocks they throw at us. And so far we haven’t been able to inflict much damage on them either. We’re wasting a lot of ammunition on shadows and illusions.”

“They don’t have many women or children to safeguard,” Blaine said thoughtfully.

“No, sir, so they can spread out and attack us from all sides of the lodge. They’ve cut the electricity and phone lines, as you know, and they drive us back if we try to leave the compound to get into town.”

Blaine leaned back in his chair. He was worried, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to hide. The Dires had his pack besieged, and they seemed to be almost toying with them—just biding their time before they were able to swoop in and take over. And then what? What was Kerrick trying to do?

“Thanks, Robert. Colby has taken a few men to the stream this morning, so hopefully they’ll be able to bring back some water for the children. We won’t last much longer without it.”

His gamma nodded grimly and left Blaine to his thoughts. Blaine sighed and got up to stand by the window, searching for any sign of Colby and his men. The relationship between Blaine and Colby was in tatters, and he wasn’t sure how to fix it. This latest expedition to the stream had been Colby’s idea, and he hadn’t waited for Blaine’s okay.

Blaine couldn’t forgive Colby’s highhandedness, and the way he deliberately continued to undermine Blaine’s authority. Colby, for his part, told anyone who would listen that Blaine was indecisive and weak. Most of Blaine’s pack remained loyal to him, but a small faction had begun to follow Colby’s orders and ignore Blaine’s. The pack was falling apart.

Blaine blamed himself for his lack of control over Colby, for his failure to show him who was boss a long time ago. If he had, he would never have dared to act on his own like he did. His rebellion was a failure of Blaine’s leadership.

He knew that Kerrick’s commands would never be questioned by the members of his pack, his authority never attenuated. Kerrick must think him weak and without character, not to mention a cold-blooded murderer. Somehow knowing how he must feel hurt Blaine more than anything else.

It was foolish, having these feelings for a man who was a stranger, really. The more he thought about it, the more Blaine realized his attraction to Kerrick had to be mostly in his imagination. He couldn’t have been so instantly swept away by the touch of the man. By any man! Blaine had never been attracted to a male before. Never. He was mortified to think of how he’d given in to him that day by the stream, allowing him to do the things he did, even begging for it. Little wonder Kerrick thought his pack and his land was ripe to be taken over.

Blaine had only seen Kerrick again once since that day on the porch, and then it was across a small clearing during one of the skirmishes with the Dires. His men had been using their dwindling supply of ammunition sparingly while Kerrick’s men tossed rocks and sticks at them. Blaine had given orders not to engage them unless they used their guns, since they knew the Dires were only toying with them. They were playing this like some elaborate game and seemed far too confident of the outcome.

Blaine had just dodged a huge rock thrown at his head and leaned up to fire when he caught sight of Kerrick himself, standing behind of a massive pine tree, his face grim and unsmiling. He looked up and their eyes met. Something almost electric had jumped across the distance between them, and then Kerrick stepped back and was lost from sight, disappearing into the shadowy darkness of the forest.

“Blaine, come quickly!” Blaine turned away from the window and his thoughts to face the female who had burst through his door. “They’re attacking the men who went to the stream for water. Come quickly!”

Blaine ran down the stairs and out onto the porch. The Dires must have surprised Colby’s men at the stream and chased them back down the mountain. A pitched battle was raging between the two sides now as the Dires tried to cut off the Grays’ avenue of escape back to the lodge. Blaine pulled his knife from its place at his side and jumped off the porch to join the fray. Almost immediately, he was engaged by two huge Dire wolves, who didn’t attack, but kept forcing him backward toward the trees, dodging his attempts to strike at them. He was being herded, and he looked around wildly for a way to escape.

From out of nowhere, a large group of Dires swooped down off the mountainside to join the fight, and Blaine’s spirit sank when he saw Kerrick at the forefront. Kerrick must have spotted him because he was headed straight for him at a dead run.

Instinctively, Blaine took a few steps backward, and then he heard Colby cry out from over on his left. He turned to see him going down with two Dire wolves on top of him. He let down his guard for only a second, but it was enough to give the Dires in front of him the chance they’d been looking for. One of them leaped on top of him and took him down to the ground.

Landing hard on his back with the huge man on top of him, he couldn’t get his breath for a moment. The Dire pressed a wicked sharp knife to his throat. He closed his eyes, preparing for his death when Kerrick’s loud shout sounded across the yard. “No!” he cried out.

In an instant Kerrick was roughly pulling the young Dire off him and hauling Blaine to his feet by his shirt front. Blaine struck out at him, but he grabbed him around the waist and lifted him off his feet, trapping his arms by his sides. He could hear Kerrick’s voice growling out something harsh sounding in a language Blaine didn’t understand, and then he tossed him to one of the other Dires like he was a sack of grain.

The man caught him and set him on his feet, pulling his hands behind his back. He was pushed and shoved toward the basement entrance on the side of the house. Manhandled down the steps, he landed on the dirt floor alongside a group of his pack already being held prisoner there. Some of them were injured and their moans filled the dank air around him. The Dire leaned over him and wrapped a length of chain around his wrists, securing him to the wall.

