Wild (58 page)

Channing paused then, considering his words carefully. He'd been thinking about this all afternoon as he'd unpacked all the boxes of food and other supplies that he and Kira had ordered online. This was the only responsible answer. It was the best way to keep Caroline safe while the pack continued to figure out a way to keep Zeus and all the other bounty hunters from finding Blaez.

“We have to change her,” Channing said finally, his words lingering in the silence of the room while Malec stared angrily at him.

“No,” Malec replied only seconds later. “That's not an option.”

Channing shook his head. “It's the only option, Malec, and you know it.”

“I won't do that to her,” Malec insisted. “I won't take away everything she knows, everything she's worked so hard to become. All that those dumb, narrow-minded humans told her she would not be. I won't sentence her to this.”

Malec had finished with a vehement slap of his palm to his chest. Channing knew exactly what the other lycan was thinking and possibly what he was feeling. Being a lycan wasn't easy. Learning that he was totally different from the parents he'd come to love and all the people around him had been a tough pill for Channing to swallow all those years ago as well. But he had adapted, because he'd had no other choice.

“She's stronger than you think,” Channing told Malec. “You weren't there today to see how she handled them, how she simply walked away, looking at them as if they were the ones with the problems, not her. She had pride and strength, and she held her head up high. She didn't beg them to understand or try to negotiate with them; she simply left, with only pity in her gaze for them. She's meant to be here with us, Malec. I know you feel that as strongly as I do.”

At his sides, Malec splayed his fingers out wide, bringing them back together slowly, all while a muscle in his jaw clenched. Channing had known this would upset him, but he didn't give a damn. It was the only choice, and he planned to move forward, with or without Malec's consent.

“This will end her life,” Malec said, his words tight and restrained.

“Her life is here now,” Channing told him. “It's with us.”

Malec looked up at him, their gazes holding for silent seconds.

“She's the one for us,” Channing continued. “You felt it that night at the bar, just like I did. As we stood there, you in front of her, me behind. I know you felt that connection, as if the Fates had finally brought us together.”

“Don't give me that fate shit,” Malec said, shaking his head. “You know I don't believe in it.”

“But you do,” Channing told him. “You have been believing in it since you walked out of your parents' house and joined the Marines. Since the moment you decided that you would not take your life the way Mason did. You made those decisions because you knew you had a greater purpose, a destiny to fulfill. And how could you fulfill that destiny without the Fates?”

“Fuck the Moirai!” Malec yelled. “They do Zeus's bidding, and they fuck with our lives, the ones that were already messed the hell up! They don't give a damn about us!”

“And yet they brought Kira to Blaez and Caroline to us. That was no mistake,” Channing continued even though he could see Malec's body shaking with rage.

He knew he was pushing him, knew that this entire conversation was one Malec had never intended to have. But there was no other way.

“Aleya killed herself. Do you remember that, Channing? She put a blade in her chest because she didn't want to be the creature that Nyktimos had changed her into with that one bite on the night of the full moon. I won't … I can't … do that to Caroline. I just can't,” Malec said quietly, shaking his head as he started to leave the room.

“But I can,” Caroline said.

She stepped through the open adjoining door that connected Channing's bedroom to the sitting area on the other side.

“I can decide if I want to remain human or if I want to be changed to a lycan,” she continued with her shoulders squared, her gaze now level with Malec's.

“No,” he said slowly. “I won't sentence you to this life.”

“It's not a sentence, as you put it, if it's what I want,” she told him. “There's nothing for me in that world anymore. I've learned all I could, tried all I know how, and they're still determined to cast me aside. I'm tired of begging and pleading to be accepted. I just want to be … I want to be with you,” she told Malec. Then she looked past him to where Channing stood. “And you.”

*   *   *

Caroline and Channing stared at the doorway that Malec had just walked through. Phelan's text to Malec requesting he come see him in the monitor room had come at the most inopportune time.

The fact that this was also the most eye-opening moment of Caroline's life and that Malec had played a big part in her transformation hadn't escaped her either. Still, Malec had exited to carry out his duty, and she was left standing in Channing's room, trying to grasp everything she'd just heard and what she'd just declared.

“Do you know what being with both of us will entail?” Channing asked from where he stood behind her.

Caroline let out a slow breath before she turned to face him, shaking her head. “All I know is that this is where I want to be. I have no idea how this … ah … the relationship with all three of us will work, but I don't want to be without either of you,” she said to Channing.

He was watching her as if he wasn't certain her words were true, or that she actually knew what she was saying. But Caroline was perfectly clear on what she wanted, and she was determined to convince them of the same.

“We've never done this before,” Channing told her. “The relationship or…”

“Or changing someone into a lycan,” she finished for him. “Then I guess we're all going to be broken in together.”

She tried for a little humor to ward off the tiny remnants of anxiety she'd felt as she'd listened to Malec and Channing discussing her future without her.

“One of the first rules will be no discussing me or anything that concerns me behind my back again. I'm perfectly capable of making my own decisions,” she said, taking another step closer to him.

He nodded, his lips suppressing a smile. “I'll just bet you are perfectly capable, but I'm not the one you need to convince.”

“I shouldn't have to convince anyone,” she said. “Hell, I'm so sick and tired of fighting this battle. Of trying to prove myself to people who don't give a damn and trying to fit in where I obviously don't.”

“You know, I can totally relate to that feeling,” Channing said, coming closer and taking her hand.

They had moved to the sitting room after having followed Malec in an attempt to continue their conversation. Now Channing led Caroline to a sage-colored couch, which, as it turned out, was just as soft and comfortable as it looked. She sat down, leaning her elbows on her thighs.

