Fear the Heart (Werelock Evolution Book 2) (3 page)

“Fuck you! I told you before it was practice for Milena! I never claimed to be perfect at handling human females,” Alex defended, his face abruptly flushing the most shockingly dark shade of …
embarrassed Alpha?

Oh, my God!

He cursed and ran a hand over his face, anxious, repentant eyes seeking mine for the briefest moment before darting away to spit fire at Remy again. “Which is why I needed to practice on Amy first.”

Umm
 
…
what? He’d “practiced” on Amy?

Alcaeus frowned. “Who the fuck’s Amy? Can we just get back to the Salvatella discussion, please?”

He’d
practiced
on Amy … as some sort of preparation for handling me?
Eww!

“Amy is Milena’s doppelganger,” Kai supplied, not bothering to glance up or break focus from whatever he was busily thumbing into his iPhone.

It was so utterly twisted … so completely disturbing. And yet … strangely …
thoughtful?
No!
Oh, no, no, no!
I refused to listen to the lovestruck rationalizations of my vapid inner she-wolf right now.

“Milena has a doppelganger?” Alcaeus’ eyes lit up with interest. “Where?”

“Idiot!” Remy said with a disgusted eye roll at Alcaeus. “You met Amy just yesterday in the gardens.”

“Alcaeus fucked Amy too,” Alex tattled to me. “Way more times than I did!”

My mouth gaped open in a silent gasp of horror.
All three of them had fucked my doppelganger?

“Right,” Remy snorted. “But only ’cause you were so wound up after bathing Milena you lost patience with how delicate Amy was and had to move on to fucking your own kind for a while first.”

“
It was practice!
” Alex shouted.

“That was Amy?” Alcaeus questioned, looking confused. “Huh … I was calling her Allison the whole time.” He shrugged. “Whatever. That girl looked nothing like Milena. And aside from an innocent handprint or two on her ass, I definitely did
not
bruise her. Why am I getting lumped in with Alex’s performance shortcomings?”

Oh, that was it!
I forced my jaw back into place before turning and scowling directly at my chair companion. “How ’bout you? Did you fuck Amy, too?”

He swiftly shook his head in the negative.

“Kai? Did you fuck my doppelganger?” I yelled across the room, loud enough to disrupt the brothers’ bickering.

“Nope,” Kai answered readily, still fussing with his iPhone, “sure didn’t.” He didn’t look up or comment further, but his lips twitched and curled at the corners.

Alcaeus roared with laughter and bum-rushed me a split second later, tickling me into the leather chair until I begged for mercy. Then he snatched me up by the waist and flung me none-so-gently over his broad shoulder.

“Aw, Milena, Milena,” he sang, “I’d adore you even if you weren’t the hottest vessel in half a millennia and holding the key to our entire future existence.” He swung me around a few times before marching back toward the center of the room with me still dangling upside down over his shoulder and protesting that fact with my fists.

“In the first place, Remy,” Alcaeus argued, “Milena is no longer a fragile human female. And in the second, check this cool trick out …”

Before I could blink he’d pulled me back over his shoulder and down the front of his hard body, drawing my thighs open around his waist and imprisoning me securely up against him with a hand splayed intimately beneath my backside.
Whoa!
I was about to let squeal my disapproval of his most unexpected manhandling when he forced my head to the side with his other hand, sweeping my disheveled hair out of his way and lowering his mouth to my neck.

“Ooh, ah, oh!” I emitted rather lamely in my startled bewilderment as his hot tongue swirled over my skin. “
Al-cae-usss!”

I squirmed against him as a cacophony of protests, curse words, and loud, vicious growls erupted throughout the room from all sides. I shrieked in objection, even as my eyes crossed and glazed over, when Alcaeus drew a sizable expanse of my tender flesh into his warm mouth and began sucking erotically.
Sweet Jesus!

“Ooh …
ahh
 
…
Aaahlcaeus …
Ssstopit!”

The sounds of furniture breaking and bodies barreling and smashing about the room around us assailed my ears. And yet I moaned in bliss, my eyes rolling back and fluttering shut as a freakishly delightful pulling sensation bloomed in the pit of my belly. Glorious tingles spread throughout my body. I was still struggling—albeit weakly—as a peculiar sense of apathy and lethargy pervaded my system.

