Forrest, Dawn - Alphas' Prize [WeresRus] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (11 page)

“Don’t count on it. She tried that once, and look what happened, a massacre apparently. Only being true-mated will bring her peace.”

“Yes, and the same is true for you.”

That was exactly the way it was. If she wanted any peace in her life she would go to the twins. Instinct, intuition, and some deeply buried genetic code conspired to ensure that there really wasn’t a decision to be made.

“Okay, I’ll stay with…my mates.” The words felt thick and foreign on her tongue, yet also thrilling.

Hawke looked relieved, and Angela and Mike looked delighted. Obviously this whole finding-one’s-mate thing was a joyous occasion in Were society.

“They’ll still be unconscious at the cabin, but I have the antidote. Come on, let’s go wake up your mates.”

“Wait,” Angela piped up with a serious expression on her face. “I’m sorry, Will, but Jo has to know that once Vladimir and Yuri wake up there’ll be no keeping them from her, except by tranquilizing them again. From what you’ve said about their behavior in the hall it appears to be a much greater reaction than normal.”

“Yeah, well, I was not unaffected either,” Jo admitted, feeling a bit embarrassed. “It’s probably a werewolf thing.”

Angela turned to her. “Don’t worry, listen to your heart, and let instinct take over and don’t fight it. They’re scary-looking dudes, but they would never, ever, hurt their mate. You are the most precious thing in their lives now, and they’ll take good care of you.”

“I’m a virgin,” she blurted out.

Three pairs of eyebrows rose, and then two male pairs fell into a frown.

“Not for long.” Angela chuckled with a wink.

“Angela!” Mike admonished, sounding shocked.

“I’ll speak to them first if you want,” Angela offered.

“You are
not
going anywhere
near
two male werewolves with mating fever, never mind between them and their new mate,” Mike quickly said, his tone allowing no argument.

Angela turned and frowned at him. She looked like she was going to object, but Hawke stepped in.

“I’ll do it,” he said reluctantly, as if he’d just volunteered to buy feminine hygiene products from a busy local drugstore.

Chapter 7

“The things a responsible Chief has to do that a simple warrior does not.” Will muttered to himself as he drove up to the cabin while Jo followed on her bike. He guessed she was more comfortable having a fast means of escape, and he was glad not to have her in the enclosed cab with him. She still didn’t seem to fully understand the effect she had on an unmated male. At least once she went inside the cabin she wasn’t likely to be going anywhere far for a while, and certainly not without one of the Siberian Pack Alphas. Hopefully she’d take on their scent enough to make her less appealing.

She looked super sexy in her tight white leathers as she threw her long leg over that crotch rocket of a bike. He envied the machine. It was a good thing she’d found her true-mates so soon because she would be hard for any unmated Alpha to resist. He wasn’t convinced that he wouldn’t have tried to woo and persuade her to stay with him and mate to give him a family, even if they couldn’t bond. He experienced the familiar ache in his gut at the thought of what he’d lost long ago, and the beast within him keened.

“I’ll wait here until you’ve woken them up and had a little chat,” she said when they reached the cabin.

She was doing her best to sound calm and nonchalant as she fiddled with the straps of the pack on the back of her bike. He expected that she smelled of nervous excitement right now, but he couldn’t tell because he had nose plugs firmly in place. The sooner she was mated the better, because it wasn’t a good look for him.

He nodded and stepped onto the porch but was stopped short of entering when she called to him.

“Prime Hawke.” There was a tremor in her voice. “Thank you for doing this and being so kind.”

If only she knew his thoughts and the internal struggle that even now raged to just let his beast free, kill the Russians, and take her for his own. He straightened his back and entered the cabin.

He found both Alphas unceremoniously spread out on the super-king-sized bed. He injected each one with the antidote to the tranquilizer. A pharmacist in the Redwood Pack had devised the drugs a few years ago, and it had proved to be an effective means of preventing violence without succumbing to it. Within minutes the men began to surface to consciousness. He stood back and waited.

Yuri was the first to spring off the bed and whirl around, looking for threats to his mate, no doubt. Moments later Vladimir joined him. Two pairs of deadly cold gray eyes zeroed in on him. Immediately the two began a partial change. They were both powerful. Not many Weres could initiate and control a change to such an extent. He could for many years now, but he remained still and calm.

“I wouldn’t if I were you.” His voice was cold, clear, and deadly serious. “Yuri, Vladimir, relax. Your mate is outside, and she is here for you of her own accord. You will see her in a moment, but there are some things you should know if you want this mating to go smoothly.”

They growled at him menacingly, and it was starting to get his hackles up. He reminded himself that they were strong Alphas, unused to taking orders, and the mating fever was upon them. He made a monumental effort to push his beast down, because he knew for certain that, if he lost control now, he would kill them and go after her.

“You don’t want to mess this up. I’m wearing nose plugs because she’s outside waiting for you, and I’m sure you can scent her.”

The twins’ nostrils flared, and the bulges in their trousers grew implausibly bigger. Yep, they could smell her all right.

“How it goes today will set the tone for the future. Please listen to what I have to say, because Joanna has asked me to speak to you. Believe me, there are many other things that I would much rather be doing. Listen for her.” He spoke evenly, as if inviting them to tea rather than preparing to fight if necessary.

He hoped that the twin werewolves before him, who were battling with their lust, instinct, and desire, understood what he was doing. They didn’t know anything about her and would be wise to follow his lead.
Don’t make me tranq’ you again, boys.
The gun nestled comfortably in the holster he was wearing inside his coat. It was more for their protection than his. Better that than to rip their throats out.

They continued to glare at him for a few seconds more, and then Yuri slowly inclined his head and in a strangled voice said, “
Da
.”

Smart boy.

