Standing Before Monsters (Vorans and Vampires) (9 page)

Logan shrugged and looked at Nick, “I think he means you.”

“Nah, he couldn’t mean me. I thought we became friends when we took down Cyrus,” he waved off the guard’s blustery greeting.

Folding his arms across his chest with a grunt and a nod, the werewolf added, “You mean when I saved your butt from him.”

“What do you mean? I held him for you,” the voran replied with a good natured chuckle.

Shrugging the man admitted, “
Yeah, that was fun... until he exploded anyway.”

“Well, nothing’s ever perfect, Ray,” he said shaking hands with the muscular man.

Charlotte shook her head and complained, “You two are idiots. Maybe you should have been the ones to imprint instead.”

As the women walked past, Ray looked confused and Nick patted his shoulder warning, “You probably don’t want to know.”

“So why are you all here? Kate left for a walk this morning and suddenly you all show up,” the big man asked trying to catch up. As he took a breath, his nose wrinkled and he added, “What is that smell? Kind of like perfume, but a little off.”

From the top of the porch another voice stated, “That would be pheromones, Ray. If the perfume smells real good to you, then you might have had a shot at becoming Kate or Charlotte’s mate. They’re in heat,” Eric finished with a laugh.

Giving an inarticulate growl, Charlotte struck his arm with a backhand and a complaint, “Don’t call it that! It sounds degrading when you put it like that.”

As the two women pushed their way past to go pack Kate’s clothes and personal stuff, Eric shrugged and asked, “What do you want me to call it then? I didn’t make it up.”

Looking more confused Ray tried to catch up and asked for clarification, “They’re in heat? You mean like they’re on their periods or something?”

“Or something,” Nick agreed. “They’re so hormonal right now it’s off the scale.”

Eric looked at the voran and asked, “Did she bond with you? I thought that you and that vampire were an item.”

“Nicola and I are together, but apparently Charlotte couldn’t help her hormones. We went to spar at the gym with Lena and suddenly she went berserk until I was able to calm her down. That was after she bit me and it scared her.”

“She doesn’t want to pass the curse onto anyone. I know,” the pack leader nodded. “She managed to bond to you though. That is unusual. I have never heard of a werewolf bonding to anyone other than another werewolf. Then again I had never heard of a voran before two months ago either.”

“We found that the girls just needed to feel something of ours with our scent or sweat on them to keep them from seeming to go into withdrawal. How did you deal with it when it’s happened before?”

Eric looked up from his musing of the ground at his questions. “I haven’t seen anyone go into withdrawals. What type of symptoms did they have?”

Caught off guard by his admission, Nick shook his head and answered, “Their skin grew itchy. Kate was alone too long and developed hives and a fever.

“What do you mean you haven’t seen it happen before?”

Pulling the voran away from the proximity of the house as he looked over his shoulder at the large window where a handful of his pack were overlooking the yard curiously, Eric spoke quietly, “I haven’t seen that many females go into heat.”

Nick stopped short only to be pulled towards the sidewalk. The pack leader confided, “In this pack, only Vanessa who bonded to me and Victoria who bonded to my second, Terrell, have ever gone through the change.

“In the past, other females have bonded similarly. The other women are lesser females in the pack though. Only the strongest and most willful or the ones desired by the leaders tend to go through the bonding process. My past mates have been the only ones throughout the years that I have seen and we joined together as soon as we knew what was happening. There have never been side effects for any women I knew.”

Nick tried to digest the information quickly and he asked, “Then why have these two all of a sudden gone into heat?”

Shrugging, Eric conjectured, “Kate has always followed Logan around like she was in love with him. She’s felt guilty for turning him, but she desires him. When he left, it was her body’s way of getting them back together.

“Since the siblings left our pack, my guess is that Charlotte’s body is trying to attach her to a lead male as if starting a new pack. Congratulations, she feels you are a pack leader or second, I guess.”

“I don’t see a bunch of baby werewolves running around though. If bonding with the leaders is supposed to bring them together, then I am surprised that you don’t have a couple children around,” Nick replied as his mind deflected the idea that Charlotte had bonded to him as a pack leader.

“It isn’t just about sex or procreation,” Eric sighed spreading his hands trying to make the man understand. “We’re also human, so we try to have safe sex. No one wants to find out what happens when a baby werewolf comes out of one of those we love.”

The last news brought his eyes up in surprise to search the werewolf’s face. “So you’ve never had any children?”

“None that I am aware of anyway,” his blue eyes looked a little sad from the admission before he brushed back his brown hair from his forehead. The breeze was just strong enough to muss one’s hair, if left exposed long enough. “I have lived a long life, but never had any children.”

“Do most werewolves live unnaturally long lives like you?”

Eric looked perplexed by his wording and assumption that he was older than any of his pack. Though his words had said that he had been around awhile, he still hadn’t come out and said so. “Most just live until the continual changes of becoming a wolf eventually wears out their hearts. I was born over a hundred years ago.”

Nodding, Nick admitted, “Me too, but were you turned into a werewolf or were you born that way?”

Wincing as he looked towards the house and the pack that he led, Eric spoke quietly to a man who could understand the passing of time better than most, “I remember my father being a werewolf. My mother might have been, but died in child birth. He raised me until I was twelve. I remember changing with the moon as a child, but I don’t know if he had to turn me or if I was born that way.”

“If Kate and Logan go for it, then I was hoping that you would know more about this,” he replied disappointedly.

“How about you and Charlotte?”

It was the voran’s turn to wince, but he admitted, “I like Charlotte, but I already have Nicola. I don’t think there is anything to do but ride it out. She had enough of a crush on me for helping them that she bonded to me, I guess. Other than that, we can’t do much but keep her comfortable for two full moons.” Suddenly it dawned on him, “If you’ve never seen the symptoms, how do you know that it takes two full moons for the bonding hormones to end.”

