Damen’s face went from shocked to curious. “This isn’t about what happened in the airport over a month ago, is it?”
Jasmine jumped up from the chair and Dir gripped her by the waist and sat her back down.
“Show us some satellite pictures of the Westlyn pack commune. We’re all depending on your expertise, Jazzy,” Dir whispered loud enough that Olivia heard, and she imagined the others did also. Acute hearing came in handy a lot lately.
Trevor and Jase stepped closer, staring at the computer screen, while Damen stayed back. Olivia thought it funny Damen knew not to press it. Jasmine remained upset over her last undercover operation at Dr. Linden’s lab in England. It happened on her way home and Damen barely made it to the airport in time. Jasmine ended up handcuffed and led away by airport security. Someone switched out Jasmine’s bag of goods in the short time she was preoccupied. She lost the Total Eclipse and Full Moon compounds. Olivia recalled Jasmine’s temper as she walked into their home facility, safely returned from England. She attempted to explain it to Chance while he talked on the phone with Damen.
Jasmine’s temper flared that day similar to Chance’s exhibition a few minutes ago, even though not in the same velocity, it contained the same initial fury. Olivia sensed the tension, the instant explosion, and wondered if all Lycan came with short fuses. She almost lost it herself moments before she realized.
“Here.” Jasmine pointed at the screen.
“Set it on the large screen.” Jase walked over and powered up the flat wall screen. Trees, tall hills, maybe even mountainous, some big body of water in the mix, and then as Jasmine scanned in another direction Olivia saw buildings dot an open area. It looked like a small play village with a bigger-sized structure, like a town hall, in the center surrounded by smaller square buildings. Perception was difficult for realizing actual size, until Jasmine zoomed in.
“Oh my gods, is that him?” Jasmine zoomed in farther, over snow-covered ground until the screen settled on one walking man with a side of his head deformed and bald, the rest covered in strings of long dark hair blowing in the breeze.
Olivia gasped, her face burned, and her heart banged so hard it shook her body. Something untamed took hold of her, like it had a short time ago. What was happening to her? Jasmine jumped from her chair and bounded over.
“Deep breaths, Olivia. Close your eyes and think of Chance. We can’t have you shifting again until…”
Olivia’s eyes flew open, her body shaking so hard her teeth chattered. “Until, what?”
“Until you receive official permission in a signed document from the seven Lycan Elders. It states the date you shifted and who performed your blood ritual,” Damen said and stepped closer, but didn’t touch her. “Every Lycan must have one or they are considered rogues without a pack. Rogues are never a good thing within the Lycan race. They represent a flaw in the system, someone unacceptable. Someone no pack wants.”
Olivia thought about it, realizing her status must be rogue, a flaw as it stood. Probably why the elders urgently wanted to see Chance, and now she understood why she had to go with him.
“Holy Crap!” Jase gave Trevor a little shove, and when everyone looked at the screen, the eeriest thing happened.
A deformed face turned skyward toward the satellite, staring at them from the flat screen. His mouth stretched, a corner of it dipped into his sunken cheek, showing pointed-edged teeth. One glowing amber eye and one nearly opaque milky eye remained fixed in a haunting gaze, sending icy chills needling through Olivia’s veins.
Smoke.
Lindsey
Lindsey watched Smoke walk out the door of their one room cabin. His weight made the wooden deck creak until he stepped off. She ran over to one of the two small windows flanking the door. He stopped a few paces in front of the pack’s central community building and stared skyward as wind caught his hair, swirling dark tendrils around his shoulders.
What in the hell was he doing?
He stood there grinning at the sky like a mad man. Well, hell, he was a mad man. She thought about Smoke and his gruff ways. After a month or more together, she had acclimated to the pack, and even some of the women, but with Smoke, she simply played the part. It kept Trevor and Olivia alive. If Lindsey didn’t cooperate by forgetting her past, Smoke would kill them. She’d never risk their lives and mastered a secret place inside her brain to hide the memories she only tapped into when Smoke was away.
She wondered if Trevor ever thought of her. How could he after she’d been gone so long in Smoke’s possession? He had to know what Smoke and his pack did with human women, and why would Trevor even look at her after all this time? She would never love anyone else like she did that Lycan. Her heart raged for him, painfully wanting what she’d never have again.
