* * * * *
“Where are you going?”
Lee looked back over his shoulder at Caine and raised his eyebrows. He stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged.
Caine laid his paper down and squinted at the boy.
“Are you after my woman?”
Lee grinned at him. And nodded.
So Caine let him go.
Caine sat alone in the living room of his parents’ house. The house where he and his brothers had been conceived and raised. The house where he wanted to raise the children he and Chloe created together.
The thought gripped Caine’s heart. Chloe had to have no doubt about the love Caine felt for her. He had showered the woman with affection and attention and adoration. And although their nightly ritual of his teasing her to sexual madness and then leaving her to please herself was proving to be very frustrating for Caine’s own sexual needs, it was also wonderful for him to watch the woman he loved as she demonstrated how aroused he could make her.
Every night as Caine watched Chloe love herself from his post just outside her bedroom, he thought about going to her again as he had the first night they’d met. He had considered climbing into her bed and beginning to make love to her in his animal form.
Caine only thought of doing this because she seemed so much more open with him when she didn’t know it was he who was keeping her company. When Caine was in wolf form, Chloe talked to him about him and about how what he was doing to her each night was making her ache with need. Caine was learning whether she had enjoyed his hands on her body in one way or his mouth on her in another. And he was using that knowledge each night he went back to her.
It was as if they were completely open to one another, but only through her conversations with two different creatures and only because she didn’t know who Caine really was. That was a problem Caine could not take lightly. And a problem that told him that it still wasn’t safe for him to tell her what he was.
Several times, when Caine was in his human form, they had talked more about the stories of Caine’s family and each and every time, despite the way she called them fairy tales, Chloe’s eyes and tone had sparkled and her face had become bright with excitement. She had even started telling Caine a story about how her great-grandmother had been ill enough to believe that she had once been in love with a man who was part wolf and part human. The story Chloe told Caine had been a very sweet and romantic yarn and it had made her face flush and her body become very aroused even when she stopped mid sentence during the story and told him that she knew that the tale was nonsense.
Caine hadn’t had the heart to tell her the truth. He hadn’t told her that she was wrong about the story being nonsense, or that the story itself was incomplete in more ways than she had left it.
The man’s name had been Grey. Grey Caine. Caine’s great-grandfather.
Even if he was able to tell Chloe that the stories hadn’t been the ranting of a mad woman, Caine didn’t know if he would ever tell Chloe that shortly after Maw’s love was forced by his own alpha position in the pack to breed with another woman, he was shot and killed while in wolf form as he tried to go back and see the woman he wasn’t able to forget.
Caine could only guess that either Maw’s father had kept the truth from his daughter or Maw had kept the truth from Chloe. More secrets. And these secrets were the kind that could put an even greater wedge between Caine’s pack and Chloe’s human family.
Caine’s grandfather had never known his own father because of the actions of Chloe’s ancestors. It was information that hit Caine hard when she told him what she knew of the story. The wolf in Caine had been immediately enraged, but the man who loved this woman had been able to back it down. It wasn’t Chloe’s fault. And Caine knew that she herself would never have done such a thing to one of his kind or his cousins. Caine also used the one consolation that had the events of his past not unfolded as they had, Chloe might never have been born.
But she had been and Caine had finally gathered the nerve to take a chance and tell her about what he was. When she hadn’t wanted to make love to him, Caine had no choice but to rethink the situation. He considered the fact that Chloe was just a bit old fashioned and wanted to wait a little longer, especially since she thought she’d been with his brother. And that bit of conscience suited Caine just fine. At least it suited the human side of him.
The wolf side of him wasn’t so easily told to wait. Caine’s body was going crazy with its urge to breed. It knew that its mate was near. It knew that Chloe was supposed to bear his young. And it was well aware that before long, Caine was going to lose his battle against such a force. It frightened him sometimes, for Chloe’s sake. Even with Meagan, Caine hadn’t felt as much sexual energy build inside himself as he anticipated making love to her. Caine feared that if he wasn’t able to tell Chloe what he was soon, he might not have a choice in the matter.
Caine had never felt so much like his own prey. But with the uncertainty of Chloe’s feelings toward him, the wolf in him knew that he might still have to force her to breed with him. She would be fertile again within days and Caine knew that she would become pregnant with his young this time. Whether it was something that he or Chloe wanted.
The animal in him knew that her monthly cycle had already come and gone. And that nothing would have prevented them from making love when he’d wanted to that afternoon.
But it had been the man in him who had to wonder why she had felt the need to lie.
Chapter Nineteen
Chloe awoke with a jerk. The sound had been loud enough to wake her, but now the room was silent. Until the howl echoed again.
She reached for her jeans and her shoes. This was none of her business. She knew that nature controlled these things, but still, the thought of losing only one of the precious beasts was enough to make Chloe rationalize her interfering with the most delicate and intelligent of all things.
The fight sounded very close. And they were large dogs. Chloe could tell by the sounds coming from them as they ripped and tore at each other that this was not the play of pack members. And as the alpha had obviously staked his claim on the cabin and her uncle’s property, Chloe knew that only one thing could be important enough for the two wolves she could hear killing one another to resort to this level of violence.
Someone had been caught where he didn’t belong.
* * * * *
Caine jumped and then closed his eyes again. It was all right. The house was silent.
But the air felt heavy around him. Intrusive. Wrong.
The smell of defensiveness coming from his twin as the wolf appeared in Caine’s bedroom door, reminded him that it was never a good idea to ignore his instincts.
* * * * *
They couldn’t speak when in this form, at least not with human words. But they didn’t have to.