It occurred to me I probably should have cared more as I heard an enraged Alex screaming gruesome death and torture threats at Alcaeus, and an equally infuriated Remy promising full-on defection should Alcaeus dare mark me against my will. But it just seemed easier to blow off their over-the-top, predictably possessive reactions right now in favor of enjoying Alcaeus’ bafflingly inappropriate and ill-timed public mauling session.

What the hey, right? YOLO and all that jazz
 
…

“
Mark her and die! Mark her and die!
” Alex was bellowing again and again, like a deranged man.

Mark me?
What? Well …
duh!
Yeah, this little prank of his was definitely going to leave quite the trashy-looking hickey on my neck, that was certain.

I felt the vibration of Alcaeus’ profound amusement rumbling deep within his chest as he hummed pleasantly against my neck. But when I heard handclapping and the unfamiliar cackle of a female occupant in the room, I finally forced my eyelids open and blew my hair out of my face just enough to see what sort of insanity was transpiring around me from my cockeyed view over Alcaeus’ shoulder.

Alcaeus turned us slowly in place, affording my dazed eyes a glimpse of the room and what proved to be quite the riotously chaotic scene. Alex was magically suspended high up against the wall, his face beet red, his eyes bright yellow, his mouth practically foaming in fury as he raged down at Alcaeus—every muscle in his body bursting with tension, veins protruding throughout as he wrestled in vain against imaginary restraints. I noted it was both distressing as well as a turn-on for my wolf to see him so.
Hmm
 
…

Remy was caught in a similar predicament on the adjacent wall, but he’d somehow lost all of his clothing and was completely naked, restrained to the wall. I sensed my pervy she-wolf’s disappointment over the injustice of Alex managing to stay clothed when Remy hadn’t.

Meanwhile, Kaleb was shifting uncomfortably in his seat, wincing with distress as his eyes darted back and forth between Alex up on the wall and Alcaeus defiling my neck. Guadalupe had taken my vacated seat beside him, and she was the one clapping and cackling rowdily, cheering Alcaeus on, pointing and catcalling at both Alex and Remy.

As my eyes found Kai, he paused in his texting to look up and address me directly. Only he didn’t speak aloud, he spoke inside my head. “
Do me a favor, Milena?
” he petitioned
.
“
Be sure to give them a really good scream, okay?
”

Scream? Huh?

Kai smiled broadly then and gave me the most hilarious imitation of an Alcaeus wink that managed to transform his entire countenance and distract me from further pondering his bizarre scream request.

Alcaeus turned so that I was directly facing Alex again. And then he stopped. No longer threatening, Alex had switched to begging and pleading with Alcaeus, arguing that I had a choice—of all perfectly maddening things, spewing crazy talk about how Alcaeus would never understand me the way he did, never suit me the way he would. Lecturing him on how dishonorable it would be of him to abuse his power over me, and begging him not to mark the only woman who could ever be his true mate in life.

Oh, good grief!
What a lot of fuss and drama over a damn hickey. A fabulously pleasurable, titillating hickey, at that, but a hickey, nonetheless. If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve sworn Alex almost looked to be on the verge of tears now.
Was I missing something?

“
Only this, sweetheart,”
Alcaeus crooned inside my head. Followed by, “
I’m sorry
 
…
” as his teeth sank hard and fast into the vulnerable flesh at the juncture of my neck and shoulder, breaking cleanly through the skin to penetrate the layer of muscle that lay beneath.

My eyes bugged wide in shock.
And boy did I scream!

I hadn’t a moment to process the reality of what had just happened though—much less acknowledge the certifiably insane fact that I’d just heard a wounded wolf howling inside my own head—because Alex’s face contorted in pure agony, and then he exploded.

He was a man supernaturally affixed to a wall one moment, and an enormous beast of a wolf the next.
A beast of a wolf who was flying from the wall straight at me!
I screamed again as Alcaeus abruptly relinquished my neck and tossed me through the air—halfway across the room into Kai’s awaiting arms.

