Slip of Fate (Werelock Evolution Book 1) (8 page)

He looked momentarily stunned, and for some reason it was enough of an infinitesimal victory for me to die knowing I’d put that disoriented, confounded look on his arrogant face.

In spite of whatever pain and sedation medication they had coursing through my veins, I felt a crazy surge of adrenaline and reckless courage shoot through my weakened form. I stared him square in the eye as best I could through my increasingly blurry vision, and I told him, “Just kill me now so you can go back to your stupid party.”

CHAPTER SIX

Alex’s features went blank for a moment as he held my face in his grasp. Then his bow lips split into a grin reminiscent of Remy’s, only his didn’t come close to reaching his eyes. A low rumble of humorless laughter bubbled up from deep in his chest as the fingers of his right hand slid down the side of my face to encircle the column of my throat.

I sucked in a breath and held it as those fingers flexed and tightened, subtly squeezing my trachea. His nose lowered and inhaled the skin just beneath the ridge of my jaw. My eyes fluttered shut in anticipation of the worst.

“Mm … that really what you want, little girl?” he taunted, before pressing his lips to my ear in the briefest, faintest of kisses that somehow managed to terrify me more than his hand wrapped around my throat did.
“Breathe,”
he mouthed against my earlobe.

I panted small gulps of air into my lungs and was relieved to find his fingers weren’t in any way restricting my ability to do so. He maintained a gentle grip on my neck with one hand while the fingertips of his other hand delved into the thickness of my hair to once again drag back and forth against my scalp, producing such pleasurable tingles that I vacillated between despising Alex and hating myself for being so affected by him.

“Sorry to disappoint you, Milena, but no one in my house is going to harm you.”

My heart twisted between emotions of hope, disbelief, acute confusion, and dread.

“Believe me,” he lamented in a soft, deceptively dulcet tone, “I’d indulge your request and kill you this instant if I could.”

Clearly, he was trying to demonstrate that he could fuck with my head even when he wasn’t in it.
He wasn’t,
was he?

The tip of his nose grazed mine, and his breath fell over my slightly parted lips. It smelled of mint and chocolate. Sadistic murderers weren’t supposed to smell this good. Or administer amazing cranial massages as they casually talked about killing you.

I decided there had to have been something in one of those drugs Kai had given me to cause me to react to Alex this way. I willed my tear ducts to behave and deprive him of the satisfaction of seeing me break again. I didn’t dare open my eyes.

“For over a century it’s been our law to dispose of the blood relatives of those who betray this house,” he explained. “Always terminating the innocent as humanely as possible. I’d have taken your life so quickly and painlessly you’d never have known what happened.” He sounded almost wistful as his lips ghosted my brow.

“It’s never been personal. And I regret that circumstances are such with you that I must make an exception and insist you live.”

Wow.
His propensity for apologizing was piteously stunted.

I was feeling loopier by the second, but it sounded as if he was actually applauding himself for some misguided sense of magnanimity within his unnecessary practice of murdering his enemies’ family members, just because he’d convinced himself he was being merciful about it.

I wondered how many of those innocent blood relatives had mistakenly taken his “humane” killing of them personally?
It was obvious even to my doped-up brain cells that I was dealing with a devout sociopath. And then he threw down his full hand of crazy cards.

“I’m afraid you smell far too delightful to die,” he said in a covetous tone that set off every innate warning bell I possessed, despite my impaired state. “My wolf wants you very much alive.”

God, help me, what did that mean?

It took multiple tries before my eyelids responded to my brain’s command to open. And several more blinks before Alex’s two sets of blurry features merged into one. He was startlingly close to me!

His dark eyes were half-lidded, and looked as if they were about to swallow me whole as they canvassed my features. At some point his fingers had deviated from encasing my throat to massaging the vertebrae along the back of my neck, and it felt undeniably fantastic, particularly combined with the sensations induced by his other fingers working their magic on my scalp.
He was evil incarnate.

When the pink tip of his tongue peeked out to lick across his full bottom lip, I felt my cheeks heat with unease and trepidation. I lowered my eyes in an effort to look elsewhere. They had nowhere to settle next but on his broad, naked shoulders, and then to his bare chest hovering over my blanketed form.

