Dire Needs: A Novel of the Eternal Wolf Clan (26 page)

The feel of the dead around him; vicious, violent, ground-rotting beasts who would not be controllable once unleashed. But Mars didn’t listen to him—no one did.

“Rogue’s brother is interfering with the raising. He would have been much more valuable than the king,” Mars pointed out. That was indeed the truth, and Seb was forever grateful that Harm had a lick of sense left in that metal-addled brain of his.

R
ifter had stayed deadly quiet, and finally he’d risen and walked out of the room after Gwen mentioned her possible mortality. It was easier for her to talk about it, she supposed, since she’d always been mortal.

Vice and Jinx and Stray remained, though, with Jinx watching her carefully, like she could shift at any second.

If she thought about that long enough, she’d have a panic attack for sure. She took another shot of whiskey instead.

“Why isn’t the night ending?” Stray asked.

“If Seb’s spell is good enough, it could be night until the blue moon—a supernatural cornucopia,” Jinx said bleakly.

“This is fucked,” Vice stated. “Gotta do something. Because humans are going to notice this shit, and we’re all in trouble then.”

She couldn’t help but agree, even though technically, she was dead in the eyes of most of the town. “I’m really the reason behind all of this?” she asked tentatively.

“Not the whole reason, but you’re sure as hell not helping,” Vice offered with what she was beginning to see was his usual candor.

As
long as he was up to answering questions… “You’re immortal but Weres aren’t?”

“They live a long time, but they’re not truly immortal, no. We were the unlucky ones granted that.” Vice put his feet up on the table, his size-twenty-two feet a dead giveaway that this man was a vice all his own, if you believed the old wives’ tales about the size of a man’s feet being equal to the size of his… “Since there were no Dire females, there were no mates for us.”

“What about female Weres? Why can’t you mate with them?”

“They can’t handle the mating,” Jinx said. “We’re all wolves, but we’re different breeds.”

“But we do fuck them,” Vice added. “What? Brother Wolf needs to get some too.”

“You said Stray was found later,” she said, and Stray nodded. “Does that mean there could be others?”

“We looked.”

“Not in hospitals. Not for half-breeds. We didn’t know they could exist,” Jinx said. “Now we don’t know if we’ve unwittingly let other Dires die because they couldn’t shift.”

But would she have actually died? Would her human side have prevailed over the curse of the Dires’ immortality? “If I’d been alone when I shifted, would I have been a danger to humans? Are you?”

“Only if they annoy me,” Vice said with a shrug. “Other than that, humans don’t interest me. No offense to that side of you.”

“None taken.” She paused. “But you can tell the difference between a human and a witch, right?”

Vice shrugged. “Humans taste like chicken. Witches taste like rotten chicken.”

“You… eat humans?”

He looked at her like she was the stupidest person on earth. “
No. We kill them. They don’t taste good enough to eat. Because I don’t like chicken.”

Jinx shook his head. “I’d apologize for him, but it wouldn’t do any good.”

The man called Vice was taller and bigger than the others, and she supposed that was fitting, since his ability was tied to all the extremes a person—or wolf—could have.

He looked like sin, and she was pretty sure he could take anyone he set his sights on down the wrong path, and down to their knees. They might even beg for it, and from the curl of his lip, she knew she was right.

But although she didn’t mind looking at him, the spark in her belly burned in pure relief only for Rifter. Rifter, who’d just come back into the kitchen to shoot Vice a disapproving look. She guessed that if she was starting to develop supersonic hearing, then Rifter’s must be much stronger.

Her eyes wandered to him, the lust rising inside of her, and she could smell it on him too.

It’s the animal inside of you—give in—what’s the harm?

So far, she’d found no downside. But obviously, the Dires had been around for a long time before her, and they’d found one.

She put her own questioning aside for the moment and let the men get back to what Rifter referred to as
pack business
, muttered it under his breath as he took his seat next to Gwen again.

“We don’t hurt humans—we protect them against moon-crazed Weres and we try to make sure the Weres keep the peace among themselves,” Rifter told her, wanting to kill Vice for his
humans taste like chicken
comment. Although he wasn’t exactly wrong.

