Half Truths (A Helheim Wolf Pack Tale) (8 page)

Her eyes
narrowed, suspicion flashing in them briefly. ‘My blood?’

He moved closer
to her on the couch, taking her hands in his. He felt the surge of electricity
run through his fingertips—the same surge he was becoming addicted to. ‘A
félvair’s blood is the key to our species’ survival.’ He licked his lips. ‘In
our pack, there are fifteen wolves. Of those fifteen, only three are female.
There’s my alpha’s mate, Eaton, Saskia and Grace. But of those three, only one
is able to bear children.’

She frowned,
pulling her hand free to take a drink from the mug. ‘How does this concern me?’

‘A full-term
pregnancy between a werewolf and a human is impossible. The human female will
always miscarry because the foetus is an entirely different species.’

‘What about a
female werewolf and a human male?’

Rhett bristled
at the thought. No alpha would allow one of his females to carry a human male’s
child. ‘That’s never been an issue,’ he answered quickly. ‘The point is, our
pack is small, but we have the largest territory on the east coast by far. What
we need is to expand our numbers, and you are the key to that expansion.’ He
raced on before she could ask the question he knew she would. ‘I know what
you’re thinking. Saskia could get pregnant to one of the male wolves, right?
But there is only a one in ten chance the baby would be born female.’ Taking
her free hand into hers again, he squeezed her fingers as he talked. ‘But with
a small donation of your blood, you would guarantee the child to be female.’

‘Couldn’t you
just bite some more people to boost numbers?’ she asked.

‘My pack is one
of the few that remain a purely Born wolf pack, with one exception that is,’ he
added bitterly under his breath.

‘Who’s that?’

‘A wolf named
Sabel. He saved my alpha’s life when they were younger. My alpha took Sabel
into the pack when he was expelled from his own.’

Indi drained the
last of the blood from the mug and set it on the ground. ‘Why did you take so
long to tell me?’

‘I didn’t want
to overload you with information right away.’

She stared down
in her empty hands for what seemed like eternity. She looked up finally.
‘Okay.’

‘Okay?’ he
asked.

She nodded.
‘Okay. But next time, just tell me, alright?’ She grimaced and swallowed
convulsively; the colour draining away from her cheeks suddenly. 

‘Indi, are you—’

‘I’m fine,’ she
bristled, standing up and tugging at the hem of her t-shirt. ‘Now, if there
isn’t anything else you’d like to confess, I need to get ready for my shift at
the café.’

*

Indi’s stomach twisted violently
again. When she stood up, she reached for her stomach, but stopped herself,
feigning pulling down her t-shirt instead. Rhett was still watching. She walked
into the bathroom, closing the door firmly behind her. Another wave of pain
rolled through her stomach. Doubling over, she clutched at the edge of the
basin; her knuckles turning white.

She hadn’t
wanted to drink that blood. It smelled wrong to her, but she took it because
Rhett would have questioned her if she hadn’t. She was starving, but even the
blood she had taken didn’t seem to satisfy her need. It was still churning
slowly down in the pit of her gut like she was craving something she had tried
before, but would never be able to have again.

Rhett knocked on
the bathroom door. ‘Indi? Are you alright in there?’ he called.

‘Fine,’ she
called back, squeezing her eyes shut tightly to stop the dizziness. She stayed
still, listening hard, waiting for him to go back to the couch. When she heard
his footsteps recede, she let out the breath she’d been holding; a whimper
escaping her lips at the same time.

Her stomach
convulsed again. Her knees buckled, and she fell to the cool tiles, still
gripping the edge of the sink. With her free hand held tightly over her lower
stomach, she gritted her teeth, riding the roll of nausea that was sweeping
through her like a freight train; shaking her to her core.

Pain lanced
through her. She lost her grip on the sink’s edge, collapsing onto the tiles
and curling around on herself; riding out the pain until she must have blacked
out.

She woke with a
start, pulling herself into a sitting position quickly. With her breath sawing
in and out of her lungs, she blinked, looking around the bathroom. How long had
she been out? Something ran down the side of her face. Lifting her hand, her
fingers felt for the source. Sweat. Indi wiped her hands on her pants, and
pulled herself up onto the closed seat of the toilet.

