Turns out creating a hybrid is a little different than turning a human wolfy. Our magical makeup and superior healing make the process more difficult, because time is of the essence. From the start of the blood draining and exchange to the stopping of the heartbeat—yeah, so not looking forward to that part—the whole process had to be completed in a matter of minutes. With time being so crucial, it also meant that Jake would need help to drain my blood. It was either that or slice me wide open. I was not expecting that part.
“So I have to let other people gnaw on me? I don’t know if you have noticed this, but blood exchange is a bit erotic for us of the wolfy persuasion. I am not about to have a blood orgy with my new Family-to-be.”
Vampire Barbie giggled at me. My new sis-in-law was grating on my nerves. Hopefully my new Family had some space in the living arrangements, or I saw an epic chick fight in our near future.
“You’ve never had blood taken by someone who wasn’t your mate. There is a difference. It’s only erotic for you because of the mating pheromones. This will not be a sexual exchange. Although I’m not opposed to female companionship at times, I won’t be attempting to seduce my brother’s—my Protector’s—mate.”
Both Doc and Dad practically had their tongues lolling from the sides of their mouths with the girl on girl comment.
Ick
. I knew Daddy and Doc weren’t celibate. I have never heard details, but neither one had ever done the relationship thing. As I watched them flank Shelly, I was curious if maybe, like me, they needed something more than a traditional relationship.
Then Shelly licked the tip of her black plastic bottle, and I remembered that they were both men, and ogling is akin to football in some respects. Because Daddy raised me as a human, and Doc raised us both as wolves, I had to witness conquests from time to time.
“I’m assuming Jake will be doing some taking too, so won’t that throw around some pheromone voodoo?” Anything to interrupt the flirting going on would be a welcome change, so I brought the attention back to me and my soon-to-be-alternative dietary needs.
Jake moved to crouch in front of where I was sitting. He didn’t agree with me right away, which had me really twitchy. I wanted him to turn me. He was the only one of these vamps that I knew. Well, besides Vampire Barbie, and I didn’t really like her much.
“Baby, as the Protector I am in charge of the ceremony to bring people into the Family. I am usually not involved in the event physically.”
I pulled my hands out from under the comfort of his. “Wait—whoa. It won’t be your blood?”
Shelly dropped Doc and Daddy’s attention like a gum wrapper and chimed in. “It isn’t usually. With his mixed heritage we are never quite sure what he would change people into. But with you…” she shrugged. “His hybrid balance is the ultimate goal, so his blood will be administered to you during the change. We still don’t know what will happen, but even Doc agrees that having your wolves mated makes his blood the best chance at success.”
“All of you agree? So y’all have been getting chatty? Glad everyone was discussing this without me.”
“We had to find some way to kill time while you were out having your temper tantrum. I thought it best to spend our time planning for the future. It didn’t take too much convincing to get them to sit and stay, did it, guys?” Shelly had a smirk on her face that had me using my powers of selective cognition.
The uncomfortable look on both my dad and Doc’s faces told me I did not, did
not
, want to know a damn thing about what they were talking about or doing before Jake and I got back. At least they had the decency to not comment on it and give the girl a bit of breathing room. Shelly didn’t seem to be rattled, but she took another drink from her bottle o’ blood. I wondered if she was using it to quench her unholy thirst, or if maybe she wasn’t the only one in the room that was trying to distract me from some uncomfortable attraction that seemed to be forming between her and the Paulson Pack leaders.
I was disgusted and curious all at the same time. Thank goodness we got off the topic before my wolf decided to shift again out of mental preservation.
“And just so you don’t lose what little control you seem to have and run away during the whole thing, we also agree that restraints will be used.” The little bitch smiled. She was enjoying this far too much.
“So let me get this straight. You—all of you—think that it is just a super idea for me to get chained down and snacked on by a bunch of vampires. I gotta say, this is not what I had in mind. I thought Jake and I would take a little vacay, and I’d come back minus a heartbeat and with strange new dietary cravings.”