Outside the dark, cold basement he could hear sounds of the fight still going on, but things seemed to be dying down. It was too dark to see clearly, but it seemed to Blaine that most of his remaining soldiers were there with him. He wondered what had happened to Colby, and then pushed it from his mind. Despite his recent betrayals, Colby was like a brother to him, and if they’d killed him, as he suspected, he couldn’t think about it now. He pulled at the chains, but it was useless. All he could do was wait helplessly until the fate of his pack was decided outside. Closing his eyes, he lay in the dark and listened to the sounds of his pack’s defeat.

It was a few hours later that they came for him. He had been listening to what sounded like a victory celebration on the lawn of their lodge. He could smell the fire they’d made and heard the raucous, drunken shouts of triumph. He figured they’d found the liquor cabinet inside, and wondered briefly if they’d destroyed any of the antique furniture in the lodge—a strange thing, perhaps, to worry about given his present situation, but some of it had been in the lodge for over a hundred years. Like everything else about their way of life, it might be destroyed and swept away by these barbarians.

Blaine was freezing as he waited in the dark, surrounded by the groans of the wounded men. For the last few hours, those who were able called out to each other, and by counting the different voices, Blaine knew there were at least fourteen men in the basement with him. Colby wasn’t one of them.

Most of the men had minor wounds—again, the Dire wolves had spared most of the pack when and where they could, even though the Grays tried their best to kill them. One of the gammas had a deep puncture wound that needed to be attended to, though, and all of them were bruised, demoralized and exhausted. Rumors and speculation over what the Dires would do to prisoners were whispered from one man to another, and all vowed to die as honorably as they could, though so far Blaine was the only one the Dires had tried to kill.

Kerrick had stepped in to stop them. Briefly, he wondered why he’d bothered, but then decided they must want to kill him more publicly, as an example to his pack.

When the door was pulled open and two big wolves came in for Blaine, he kicked out at them, hoping to inflict whatever damage he could. The others shouted encouragement and vowed empty promises of revenge. The Dires ignored them all and pulled him from the basement, dragging him between them. He was pulled up the steps and the sounds from the bonfire got closer and more overwhelming. Damn it was cold. He squared his shoulders, ready to face whatever waited for him.

****

Blaine woke up with a start, disoriented and confused as to what had happened. He realized he was enveloped in warmth and softness, as he blinked his eyes a few times, as the reality of his situation hit home. A big warm foot was hooked around his ankle and a muscular arm was wrapped around his waist, pulling him up into a hot wall of naked hardness—and some of that hardness in particular was rudely poking him in the hip.

Kerrick. Blaine was naked and in bed with him, wrapped in his arms with not much chance of getting out of it any time soon, or until Kerrick let go of him anyway. The man was making soft snoring sounds against the back of Blaine’s head and small puffs of breath ruffled Blaine’s hair with each exhale.

Sudden memory of the night before flooded back into his mind, and he groaned softly. Kerrick had claimed him decidedly and publicly, in front of both assembled packs. Blaine had come to the circle fully expecting public execution and instead, Kerrick had given him the mating bite. It had been both painful and traumatic, but if he was honest, the bite had also sent a thrill of lust through his body. Blaine had felt the venom move sluggishly throughout him, changing everything it touched.

Among the wolves, mating was a biological bond as much as an emotional one, and it was completely irrevocable. Once the mating bite was given, there was no going back—he and Kerrick were mates now for life.

A mate to Kerrick—Blaine wasn’t sure how he felt about that. On the one hand he was furious with Kerrick and highly resentful that he hadn’t asked his permission. He’d simply taken his choice away from him in his usual highhanded way. He supposed that kind of behavior was usual for Kerrick, anyway. He didn’t really know the man well enough to know if this was standard operating procedure, or if Blaine just brought out the worst in the man. On a positive note, Blaine was still alive, and hadn’t had much hope he would be for long when they’d pulled him from the basement.

Besides, once any of their kind was struck with the mating urge, choice was pretty much irrelevant anyway. He’d known since the encounter in the stream that Kerrick was his mate, and part of him was tired of fighting it. The biological imperative was too strong.

Kerrick seemed to be waking up, moving restlessly against Blaine, his rigid cock rubbing a hot trail along Blaine’s crease.

Careful not to disturb him, considering the current precarious situation of his posterior, Blaine could see bright daylight peeping under the shades on his windows, because he was indeed in his own bed back in the lodge. Was this irony on Kerrick’s part or some kind of message to Blaine and, indeed, his whole pack? He wondered, too, if Kerrick had taken advantage of him while he’d been unconscious, but a quick assessment proved the only sore place on his body was on the back of his neck.

Needing to use the bathroom, he moved as slowly as he could, trying to ease himself out from under Kerrick. Of course, the irritating man woke up right away, tightening his arm around Blaine and biting his ear. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Blaine wrenched away from him, or tried to, succeeding only in twisting his body over onto his stomach. Kerrick smoothed his hand over his ass. “Mmm, a tempting offer, but I have too much to do, and we’ve overslept already. Maybe later, hmm?”

Fuming, Blaine got his elbows up underneath him and turned to glare at Kerrick. “Don’t flatter yourself. Let me up, damn it, I have to piss.”