“Well, he claimed her in the woods. I’d say that gives the man some rights too,” Alpha Paulson said. At least one person was on my side here.
Only then did Amber notice her father. She ran to him and the man’s arms slammed shut around her.
“Why are you here?
How
are you here? And…wait…did you say claim?” She looked at us for a moment. “Well, I guess whatever you were doing to stay away failed. Glad you suck at standing your ground, dude. Wait, if you got it on, did the other drawing happen? I missed the beheading, didn’t I? Damn.”
“It was my father.”
Amber cringed. “Shit, I’m sorry, Craig.”
Shelly didn’t look sorry, and she wouldn’t. Shelly did what she thought had to be done. I wouldn’t get an apology from her, but she’d fought with me. She’d kept Mary safe. That was enough. Living with my former Pack for a few days hammered home that I didn’t have to look far to find where I belonged now.
Amber was a bit more welcoming at the moment, so I went for it. “I accept Amber Hart as my Alpha.”
As the words left my lips, I felt my connection return to the dysfunctional Clan I couldn’t wait to expand.
“Oh no you don’t, mister. Pledging your loyalty is not kissing nearly enough ass to make up for your temper tantrum. I want people in my Clan who will work with me, not run off on their own stupid missions.” She yelled, and waved her hands through the air. She made a scene, but Amber couldn’t stop her grin.
“You let me back in, already.” I pointed out.
“I can still scold you for biting my friend. I doubt in the heat of the moment you were teaching werewolf 101.”
“She understands she’s mine. She said the words.” Mostly.
“Before she passed out from exhaustion, sport. That’s like asking a drunk person if they love you.” Shelly pointed a look at Amber during the drunk comment.
“Shut up, Barbie.”
Tents had been erected all around the house. There was no way all those people would fit inside Kari’s little bed and breakfast, and they were used to roughing it anyway. I kept Mary snuggling in my arms as our Clan, along with Mr. Paulson and Shelly migrated inside. We spoke as quietly as we could. There were dozens of supernatural ears around us. They were under Paulson Pack leadership now, but I valued a bit of privacy.
We were in the kitchen. The food was all outside, picnic style, but we all needed to be away from crowds at the moment.
“I don’t know if I believe that the Matheo is behind the harvesting ring,” Shelly fidgeted with the solid black bottle still clipped on her hip. “Maybe I just don’t want to, but wouldn’t the miasma have the knowledge of that crap going on?”
Jake shook his head. “Not if he were working alone.”
Alpha Paulson stood against a wall, arms folded. “Seems like a lot for one vampire to accomplish. Even considering his age.”
I knew that power increased with age in vampires. Unfortunately, it didn’t really work like that for werewolves. Vampires really were near the top of the food chain. Being damn near immortal, it was just a matter of experience and time before they used what was around them to their advantage. That included people, I guess.
“Well, this might not be what we were coming here for, but I think we need to discuss what to do about the harvesting situation.” Paulson kicked his chin in my direction, “And maybe you can fill us in on what Mary did to that wolf.”
I excused myself to put Mary in her bed upstairs. Doc handed me a couple of meal bars and a bottle of water the Alakin Pack brought with them. I dropped the items onto the table next to Mary’s bed. She would need something when she woke up.
Tucking the covers around her I looked at her neck. Once she turned, she would wear my mark. Kissing her forehead didn’t wake her, and I eased the door shut behind me. I could hear her if she woke and get to her easily.
I took advantage of the bathroom next door and rinsed the grime from my hair and arms. The quick detour gave me a much needed moment to figure out how to explain what happened when Mary went all Scanners and popped that wolf’s head like an over blown balloon.
It would be a lot easier if I had even a glimmer of a clue how that worked. Mary had changed. She was stronger than she realized, and whatever took over in the woods was freaking intimidating. Damn she had been scary sexy when she went for that wolf taking me down.
