My Alphas: The Complete Series (25 page)

One other direction, her only hope to escape but then came the ice cold fear flowing through her body. The frozen muscles, the breath stuck in her throat. Only her heart had kept beating, thudding recklessly against its frozen cage. She could taste the whisky in her mouth and knew he’d put something in the drink. She had only moments perhaps before she’d pass out and then he’d do what he wanted, what he’d planned.

Kyle licked his bloody fingers and then wiped them on the wounds.

Kyle snorted and then spat on the floor.

Kyle stepped toward her.

He got her wrist in one meaty paw and Cass would be forever grateful he lived on a diet of greasy fried everything because she pulled and her slim wrist slipped out of his fingers and then she turned and ran. Ran through the syrup that was the air. Ran against gravity that had strengthened. Ran past cheap wood panel and fumbled at a door handle and heard breathing behind her and footsteps and then she was standing on foam, her feet sinking in, feeling like she would sink up to her neck and die there, the cheap window latch breaking apart under her fingers, the wood squeaking, flakes of paint sifting down and she was outside, half of her at least, the frame cutting into her stomach and then her thighs and there was a hand and pain as nails dug into her skin and she kicked and twisted before hitting something, soft over hard, flesh over bone and she fell, landing on her back on spiky gravel before she was off, running, gulping air, only wearing her shorts and t-shirt and a single shoe, running away from home forever. Cass ran, her mind blurring, the scenery suddenly making no sense, her only thought to hide, to get away. She saw leaves and dirt and a hole and then cool darkness before she slipped into unconsciousness.

That night Cass awoke in the bottom of a pipe that ran under an old railway line, her body covered in mosquito bites, the back of her calves screaming in pain from sunburn. She’d collapsed half in the pipe, her legs sticking out and laid there through the hot afternoon and into the night. She crawled out into the dark and started walking, resolving to never go back.

Years passed and the terrors were ordinary compared to Kyle and her final day at home. Finding food, stealing, begging, a long-lost aunt who gave her some money and put her on a bus away. Finding a job, finding a house, finding and losing love. All of the ordinary sadness of life was just that - ordinary and there was no ice, not until now, not until Rey ran forward to fight to the death.

Cass felt the freezing chill of it, the terror that held her. The first and only time she’d seen the werewolves fight was from above, at a distance. It had been bloody and brutal and let’s face it, she hadn’t been in love with both of them then.

Love. This curse had a name.

Cass could only stare as Rey kicked backwards, hitting the attacking werewolf in the chest. She heard the crack of bone and in her frozen state could only watch as he ran to meet another attacking werewolf.

I love him.

She felt Edon move under her, stepping closer to the battle and the same thought slipped through again.

I love him.

This was followed by
I love them
as though she were chiding herself.

Edon ran forward, her stiff fingers clenched in his fur and then she was standing there by the two werewolves she loved. Rey was covered in blood from jaws to chest. He’d shaken the gray werewolf viciously by the throat before tearing it out, almost decapitating him. As soon as Cass was off his back, Edon attacked the prone werewolf, pounding down on his body with both paws, breaking more bone before crunching each of his limbs between his jaws.

Cass could only watch in horror as Edon crippled the werewolf, not biting off its legs but breaking each one, mangling it. He then leaned down and snapped off its ear as if it were nothing.

The next Cass knew she was on Rey’s back, staring at the deep wound on his shoulder where he’d twisted out of the gray wolf’s teeth. It was still bleeding, a dark red that trickled down his fur.

Then Nia yelling out her name, joyful, calling out as though she hadn’t seen her for a million years. The other werewolves howling and yipping, happy their Alpha had returned and with the Pack Mate and soon there might be a baby but then the tenor of their barking changed when they saw Rey’s injuries and Edon was missing.

She fell off Rey, feeling sick to her stomach and into Nia’s arms. She turned and saw Rey reaching for her and her heart clenched in fear, a slick hand reaching for her once again.

Nia pulled her along, taking her to the warm spring rather than to her room. Cass stepped in fully dressed and only when she brought her hands up full of water did she realize she was splattered with dried blood from head to toe.

“What’s wrong?” Nia asked for the tenth time, her beautiful face frowning in concern.

I’m in love with two werewolves, Cass thought, and could be pregnant to one of them and they’re vicious wild creatures. Not humans. Not men with the occasional night out howling at the moon. They are wild and dangerous and I love them both and now one has vanished and I want to die.

She didn’t answer Nia but instead sank under the water, holding her breath and wishing she could stay in the dim warm underwater world forever.

*

Rey told Vara what he remembered after leaving the den as she washed the wound on his shoulder.

“Last I saw him he was covered in blood. Then I was here.”

“This is deep. You’re going to have to stay in one form only for a few days,” Vara replied, touching her fingers to his skin. She washed the wound, clearing away the blood and dirt.

Rey shifted uncomfortably, not from the pain (although there was that) but because he wanted to tell Vara about Edon. About the darkness that had taken hold. She was Edon’s advisor and although they’d had a neutral amicable relationship in the past, it had mostly been her trying to tell him things and him ignoring it.

Edon has gone crazy. He is away on some bloodthirsty quest to kill any invading werewolf he can find. He has a plan to steal a plane and guns and presumably kidnap a pilot so we can fly over Turo territory killing them all.

“Do we have guns here?” Rey asked.

“I believe Edon had the militia’s guns collected and put in the top room.”

Rey considered this. Edon hadn’t said a thing to him about it which was highly unusual to say the least. Maybe there was something truly wrong.

“I’ll stay wolf and find Edon,” Rey said.

“How is your mate?” Vara asked, apropos of nothing.

“She will be fine,” Red declared.

He felt a stab in his shoulder as Vara pulled out what appeared to be a tooth fragment.