His olive brown skin was smooth and his chest and arms muscled beyond anything I’d ever seen or imagined possible for the human male body. I had to remind myself he wasn’t human.
Dear Lord, was that an eight-pack?
I felt my heart rate spike despite the medications within me as an unwelcome pulling sensation began in the pit of my belly, horrifying and sickening me.

I must have appeared petrified as I drew my eyes back up to his face, because he frowned and reassured me, “I won’t hurt you, Milena. Not …” He shook his head. “
Never
like that.”

His words were spoken as if in earnest. And fuck it all, but I was too wasted to follow whatever mind game he might be playing. I could scarcely keep up with his changing moods, and I was almost certain I preferred when he was outright angry and threatening compared to this new twisted tactic he was taking.

I didn’t like the way he was saying my name now either.
Like he was savoring it.
Never before had my name sounded so luxurious and exotic as it did falling from my would-be killer’s lips.

I didn’t like it. Not the way he was looking at me, not the way he was touching me, and not the way he was talking to me.

Why hadn’t the stupid sedation medication knocked me out yet? As frightening as the prospect of being unconscious at Alex’s mercy was, I was growing more desperate for any manner of escape from him that I could achieve.

“Stop,” I managed to croak at last. My mouth felt dry, and it seemed markedly more difficult to get my lips to form the words I wanted to speak than it had a few minutes ago. “Please stop.”

“Stop what?” he asked, gazing down at me with rapt interest, his near-black irises swirling with flecks of gold.

“Stop creeping her the fuck out!” Alcaeus spoke up from somewhere in the immediate vicinity. “Jesus, if you weren’t Alpha, I don’t know how you’d ever get laid. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Why are you still here?” Alex turned his attention from me to his brother. “I thought you’d have gone to comfort Lessa by now.”

To my blessed relief, his fingers stilled and withdrew from my hair and neck at long last. To my supreme irritation, the delightful tingling sensations remained.

“What, and miss this grand display of your softer side?” Alcaeus quipped. “I suspect the news of Raul’s death is slightly less heartbreaking and traumatic for Alessandra as it is for Milena. Alessandra is used to you disappointing her and disregarding her feelings.”

Somehow Alcaeus proved to be quite the comforting sight for drugged eyes as he came to crouch next to me on my right side, giving me a lopsided smile and a wink. “Holding up okay there, sweetheart?”

The emotions in me swelled in response to Alcaeus’ understanding about my brother and his confirmation of my earlier suspicion that Alessandra had held feelings for Raul, and I nearly burst into tears at his inquiry as I shook my fuzzy, weary head.
I was not holding up okay.

“Please … help?” I mouthed, my watery eyes pleading with Alcaeus to save me from his evil little brother’s clutches. Alcaeus gave me a quick nod of reassurance as Alex’s inner
Cujo
commenced growling at him.

“Oh, quit your yapping! You’re acting about as endearing as a serial killer right now, Alex. Way to win over your mate.”

“Mate?
Never.
I assure you, I’ve no such interest in her.”

“’Course not. It’s only your wolf’s attraction to her scent,” Alcaeus mocked. “You yourself couldn’t possibly find anything tempting about her hot little young human body. And I’m sure those guileless blue eyes hold zero appeal for you as well. That why you can’t keep your hands off her? She said stop! She’s a far cry from accepting you as her mate.”

“She is
not
my mate!”

Whatever did they mean by
mate?

“This isn’t something you’re allowed to force on her,” Alcaeus lectured, ignoring his brother’s protests. “It’s against our laws, and particularly in the rare case of a human mate. She has no idea what this means.”

Did they mean mate as in … an actual mate?

“What the fuck am I forcing?” Alex blustered, arising onto his knees where he straddled my midsection. Out of the corner of my eye I noted he’d thankfully pulled on a fresh pair of pants at some point—presumably during my shaking fit.

“I don’t even want her. She is not my mate! No matter how fucking fantastic she might smell.”

Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, they did mean mate as in mate!

“You were practically salivating over her just now,” Alcaeus said. “And you were growling at me for getting too close to her.”

“That wasn’t about her,” Alex denied. “I do not disregard Lessa’s feelings.”

