William reared up so that his hand may continue its descent. I was close, I was so close, moaning breathless, passionately begging with my body, with my eyes, for him to tip me over that edge. He smiled down at me and slicked his thumb through my wetness, gently teasing my clit. The sensation of him inside me, of that light teasing touch, it was too much but at the same time, it was perfect, just enough. I clapped a hand over my mouth to stifle my scream as I came. I shivered and jumped and William soothed me with his voice but didn’t let up, drawing my orgasm out into the ether. Until I lay limp and spent beneath him.
He bent over me once more and kissed me languorously, until I whimpered with satisfaction into his mouth. He drew back and smiled down at me and whispered, “My turn, hold on to me, Sugar.”
I wound my arms around his shoulders and held to him as he renewed his thrusting, and didn’t stop until he attained his satisfaction. God. I never wanted him to stop! We lay in a tangle of limbs for the longest time, catching our breaths before finally showering together silently.
There was no need to speak, we simply moved around and against each other in this comfortable quiet, dressing and packing up. We stopped and ate before continuing on towards the west coast.
“Can you tell me what’s happening?” I asked when we’d finished eating. I was balling up wrappers back into the bag the food had come in while William piloted his car down the freeway.
“
What’s happening in regards to what, precisely?” he asked, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye.
“With your whole situation, you know? I mean, I’m sorry to bring it up, but your dad was murdered and it sounds like he was important… what’s happening with that? What does it all mean?”
“
Without an Alpha the Pack is as close to chaos as it’s ever been,” he said. “The Arbiter will be holding things together until an Alpha is agreed on, but the longer that takes, the higher the chances for trouble, that someone could go rogue and expose us.” He shifted, making himself comfortable.
“Okay, so you guys, what? Vote someone in or something? Like a Presidential election?” I shrugged. I really wanted to understand.
“Packs are small for a reason. When they get too large the question of leadership becomes muddled. My Pack has close to two hundred and fifty members, that’s monumentally huge, it complicates things.”
I waited for him to gather his thoughts patiently, finally, he continued with, “The only way to keep members from going off on their own or perhaps attempt to take trouble directly to the Hunters is with strong leadership. If too many decide to leave that makes us vulnerable. It leaves our territory vulnerable.”
“So that’s what an Alpha does? Maintains your territory?” William winced, and changed lanes over into the fast lane.
“The Alpha protects the Pack. Makes the decisions that keeps the Pack strong. It was Father’s decision to relocate the Pack to Seattle and since then, the entire state of Washington has become our territory, no other Pack would dare hunt on our land without our permission.”
I considered what he was saying, “So, you guys hold some kind of election then? Nominate and vote on a new leader? A new Alpha?”
“Not exactly. Wolf-kind are instinctive. Basically, we trust our guts. Candidates are presented to the Pack and the one, that the Pack as a whole feels is a strong and capable leader, will get the opportunity to prove themselves as Alpha.”
I stared at him, incredulous, “You know that sounds really stupid right?” I put on a mocking tone, “Oh you seem like a really nice guy, you should run our country!”
William laughed, “Isn’t that how you elect your president every four years?” he asked and I blushed.
“Yeah,” I said sullenly. He laughed again, harder this time.
He shrugged after his laughter died down. “It’s not a perfect system but it’s what we’ve done for centuries.”
“Centuries?” I echoed, I guess I hadn’t really thought about how long werewolves, I mean wolf-kind, had been around.
“Mm-hmm. If the Pack thinks one of the twins a better candidate they’ll accept his leadership over any other. It’s kind of like mass hysteria or a psychic link, it’s hard to explain. Basically if the vast majority of the clan feels strongly that a certain person should be Alpha, then the entire Pack will accept that person as Alpha. At that point the only option would be to challenge for leadership, meaning a fight.”
“Wow,” I sighed and sagged back into my seat, “To the death, or just until there is a winner?” I asked softly, worried. William was silent for a while before he spoke again.
