Alphas of Black Fortune Complete Series (6 page)

Rules of the Tribe

(Alphas of Black Fortune: Part 2)

By Scarlett Rhone

They had been months at sea, and morale on the
Oso Armonia
was flagging badly. Though Kelly had known that the journey would be longer than any they had attempted before, he realized now that he had not been prepared, and his crew had not been prepared, for such a long time at sea. It was unnatural; even for humans, such a length away from land would have been difficult, but for bears it was worse. They were creatures of the forest and the mud and the fresh water. The ocean was particularly unkind to them, no matter the years they’d spent adjusting to its fickle temperament.

And having the tiger on board did nothing but exacerbate the situation. Kelly had released the man from the brig at Cressida’s urging, and Reza was a good enough sailor, but he was not of the den and he made that very clear. The open displays of aggression and refusal to submit to Kelly’s leadership put the entire crew on edge. He worked with them, ate with them, and slept in the crew bunks with them, but he refused to really count himself
with
them. Kelly wondered if Cressida could perceive it, or if being human kept her from understanding the delicate balance being maintained all around her.

Kelly didn’t ask. After their first tumble together there had not been another. Once she had learned what they were, she had put them both at arm’s length and kept them there. Kelly wondered if it was driving the tiger as mad as it was driving him. Months at sea without a woman’s touch would have been difficult enough, but to then
see
her there every day, to catch her scent on the wind as it buffed the sails, to know that she was in front of him but out of reach…

She slept in the crew bunk in a hammock of her own, and that was best. Kelly had very plainly laid claim to her; none of the other den members would harm her or try to claim her for himself. And they would stop Reza if he tried. But Kelly spent too many nights lying awake in his bed, convincing himself
not
to go down to the crew bunk and haul her out of her hammock, carry her back to his quarters and ravish her properly.

There were consequences to that, however, and not simply the possibility that she’d smack him and storm angrily out. Tension was high enough on the ship as it was; if the crew caught on that there was mating and they weren’t a part of it, even Kelly’s status as alpha might not be able to stop the eruptions of temper. The ship full of rampaging bears (and a tiger) would destroy itself quickly.

And so Kelly did his best not to gaze too long at Cressida as she climbed the rigging to patch the sails. Though just the movement of her legs encased in those leather trousers, the shift of her rounded buttocks and the stretch of her torso as she reached for the higher ropes was enough to drive his mind and body to lust. He forced himself to look away, instead taking in the view of open, endless water and the cerulean line of the horizon ahead of them, which seemed to go on and on forever from where he stood on the ship’s forecastle. They had been sailing, it seemed, towards that same glimmering line for months, and never gotten any closer. But Kelly was confident they would find their way. He had to be, for the sake of the den, and all the dreams the
Oso Armonia
carried.

The weather had been kind to them, at least. In this part of the world so prone to violent storms, the skies had been clear and the breezes had been generous. All of Kelly’s research, including his contacts in the East, spoke of the great cyclones that devoured ships whole. He had not mentioned those to his crew, though he suspected Reza was waiting for them, from the way the man stood at the railing and stared at the horizon sometimes, expression full at once of challenge and dread.

“Cap’n.” Kelly turned to find Cort standing beside him. He squinted in the bright sunlight, looking his carpenter over for a moment. The man looked thinner; he supposed they all looked thinner. Cort’s usually bright green eyes were dull.

“What is it?” Kelly asked.

“We’ve run almost out of salted beef,” Cort muttered. “And there are only five limes left. It’ll be porridge from tomorrow on.”

Kelly nodded and looked away again. “Do you think we should turn back?”

Cort didn’t answer him immediately. Kelly was grateful for it. A moment of deliberation meant that things were not so desperate that the crew would jump on any chance to give up.

“No,” Cort eventually said. “We’ve come too far.”

“I think so too.” Kelly nodded.

“We stand with you, Cap’n,” Cort assured him softly.

Kelly grimaced, but turned it into a wicked smile at the last moment and looked again at Cort. That familiar, determined expression was one he’d relied upon for years to relay confidence, and it didn’t fail him in that moment either. Cort smiled back, nodding, and turned to leave him.

Kelly decided, as he watched Cort descend the steps from the forecastle to the deck, that his only recourse now was to act as though they had reached their destination even if they hadn’t yet. He had to keep things moving forward. His only chance to forestall the death of hope and faith was to simply pretend they had already succeeded. With that in mind, he descended from the forecastle as well and called for Cressida to join him in his quarters below.

She’d done her best to avoid being alone with Kelly, which over the course of months at sea had proved quite a challenge. She had done the same with Reza, but that had been less difficult since he had withdrawn so completely from everyone aboard that half the time she couldn’t have said where he was, had she actually wanted to look at him. Like any feline, he seemed able to find hiding places even in this finite amount of space, and she envied him that gift. Despite her spectacular sense of balance, Cressida was struggling to maintain an even keel on this ship.

This ship of
bears
.

