Weremones (35 page)

The dominant female laughed. Her full breasts were tight with the need from her heat and strained against the fabric of her too small tee shirt.

“You’ve killed everyone that matters to me already, besides my sister,” she growled. “This one was promised to us already.”

“He wasn’t your leader’s to promise. He belongs to me.”

The female made a strangled sound in her throat. She stood, dragging both Brandon and her sister up with her.

“No. Garrick promised me a fertile mate. He promised me this one. We
know
he’s capable. He’s mine, and Dresilla’s,” she added her sister’s name on when the female growled her protest.

Brandon shuddered.

“No,” he said softly. “No, no, no.”

Brandon’s breath came in short pants that brought a fresh whiff of the females’

scent with each intake. He didn’t want to want this. This was his embarrassment and shame. Wolves didn’t mix with coyotes, Adam said.

He concentrated on the acrid scent of the fire. The bitter scent of Sheila’s hairspray as she bent close. Her hands in his hair made his skin crawl. The sick sweet smell of her perfume made him sick to his stomach. No, the female did that all on her own. Dresilla’s sharp claws raked across his hip, leaving hot lines in their wake, marking him like she did during sex. Only then she drew blood.

“Garrick’s promises died when he died.” Adam’s voice came through the haze of his fear and disgust. “Let him go.”

Brandon struggled. He didn’t want to disappoint Adam even more.

No. He wouldn’t lie still and let them do it again. Dresilla smacked him on the butt, digging her claws in for extra punishment.

He heard Adam, only not the words. He felt the anger, felt his own. The heat of the emotion burned through him, drawing the supernatural power from the place hidden within him. Brandon wouldn’t let them do this. Never. Again.

This time, Brandon didn’t merely let the monster out of its cage. He embraced it.

He changed. Adrenaline lent him speed and physical energy. His jaws found and closed on his tormentor’s flesh.

The wolf didn’t understand the shouts around him. Only escape. He snapped. He lunged. He bit. Finally, he slipped loose and found a bolthole, a place to stay out of the way while the alphas fought.

When the fighting stopped the only sounds were the cries and whimpers of the wounded and subdued coyotes. Crouched under a car amid the scents of fire, blood, death, and ready females, the smallest of the wolves hid and trembled. He watched it all.

He tried to think, to focus on what the lead alpha, a pale two-legged wolf whose magic tugged at him, said. The words were simply noises used by two-legged humans.

He was afraid. He was a four-legged wolf now. He crawled deeper under his hiding space and whined, wanting the four-legged alpha wolf to come for him.

When the other two-legged wolves bent to reach for him, he snapped at their human paws and darted out from under the space that wasn’t safe anymore.

The smallest wolf remembered that he was supposed to run to the trees. So he did.

He ran and ran, all the way
home,
where he was safe.

“Brandon!”

Adam reined in the urge to find and comfort the fleeing wolf. There was still work to be done. Benjamin Gates lay dead by his hand, exactly as planned. As Adam expected, the trauma of the last few days was too much for the boy.

Before the boy changed, Adam had sensed a difference in him. The boy had exploded in a fury of fur and fire. It had been one of the fastest changes Adam had witnessed.

Once Brandon freed himself of the females’ clutches, he’d hightailed it, literally, under a car. There the boy stayed until the wolven tried to coax him from under the car.

“Damn kid nearly took off my finger,” Chase complained while dragging another body to the fire. The fight hadn’t taken more than ten or fifteen minutes.

The flames were still burning bright and hot consuming more of the building.

When it was done, there would be nothing left of the bar. Adam intended for the dead to be part of that nothing.

Adam flicked his eyes over the able bodied werecoyotes. It was cruel, but had to be done.

“Those of you that can move, get to work. The fire department may be slow, but they will be here soon.”

He bent and grabbed Benjamin Gates’ body to heft over his still good shoulder.

Tank’s dark hand covered his. The warden gently pulled the carcass from his alpha.

“Allow me, Canis. I will make sure he burns.”

Adam nodded, biting back the nausea from his injuries and the silver poisoning.

