Alcaeus
“You do realize what a hypocrite this makes you,” Kai’s aghast voice reverberated off the tiled walls as my perfect, beautiful mate startled in my arms and hastily withdrew her mouth from my neck, sending the single greatest moment of my life screeching to a disastrous halt.
Christ, did no one knock anymore?
Words failed me. I could only growl at my best friend as my wolf eyes promised murder.
“Throughout our four-hundred-year friendship, you’ve acted like I was the one afflicted with unhealthy fetishes,” Kai’s patronizing voice persisted, utterly obliterating the brief taste of heaven I’d basked in just seconds before as the scent of my mate’s anxiety filled my nostrils and she scrambled to at once conceal her nudity and climb off of me.
I turned my back to Kai, partially blocking her from his view as I helped her off my painfully stiff cock. I conjured a towel for her to clean up with along with new jeans for her to wear and handed them to her once her heeled boots seemed steady on the floor. Then I conjured a new pair of jeans onto myself, followed by a T-shirt.
A dozen apologies and explanations formed on my tongue, but I was too afraid to speak—for fear of how angry my words might emerge. I needed to calm down. I didn’t want to risk making her more distressed than she already was.
“And here I find you … fornicating with a perfect stranger whose got her canines lodged dangerously deep in your trapezius and a useless gun to your idiot head. Interesting role-play fantasy, Al, I must say.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I turned and raged at him.
“What am I doing here? Let’s start with what you’re doing here. We’re supposed to be on a mission. You’re supposed to be upstairs gathering information about the woman who survived a rogue attack. I’ve tolerated your endless cavorting for the past decade, turned a blind eye to your insatiable need for meaningless casual sex with random human partners in nightclubs, parked cars, and alleyways. But skipping out on a meeting—a meeting that you insisted I needn’t attend—in order to play a kinky game of mate-bond Russian roulette in a basement bar bathroom with some she-werewolf you just met, is a little too irresponsible—even for you.”
“Not now, Kai. I’m ordering you to leave. How did you get here anyway? I ordered you to stay at the hotel. Fuck, never mind; just go.”
“Not leaving. Milena sent me.”
“What?”
“Milena sensed heightened emotions from you and was worried. She called and asked me to find you and make sure you were okay—overriding your order.” His slight smile was smug.
Milena could do that? Sense my emotions? She could override my orders to Kai? Not great news. I didn’t have time to dwell on it, though. My mate’s increasing sense of panic was my current most pressing priority. Her heartbeat had skyrocketed at Kai’s mention of Milena sending him to find me. She smelled terribly upset now.
“Milena’s not my girlfriend,” I projected over my shoulder to reassure her, lest she mistake the situation or my intentions toward her. Kai had done enough damage already by making it sound as if I hooked up with random women in bathrooms every day. “Milena’s my sister-in-law. She’s just one of those worrying types,” I rambled, willing her to scent the truth of my words.
“It’s fine,” she spoke up from behind me, her voice coming out high-pitched. Nervous. I caught the sound of her jeans zipping up. “Hey, we both got carried away. You don’t need to explain anything. I had fun. But I gotta run now, too.”
Damnit, she was embarrassed and trying to save face. I glared at my Beta. “Kai, get out of here. Now.”
I sensed Alessandra trying to tap my mind to reach me. Jesus, everyone had the worst timing today. I blocked Lessa out.
“Oh, but I’m rather enjoying this,” Kai replied, his harassed expression conveying otherwise as a phone vibrated in his pocket. As he fished it out to check it, I turned around to try and calm my mate’s growing scent of alarm.
She was fully dressed—albeit looking a disheveled, shell-shocked wreck—and was just strapping on her backpack and adjusting her beanie with trembling fingers. I noticed she was wearing a bulky sweatshirt over her tank top that she hadn’t been wearing before. I assumed she’d pulled it from her bag. I was a little disappointed to see her looking so covered up—hiding herself from me.
