Dire Needs: A Novel of the Eternal Wolf Clan (28 page)

Seb might as well really be dead if they did that.

“I think this might help you instead,” Mars said, began to chant in a way that made Seb turn cold. It was the punishment long promised to him, a spell attaching a demon
to him that could have come only from Cordelia. His sister was finding a way to reach out and hang on to him from inside her grave, and since Mars was half-possessed himself, the spell would hold—and Seb was powerless to do anything about it.

The demon wouldn’t possess him—not in the traditional ways, because that would make it too hard to control Seb. No, this demon would be more like Seb’s keeper, meting out punishments when Seb even thought about doing something wrong.

Seb cleared his mind of anything the demon might latch onto, felt the black smoke rise around his body even before it floated up around his face and brushed his neck.

“I know you’ll do the right thing,” Mars practically purred against his cheek. “This is just some added incentive.”

Mars’s eyes were nearly pitch-black. Seb knew, in a few days time, his would resemble them and he wouldn’t care if he ended up in bed with Mars or not.

G
wen was unstable—no doubt ready to shift. Max had seen enough young wolves in her short time among Liam’s pack to sense these things, but it was so apparent a blind person could note it.

It would be tough for the doctor, although the Dires seemed to have accepted her.

Vice, on the other hand, wanted to rip Max apart. Maybe she should’ve tempted him enough to let him. Maybe her son would never be accepted by Liam or the pack.

She’d watched the horrific fight last night from the single, barred window that faced the large backyard. Even in the dark, she could make out the shift. The man-to-wolf thing had at first shocked her, and later, she began to understand the wolf’s nature.

Liam could kill her easily, was supposed to, when she’d discovered his wolf status—it didn’t matter that he’d been the one to reveal that secret.

Now Max looked at the secret swell she’d been hiding under her scrubs and sweats. She’d grown out of her jeans within two weeks’ time.

It was lucky she was the only wolf in the hospital. The ob-gyn had given her an ultrasound, pronounced her
very early on. Way too early for the doctor to have seen anything out of the ordinary. Another week into the pregnancy and the fetus would have shown anomalies.

But they didn’t deal with wolf gestations, which took place over a much shorter period of time.

She was due in three weeks, her nesting instincts in overdrive… and she’d lost the leader of her pack and the man she loved in quick succession.

There was a place for her in the outlaw order. If Teague came now to rescue her, would she take his offer and leave with him?

It was a question she hoped she wouldn’t have to answer.

“This can’t be possible,” the police officer was saying as he motioned to the dead girl’s body when FBI agent Angus Young came on the scene. One flash of the badge and the local law scowled. “Really? You like AC/DC that much?”

“It’s a family name,” Angus said for the hundred millionth time in his life. The damned band never died—he’d be better off changing his name. Except it helped to get him laid and comped hotel rooms at times.

He was tall and angular—not exactly handsome, but he was rugged enough that women were drawn to him. He was convinced the opposite sex scented danger and were equal parts attracted and repelled by him. “Just tell me what you’ve got here.”

“Nothing the feds should be interested in.”

He stared at the man’s badge. Officer Leo Shimmin. Now, that couldn’t be coincidence. The paramilitary organization he’d been watching for the past ten years had a man with the same unusual last name. “Why don’t you tell me anyway?”

“A young girl was found murdered in the woods.”

If
Angus investigated, he’d bet the woman’s heart was missing. The MO would match the string of murders that matched heavy metal band Knives ‘n’ Tulips’ yearlong concert across the U.S. Angus had tracked murders through Europe and Canada as well, but he’d never been able to pin anything on his main suspect, the band’s lead singer, named Harm. And he’d tried on many occasions.

He tried harder now that the murders hadn’t stopped when the band broke up.

“Could be a crazed fan. Or a roadie,” his longtime partner, John Paxton, liked to point out.

They were all young, dark-haired women. Definitely Harm’s type, if the dating life sprawled across the tabloids was any indication. “Was she a brunette?” he asked now, and Shimmin nodded.

“Suspects?”

“Yes.” He pointed to the young man in handcuffs. “We found him at the scene, standing over the body.”

