Wolves of Haven: Lone (21 page)

“Not at all. Never have I regretted
anything when it pertains to your daughter. I love her,” Damian
assured him. “I would die for her, and when my father finds out, I
just might.”

That, oddly enough, gave Beowulf
comfort and might have prevented a war between packs for the
moment.

“We don’t know where she stems
from,” Beowulf said in a soft tone. “Son, stop eavesdropping,” he
called out.

A blue-tinted wolf lopped the rest
of the way down the stairs then sulked into the cellar and flopped
down next to Beowulf.

Tenderly he rubbed his furry blue
head. “You can stay until Eve comes,” he offered.

The young wolf nodded.

“Eve?” Damian asked.

“That’s what my daughter calls her
wolf,” he explained. “She has no control over her, none, and that
terrifies Akia. When I found her, it was purely by accident, and
she was terrified and confused, backed into a corner and nearly
killed me, but I took a chance and gambled on her.”

Damian swallowed the lump in his
throat. “Where did you find her?”

“While dealing with an issue one of
my lovely sons had found himself neck deep in while in Cambodia, I
heard whispers of a travelling show that was unlike any other, and
for the right price a man could play with the talent.”

Ulrik whimpered.

Beowulf caressed his head. “I know,
Child. I went solely with the objective of killing them all… My
patience has only been achieved over the years because of righting
my moral compass, and burning a child sex trade sideshow to the
ground would have been compass righting to say the least. However,
when I got there, I was too late.”

Damian nodded; his sole attention
on the face of the woman he loved as she shivered and convulsed on
the floor. “What did they do to her?” he managed to ask.

“Honestly? I don’t know,” Beowulf
admitted. “By the time I got there all I found were corpses; men,
women, children, and werewolves strung across the darkened club. It
looked as if a savage pack of rabid wolves had attacked, ripping
each person limb from limb, entrails were wrapped around throats
that no longer bled, eyes were gouged out, hearts were all missing…
Never in my centuries of life had I seen anything so gruesome.
Since there were no children or wolf survivors, I turned to leave,
and that’s when I caught a strange scent.

“In a darkened corner was a tiny
creature, one that was so covered in filth and blood that it was
nearly unrecognizable. I couldn’t tell if the creature was a
female, but there was no mistaking the burning amber eyes locked on
mine and the menacing growl rolling from their throat. Clutched in
tiny, clawed hands was a heart, one of many devoured that evening,
I suppose, and the little creature was ripping and tearing at it
with tiny fanged teeth, feeding as if they hadn’t ever eaten
before. ‘I will not hurt you,’ I whispered, and they growled at me
even more and scampered away from me, the partially eaten heart
clenched between their teeth, moving in a defensive crouch as if
sizing me up for their next meal. ‘I can take you away from here
where no one will ever touch you again,’ I promised.

“Sadly, there was no way of
reasoning with the creature, and when I accidentally backed it into
a corner, I made the mistake of reaching for them, and they
attacked.” Beowulf pulled down the collar of his shirt, and
Damian’s eyes followed the motion before widening; blemishing his
light tan skin were soft pink scars from fangs and claws, the
smallest fangs and claws that he’d ever seen, but the intent was
very clear: she was trying to kill him. “Much like Fae had, I
resorted to violent means to subdue the amber-eyed creature. Once
back to the villa, Seff tended to my wounds while Louvel tended to
the tiny wolf I brought with me. When Louvel joined us, all the
color had drained from his complexion, and he looked as if he was
faint. At first I thought the tiny demon had done something to him,
his hands to the elbows were covered in blood, but it was not his…
He had bathed the child while they were unconscious and that was
when he made the discovery that the tiny wolf was a
female.

“Seff demanded that we kill her,
that it was a bad omen. Louvel got drunk, his way of dealing with
problems. And as much as I wanted to agree with both of them, I
couldn’t. There was something about her, something beyond her
gender, that made me curious. Her eyes were those of a wolf while
in human form, that I had never seen outside of in the throes of
transformation. When I went to check on her, the room was
apparently empty. She was nowhere to be found-”

“The closet,” Damian
interrupted.