“I’m really sorry about this,” I apologized. “Kai’s my Beta. He’s also our pack doctor and interminably celibate, so there’s no need to be embarrassed about anything he saw. He’s not normally this much of an ass. Please don’t go, all right? We need to talk.” I wasn’t about to let her out of my sight. But it was best to phrase it as a request.
“Lessa just texted me,” Kai announced to my back, grating on my last nerve. “Have you seen Al?” he read aloud, his speech stilted. “He’s blocking me. Is he back from his meeting yet?”
“Tell her I’m busy,” I growled over my shoulder. “I’ll call her later.”
My chest clenched painfully as I watched my mate’s gorgeous face go ashen at the mention of yet another woman looking for me. “Lessa’s my sister,” I quickly explained, forcing my voice to be far gentler than I felt, given my pressing desire to strangle the life from Kai. But my explanation about Lessa only seemed to spike the scent of her panic further.
“It’s all good,” she said as she gave me a shaky, phony smile. Her heart was racing, her chest heaving up and down like she was struggling for air. “Have to go. My friends are upstairs. Waiting at the bar for me.”
She looked so small and fragile. I wanted to wrap her up in my arms and never let go. Her hand reached for the lock on the door. I stopped it, capturing it in my own. “I can’t let you go, sweetheart.”
“Finally, a shred of common sense prevails. I was waiting to make sure you wouldn’t forget to erase her mind of this encounter.”
Her eyes widened at Kai’s words. I was a breath away from ripping his limbs off.
“Hey, hey—it’s okay.” I cupped her face in my hand. “He’s only joking,” I told her, and hoped that I’d adequately masked the scent of that lie. “You’re completely safe with me. And that safety extends to my pack. I promise.” I raised her hand in mine to my mouth and kissed it.
“Guess I spoke too soon,” Kai muttered to himself in that droll tone of his from behind me. “They’re waiting upstairs, Al. Just go. I’ll handle this.”
“You’ll handle nothing to do with her.” I pulled my mate into my side and turned around to find Kai staring at her with a strangely puzzled expression.
“You put a shield on her?”
“What?”
“Her mind’s blocked, Al.”
“How—wait, what are you doing? Stay out of her head!”
“Al, are you listening? I can’t access it. Did you cast a shield? That’s a really good one. It doesn’t even feel like a shield. How’d you do that?”
“What? No. No, I haven’t touched her mind.”
“Well, someone’s blocked it.” Kai’s eyes on my mate were accusing. “If it wasn’t you, then we may have a more serious problem on our hands.”
“Don’t look at my mate like that.”
“Your mate?” His brow rose in disbelief.
I saw red as he eyed my mate up and down like she was something foul. “You don’t want to cross this line with me,” I warned him.
“You can’t be serious. Did you hear what I said? She could be a Salvatella spy for all we know. Role-play time is over.”
“She’s not a Salvatella spy.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Try entering her mind and then tell me that.”
“I’ll do no such thing.”
“Then I’m calling Milena.”
“You are not calling Mi—”
“Hey, listen,” my mate interrupted. “I don’t understand what’s happening here, but I’m not interested in getting on a call with anyone’s girlfriend or wife or … whoever this Milena is—”
“She’s not my girlfriend, I swear,” I assured her, squeezing her hand in mine. The mention of Milena’s name had sent my mate’s pulse and panicked scent into overdrive again. Fuck, we were scaring the hell out of her.
“I need to get back to my friends upstairs before they start to worry about me,” she reiterated.
“Just humor me, Al,” Kai persisted.
“We just met!” I snarled at him. “It’s too soon.”
“But I thought you two were already mated?” he snarked.
Goddamnit. He wasn’t going to drop it.
I turned to my mate. “I apologize for this, but I need to take a quick look around your mind to prove to my Beta that you’re not a spy sent by one of our enemies. It won’t hurt you, I promise, and I won’t read any of your private thoughts. I’ll just be in and out. You won’t even know that it happened.”