“Move it people!” Chase urged the werecoyotes on with their grisly task. “Fire truck’s coming! If you don’t want to be here when it shows up, you’d better get moving.”

Adam watched the last of the bodies tossed into the building. The flames covered enough of the front so that the last one was a difficult throw battling the heat and smoke.

Chase took the body away from the were and chucked it inside.

This wasn’t the first time Adam had to do something horrible to protect his pack.

He looked around. Now the stakes were higher.

He watched the building burn and realized that whatever it took, whatever he had to do to keep his pack, all of them, safe, he would do it.

A deafening
boom
shook the ground. Everyone dropped, taking cover where they could. Adam looked up, seeking out his two wardens. His gut clenched.

“Tank! Chase!”

Damn, he couldn’t hear past the ringing in his ears.

Ash and pieces of the bar rained down around him, catching in the dry brush and trees of the woods. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye.

Chase waved at him to come, then pointed down the road. Flashing lights were making their way slowly up the road. Adam chose the better part of valor and followed his warden into the trees. Here and there, small brushfires flared up.

The forest. Adam’s gut clenched at the new danger. He glanced around, but he didn’t even have a shirt to beat out flames with.

“I should have kept a closer eye on the boy. I thought they were surrendering. The female’s scent …”

Tank’s distress over Brandon made Adam pause and rest his good hand on the big man’s shoulder for comfort.

“Just say it.” Chase’s eyes were hard amber bits. “They were a couple of sneaky bitches.”

Adam started to shake his head and stopped short. His broken collarbone made movement almost impossible. He’d have to change soon to jump-start the healing process.

He prayed that the fire department would concentrate on the forest. Aside from the wildlife and the trees, there were human homes a few miles away. A fire could travel fast.

Adam’s eyes blurred. He focused again on the small fires and watched it fizzle out in a small cloud of steam. Small multicolored sparkles flew around the extinguished fire and up into the trees.

He turned his attention back to his pack. Mentioning the sparkles or the extinguished fire might have Tank fussing more over the silver poisoning.

“Don’t blame yourself. Either of you.” Adam blamed himself enough for all of them. “Anything can happen in a fight. You do the best you can at the time.”

They watched the fire truck from the safety of the trees. Tank fussed over Adam’s wounds until he growled and snapped at the big man to leave off. The volunteer firemen made a big show spraying the surrounding area so that the fire wouldn’t spread.

“You’re lucky, wolf. Between the fire department and my people, the fire won’t spread.”

Tank and Chase closed ranks around their leader and faced the intruder with bared teeth. Fighting claws ran out like switchblades on the warden’s hands.

Jarred Morgan held his hands out in the universal sign of peace. He looked very different without his dorky cowboy getup. A gauzy sheet wrapped around his body similar to a toga or ancient Greek style. He still wore the black-framed glasses.

Adam finally figured out what the scent was that eluded him.

“You’re an elf,” he accused. A fairie lord. Adam really didn’t want to mess with fairies, anytime. Never mind when he was wounded.

Morgan smiled. He glanced up at the sparkles that coalesced over his head. Scent and closer inspection by the wolven revealed a humming mad swarm of fairies.

“Mostly an elf,” Morgan corrected. “I told you I’m mixed. The purebreds in the courts hate it when we mongrels think we’re good enough to associate with them.”

Tank and Chase relaxed their stances a little. Enough not to offend a fairie lord, but not enough to jeopardize Adam’s safety.

Adam wondered how long he’d have to chat before he could go curl up somewhere and tend to his wounds. Would it insult Morgan if he emptied his stomach in the bushes? The silver was making him
very
nauseous.

“Take your Pack Father home, gentlemen.” Jarred Morgan stepped back into the trees and disappeared. Fairie folk were more at home in nature than wolven. “The fire will not spread any further. The county has been trying to shut down this place for a long time. They’ll be happy it’s gone.”

Adam wanted to stay. He managed to wait until the fire was out. The water hoses made puddles that the volunteer men stomped through until the parking lot was a muddy mess.

