Claimed by the Wolf (2 page)

Chapter Three

Beth was alive.

Stefan didn’t understand. She’d been infected—
turned.
She didn’t look sick, and she still had her human consciousness when she changed. All of the beasts at the facility did. He’d never seen that behavior before. That didn’t negate the fact they were brutal dogs, but it did change how he’d deal with them in the future.

Studying her, she still
looked
human. She looked like the same beautiful woman she’d been the last time he’d seen her, the last time he’d touched her. Except for her eyes—they were electric-blue shining out into the darkness—strangely hypnotic.

I
love you
, she’d said.

He could admit now he’d mourned her death. But here she was in the warm, living, breathing flesh claiming she couldn’t leave him—even after all he’d done. The guilt from earlier blossomed into something else, something he couldn’t name and didn’t want to give voice to.

As the prince of his people, he had special magic he knew he could use to save himself. He didn’t know if he was strong enough to shield all of his men from the bomb, but he could save himself.

He could save
her.
She didn’t have to die, not for him.

Logic argued he would only make things harder. It would save him the trouble of putting her down if he let the bomb have her. He killed werewolves. Beth was a werewolf. He couldn’t reasonably let her continue to draw breath.

He couldn’t let her die either. The thought of watching her incinerate while he protected himself with his magic was a poison dagger that twisted in his gut and ripped something vital from him.

Decision made, the Mark of Zoranna on his neck burned as he summoned his power. It crackled in violent spears of lightning that struck the earth, and he dragged her against him just as the bomb hit.

Heat blasted through his shields, but it was nothing compared to the fire that the feel of her nakedness pressed against his body ignited in him. His flesh remembered what it was like to touch her, taste her and have her wrapped around him while she cried out in ecstasy. His cock didn’t care what was beneath her skin. Only that she felt like heaven.

Even with his silver, his weapons and his lies, she came into his arms so easily. The world was on fire and burned to ash around them, but the only thing that mattered in this moment out of time was touching her.

“Beth,” he said, his voice thick.

“Don’t,” she pleaded. “Aren’t I broken enough?”

“I’ll put you back together,” he swore. “This was always good between us, and I swear to the Goddess it was real.”

“You don’t have to keep lying.”

He gripped her tighter against him so she could feel his arousal. “Does this feel like a lie?”

“None of it ever felt like a lie,” she answered.

“So much of it wasn’t,” he confessed. “I know this is wrong, but I still want you.”

She tilted her face up to him, arms wrapped around his neck, and didn’t hesitate to kiss him. The first touch of her lips was alchemy—every emotion that churned inside him was transmuted to molten gold.

His hands, still sparking with magic, tangled in her wild mane. It was soft as silk, but she no longer smelled of pomegranate shampoo. This was earthier, richer.

His logical brain argued she was infected, and her kiss could possibly infect him, too. He was immune to werewolf venom, but the virus was something else. What was done was done. There was no going back now. Stefan didn’t want to go back—he wanted to go forward, further, deeper. He wanted to drown in her eyes and burn in her hair while he buried himself to the hilt in her pussy.

She was so responsive, wanton. She arched into his touch with no fear, only heat. Only the desperate desire born of denial—of being apart.

“I need you,” he ground out.

“I’m yours.” Her elegant fingers made quick work of his utility belt and BDU pants. She freed his cock, stroking him expertly while she sought another kiss.

What he loved about her ministrations was that she approached each encounter like she planned a military coup. She was hot and passionate but thorough and precise. Beth learned exactly what he liked and endeavored to give him more of it until he was ready to come—then she held him off until
she
wanted him to come.

Stefan lowered his mouth to hers until their breath mingled, but didn’t kiss her. He gloried in that moment before he took her mouth—the way her lips plumped for his kiss, her breathing became erratic and her eyes met his with no reservation as they conveyed all of her longing, her desire.

“Fuck me while the world burns, Stefan.”

Her words made his cock surge in her hand—he was so hard, thick with his need of her.

Instead of waiting for his kiss she stroked him and turned in his embrace. Beth shifted so she ground her ass against him. He filled his hands with her pert breasts, kneading the buoyant flesh and teasing her already tight nipples.

It was always like this with them, a contest to see who would break first. Tonight, it would be him. He didn’t have the mental acuity to maintain the shield and resist the siren call of her demands.