“Among wolf-kind, you haven’t won if your enemy is still breathing.”
I shivered and hoped that William didn’t see it, I threaded my fingers through his and sighed. “It sounds like a brutal way of life,” I said softly.
“It can be,” he said, carefully neutral. He brought the back of my hand to his lips and brushed it with a kiss. He shrugged, “But there’s nothing like it. Your senses are so
powerful
.
I remember when I was a kid my mother would cook lasagna for dinner every other week. I could always smell it down the block. I’ll never forget that smell. The day after I was turned and woke up? My new senses made me feel like I had been deaf, blind and unable to taste or smell my entire life up to that point. Suddenly, everything was like that lasagna that I could smell from two blocks away.
“And you’re stronger and faster than you ever were. Pain isn’t as bad, you heal faster. There are so many benefits that it’s hard to imagine my life without it, my life before.”
“So you’re one of the other ones then? Not Moon Forged but Blood Born or whatever?” I stumbled over the unfamiliar terms and hoped I got them right. He’d confused me with the lasagna story.
William smiled, “No, I’m Moon Forged. I was born human then bitten and became wolf-kind.”
I sighed out, a harsh exhalation of breath and quailing inside asked the hard question… “And what about the Hunters? My father? Who are they?”
You know, other than racist, prejudiced killers on par with the lynch mobs of the KKK or the fucking Nazi’s?
I thought to myself bitterly.
He shrugged. “No wolf-kind knows. As long as our history extends there have always been Hunters. They were the Knights Templar for a while. There’s an ongoing theory that the reason the Pope of the time ordered the Knights murdered in that massacre was that some of them had become Wolf-kind, endangering their entire organization,” he pondered. “The Spanish Inquisition wasn’t a good time for our people either, but we’ve never really been able to get very close to them to find out more.”
“Wait, so you don’t know how they originated? You don’t know why they started hunting you in the first place?”
He shrugged again, “Their origins have never been clear, or high on our list of priorities. But the one thing that
has
always been a constant? They’re part of an organization. A focused group with their only goal being the eradication of my species. Maybe at one time they were run by the Catholic Church, maybe some government another time. Who knows? But it has always been a unified force, all part of one larger group. Survival has taken precedence over digging into the Hunter’s history though, and it’s just getting harder.”
“Why?” I asked, genuinely curious. William smiled and kissed the back of my hand again, I think he was slightly entertained by all the questions, which I would have been too had I been in his place, however, there was just something so damned tragic and sad about
everything
that had brought us to this point that I couldn’t see the humor in much of anything right now.
“Why is it getting harder?” he asked and I nodded.
“Advancements in technology and weaponry, mostly. Like the myths say, silver is fairly toxic to my kind. So it makes a good material to coat weapons meant to fight us and they keep finding new ways to use it. As society moves on, it gets harder to create false identities. More information than ever is online and in the governments’ hands. It’s getting harder and harder to stay on the fringes of society.”
I turned my attention thoughtfully out the window and relished how William’s thumb stroked gently back and forth across the back of my hand. I worried my bottom lip between my teeth and thought long and hard about everything he’d told me. Uneasy with some of the revelations, I decided to pick a different topic that was no less important to me.
I had a lot to think about and I felt like I had barely even scratched the surface.
Chapter 11
William
“You talked about when you were a kid, your senses being sharp and all of that, how old were you? I mean, when were you… turned?” She’d been silent for a long time and her voice nearly startled me, I’d become so lulled by the road, by the miles passing beneath the tires.
I thought about it for a moment before I was able to answer. “Well, let’s see, I was twenty-four or twenty-five, I don’t remember the exact month so it’s hard to say for sure.”
“And how old are you now?” she asked curiously.
I really had to think about that one. “Umm… twenty-five in 1966 but I was born in ‘41 so… Seventy-three? Give or take a few months? I should probably find out about that one of these– Ow!” I yelled as she suddenly punched me in the shoulder. “What was that for?”
