BAD BOY ROMANCE: DIESEL: Contemporary Bad Boy Biker MC Romance (Box Set) (New Adult Sports Romance Short Stories Boxset) (142 page)

“I’m here to take care of unfinished business,” she said, still looking at me. Kurt curled his lips back and snarled. Sarelle looked down at him as if she only noticed him now, and afterthought. I was suddenly scared she would do something, but she made a small ‘hmm’ sound and then drew her eyes back to me.

“I want a duel,” she said, speaking to me now. “Me and you.”

I wanted to shake my head, but Reid spoke before I could react.

“You cannot challenge my mate without challenging me. And if you challenge me you fight for my place as alpha. You realize what this means?”

I knew what this meant. It meant that she wasn’t allowed to fight me unless she fought and beat him. And if she did fight him, it would be to the death. That was the rule when you challenged an alpha. It wasn’t like any other werewolf fight, where there may be mercy.

“I don’t have any quarrel with you,” Sarelle said, looking at Reid. I thought she would hold his banishment against Reid. Maybe she was blaming me for that too.

She took a step closer to me and I felt her anger wash over me. It was terrifying. I knew that if we came face to face now she wasn’t just going to try draw blood like she had the first time. This wasn’t the first time Sarelle and I had had our differences, but it was the first time I saw the promise of death in her eyes. It made me go cold.

As one being the other wolves stepped closer, too. They were in the circle now, the power flowing and linking up until I could feel them all, interlinked, one being, one unit. And they were all against her. If she moved, they would move. If she attacked me, they would attack her. The tension built until it was so thick around us I could run my fingers through it like water.

Sarelle must have felt it, too, because she stopped and looked around her.

“You’re not welcome here,” Reid said and his voice was full of authority. The tension in the air was making it hard to breathe. Maybe I was the only one struggling with it.

She looked like she wanted to say something to Reid, but then she turned her face back to me.

“Don’t think I haven’t seen him watching you. I know you think you’re safe now that you have someone watching your back even when Reid’s gone, but you won’t be protected forever. And when that happens, I’m going to be there. And you’ll wish you were one of us.”

She turned and marched out of the circle. The tension drained with her until the clearing felt empty, like we’d all already left.

“What is she talking about?” I asked Reid.

He looked at me and shook his head. “We’ll talk about it later,” he said. He didn’t want to discuss personal matters in front of the pack. But I wanted to know. It wasn’t like he didn’t discuss personal matters with them behind my back, it was just a matter of looking like he was the head of our house.

“Who has been protecting me, Reid?” I asked. The other wolves squirmed. The moon was getting to them. I gave it five minutes and they were going to lose control. They had to hunt. They had to take blood to gain full control over their wolves again. Our little family dispute was stopping them. But I was suddenly upset.

Reid had made it sound like I could take care of myself. Until he’d come home a few weeks ago I’d thought I could. First he’d made it clear I wasn’t ready to face a werewolf. Then he’d stopped the challenge from happening before I got to answer, and now I found out that I was being watched by someone.

And he hadn’t told me.

I was angry. Angry and upset and scared. Sarelle had all but promised to kill me. But it was in her eyes. They were soulless black pits, reflecting nothing. And I was the target of that merciless stare. If she found me I wasn’t sure I would make it. It made me feel on edge, and the last thing I needed when I felt on edge was Reid keeping secrets from me.

“Reid,” I said again when he didn’t answer me. But he shook his head, and brought on the change.

The idea that he’d gotten someone to watch me without my knowing just made me feel like I looked like a coward because I wasn’t going to fight my own battles. And I already looked weak because I was just human.

Usually he waited until all the others had changed during full moon. He kept control of them, made sure they didn’t lose it. He knew what losing control was like. But he was running away from me like a coward, refusing to stay in human form where he could answer to me. And that just made everything worse.

The moment he was in wolf form Kurt walked up to him and sniffed his nose. The others had started changing as well, and the air filled with the grunts and groans and yelps that came with the change. When they were all in wolf form Reid threw his head back and howled. Kurt joined in, and only when he did, did the others join too. They were already accepting him as part of the pack. I knew that later they would all do the wolf’s equivalent of bowing before it him, but that would happen after the hunt. Reid had explained.

It was natural. It hadn’t been with me. I was suddenly angry. And jealous. It had replaced the fear, but it was still there lurking behind the emotion. When they all ran into the trees, Kurt’s silver form slicing through the tree next to his father’s wheat colored wolf, I was left behind feeling deserted, rejected, alone.

I turned and walked back to the house. A shadow slipped through the trees, so fast I thought I’d imagined it. But then a faint sliver of magic slid over my skin and I knew I wasn’t alone.

I stopped, trying to control my breathing that suddenly came in quick gasps. If Sarelle came at me now it was over.

But nothing happened. If it was Sarelle she was biding her time. But her words echoed in my head.

Someone out there was watching me.

Chapter 4

Reid

Sarelle knew that I’d gotten Ted to watch over Allegra. I hadn’t realized Ted had already started his watch. I’d thought he would only do it after I left, but it was what I had asked him to do, so he did it.

You didn’t just ask a favor of an old wolf like Ted and then tell him how to do it. So I didn’t go back and speak to him about it. Favors like these seldom came without a cost. I wasn’t going to mess with it.

But that did mean that Sarelle had already wanted to try with Allegra. Without me even being on duty yet. I was still home, and already she’d been checking up on her. Maybe it was just homework. She was shrewd enough to bide her time.

Maybe she was getting desperate. It had been almost five years since she’d been banned. She’d taken that long to brood over what had happened. Wolves held terrible grudges because we lived so long. It was hard to let go if you didn’t grow old. Life would always have some sort of quality no matter what. Even if there were grudges.

