It's the smell that wakes me up.
For a minute I'm disoriented, with no memory of falling asleep. But I must have. Not for long - the night's still just as dark as ever.
But something's changed. It's not quiet anymore. And we're not alone.
I sit up slowly, head pounding. What the hell's wrong with me?
A quiet snarl answers that question. Sort of.
I reach out to shake Delilah awake, but she's already sitting up beside me.
"Well, well, well." The voice comes from the darkness, and it's not one I've heard before. Definitely not the bartender.
"What have we here?" says another.
"A couple of pussies, smells like." Yet another voice. How many of them are there? My eyes are still adjusting to the darkness.
Suddenly, the whole area's flooded with light. Dean, the bartender, stands in the middle of the beam.
Not two feet away from us, surrounding the back of the truck, there are five thugs that reek of wolf.
"So!" One of them, the tallest and angriest-looking, takes a step closer to us. "If this whole thing doesn't go through, it might start a war with some place called Douglas Mountain. Of course we don't want that."
"Of course," one of the others agrees, licking his lips. His fangs are just starting to poke out.
"What the hell do you want?" Delilah hisses. I can feel the tension, smell her scent growing stronger and stronger as her body gets ready for a fight.
The werewolves laugh.
"Nothing at all," their leader says. "I guess you're planning on setting up your happy home out here in the neutral zone, huh? We're about to be neighbors."
I square my shoulders. "Is that a threat?"
Delilah slides down from the bed of the truck, landing squarely in front of the leader. I've got the insane urge to grab her and pull her back, out of harm's way.
But she doesn't need protecting. If we have to fight, we'll fight side-by-side.
And suddenly, things start to happen very quickly. The circle of werewolves tightens, and my fangs start to poke out of my gums. My fingers ache as my claws start to break free.
"You don't want to do this." It's the first thing Dean's said since he turned on the light.
The werewolves don't bother looking, but I can see he's got a rifle in his hand.
"You'd better step back there, little girl." The leader snarls at Delilah. "Or I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll..."
With a furious cry, Delilah leaps toward him. In an instant he's half-shifted, claws tearing across her body. She twists and falls back at the last moment, so they only graze her shoulder.
BANG.
The wolf closest to Dean lets out a bloodcurdling howl, crumpling to the ground in obvious, searing pain.
"What the hell did you do?" The leader whirls on Dean, clearing half the distance between them in a single leap. But he stops there, staring down the barrel of the rifle. "What the hell is in that?"
The downed wolf is still shrieking.
"It's exactly what you think it is." Dean smiles grimly. "Take one step closer, and you'll get one too."
Delilah doesn't even seem to have noticed her injury. "Silver bullets?" She stares at Dean. "What the hell are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking I want to stay alive," he grunts. "Turns out, they come in pretty handy."
Shit. I always thought that was just a myth.
Suddenly, there's a flurry of movement. One of the other wolves is taking advantage of the distraction, and before my brain can catch up to what's happening, the ground's gone from under my feet. I land heavily on my spine, with a snarling wolf on my chest.
From the sounds of it, the same exact thing is happening to Delilah.
There's the distinct thump of Dean throwing his rifle aside, then he's rushing towards us.
"Livvy," he shouts. "LIVVY!"
Instinctively, my head snaps around, looking for someone else. Because of course, the girl on the ground next to me, pinned down under a werewolf - that's not Livvy.
She can't be.
Oh, goddamn it, I've been so stupid.
Another ungodly howl, and then a few moments later, the wolf on top of me leaps away and starts a mad dash into the forest. I sit up, dazed, and stare at the girl I've been calling Delilah.
She's glaring at Dean.
"What the fuck?" she demands.
He spits on the ground. "I saved your life," he says. "That's what the fuck. I can't keep track of your cockamamie schemes. Anyway, the kid deserves to know who he's sleeping with."
"Next to," I correct him.