Glancing at her
watch, she found that only a few minutes had passed. Standing up experimentally,
she went to the basin and washed her flushed face with ice-cold water. She
looked up at her reflection, water beading from her chin slowly. Her skin had
grown paler since she’d completed her transformation, and the angles of her
face looked more severe. Her eyes seemed brighter than they ever had before,
bordering on glowing. She smiled at herself, seeing the flash of fang.

‘Indi?’ Rhett
called through the door. ‘Are you ready yet?’

Letting out a
deep breath, she called back. ‘Yeah. Give me five.’ Whatever had happened was
just a passing thing, and with any luck, Rhett would never have to find out
about it.

Leona was already awake when her
alarm went off, having got little to no sleep the night before. She turned the
alarm off and sat on the edge of her bed with her head in her hands. In the
corner of her room lay her clothes from the night before, reeking of cigarette
smoke and humans.

Her head jerked
up when someone pounded on her door, rattling it on its hinges.

‘Le-on-a!’
Connall called in a sing-song voice from the other side of the wood. Standing
up cautiously, she palmed her Browning Hi-Power from her bedside table, and
edged towards the door.

‘What?’ she
barked back.

‘Marcus wants to
see you,’ Connall replied. She could hear him pressing closer to the door. ‘Are
you naked, Lover?’ he asked in a whispered breath.

She cursed under
her breath. ‘I’m not your lover,’ she snarled, retreating from the door and
throwing her gun into the tangle of black cotton sheets on her bed.

The tiled
bathroom was clean and stocked only with the essentials; none of that fluffy
female shit that adorned most other females’ bathrooms. Turning on the
four-head shower, she waited until steam billowed out from behind the glass
screen before getting under the spray. She was in the middle of rinsing her
hair when an unwelcome voice echoed through her bathroom.

‘Need some help,
Lover?’

Leona spun
around to find Connall standing in the doorway with a smug expression on his
face.

‘How’d you get
in here?’ she asked flatly, not bothering to hide her naked body from him.
She’d known him ever since she’d been Bitten and welcomed into the pack. ‘I had
the door locked.’

The corner of
his mouth tilted up, revealing his wolf’s sharp canines. He could never shift
them all the way back, or didn’t want to shift them all the way back. ‘I’m not
going to let a silly, little locked door stand in my way,’ he drawled slowly;
that small smile still in place.

He leaned
against the doorframe, his ankles crossed over one another, his arms over his
broad chest. His phosphorescent pale green eyes blinked to yellow then back
again. ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in? I could wash your back for you?’ His
voice was a silky purr.

‘No. I was just
finishing up.’ Leona cut the water, and looked around for a fresh towel.

‘Here,’ Connall
said, holding out a fluffy white towel under her nose. She growled at him,
snatching the towel from his hands. ‘You’re welcome,’ he simpered smugly.

She pushed past
him, rubbing the towel carefully along her cornrows. She could feel his eyes on
her ass, but that was nothing new. He stared at her every chance that he got.

‘Did you come in
here for a reason?’ she snapped without looking back at him. She looked at her
gun—still in the tangle of bed sheets—wondering whether she could reach it in
time. Probably not. Her attention went to the drawer of clean clothes in front
of her.

‘Marcus told me
to make you hurry up,’ Connall said softly into her ear. Leona jumped,
automatically lunging for her Browning. He grabbed her wrist, squeezing it
tightly until the bones began to grind against each other.

‘Let me go,’ she
hissed, glaring into Connall’s wolf’s yellow eyes. His top lip peeled away from
his canines.

‘Why won’t you
give me a chance, Leona?’ Connall’s warm, fetid breath brushed against her
cheek as he pulled her closer. She felt repulsed by the caress of his lips
against her skin, but made no attempts to pull away from him. He was still a
higher ranking wolf than she was, and Connall had to remind her of that
constantly.