Lindsey missed Olivia terribly and wondered if she’d see her friend again. She longed for a woman’s companionship.
Most of the human women lived inside the community building, sleeping on small pallets against the walls. A large room, separate from the women’s sleeping, living, and cooking space, was designated as a meeting room for the male Lycan. When the males collected inside the building, she knew more than a meeting kept them all occupied for lengthy stretches of time.
So far, Smoke didn’t share Lindsey with other males, but she was aware of the orgies inside the central building. She heard a few women talk of them. Some even liked them, being surrounded by hard-bodied men hung like rocket launchers. Those women went at it without the use of the stimulation drug Smoke used on everyone else.
She was used to the little needle pricks and welcomed them. It made acting the part with Smoke so much easier, believing in her heart Trevor made love to her, but guarding that fact from Smoke by holding Trevor’s name in the secret place, locked safely away.
Lindsey understood some of the sexual attraction. She had that once, but she couldn’t go there in her mind. Smoke searched her thoughts almost daily and always found if she’d tapped into any memory nuggets of people she loved. He possessed psychic abilities others didn’t. Already, the thoughts of Trevor that had emerged she’d need to bury before Smoke returned.
If an orgy ensued during their pack meeting, Smoke would be preoccupied for a good while. She reached her arm underneath the mattress, where a few weeks ago she saw Smoke slide his journal. Lindsey had fallen asleep with her back to the fireplace. A crack of thunder wakened her in time to witness Smoke closing a journal and placing it beneath the mattress they shared.
Lindsey touched its leather cover, wrapped her fingers around it, and hauled it out. A couple of pages were torn out of the front. She skimmed through a few pages about things happening in his youth. He spoke of his newborn brother. Lindsey read the discolored crisp pages.
He’s no brother of mine. I hate him.
He killed my mother. And yet father gave the babe his name, Chance, short for Chanceleur. Father should have given me that name. It wasn’t my fault I was born smaller than the others, being the only survivor of my litter. And now she bore Chance, another sole survivor and the biggest of his litter.
I will always hate him for killing Mother.
Their mother died in Chance’s childbirth. Lindsey’s breath caught. Smoke couldn’t possibly be writing about Chance, Olivia’s primal-mate. Lindsey scanned a few more pages. He noted a bully by name, Thyne, who picked on Smoke every day.
Today Thyne threw me high in the air and I landed in the upper branches of an oak tree. All the other pups laughed and fired acorns at me. I didn’t cry, but in that moment of being helpless, my eyes filled with water. Finally, they all walked away, following Thyne like he was an Alpha. I was the eldest son of the pack Alpha…they should be following me.
No one stayed.
I was too high in the tree. Every time I shifted my weight, the branch crackled. I froze in place, knowing eventually I would fall.
I remained up there for hours, thirsty, sweating, and needing to take a dump. Then Chance found me. Why him? I didn’t want his help, but I couldn’t get down on my own.
I hated him.
Why did everyone like him? He was Father’s favorite, so easy to see. Father allowed Chance into the Lycan council meetings already. Father never asked me, not once.
Chance killed Mother. How could Father even look at him?
Lindsey flipped into the middle pages, looking for something other than Smoke getting beat up by Thyne, or Smoke finding hiding places where he could hole-up for days at a time and not be missed. Chance always found him, and Smoke always mentioned how much he hated his brother for their mother’s death.
God, she couldn’t sympathize or empathize. He’d hurt Olivia, killed people, stole women, like herself, slaughtered Olivia’s dog, the goat herd, and burned her barn down.
His stature was shorter than the other Lycan, but his buffed-out physique, tattoos, and deformed face gave him the rugged appearance of a leader. And he certainly didn’t take any crap from anyone, but she never saw him physically fight anyone. He held his pack together with his reputation from the interactions she witnessed whenever he allowed her out of the cabin.
