Unprepared for a struggle from the “pathetic human,” he took the blow square to the balls, and his grip loosened. Doubled over in pain, he made the perfect target when Missy linked her hands into one giant fist and brought it down hard at the base of his skull. It would have felled a human, but in wereform, the heavy ruff and thick muscle protected him, and Curtis remained standing, bent at the waist while he struggled for breath.
Ripping free of his loosened grasp, Missy ran again and just hoped she was still heading north like Graham had ordered her to do.
An angry howl told her Curtis wouldn’t be down for long, and she dug deep for the last of her reserve strength. She found it in her belly, where the baby she now knew she carried rested, tiny and warm inside her. Thinking of nothing else but protecting him so that she could flay the skin off his father’s back when she saw him again, she fled deeper into the forest.
If she hadn’t been running for her life, she might have taken time to wonder about how she saw so clearly in the heavy darkness, but she really had other things on her mind, like listening to her back-trail for the sounds of Curtis’ pursuit. She concentrated so hard on what was behind her that she didn’t see what was in front of her until she ran headfirst into it.
Missy bounced off something hard, resilient and thick with soft, plush fur. She backpedaled quickly and looked up—way, way up—into Graham’s wolfish features.
Christine Warren
Fur Factor
101
He stared down at her with the same eyes she’d come to recognize, though they now glowed bright and constant. The hands he reached out to steady her with were strong and gentle, despite their tips that gleamed lethally sharp. He was still covered in fur, still in the wereform she’d first glimpsed in the clearing right before he attacked Curtis, but when she looked into his eyes, all she saw was Graham. The same Graham she’d fallen wildly, irrationally and irrevocably in love with.
“Stay put,” he growled, picking her up and depositing her on the far side of a fallen tree a split second before Curtis leapt out of the shadows and launched himself at Graham’s throat.
Graham countered, throwing himself into the battle. They met in mid-air, claws ripping, teeth tearing, before they even made it to solid ground. Missy had never seen a real fight, not between men, not between wolves, and certainly not between wolf men.
They grappled a little like wrestlers, but mainly they fought like animals, using teeth and claws and sheer physical might to try and force the other into submission. The moves were so fast and furious, so brutally contained, she could barely see what was going on. All she saw was the twisting shift of muscle and a few bits of red when one or the other landed a swiping blow of razor-sharp claws, or tore through fur and flesh with strong, white teeth.
They fought for control, a struggle for the dominance of the alpha position just like it had been explained to her earlier in the day. While Graham, Annie and Samantha had been explaining the nuances of werewolf etiquette to her, they’d mentioned dominance fights, since several inevitably broke out during a mate hunt. Emotions and hormones ran high on these nights, and when two males wanted the same female, they settled the contest with a fight, the more dominant winner getting the girl. Fights in a mate hunt usually ended with one Lupine giving in and submitting to his stronger opponent, showing his belly and averting his eyes to show his subordinate pack rank. The only problem was that this fight between Graham and Curtis wasn’t really about her. It wasn’t a matter of who got the girl, it was an Alpha Challenge, and those fights could and often did end only in the death of the subordinate were.
Missy knew Graham was stronger than Curtis and could easily handle his cousin in a fair fight, but in the short while she’d known Curtis, Missy had begun to doubt.
Graham’s cousin would offer a fair fight. She just hoped Graham wouldn’t count on honor to keep their struggle weighted in his favor.
She fisted her hands into knots to keep from wading into the fray and helping Graham beat his cousin into a bloody pulp. She only held herself back because she knew she’d be in the way, which might prolong the fight, and she wanted this over with as soon as possible so she could beat up on Graham herself.
She winced every time she made out a blow that Curtis landed and bit her lip to keep from cheering every time Graham sank his teeth into his cousin’s lousy hide. The struggle continued, fast and mostly silent, punctuated only by the occasional grunt or snarl as each of them tried to rip the other’s throat out. The tangle of fur and teeth made it hard to tell where brown ended and brindle began. Then she heard Graham howl and Christine Warren
Fur Factor
102
saw a dark red strip appear on his upper chest, and she jumped forward, not caring whose way she got in as long as she could get her hands around Curtis’ neck and choke the life out of him for hurting her mate.
