Claiming His Need (3 page)

“You need to give up this little obsession of yours. I’m not interested in being your bedmate.”

He shrugged, a sneer spreading across his face. “Maybe not, but you’re an Omega of this pack. Laws state when an unmated Omega comes of age, any male pack member can petition the Alpha to breed her.” He stepped closer, crowding me. I clung to Luka as Eli cowered behind my cloak.
 

“I can smell it, you know. You’ll be in your first heat soon, far too early for breeding season. Every male in this pack can smell it on you. They grow hard whenever you walk by. But that secret you’ve been keeping between your legs will be mine. I’ll be the wolf who gets to have you in my bed for months, bedding you whenever I choose under the guise of trying for pups. Too bad your heat came early this year; it’ll be all for naught. Well, at least on the pup side. I’ll still get exactly what I want.”

I raised my chin. “This is not that kind of pack, you cretin. The Omega has to agree to the breed petitions, and I definitely do not. I will not be bred until I have found my mate.”

He snorted. “We both know you’re not a virgin. Just give it up to me, and I’ll think about dropping the breed petition.”

I glared at him, fighting the urge to shift and challenge the arrogant man as a way to establish pack order. “I wouldn’t lay with you if you were the last shifter on earth. Your petition is worthless, and so are you.”

I stepped around him, but he grabbed my arm and yanked me back. Luka screamed as he nearly fell out of my grasp. Eli, ready and willing to fight any foe who upset his brother, jumped at Chinoo with his teeth bared, a tiny growl rumbling from between his lips.

And then he bit down on Chinoo’s calf.

“Fuck. Let go, you little brat.” Chinoo jerked his leg, knocking Eli to the ground.

“What’s going on here?” Rex came racing down the hall from the front of the house, his maroon cloak swirling behind him.
 

“This brat bit me.” Chinoo pointed at Eli, who was still crying on the ground.
 

I pulled Luka tighter against me and bent to pick up his brother. “Chinoo here thought it would be a good idea to grab me while I was holding Luka, and it scared him. Eli was just defending his brother.”

Rex glared at Chinoo, the power of his wolf an almost physical entity in the small space. “You dared to lay hands on the Alpha’s only daughter? The Omega of this pack?”

Chinoo glanced at me, his face growing pale. “I was just informing her of my petition to breed her during the upcoming season.”

Rex’s eyes met mine and his nostrils flared. My cheeks burned at the realization that he knew how close to my heat cycle I was. But for the first time, I was thankful my family and packmates would know without my telling them. My brothers would never allow a forced breeding.
 

“Kaija is not expected to breed this season.” Rex gave me a wink before returning his attention to Chinoo. “Father’s decided she’s come of age for a proper mating. He’ll be taking her to the annual Gathering in October.”

Chinoo positively seethed. “But by shifter law, any male—”

“By pack law,” Rex interrupted, “Kaija can choose whether or not to accept a male petitioner into her bed. Do you choose to breed with this wolf, sister?”

“Hell no.”

“Fine. That’s settled. Now, let’s get these boys back where they belong. Plus, I want to find my mate. It’s been too long since I’ve laid eyes on her.”

Rex put his hand on my back and escorted me past a furious Chinoo.

“You okay?” he asked once we were out of earshot.

“Of course. Though your lie got my hopes up, and now I’m wishing for things that cannot be.”

“What lie?”

“The one about Father taking me to the Gathering this year.”

Rex pulled me closer. “It was not a lie, sister-mine. We shall be calling all the packs of the North American Lycan Brotherhood this week to announce your status change. The gods be willing, you will have a mate before the end of the year.”

I awoke suddenly, the disorientation of going from sound asleep to wide-awake in a moment making my heart race. I’d been dreaming of my mystery mate—a handsome man with dark hair and bright eyes—laying me down on my bed and doing all sorts of naughty things to me. The dream had been so strong, the face almost clear, and yet something had pulled me out of my bliss and dropped me into the agony of being burned alive with desire.