She tossed her hair over her shoulder and cut a glance out of the corner of her eye, daring him to stop her, to follow her, to do anything he wanted to the feast splayed before him. Beth dropped to her knees, still looking at him. She braced her arms and angled her legs apart as she spread herself on all fours.

He devoured the sight of her. The shadows of fire dancing around them, casting highlights and lowlights over her silky skin that made the strands of her hair seem like flames themselves. The flare of her hips was made for his hands to anchor her hard against him, the smooth line of her long, slender legs made to be wrapped around his waist. But he especially loved the sight of her swollen, pink cleft slick and wet for him.

It brought him to his knees.

He traced the topography of her back, from her neck down to the gentle dip of her spine, then back up again to knot her hair around his fist. He tugged gently to angle her head back and she gasped, licking her lips. Stefan reached between them and rubbed his fingers along her slit, delving inside her channel only to tease her clit with a few practiced strokes before entering her again.

She rocked back against him, seeking more—always more. This was what made her so addictive. She pushed every boundary, even her own. She wanted anything he decided to give her—any pleasure he could conjure, with no limits.

Her inner walls contracted, suctioning his fingers deeper, and he grit his teeth to keep from groaning aloud. He remembered just how good that felt on his cock while he drove himself into her.

Stefan rubbed his cock around the mouth of her cleft, pushing only the thick crown inside while he continued to tease her clit.

“Stop teasing,” she growled.

The growl should’ve turned him off, should’ve made him remember what she was and how wrong this was between them now. It didn’t, it only made him hotter. A sense of pride welled inside him that he’d pushed her so close to the edge she was growling, her voice like gravel. Maybe he wouldn’t be the one who caved first, after all. Triumph bloomed.

Beth bucked against him and he thrust hard, her satin heat tightening around him. Stefan withdrew and plunged again, drilling into her core. The sensation coupled with his conflicting emotions was too much, and he knew he’d finish before he was ready to. He increased the tempo of his caress on her clit, pushing her higher and causing her channel to butterfly around his cock.

“Goddess, woman.”

She rocked back, meeting his thrusts with her own, taking him deep. Small gasps of pleasure filled his ears, and when she struggled to increase their pace, he knew she was close. She convulsed around him, and only when she cried out his name did he surrender to the fury of bliss that stole his senses.

He didn’t want it to be over. Stefan knew when this moment burned itself out, they’d be thrust back into the world where she was a werewolf and he was a hunter. Where he lied and she didn’t. Where she loved him and he—couldn’t finish the thought.

“I know you,” she said, leaning her cheek into the bowl of her hand. “This version of you right now.”

Stefan didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.

“You fuck the same no matter what mask you wear.”

Her words cut him. This had been more than fucking. He’d tried to tell her everything—no, show her that it hadn’t all been a lie. Watching her face, he searched for signs she’d said that to hurt him, but there was no subterfuge. He supposed he could understand wanting to put that distance between them, to make it something so mechanical as Slot A and Tab B. That was all it should’ve been.

“You don’t.”

“I was going to spend my life with you before, and now I’m not. This was a throwaway, right? We were going to die. Adrenaline was high and this is what we’re used to...or at least what I was used to—taking comfort in you.” She sat up. “Can I leave the magic bubble now?”

“Tell me why you didn’t leave me.”

“Don’t be stupid. I already did. You’re my mate. My
it.
My
one.
But don’t worry, I didn’t scratch or bite you. You didn’t say you’re mine, so we’re not bonded.”

But he was, he realized. He was hers, and her ownership of him was chiseled into something deeper than bone. He owed her a debt for what he’d done to her, and until his slate was clean, he couldn’t be free of her.

He’d saved her life just now, but that wasn’t... It hadn’t satisfied the debt. His people believe in retribution and revenge. Maybe that was his task—to punish those who’d done this to her.

“I’m going to kill them for what they’ve done to you,” he swore.

“Who?”

“The brothers Gevaudan.”

“Konstantin
saved
me.”

“You only say that because he turned you. He’s the Alpha.”

“I say that because it’s science. I was infected when I went inside the enclosure. Ian infected me with a pure form of the virus. He dosed my coffee to see what would happen. Konstantin bit me, and his form of the virus, which was stable, defeated the other strain that would have turned me into some mindless zombie mutt.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “You may not be able to stand what I am, but I’m alive, and I’m grateful for it.”

She looked so alone and small in that moment. Everything about this woman twisted him up, confused him.

“I’m grateful for it, too.”

