Avery
Alcaeus’s eyebrows shot to his hairline. “You marked me.”
His words hit me like a bucket of ice water, instantly clearing my head and checking my runaway heart.
Lust, I corrected myself. This was only lust. My heart had nothing to do with this.
Even if he thought I smelled of petrichor. Even if he truly could scent the strife and triumphs that had made up my life.
I knew that marking another werewolf meant serious business. But I didn’t know exactly how it worked. I’d never bitten anyone in a fit of lust before. Obviously. I hadn’t had any fits of lust since gaining the teeth to bite someone, until now.
There was no way my teeth could’ve done damage to a werelock where bullets had failed.
His annoying killjoy Beta, Kai, was swearing and freaking out even more now, as he pushed forward to inspect the spot that Alcaeus was palpating.
Kai struck me as the quintessential dark-and-tormented, brooding Heathcliff type who probably would’ve tattooed his brand of damage across his fat forehead if only his rapid healing capabilities would’ve allowed the ink to take. He had dark hair and brown eyes, but his complexion was fairer than Alcaeus’s was. He looked more European than Brazilian. If not for the iron poker rod jammed up his ass, he might’ve been a hottie.
I backed up out of the way—pressing closer to the door.
“By God, it’s the real deal,” Alcaeus professed, staring at me with a look of wonderment. “She marked me.”
It didn’t escape me that he genuinely sounded—and smelled—wildly, inexplicably thrilled about it. Which only freaked me out more. Because he wasn’t just a powerful werelock and member of the Reinoso pack—he was a Reinoso! He’d said that Lessa was his sister, and that Milena was his sister-in-law. He was Alex Reinoso’s brother, for fuck’s sake. And I’d just shagged and bitten him in a bar bathroom.
“Move your hand and let me see it,” Kai complained.
“Wait, I wanna see it first,” Alcaeus said, moving to the mirror to get a look. Kai followed after him, hovering to get a look as well.
This was my chance.
I spun around and quickly unlocked and yanked the door open, only to look up and find none other than my former pack mate, Chuck—the bad-breathed redneck werewolf—standing on the other side, his knuckles raised in the air as if he’d been on the verge of knocking.
Shit. Could my luck get any worse right now?
His eyes widened in recognition. “You!” His breath hit my face, confirming that his bizarre supernatural halitosis affliction hadn’t improved one bit over the years.
Then his eyes traveled above my head, looking past me into the bathroom. “This is her, Alcaeus! This is Blythe Delacroix, the abomination we told you about,” he declared, giving me away and reminding me that “Cynthia Pressley Blackwood” was hardly the first ridiculous boarding-school-bitch name that Wyatt had ever given me.
There was no time to lie my way out of this—not with two werelocks at my back and six other werewolves upstairs who wanted me dead.
I’d taken the liberty of strapping my gun and a switchblade to my midsection and concealing them under an oversized sweatshirt when Alcaeus’s back had been turned to afford me privacy before. I drew the switchblade and threw it straight down into Bad Breath Redneck’s right foot as hard and as fast as I could.
When he yelped and immediately pitched forward and down into the open doorway in reaction—rushing to pull the knife from his foot—I wedged my body sideways through the small space between his bent form and the doorframe, grabbed hold of him by his belt where it was looped through the back of his jeans, and hurled him the rest of the way through the doorway and into the bathroom as I scooted out of it—sending his bulky body toppling headfirst into Alcaeus and Kai as they made to follow after me.
I bolted up the stairs.
As I reached the top, I came face to face with yet another former Highlands Ranch pack mate. Ugh. This one I shot twice in the leg at point-blank range before shoving him down the stairs—once again, into Alcaeus and Kai, who were bounding up after me.
“Cynthia, wait!” Alcaeus called.
I ran.
I made it to the front door and was just about to push through it, when I was yanked backward—by my stupid backpack.
Damnit, this was why I normally wore a backpack in the front. A backpack became a point of vulnerability when worn in the back, where anyone could easily grab hold and leverage it against you.
Before my arms could squirm their way out of the confines of my bag’s shoulder straps, someone knocked my beanie off and grabbed a fistful of my hair. Two hulking male bodies crowded behind me on either side, each grabbing and twisting one of my arms behind my back as they lifted my feet off the ground and hauled me out the front door with my legs kicking in protest.