Grinning at the man, Eric shrugged his shoulders and confessed, “I was guessing to give you hope. I didn’t know about the side effects because I’ve never seen it happen. Taking my women right away was always my favorite course of action.”

Feeling his stomach drop, Nick suddenly realized, “You don’t know if it will be gone with the first full moon either then.”

“True, I guess you can do all the trailblazing and let me know. Maybe one of the twins or Aubrey will go into heat for Terrell. He may not be ready for a second mate when they’re ready for him, so it would be good to know.”

Shaking his head at the werewolf, Nick complained, “You are really a terrible mentor aren’t you?”

“I’m a werewolf. We aim low,” he chuckled before the two men returned towards the house.

Charlotte joined Kate in her room. The pack had greeted her less warmly, but without hostility at least.

“They still hate that we left?” she asked the girl who was about to join her brother in exile from the pack.

Green eyes lifted from her looking at the clothes she was pulling from her drawer. “I almost wonder why I am bothering to gather my stuff, if I am so allergic and have to wear Logan’s clothes for now.

“And no I don’t think the others hate you. After that fight with the vampires, and all those deaths, I think you moving on seemed a lot less important to everyone. I know I never hated you for leaving. You stood up to Eric for that girl and it seems to have worked out in its own way at least.

“Do you see Lena very often?”

“I went with her and Nick to the gym today when I lost it,” Charlotte replied as she sat on the edge of the bed. Nick’s clothes were a little big, and certainly not the most feminine things she could wear; but they weren’t uncomfortable or too unflattering.
The thought that she was still worried about her appearance, and for who, made the woman blush. Her crush was more than just that, even though he had told Nick different. She really wished that he wasn’t already dating Nicola and they seemed very close besides.

Thinking her friend was blushing from the embarrassment of flipping out in the
gym, Kate still couldn’t help ask, “What did you do?”

Realizing that Kate wasn’t judging her, Charlotte answered truthfully and without shame as she finally analyzed it for herself, “Well, before we even went, there was just something off today. I only wore one of Nick’s shirts to breakfast... nothing else.” She sighed and continued, “It was like I was intentionally seeing if I could push his buttons. Instead of getting a real rise out of Nick, it was Logan that got mad at me for not dressing appropriately.”

“Good southern girls don’t dress like that,” giggled Kate another girl from the same state after all.

“Not when their parents can see them anyway,” she laughed with her friend. “Anyway, when Lena came with his housecleaner, Geni, (she’s human by the way so try and not give yourself away) they decided to go to the gym that is supposed to help her learn to fight. When they asked if I wanted to come, for the first time I said yes.”

“Nick has offered to take you before?” Kate asked stopping in her gathering with her interest in the story.

“A couple times.
I think that he kind of wanted another person so that it wouldn’t be awkward between him and Lena. She’s so much younger than him and doesn’t know much about the world, the world humans see or ours for that matter. Anyway, I said yes and I’m not sure why. For some reason the idea of rolling around on the mats with Nick made me almost romanticize it, I guess. I mean, a real training day in one of those gyms, and it is a hole in the wall type, means sweating and getting dirty.”

“Neither of which are your thing,” Kate nodded.

“I know, right, but I said yes and it was fun for a few tries. Then I started getting a little overly wild, so he made me wait while he worked with Lena. I didn’t appreciate it, I guess, so when one of the gym hunks asked if I wanted him to show me some moves, I said yes. He was good looking and had his shirt off, but I didn’t really care about him. I’m not sure why I said yes.”

“You wanted to get Nick jealous, and what did he do?”

Had she thought to make him jealous? Was she jealous that he had spent time with Lena instead of her? Charlotte’s skin started getting warm just with the thought of it. Rubbing Nick’s towel on her arms as she began to itch a bit, the woman remembered what had happened. “He left Lena to go to the locker room for a minute. That was when, Bobby,” she said his name with distaste, “decided to get fresh and touch my breasts. He even went for a throw that would let him put his hand on my groin. That was when I snapped and broke his nose. I think I kicked one of his friends in the groin too, but I sort of blacked out and can’t really remember much until Nick returned and I started to fight him.

“I bit him... with my werewolf fangs out for anyone to see. If he hadn’t left his hand in my mouth long enough for me to relax and withdraw my fangs, the entire gym might have seen them!”

Moving to sit by Charlotte, the other girl recapped on her fingers, “So you went with him because you wanted to be with him after trying to seduce him. Then you bit him after he left while you were trying to make him jealous. That sounds completely normal,” she finished with a laugh.

With a sad groan as she leaned her head onto Kate’s shoulder for sympathy, she complained, “I might as well be trying to seduce a married man. They’ve known each other for decades and seem to have waited for the right moment to click. Now here I am trying to get them to unclick.”

“Maybe you can ask Nicola to let you have him for a few decades. I mean they’ll outlive you anyway and you’ll just be a blip of time to them. They waited this long why can’t she let you have him a few decades and just wait for you to die?”

“Aw!” Charlotte moaned in sad protest.

“Oops, sorry,” the girl giggled as she covered her lips self consciously. “Maybe I am getting out of this house just in time. These werewolves have been rubbing off on me in a bad way.

“I just meant...,” she paused and shrugged throwing her hands out palm up giving up. “There is no way to say it that doesn’t just sound morbid. Anyway, maybe she’ll give you a chance or he will.”

A large shadow moved in front of the bedroom door and Ray leaned against the door frame shaking his head, “You know I remember you having a lot better style than this, Charlotte. Wearing oversize men’s clothes? How gauche. It looks like this time with the voran is affecting you negatively. Maybe you should have bonded with a wolf?”