“Because you didn’t want my death on your conscience.”

“Is that so bad?”

She shook her head. “The fire’s burning itself out. Konstantin just contacted me telepathically and told me there’ll be a cleanup crew here soon to check the rubble and hunt down anything that escaped. I didn’t even know about the other werewolves until I saw them. Who knows what else the Aeternali was keeping here. I’m going back to the cabin to grab a few things.”

“The cleanup crew—”

“What was it you said earlier? In and out? There are keepsakes I want.”

“I’ll go with you.”

She sighed. “No. You need to go while I can still let you. Every second you spend in my presence is another that the beast wants to mark you. Don’t you understand that?”

He considered her meaning. The mark of the beast. Her teeth tearing into his flesh, branding him as hers. It should’ve turned his stomach, but it didn’t. Stefan didn’t want it, but he couldn’t deny what the power inside him demanded either. “I owe you. A Gypsy always pays his debts.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“Just like you have your beast inside you guiding your actions, I, too, have something similar. I can’t ignore it,” he argued.

“Consider yourself warned.”

Chapter Four

It was strange walking into the cabin with Stefan. It was like a foreign country where she didn’t speak the language. So many things were familiar, but they were still strange. The house looked as if he hadn’t touched anything since her infection.

They’d had a whole life here. It was a small life, it was a quiet life, but they’d built it together these last two years.

Her white wedding dress hung on a plastic form in the corner of the living room where she’d been adding seed pearls and threading a pale orange cream ribbon through the bodice. Not the most traditional of color choices, but it made her happy.

They were supposed to be married the following October.

She watched the way the tallow light fell on his dark hair. Beth still wanted to run her fingers through it. “When were you going to bail, Stefan?”

He looked at her, eyes dark and fathomless. “What do you mean?”

“You asked me to marry you. We were planning the wedding. When were you going to leave me?” Stefan couldn’t possibly have planned to go through with it.

He blinked, as if the question surprised him. “I don’t know.”

“You didn’t have to ask me to marry you, you know. I was fine with things the way they were.”

“It seemed right.”

It seemed right? His answer enraged her. Beth knew there was no answer he could give her that would make it right, that would be enough, but this pissed her off. “I guess I don’t need to worry about returning your grandmother’s ring. Good story, though. You had me.”

“Beth, it really is my grandmother’s ring.” He nodded.

“Talk about committed to a cause.” She bit her lip, and the air was suddenly too thick with his scent, with the heavy weight of memories that now meant nothing. Beth needed to move. Her skin was too tight, her chest too full and her heart too broken. She went to their bedroom where her jewelry box sat on a dresser.

“Can I explain?” he said, following her.

Why had she even asked him anything? Her need to know?
Jesus.
She didn’t need to know. She didn’t need his explanation, because none of it would heal the gaping wound in her heart. Nothing would make this pain better.

“It was January.” He sat down on the bed and stared at his hands. “My people and wolves—we don’t mix. Or we mix a little too well. There’s something about Gypsy blood.”

She pulled the rings—her mother’s and his grandmother’s from the box—and leaned against the wall. Remembering the way he’d flinched away from her, it didn’t seem right now to sit down next to him. He wouldn’t find any comfort in her, anyway.

“They say he was my younger sister’s father.” Stefan looked up at her, his eyes like dark coals. “Can you imagine what it must be like in her head? To have found our mother as she did? Ripped apart in her own
vardo
, an enchanted wagon where gypsy magic should’ve kept her safe. My mother was a princess, next in line to be Alpha of Alphas—Eve of our kind. The most powerful. And a stinking, dirty mongrel ripped out her heart and used her ribs like toothpicks.”

Empathy stole over her like a silent thief. She didn’t want to feel anything more for this man than she already did, but there it was. Understanding, acceptance and the sharp stab of his pain like it was her own.

“And me, I set off into the dark woods after him. I was going to kill him and bring home a wolf pelt to hang on the
vardo
door. But I was only a child myself and got this for my trouble.” He pulled up his shirt, and he was scarred from shoulder to hip bone. By all rights, it should’ve killed him.

“I haven’t seen those before.”

“I hide them with magic. Always.”

Yet something else she didn’t know about him. Beth thought that at least she’d known his body, but she hadn’t. Not really. She held out his grandmother’s ring. “Here.”

He didn’t take it. “She likes you.”

“She hasn’t met me.”

“Oh, she’s met you. She’s the one who told me to give you the ring. She wanted you to have it. So keep it.”