“Been a long time, Blythe,” the nasty voice of Clifton, the Highlands Ranch pack Alpha, said, as he and his Beta, Zeke, quickly carted me down the empty sidewalk and straight into the alley.
“You’re making a huge mistake,” I told them. “My name’s Cynthia.”
I suspected that fib might’ve gone over a bit better if they hadn’t just seen me shoot their pack-mate Barry and toss him down a flight of stairs. But that didn’t stop me from continuing.
“The big werelock in there is my mate.” Damn, where had that lie sprung from?
Too late to turn back now. Probably be more convincing if I called my “mate” by his name, only I wasn’t sure if I could pronounce it right. I recalled Wyatt’s advice of ‘Al’ plus ‘chaos’ and went for it.
“If you do anything to me, my mate, Al-chaos, will kill you,” I bluffed.
“Ha!” Zeke mocked. “Right. Well, that’s convenient, because he and his friend were very interested in hearing about how you managed to survive a rogue attack as well as your werewolf transformation. I’ll enjoy hearing you howl for this ‘mate’ of yours to save you when we skin your wolf alive. We’ll be sure to offer him a front-row seat.”
Clifton snorted. “Mated to a werelock. Named Cynthia, my ass. It’s gonna be standing room only at this bitch’s execution.”
They were dragging me toward the back parking lot. The good news was I knew they wanted to take me back to their pack and kill me in some grand ceremonial display. They were too dumb to know that ease and efficiency won out every time and that they should always kill an enemy immediately, while they had the chance.
That point was proven a moment later when Zeke and Clifton’s meaty paws were ripped from my person and their bodies were sent flying into the side of the old brick building that we’d emerged from.
“Her name is Cynthia, and she’s my mate.”
As I was released, my feet hit the ground, and I stumble-stepped, my body pitching to the side. But Alcaeus’s arms came around me a second later, righting me on my feet. Then he did that move again where he cupped my face in his hands like it was totally natural—while being the highlight of his day.
“You okay?” he checked.
I nodded, a little dazed. I’d had my escape plan practically worked out in my head already. This changed everything. Now I had to escape from a bulletproof werelock instead of a bunch of werewolf simpletons.
Alcaeus leaned in and brushed his lips to my ear. “Sorry I took so long. Had to take care of a few things.”
That was long?
“That’s impossible,” Zeke spurned, picking himself up off the asphalt. “She’s not your mate. Her name is Blythe, and you came to us looking for her. You’d never met her before tonight. She’s wanted for crimes against our pack.” His wolf eyes glowed an angry orange color. “My house was destroyed by that crazy bitch. Besides that, she has a price on her head. There are rogue hunters who’ll pay a monstrous ransom to get their hands on her. We’re not letting you walk away with our prize.”
“How about we let you live and call it even?” Kai’s voice suggested.
Oh, yay, the doctor had come to my rescue, too. Make that two bulletproof werelocks to escape from now.
“No deal,” Clifton snarled, dusting off the seat of his jeans. “My mate, Patsy, has waited a very long time to see this one’s execution.” He pointed an accusing finger in my direction.
Right. I’d blown Patsy’s prized, tricked-out Range Rover sky-high. I had to cover my mouth with my hand to thwart the sudden onset of church giggles that hit me at the memory of Patsy’s keening wail of agony over the loss of that gaudy, new-money-trash ride of hers.
“She burned our entire community to the ground!” Clifton proceeded to rage. “It took years for us to rebuild. And she just attacked members of our pack in the bar tonight. She’s our captive, and we’re taking her back to stand trial before our pack and face the retribution she has coming to her.”
Idiots. A trial meant at least a week, if not more, to escape. How did their pack operate like this and manage to survive?
“Is this true, Cynthia?” Alcaeus’s stern voice demanded, his glowing wolf eyes shifting from Clifton to me, pinning me in place. He looked shocked by what they had told him. Check that; he looked furious. “Did you burn Clifton’s pack’s entire community to the ground?”
Whoa. That was some hardass Alpha mojo he was throwing off. It shot straight to my lady bits—at what was a really inopportune time to be getting turned on.