Lucky for her, she was still as slow as a human because a hand on the back of her body suit pulled her to a halt before she got more than a foot closer to her goal. Her surprisingly sharp vision picked out Annie’s form easily, and her angry growl turned into a sigh of relief when she saw Samantha following close behind. She’d been afraid Graham’s secretary had been hurt badly, but Samantha looked completely conscious and relatively unharmed as she jogged to her Luna’s side.
Missy’s sigh turned into a blush when she saw Logan bringing up the rear of the arriving entourage. After this morning when he’d seen Graham fucking her in the front hall, Missy figured she’d probably keep blushing in his presence for the rest of her life.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Logan snapped as soon as he got close enough.
He didn’t bother to comment on her red cheeks and mortified expression. “That’s an Alpha Challenge. You can’t just go barreling in there like Joan of Bloody Arc. You could get hurt!”
Missy’s blush faded in a rush of anger. “Don’t tell me what I can’t do,” she snapped. “I’m Luna here, and that’s
my
mate getting his hide torn to shreds!” Logan scowled and straightened to his full height so that he towered over her by about a foot. He crossed his arms over his chest and dug in his heels like a mulish man.
“You may be Luna, but I’m beta. Your authority is over the females, not over me. I will defer to you under normal circumstances as a sign of respect, but I will not and cannot let you place yourself in danger. You belong to the alpha, and I protect what’s his.” Ignoring the difference in their heights, weights, ages, experience, physical strength, fighting ability and species, Missy stalked the few steps it took until she stood toe-to-toe with the blustering male, tilted her head back and stared him down through narrowed, brown eyes. “I’ll place myself any damned place I want to, buddy,” she bit out in a dangerously soft voice. “And instead of spouting off about how you’re protecting me, why don’t you do something useful, like protect the one who’s currently getting his
hide
sliced off
!”
By the time she finished yelling, she was standing on her tiptoes and leaning forward until Logan was practically bent over backward from trying not to touch her.
“Um, before you take my head off,” he ventured, his expression changing from mulish to amused, “maybe you want to take a look at your mate and tell me if you still think he needs my help.”
Surprised, she pulled back and turned in Graham’s direction just in time to see him lift Curtis over his head and slam the smaller were to the ground before planting a foot on his chest to keep him down. Curtis lay belly up, yelping while Graham crouched above him, one foot on his chest and one hand wrapped tight around his throat.
“Yield!” Graham growled in a voice so thick and savage and predatory it barely sounded like human English.
Christine Warren
Fur Factor
103
Curtis spat out a foul curse and then made a violent choking noise as the hand around his throat tightened.
“Yield,” Graham repeated, and Curtis finally complied, hatred burning in his muddy yellow eyes. As they watched, the smaller lycanthrope went limp and relaxed beneath his foe, and he turned his head, averting his eyes from his cousin’s harsh, triumphant features.
With a growl of satisfaction, Graham stood, keeping one foot on Curtis’ chest as he turned and locked his eyes on the other people around him. Actually, his eyes locked specifically on Missy and sparked an even brighter green.
“You. Leave. Now.”
Missy jumped at the tense, gravelly command, but Annie and Samantha were already turning away. More than happy to get away from the Mr. Hyde version of her lover, she took a step backward, freezing when Graham growled, the sound loud and deep and full of menace.
“Take him. Away. Go.” Graham’s eyes never left Missy, but Logan moved forward to obey the order. The beta grabbed Curtis as soon as Graham lifted his foot and began dragging the bloody and battered lycanthrope back toward the clearing where the pack had gathered earlier.
Suddenly left alone with her mate, Missy took a deep, shaky breath and turned her gaze toward him.
