Lovers' Tussle (9 page)

His brother did not choose to answer him with words. Instead he sprung forward, the maws of his beast gaping, and went straight for his throat, deadly paws going for his heart. This time there was not a moment for harmless evasion. Roth swiped again, fully intending on simply swatting the yawning jaws away. But at the last second he felt the hands of a foreigner on Tienna’s body. Apparently at that fatal second Aiden felt the trespass as well. A powerful rage consorted Aiden’s features, and his claws unsheathed. Aiden’s jaws snapped shut inches before his face. Roth’s eyes widened in stunned silence, as his chest was suddenly aflame.

Aiden yanked his claws back and away. But it was too late. His aim had been deadly, his weapon lethal, and the wound fatal. His gaze mirrored the stunned, horrified look in his brother’s eyes.

“
Oh God! What have I done?”

Roth stood motionless. “
Won.”

Aiden’s eyes never lost the sheen of disbelief even as his own glazed over. It was a mercy when they finally closed. Roth fell with a mighty crash, his gray coat no longer glorious. The red overpowered it, staining everything in matted darkness, and continued to spread its disease to the earth.

* * * *

Snowy-white fur caressed the ground, soaking the blood as Aiden dropped to his haunches. He nuzzled the fallen thick fur. It remained motionless. So very warm, yet so very still.
“Roth.”
He got no response. Aiden’s paws scratched at his brother, begging him, pleading for his return. He vowed to leave and never come back. He promised to hand over Tienna. He cried he would take Roth’s place in death. Dark silence greeted his oaths.

Tears gathered and trickled freely down his face. His entire frame shook with the force of his grief. And yet all he wanted to do was run. He had to get as far from this sin as he could. He had to flee his shame. But the Gods were unmerciful. They would not take him and send Roth back.

Grief turned to hatred, and that spewed forth into fury. He wanted to tear someone, something, anything to pieces. The rage spread through him until he frothed foam like a rabid dog. The swirl of emotion was dark, evil, and sent him spiraling over the edge of his sanity. With death in his nostrils, filling his lungs, and murder on his mind and damned soul, he rose slowly.

Tienna was frozen, staring at his fallen brother on the ground. But Aiden’s attention was on the man beside her. The man who had touched her for just that fateful moment. The man who had made him kill his own brother. He growled as he went straight for the villain’s jugular. Tienna screamed and dived out the way. Aiden brought his enemy down and panted breath as hot as the smoldering flames of hell in his face. Panicked eyes stared back at him. He smelled the man’s fear. It fueled his beast, the silent devil within him. It was his right to kill the man. But at the very last second, he lightened the blow, dragging his claws down his chest instead of tearing out his heart.

Leaving the man writhing on the ground, he stared at the edges of the forest. He could not bring himself to look at Tienna again. Her horror would be too much for him to bear. So he did not look her way as he leapt into the shelter of darkness. He kicked up dust and leaves as he flew to the hell he knew he would reside in forever. The tears blinded him, but he pushed on. He faltered only when he heard the sweet voice of his love.

“I’m sorry.”

But he knew she spoke not to him now. She spoke to his dead brother. Her mourning tore down all the walls of her mind and lashed out at him like the very whips of the demon. He stumbled but kept going as he echoed the apology, for which he knew he deserved no forgiveness.
“I’m sorry, brother.”
His howl to the still shining, uncaring moon was forlorn and grief-stricken. It was lonely. It was pained. It was the tortured cry from the soul of the damned.

* * * *

Tienna raised her head from the Roth’s chest. Anyone passing by would have thought she’d been the wolf who’d ravaged him. Her face was stained a deeper red with his blood. Her cheeks and muzzle were crimson, coated with his life’s essence. Well, if they had witnessed such a scene, they would not have lingered.

Brother?
She blinked down at Roth’s still form. She could not have possibly heard right. Aiden’s voice had cut straight into her head. She must have heard it because he had spoken to Roth. And Roth’s blood coated her palate. But there was no time to contemplate this new knowledge. She had work to do.