“We need to stop thinking about being lone wolves in
light of recent events. Our pack’s growing,” Jinx pointed out.

“The twins are alphas—they’ll lead their own packs one day,” Rifter said.

“Yes, but those packs could work in tandem with ours to make sure a capture never happened again,” Jinx said, stared at Rifter, a direct challenge that, at times, could be dangerous.

“It won’t happen again,” Rifter said, and it was taking all his control not to think about that time in the snare of the humans.

The chains, the drugs…

“They hated us, wanted us destroyed, and I could understand it. Respected it, in a way, after what our kind did to theirs. But then something changed and they decided to use us for their own purposes. They think if they can control an army of wolves, they can rule the world.”

“Could they?”

Rifter stared at Gwen, his eyes Brother Wolf’s. “Yes.”

That shook her. “We—you—have that much power inside of you?”

Again, he simply told her yes. She stared down at her own hands, the knowledge of the power she held overwhelming and heady all at once.

“We can’t let it happen,” he said.

“How many Weres have they slaughtered?”

“Too many to count. We’ve killed weretrappers as well, but with the help of the witches. The Weres are easier to spell. Especially the young ones. The trappers capture the moon-crazed ones and use that to their advantage, try to reprogram them. So far, they haven’t been successful. Weres they’ve tried to fix, so to speak, haven’t survived.”

“What do the witches use?”

“Drugs and spells. Wolves don’t fare well with either…
our metabolism can’t handle the drugs. The spells…” He shook his head and tried not to let his body shudder at the thought of what they’d tried on him.

“Why did Seb agree to help them instead of joining forces with you against them?”

Rifter had never been able to figure out a satisfactory answer for that—he’d long pondered it, but thinking on it and talking about it were two different things.

There was a time he considered Seb a brother. Vice and Rogue had always warned him to be cautious, but Rogue never elaborated as to why, and Rifter dismissed it easily. He’d served side by side with the man. That created a brotherhood all its own.

“Seb’s an Adept—a master witch. Beyond time, although he looks human and lives among humans like us. He was charged to go back to his own coven, who’d made the pact with the trappers. Cordelia was the head witch of the coven and she wanted him back in the fold. I know he was worried he’d bring the wrath of witches on us, but he didn’t give us a chance to help him. He just left, damn it. And then he’s been selling out Weres ever since.”

“I understand that the witches weren’t working with them until recently. But how is it that they didn’t grab me between the time they joined forces with the trappers and now?” Gwen demanded. “You keep skirting the question. I’ve been vulnerable, so why wasn’t I found earlier?”

“Harm made a pact with Seb—they were watching out for you, until Seb left us and went to the coven,” Rifter finally said, and she stilled.

“Harm—the man chained upstairs. What, he’s my bodyguard?”

“No, Gwen. Harm is your father.”

I
f she hadn’t been sitting, Gwen definitely would’ve fainted. As it was, she turned really pale, and Rifter found himself holding her semi-upright while Jinx brought her soda and told her to “keep fucking breathing, Doc,” which she didn’t appreciate if her “fuck off,” was any indication.

It made him feel better, though. When she pushed away from him, she downed the Coke. “Stronger.”

Vice got up and went for the Jägermeister, because they’d finished the Jack Daniel’s Green Label. Poured her some neat and she did three shots before she spoke again. “Why is he chained?”

“Because he’s the one who turned Rogue and Rifter over to the trappers—in exchange for your protection,” Vice said.

For once, Rifter was grateful for Vice’s lack of impulse control—no way in hell would he have been able to get those words out. The look of hurt on her face was hard enough—better he hadn’t been the one to put it there.

Well, technically, he had.

It was his turn for drinking—he grabbed the bottle and downed half. It took his wolf a lot more to get hammered. That would barely take the edge off.

“
How long have you had him here?” she asked.

“Since the night I met you,” Rifter said. “So I’m guessing none of this is really coincidence. He killed twenty weretrappers outside another bar—they were headed your way.”

“Rogue is hurt—you were hurt… because of me,” she said, repeated it a few times like she was trying to burn it into her brain.

“It’s not your fault.”

“Kinda is.” She took the bottle from him, but only to stop him from drinking more. “What’s going to happen to Harm?”