Caine had smelled the intruder. It hadn’t been a sound that had awakened him. But now that he was awake, the smell and sound of the fight ensuing between Caine’s grandfather-a former alpha with a brutal streak that rivaled even Luke’s-and a wolf from one of the neighboring packs, was very clear to Caine’s senses.
Luke had hit a hard run before Caine even finished transforming and Lee was quickly bringing up the rear. As soon as Caine dropped and changed, he caught up with his twin and they bolted, side by side, across the miles between themselves and their oldest patriarch. Caine knew that his father would be joining them, although a few minutes later than his sons, his own aging body less able to travel such distances at this speed.
But Caine, Luke and Lee were not aged or infirm or unhealthy. As Caine felt muscles work in perfect stride alongside his brothers, he was not only reminded of how grateful he was that he had been born the magnificent creature he was, but also how grateful he was for his family.
The one that was being threatened by an intruder.
Caine glanced to the side just long enough to see that Lee had quickly caught up with his older brothers and now was even challenging their own abilities with his strength and speed. The thought of yet another alpha-worthy male in the family was one that Caine simply could not deal with for the moment, but one that he knew he would have to confront sooner or later.
The calls that were coming from Caine’s grandfather had grown weak and were causing Caine’s heart to pound even harder than his physical exertion was. The man was almost seventy and although he had relinquished his position as alpha to his son decades ago, he remained one of the most influential wolves in the pack.
And he was their grandpa.
That thought gripped Caine as he and Luke topped the hill that overlooked Chloe’s cabin. Caine was forced to stop because of the futility of what he saw, but his brothers never slowed. Luke and Lee were angry and for the moment unable to control that anger.
Caine could suddenly feel nothing but grief.
He watched as Chloe quickly backed away from the bloodied and obviously dead body of Caine’s grandfather as Luke and Lee approached their beloved patriarch. Chloe was crying and very visibly shaken by the sight of the dead wolf and by the sight of two other wolves coming at her with such anger in their eyes.
Caine could understand her fear as she quickly made her way back into the cabin and closed the glass door. But more than anything, Caine could understand his brothers’ anger for what had happened.
He watched as Luke and Lee sniffed and examined their grandfather’s body. Caine slowly made his way toward the site, and then bypassed it in order to examine something else on the ground very close to where his blood lay dead.
Caine stared at the small piece of metal that had obviously been wedged from the intruder as he’d fought to take what rightfully had belonged to Caine since the day he’d been born. His eyes then went to the woman who stood inside the cabin, looking out at Caine and his kin. Afraid of Caine and his brothers and the very creatures she herself had invited into Caine’s home. The wolves that had now killed a member of Caine’s family.
As she stood there and cried, the man in Caine longed to comfort her. He longed to tell her that this was their way and that they had accepted this as a sad but necessary part of their lives.
But Caine couldn’t tell her that. And he couldn’t tell her what he truly was. And now, it had nothing to do with whether or not she could accept him for being half wolf and half human. Because for the first time in his almost thirty years of living as the animal he had always been, the instinctual animal in Caine could not overcome the human anger he felt. Anger over the fact that a member of the family who had killed Caine’s great-grandfather now stood directly in front of him wearing the blood of Caine’s family on her hands.
Again.
* * * * *
“No, you will not!”
Caine growled his order to his father and then stared the man down.
Never. Ever. But he’d had to this time.
Caine’s insides were torn as badly as his grandfather’s poor, arthritic and grayed body had been when they’d retrieved it quietly after the lights had gone out in Chloe’s cabin. Caine’s father wanted blood. And he wanted revenge.
As most men do when they’ve lost someone they love at the hands of another.
“We do not work that way.”
Caine’s tone was one he’d never had to use before with any of his family. Even Luke. It was his alpha voice, but it had to subdue and control the anger of the men in his family, not the wolves.
He yearned to be dealing with the more gentle beasts once again.
“They are taking over our territory…”
“And we will defend that territory,” Caine reminded as he cut his father off with yet another growl and straightened stance. “But we do not attack.” Caine lowered his voice. The man in him called to him for a show of respect to his father. Something that Caine knew was never out of line for any creature.
“It is not our way,” he reminded softly.
His father brought his eyes up level with his son’s. His alpha’s. Caine met the gaze steadily and with a confidence that he had always known he had. He could see a hint of pride behind the pain of grief and the rage of injustice that fought for control of his father’s emotions.
Caine was the alpha for one simple reason.
He knew that they were not wolves. And he knew that they were not men. They were animals unlike any other, yet similar to them all. And the man who was able to control such a combination of beasts within himself was the only likely candidate for such a daunting position.
Sometimes Caine would not trade what he was for any amount of territory in the forest.
In fact, he had always loved what he was. And Caine suddenly acknowledged the fact that since Chloe wasn’t willing to consider the stories she’d heard as possible, there was no way she was going to be able to consider him for the wonderful beast he was.
He would mount the bitch in her next rut. And he would give his pack a new alpha and bring its numbers up again. Chloe Evans hadn’t killed Caine’s great-grandfather. But she had brought an intruder in who had killed that man’s son.
The bitch owed him at least one life. But she would settle her debts by giving him a life and not by way of his taking one from her. Even the man in Caine was in agreement with that bargain.
His father stood silently over the body from which his wolf blood had come. Mason Caine had never questioned what he was. He had never allowed his sons to question what they were in his presence. And the man respected Caine enough to let him run a family who could die at the hands of one human.
Caine, himself.
But Caine wasn’t just human. He was hybrid. Half man, half wolf. The thought was quiet and determined when it circled and lay down in Caine’s mind. And he was not about to let his family die for his own selfish needs and emotions.
As for anyone else who had a problem with his renewed sense of pride for himself and his kind, Caine pitied them if he ever again had to defend or protect what rightfully belonged to him.