Sassy Ever After: Bonnie Sass (Kindle Worlds Novella) (5 page)

B
y midnight
, the alphas, seconds, and most powerful hunters from the Highlands and Las Vegas wolf packs had converged in the suite. The new Vegas alpha, after the now late Grady Harris had unwisely tangled with the widely respected Wolfe pack, was Paul Ramos. Black-haired, dark-eyed, and particularly stoic for a shifter who made his home in Vegas, Ramos looked the part of a man who drew his shifter blood from Native American wolf lineage.

With the two alphas alone on the balcony while their packs prepared and paced behind them in the suite and their scouts ran the streets of the city, Calum said, “My pack has followed protocol to the letter by advising you of this shifter incident in your territory.” He didn’t say
on your watch
, but it was implied, and the Vegas alpha winced so slightly it would have been imperceptible to human eyes. “Now we are calling for your leave to hunt the wolves who have taken our females.”

“Asking?” Ramos said, still sounding unruffled, “or telling?”

Calum turned from the city view to face the Vegas alpha. The Highlander had about four inches and a few pounds of muscle over Ramos, but Calum knew not to underestimate the fighting skill and blood fury of a leaner, fast man or wolf. “It has to happen, with or without your leave. Even if you assure me your pack can find my sister and my mate and rescue them, I canna leave it to you. They are mine to protect, to the death, no matter who I have to fight to that end.”

Ramos nodded, understanding. “It will not be my pack you fight. We’ll stand with you. This was an attack on our territory and on our guests. My scouts are coordinating with yours to pick up the scent. When they have it, and it’s time to take back your females and put down the rogue wolves, our wolves will run with yours.”

“Something you said….” Calum paused and considered the man. “Rogues. You assume this was rogue wolves and not a pack with some reason to strike at me and mine.”

“Not without reason. After Grady’s death, there was a wolf who exiled himself from the Vegas pack—probably because he knew his behavior was going to get him killed sooner rather than later. Probably by us. Scruffy bastard by the name of Joel Ballard. We hear he has a few more rogues loosely banded together with him. Could be quite a few.”

“To what end?” Calum asked.

Ramos sighed, but with a growl under his breath that betrayed a quiet anger beginning to roil beneath the still surface of his demeanor. “Trouble for trouble’s sake is an end to a rogue, but…. I think Joel does have a specific outcome in mind. The end of stability and peace between the packs? Pit us against one another? Make us violate territorial boundaries? Make us even more distrustful of other packs than our animal instincts already do? Maybe this is even a power play to weaken and attack my pack and replace us with his own in Vegas.” Ramos shook his head like something didn’t quite add up yet.

“If it is the rogues, whatever they want,” Calum asked, “would they go so far as to ally with vampires to cause trouble?”

Neither alpha knew the answer, it was clear, but the question sat uneasily between them.

When the packs headed out to add more eyes
and paws
to the search, Calum traded his suit and lordly persona for a black track suit that would be easy to get out of for a shift. Hew and Ewan stuck close to Calum as they let out on foot to prowl the shadows and alleyways of Las Vegas—but not too close. Ferguson was obviously in a mood, bristling, stiff-jawed, eyes narrowed.

Damn Kenzie and Angie, the alpha thought, for roaming around without protection and putting themselves in danger. And damn himself for not accepting
and working around
the fact that she-wolves were far too independent to stay wrapped up safe and tight behind lock doors and a wall of guards. Calum included Angie in the she-wolf category, changed or not. Once they were mated and he marked her…. If they were ever mated. That wasn’t certain until he got her back, safe at his side.

The one thing Calum knew was that the time for letting everyone tell him how to lead his pack, how to represent his family, who to marry in the name of strategic alliances, and who to fucking mate with was over. Damn his own voice inside his head telling him he should have let Angie go a long time ago—by her choice. He’d dragged this danger with him and his summit right to her doorstep. Then he’d left her unprotected. It wouldn’t let up, the voice, no matter how hard he pushed it away.

It was Calum’s wolf rearing up on him suddenly, forcing him to shift and shrug off human form, that pushed down those human fears for the absolute certainty of animal instinct.

A howl sounded abruptly to the left, telling Calum and his wolf that one of his pack had found something. Another howl in the distance answered, then another, lost to most human ears in the din of music and traffic noise.

The hunt was on, and Calum’s wolf streaked unseen through the darkness to join it. To lead it.