Instead, she
closed her eyes and thought about being somewhere else. Connall’s hands began
roving over her naked flesh; his rough fingers playing across her collarbone,
skimming down between her breasts. He lay his palm there, feeling her heartbeat
beneath her ribs. He dropped his head, nuzzling into the space between her
shoulder and neck, his palm still burning hot against her skin.

‘I want you to
have my pups,’ he murmured softly.

She swallowed.
‘I’d rather die than give birth to the poison that will come from your loins,’
she answered just as softly. This wasn’t the first time that he had asked her
to bear his children. And it wouldn’t be the last. She gasped when something
sharp bit in under her ribs.

Connall pulled
away from her; his face twisted into an ugly mask. She looked down to find he’d
pulled a knife on her—one of her knives. The silver-plated tip was buried into
her skin, burning her flesh. Pressing her lips together tightly, she looked
away from his glowing eyes and over his shoulder.

He growled
softly. ‘Be careful, Leona. I want you, but I will not have you talking smack
to me like that.’

He pulled the
blade free, making Leona gasp again. Connall picked up the towel at her feet
and pressed it to the wound. ‘Sorry, Lover, but you know the rules,’ he
whispered into her ear, running his tongue along the shell of her ear. She held
back the shudder.

‘Leave me to get
dressed. Marcus must be wondering where I am,’ she told Connall in a hollow,
dead voice. His eyes slipped colours furiously as he looked at her.

‘Don’t take too
long, Lover.’ He turned on his heel and stalked away from her room. When the
door closed behind him, she noticed the lock had been kicked in.

Looking down,
she lifted the towel away from the cut. It was still bleeding heavily, and
would continue to bleed like that unless she cleaned the silver away. Back in
her bathroom, she pulled the small container of first aid supplies out from the
bottom of the cupboard, pawing through until she found a tube of Neosporin.

Dumping the
towel, she slathered on the ointment, sealing the wound with a thick layer. She
felt her skin tingle, and after a minute or so, the bleeding had stopped.
Wiping away the remaining cream, she stalked from her bathroom back to the
chest of drawers to get dressed.

She had
countless scars from Connall. Each of them were small “love cuts” as he called
them. Ever since her violent admittance into the pack, Connall had had his eye
on her. She had never been attracted to him. There was just something about him
that made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. She found out why she
felt that way when she discovered his “trophy collection”.

Connall’s room
was a shrine to his kills. On every inch of spare wall, he’d put up shelves.
And on each of these shelves, were small jars filled with formaldehyde and the
ears of his victims. Some were human—cut cleanly, methodically. Most were wolf,
torn from the body of his enemies with his teeth.

She threw on a
black tank—not bothering with a bra—and a pair of leather pants. Pulling her
boots out from under her clothes from the night before, she put them on,
followed by her wrist sheaths. Carefully checking over her daggers, she slid
them into the leather before attaching her hip holster where she kept her
Browning.

When she opened
her door, Connall was standing outside in the hallway. ‘What are you still
doing here?’ she asked through narrowed eyes, already making her way down the
long hallway. Connall fell into step with her.

‘Marcus wants me
in the meeting too.’

‘You could have
gone ahead of me,’ Leona said, getting a little queased out by the puppy act
Connall was pulling. ‘Did Marcus tell you to keep close to me?’

‘No, Lover,’ he
replied in mock seriousness. ‘I just love being able to smell death on you.’ He
grinned. Leona’s stomach flipped as she pushed open the door to the kitchen.

Marcus was
sitting at the breakfast bench with a terrified-looking human female sitting
next to him. Her hands and feet were bound with black satin ties, and in her
mouth was a ball gag. When the girl saw Leona, her cornflower blue eyes bulged,
pleading. Leona spun around to face the wall, so she didn’t have to witness Marcus’s
penchant for torture and under-aged girls. She was probably just some runaway
that needed something to eat and a place to shower.

Marcus was an
attractive guy. Leona understood why they would go with him. It was only until
he brought them back to the house did they realise just how sadistic he was.
Leona knew firsthand just how he operated and just how sadistic he could be.

‘Leona, don’t be
rude. Introduce yourself to my young friend here.’ Marcus’s voice was thick
with his Alpha Influence. She had no choice but to turn around and look into
the human’s eyes.