A scratch at my balcony door had me jolting up in bed. My heart thumped as I looked around my room, clutching my sheet to my naked chest. The curtains floated in the breeze, throwing shadows across the walls and ceiling. I sniffed, trying to catch the scent of another wolf on the breeze, but the perfume of the lavender planted in the flower boxes outside was too strong to grasp anything else.
 

A second scratching sound set me in motion. I crept out of bed and tiptoed to my hope chest where I’d laid my yoga pants and tank top earlier in the night. I slipped the clothes on and crept along the perimeter of the room. If someone was out on the balcony, I wanted the glass side of the patio door between me and them, not the screen. I’d never thought twice about sleeping with the door open, something I regretted as every tension-filled second ticked by.
 

Sidling up to the patio door, I leaned my shoulder against the wall and slowly pulled on the linen drapes obscuring my view.

And met a glowing pair of amber eyes in the darkness, looking right at me.

I’d barely yelped when a man burst through the screen, another coming in from the sitting room. The one who’d been outside tackled me to the floor and clamped his hand over my mouth. I bucked and screamed but to no avail; he had me pinned and silenced.

“C’mon, pretty one. You don’t want to fight me. Boss man may want you alive, but he didn’t say in what condition we needed to deliver you.”

I squirmed, but the man, a wolf shifter by the smell of him, pushed his weight into me, pressing me into the floor. I stiffened, fighting back the burn of a full panic when he ran his nose along my neck and up the underside of my jaw.
 

“What’s this, now? The little bitch is coming into heat? Oh, this is rich. My boys aren’t going to be too happy if I don’t at least let them get a taste of you, sweetheart.”

My stomach knotted in fear as I struggled beneath him once more. When I felt the hard ridge of his erection pressed against my bottom, I kicked and spun, finally knocking the man off my back. With a twist, I stood and readied myself to jump from the balcony. But another shifter rushed through the door from the sitting room before I could make my move, and he wasn’t alone.

Lanie, bleeding and unconscious, lay over his shoulder.

“You run and she dies.”

I froze. There was no way I could leave my human packsister to these animals. Rex had been alone for so long and had nearly died in his quest to find her. He deserved his happiness. Knowing I needed to buck up and protect the woman I saw as a sister, I pulled myself to my full height and glared at the man who held her captive.

“You hurt her, and you’ll have every member of this pack hunting you to hell and back.”

He sneered and leaned toward me. “Then I suggest you come along nicely. Boss only wants you. This one is just a bargaining chip if we can’t get out of town fast enough.”

Biting my lip to keep it from quivering, I nodded my acceptance. Hopefully, the rest of the pack would soon know there was trouble and would come running. I had to keep Lanie alive until then.
 

The man who’d been on my balcony grabbed my arm and yanked me across the room. “It’s time to go, blondie. I expect you to behave, or I’ll make sure the human never makes it home alive. And if you even think of going wolf on me, I’ll cut your little human pet open and leave her for the animals.”

He picked me up and carried me over the patio door threshold onto the balcony. Without pause, he jumped over the stone railing, landing lightly on his feet. Another shifter waited in the shadows of the pine trees surrounding the house.

“Deek caught a shewolf in the woods. I told him he could take her with us. Figured we could relieve a little tension with her and keep the guys’ attention off the princess.” His eyes raked over my body, and I shivered in response. What I wouldn’t give for the loose-fitting, unflattering pack cloak.

“She smells like she’s in heat.”

“Back off.” The shifter holding me growled and gripped me tighter. “Boss wants this one. Let the boys play with the bitch you caught—the Omega is off-limits.”

I barely caught the other shifter’s nod before the man holding me was running through the woods. Carrying me off to parts unknown while another shifter carried my fragile human sister behind us.

Just into what was once called Copper Island, we pulled onto Valkoisus Pack land. I immediately knew something was wrong. Men loped through the woods toward what was obviously the Alpha’s house, all of them wearing traditional shifter cloaks. That wasn’t unusual, though. Many packs wore the cloaks as a way to clothe themselves while still being able to shift on the fly. What didn’t seem right was the fact that there were no women to be seen and no children running about.
 