Graham stood in the center of the small area where he and Curtis had fought, his chest heaving, his muscles tensed and bunched, ready to spring. He still wore his werewolf form, and his fur was matted and darkened with blood where Curtis had injured him. The worst wound looked like the one on his shoulder where his cousin’s claws had bitten deep, but already, the bleeding had stopped. Lupines healed at an amazing rate, and Missy was getting to see that first hand, but she still couldn’t quite convince herself he was really well.
“Come here.”
She heard him, but her feet seemed to be glued to the ground. She was too busy fighting the conflicting instincts that urged her to go to him and run her hands over his magnificently furred body to assure herself he was really okay, and to turn tail and run as fast as she could back toward civilization. Instead of doing either, she remained locked in place, her eyes wide and fascinated as she ran her gaze over him from the tips of his pointy ears to the claws on his bare feet.
Except that she never got as far as his feet, because her gaze skidded to a halt when she saw his erection, long, thick and jutting high above his tightly drawn balls. That was about when her mind turned to jell-o.
“Here,” he repeated, gesturing impatiently. “Now.” But the fear wouldn’t let her. He was intimidating enough in human form, but the sight of him in wereform, tense and intent and aroused, bent her reality just a little too Christine Warren
Fur Factor
104
far. She recognized the light in his eyes, recognized his desire for her, but her mind couldn’t get past his fur and his teeth and the frantic desire to
get away
.
She started to turn, to flee, but his growl stopped her, not to mention the fact that he leapt across the ten feet separating them in a single bound, landing between her and escape with the grace of a cat—or a wolf—and began herding her backward.
“
Don’t
!” he growled. “Don’t run.”
She almost did. Her instincts almost took over, sending her hurtling through the dark forest, but then she looked into his eyes, and her heart contracted.
He was in there. Her Graham. His eyes shone out at her from the face of the monster that terrified her, and she felt her fear begin to ease. His gaze, even sparking with raw hunger, was kind, reassuring and familiar. She focused on it and found herself relaxing as a thought occurred to her. Growing up, her favorite fairy tale had always been Beauty and the Beast, because her heart ached at the loneliness of the huge terrible Beast and the unfairness that he had to change into something more human and more handsome just to give some spoiled Beauty a happily ever after. If Missy had been Beauty, she had thought, she would have wanted her Beast to be her beast forever, not turn into some sappy Prince just when she admitted she loved him.
Well, here was her fairy tale. Her Beast stood before her, wild and fierce in appearance, but a better man inside than most human males could ever hope to be.
“Here,” he said again. “Now.”
Missy went.
She drew a deep breath, still a little shaky, but effective, and crossed the small distance between them until she had to crane her neck to meet his gaze. She lifted a trembling hand to his chest, forcing her fingers to uncurl so she could lay them against his soft fur. She gasped, and he growled. Then he took two steps back and clenched his own hands into fists.
“Don’t,” he growled. “Too dangerous. Don’t want to hurt you.” Feeling another layer of her fear melt away, Missy slid her hand down further, over his flat nipple, and marveled at the similarities between his human form and this one.
He might be so large now that she felt like an under-endowed Barbie doll next to him, but in either form, he trembled the minute her fingernail scraped over the tightly drawn flesh. “You won’t,” she murmured, and she was beginning to believe it, too. “You won’t hurt me.”
He gasped, the air hissing through his clenched teeth. “Won’t want to. Won’t be able to stop.”
That made her pause, both hands now pressed flat to the heavy muscles of his torso as she contemplated the implications of his lack of control. The things he’d explained to her that morning came flooding back. She could remember the chill fabric of the sofa pressing against her bare skin, the heat of his body looming over her. She could remember exactly what he’d said.
Christine Warren
Fur Factor
105
“We pick the one we want for a mate.
We chase her down. And we fuck her. There’s no
seduction, no asking what she wants…. When the males give chase, they’re in rut. Their
instincts are in control, and there’s no werewolf alive who can control his need to mate when he’s
in rut. If a hunt didn’t end in sex, it would end in death. Which do you think is a better choice”?
He stepped back to evade her touch and hauled in a deep breath. “Don’t touch.
Can’t shift if you touch. Need control.”