“Sorin, tell me what you’re seeing.” She kept her voice calm and soothing.
“I returned to my pack, but it was as if I could no longer connect to them. I stared them right in the face, but my wolf could not feel them. It was as if they were all ghosts.”
His hands tightened and Gia stepped closer, bringing their bodies into contact. Tension vibrated his body and she could smell fear all over his skin. Whatever he was remembering was scaring him. She pressed their bodies together, silently offering him the support of pack.
“I went mad, Gia,” he whispered hoarsely. “I attacked them like a rabid dog. The . . .” He shook his head, frustration pinching his features. “The word does not translate well. Whatever that mystic connection is that forms between members of a pack—it vanished. They ceased to be pack to me, my wolf couldn’t recognize them. I woke up with their blood all over me . . .”
“Shhhh, it’s all right,” she soothed, trying to pull him closer. “It’s all right.”
“It is not all right,” he shook his head and pulled away.
The look in his eyes tightened her chest with sympathy. She stood there helplessly as he stared at her like a lost child.
“Gia, I cannot be part of a pack. I cannot bond with other werewolves. Without that bond, I would be a danger to them.” He shook his head, sadness thickening his voice. “I would forever be outside the pack, a stranger looking in.”
Strangely enough, his panic calmed her. The part of Gia that had been lupa for all those years, rose up in response to a werewolf in pain. She straightened her spine and smoothed her features into an expression of calm confidence, willing him to feel it.
“Sorin, you died. Of course that would change how you relate to your pack. I know the connection you speak of, our people call it
mnemosyne
. It’s the sense of home you get from the smell and touch of your brethren.” She met his eyes, keeping all doubt from her visage. “I can’t tell you how to fix it, but I am confident it can be fixed. With your permission, I will speak with our oracle. If you let me do this, I promise you we will find a solution.” She stepped forward, taking his hands in hers again. “I pulled you back into this world, Sorin. Let me help you live in it.”
He stared at her, uncertainty clear in the tilt of his head. Her heart pounded and for one achingly long moment she waited for him to say he would stay.
“The oracle is the mouthpiece of our goddess, not the goddess herself.”
A new voice pierced the air, making Gia and Sorin snap their heads around to face the speaker. Gia’s breath caught in her throat as she recognized Byron’s towering form separating itself from the shadows of the trees. She hadn’t smelled him coming, no doubt because he’d approached from downwind. Her chest tightened with remorse. Regardless of how the challenge fight ended, her relationship with Byron would never recover.
“Byron—”
“The reason you could not feel your pack is because you’re dead.” Byron completely ignored her, giving Sorin the full brunt of his unforgiving stare. “The oracle can’t change that. We know pack by touch and by smell. Your body holds the chill of the grave and you smell like a corpse.” Byron shook his head. “You’ll never bring anything but death to us.”
“That’s enough, Byron!” Gia snarled, baring her teeth. “You will not talk to him like that.”
“You are not my lupa, Gia, don’t bark your orders at me.”
It was a simple statement of truth and yet the pain of it nearly brought Gia to tears. Byron had finally turned his eyes to her and the betrayal in his brown depths broke her heart.
“Byron, please listen to me,” she begged.
“You know what they did to my wife,” Byron whispered. “How could you bring him here? How could you invite a murderer into our home?”
“He isn’t a murderer, he’s a good man.”
“He’s brainwashed you. You’re a victim of Aphrodite.”
His gaze met hers and Gia was shocked to see real regret in his eyes.
“I am sorry, Gia. If I had known calling for Aphrodite’s Hunt would lead to this I would never have added my voice to the rest. I would have done anything to spare you the bond you now have with this abomination.” The regret vanished under the burn of true hatred as he returned his gaze to Sorin. “Rest assured though, I will try to make amends. I only hope that his true death will bring you peace.”
“Byron, you don’t know what he’s been through,” Gia protested, taking a step toward her former second in command. “If you would just listen you would see that he needs our help—”
“I don’t need to listen. I heard everything you said.” He pointed a finger at Sorin. “He attacked his own pack. That sin alone should be enough to banish him.”
Gia glanced at Sorin, almost afraid to hear his reaction to Byron’s unforgiving judgment. The vulnerability that had been written across his face only moments ago had vanished and he stood there staring at Byron with all the emotion of a rock. A stabbing sense of loss pierced her gut as she watched him standing there, alone and silent. She’d done this to him.
Before she could open her mouth to say anything, Byron stepped back and gestured for Sorin to walk ahead of him.
“I’m here to make sure you find your way to the challenge circle. Start walking.”
Sorin swayed forward, but Gia darted in front of him, holding her palms to his chest to keep him from moving. Sorin tilted his head to meet her gaze, only the barest flicker of confusion in his eyes.
“Sorin, wait. You don’t have to do this. Rescind the challenge.”
His eyebrows rose ever so slightly. “Why?”
She blinked against the rising tears in her eyes. “I made a mistake.” She swallowed hard, remembering all the faces she’d seen tonight. How had she caused so much pain? How had she ignored it? “I made a lot of mistakes,” she amended quietly. “I let my fear choose my mate, I ignored my pack’s needs, and I dragged you into the middle of all of it.”
He stared at her with an infuriatingly amused calm and she grabbed his face in her hands, fighting the urge to shake him until that amusement died.
