Dire Needs: A Novel of the Eternal Wolf Clan (3 page)

But he didn’t want to think about Seb right now. Not when Rifter could close his eyes and still hear Rogue’s howls in the night. They’d gotten him back, but not until terrible things had been done to him.

Rifter knew from personal experience what kinds of horrors the man and his wolf had endured. He’d been with Rogue that night six months earlier. Both had been captured and taken to separate cells. It took Rifter three weeks to escape and take Rogue with him.

By that time, the man was a shell of his former self.

Now Rogue remained in the attic of the house, as comfortable as they could make an immortal in a coma. Whether he would come out of it—and how he would be when he did—remained to be seen.

Rogue’s mind was a terrifying blank, and Rifter couldn’t get inside, no matter how hard he tried.

And then there was the one they rarely spoke of: Harm—aka Harmony—the Dire who could calm the masses or incite riots with his singing, who’d gone out on his own thousands of years earlier and most recently made a name for himself as the unpredictable superstar singer of a rock band and who now lived as a recluse. Rifter would rip his fucking head off if he ever found the man—rip it off every day for the rest of his miserable life for the danger he’d put all of them in.

Along with the six of them were the Weres they’d let into their Dire pack, mainly those who’d gone rogue from their own packs because they were too mean or rowdy or didn’t follow direction well… or they were still moon crazed, like the young twins Jinx had taken under his wing.

They listened to the Dires. Had their backs. The Weres weren’t nearly as strong as the Dires, but they were formidable powers in their own right.

And oh yeah, no female Dires, because there were none.

The female Weres they hung with as part of their group were cool, and they could handle the Dires moderately well, sexually and otherwise, if they weren’t newly shifted. It took a hell of a lot for a Dire to be with a human. Rifter couldn’t remember the last time he’d let that happen but suspected it was right after he’d shifted for the first time, the moon craze making him goddamned insane with lust and hunger, and Brother Wolf hadn’t had any measure of control either. Slowly, the two of them pulled back, got some form of measured control and agreed to keep their shit together.

Brother Wolf tugged—rightfully so, because Rifter was encroaching on his time—but he couldn’t leave Gwen now. She was still twitching, a restless combination of sleep and unconsciousness, and nowhere near peaceful. He remained firmly rooted in reality, not attempting to enter her dreams like he itched to.

The dreamwalking had become worse in the months leading up to his capture. Since Rogue’s coma, it had only gone downhill. Rifter had always been able to control it, but lately, his own dreams had been stranger. He’d wake up speaking the old language, unable to remember where he’d been.

The dreams were draining him. He wasn’t scared of anything, but they freaked him the fuck out.

Jinx did what he could to help keep the dreams at bay, which included the use of Native American dream catchers, while Rifter actively tried not to sleep. Much. And even though he’d promised Jinx and the others that he wouldn’t do this because they couldn’t be sure the new dreams weren’t
the insidious work of Seb and his witches, Rifter pulled off the dream-catcher necklace and put it around Gwen’s neck instead. Then he prepared to put himself in a danger he’d sworn not to.

He closed his eyes, her hand in his large one, her skin soft and smooth and cool, and goddamn, it would feel good on his cock. But this wasn’t about him, and he had nothing but time, so he could afford to be magnanimous.

He settled into a light sleep. The push into her subconscious wasn’t effortless, which was strange, because in her state, there should have been no resistance.

But very few could resist him for long, especially humans.

Finally he broke through and began the dreamwalk—a combination of actually walking through the person’s dreams and then influencing said dreams. A handy skill. Inside Gwen’s dreams, he got sucked into a swirling mass of terror and confusion and… hope. Strange enough, there was more of that than anything.

Rifter didn’t know how the hell it all worked, but somehow, with the dreamwalk, he was both by Gwen’s side physically while his dream self walked with Gwen inside her mind.

In that dream state—suspended from the reality of her world—he took her away from the pain and fear and put his leather jacket on her, over her bra and underwear, even though she wouldn’t really feel the cold, and holy Mother of God, she looked fine. He almost stayed on the bed next to her, but instead, he put her back on his bike… and because they were in the dream, he rode faster than he ever would with her in real life. She laughed, her hands in the air the way they’d been before, and the vibrations rang through both like a fever.