“We don’t know,” Rifter admitted.

“Does knowing why he did it change anything?” she asked quietly. “I mean, I just found my father. And I’ll have to lose him.”

Vice walked out of the room, which was probably for the best. Jinx followed, and Stray remained quiet for a long moment before saying, “He betrayed us long before you came along, Gwen. There’s a lot more history there.”

“I understand,” she said quietly. But Rifter knew she didn’t. Couldn’t. “Can I at least talk to him?”

He couldn’t deny her that; he nodded, and Stray slid off the counter and left them alone.

“They’re angry.”

“Yes. Wolves take loyalty seriously.”

“So do I.” Her eyes glittered with anger—and with tears. “But he’s my family.”

“So are they. Tonight’s the first I heard of him being your father.”

“He kept it from all of you?”

“We haven’t seen him for a while.” Like for thousands of years.

“Are you really going to let me talk to him?”

Better now, while he still retained all his limbs. “Why? What do you want to know?”

“More about my mother. Do you think my mother and my aunt and uncle… knew what I was? Were they killed because of me? Did Cordelia know?”

The floodgates were opened—there would be no stopping her from making the connections. And even though he hated the man, Harm had helped to create Gwen, the woman he and his Brother Wolf had decided to mate. “I think your aunt and uncle knew, yes.”

“They were so good to me. But I didn’t look or act like them at all. And then I was sick—a burden. They never said it, but how could it not have been?” She hugged her knees to her chest. “And now I’m finding out that they knew I was a wolf. Half wolf.”

“What if they’d told you?” Rifter asked. “They probably thought they were helping you so you didn’t make a connection between the seizures and the shift. I don’t think they knew they were putting your life at risk by not letting you shift.”

But that’s what had happened nonetheless. And if Gwen’s mom did know what Harm was, he would’ve told her about when the shift might occur for Gwen. “They were protecting you,” Rifter continued.

“By killing me,” she finished for him. “I can’t blame them as much as I blame Harm. He knew—he could’ve stepped in at any time. But he didn’t.”

They hadn’t had time to deal with Harm, to decide what they would do to him for the betrayal—and beyond. Sending him out to the weretrappers, however, would put them all in danger. He knew it as well.

But one day at a time. “Harm said he lost your trail for a while—your aunt and uncle hid you, which, in the end, served you well.”

“The paintings—the wolves and the moon… you saw
them. The wolf looks like a Dire wolf, but not you or your brothers. Did you recognize Harm? Is that what he looks like when he’s… shifted?”

“I knew there was something familiar about them. I was drawn to them, but I didn’t have time to study them for long. I needed to get to you.”

As much as she wanted to be part of a family—of this family—she was too much of a danger to them. “Rifter, was Harm right? Am I a weapon?”

“Don’t think that—don’t say it.”

She would always be a threat to the Dires. The Weres too. And if Rifter was king and she was mated to him, what kind of queen would she make? Who would ever trust her? “I’d never be able to leave the house, go anywhere without the fear that they’d grab me and use me against you. And I could never live with that. Never.”

Not that she would necessarily live—no one knew if she could even pull off a shift. Maybe nature would make that decision for her—survival of the fittest and all. “Even Harm thinks I should be allowed to die.”

Rifter’s expression was pained. “I can’t make this decision for you. I want you here. Having to let you go now would kill me in every way except the one that counts. Immortality’s a heavy burden, but we’d be together. Mated.”

She’d already felt the pull—there was no denying its power. “This is all incredible. Unbelievable. My father is chained up because he tried to save me at your expense. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about all of this. I need to… go somewhere. To breathe, away from all of this.”

“You can’t.”

“Right, because for all intents and purposes, I’m a prisoner and a ghost.” She spat out the words. “Maybe you should just let me die—would’ve been easier on everyone.”

“Don’t you say that. Don’t. You. Dare.” His eyes went
lupine. Feral, like he’d flipped a switch.

“Why do you care so much?”

“Because you’re mine.”

“I’m not anybody’s,” she whispered. Because no one had ever wanted her like that, with an intensity that could burn her worse than the sun on a hot summer’s day.