“Well?” he prompted, a bit gentler this time.
Oh, geez, what to say here? I thought back to my days of standing human trial and of what Wyatt’s dad would’ve told me to say and went with, “I don’t recall.”
Alcaeus’s lips twitched faintly, but his eyes and mouth were hard once more as they returned to Clifton. “There, you see? Not Blythe. Not guilty.”
Dang. I should’ve tracked down and bitten me a hot werelock ages ago.
I felt a stupid grin break out on my face. Al-plus-chaos was seriously into me.
“You challenging us?” Clifton growled at Alcaeus, his claws and fangs extending.
“I believe it’s simply implied as an unspoken threat when there isn’t a challenge to be had,” Kai returned. “We’re taking her.” He turned to Alcaeus. “Shall we?”
Alcaeus looked down at me, then back at Clifton and Zeke. He shook his head and wrapped his fingers around my bicep. For a split second, I thought he’d decided to hand me over to them. But instead, he handed me over to Kai, telling him, “Go. I’ll catch up with you.”
“So, Doc … about that whole bite thing,” I broached. “That mark I made on Al-chaos will heal, right? I mean, I was just going for a little hickey. A love bite, if you will. I didn’t mean to do any lasting damage. Is he really single?”
I’d been talking to myself for the past twenty minutes while Kai had restlessly drummed his fingers against the steering wheel of the SUV we were sitting in, waiting for Alcaeus.
Kai had taken hold of my arm and had done that same sick-cool werelock trick that Raul had done with me before—disappearing us from the alley and reappearing us to a parking lot next to the SUV we were presently inside of. I wondered if all werelocks could do that. If so, I was in trouble.
“How old are you?” I tried again to get him to converse with me.
He smelled super-old, like Alcaeus. Werewolf males usually loved to brag about their age. More strength and power came with age, typically. So with male werewolves, I’d learned that it wasn’t only about whose wolf balls were bigger; it was also about whose were older—as odd and ew-worthy as that testosterone competition was.
Kai hadn’t said more than “Get inside” to me since Star Trek-beaming us here. But I’d get him to crack yet. I needed info. And I could tell he was super-annoyed with my very presence already.
“You and Al-chaos been friends for long?”
Nothing.
“Do you want me to talk for us both? Because I can. Gosh, what should we talk about? The possibilities are endless—”
“Alcaeus’s mark will heal,” he answered my earlier question. He didn’t look at me as he spoke. His eyes remained cast forward, staring out through the windshield. “I’ll make sure of it,” he added under his breath.
Yeah … Heathcliff didn’t care for me so much. At all.
“Al’s not been himself lately,” he offered up without prompting. “He’s become addicted to … consoling himself … via random nightly trysts—endless meaningless casual sex.”
I got the sense that Kai was the one talking to himself now—trying to ease his own concerns about his friend’s behavior toward me, more so than he was attempting to explain anything for my benefit.
And by “for my benefit,” I meant he was attempting to insult and degrade me, of course. Too bad he was way out of his league embarking on that cause.
“He lost someone recently,” Kai expounded. “He’s … grieving.”
I gave his profile a raised, whatever-the-fuck-you-gotta-tell-yourself brow.
“We all lose people,” I blurted a bit callously before I could catch myself. “I mean, my sincerest condolences for your friend’s loss,” I amended. After a pause, I asked, “Was it a woman?”
“Yes.”
I nodded, studying him in profile. “You loved her too, huh?”
A strained, faraway look had flashed across his features that had made me suspect that the woman he spoke of had been someone special to him as well. But he seemed startled by the very suggestion for some reason, as slowly, he turned to look at me. Oh, yeah, he was supremely irritated with me now, judging from the way a muscle ticked in his jaw and the vein that ran down the centerline of his forehead suddenly pulsed to life.
Oops. Direct hit. And score. I shrugged and flashed him a toothy smile. Time to jet before the old dog killed me.
“Want some gum?” I asked, bending down to unzip the backpack at my feet. Werelock or no, one flashbang at close range should do enough damage to give me a decent running head start at least.
My fingers had just wrapped around the very item they were searching for, when I felt a sharp, pinprick stabbing sensation in my thigh.