But Brother Wolf’s needs were becoming increasingly
hard to ignore, what with the white round bitch hanging in the sky, and he needed to run. Had no choice but to take Gwen with him.

Rifter’s skin tightened, and he didn’t fight the change from man to beast. He reveled in it. Letting the wolf take over was sometimes the easiest thing in the world… would be so damned easy to let him take over full-time. And so he was now Brother Wolf both in Gwen’s bedroom and in her dream, and Brother Wolf complied by keeping his paw on Gwen’s hand to not break Rifter’s way into her dream.

In the dream, though, Brother Wolf was free, and he stopped and howled, and Gwen was watching warily. He smelled the fear on her skin, watched her face pale and her mouth gape in a frightened O, because, yeah, Brother Wolf was a big, scary-looking motherfucker, although a hell of a looker too. He shook his head and the fur around his neck shifted, and then he bared his neck and howled, his way of telling Gwen she was safe, although she wouldn’t know that. And obviously she didn’t because just then she backed up and began to run from him.

He caught up to her and for a while they ran side by side, until he stopped smelling her fear… until he saw the smile on her face. Brother Wolf dusted up the leaves from the ground, and they swirled around their feet, crunching in the night. And when Brother Wolf sat, she even reached out—hesitantly—and patted his back.

He gave a contented whimper in response. Bastard.

It was after one in the morning when Brother Wolf conceded. Rifter stood naked in front of her as she lay on the forest ground on a blanket of old leaves untouched by the snow, thanks to the thick covering of trees. She could see pinpricks of moonlight coming from
above, her body sated from the run. As she gazed at him as if he was the best thing she’d ever seen, it made him feel like beating his chest.

Father Wolf,
Brother Wolf whispered in his ear.

His cock jutted out toward her, and in response she reached to unhook her bra and stripped it and her underwear and lay on the soft ground naked under the moonlight, waiting for him.

In the dream state, he was supposed to lead her through a higher reality, a place she couldn’t get to herself. He wasn’t supposed to gain pleasure from it, but he couldn’t help himself, not when her nipples tightened into perfect buds the color of ripe berries, her breasts a little more than a handful. A perfect blond triangle between her legs.

She had a runner’s body—lithe, long, finely muscled, and his hand dipped between her thighs, a finger exploring the wet heat. She would feel this to her core. Her hips already began to rock against his hand in response to his touch, her fingers moved across her belly and her body thrashed, this time for pure pleasure.

He couldn’t remember wanting a woman this much. He wouldn’t take her like this, felt bad about doing this to her, but judging by the length of her orgasm, she needed it.

She’d remember none of this—if she had a vague memory, she’d think it was a hot dream.

He’d remember everything and it would haunt him for a hell of a long time.

V
ice slammed into the bar, intent on finding the assholes who called themselves the outlaws and decided they could take over this town and fuck up the wolf thing. Stray was by his side, primed and ready for a beat-down.

Separately, they were terror—together, fearsome, shit-kicking Dire wolves whose existence was a mix of myth and truth. The full moon tugged at them, a terrible, awesome pull, and they were more than ready to shift. Overdue.

But the call had come in less then twenty minutes earlier, one of the local Were bartenders telling them about rumors of a fight brewing between two different werepacks. The weretrappers were circling, and it was up to the Dires, the fucking police of the Were world by default, to stop the trappers without getting themselves captured.

The Dires, especially Vice and Stray, had been hunting down the outlaw wolf pack for days. The Dires tried not to get too involved in the werepack wars, but when Linus, King Alpha of the New York City pack, called them back from Europe six months earlier, the Dires willingly came to help advise Linus and, if necessary, help quell the rebellion.

Of course, that’s
when Rifter and Rogue ran into their own trouble with the weretrappers.