Beth wanted scream at him to stop sending her mixed signals. It was either all or nothing, even with the story he’d just told her. Her wolf didn’t understand. In fact, her beast wanted her to lick those scars. She couldn’t get the imagery out of her head—him flat on his back and at her mercy, her tongue laving over him.

Her sex twinged thinking about all the things she’d do to him.

Not mine
, she reminded herself. The beast was curiously silent.

“I’m sorry for what happened to you and your family.” She pursed her lips. “If you hate werewolves so much, how can you stand for me to have the ring?”

“Zoranna does what she will, and it’s not my place to question her. I may be a prince, but she is the Eve.”

Beth remembered the training about all of the new creatures the facility provided, the social hierarchy and what she’d learned from Konstantin. The Adam or Eve was akin to the progenitor of a race or species, but it was a role that could be transferred upon death and it came with all the memories and the power of those who’d come before.

Watching him sitting there on the bed—their bed—and knowing he was a total stranger made it hard for Beth to breathe, to think. Her wounds were still too raw. Being here with him
hurt.
Beth’s humanity was at odds with her beast.

The primal brain told her nothing that had happened before mattered. Only being with him, claiming him because he belonged to her. Human Beth still couldn’t get past the fact that he was a stranger who’d betrayed her.

Neither of those things changed the way her body ached for him. She wanted his touch—wanted to be curled in his arms, because that was what she’d been taught was safe. He was a shield against the world, but he was what she needed shielding from.

Suddenly, everything went dark—even the solitary streetlight outside.

“They must’ve tracked us somehow. Stay close to me,” Stefan demanded.

“You forget. I’m as dangerous as you are
and
I can see in the dark.” Beth threw off her human skin with ease.

If she’d been paying attention to her surroundings instead of being lost in a past she couldn’t change and a future she couldn’t alter, she would’ve smelled their approach. They stunk of fear.

Soldiers on rappelling lines swung through the windows and a blast of light shot through the space. Stefan raised his hands as he had before to call his magic, but nothing happened. He didn’t let that stop him. He was quick to engage the enemy. When his magic didn’t burst from his hands, he grabbed the AK-47 out of the hands of a soldier and broke the man’s nose with the gun before unleashing a spray of bullets.

Beth launched herself into the fray, snapping her jaws around whatever flesh was nearest. They fired their guns, but even the silver bullets did nothing to slow her down.

Nothing did, until a choke collar was snapped into place around her neck. She was yanked back down into her human form and quickly subdued. Needles pricked her arm, her neck, her thigh. Her vision grew dim and the world in front of her swam like the swirling of watercolors on a child’s canvas. Sounds blurred into the hum of cicadas, nothing more than meaningless buzzing.

She drifted on a turbulent sea of semiconsciousness. Strange hands moved over her body in sterile motions, checking her pulse, her blood pressure, pushing more needles into her.

“Use her for bait...”

“...gypsy phenomena.”

“...she’ll mark him.”

“...magic.”

“...silver ineffectual...”

She wondered, groggily, if this was how her test subjects felt. If they’d still had a self-awareness while they’d been transported to Blue Ridge.

Another voice in the ether spoke to her, a siren’s call of peace and tranquility—if only she’d let go. If only she’d surrender to the waves that fought to drag her away from the shore of awareness.

The choice was taken from her when another dose of something was injected into her veins. Beth didn’t just slip away from the shore—she rocketed out into the black space beyond the sea where the skyline met the horizon.

Among all the black, a woman rocked gently in time with the waves in a hand-carved chair. Her white hair fell long and silky around her in pools of clouds.

“Come closer, child.”

Beth knew she was dreaming, but she couldn’t resist creeping closer to the woman. In her hands, she used strands of her white hair to knit the most ornate webs, like a spider. Rather than being frightened, Beth was intrigued.

“Closer.” The woman reached out and draped a veil of the webbing over her. “There. As it should be.”

“Zoranna?”

“That’s Grandmother to you, little one.” She smiled, the lines of her face changing just like the sand on a beach—ebbing and flowing with the tide.

After what she’d read about the Gypsies and their powers, she knew this was no dream. It was a visitation. Sorrow, joy, guilt and hope all welled up together in a bittersweet brew.

“Everything shall be fine, child. You’ll see. Only now you must be strong. Stronger than you’ve ever been before. This is the last of my magic, and Stefan will ascend to my place. He will need you.”

