Fear the Heart (Werelock Evolution Book 2) (11 page)

“You’re a sweet girl, Milena.” I felt his warm, dry palm land atop my bare knee. “Don’t let the blood curse change you. Hold onto your humanity.”

I didn’t understand what he meant by that, but by the time I’d regained my bearings enough to request clarification, he’d already collected his things and left.

As I replayed our interaction in my head, I wondered what in the world had gotten into me. I’d been a breath away from throwing myself at Kai before he’d doused the flames of my wantonness by bringing up his dead wife! What had I been thinking?

And why in God’s name was I suddenly feeling so horny?

***

I moped around Alcaeus’ house for a bit, searching from room to room until I found Guadalupe in an upstairs sitting room, crying her eyes out watching episodes of
Avenida Brasil
on DVD. She explained it was the story of a girl seeking revenge on her mother for abandoning her as a child to live in a landfill. She was quick to point out it was also a love story, though, as the girl had met the hunky love of her life in said landfill.

Hmm. I’d barely grasped the plot lines of the few American soap operas I’d ever attempted to watch. This one sounded well over my head.

When I asked her if I might help out with anything around the house, she said I could help by eating lunch with her just as soon as the episode she was watching was over.

As the Brazilian soap opera played out on the small screen in front of me, I saw none of it, my mind drifting to thoughts of Alex, wondering where he was and what he was doing. I couldn’t smell him anywhere in the house. I kept picturing him in my memory as he’d looked in Alcaeus’ study when he’d gently encouraged me to throw him through more walls. My she-wolf had found that particular offer of his terribly romantic.

I was so fucked.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I ate steak for lunch, resigned to the fact my days as a vegetarian were over. Guadalupe and I sat across from one another in a little dining room off the kitchen. While we ate, I asked her about the Rogue Missions in America Alcaeus had mentioned earlier that both Mateus and Raul had apparently taken part in. I got the sense those missions were critically important to Alcaeus and the others for some reason. Unfortunately, I’d fallen asleep before I could glean what they were about.

Guadalupe explained that rogue werewolves were considered an unnatural, defective form of the species. She claimed they were unruly creatures, incapable of assimilating and adapting to the pack law other werewolves lived and survived by. They were the ultimate of loners and discards.
Supernatural outcasts
.

“They lack obedience. They have no innate drive to belong or seek acceptance from a pack.”

“Sounds like a good quality, given the circumstances,” I muttered. “I think I’ll be a rogue.” Turning into a dog was one thing.
No way was I joining a Cujo pack.

She snorted and bobbed her head. “You’re thinking like a human still. Wait. Your needs will change.”

“I very much doubt that.”

She shrugged. “I look forward to saying, ‘told you so.’ You won’t be a rogue, Miles. And you wouldn’t want to be one. Theirs is not a happy existence.”

“Can’t be worse than being mated to Alex,” I grumbled over the steak in my mouth.

“That
I might agree with,” she said with a solemn nod of acknowledgement that was not at all reassuring. “But all rogue werewolves eventually go insane and self-destruct. And when they do”—she paused, her eyes abandoning focus—“they do terrible things,” she finished quietly.

She looked lost in her own thoughts. A quick shudder ran through her small frame as I asked, “Why do they go mad?”

The green eyes that returned to me were blank. Her tone was equally emotionless as she told me, “Even though they have a lesser need to belong, they still crave some basic level of connection. Ultimately, they go mad without it.”

I was almost afraid to ask. “So … what happens on the Rogue Missions?”

“They track down reported rogue werewolves, kill them, and eliminate all loose ends related to their existence and destructive behavior.” She said this as if she were reporting on the weather, and proceeded to cut into her steak.

My jaw found the tabletop.

“Every pack does it, Miles.” She raised a cynical brow along with her shoulders. “It’s not a practice exclusive to the Reinoso clan.”

I lost what was left of my appetite as she went on to relay that because rogues were viewed as possessing the potential to expose and endanger all other werewolves through their unpredictable and uncontrollable behavior, they were routinely, systematically snuffed out across the globe by all werewolf packs in the name of preserving the status quo and upholding the greater good.