Linus had been able to quiet things down since the Dires returned, but obviously not enough. The king had been murdered by his own once loyal wolves days earlier, and now chaos ensued. Manhattan was in an uproar and Linus’s son was missing, rumored to have died at the hands of the same outlaw wolves.

But as far as Vice could see, there were no outlaws in the bar and everyone appeared to be at peace.

Well good for fucking them.

“There are twenty weretrappers out back,” Stray reported as he stopped to smell the air, then muttered, “Suicide mission.”

“I wish,” Vice muttered, stomping ahead. “Just gonna hurt like hell, and in the end, we’ll all still be alive.”

“We’ve been wanted since what feels like the dawn of time—you’d think we’d be used to it by now,” Stray grumbled.

Vice’s eyes glowed. “Let me take care of them once and for all.”

“Rifter’ll kill you—just do what we came to do and let’s get the hell out.”

Stray was
never
any goddamned fun.

Then again, neither were the weretrappers, who were humans, armed to the hilt with all kinds of silver shit, which was deadly in large quantities to regular Weres but could do nothing but cause extreme pain to the Dires. They could fight through the pain—and would—but it would be far easier to avoid contact with the stuff to begin with.

The weretrappers targeted all wolves—especially the Dires lately—not to kill them, but to hold them for experimentation. The horrors they inflicted on wolves, the majority of whom stayed as far away from humans as they possibly could, were unspeakable.

Vice had seen some of them firsthand on both Rifter’s and Rogue’s bodies, and his gut twisted at the thought of what they’d gone through.

He just wanted Rogue to wake up, no matter what state he was in. Slept on the floor next to the man just in case. So it was for Rogue that Vice was on the rampage, out to destroy as many weretrappers as he could without getting himself caught or drawing too much human attention to the packs.

Howlers was packed to the damned rafters, just the way he liked it, with wine and women and various other vices that would for sure lead a man astray.

Vice
really liked
astray, so much so that his entire life had been molded around it. The music slammed through him—the smells of Were and sex and smoke and whiskey washed through his senses. When Stray turned back to him, his eyes had already changed.

Vice knew his had too. It was controllable, but here, where there was no need to control, he let something be goddamned easy. And when a stripper—Were—slid by him, tits against his chest, and he smelled her want, immediate and strong, he wanted nothing more than to pick her up, carry her to the back as she wrapped around him, telling him he’d be so amazingly good.

He would be too. Fact of life and breeding and many, many years of practice.

But Stray the killjoy simply shook his head, reminding Vice they were just cutting through the bar and not supposed to be enjoying themselves. But hell, turning it off was never that simple.

Misconduct, misbehaving and sin—yeah, those were a few of his favorite fucking things…

Vice made it his life’s work that all the people he’d come in contact with found their favorites too, because what the hell was more fun than that? He was born to
lead people astray, take them off the beaten path, travel the road not taken.

Den of iniquity
was tattooed across his back because his entire being was one, along with the words
mayhem
and
deviant.
They didn’t stop the women—and the men—from wanting him. The wolves all knew better and gave him a wide-as-hell berth. They didn’t want to be pulled into his world of sin, and Vice knew it was better they weren’t all in the damned gutter with him.

“According to Facebook, Rifter left the bar with a human.” Stray was checking his iPhone as they pushed through the crowds. “Twitter confirms.”

“I fucking hate social media.” Vice lit another rolled cigarette, the wafting of the special blue smoke hovering around both of them like a heavy embrace. “No one can just fuck in private anymore.”

“Rifter went home with a human and that’s what you’re worried about?”

“Ah, Stray, come on. Probably just a rumor.” He stared up at the full moon, the pull that much stronger because of this time of year. Mating season made them all edgy and way too unfulfilled, even after hours of mind-blowing sex. They couldn’t get everything they needed, and neither could their wolves, and that made for some very unhappy dual-natured creatures.

If Rifter had taken a human home, she was in big goddamned trouble. That made Vice smile. “Let’s get this shit over with.”

He looked through the small window on the heavy back door and saw the open, tree-covered field behind the bar. When he opened it, the smell of snow—and human—would be unmistakable. “They’re out there.”