Beowulf chuckled. “Yes. She was
huddled in the closet, the fear radiating from her nearly dropped
me to my knees, and when she looked up at me, her beautiful
ocean-blue eyes caused tears to flood mine. With only a look, she
bewitched me—mind, body, soul, and wolf—and I knew that I had to
risk everything in order to protect her at all costs. It was a
fight, Seff was adamantly against it, but I am the Alpha, and he
was still the Beta. After nearly a month, she was able to stop
gorging herself with so much food that she’d throw up before trying
to eat what she vomited in fear of starving again. We watched and
waited on the new and full moons, but she merely slept as if she
was in a coma. Finally, I was able to convince her to board an
airplane and it would take her home.

“The boys were terrified of her,
with good reason, I suppose. Connell poked and prodded her, ran
tests and did a genetic workup. The tests confirmed she was like
any other werewolf. Over the first few years she grew and put on
weight, the effects from the malnourishment she was subjected to
corrected itself as expected in a werewolf, and she took that
form,” he said, motioning towards the unconscious woman. “Even
though she was in the body of a woman now, she was still a
terrified little girl. The first year she didn’t speak, not once.
For five years she never made eye contact with people and would
flinch away from someone if they moved too quickly or in a means
that could be construed as violent. Her system started to align
with the lunar cycle, it took years, and when it did we got the
grave misfortune of meeting Eve’s acquaintance.

“At first I wasn’t sure what to
think of it,” Beowulf admitted, sounding reluctant to speak of it.
“The boys were excited to get to run with their baby sister, but
that excitement quickly turned to terror when she did
unmentionables… There was no cardinal rule that Eve did not long to
break. When we pressed the matter, Akia had no idea of what we were
talking about. To her, she merely sleeps when the wolf takes
over.”

Damian gasped; that was completely
insane and unheard of! Never did he think that it was even
possible. “They are one in the same,” he argued.

He chuckled. “To one that boasts
from the strong bloodline that you do, you wouldn’t be aware of the
struggle that some have with their inner wolves. Varg’s wolf is
Adam, the first of his bloodline; born from a recessive gene
father. This little guy,” he mused and tousled Ulrik’s furry head,
“has unprecedented control over his wolf like you do, and enjoys
changing at whim, doesn’t feel the siren like call of the moon, and
his wolf only longs to play, not hunt. He has made Louvel very
proud of him.”

Ulrik rolled to his back and shook
his legs.

Damian shook his head; this was all
very strange to him. His pack was completely different than Akia’s,
and he wasn’t entirely sure how to handle that.

“Connie, Fae, and Rafe, they have
control over their wolves, but the call of the moon still speaks to
them. Connie struggles with keeping his wolf contained. He has to
run a few times a week in order to keep from overheating and losing
control. When he does lose his hold on the wolf, it isn’t bloody.
Usually he’s horny and you’ll find him peeking in windows or
getting laid…don’t ask. Even though control comes with age, and
they are relatively young, some struggle with it their entire
lives, hence our lovely cellar…” his words trailed off when
groaning came from the cell. “We’ll leave you two alone for now.
You’ll know when Eve presents, you’ll be able to smell her. I can
have Fae and Rafe take shifts watching her tonight so you can
run.”

Damian shook his head and crawled
over to the cell then reached inside, his finger just barely able
to caress her hair. “I have no need to run,” he said. “I will watch
after her. She is mine…if she’ll have me.”

Beowulf nodded then stood. “Come
on, Kid. Let’s give them some privacy, and I’ll make sure that
Louvel is around if they need anything.” He turned to Damian. “I’m
going to the station with Seff. Tonight the Stray will strike
again. There is no way he’ll be able to withstand the call, even I
am struggling with it, so that should, in theory, give me an alibi.
If you need anything, either of you, just yell. Louvel will be here
if you need anything.”