A
lone in a lavishly but
impeccably furnished room, a salon for lack of a better term, Angie tried to keep her distance from the vampire with the posh British accent. With eyes as light and luminous a green as Calum’s were blue. With features more angular and refined than the alpha’s. It made Angie ache with want to look at Calum Ferguson. It made her want to turn away it hurt so much just to look at this vampire.

“The cat and mouse game is hardly necessary,” he said as Angie kept circling large Victorian couches and delicate side tables to keep them between her and the vampire. Suddenly beside her, moving so fast she never even saw it coming, he added gently, “Nor is it particularly effective. You won’t have a seat instead?”

Angie didn’t turn her head to face him, only sliding her gaze over to regard him sidelong and with tense suspicion. Would she even know if he was about to bite her? If he moved that fast?

The vampire smiled softly with lips that looked like silk, with the slightest gleam. “I suppose not then. Is there a point to asking you all the questions I have?”

He circled around behind Angie, lost to her senses for a moment, before she felt his breath stir the hair beside her ear on the other side of her. The caress of breath sent violent hot-and-cold tingles down her shoulders. Prickling goosebumps rose high along the skin of her neck and chest and arms as she trembled.

“Are you truly Calum Ferguson’s mate?”

When Angie didn’t answer that question, either, her host stepped back again out of her peripheral vision. The woman jumped when she felt him run just his fingertips through the hair at the back of her head, the strands still loose from her encounter with Calum earlier in the kitchen. The memory, especially when she was in such obvious and serious danger, made her flush even worse than the shivers rippling up over her scalp from the vampire’s touch.

The impossibly handsome vampire appeared in front of Angie as if by magic, in only the second it took her to blink. “You name, then. That is easy enough and quite harmless. Maybe just your first name. What is your name, my sweet?”

This time, Angie’s refusal to respond made the vampire tilt his head at her pensively for several seconds—the time seemed so much longer. Then his smile broadened and accentuated his high cheekbones, the kind you see on men who play elves in Hollywood movies. But it was not a time for Angie be thinking that she’d also never met an elf and wonder if they could be vampires, too.

“Such a beautiful soft woman,” the vampire said admiringly, “but with a spine of steel. Impressive, very impressive.”

When he crooked one finger under Angie’s chin and lifted her face to make her look at him full-on, she caught her breath and nearly choked. She wanted to back away, to flee, but it was like her thoughts were swimming through molasses and her body was sealed in concrete.

“As a show of good faith, I shall go first. My name is Thomas Davenport, and you already know I am a vampire. You also probably know shifters, especially werewolves, do not appreciate the company of vampires. This was the reason I found myself in the unfortunate position of utilizing those rogue wolves to collect Mackenzie Ferguson for me.”

Adrenaline shot through Angie’s veins at the mention of Kenzie. Was the girl still alright, alone with those rogues and that distastefully crass bald vampire? The anxiety woke up Angie’s body to a degree, enough that she leaned away from Thomas Davenport and the mouthwatering scent of citrus and spice that emanated from him. The scent’s coppery undertone made Angie nervous—it reminded her of blood.

“If you hurt Kenzie—.”

“No, no,” Thomas said and laid his cool thumb against Angie’s lips. He took a moment to swipe his thumb across her skin, caressing, appreciating. “Don’t threaten me on her behalf. Don’t fear for her. It’s quite unnecessary.”

Angie was perplexed until a single word she’d overheard occurred to her. “Leverage.”

Thomas Davenport nodded. “Leverage. My thought is not to harm her. My plan was only, admittedly and certainly shamefully, to use my natural powers of persuasion to… sway her… even seduce her to my cause.”

The word “seduce” coming from the vampire in that lulling, tantalizing accent was lewd and immoral and made Angie’s pussy throb up deep and hot inside her.

“Persuasion,” Angie breathed. “That’s what you call it? But that’s not what it is. It’s a power you hold over….” She searched for a term that didn’t tempt her to whimper and failed. “Over prey. You have an aura of great magnetism, and you’re using it on me and Kenzie to—.”

“Not to harm you,” he interrupted, growing slightly impatient, perhaps with Angie’s own powers—of resistance. “To enlist Kenzie, and through her the Highlands pack, to help me find a female vampire who betrayed our coven in London and fled. I know that vampire had had numerous contacts with the Highlands wolf pack over the years, first with the current Lord Ferguson’s father, but with others as well.”