I put words to my thoughts as I made it back to the group. I wasn’t the only one who was looking at my little witch in a new way. “We can ask Mary about the skull explosions after she gets some rest. It has to have something to do with her psychic ability. She tried to get a hold of my mind when…before we…” The images of what we did flooded to my brain.
“Craig, knock it off. You need to focus on something that doesn’t involve sex. You are making this whole place stink.” Amber plugged her nose.
“Yes, because no one else in this room has offended our noses with that scent recently.” Alpha Paulson kissed his daughter on the head. Despite the relation I noticed Jake twitch before yanking his wolf back under control.
“Dad, why did you come here? Not to sound ungrateful, because a big part of me thought we would never see you again and that depressed the hell out of me, but I thought us seeing each other was a big no-no.” Amber gave her dad a squeeze before returning to her mate. She must have sensed his wolf’s unease at someone else touching her.
Shelly hopped up on the counter. “We’ve been discussing a way to end the feuding between our sects. With Amber and Jake getting it on like Donkey Kong, we thought it might soften the Matheo’s stance and encourage him to relax his no-consorting status. Hell, the treaty is null and void now that those two are mated. We’ve learned the Matheo is working with wolves to kidnap women, and that makes his reasons for not wanting to budge on that make a bit more sense.” Shelly was usually the stoic vampire, Amber’s nickname, Vampire Barbie, suited her. Although she wasn’t tall, she was solid, strong and immobile.
Mr. Paulson placed a hand on her thigh in comfort, but rather than shake it off she put her own on top of his. Everyone needs a bit of comfort when they realize their father was doing something so abhorrent. It was strange to realize how much I had in common with a vampire wearing patent leather high heel boots.
“Does the Matheo know that his ring has fallen? Mary’s claimed. That puts her off the market, right?” I put the question to Jake, but as he looked to Shelly, it was obvious no one really knew for sure.
Jake pulled Amber close to him. It seemed Matheo Meyers would love to do away with our entire Clan. Jake wasn’t the only one who appreciated the fact that his mate was alive. Alive and awake, apparently. I heard a door open and close and a toilet flush. The meal bar wrappers crinkled until she must have tossed them in a garbage can before walking through the dining room.
My blue-eyed witch was a bright flame of energy across our mate bond. I couldn’t tell if it was the absence of my chemical buffer or the Clan connection, but I was insanely aware of her.
“As long as wolves are doing the dirty work, no one is going to touch her now that library boy over there marked her.” Shelly hopped down from her perch. “Let’s hope she’s happy about that decision being made for her. I sure wouldn’t be.” She mumbled the words as she left the room. Guess she was done with us. Or she would have been if Mary hadn’t blocked her exit. Watching an older vampire like Shelly drop her eyes from Mary’s made me realize that letting word get out about her performance wouldn’t be a bad thing for our safety.
Shelly stepped back from Mary as the room got a little too small for comfort. Mary’s eyes locked on mine. I had to work to keep from dropping my gaze too. “Craig…what does she mean you marked me?”
Part of me had hoped that Amber had talked with Mary about what all this meant earlier. Guess not. Now I had to explain to her, in front of an audience, that I had claimed her. There would never be another for me as long as she lived. She was my mate, but I hadn’t really done things the traditional way.
“It means you’re mine. Any werewolf who comes near you will know it. I had to make my mother see that my claim was stronger than any harvest order.” Simple terms were best in situations like this.
“This is because you bit me.” As she spoke, the room temperature began to climb.
“Yes.” I was already flush against the kitchen counter. I couldn’t back up like I did last time. I felt the heat in the room zero in on my mind. My head began to buzz.
“And now I am, what, married to you?”
“In human terms, yes.” Geez, was that such an awful thing? She was getting inside my head.
“Well, Craig, I don’t know if you noticed this, but I am human. Don’t I get a choice in this? No freaking ring? That was a pretty shitty proposal.”
Oh, crap.
I rubbed my forehead. “You will understand it better when you’re turned.”
