Blood Moon (21 page)

Snuffling and grunting like a pig as
he began pumping into her, he grabbed a handful of breast and
squeezed it until Gwyneth had to grind her teeth to keep from
crying out. He made several attempts to capture her mouth, but
Gwyneth managed to elude that, jerking her head away each time so
that, although she felt his slobber smear across first one cheek
and then the other, she didn’t have to endure the taste of his
putrid mouth on hers.

He’d managed no more than a handful of
seconds of humping and grunting when he abruptly jerked, uttered a
grunt, and went limp on top of her. Gwyneth struggled to push him
off, to catch her breath. Abruptly, he rolled off, sprawling limply
on the floor beside her.

“Swine!” Caelin growled furiously,
bending over the unconscious guard with his fists
balled.

Gwyneth struggled upright, shoving her
skirts down. “Is he dead?” she asked shakily when she realized the
guard hadn’t merely passed out—at least not without
help.

Caelin slid a speculative glance at
her. “Say the word and he will be,” he said grimly.

Feeling her heart leap, her throat
grow dry, Gwyneth gaped at him but finally shook her head. “You
should go. They’ll send someone to spell him in a bit.”

He nodded. Kneeling over the man, he
relieved the man of his weapons,—a short sword and a dagger—tore a
piece of cloth from the guard’s shirt, and used it to form a gag.
Grasping the man beneath his arms, he dragged him into the cell.
Gwyneth heard the clink of the manacles as she finally gathered her
wits and looked around for the bread and cheese she’d stolen. The
scuffle with the guard had crushed the bread a bit and the cheese,
she saw, had been kicked several yards. Scrambling on her hands and
knees, she gathered what was left, brushed the dirt and debris from
the food, and carefully tied it in the cloth she’d used to carry
it.

Caelin emerged from the cell again
just as she finally managed to get to her feet. He locked the cell
behind him while she tucked the knotted cloth into the waist of her
skirt and slipped the strap on the wine skin over her shoulder to
leave her hands free. “I’ll show you the passage,” she said
shakily.

Nodding, he looked around and finally
pulled the torch from the sconce on the wall. She stared at it,
frowning as she struggled to find the words to reason with him.
“There are cracks and peep holes all along the passage. If anyone’s
about, they’re liable to see the light.”

He divided a glance between her and
the torch and finally returned it to the sconce, following her as
she moved to the wall and felt around for the catch that would
release the secret door. He caught her arm as they stepped inside
and the door closed. “Show me the way to the king’s
bedchamber.”

She shook her head even though she
doubted he could see it. “I don’t know the way.”

He studied her, or perhaps considered
whether or not she was lying. “You do.”

Resentment swelled inside
of her. “I freed you. Let me go. I am going whether you help me or
not! I cannot
endure
this place longer!”

“Show me the way first,” he growled,
fury in his voice and in the tension of his stance.

She tried to pull her arm free. “I
risked enough to free you—endured that pig rutting me. Let me go, I
say! I am leaving.”

She sensed an internal struggle but
finally his grip on her arm eased. “I will take you a short
distance from the castle and give you directions to reach the first
village beyond here. And then you will tell me the way to his
apartments. If I can, I will join you again once I am done
here.”

Hunger of the Wolf

By

Madelaine Montague

Chapter One

The bastard was brazen, he’d give him
that, Dante Belue thought angrily as he shadowed the alpha of the
rogue pack that had been encroaching on his territory for months.
They’d been more subtle to begin with, slipping in and out again
before any of his pack mates could lay one of them by the heels
and, so far, they’d managed to elude every attempt to track them
back to their lair. They didn’t try to hide the fact that they’d
encroached. They made damned sure they left a calling card when
they came. They’d simply been playing at cat and mouse, more of an
annoyance to begin with than anything else.

The incursions had been steadily
escalating, however, both in frequency and violence until there was
no longer any doubt in his mind that the pack alpha wanted a
territorial war or, more accurately, he supposed, the
son-of-a-bitch was after his ranking in the pack.

He was prime alpha over the
entire territory. There were more than a dozen other packs beneath
his own that were under his jurisdiction. If the rogue had wanted
nothing more than to move into the territory, he would have
sought
him
out and
requested acceptance and then he could have challenged anyone for
pack ranking.

He’d been thumbing his nose at Dante,
however, by breaking pack protocol. He was well within his rights
to attack without any further provocation, without warning, without
any challenge at all, and dispose of the rogue in whatever manner
he saw fit, up to and including killing him outright. He wasn’t
even required to consider it a bona fide challenge and meet the man
honorably. He could send any one of his pack brothers out, or the
whole lot of them, and simply slaughter the rogue pack.

He would have the full support of his
pack and the other packs within his territory if he chose to do so.
He would have the full support of the head council, for that
matter.

On a personal level, though, it went
against the grain. He had absolute faith in his own abilities and
blindsiding the rogue, whatever the provocation, just smacked of
cowardice and underhandedness in his book. He didn’t need to play
that way, and he had no intention of doing so, although the bastard
was really starting to piss him off. For his own comfort, he’d
decided he was either going to have to catch him in the act—in
which case all bets were off—or he was going to have to figure out
a way to force the rogue to meet him in a fair fight.

Waiting for the rogue to make his move
wasn’t getting him anywhere fast. He’d been expecting the
son-of-a-bitch to come forward and challenge him for weeks. If he
was going to, though, he figured the rogue would’ve by
now.

So, he was either waiting for
something, or he just didn’t have the balls to actually face Dante
without a prod in that direction.