She was almost grateful that she’d only been told the truth well after they had left port, and that her choices had been to accept it somehow or to jump overboard of her own volition. Cressida had a powerful sense of self-preservation. So powerful it overwhelmed and then undermined, perhaps, her sense of reason. A ship of bears. And having seen it with her own eyes, she could not refute it. And being among them these long months had forced her to reconcile herself to it. Kelly could turn into a bear and Reza could turn into a tiger. Perhaps more accurately, they
were
these beasts, at least in part. She wanted no further details on that score. As it was, she slept each night in her hammock, besieged by feverish dreams filled with sprouting fur and shifting bones.

She walked into Kelly’s quarters to find him slouched against the edge of the long dining table, head bent over the map.

He was, she thought, still damnably attractive. Which was no small feat, at sea for so long. His dark hair was pulled back from his face and the laces of his shirt left untied, revealing a vee of sculpted chest and dark hair. Broad shoulders tapered to hips adorned with rapier and pistol, and when he hunched with his hands on the desk like that, the muscles in his arms shifted beneath the linen of his shirt.

She shook herself a little.
Bear
.

“Don’t tell me we’re lost,” she quipped, folding her arms beneath her breasts as she approached the table.

“I don’t see how you think we could get lost finding an island we’ve never found before,” Kelly muttered.

She frowned. “That doesn’t sound very confident, James.” And he, of all people, could not lose confidence. Not now.

“We need to talk about what’s going to happen when we get to the island,” he said.

Well, she’d rather he sound preemptive and ambitious than defeatist.

“All right.”

“I’m surprised the slave hasn’t told you already.”

She arched a delicate eyebrow. “He isn’t a slave, Kelly.”

Kelly shrugged, waving a dismissive hand. “I never expected it would be you, Cressida, but I was always going to need a human on this trip.”

She felt her stomach flip-flop, dread swelling all the way up from her toes right into her eyes as she looked at him. But she didn’t flinch or look away, just held herself still, feet planted, and gazed right back at him until
he
looked away, back down to the map.

“What does that mean?” she demanded.

“Well, I’m going to
tell
you,” he said, voice sharpening. “So don’t get hysterical.”

“Keep talking to me like that, James Kelly, and you will see hysterical, all right.” She glared at him and gave the pommel of her rapier a pat where it sat low on her left hip.

“It requires,” Kelly finally said with a deep sigh, looking at her again, “two shifters and a human.”

“To do what?”

“To acquire the jewel.”

“How?”

“I don’t know the details.” He held up his hands to forestall the protest that was right behind her teeth. “I’m sorry. All I know is that it will take three of us, and one of the three must be you. My information is limited. There will be challenges.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What sort of challenges?”

“I don’t imagine they will be more complicated than your average bear trap. They were constructed by primitives, after all.” He smirked, stepping away from the table’s edge, rounding its corner towards her. “But my agents in the East only barely speak the language of this place. Specifics are hard to come by. But I do know
someone
who could tell us exactly what we’re up against…”

To her surprise, he reached out, catching a stray lock of her hair and looping it about one finger. She blinked, watching the pale blond strands slide against his knuckle, and looked up into his face. His dark brown eyes were very serious.

She smacked his hand away from her. “You want me to ask Reza.”

“We need to know, Cress.”

“He won’t tell you, so you want
me
to…”

“Ask.”

She expected him to back up, but instead he reached for her again, and this time his hand landed on her hip, curling tightly. A breath caught in the back of her throat as he turned her slightly, pushing her up against the edge of the table.

Months and months and she’d not let him touch her.

“James, stop.” She flattened a hand on his chest, which stilled him, but he didn’t let go of her or step away. “You want me to
seduce
this information out of Reza? And you are seducing
me
into it?”

He smiled down at her. And it was an incredibly appealing smile, and she hated it and longed for it all at once. He bent his head close, lips brushing her cheek, breath warm at her ear.

“I can’t stop thinking about having you in my bed,” he whispered.

She felt her color rising. “James, we can’t.”

His hand slid up from her hip, beneath the hem of her shirt, fingers gliding over the skin of her waist towards the ladder of her ribs.

“I can control it,” he murmured as he kissed her jaw. “I can control myself, and my crew. You need to control the…tiger.”

“James, please…” It was hard for her to even listen to what he was saying like this. Cressida was not a woman accustomed to denying herself. She had built a life based on the notion that no woman should ever be
forced
into denying herself the things she wanted, and here she’d been stuck on this ship for months, desperately wanting either one of these men and stopping herself from having them both.

Damn Kelly. Damn him and his lips kissing the thrum of her pulse just below her jaw. Damn his hand, as it curved over her breast beneath her shirt, lightly squeezing. She caught a gasp between her teeth but couldn’t stop herself arching a little into him.

“That’s my girl,” he chuckled, lifting his head to catch her mouth with his in a kiss.

She sank headlong into it, her lips parting against his, and as their tongues twined and their breath mixed, she found herself pulling him against her. He lifted her onto the table and settled between her thighs, kissing her back down to the table’s surface.

“James,” she sighed, as the kiss broke and he began plucking loose the laces of her blouse and kissing down between her breasts. “I’ll ask Reza but I won’t go to bed with him.”

Kelly paused, his nose to her sternum, and then lifted his head to look at her. Dark eyes glimmered, interested but wary. “Why not? I know you desire him, Cress.”