* * * *

Joanna waited for Hawke to reappear. She took the time to observe what she could from her position, work out the best escape route, assess where a possible ambush might occur. The habits that her mother had drilled into her were hard to ignore, especially here, in the werewolves’ den.

He had been gone for fifteen minutes, and she was starting to get impatient. She wanted to see her mates, to throw off this horrible clawing anxiety that she’d felt since they’d been taken away. It was like suffering from acute withdrawal symptoms. Now that she’d sensed them, she needed them to relieve this aching tension building in her body. Any sane woman would be reconsidering her position, any sane virgin would be hopping on her bike and zooming off into the sunset. The irony of her situation mocked her. She was a nervous virgin who was about to get laid by not one but two dominant, sexy-as-hell werewolves.

The door of the cabin opened inward, and her new Alpha—soon to be her old Alpha—came out. Behind him stood the two most attractive men she had ever seen. They were still dressed in their black leather pants but had taken off their jackets to reveal snug black T-shirts that did nothing to hide their lean, muscular torsos. One man had his very long, very straight white hair tied back by a simple leather cord. The other man’s was loose, and it hung like a fine stallion’s mane past his shoulders and down to his waist. They were tall, a good few inches over Hawke, and he was around six three or four. Good Lord, they looked splendid. A single cohesive thought looped around her mind.
Mine.

The twins stayed by the door, watching her intently. Hawke walked slowly to her, ignoring their low rumbling growls.

“You sure?” he asked.

She understood that this was the point of no return. She could feel the heat of their eyes upon her and felt certain that her body was reacting to them already. Every darn male and his brother within a twenty-mile radius would smell her arousal at this rate. It was time to do something about it.

“Yes.”

Hawke straightened up and looked serious. With a nasal voice he said, “Go now to your dwelling place to enter into the days of your togetherness, and may your days be good and long upon the earth.” He quickly explained, “That’s part of an Apache wedding blessing, but it seems appropriate. I’ll see you tomorrow. Sorry to be abrupt, but I’ve got to go, the Russians are anxious and your scent is…it’s getting to be too much.”

Well, as far as spiritual sentiment was concerned it was lovely, but it would have been better delivered without nose plugs. She appreciated it all the same.

Hawke didn’t say anything else because he couldn’t. He was holding his breath. He just shrugged with a grimace and hightailed it away from her, leaving her standing in front of the cabin and two very aroused male werewolves. She didn’t need her perfect vision to see the erections they were sporting within their pants—they could be spotted on Google Earth. They stayed near the doorway of the cabin, watching her the way a cat watches another on its territory, deceptively still and relaxed yet ready to pounce.

She took a deep breath to calm herself, and their combined scents hit her like a tsunami, swamping her thoughts and senses in a deluge of desire. In the lust-clouded recesses of her mind she thought that she should at least talk to them, make some sort of intellectual connection, but it was completely overridden by the biological imperative to mate. Everything else was secondary.

In response to them, her scent had reached epic proportions. The men remained still and appeared calm, but the truth was belied by the creaking, splintering sound of the wooden doorframe where one man gripped it. They were like a force of nature, a riptide surging over her and pulling her in deep. She dropped her bag and walked toward them.

* * * *

Yuri Volkov, famous for his unemotional, disciplined demeanor, a hard man from a harsh environment, was having great difficulty controlling himself
.
It was all he could do to remember Hawke’s words about the gaps in her knowledge of their ways and the fact that she was a virgin. But for that, he would already be balls-deep inside his hot mate, and she would be bent over her bike screaming her pleasure. He glanced at his brother and at the gouges that his claws had made in the doorframe and knew he was fighting the same battle.

He could barely believe his eyes when she dropped her bag and began a slow, sensuous walk toward them. Any other creature with an ounce of survival instinct would be fleeing, but she was their mate and an altogether different instinct was at work. He would never forget this moment as she first came to them, clad in white leather that contrasted with her golden skin and long, dark hair tied in a thick braid that hung down her back. The image would be branded into his mind for the rest of his life. The Fates be praised, because she was a beautiful female werewolf and built for some serious Were loving. That stunt maneuver she had pulled in front of the house, the way she handled her bike, and the leap up the stairs, showed that she was fast, agile, strong, robust, and therefore perfect for sex with them.

Both he and Vlad usually had more than one woman at a time, to ensure their satisfaction while not hurting the women involved, and even then he had to rein back his inner beast. Although they sometimes went for long periods without female company, he had not ever shared less than three at a time, never mind only one woman, with his brother, because that was too much to expect from a single fragile human female. Finding willing women had never been a problem, and they tended to have orgies on an epic scale. The night before last, they had slaked their lust with five human women, but from now on all that would be a thing of the past. They would never want or need anyone else again. He hadn’t heard of Alphas sharing a mate before, but it felt absolutely right.

He knew that she had ridden her bike to the cabin because she was more comfortable having her own means of coming and going, and of escaping them. That thought had him growling because he didn’t want to be parted from her ever again. He had watched her through the window as she surveyed the area, looking for possible threats and escape routes, and he thought about what Hawke had told him. It brought out the protective instincts in him. They would look after her safety from now on, and his precious mate would not need to worry about that ever again.

Thankfully Hawke had moved them to a more isolated location within the forest on the Pack’s estate, a reasonable distance from the main house. He was grateful to the Prime Alpha as it gave them some privacy for their first mating. Werewolves were seldom bothered about such things, but she was special, and until they were permanently bound it was possible that another male—one with suicidal tendencies—might be tempted to take a chance with her.

The cabin was well appointed and very comfortable, with all the conveniences of a luxury guesthouse. Apart from a separate bathroom, it was all open plan. The spacious living, kitchen, dining, and sleeping area was tastefully decorated and, most importantly, boasted a super-king-sized bed, big enough for three.