Daddy proved he wasn’t mute, but he didn’t come to my rescue either. He agreed with everything Shelly had laid out. He said it a little more nicely than she did, but the end was the same. Doc agreed and Jake was quiet. There wasn’t much left to go over. They had the plan of attack on the last bit of human I had left in me. My heartbeat.
Daddy stayed as the rest of our planning committee headed out. He stood in the doorway just staring at me. He looked like he was trying to remember me in case he didn’t get to see me again. The scary part was that he might not.
I felt his arms go around me, and I nuzzled under his head. His jaw twitched and, for the first time since I can remember, his emotions traveled all the way down his face. He held me back to look at me. “You come before the Pack. You are my daughter. My responsibility as Alpha is important, but my responsibility as your father means more. I can’t protect Jake. But if this goes bad…if…well, you have the Pack if you need us.”
He meant if someone ended up dead. He was trying to spin the words and make it sound less life-or-death, but there was no sheltering me from this. We both knew that. “I never believed in fate when I was human, sweetie, but I feel like you could begin something wonderful between Pack and Family.”
He looked at Jake then and nodded as he let go of me. “Becoming more than a man, I have learned that there was a lot I didn’t know. Didn’t understand. If this is meant to be, it will be. And because it’s you, something amazing will come from it.”
He kissed me and left. I cried silently with Jake’s arms closing around my chest. Daddy’s pickup kicked up dust as it skidded from the cabin. The truck turned a corner, and I felt the connection to my Pack start to thin. That sense of belonging to them wasn’t the heavy cord I was used to anymore. Jake was pulling me away. Something held me back from completely letting go.
The plan was that Jake and I would travel to his Family’s main house that night. Shelly had called a meeting, and his whole Family would be there. He would present me and propose to bring me on board with the whole vampire life.
He had a lot of pull as the Protector, but his father was the Family figurehead—the Matheo. He would take note of the opinions of the rest of the Family and make the final decision. Then we were either ready to go for the change process, or we would fight our way out and run. Jake was positive that we would be okay. I couldn’t find the same kind of positivity putting my life in the hands of people who had to have a treaty not to kill me.
We decided to try and grab a few hours of sleep in a hotel located comfortably between our families’ locations. More than likely, someone would’ve dropped by the cabin, and I needed some serious downtime before we set this in motion.
Jake’s Family was set to meet at midnight. That left us four hours to rest or take part in other activities between consenting adults. Jake had stopped off to get a couple bags of items for us before he found me in the woods. Two duffle bags pressed into our shoulders as we headed out.
I climbed into the black SUV that was waiting to take us away. I couldn’t help saying a mental goodbye to the cabin. No matter what happened that night, I would never return to that same cabin. I would either see it in a different light as a hybrid or I would watch it from afar, never being able to stop inside, because we would be on the run.
There was always the option that I would be dead, but I was trying to put that out of my mind.
I took a mental picture, and one with my cell phone. I used a little app to place a flowered border around the picture. Then I took the border off and deleted it. I was about to find a new safe house, hopefully. The only thing I knew was that Jake was with me. He held my hand all the way to the hotel.
Chapter Thirteen
As far as pre-turning activities go, ours weren’t what I expected. At least we were naked. Naked was good.
I was chained to a bed with Velcro cuffs and nylon tugs. That part wasn’t as great for me, but since we were both naked, I was game. Sparkling in the moonlight, the restraints held me to the bed as Jake hovered over me. I felt so small beneath him. His arms bracketed my ribs, and he slowly lowered his body.
His weight felt startling on me. He wasn’t so big that he was the obvious wolf, but with his shoulders spanning so far past mine, and his weight taking the breath I was already short on, I felt his power.
His cock was pulsing against my inner thigh, and I tried to wiggle against the searing path of heat he was leaving as he lowered himself. He managed to move back just as I moved forward, to move left just as I moved right. I felt the trickle of precome dribble warm across that sensitive skin.
Fuck this
. I was getting him inside me now.