I was glad Ted had my back. I was glad he would watch out for my family. The run with Kurt had been amazing. I’d never felt so protective and so proud before, and the pack had always been a part of me.

But Kurt really was a part of me, in ways the pack could never be.

And he’d run next to me with the full moon glinting off his coat, and he’d howled with me. He was just a child. When he was in human form he reminded me so much of Allegra it almost hurt. He was a carbon copy of her, the intensity, the strong will, the gentleness. When he was a wolf he was my son. A part of me shone through.

Any father would tell you that means more than anything in the world.

Allegra was in the kitchen making lunch packets for Kurt. She prepared them every weekend so she didn’t have to spend so much time in the kitchen during the week. The sound of the knife hitting the cutting board was rhythmic, and for a moment I just stood in the doorway watching her.

She was beautiful in every way. But there was a tightness to her shoulders. Tension in the way she held herself. The room was quiet besides the sounds of her cutting.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked, stepping further into the kitchen. She paused, knife on the cutting board, and took a deep breath. Then she carried on cutting without answering me.

She was upset with me, then. I walked up to her, leaned my hip against the counter so that I was facing her. She stood with me at her side, and her profile was serious.

“What did I do?” I asked. She turned her head to at me and her dark eyes were fiery. The heat in them made my body tighten. She was stunning when she was angry.

“You know exactly what you did,” she said and her voice was low. Quiet anger. It was so much more dangerous than a screaming rage.

“Are you angry about your guard?” I asked. She glared at me.

“You could have told me,” she said. “Do you know what that makes me look like? Do you have any idea what it’s like to hear in front of the whole pack, from someone else’s mouth, that you’ve made a decision without me?”

“I’m trying to keep you safe, sweetheart,” I said. “Sarelle isn’t kidding. She’s promising death and I have to keep you safe.”

“So teach me what to do. Surely there’s got to be something? I can’t just stand here. It makes me a coward, Reid.”

I was suddenly angry. I felt my pulse thudding, blood rushing through my veins. I looked away from her and she turned back to her cutting board. I didn’t want her to see my eyes.

“It makes you alive,” I answered her. “I don’t care how brave you’re trying to look, if you’re dead it’s not going to make a difference anyway. And what about Kurt? This isn’t just about you.”

“No, you’re right. But it’s not about you either, and you’ve made it look like you have a control of life. It’s about the fact that you didn’t talk to me about. You didn’t even ask me.”

I sighed, fought the urge to roll my eyes. When we argued it always felt like I couldn’t get anywhere. There was always a suppressed rage that made me feel like I had to get out and run. If I didn’t do it, or if I didn’t hold on tight enough to it, I lost it.

“I didn’t ask you because I knew you would have disagreed. You don’t understand how serious this is. You don’t see how this can blow up in your face, and then all of us will suffer from it. You’re my mate, Allegra. Second in the pack. You can’t just die on us. If we’re not here to save you, then we’re screwed. And your death with cripple us.”

She looked at me, knife poised on the tip and I was suddenly nervous. The anger in her eyes was enough for me to want to take away the knife.

“So it’s really about the pack? Guard me to save them?”

I groaned, stuck my fingers into my hair. “Why are you doing this? You know that’s not what I meant. But if something happens to you and I’m not here, I don’t know what I’ll do. You don’t know enough.”

She put down the knife and I breathed just a little easier.

“Then show me, Reid. Tell me what’s going on. Explain it to me so that I understand. There’s still so much about the pack, and being part of it, that you’re not telling me. Do you really think this is fair?”

I didn’t think it was fair. But I didn’t know what else to do to keep her safe. I couldn’t be with her every second of every day. And if something happened to her, to Kurt, because I wasn’t here to protect them, I would never forgive myself. I would never survive.

“I think that it’s my job to do what’s right. To protect my own. I will do whatever it takes to do that. I’m the alpha.”

I turned and walked out of the kitchen. I marched through the dining room, the living room, and then through the front door. Only when I was outside did I stop. I sat down on the porch and leaned my elbows on my knees.

I’d sounded like an ass in there. I’d sounded like I was the boss and what I say, goes. I didn’t want to be that person. I wanted to speak to her about these things and come to an agreement.

But I just couldn’t. I didn’t know how to tell her what she was up against. I didn’t know how, and in a way I didn’t want her to know how it all fit together.

Being a werewolf is crossing the line from human to monster. We manage to look human, and some of us can pass for human enough that no one that isn’t a preternatural creature will know. But we’re still monsters.

Allegra was number two in the pack. She was a conductor. She could feel magic and feed it back to me. Every bit of power that flowed through her came back stronger and more dangerous than before, and it was great to have her around.

But she didn’t have her own power. And she wouldn’t understand what it was like to have to control it and use it right until she did. She couldn’t understand what it was like.

I didn’t want to try explain it to her. And I didn’t want her close to Sarelle. What if something happened like she amplified Sarelle’s power and got herself killed that way?

I felt guilty. It was my fault she was in this mess to begin with. I’d pushed her to become my mate in the pack. To accept the role as the pack’s second. I’d been the one to make her choose. Maybe not directly, but it had been because of me.

Now she was in danger because I hadn’t been able to control my pack, and one of them had gone rogue. Even if she belonged to another pack now, she was a problem.

And Allegra just wasn’t ready to start the preternatural battle. I wasn’t ready to lose her.

The front door clicked open, and then slowly closed again. Kurt came to sit next to me. He looked out over the front yard the same way I was. His hair was bright in the sun, lighter than when we were inside, but his eyes were serious.