What happened after that I couldn’t accurately say, but by the time I turned in Kai’s arms, there were two enormous wolves tearing apart Alcaeus’ living room. A naked Remy had fallen off the wall, and Guadalupe was frantically jumping up and down upon her chair, shouting in Portuguese at the wrestling wolves. Kaleb was in his
Cujo
form and pacing back and forth at the ready on the sidelines—looking just as awkward and unsure of what the fuck his role was supposed to be as he had while in his human form, I noted.

“No. Fucking. Way.” Kai muttered with a look of awe as the pure black wolf was sent crashing straight through a window.

The black wolf quickly returned through that same broken window to attack the black and grey wolf who had thrown him.

I knew Alex’s wolf was the black and grey one, so Alcaeus’ had to be the pure black. I didn’t relish seeing such violence, but I was too stunned and disoriented to voice that thought.

“Milena, they’ll be fine,” Kai assured. “Let me have a look at your neck, please?” Setting me down in Remy’s broken chair, he reverted to doctor mode, tilting my face away from the fight so that he could get a better view of Alcaeus’ handiwork.

Instinctively, my hand flew up to finger the wound first, as it occurred to me I definitely had to be bleeding. I felt a little dampness at the spot where he’d bitten me, but nothing more. It didn’t hurt, and my skin seemed unbroken—smooth and uninjured beneath my fingertips.

“Let me see, please?” Kai requested more firmly, kneeling on the floor in front of me and drawing my hand away.

“There’s … nothing …” I mumbled as he leaned closer, his fingers trailing gingerly over the point of contact.

“Mm-hmm,” he confirmed, pulling back and gifting me with the sweetest of half-smiles that I was sure I’d never seen him wear before. “Not even a scratch,” he said, a curious reverence in his tone.

“Guess that means I’m healing like a werelock already, huh?” I assessed shyly.

He shook his head. “It means you are without question our vessel. A vessel can’t be marked.”

“Marked?”

“Werewolves mark their mates with a special bite that is permanent. One that will leave a definitive scar, regardless of any supernatural healing capabilities.”

“Oh.” I frowned. “So then Alex thought … and that’s why …” I fumbled and stopped short as Remy stomped over to us, still buck-naked, his big dick literally swinging back and forth as he went.

“Are you two fucking nuts?” Remy berated Kai. “What if she hadn’t been the vessel, huh? What the fuck then?” he demanded, coming to stand right next to where I was seated.
And in doing so placing his penis directly in my line of vision.

Kai shrugged. “We were ninety-nine percent certain.”

“Oh, well, that’s just great. Real cool fucking trick, Al!” Remy yelled at the battling wolves. “She’s the vessel, Alex, she wasn’t marked!”

I cringed as the snarls and the sound of snapping jaws seemed to grow louder. The sound of shattering glass followed, and I looked back to see them both soar through another window. Guadalupe screamed after them to fucking stay outside.

“Good God, are you all right, Milena?” Remy fretted over me, getting a little too close for comfort, considering he had his penis on full display. “Did he hurt you?”

“I’m good,” I managed to rasp, keeping my eyes averted.

“Are you sure?”

I nodded vigorously, thinking I’d be positively perfect if he’d just step back and put some pants on already.

“You’re a bastard for going along with that stunt,” Remy scolded Kai, whacking him on the back of the head.

“Well, it was you who gave Al the idea,” Kai responded.

“What? Fucking hell, I know he’s an asshole most of the time, but do you have any idea what that shit did to Alex? Christ, I can’t remember when I’ve ever sensed him get so weepy emotional about anything,” Remy remarked with a shake of his head. “And right before he went ballistic it felt like his powers virtually doubled in intensity.”

“Exactly,” Kai said with a raised brow.
“That
was the whole trick. How do you think you both got off the wall? How do you think Alex is still holding his own against Alcaeus and the power of Joaquin Salvatella’s blood magic right now?”

Comprehension lit Remy’s features.

“Alcaeus proved your theory. Alex
did
inherit Renata’s power as well as Antonio’s. He’s just chosen to willfully neglect and deny any proclivities toward emotional awareness—and consequently the power that would be drawn from such ability.”

Grinning, Remy smacked Kai on the back of the head again. “Well played.”

Before I could ask Kai to translate his last statement into human-speak for me, I heard a female voice reprimand from outside the broken front windows, “Boys,
boys!
Stop it! Stop it this instant! What the fuck is wrong with you two?”