Angus looked at the young man standing there calmly. “He doesn’t look bloody.”

“We found her blood on his hands and the sleeves of his shirt. He claims he was walking home and was about to call 911 when we happened on the scene. I’m bringing him in for questioning,” the officer said, showed him the kid’s ID. According to his license, the young man, named Cain Chambers, was twenty years old, the address an apartment building off Fifth Street.

Angus made a mental note to swing by there later. “And you think he killed her and hung around, waiting to get caught?”

“Her body’s still warm—I think we surprised him. Got a call from a concerned pedestrian who heard screams coming from this part of the woods.” Shimmin shook his head. “Guy already lawyered up and
demanded his phone call. Just kept repeating his lawyer’s name and number.”

Angus stared down the young man, who returned the gaze without fear, and wondered what kind of trouble Cain Chambers got into on such a regular basis that he had his lawyer’s phone number memorized.

O
nce Rifter had carried her inside, he’d gotten her towels and dry clothes. Gwen sat in front of the fireplace next to him and ate at his urging. It didn’t take much, because her stomach was growling. The Dires and the Weres were in the house but giving them their privacy, and she and Rifter were mainly silent while they finished their food.

He’d kept a hand on her thigh the whole time, like he was afraid she’d disappear if he let go.

“It’s like, how was there an entire underground, a subculture subsisting—existing—along with us?” she asked finally, her voice still tinged with disbelief even though she was now living, breathing proof of it. “I mean, maybe, when you kissed me that first night…”

“Werewolves are born, not made. That whole bitten shit’s a myth,” Rifter told her roughly. “If a wolf bites you hard enough, you die. You won’t be lucky enough to turn into one.”

These men were proud of what they were—they didn’t skulk in dark corners because they were ashamed, but because of safety reasons. Because no human on this earth could truly accept them.

“Werewolves and witches and… ghosts?”

“
Vamps too. All things that go bump in the night,” Rifter agreed, and the scientist in her wanted to say no, it wasn’t possible.

The wolf inside of her simply howled, like it was laughing at her confusion, though not unkindly. She had little choice—she could die on the pills or off them during the shift. “If my shift is… successful, then what?”

“You have to shift at least three times,” he said. “After that, your Sister Wolf’s stable. After that, technically, you have to go on your Running. But it’s too dangerous to let you free in the world now.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

He gave a wan smile. “I’d go with you. We’ll go when this has all calmed down.”

“They say you’re king.”

“Only because Harm renounced the title. He always felt more at home with humans than with wolves. He always said that being king would be like a death to him.”

“Your brothers don’t seem to think you’re second choice. Neither does Liam. They have so much respect for you as a leader.”

“I didn’t want the job, but I do it for all of them,” he said. “I was the next choice in the mind of the Elders.”

“I can imagine it’s not easy leading,” she said cautiously.

“Nothing about being dual natured is easy. It never should’ve been,” Rifter said. “We pay for our primal urges.”

She believed it, since she felt like she was already paying.

She could barely keep her eyes open, even though her mind was spinning.

“You should rest,” Rifter told her. “We’re going to have more company—with the paranormal activity, you’ve
got to keep holding your shift off until we can eliminate some of this danger.”

She nodded because she understood the severity of the situation, but whatever was happening inside of her was becoming constant and persistent. Her back was sorer by the second, and even the well-worn soft cotton shirt of Rifter’s was bothering her. She planned on sleeping naked against the clean, soft sheets of his bed.

She let him lead her upstairs, the rest of the men planning on staying up all night to guard the house and the property. When they got into the room, the first thing she did was take the shirt off, and his gaze grazed her body appreciatively. “Goddamn it, I want you so bad.”

“What’s stopping you?”

“You. Sometimes it can… bring on your shift sooner. I don’t want that to happen until we’re more prepared.”

“I thought the next full moon is at the end of the month—the blue moon.”

“You won’t last twenty-four hours. Your wolf’s been suppressed for too long. Besides, Dire wolves never needed the moon for their first shift. It’s going to happen soon. I recognize the changes,” he told her. “It’s in the way you’re moving. Your eyes. Your skin. I can’t believe I was so blind to it.”