“You did where Raul was concerned.”

“It’s our law. I don’t have to explain my actions.”

“Our law? You uphold our laws when it’s convenient for you,” Alcaeus charged. “Damnit, I don’t deny it was a unique circumstance. I’m not at all happy about what Raul did. But the consequences arising from his death at your hands are going to significantly complicate things for you, both with Lessa and now Milena. And what affects you impacts all of us.”

Alex snorted. “You don’t know the half of it. The situation is a little more than complicated.”

“Oh, I think I have a pretty fair sense of the situation and what you’re up against.”

When was someone going to explain the situation to me? I still had no idea what I was up against!

“You want to abide by our laws? Let me take Milena under my protection while she recovers and digests everything that’s happened,” Alcaeus proposed. “In the absence of a male blood relative capable of protecting her in this circumstance, by law the task falls to an elder within the pack, which would be me.”

“Ha!” Alex exploded, his eyes flashing amber. “Not a fucking chance! Do you not comprehend what’s happening to me here with every passing fucking minute? My wolf will take your head off if you dare try to cross the threshold with her.”

“Really?” Alcaeus snickered. “You’d kill your own brother over a girl who’s not your mate? A human girl you don’t even want?”

“Fuck you. You don’t understand. It’s my wolf who wants her, not me. I couldn’t give a damn what you do with her or to her.”

“So why are you the one hovering over her with a semi-hard-on still tenting your pants?”

I was going to be sick.

“I won’t allow it,” Remy’s voice interjected from out of nowhere. The space around me was starting to tilt and spin again.
Or maybe it was just my head
. “You cannot let Alcaeus take her.”

I groaned. They were going to argue over me as if I were property again.

“Piss off, Remy. Who the fuck gave you a say in this?” Alcaeus complained. “You’re neither elder nor her mate. Be helpful and go use your super-touchy-feely skills to comfort Alessandra. I got this,” he emphasized through gritted teeth.

How I wished Alessandra hadn’t been sent away, if for no other reason than the fact that she was the only one of them who hadn’t yet tried to mind-rape me, molest me, or talk down to me like I was an infant. I wasn’t sure I’d feel that much safer with Alcaeus than I did with Alex, but Alcaeus was presently the lesser of two evils.

“Alex, I don’t care if he is an elder. I can sense his lust from down the hallway,” Remy claimed. “He can’t be a suitable protector to her when he still wants to fuck her as badly as he does.”

“Well, of course I want to fuck her! When did I deny it? So do you. So does Alex, even though he won’t admit it. What’s your point?” Alcaeus threw his hands up. “Go away and let me handle this.”

“Not until Alex promises me he won’t turn Milena over to your care,” Remy said, striding into view to stand behind where Alex was kneeling over me. “And not until he reassures Milena that he was bluffing to Felix and that he didn’t kill Raul.”

“Mother of fucking Christ!” Alex bellowed, leaping to his feet in one fluid, swift motion that somehow simultaneously sent Remy careening backward down the hallway and out of sight. And without Alex ever even touching him, near as I could tell!

I heard what sounded like Remy’s body colliding with and cracking a solid surface a moment later.

What did Remy mean? Could it be true? I dared not get my battered hopes up. I was losing sight of what was real anymore.

“I swear to you, Remy,” Alex seethed, his taut muscles rolling and flexing to life with restrained rage as he turned to glare in the direction he’d just thrown his brother. “I will tear your limbs off and beat you senseless with them the next time you fucking dare read my emotions!”

Remy trod back into view, casually dusting broken stone and debris from his clothing. He shrugged at Alex. “I didn’t read your emotions. I read Kai’s. You put an order on me preventing me from reading yours, remember?”

“Is it true?” Alcaeus demanded of Alex. “Raul’s still alive?”

Alex turned from Remy to glare at Alcaeus and then back to me as Kai resurfaced, muttering an apology as he materialized at Alex’s side. Alex cut him off.

“Take her,” he ordered Kai with a nod in my direction. “Put her in my private quarters and start an IV drip. She’s dehydrated and mineral deficient. Keep her comfortable and sedated for the next forty-eight hours until she’s fully healed.” Under his breath he added, “And until I figure out what the fuck to do with her.”