“When…what?” She went to charge at me, before she noticed everyone was watching us. Then it was like a switch was turned, and the tickling in my brain receded. I rubbed a hand through my hair, grateful it was still attached to my head and not splattered all over the wall.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Mary
I dreamed. There was a rolling fog around that let me know my dream was a reality that hadn’t happened yet. I was back in Indiana, but at some old mansion. I didn’t even know they had that kind of old home in the Midwest. It was extravagant and gated and big. A stone walkway propelled me up to the front door. A man with pitch black hair opened it. Something about him had me pissing my astral pants.
Kari was surrounded by heavy wooden trim in the doorway with him. She was bleeding. Deep stripes of red raced up and down her arms. Another man held her tight with hands that changed into claws at the fingertips. Kari didn’t look scared. She perked up as the men talked over her and she looked at me. It was like she could freaking see me.
A woman rushed up to the steps then and that’s when I realized this was a dream. They hadn’t opened the door for me. This woman was the one they were expecting. She was dirty and her ash blonde hair was in a matted ponytail.
“Matheo. They’ve taken every one of them. They broke up the camp. I went back and it was all gone.” Craig’s mom had come to talk with Matheo Meyers. This was who had Kari. This was who had come for me.
“What do you mean gone?” The Matheo’s lips barely moved as he spoke. His eyes didn’t blink and I saw tips of white fang poke from between his lips. A black aura erupted from him. I had never seen an aura that dark before.
“Sir, they took it all.” She bowed her head. Her body slumped forward.
“Who is they?” The Matheo was focused on the woman nearly kneeling at his feet.
“My son, your Protector, the Paulson leaders and that witch. They took everything, and I couldn’t stop them.” The woman who had laughed at Shelly seemed to tell a different story when she was looking for sympathy. “I needed to make you aware of the actions of your Protector. Of how much she cost me.”
Kari didn’t acknowledge the growl that came from Craig’s mom. She was still staring at me. Her gaze didn’t move.
“So you are Packless?” The Matheo asked her.
The older woman stood as tall as she could with one shoe missing, and tried to calm down her hair, but a small tree branch held it up like a tripod against her spine. If she was looking for compensation for her losses, she really ran to the wrong mansion. “I will rebuild. Some will return.”
The Matheo went to the woman with solid deliberate steps. He was a man who knew he had the power in this situation. He began to inspect her as he walked around. She limped in a circle to follow him, never letting him have her back. After a moment he said, “I have something to offer you.”
“I cannot take handouts from other species. I am giving you the courtesy as a leader to let you know your own Protector is the one cutting off your supply. Not me.” She stopped and waited for the Matheo to react. He didn’t. “I thought you should know. I would want to know if my own ranks were betraying me. I don’t want to discount our business relationship, but I must stay true to my kind. For the good of…” She looked at her feet.
“For the good of the Pack? That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it? But you have no Pack. Why don’t we go inside and we will discuss what we can do for the good of you.”
Kari didn’t open her mouth. They would have heard. Instead her voice echoed in my head. “
Bring them. It’s time.”
I wanted to ask her what she meant and who it was I was supposed to bring, but white noise pounded against my dream. Kari dropped her gaze, and the connection broke. I woke up on the bed I had come to think of as mine in Kari’s home. Before everything clicked into place in my brain, I’d hoped the last few days had just been part of the dream, and Kari would walk in carrying a few pieces of chocolate. Only a headache met me, no chocolate.
My empty stomach threw a party when I found the two granola bars and water next to me. I had the first one down seconds after I tore it from the wrapper. Then I guzzled the water and hit the bathroom. I slowed down with the second piece of granola as I tried to catch what the voices that filtered up from below were saying. I followed the sounds as far as the dining room when Shelly’s words from earlier hit me. She said Craig had marked me. That he told me I was going to be turned. I may have been slightly out of it, but I’m damn sure I would have remembered agreeing to something like that.