Angie instantly thought of Hew’s and Orla’s brother… killed in London… possibly by a vampire. And the suspicion that a vampire had had something to do with the death of Calum’s father, that was what Kenzie had told her.

“This female vampire is far more dangerous to the Highlands pack and to humans like you than I am, my dear. She has stolen powerful artifacts. She has slaughtered shifters even when our coven elders ordered us to hold a fragile balance with the packs. She has even killed her own kind. Surely the Highlands pack would want to help me find her and stop her—if they’ll listen to me or to the alpha’s sister speaking for me. Or… to you, if you are the future Lady Ferguson.”

“I am not—.” Angie bit down on her tongue midway through denying she was Calum’s mate. The reaction had become an automatic one since he’d turned up in Las Vegas, but it wasn’t necessarily the best way to stay alive right now.

“Not his mate?” Davenport asked, leaning over Angie, leaning closer. His breath warmed her cheeks in a feverish sensation that traveled down over her shoulders and chest. Down over her heavy, aching breasts and trembling stomach to her aching pussy.

She amended her statement to, “I am not talking about this with you.”

Thomas chuckled, gently, warmly, even charmingly. Damn predator, and fucking good at it, she thought.

“I was not expecting you. Very intriguing.” Angie let out a huff, obviously unimpressed with the flattery. “Do not underestimate yourself. You are clearly a beautiful woman, but you are also unique among human women. You stand tall amid the rogue wolves. You refuse to cower. You obviously command great respect among the Highlands pack, for the lord’s sister to defend you so fiercely. And you have incredible fortitude resisting me.”

Angie didn’t feel like she was resisting Thomas Davenport at all, or at least not succeeding. Even a look from those green eyes left her unsteady, swaying on her feel. And she couldn’t stop looking at his lips. Were there fangs…? She didn’t see any. Perhaps they only came out to feed. That was another idea that made her shudder, and made him smile again.

“What you would do, sweet, if I told you I was imagining what it would be like to sink my teeth into your soft, smooth neck in the same moment as thrusting my cock to the root in your wet pussy?”

Stunned, mortified by the flutter in her chest and her sex, Angie stammered. “I’m not wet.”

“You are. You can’t help it. Your mind resists me, but your body doesn’t. I don’t think you are Calum Ferguson’s mate if you react to me so strongly.”

Angie lifted her stiffened chin, lifted it out of Thomas Davenport’s grasp and leaned back slowly away from him. It was a terrible effort. “And you’ll kill me if I’m not? Because I’m no use to you?”

Thomas made Angie jump when his hand encircled her throat to hold her still, with just enough pressure to make panic flare inside her. His lips brushed hers, and he was practically whispering into her mouth.

“I can think of many uses for you and your body. And if you’re not really Calum’s mate….”

“I am.”

Fuck. Having to say that, letting herself say that, letting some part of her pretend that she and Calum could ever be joined like that, physically hurt Angie’s heart. But she couldn’t let the terrible magnetism this vampire held over her win.

“I am Calum’s mate,” she said again, more steadily. “It doesn’t matter how far apart we are or for how long. No time has passed for us when we come back together.”

And this more than anything else felt true. They still tormented each other, still desired each other.

“Calum has gone to extraordinary lengths to shelter me from the press that watch his every step and the pack that would rather see him marry a shifter with royal linage herself.”

Angie did not detail the fact that Calum insisted on calling her by her true given name. Or the long nights they’d had together in London when he lavished pleasure on her body, orgasm over orgasm, growling into her ear about how beautiful she was in that moment of release.

Shit.

Angie was actually starting to convince herself that Calum really cared about her. That he really wanted her for his mate. That she could possibly be his mate. But what a booby prize that was, a mate who was such a pure liability, totally unable to protect herself.

“Thomas.”

That low brow accent interrupted the conversation, and Davenport’s mouth tightened down on a frown before he turned to face the door.

“What is it, Simon?”

“Time to decide what we’re doing about your leverage,” the bald one said sarcastically, glancing at Angie. “We’ve got a mess of bloody wolves downstairs, at least three packs worth going at each other. Joel’s mutts are taking the brunt of the damage.”

“Is it Ferguson’s pack?” Thomas asked, and Angie’s heart leapt and thumped erratically against the inside of her chest.

“And the Vegas pack, if I’m correct.” He glared at Angie with flat eyes holding a glint of menace. “What are we going to do about the bird?”