She had rushed to Roth’s side as soon as her paralysis had been broken by Aiden’s charging of Matthew. The first thing she had done was search for a pulse. No matter how faint, she needed one, for without it there was nothing she could have done. She was no miracle worker. Dead was dead, and nothing could bring life except God. But the devil had gifted his subjects with a blessing of his own, and while it was not nearly as powerful as the one of divine spirit, it was at least something. There had been a flutter against her fingertips. And she had set about her healing immediately, taking on her red-coated form as the devil’s advocate.

The other packs were so very primitive in their skills compared to her regal family. She had turned her attention to implementing that valuable talent and had never paused even as her whiskers had twitched, sensing Aiden’s departure.

She now did the same. Roth was, at this moment, knocking on death’s door. She just prayed that the strength of her saliva would be powerful enough to bring him back. Continuing from where she’d left off, she began to lick his wound once again. She worked fast, yet she remained meticulous. If a single vessel was left unsealed, even slightly, it would continue to bleed, or worse, become infected. And she would not even know that she had merely prolonged his death once the surface of his skin had been mended.

The taste of his blood was sweet and arousing, mighty even in the face of death. His scent was pure and intoxicating, alluring against the stench of decay. She struggled to keep her body’s reaction under control. She battled against the need to drink and drink until she drained him. Her body trembled from the effort. But she remained ruthless, fighting her own lusty, greedy demon who snapped within her, at her with snapping teeth. She licked, latching on to and savoring what his open injury offered freely. Sexual pleasure had no right here, not now, not for her. Ultimately it had been by her hand that Roth had fallen. Aiden, Matthew, they had been but actors on a stage, in a play she had orchestrated. This shame was hers to bear. And she would stop at nothing in undoing it.

Even as they had battled she had been consumed with the need to stop them. Matthew had interceded at the very instant she had decided to rush forward. There was no telling what exactly his intention had been. All she knew was that he wanted her, wanted the status she offered, and he was greedy enough to play dirty. The imbecile who had made the mistake of laying his hand on her was still moaning and writhing like a baby. He deserved his fate, if not more. Aiden had been merciful, a gentleman. Had it been Roth, she was sure Matthew would have taken his last, chilled breath tonight. Here again she was to blame. She never should have made her plans known to the pack, and she certainly should have been more astute about being followed.

She sighed softly as she slumped and rubbed the side of her face lovingly along the thick mane of fur. His muscles were relaxed and tender beneath her touch. Each gentle touch, each swipe of her red-stained tongue, she had poured all her regret, her hope, her love into it. He had to survive. She could not live without him.

Finally, the dim light of false dawn threatened to break. She inspected her handiwork in the light of this new day. His luxuriant coat was still horribly stained, lightened to a soft pinkish gray by her constant laving. His heartbeat was faint, and he remained motionless. But the bleeding had ceased. Each breach in his precious body had been mended. And he was alive. The battle was no longer in her hands.
“Fight, Roth. You are a warrior, so fight your way back to me.”

She remained by his side even as two members of her pack arrived at her silent call. They glared at her, allowing their disgust at her cowardice to be fully displayed, but did her bidding nevertheless. She would face the wrath of her father later. Now she would have to turn Roth’s care over to his brother. That was the face deserving of Roth’s first glimpse. She said a silent prayer as she helped load his still body into the open cart her pack members had arrived with, praying that just this once God would answer the pleas of a damned soul.
Please wake up, Roth. Your brother needs you. I need you.

Chapter 5:

The Union

Slumped over in the chair and smelling like something had crawled into his shirt and died, Aiden struggled to keep his eyes open. Realizing that the time span between each self-inflicted, forceful shake had vastly diminished, been overtaken by the time he spent unintentionally dozing, he finally pushed up from the chair. Sitting was getting him nothing but a quick invitation through the yawning doors to the land of dreams. He ran his hand over his fatigued face and blew out a breath of exasperation. The action did nothing to console him. Three days’ worth of hair scraped against his palms, and the odor from beneath his unwashed armpits was overpowering.