“But if every werewolf and werelock pack does it, why would Alcaeus worry about the Rogue Mission being compromised by Raul’s
alleged
defection? Why would he care about that information being shared with the Salvatella clan?”

“Because”—she raised her fork—“he’s hunting for the fabled
Rogue
who will beget all rogues. They’re searching for
the Rogue
.
”

I was unable to stifle my groan. “Another prophecy?” I guessed.

She nodded and rolled her eyes in commiseration, before going on to reveal the werewolf legend about a mythical
Rogue
, the prophesied firstborn of a new and errant breed of werewolf, whose rise to power, it was foretold, would herald the extinction of the human race.

Awesome.
I needed more good news today.

“Prophecy says that a rogue werewolf will come to be that is unique from all other rogues before it,” she imparted, “and that this fabled
Rogue
will be capable of long-term survival on its own in a manner in which no other rogue was ever successful before.”

“So it won’t go mad just because it’s a loner?”

“No. It will require absolutely no communion with others and will suffer no ill effect for lack of it.”

“Why does that have to be a bad thing? Maybe it’ll just be a shy, hermit-type and keep to itself,” I proposed hopefully. “Why do they assume it’ll destroy humankind?”

She laughed without humor and gave me a look that said I had a lot to learn about this new world I didn’t want any part of. “It is also prophesied that the
Rogue
will be consumed by the darkest of forces. That its power will be unbeatable, its reign of terror on the world unstoppable.”

We fell silent as Guadalupe resumed her meal. It was all too much to contemplate.
Even harder to fathom Raul ever wanting to be a part of such awful missions.

I decided to change the subject and tell her about what Kai had brought up about his deceased mate while doing my blood draw—omitting the fact that he’d “brought it up” only because I’d gotten so aroused by his presence that I’d boldly inquired after his availability.

Guadalupe’s eyes lit with excitement, and she needed no further provocation from me to dish the goods on Kai. She confirmed Kai was indeed the anomaly, divulging that he’d been completely celibate since his wife Maribel’s passing—which was now going on a century!

She said Alcaeus had long ago taken to referring to Kai as the pack’s priest and that most of the pack thought of him as asexual, treating him as if he were a eunuch at this point—explaining why Alex and Alcaeus trusted him above all other male members of the pack to look after me.

Her eyes took on a dreamy quality as she confessed she’d had a secret crush on Kai for a good part of her adult life, and that it was her staunch opinion he was an “autosexual” rather than an “asexual.”

Autosexual? “What’s an autosexual?”

“An autosexual practices self-love,” she informed me, “choosing self-gratification over sexual activity with others. Whereas an asexual is viewed as not having a sex drive at all.”

Huh.

“I happen to know for a fact Kai is the former rather than the latter,” she boasted, a self-satisfied smirk dominating her features as she stabbed her last bite of steak.

I took the bait. “How?”

“For one, I know a woman who made out with him forty-eight years ago,” she disclosed, her eyes dancing with mischief. “And for two, he was sporting a major
stiffy
as he bolted from your bedroom this afternoon.”

My eyes flew wide and I channeled my late Great-Aunt Felicia. “No way!”

“Way!” she cackled.

I blushed and stuttered that perhaps she hadn’t seen what she thought she saw.

She snorted. “I know a stiffy when I see one.”

I chose to switch topics rather than discuss Kai’s supposed erection any further. I told her what Kai had said to me about not allowing the blood curse to change me.

“What do you suppose he meant by that?”

She quirked one brow and slid her empty plate aside. “Do you not remember launching several old-ass werelocks through walls this morning?”

“Oh … that.” I cleared my throat. “Yeah, sorry about that. I’ll clean up the mess.”

“Please,”—she waved a flippant hand—“like I give two fucks. Most of the repairs were made before you even awoke from your nap. I’m referring to how easy it was for you to get swept up in your rage. Am I right? I’ll wager you barely noticed the destruction you were causing until it was too late?”