He wasn’t sure what the hell the
bastard might be waiting for—but he was waiting for something.
Dante was sure of that.

What confused the hell out of him
about the little game of espionage they were currently playing was
why the alpha had broken his pack up and sent everyone off in
different directions. It weakened them—his pack, too—because he’d
had to break his own pack up and send them to tail the members of
the rogue pack. If it was a battle strategy, it was the worst one
he’d ever run across.

Unless he thought he could whittle
Dante’s pack down one-on-one? Divide and conquer?

That wasn’t as stupid as he’d first
thought. Not that it had a chance in hell of working, but it
would’ve had merit if they hadn’t been up against his pack. The
rogue pack was smaller than his. From what they’d been able to
determine, they also had a number of members that were young and
looked to be relatively inexperienced—which, of course, also meant
they weren’t dependable in a pitched battle.

Dante paused behind the broad trunk of
a live oak as he saw the lycan he’d been tailing stop and lift his
head, sniffing the air.

Dante’s dark brows descended. He was
down wind. He hadn’t been so preoccupied with his thoughts, he
knew, that he’d let the bastard catch his scent. Unconsciously, he
lifted his own head to test the air, sorting the scents that came
to him and trying to determine what had had the effect of making
the other lycan slink into the shadows.

Not surprisingly, he detected a
hodgepodge bouquet of human scents. It was a park, after all, the
largest in the city and frequented by tourists and locals alike. He
caught the scent of the lycan, as well, since he was downwind of
him.

What he didn’t catch was a scent to
explain the behavior of the alpha male in front of him—nothing of
threat to any lycan.

The light breeze was still wafting in
his direction, however, and after a moment, he decided to move a
little closer to see if he could see what it was the rogue was
studying with so much fascination that he’d abandoned his caution
about being followed.

Sloppy, he thought derisively, very
sloppy.

A tantalizing scent drifted to him as
he reached the copse of trees he’d targeted as his goal. It
distracted him. If the rogue hadn’t been so focused on the source
of that enticing scent himself, he might have realized he’d been
discovered. Dante was too distracted even to realize he’d blown his
surveillance. The hairs on the base his skull prickled as the
delectable scent coiled inside of him. His beast stirred, shifting
his instincts to the forefront.

And his instincts were in total
riot.

The scent was female—human—and
something else completely outside his experience, and whatever that
something else was it shot his concentration to hell. Desire
stirred within him, so potent he felt dizzy with it.

Belatedly, he slunk into the shadows,
but his focus was no longer on the rogue. His entire being was
straining for another taste of that luscious scent. He sniffed the
air until he was more dizzy still from the rapid intake of air. The
smell faded in and out, drifting on the currents of air, driving
him crazy because it teased his senses and he couldn’t quite get as
firm a grip on it was he wanted to.

His quarry was moving, he finally
realized—the female—coming closer.

As his predator instincts took over,
his focus switched back to the rogue.

Dimly, he realized the rogue had come
here, to this place, with the female as his goal all along. He had
moved with purpose, steadily, in this direction even though he’d
taken a cautiously circuitous route to reach it. This was where he
had planned to come all along.

Because of the female. Abruptly, Dante
was absolutely certain the entire ruse, as strange as it had seemed
to him, was all about this woman.

A sense of fierce possessiveness moved
through him that he hardly recognized.

He tried to shake it off,
tried to force his man’s mind to the forefront to examine the
situation with cool headed logic so that he could understand it.
This was no lycan female giving off the pheromones indicating she
was in heat, or about to go into heat. In any case, this was
his
territory. He knew
all of the females—and all of them were well guarded during their
mating cycles.

Control was essential when they had so
few females. The females, once in heat, had no discrimination.
Their need to be bred overrode reason. It was up to him to ensure
that the strongest of the males got first breeding opportunity to
insure healthy off-spring for the whole pack.

Ordinarily, that would have included
the prime alpha’s pack, would have put them at the top of the list.
Unfortunately, none the females available had met his
standards—meaning none of them were females he was willing to tie
himself to, or any of his lieutenants for that matter, because they
were still members of the prime alpha’s pack and could assert their
rights above the others if they’d wanted to. Not that there was
anything wrong with their females. They were all pretty and
intelligent—good stock—mostly likeable, just not lovable in a
mating sense as far he was concerned.

He didn’t actually have to
bind to one to mate, he knew. He could have asserted his rights and
taken whichever one took his fancy. He had, in point of fact,
bedded most of them at one time or another—he was a healthy,
red-blooded male after all. He’d just been careful to do it when
there was no chance of actually breeding them. The breeding created
a bond that he didn’t want—however lose a bond it might be. If and
when he got around to breeding a female, it was going to be one
that he
wanted
to
be bound to, permanently, or one he was at least willing to form a
parental bond with.

He had, in point of fact, begun to
wonder if it was at all likely that he was ever going to run across
a female that appealed so strongly to his breeding instincts that
logical decision didn’t enter into the equation—because it was for
damned sure he wasn’t going to take the leap unless he
did.

It disturbed him to discover those
particular thoughts circulating in his mind under the current
circumstances—which sure as hell had nothing to do with a breedable
female.

If his cock hadn’t been as hard as a
rock, he would’ve thought the rogue had gone completely off the
deep end to be stalking a human female at all.

Lust, though, that was a different
matter. If she could do this to him when she hadn’t come within
sight of him yet, he could completely understand the rogue’s
determination to have her. But why risk his entire pack for one
female? And a human female, at that? Why risk all on the turn of
one card?