"Right," he says, one eyebrow twitching up. "Well, I'm going back to bed. Something tells me they're not gonna come around here again for a while."
There's a flash in his hand, and he produces a rag out of his back pocket to wipe something that I now realize is a knife.
A silver knife. Even in the dim light, I can see that.
The adrenaline's still pounding my ears, but I'm starting to process what just happened.
Livvy. Here. She's the one. That lying little...
"Save me the lecture." Like she can read my thoughts, Livvy cuts me off, grabbing a corner of the blanket to wipe away the blood from her shoulder. "I wanted to get to know you. I figured you'd be more honest with somebody who wasn't...me."
"But you were you," I growl. My fists clench at my sides. "Anyway, you had six months to get to know me. And you wouldn't. You acted like I didn't exist."
She takes in a sharp breath. "Oh, you want to air hurt feelings now? Okay. Yeah, I resented you. And I know it wasn't fair. Right away, I decided I didn't want to know anything about you. It would be easier, I thought. Then, once you were getting into town, I freaked. I had to come up with something quick, something so I could get to know you on my own terms."
"On your own terms," I echo. "By lying."
"Yeah, by lying." Another sharp sigh. "This whole situation's pretty fucked up, I don't think my lying is the worst part."
I don't want to argue with her. Hell, more than ever, now that we've had our brush with the wolves, I just want to fuck her. Is that sick? It's kinda sick. But I can't help the places my mind wanders when I look at her.
"No, it's not the worst part." I take a step towards her, and she shivers a little. But she doesn't back down. "But it is the only thing you could control. And you chose to lie. You chose not to trust me. What am I supposed to do with that?"
She worries her lower lip between her teeth. "I don't know, Nolan."
"I can't fucking believe this." Taking a deep breath, I pace away from her, suddenly feeling suffocated. "You knew wouldn't be thinking straight, because you're in heat, so you..."
I glance back, expecting her to have already retorted by now. Her look of utter confusion, mixed with horror, stops me mid-sentence.
"Heat?" she almost shrieks. "I'm not in heat."
Now I'm the one who's confused as fuck. "You're...not?"
It's tempting to just insist that she is, but she's already on the verge of tearing out my throat. Better not push it.
"I'm not in heat," she insists, even as a deeper flush rises on her cheeks - one that's got nothing to do with the exertion of fighting. "I'm not due for another..." she mouths numbers to herself for a split second. "...Forty-five days. At least."
It doesn't make sense. Not even a little bit. I can still smell it on her. She might as well stand there and tell me she's got black hair when I can see the golden wisps around her ears.
But, again...I like my throat where it is.
She's still breathing heavily, the scratches along her shoulder oozing blood. That shouldn't turn me on. Nothing about her should turn me on. She might be my mate after all, but she's an Oscar-worthy liar. I can't trust this girl as far as I could throw her. And based on that performance with the wolves, I wouldn't even be able to get a grip on her before she evaded me.
Her voice has fallen a couple octaves when she speaks again. "Why do you...what makes you say I'm in heat?"
I hesitate for a second, gathering my thoughts. What can I say without utterly creeping her out?
"Everything about you," I tell her. "Your scent, your..." I drift off, realizing how stupid this is. "But you've got to know. Can't you smell it on other females when you're around them? There's no mistaking it."
"I know that," she snaps, folding her arms across her chest, then wincing when it pulls at her wounded skin. "I'm asking you what you smelled, not what I can smell."
Oh, she's pushing me to the limits of my sanity. I've been here, practically bathing in her musk all night, fighting every primal urge to bury my fingers in her hair, yank her head back, and nip at her throat with my growing fangs.
God, I want her. I want her more than I've ever wanted another woman, and now that I know she's meant to be my wife...my mate...
"Your pussy," I growl, before I can stop myself.
She stares at me, and I stare at her. I swear I can almost hear her heartbeat, and it's nearly as fast as mine.