Lindsey sat on the edge of the bed wondering what kind of a man Smoke would have been had his mother not died in the birth of her second child. She also thought about Chance, if he was actually Smoke’s brother, and that brought Olivia to the forefront of Lindsey’s mind. She missed her so much, recalling her attraction to Olivia’s beautiful body. And Trevor; his rippling body stood naked before her mind’s eye, making her heart thunder and sending a rush of heat to her core. A tear spilled from her eye as she let the thought of Trevor drizzle away, like she had every moment of every day.
Lindsey knew she played the part well. Her acting classes paid off with the best performances of her life, but to what avail...she thought more than once of death as an easier fix.
What happened to the spit-fire strong woman she’d been before Smoke’s abuse? Now she had something else to lock away in her mind, knowledge of Smoke’s youth. His ability of reading her mind threw things into a whole different ballgame. She’d figure something out. Maybe it wouldn’t be so tough now that Smoke relaxed more around her.
A short rap on the door drew her attention. Panic seized her, tightening her chest. She’d heard nothing cross the wooden deck. No one ever came to their door unless an urgent matter arose for Smoke. She quickly slipped the journal beneath the mattress, knowing she’d find it again and read more. Another tap and a lovely woman’s face peered in through the small window. A stranger. The woman waved and smiled.
Lindsey quickly opened the door and yanked the woman inside, closing the door as fast.
“How did you manage being out there” —Lindsey pointed— “without a Lycan at your side?” She peeked out the window to see if anyone followed the woman, and then looked at the beautiful stranger. “Who are you and where’d you come from?”
“My name’s Bliss. A naked woman in the Commune Center directed me here with hand signals. She didn’t have time for conversation, otherwise preoccupied. I glanced inside the room and noticed only naked, writhing bodies. I believe she thought I would be pulled into the orgy if I didn’t hurry away.”
Thick coils of kinky hair hung in brilliant pale waves over her shoulders and down her back. Green eyes, the shade of emeralds, studied Lindsey, enchanting her. Bliss’s full lips parted and she slid a tendril of Lindsey’s hair behind an ear, forcing Lindsey back into the moment with that electrifying touch.
Why hadn’t Bliss run away when she saw the orgy going on inside the…she called it the Commune Center, Lindsey didn’t recall anyone else calling it by that name.
“So Bliss, I don’t recall seeing you around here. How’d you find us?”
She scanned Lindsey from head to toe and back up again, capturing her with those brilliant green eyes and sending a warm cozy shiver to Lindsey’s center.
“And who are you?”
“Lindsey Grimms,” she responded to Bliss’s authoritative tone.
“Okay, Lindsey Grimms, what are
you
doing here?” Her lips again parted and Lindsey saw the tip of her pink tongue. Another shiver spread over Lindsey, and a warm sensation collected between her thighs, moistening, throwing her off kilter. “Simple question, I’d like an answer.” Her abrupt manner confused and also intrigued, but her flawless exquisite face astounded.
“I’m sorry…I don’t mean to hesitate. Simple answer, your beauty honestly has taken my breath away.”
Bliss stared at Lindsey, wide-eyed, one brow arched, and her rigid stance suddenly relaxed. “You appreciate the female gender?”
“It’s been a weakness all of my sexual life.”
Bliss walked around her. “You’re human.” It wasn’t a question, and Lindsey thought it a strange thing to say.
“Yes.” Lindsey took a quick peek out the window and then moved into one of the two chairs in the cabin. She motioned toward the other for Bliss. “I’m a captive here. It’s the same for all of the women inside the central building where you witnessed the lust-in. I believe that’s why we’re here, for sexual pleasure.”
“Then, why aren’t you with the others?” Bliss folded her lithe body into the chair. Her light colored blue jeans molded perfectly to her slender, shapely legs. She bent one leg underneath her.
The action drew Lindsey’s attention to Bliss’s clothing. She wore only a slim fitting tank top beneath an open thin sweater, emphasizing her pert small breasts. It didn’t make sense with the temperature close to zero degrees outside. Then she understood why this woman didn’t require warm clothing or have a fear of getting caught.
“You’re one of them…a Lycan.”
Bliss smiled, eyebrows arched. “I actually lived here with my father, Lander Edwards, the previous Alpha of the Westlyn pack. I’ve been away for months and just heard about the Westlyn pack take-over. No one could tell me what happened to my father, so I thought I’d come and find out for myself.”