She shook her head; her brow creased. “I don’t understand.”
I stared into her big, brown doe eyes and felt sick over what I was about to do. It occurred to me that she may not have encountered any werelocks prior to me, so she might not be aware of our abilities. God, I hoped she hadn’t met any werelock before me. The idea of anyone traipsing around in her mind or influencing her thoughts and emotions made me want to commit murder.
“I know you’re a young wolf, so you may not have heard of our kind before, but Kai and I … we’re part of a werewolf subspecies. We’re known as werelocks. Do you know what that is?”
She bit her lip. “Um … I don’t think so.”
Damn. That smelled like another lie she’d just told me. What the hell?
“Why are you explaining this to her just so you can then erase it?” Kai asked.
I unleashed a growl in his direction. “I’m not erasing anything! I’m satisfying your Salvatella spy curiosity. Shut up or get out of here.” I turned my most apologetic eyes on my mate. It was best to just get it over with. “I’m really sorry about this. You feel unconditionally safe with me, sweetheart. Okay?” As I said it, I sought entry to her mind.
And failed.
Not because I sensed a shield, either. It was because there was simply no point of entry. It wasn’t blocked off by magic—it just didn’t exist.
“See what I mean?” Kai said, accurately reading the confusion that I was sure was written on my face. “That’s one powerful shield she’s got up.”
Meanwhile, my mate was regarding me as if I were nuts. Her eyes flicked back and forth between Kai and me. “Are you guys trying to … Jedi mind trick me or something? Because it’s not working.”
“No.” I shook my head in denial and said with an awkward laugh, “Of course not.”
“This is getting creepy,” she added, her nose crinkling. “I’m just gonna go back upstairs now.”
I gripped her by the elbow when she tried to turn toward the door. “I can explain—”
“What in all that’s holy …” Kai murmured, before blurting a frantic, “She’s got no scent. Where the hell did you find this one?”
“Kai, just get out of here,” I snapped at him. “Go and meet with the pack upstairs.”
“I didn’t notice it before,” he continued, ignoring my order as he eyed my mate with renewed revulsion, “because she’s got your scent all over her at present, partially masking it. But she has no underlying scent of her own. None at all.”
“Quit scaring her. Can’t you hear and smell what your ridiculous accusations are doing to her?”
“Hear, yes. Smell—no. Not a bit. That’s the fucking problem,” he said, his voice raised in anger. “Because she has no scent. This is serious, Al. When—how did you meet her tonight?”
“Are you insane?” I got in his face. “No scent? She’s the best damn thing I’ve ever scented before. Better than anything in the entire world. She smells like perfection. How can you not scent her?”
“If perfection smells like nothing at all, then yes, she’s nailed it. Brilliantly.”
“Nothing?” I balked. “Kai, she smells like wildflowers. And like fresh, damp earth after a rainstorm when the sun comes out.”
“Petrichor?” Kai confirmed with a dubious shake of his head, chuckling drily to himself. “You think you scent petrichor on her?”
“Yes. And she smells like hardship, struggle, and triumph. Like dignity and rebirth. Like passion, courage, and persistence. And unrelenting tenacity.”
I heard her heart skip a beat and then speed up. When I turned my gaze back to my mate, she was staring at me with an unreadable expression. Well, not completely unreadable. The scent of her body’s arousal—the fierce yearning emanating from her—brought every carnal thought I’d been trying to suppress since Kai interrupted us rushing back to the surface.
I inhaled deeply, relishing the scent of her slick, ready sex. My eyes shifted; my blood rushed south. And I felt a foreign, pulsing ache at the juncture of my neck—where she’d bitten me.
Huh. I reached up, pulled my T-shirt collar aside, and fingered the spot. Holy shit. The bite was tender, and the skin still felt broken where she’d bitten me.
She’d left a mark!