I nodded, ashamed of my actions. I’d never been a violent person before. “Will you tell me what you know about the blood curse?”

I’d learned enough from my brief time with Guadalupe to know she knew far more than she likely ever let on to most. And while she hadn’t yet shared her full history with me, I knew that she’d come to live as part of the Reinoso pack at the age of sixteen, that she’d been friends with Mateus, and that she’d been close to Hector in his final two years of life.

She sighed, hesitating a moment. “Joaquin meant for his blood to protect you, that I do know. But let’s face it, he was also a man just a little bit”—she raised her brows and her pitch as she made the classic cuckoo gesture next to her head—“demented by grief, not to mention driven by bloodthirsty vengeance, when he designed this great blood curse of his.”

I cringed as her meaning sank in. Lord, she was right! I’d inherited the machinations of a madman.

“A curse dressed in noble intentions is still at heart a curse.” She took my hand in hers across the table and turned it palm up, running her fingertips along the underside of my wrist up my forearm.

“It is a dark,
dark
magic that runs through your veins now, Miles. And it will consume you.” Her piercing green eyes searched my features, gauging my comprehension. “It will
use
you,”
she stressed, “to exact the revenge it is naturally inclined to seek.
If
you let it.”

My stomach dropped through the floor. I had felt it—the foreign, yet familiar pain; the ancient beast of fury that begged to be unleashed to exact its vengeance. It was the elemental force behind the curse. Driving it.
Feeding it.

“It’s the very last thing Hector would have wanted for you.” Her eyes softened with sadness, crinkling at the corners. “That I also know. Your grandfather saw his family torn apart.
Literally.
By those Salvatella savages,” she hissed. “He witnessed firsthand what greed and hatred bore, and he wanted no part of it. He wanted peace.”

She took both of my hands between hers, squeezing them together. “He wanted all the hate to die with Joaquin, not be resurrected through a blood curse to live on in perpetuity through his grandbabies.”

But it was too late. The curse was within me now. I could sense it. Lurking within the darkest corners of my psyche. Waiting.
Wanting.

“But what can I do? I tried to give it away. Alcaeus won’t keep it. Neither will Alex or Remy. I can’t understand why none of them will just take it from me if they love power so much. I don’t even want it!”

“Honey, it’s a part of you now. It lives and dies with you. There’s no way to give it away.”

“But there has to be a way,” I argued. “There’s always a way!”

“No.” She shook her head. She opened her mouth to speak, then paused, her eyes darting around the room. When she spoke again, her voice was a whisper. “Joaquin told Hector he fashioned this curse to ensure that it could never be taken from him or his progeny.
Never.”

Her eyes flashed meaningfully. “There’s not a werelock alive who can take it from you, Miles. That’s why Hector didn’t want any of his kin turned. He knew it would unleash the curse, and that the curse would then remain within his lineage forever.”

“But I don’t want to change! Not like that. I don’t want to be consumed by anger and hate.”

“Then don’t let it change you,” she stated simply, very much as Kai had, as if it were a no-brainer. “Use the blood curse to your advantage. Use it for protection, for the noble purpose Joaquin convinced himself it would serve. Don’t allow it to use you.”

“But what if I can’t? What if I can’t control it?”

“You can. You will.” She gave my hands one final squeeze, a sad smile gracing her lips. “You’re not the grandchild of Hector I worry about.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Alcaeus returned to the house late in the evening. Shortly thereafter, Alex came by to personally deliver my things. It was a little disconcerting how positively thrilled my inner wolf was to scent him. But even more disturbing was the realization of how excited
I
was to see him.

Along with my belongings, Alex brought me a new iPhone and gave me his number so that I could call him, should I need anything. To my surprise, he said I could use the phone to place international calls as well, in case there was anyone I wanted to get in touch with back home. My mind was soon racing, pondering whom to contact first and questioning why they would allow me free access to call anyone I wanted to in the first place.

But then it dawned on me—what on earth would I say? Who would believe any of it? More to the point, who could help me, anyway?
Did I even want to be saved?