Because female shifters were a rarity in our breed, many wolves ended up mated to human women. Once their shifter mate marked the human, their aging would slow considerably. Shifters and human mates had been known to live for centuries together, adding children to the family every few years until they chose to stop breeding. This particular pack, being well established, should have had women and pups all over the place. And yet, only men moved outside.

We pulled up to the front porch of the house with Magnus in the lead. The pack shifters watched warily from around the property, guns at the ready. This was not the first time we’d been surrounded by men with firearms. It’d never bothered me too much as the shooter would have to be an excellent shot to do any real damage. But just rolling onto pack land had me on edge. Whether it was being watched by so many shifters or the unfamiliar scent on the air that I couldn’t identify, something was making the protective urges in me flare.
 

“I hate when they wear the cloaks,” Sandman said as he glanced at the dark-robed shifters surrounding us. “It’s fucking creepy.”
 

Sandman let his bike settle into a lean. He looked one smartass comment away from exploding into a ball of rage. Or fear. Not that I could blame him on either count. Being part of a pack much like this one had lost him his mate.

I met the gaze of one of the pack shifters, a younger man standing on the other side of the driveway. He glared at me, as if I’d personally affronted him somehow by simply riding onto the land. I knew packs had varied opinions about the Breed—from glowing accounts of how we helped them solve a problem, to the whispers and rumors spread about how we were nothing more than nomads with NALB permission to commit crimes against the species. That particular man must have believed the latter.

I held his eyes for nearly a minute, waiting for him to back down, before tiring of his game. He was a pack wolf, probably popular among the traditional set and good at fighting his packmates. But that shit didn’t always translate into real world situations. He was a big wolf in a little forest, and I was too far above his level of experience to think about picking a fight. He’d be dead before he took his first breath.

Wanting an end to the stare-off, I called my wolf forward. Not enough to fully shift, but enough to bring about a bit of shape change to my eyes. I waited until I could feel the slight itch of fur filling in along my nose before removing my sunglasses. It took a couple of seconds for the kid to realize what he was seeing as partial shifting was not a skill the majority of pack wolves could master. I knew the moment he figured out why my eyes were encircled in black as he balked and turned away. He must not have been comfortable around bigger, stronger wolves who could partial-shift without effort. Pity, that.

“Quit playing dominance games, would ya?” Magnus spat and rolled his shoulders.
 

I smirked as we watched the boy scurry around the back of the house.

“He started it.”

Sandman snorted. “For someone over four hundred years old, I would have expected a more mature answer.”

“Not today, my friend.” I swung my leg over the seat of my Indian and strode onto the porch with Sandman and Shadow following right behind me.
 

“You sure you can keep your cool, Sandy?” Magnus hollered from where he stood beside his bike. “Wouldn’t want you to challenge another pack Alpha and cause a riot like last time.”

Sandman’s head whipped around, his eyes nearly glowing in rage. A growl thundered from deep within him, setting birds to flight and causing every shifter within earshot to freeze in anticipation.
 

Magnus smirked and crossed his legs at the ankles as he leaned back against the seat of his bagger. “Hey man, I’m just checking. If you’re going to be under my watch, you can’t be fucking with the rules.”

Sandman blinked then turned, watching me. His emotions played across his face like a movie—pain, surprise, and a longing that looked ready to tear him apart. A second later, he shut down his emotional show-and-tell and settled his expression into a look of irritation.

“So Rebel goes off to live in mated bliss, and we’re stuck with this asshole?” He hitched his thumb in Magnus’ direction.

I snorted and angled my body to face him, subtly turning my back on Magnus. The body language was quiet and subtle, but any shifter who noticed would know exactly what I was telling the useless leader. My allegiance was not to the idiot barking orders.

Sandman lifted the corner of his mouth, his normal cocksure attitude returning in an instant. With a wink in my direction, he inclined his head toward Magnus.
 

“I’m pretty sure I can take care of myself around here, boss. Maybe you could find a nice, consenting shewolf to handle things for you. They’ve got to have someone around here who would turn your crank.”