Zoranna faded, and with her, the dark. Everything grew brighter, louder, until she found herself staring into what seemed like a spotlight, until it, too, faded and was nothing more than a sodium light inside a terrarium.

The terrarium looked just like the one at Blue Ridge.

“Where am I?” she mumbled as she attempted to orient herself.

“Can’t you guess? Another Aeternali research facility,” Stefan supplied.

“How long was I out?”

“Two days. They hit you pretty hard with that stuff, but you kept fighting.”

She struggled to sit up and realized she was wearing only his T-shirt. It comforted her and irritated her at the same time. “They couldn’t be bothered to give me any of my own clothes?”

“No. Apparently they want to see what it will take for you to mark me. How long you’ll resist and if my blood will neutralize the infection like my sister’s did.”

Her head felt like someone was using it as a bongo. “What?”

“I only overheard part of the conversation. Enough to know that Luka Stanislav wiped out the infected in Europe, but that he was infected, too. My sister cured him. They want to know if my blood can cure you,” he spat.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and settled into his lap, close to his ear so that she could speak without anyone else hearing. Beth kept waiting for him to push her away, but he didn’t. So she whispered, “I don’t know how they’re managing to keep us here or what they’ve done to your magic, but none of that crap works on an Adam, right?”

His hand slid down to her hip and Stefan pulled her more tightly against him. “It shouldn’t. There is no magic on earth that will hold an Adam, although Luka is an Adam and the virus infected him.” Even as he finished his sentence, she could see awareness dawn on his face as to why she was asking about the powers of an Adam—as he realized his grandmother was gone.

Her mouth was dry and she couldn’t find any more words to express what he already knew. Their eyes met, and the blossoming sorrow in his spoke volumes.

“Did she come to you?”

“I’m sorry, Stefan.”

The collar around her neck came alive and hit her with fifty thousand volts. Every muscle flexed and strained as the electricity pulsed through her. Her teeth clenched together and her body spasmed.

“No whispering, you two. Out loud so the whole class can hear.” A voice echoed over an intercom system.

“I’m going to kill you,” Stefan said conversationally.

“See that you try, Princeling. Zoranna will have to find you first, and you’ll be long dead by then. That pretty girl you’re holding is going to tear out your insides. Just like your mother.”

Stefan’s body tensed as if he’d been the one wearing the shock collar.

“Say you’re mine. Just say it,” she hissed.

“Why, so you can get the marking over with?”

“Trust me.”

“Don’t do it, Gypsy,” the voice warned.

“I’m yours,” Stefan declared in a defiant tone.

Just as the first phase of the mating bond clicked into place, another fifty-thousand volts shot through her. This time, it didn’t begin to ebb as soon as it hit. The jolt before had been a warning—this was a punishment.

Her beast could’ve combatted the pain easily, but the same collar that jolted her also kept her from turning. Her teeth clamped together; her whole body spasmed. A low guttural sound was torn from her as the volts kept coming.

Her toes curled, her fingers were knotted into claws and she began to convulse into unnatural poses.

“Enough!” Stefan demanded.

“You’ll wish she had that collar on when we let her change to mark you.”

“And you’ll wish for an easy death,” he returned.

The voltage stopped, but her flesh continued to contort and she could smell the scent of her own skin burning where the collar made contact. The wounds healed almost immediately.

The look on Stefan’s face was one of pure rage.

It was worth it.
Now we can talk without them hearing us or even knowing we’re talking.
Beth spoke across their new mind link.

What did Zoranna say to you?

That you’d need me while you ascended.

“Are you okay?” he said aloud.

“Yeah.” She nodded and slid from his lap, looking around the enclosure. Beth noticed cameras everywhere. “Looks like Big Brother is always watching, huh?”

“Seems to be the case.”

“What’s to stop you from disabling them? They don’t look rigged.”

“I thought that would be kind of obvious. They’ll shock you.”

Beth cast a glance over her shoulder. “So what if they do? I’m just a mark. An
asset
, I believe is how you thought of me? Doesn’t matter. I’ll heal.”

“Beth—”

“No.” She held up her hand to silence him. So much had come through the link when they’d joined. She’d wondered how he thought of her and now she knew. It was as if that bit of knowledge had been drawn to her like a magnet. She wanted it and it erupted to the forefront. Part of her wished she didn’t know, that she could stuff it back down inside of him so deep she never had to see it again.