He turned his attention back to his still patient on the bed. Nestled against plain-white sheet and pillow casing, Roth’s healthy coat should have been a striking contradiction to the background. But he was still much too pale. It had been three long, exhausting days since his arrival, yet nothing had changed.

When Tienna had turned up on his doorstep just past daybreak, leading two antagonistic men who carried a precious burden, he had been plunged into another dark, scorching hell. He had not only killed his brother, but he had left his body lying in an open field for the feeding of buzzards. The sins of a single night had added up at such an alarming rate, everything else in his life seemed like he’d been as innocent as a green-eared virgin. He had taken his brother’s still wolf form into his arms with a broken utterance of gratitude. But then Tienna had said something that had lit the dank corners of his personal hell into a bright, warm paradise. Roth was alive.

The first question that had popped into his mind after a heartfelt thank-you sent to God and every other divine being had been
How?
Tienna’s emerald eyes, jeweled further with diamond-studded teardrops, had blinked just once before she’d turned and fled. He’d stood at the open doorway of his opulent Grosvenor Square town house with his brother, who was supposed to be dead by his hand, in his arms, and watched the angel who’d brought him back fly away, once again beyond his reach. Her flee had been punctuated by the growls of her companions before they also beat a hasty retreat. And since then, nothing.

Tienna had not come back. She threw a wall up against any communication he had tried to form with her in her mind. He hadn’t the freedom to hunt her down due to his responsibility that tied him to his house. But for a person miraculously brought back from the grips of death, Roth had yet to stir.

The first day, he bathed his brother’s luxurious coat, stained as deeply as his own soul, until the fur had been once again transformed into the prolific sheen that could have rivaled even the brushed down coat of a prized gray. Yet while he had restored Roth’s mighty appearance to its former glory and dignity, the hue of meek, weak stillness tainted his aura. But that had come after he stood and simply stared at Roth in shock. The open wounds were still evident, but in the form of scars—fully sealed. Not a trace of blood seeped into his white sheets. How was that possible?

He had lingered the rest of the day by his brother’s side and the night that had followed, fending off sleep while dribbling wine infused with his own blood down Roth’s throat with a teaspoon. His brother needed nutrition, and blood offered more than anything else ever could from this world. The second day had passed with the repeat of the ritual bathing and endless waiting. And yet again there had been no satisfaction for his efforts beyond the warm breath he frequently tested for behind Roth’s bone-dry nostrils.

Then he’d reached the afternoon of the third day, and finally there’d been a change in Roth. Sadly, it had not been a noticeable improvement in his condition. The wolf form had simply melted away, leaving in its wake Roth’s dark, naked human profile. Aiden had remained by his side after throwing a sheet liberally over the now scorching body, expecting him to open his eyes anytime. That anytime, however, had elapsed into one hour and then another until the sun had sunk so far west it had left his world in shadows. There had been no further development, at least nothing with regard to Roth.

He, however, was not faring very well. The strain he’d placed on his body was taking its toll. His stomach rumbled like thunderous clouds for fresh, warm flesh, his shrunken veins screamed their thirst for even a droplet of sustaining blood, and sleep threatened each blink of his eyes. Furthermore, while he had paid careful attention to bathing Roth’s body, keeping him infection free, he had afforded little consideration to his own. He stank so badly it was a miracle on its own that Roth did not rise simply on the pungent, offensive fumes he emanated.

The excitement of this miracle had long since worn off. The questions he held had faded into the void that now occupied his mind. The only thing he kept chanting over and over, like a mantra echoing in an empty chamber, was “Roth, please wake up.” But Roth did not respond, and neither did the Gods. There would be no escaping this sin. His brother was not going to suddenly recover. He turned and eyed the decanter carefully laid on a table at Roth’s bedside. Perhaps he should increase the blood portion to the potion.