“Sorin, I don’t want you to die for my mistakes.”
For a moment, he seemed like he would pull away and keep walking. Then he sighed and leaned down to press his forehead to hers.
“I want to be the man you deserve,” he whispered. “But I fear death has changed me. I am not the werewolf I was.”
“You are still a werewolf,” Gia insisted, her voice barely audible even to her own ears. “I love you.”
Sorin smiled, a full spreading of the lips that lit up his entire face. Gia’s heart soared as his lips closed over hers in a slow sensual kiss. Before it could become more than a slide of his lips across hers, Byron cleared his throat. Sorin pulled back first.
“That is why I must fight tonight, Gia,” he said ruefully. “I want to give you everything. And this is all I have to give.”
“So you’re really going through with this. You’re taking a vampire for a mate and you’re going to try and make him our lycaeon?”
Gia gritted her teeth, trying not to let Rhianne’s scathing tone make her say anything rash.
“Sorin is a
vukodlak
, not a vampire. He is as much a werewolf—”
“He is a dead man!”
Rhianne’s voice slithered down Gia’s spine like a viper looking for a vulnerable spot to sink its fangs. All around the challenge circle, the members of her pack shifted on their feet, some of them responding to Rhianne’s grandstanding with nods. Gia stood in the center of the challenge circle next to Sorin, the focus of her entire pack.
She tightened her hands into fists at her sides. “You heard me. The challenge stands.”
The new lupa crossed her legs, sliding her hands over the smooth rock of the throne. Gia’s nerves tightened as she watched her opponent nestle even further into the seat that had been hers for over two decades. Byron sat in a matching throne beside her, two seats carved from the rocks so long ago no one remembered where the rocks came from. They sat at the top of a wide circular clearing—a place of gathering for the pack for as long as anyone could remember.
“I’m not certain Sorin qualifies to fight in a challenge fight,” Rhianne drawled. “After all he is technically—”
“I will fight him.”
Byron’s voice boomed through the circle and everyone gathered in the clearing turned their attention to him. Rhianne frowned. “My lycaeon, perhaps—”
“I said I will fight him.” Byron stood and pointed to Sorin. “You and I will battle first.”
Rhianne glared at Byron, shooting to her feet. “You fool, think about what you’re doing. I told you we could disqualify him and avoid this whole—”
“I want to fight him,” Byron said quietly.
He stared down at Rhianne and Gia was surprised to see a little tinge of fear cross the woman’s features. She hadn’t realized it until just now but Rhianne was damn near half Byron’s size. He towered over her as if she were just a small child. Gia smiled, enjoying Rhianne’s sudden discomfort.
Something in his face must have told Rhianne better than words that it was no use trying to dissuade him. The hatred she had counted on to make Byron accept a position as lycaeon now worked against her. He wanted to tear into the vampire—to punish Sorin for the sins of those bloodsuckers who had killed his wife. No amount of reasoning was going to change his mind.
A cold wash of fear doused Gia’s body, erasing the smile from her face. Byron was a good man, kinder than one might expect upon first seeing his imposing figure. The one thing that could bring that chilling glint to his eyes was the mention of vampires, the cold beasts who had stolen the life of the woman he loved.
Gia turned to Sorin and wrapped her arms around his neck. He bent to let her bury her face against his throat, breathing deeply of his scent. Tears burned in her eyes and she struggled to speak past the lump forming in her throat.
“You don’t have to do this,” she whispered. “I would leave with you.”
As soon as she spoke the words, she knew they were true. It didn’t matter anymore that Aphrodite had been the one to bind them together.
“Do not be foolish,” he said softly. “You need your pack. I will not take them away from you.” He leaned back, caressing her jaw with his fingertips. “Have faith in me, little wolf.”
“You should have eaten before you came,” Byron snarled. “You will not feed on her in our sacred circle.”
Gia and Sorin both stared at Byron in shock. His hatred rolled off him in suffocating waves and Gia had to force herself to leave the ring instead of standing in front of Sorin to block the venom Byron spewed at him.
Byron leapt down off the throne, landing lightly on his feet. He slowly drew himself up to his full height, his eyes boring a hole through Sorin’s face. “Are you ready, vampire?”
“
Vukodlak
,” Sorin corrected him with a soft smile. “And yes, I am ready.”
Byron began to pull off his shirt and Sorin held up a hand. “I will be fighting in human form. If you wish to shift, by all means do so.”
“You can’t fight in human form,” Rhianne groused. “Challenge fights are fought as wolves.”
“Traditionally, yes,” Claudiu shouted. “But there are no rules that say it has to be that way.”
“Thank you for your clarification,
former
lycaeon,” Rhianne hissed. “But I am lupa and I clarify the rules when it is necessary. I say challenge fights must be fought in wolf form.”
“In that case, the fight between Claudiu and I did not count as a challenge fight,” Gia called out. “You are not lupa.”
She watched Rhianne’s face contort in anger and a small irrational part of her brain hoped her pack would rally in her support and use Rhianne’s claim that challenge fights had to be made in wolf form to dethrone her. Sadly, no one spoke up.
“I will fight in human form as well,” Byron called out. “Challenge fights will be fought in the form the challenger chooses.”
Rhianne glared at Byron and Gia couldn’t help but smile. Byron was obviously turning out to be more trouble than Rhianne had anticipated.