“I never had any delusions about my life,” she confessed. “I've been overweight since I was a little girl. The doctors never hesitated in telling me and my mother what I should weigh and how I should look. But Max was convinced that I should be whoever I was meant to be without anybody telling me anything.” She shrugged. “So that's the same outlook I adopted. I'm proud of every ounce of my body, proud of the fact that I put myself through college and became something other than the prostitute that they thought I would be. And I'm more than the slut that these repressed and judgmental people of Blackbriar now think. Maybe I was always meant to be right here, in this place with you and Malec. What if my destiny was to be a lycan all along?”

Channing had been rubbing his fingers over the back of her hand. The motion had been consoling, the look he gave her not at all judgmental, but of compassion. Just as she had come to expect from him.

He said, “I thought I knew who and what I was up until the night I turned sixteen. I'd been laid up for a couple of days after getting into a fight with these guys in the neighborhood. And I remember lying in my bed, staring up at the ceiling. We lived in a pretty rural area. There wasn't another house for miles down a long, winding road. My mother had opened the window because I'd been sweating when she came in to check on me. So I'm lying there, and a breeze is coming in the window—some light too because it was the full moon, and it was late—probably sometime around midnight.”

Caroline touched his hand this time, taking it in hers as he talked.

“In the past days since I'd been in the fight I'd been thinking, why did Zane and his friends love picking on me so much? What was it about me that they didn't like? And then I felt it. Right along my spine it felt as if something were crawling there. I wiggled a bit and then finally turned over on my stomach when it didn't stop. I thought maybe a fly or some other insect had flown into the room and gotten into my bed. So if I rolled over, it could get up and go on its merry way.

“But the sensation along my spine didn't stop. I tried ignoring it, but that only seemed to have made it spread. My arms tingled, and so did my feet. My head started to itch, and I scratched and scratched. I rolled over on the bed again and looked straight out the window, to the moon. And just like that I knew.”

“You knew you were a lycan,” she said, a little breathless as she'd been so intent on listening to his story.

“No,” he replied with a shake of his head. “I knew I was going to die.”

She must have had a crazy look on her face because Channing smiled and quickly added, “I knew that boy that had tried to stand his ground but still took the beating from those three older boys was going to be no more. The shift overtook me, and in the next couple of days I was adjusting to the new things my body was feeling. I snapped a picture of myself when I'd had the guts to look in the mirror, and then I began researching because I knew in my gut that this was not just happening to me. Just as I knew kids like Zane were all over the world bullying other kids that were like me … like the old me.”

Channing all of a sudden looked very serious, his gorgeous eyes pensive. “I killed Zane. On the next full moon when I'd learned more about who and what I was. I'd decided to hang out by the lake because there was a wooded area that was close. I wanted to shift and run through those woods just to see how it felt. I hadn't yet figured out that I could shift anytime I wanted, just thought it was on the night of the full moon like most of the werewolf legends stated. Zane was there, and he was smoking marijuana. Earlier in the day when we'd been in school Zane and his friends had put Fred Hampton's head in the toilet. They did that for all of ten minutes with other guys in the bathroom, taking bets on how long it would take before poor old Fred passed out. Well, Fred didn't pass out. He finally made it to sixth-period English and had a seizure from all the stress and the adrenaline rush during Zane's little stunt. Fred had been rushed to the hospital, and Zane and his friends had laughed the rest of the school day. The minute I saw him I pounced.”

“Oh, Channing,” Caroline said, her heart heavy from his words.

“I just did it, and then I left him there. They found his body weeks later, after some other animals had gotten a chance at him.” Channing lowered his head then. “I've never forgotten that day. Never forgot what I was capable of.”

Caroline could only shake her head. “He tormented you for no good reason but that he could. It was shameful and inhuman. For all that they accuse the shifters of being beasts, the humans aren't any better.”

When he didn't speak, she cupped his face in her hands. “I know you told me that story because you want me to know all that goes with being a lycan. And I'll just tell you that what you've said doesn't stop me from believing you're a terrific guy, or lycan. You're honest and caring, and that's more than I can say for those ‘superior' humans that you knew and the ones I ran into this morning.”

“You're right about that,” Channing said, touching her hair lightly. “You're beautiful, and you're spirited. You know who you are, and you're not ashamed. I think that's what I love most about you.”

Caroline had opened her mouth to say something … she was going to thank him and to tell him how handsome he was, but she stopped.

“Don't worry. You don't have to love me. Not yet anyway,” Channing told her.

And to make that point clear, he leaned in, touching his lips to hers. It was a tender touch in comparison to the instant heat that always came with Malec's kiss. And yet, it still stirred her immediately. So much so that she laced her arms around his neck, pulling him closer, parting her lips in welcome.

When his tongue touched hers there was a spark of pleasure that soared through her like it had a mission. Channing tilted his head, stroking his tongue over hers expertly before licking and sucking her bottom lip. Caroline raked her fingers through his hair, following his lead, releasing her hunger for him in a guttural moan.

He moved faster than she anticipated, pushing her back on the couch and pulling at the buttons of her dress until they popped free.

“I want to see those pretty breasts,” he whispered before thrusting his tongue inside her mouth one more quick time.

When he pulled away his hands were busily working, ripping the bra apart next. Caroline heard the material tear, and her clit throbbed instantly. He cupped her breasts with both hands, pushing them together so that when he licked one nipple, he only had to move slightly to the left to gorge on the other. For what seemed like an eternity of pleasure, he toyed with her nipples, sucking, biting, and sucking again.

Caroline grabbed at Channing's hair, holding his face between her breasts as she thrust her hips upward, her pussy aching for attention.

“More,” he mumbled. “I … want … more.”