He turned her bare back to the mirror and she looked over her shoulder. The odd bruising was giving way to the shape of a wolf. Decidedly more feminine than Rifter’s, but still large enough to cover her back. And the eyes—she saw an outline of them…

“Her eyes don’t… shine.”

“They will,” he assured her. Ran a light hand over her newfound glyphs, and she shivered as something fluttered inside of her.

She wasn’t alone in her body anymore, and it was strange and wonderful. “Tell me what it’s like.”

“It’ll scare you.”

“Then I’ll ask your brothers—they’ll be honest,” she
countered, and that was true.

“You can ask them tomorrow,” he said, then literally picked her up and put her into bed. But then he joined her and she put her hand on the tribal wolf by his collarbone.

“Will I have one of these as well?”

“This is a real tattoo, not a glyph,” he explained. “I got it so I would always be mindful of my ability, partly to remind myself that I’m both cursed and blessed. My brothers got the same one, in solidarity, even though they all were born with their abilities and I was literally cursed with mine.”

“Why?”

“Have you ever heard of the berserker legend? It was reported to have started during the Viking times. Except there was no such thing. See, we fought next to the Vikings. The legend said it’s men who went crazy during the heat of battle—the only thing they were wrong about was that it wasn’t only men. There were Dires involved. They had the moon craze. The berserkers slaughtered the family of a skinwalker. He survived and cursed me with dreamwalking. It’s something I can’t control. I get pulled into people’s dreams, feel their pain.”

“Humans too?”

“Yes, but I’d have to know them pretty well, and that usually doesn’t happen.” He glanced at her with a wry smile. “I was given the powers of a skinwalker, which lets me dreamwalk and dreamcatch. Getting yanked into a dream that wasn’t mine is really jarring—to feel the pain, fear, longing, is what twists me around the most. When I was young, it freaked my parents out—I used to wander in their minds when I was little. When I could talk about what I’d seen, things got really uncomfortable.”

“That must’ve
made for some interesting show and tell,” she said. “Unless… do wolves go to school?”

The corner of his mouth quirked up. “We do.”

“With… real people?”

He laughed at that. “We went with other wolves. But today’s wolves blend right in. We don’t moon phase until we’re twenty-one. Weres turn at sixteen, which makes them a little harder to control, what with all the hormones banging around their bodies to begin with.”

“So this dreamwalking… that’s what you were doing with me the first night we met,” she said, and he nodded in confirmation. “And at the celebration—”

“Part dream. I was trying to make you think all of this was a dream, just in case…”

“In case?”

“I didn’t know you were a wolf. But I was hoping you wouldn’t… that maybe the doctors were wrong and you’d stick around.”

“Would you have let me, if I wasn’t a wolf?”

“But you are. If you weren’t, I wouldn’t have been pulled to you,” he told her. “The dreamwalking bonded us more quickly.”

“You don’t just walk in dreams—you can influence them too.”

“Yes. It’s how I got the weretrappers to release me from my chains. I walked through a sleeping guard’s dreams and convinced him to open the door and take the silver away. And then I killed him and everyone else I could find before I grabbed Rogue and escaped.” He paused. “I’m violent, Gwen. It’s in my nature.”

What could she say to that? She’d seen it. And she had it inside of her too, along with her Sister Wolf. “It’s necessary.”

“You don’t understand; I have that viciousness inside of me and I like it—don’t mind being violent and dark.
Destruction comes naturally to me. It’s a part of who I am.”

“What are you telling me?”

“I’m not built to be kind and considerate to humans.”

She blinked. Was he pushing her away because of her lineage? “You’ve already been that way to me.”

Rifter shook his head as if refusing to believe her. She touched her palms to his bare back, trying to calm both man and beast. “You’re dark, yes. But you’re not bad.”

“Gwen—”

“I won’t believe it. Not after everything you’ve done for me,” she said finally, her Sister Wolf urging her on. “I’ll do anything and everything to prove it to you.”

He stared at her, his eyes slightly lupine. “You have already. It’s just all so new. Talking about it… the capture. My family. I mourned for them even though I hated them for what they’d done.”