The county sheriff showed up and made it a point to canvass the area by flashlight, looking for anything suspicious. Adam didn’t care what the final verdict was, so long as the wolven were left out of it. While the sheriffs made notes in their notebooks and talked to the volunteer firemen, Tank finally pressed Adam to Change.

The wolven slowly headed for home, followed by a sprinkling of colored fairie light.

Diana stirred awake. In the dim lamplight, the gleam of wolven eyes watched from the corner of the room. Intent and hungry, she saw the visage of the predator that had hunted other predators earlier tonight. She wasn’t afraid.

“You’re back.”

She didn’t see any obvious injuries until he came closer, accepting the silent invitation to join her. Closer inspection revealed the weary strain in the lines around his eyes. His normally fluid movements dragged.

“You’re hurt.”

She’d prayed for him to come back alive and well. Oh yes, she’d fumed and vowed to rip Adam Weis a new one for taking Brandon into that mess. But he was back now and she couldn’t wait to touch him to see for herself that he was okay.

Adam rolled one shoulder in answer before using that arm to pull off the tee shirt he’d donned after his shower.

He’d wanted to come to her immediately, but had to get rid of the stink of blood and death and vengeance first. He’d made do with a phone call, telling Diana the basics and assuring her over and over again that the kid wasn’t hurt.

The sweatpants came off next.

She swallowed at the pink lines of shredded tissue healing on his torso. The mass of scar tissue on his collarbone was eerily similar to her shoulder bite, only much worse.

Her mind blanked of everything but the thought of how she might have lost him.

“I stayed up and waited.”

It was so late and even though she felt better, her own healing injuries dragged her energy level down. She’d fallen asleep listening for his truck.

Nude, he crawled into the bed careful of jostling her. Diana leaned back as he covered her gently with his body, settling between her legs. One armed, he held himself away from her chest. His other hand gently traced her features as she tried to decipher his feelings. He was shut down tight against intrusion.

“Adam.”

“Shhh. No words.”

His head descended. The clean mint of his toothpaste mixed with the flavor that was uniquely Adam filled her mouth. She matched him stroke for stroke, their tongues mimicking the act of lovemaking.

Heat filled her belly. Her breasts tightened, ached for his touch. She moaned, trying to pull him down so that they lay flush.

He slid down. His fingers made quick work of her pajama top buttons. Brushing a brief yet tender kiss near the healing chest wound, he buried his face between the full breasts that teased him constantly. Her wonderful tits played a major role in his dreams and fantasies.

Citrus and vanilla surrounded him with the feeling of peace, of homecoming.

All he could think of while getting his pack settled at home was getting here. To Diana, his haven. He
needed
her. His mate. Needed her so badly that he could not chance her glimpsing his emotions and pushing him away.

Diana moaned as he suckled her breast, threading her fingers through his hair. A direct line of heat shot from her breast to her womb, which contracted in sheer pleasure.

A hot work roughed hand replaced his mouth when he switched breasts.

Adam didn’t just suck her nipple. He feasted. Rolling the berry tip around with his tongue, he scraped her sensitive skin with his teeth. The opposite nipple, he plucked with his fingertips. She was the perfect dessert.

Diana keened in ecstasy, writhing upwards against him.

God, she needed this. Instinctively, she reached out with her gifts, to share the pleasure. A blank wall met her efforts. She was as blind as any normal human woman to her man’s innermost feelings.

In a way, it was freeing. She only knew what he showed her with his body. And his body said that Diana Ridley was sexy and arousing. Her hands traced over the roadmap of the battle.

Thank God, they healed so fast. She was too attached to him by far.

Adam rolled over and her thoughts scattered. Her pajama bottoms had disappeared without her realizing it. Now, she sat straddled over her very own werewolf lover.

He stretched his arms over his head. In a tiny fantasy, she could imagine him bound, a slave to her whim.

She felt powerful. Bold. Desirable.

A smile tugged at her mouth for the delicious body on display. Wide muscular shoulders, defined pecs, and a six pack abdomen were perfect to drool over.

Diana danced her fingers over the valley that divided his body. Fine, pale hair made an almost invisible trail down. His staff nestled against the crack of her behind, teasing her. So close she ached for him.