“Dirty old man,” she said with a bit of a grin.
“What?”
“You should have told me before you fucked me that you were old enough to be my grandfather.”
“Well I’m sorry! It didn’t exactly come up!” I winked at her. “But, correct me if I’m wrong, I believe you were the one that said, and I quote, ‘shut up and fuck me’.”
“No one likes a smart-ass William,” she muttered but she was smiling.
Things went a lot easier after that, with Chloe as my partner instead of an unwilling captive. She drove and I slept, I drove and she slept. When we finally crossed the border into Washington State I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Pack law dictated that the twins couldn’t attack me inside our Pack’s territory. As long as we were inside the state they couldn’t touch me without tipping their hand to the Pack. We kept driving, and all too soon we were cresting Snoqualmie pass in the Cascade Mountain Range. I couldn’t help the sigh that escaped me as, after another half an hour and we’d crossed the I-90 floating bridge and gone through the long tunnel and my city came into view. Chloe gave me a sidelong look.
“Good to be home?” she asked and I could hear a touch of sorrow in her tone.
I took her hand again, brushing my lips across her knuckles. “You’ll get home, Chloe. I promise.”
She sighed and shrugged but didn’t pull her hand away at least. “I’m not sure I really have a home to go back to at this point. I don’t think I could look my dad in the eye, knowing now how he’s been lying to me my entire life. That he’s been killing people.”
I didn’t know what I could say to that so I simply squeezed her hand.
“We’ll be at my place in a couple of hours, why don’t you try to get some sleep?”
She nodded and pulled her feet up, curling into a ball on the seat. Minutes later I heard her breath settle into a deep even rhythm as sleep claimed her. She was exhausted. I could tell, even though she tried to hide it. The entire trip had been taking a lot out of her. The stress of learning the truth about her family on top of being kidnapped would be enough to stress anyone out, add the whole discovering an entire hidden race? I felt she’d held up fairly well. Still, I would be happy to get home where I could get her comfortable and get her some
real
rest. Food, sleep in a comfortable bed, a real shower. All of it sounded good to me.
My house was located on the Northern Olympic Peninsula, just outside of Port Townsend. Probably one of the most beautiful, historical port towns within a thousand miles.
“Where are we?”
I glanced over at Chloe. Her eyes were open and alert but she hadn’t moved otherwise. She’d slept on the drive through Seattle to Edmonds and all the way through boarding and disembarking the Ferry to Kingston. It was another hour or so drive from there to Port Townsend and another fifteen to twenty minutes to my place. She’d slept through it all. She really was exhausted.
“Almost home,” I said. We made small talk, returning to discussing music for a while and I learned even more about Chloe Young than even my extensive research into her had revealed. And the more I learned, the more I liked.
An hour later I leaned forward and peered through the window. “Here we are,” I said as I made a left turn onto a small dirt and gravel track. An old mailbox on a wooden post at the head of the track bore the name ‘Reese’ in faded white letters. Chloe sat up, staring out the window as the car bounced its way over the rough terrain until we came out in a clear space between the trees.
Tall evergreens separated my home from the road, giving a degree of privacy and making the whole house feel like it was far off the beaten track. After parking and shutting off the engine I climbed out of the car and stretched, shoulders and back popping loudly as I reached as high into the air as I could.
Across the car I heard a low whistle and turned to see Chloe standing on the other side, staring up at my house. “Nice,” she said, appreciatively and shut her door.
“Thank you,” I grinned at her. “I put a lot of work into the place. Come on, lemme give you the ten cent tour.” I walked around the car, took her hand and led her up to the house. From the outside the place looked like a two story log cabin. Larger than most, but still, a log style cabin. The far left side of the house had a round tower that ran three floors high with a series of ornate, stained glass windows at regular intervals on the first two floors. The roof of the tower was a round dome of dark wood panels. I couldn’t wait to show her that. It was my favorite part of the place.