“Thank you,” he whispered, and they
left the two alone, closing the cellar door behind them.

****

Softly Akia groaned, rubbing the
side of her head that apparently stopped Faelan’s fist. There’s
only one thing that would have caused her brother to punch her, and
that was what she was terrified of: Eve.

“I’m sorry,” she
mumbled.

“For what?” Damian asked, caressing
her head.

Akia rolled over, closing the
distance between them more and struggled to focus on his face. “You
know very well why I’m apologizing,” she grumbled, closing her
eyes. “I didn’t want you ever meeting that bitch, and yet you did…
Fuck, did I shoot Varg?” she groaned. “That is so not going to end
well for me.”

“He’ll get over it,” Damian assured
her. “He’s been fighting with his brothers since we came down here.
He wants to come down, but your father told him he wasn’t invited
and his services wouldn’t be required.”

Again she groaned; that was one
fight she wished she could crawl away from in the concealment of
night.

In all fairness, a flesh
wound was the least painful of the long list of pains she wanted to
inflict on him. But hearing
my mate
from her lips terrified her since it was
automatic, and yet it felt right. The look in Adam’s eyes, they
were Varg’s eyes looking at her in pain and shock, but he couldn’t
honestly have believed that she would come home to stay and be with
him again. If Varg did, then he was delusional in every sense of
the meaning.

“Damian, can you leave?” Akia
asked, looking away from him.

“Why? Because you’re ashamed of
Eve?” he asked.

“I’m ashamed of many things,” she
admitted, pulling his hand from her head then brought it to her
mouth and kissed it. “She’s a darkness that I cannot control, and I
know that she’ll hurt you simply because I-”

“Someone once told me,” he said,
interrupting her; he didn’t want her first I love you, if that was
what she was going to say, to be because of guilt, “that normal
people have no idea how beautiful the darkness is. And your
darkness is just as beautiful as your light, you just need to find
the bridge between the two. If you want help finding that bridge,
I’ll do whatever I can to assist you with it, so you can take pride
in the other mask you are forced to wear.”

Akia hated it when Damian got
overly poetic when being reassuring. It made it near impossible to
tell him no. It was ironic that he spoke of it as a mask one wears
because he, himself, wore a half-dozen masks, all of which she had
seen firsthand but only three she enjoyed: Captain Nikas mask,
werewolf mask, and home with her mask. Somehow he brought out the
sides of her that she never knew existed, and it pissed her off,
but at the same time it felt as if the wolf side was starting to
lose the power she once had over Akia.

“Did you want to talk about the
case to pass the time?” he pressed when she didn’t say
anything.

The choked burst of amusement that
broke past her lips made him smile.

“The case is the last thing I want
to talk about,” she admitted, “but now I can openly talk about it
with you, and you won’t think I’m completely insane.”

“Because of your heightened sense
of smell?” he teased.

“And ability to sense a lie,” she
said, and he nodded his understanding.

“Involuntary response and reactions
aren’t the easiest things to pick up, even for werewolves, so you
should take pride in the fact that you can read people as well as
you do.”

She looked up at him and met his
eyes, the blush creeping up her neck felt like fire under her skin,
but she knew the heat wasn’t from her wolf side trying to run free.
“I learned it from you,” she whispered then kissed his hand again.
“You are an exceptional teacher, even when you don’t mean to be.
The Oliver case,” she said with a chuckle, “I was trying so hard
not to bust into the interrogation room when you were grilling that
bastard, and throwing you on the table before I did naughty,
naughty things to you in front of him and the cameras.”

Damian smirked. “I know,” he said,
rather smugly. “I could hear you from the other side of the glass,
and smell you and how turned on you were, that’s why I was grilling
him as hard as I was, as you put it. I only needed ten minutes with
him, but what I was doing to you was so much better than putting a
murderer behind bars.”