With a growl I pulled against the leg restraints to break out…only I couldn’t.
What the hell?
I thrashed against him. I could feel the rough tickle of his body hair against me, scraping my skin into hyper awareness. As I listed to the left and right, he held still. It was like pushing an immovable wall.
“Struggle all you like, Amber. This is a true restraint. The sparkle of color you loved in these? That’s silver thread, baby. You’re not going anywhere. I will get to play with my pretty little mate all I want, and she can’t take back control.”
Silver. The bugger used silver
. Didn’t he remember he could have just as easily gotten me drunk? I wasn’t going anywhere.
“You can’t leave me in here like this forever. And believe me when I say, you will pay for this. I’m not a kinky kind of wolf. This doesn’t wag my tail. Let me up.” I hoped he understood me, because the majority of those words were spit through my teeth.
Nobody took my control. Where the hell was my wolf? The bitch was hanging back fucking laughing at me! Okay, maybe
she
liked this shit, but I sure as hell didn’t.
Jake did a push up over me, and all those fabulous muscles corded and flexed on the way up. Which was enough to distract me until he got off the bed. “Where the hell are you going? You can’t leave me here!”
“I just have to get a few tools.”
What did he mean tools? Was he losing his hybrid brain?
Damn
. “No” was repeating in my head, but my body was humming a totally different word. The fire in my mound and the heaviness in my breasts sounded a lot more like “yes”.
Jake walked back, running some flimsy black fabric between his fingers. “This is a blindfold for you to wear. Then you can guess what else I have just by feel. Doesn’t that sound fun?”
“You keep torturing me like this, and we can just call off the whole sex thing. Dammit, Jake, let me up.”
“You do not like this?”
“No.”
“This does not turn you on?”
“No.”
“What if I do this?” He pulled a bottle of oil up over the side of the bed where I was able to see it. The bright red label mocked me. His hands glistened in the scant light that was filtering through the curtains next to us. I tried to get away from his hands. This was not the way things went for me. Then my eyes crossed as he started his massage.
His fingers slid through mine, moving down my arms. Then instead of rubbing that delicious oil over my aching breasts he moved it over my ribcage and sent off a wave of goose bumps all over my body. I shivered, and he traced the flutter down my belly and over my thighs. He slid those magic fingers over where he had branded his cock against my inner leg and moved up until I could feel the warmth of his hands against my core. Then he stopped.
He freaking stopped
.
“Why did you stop?”
“You said you did not like this.”
He was dead, or I was going to kill him more. At any rate, I was getting out of these restraints and I was causing him pain. Well, I was fucking him first, and then I would get him. Much better plan.
His hands slid up an inch, and a single finger grazed just inside my quivering lips. If I could have closed my thighs and pushed his hand up I would have. I moved what little I could, but once again he held himself back just enough to keep the touch I really wanted out of my reach.
“You are very wet for someone who doesn’t enjoy this.”
I looked at him and the growl died in my throat. He was gorgeous, he was naked and he was looking at me like he wanted to eat me with a spoon and fuck me for days.
“No comment?” His finger kept stroking just inside my lips, but not penetrating my opening and not touching my clit.
Mad
. He was going to drive me mad. He pulled his finger away and licked my juices off. Then he leaned over me again. He positioned his cock to rest against my belly and his thigh pressed against my core. He pushed his leg forward.
Oh Mylanta
.
“If you really are not enjoying this, I will stop. You just have to say the word stop.” His thigh pushed against me harder and slid from side to side. “But by the heat I feel, and from how soaking wet you are, we are going to continue, aren’t we?”
“Yes.” Where did that come from? He pressed his thigh up and wiggled back and forth. My pussy. The “yes” had come from there.
I leaned my head back to ignore some of the strain and feel the sensations he was causing all over my body. The oil was starting to tingle where he had rubbed it on my skin. It made me want to move. The fact that I couldn’t do more than wiggle was driving me crazy, but he latched on to my nipple and suddenly it wasn’t such a bad crazy anymore.