“Humans often get upset and then cover it up. They’re not like wolves.”

She lapsed into silence then, cleaning Rey’s wound of dirt and bits of debris.

Rey wondered how many times Vara had given him good indirect advice and he hadn’t even realized he was being manipulated.

Cass was clearly upset. She was pale and shaking and given the blank spot in his memory Rey had experienced, he’d no idea what she may have witnessed. Perhaps he and Edon tearing a werewolf apart. But if he stayed as human for her, he wouldn’t be able to scout out into the territory to find Edon for at least a few days. And if he shifted to wolf, he might be able to find Edon but wouldn’t be able to talk to his mate.

Rey’s thoughts drifted back to his own father. Arey had treated Rey’s birth mother Elise as walking womb - useful only so long as she could provide children. She’d died when Rey was five and his father had moved on to Julia, producing five more children in the next eight years until he chased Rey out of the pack. He’d been a violent bloodthirsty Alpha and virtually all of Rey’s memories of him were tinged with fear or pain. He’d treated Rey’s mother with open contempt and had she survived until Rey reached adulthood, he’d no doubt he would’ve had to kill his father to protect her from him.

Two paths lay ahead. One was shifting into the wolf. To run on swift paws, to bite, to hunt down their enemies and strip the flesh from their bones. He could see his father running down that path. The other was to stay as a man. To talk and kiss and comfort and lov-

“I will stay as a human,” Rey declared.

Vara said nothing but as she stitched up his wound he felt perhaps she was happy with his decision. The amount of times he got jabbed certainly went down.

Once she finished, Rey used a cloth and a bucket of water to clean himself off properly. He wiped and washed until he no longer smelt of blood. Then he made his way to his mate’s room.

*

After the spring, Cass dressed in the clothes Kale brought to her. She was in a post-terror daze but she recognized Nia and Kale were on their best behavior, acting incredibly polite to each other.

She returned to the den and ate mechanically, aware she was hungry and the meat had flavor but it was as though she was experiencing the world through four layers of plastic sheeting. She caught snatches of conversation around her, pack werewolves talking about her, Rey, Edon, the thrall. They may as well have been talking about knitting for all she cared.

After she ate, Cass made her way to her room, leaving Nia behind in the main amphitheater. She was dumb and disassociated and surprised to feel anything the moment she walked in.

The familiarity of the room hit her like a spike, the pain starting in her throat and sinking down. The room was clean, comforting and she could faintly smell the scent of her mates. Cass stumbled across to the bed and collapsed down on it. Edon. Rey. Her. Their scents mingled.

The pain inside pulled hard and Cass started sobbing. In the bed where they had slept together (in both the literal and figurative sense) the memories of the past were so vivid she felt she could reach out and touch them. Edon in front of her, his eyes gazing into hers, stoking his fingers down her skin. Rey, a wolfish grin, pulling her toward him. Edon, the civilized werewolf showing his wild side. Rey, in a moment of relaxation dipping is head to place a kiss on the tip of her nose.

With each memory came a fresh dose of tears and new spikes of pain. She’d little energy to begin with and what she did have she gave to her sadness. Cass didn’t know how long had passed, lost in a pure depression that had no answer but then she found herself catching her breath, the pain fading away. She was too exhausted to collapse. Her hips hurt and she was covered in scratches and bruises. There was a dull ache between her legs that had nothing to do with the vibrant memories echoing in the room. A thousand tiny pains made themselves known, from scratches on her knuckles to an insect bite on her upper arm.

Cass tried to remember what she’d thought would happen with the werewolves. For starters she never imagined two of them. She could see herself in what people called a “non-traditional” relationship but being the mate to two werewolves was so far away from the ordinary that non-traditional was a distant blip on the horizon. Then after she’d come to the den and fallen into the blur of their bodies…

“You knew the thrall was coming and you ignored it,” Cass whispered to herself.

It was too big, too overwhelming to consider. An unstoppable force that would take hold of the two Alphas a few weeks after they’d met and demand they mate with her?

Cass pressed her hands to her stomach. Not flat because
she
wasn’t flat but not sticking out because there was a baby in there. Or maybe there was. Cells busily dividing and multiplying, like a tiny snowball rolling down a mountain, gathering speed and size as it went. The future, always nebulous, fell into sharp relief. If she did nothing but keep existing and she
was
pregnant then there was a day when she would experience contractions and a day when she would give birth and a day when she would hold a baby boy or girl in her arms and a day and a day and a day…

The days had direction and speed and an unstoppable inescapable logic to them.

“I could be pregnant,” Cass whispered. Echoing behind it, unspoken, held back by an enormous wall of pain was another eventual truth: I could be a mother.

Two futures spiraled out. In one she’d a human husband, a house, a baby and then perhaps another. A cat and a lemon tree. There was the first nappy, the first word, the first day of swimming classes, the first day of school. A row of firsts, mostly good, some bad, others terrifying to the heart of a parent.

In the other future there were her two wild mates, wolves who looked like men sometimes. There was perhaps a first nappy (did werewolf babies wear nappies? How would she get them so far from civilization?), a first word (or first bark), no swimming lessons except perhaps in the stream and on the subject of school she’d no idea. The row of firsts was unknown, a cultural map she didn’t possess.

Hanging over it all was the first future was safe. The threats were normal. Watch out crossing the road. Ignore that bully at school. In the second future a pack of werewolves could come rushing over the hill, snatching up her children and killing them before her eyes.

Darker thoughts crept in. If she wasn’t pregnant she could go home. Not that she’d a home to go to but she could return to the human world. Take up “Melanie” on her offer. Leave the werewolves to their vicious life and one day in the distant future, this short time would be a blurry memory, easily repressed.