She stared back at him, astonished for a moment, and then pushed him back by the shoulders and sat up, hastily tying up the front of her blouse. “Because I’ll not
deceive
him. Either I’m with you or I’m with him, Kelly.”

He’d stepped back when she pushed him, and grimaced, looking away a moment. And then, with a spark of temper igniting in her heart, she understood. He looked back at her when she scooted forward to the table’s edge.

“Cressida,” he said carefully. He must have seen the realization crawl over her face.

“That is precisely your plan, isn’t it, you dog?” she demanded, hopping off the table to the floor. “You intend to
share
me?”

“Not…well, I…”

“I will not be
passed back and forth
!” she cried, lifting a hand to strike him across the face.

He caught her wrist, though, before her palm made contact with his jaw. His grip was firm, and his eyes had gone hard in a second as he gazed down at her.

“I thought I’d be doing you a favor,” he muttered. “Since you seem incapable of choosing one of us on your own.”

She hissed him and yanked her wrist free of his hand. “You’re a bastard.”

He sighed and looked away. “Maybe I’d just rather have you any way I can get you, Cressida. Have you considered that? And maybe you have forgotten that I am a
pirate
, not a gentleman.”

“You will have me in exactly
no
way,” she told him, fury flushing through her body like boiling oil. She didn’t wait for him to make a witty riposte, just turned and stormed out of the captain’s quarters, slamming the door soundly behind her. Instead of going to the deck, where all the crew would be working or dicing or lying in the sun, she went further down, and to the crew’s shared quarters. She needed a moment to think, to work through this anger, because she knew that she could not hold onto it. The ship was too small to allow for a grievance such as this between herself and Kelly.

She had to get over it. Quickly. She might have his run through later, once they’d gotten to the island, gotten the jewel, and gotten her
Fortune
back. But now there was no use for such anger, or hurt. And though she was loath to admit it…it did hurt. She knew it had been foolish for her to assume that she’d meant more to him than a warm body between the sheets, but sometimes the way he
looked
at her…

She stormed into the crew quarters, shoving beneath the spiderweb of hammocks filling the space, to make her way over to her own berth. It was just a corner of the room, which the pirates had been generous enough to give her instead of forcing her to sleep in their midst. It wasn’t exactly private, but she felt more secure simply by having a wall at her back. It was the only thing she actually did
have
, after all. Her clothes, her sword, all given to her by James. Her very life, arguably, he had given her on loan when he took her off the slave block.

These long months, she’d thought more than once that perhaps she did love him.

“Idiot,” she muttered to herself. “Fool.”

“He’s the fool.” She jumped, turning at the voice, surprised to see Reza standing only a few feet away. As ever, she hadn’t even heard him walking towards her.

“Perhaps we are all fools,” she sighed, looking away from him. To the floor, the wall, anything. “What do you know of it?”

“I know that if I had you, I would never share you,” Reza murmured.

Her heart skipped a beat, but she refused to look at him still. Because she believed him. They had never spoken of it, not over the course of months at sea; never had either one of them mentioned the passion of their first night together. It hadn’t needed to be said. She saw that he wanted her whenever she looked at him. It sat naked in his clever green-gold eyes. Along with a predatory kind of hunger, a fierce intellect, and a seemingly perpetual, if quiet, agony.

It was the certainty of it that scared her, she thought. The same as Kelly’s ambiguity appealed to her, that Reza seemed so certain he wanted her was overwhelming in its turn. Being loved and loving, after all, could be the death of freedom. The demise of independence. For a woman, at least.

She knew that he drew nearer, then, because she could feel the warmth of him at her back, but he didn’t touch her.

“I wouldn’t lie to you, either,” he said softly.

“No?” She stared at her own feet. “Then tell me what we’ll find when we get to the island.”

“My people and the treasure whose shadow they’ve lived in for so long that none of them remember what it’s for.”

“Kelly said there would be challenges.”

She heard him sigh. “I’m not going to tell you how to get it.”

She turned sharply to look at him at last. “Why not? Reza, it’s been
months
. You know me now. You know that I won’t hurt your people, or let Kelly hurt them. I need this.”

He surged forward, his hands catching her by the waist, so quickly that all she could do was grab his arms. They were nearly nose to nose, and his fingers gripped her tightly, but she held his eyes and didn’t flinch. Those exotic, changing eyes, fierce even beneath the jagged fall of his dark hair, his face hard and smooth at once. She could feel the muscles in his arms flexing tightly, burning beneath her hands.

“It’s been months,” he said softly, looking into her eyes. “And you have been as much a prisoner on this ship as I.”

“I need the treasure,” she whispered, breathless.

“I will help
you
get it.”

She searched his eyes, tried to find the truth through the wildness blazing in their depths, but knew even as she did that she could not betray Kelly. He may not have loved her, but he had saved her. She’d seen the desperation in his eyes when he spoke of reuniting with the lost members of his family, his den. It had looked not unlike the desperation she saw now in Reza’s eyes. Both of these men longed for home so powerfully. Cressida had never had much of a home to long for, and all the homes she’d known had come with the weight of unwilling dependence.