"That's what I smell." I take a step towards her, and she doesn't back down. "I can smell how hot and wet you are, how much you want me. My cock inside you. Right?"
Her eyes flutter closed for a moment.
"You don't..." She stops, clears her throat softly, and begins again. "You don't understand. I'm not in heat. I can't be. I wasn't...not this morning. Not before you..."
My cock jumps before my brain can even process what she's saying.
I've heard the stories, of course. The urban legends. The alpha males powerful enough to bring on heat in their chosen mate, but nobody actually thinks that's real.
She's lost the last ounce of resistance she had. I can tell. Her whole chest is flushed now, her body quivering with the effort of holding back. There's absolutely nothing holding us apart anymore.
No reason to fight it.
And she's the one who closes the gap. One moment we're apart, then suddenly we're not, her body pressed against mine, hot and eager, her lips seeking mine, tongue sliding between my teeth, making my cock surge.
Fuck.
By the time I break away from her, we're both breathless.
"You want me?" I ask her. I half-expect some kind of sarcastic response, but all she can do is nod. Her pupils are dilating, changing, becoming more catlike as her desire rises.
"How much?" I can feel my own claws, itching to come out. The throb in my knuckles matches the throb in my dick.
All she can manage is a soft whine, her hand sliding down my body to grasp me through my jeans. I don't even recognize the broken groan that comes out of the back of my throat, my knees almost buckling at the pure bliss of finally being touched by her.
Evidently, that's not enough. She grins fiercely, showing just a bit of her fangs, and rubs her palm along the ridge of my cock. I manage to jerk my hips away just seconds before the tingling in my balls warns me that I'm headed for the inevitable.
She's not going to embarrass me like that. Not yet.
"I'm gonna taste how much you want me," I promise her, and the words have hardly hit the air before she's scooting back up onto the bed of the truck, tugging her dress up around her waist.
I can't join her fast enough. Crawling up over her quivering body, I've got every intention of teasing her, kissing my way up and down her stomach, her thighs, making her moan and shake and beg. But she's already wriggled her panties down to her knees, and when her scent hits me ten times stronger than before, I forget all about my plans.
I have to taste her. Now.
At the first lap of my tongue, her whole body jerks and shudders. This is what it's like when they're in heat. Everything is a hundred times more intense, jolting through her body like an electric shock. She makes a high, keening sound, her neck bared to me like prey.
The beast inside growls.
Her hips buck wildly, her whole body shuddering as her wetness floods the blanket beneath us. With both hands, she grips my hair, holding my face between her thighs. Like I've got any intention of stopping.
I could die here, and be happy.
Minutes, hours, who knows - eventually she pushes my head away. My jaw's sore, but I'm still reluctant to go.
For a moment she's just lying there. Her chest heaves with every breath, and I watch her, ignoring the ache in my dick, because she's the goddamn prettiest thing I've ever seen. With her eyes glazed over and her forehead glistening with just the slightest sheen of sweat, she's perfect.
What I wouldn't give for a photographic memory.
A moment later she's sitting up, reaching for me. I guess it would be the gentlemanly thing to tell her no, you don't have to, but with her hands fumbling at my zipper I don't really have it in me to protest.
My cock jumps right into her hands. Her eyes widen a little, and she glances up at me.
"Oh," she says, softly.
"What?" I smirk, using my last ounce of self-control to stop from pushing her head down right now.
"Usually, arrogant men are compensating for something." She licks her lips. "But not you."
"Not me," I agree. "Now, are you gonna show your appreciation before I fuckin' explode?"
Her laugh is low and throaty. "So demanding," she murmurs, before her hot, eager mouth closes around my cock.
God, it's like heaven. Heaven and hell. I'm gripping the blanket as if the whole world's slanting underneath me and I'm gonna fall off, like I had too much cheap tequila. My head's sure spinning like it.
When a little spurt of precum coats her tongue, she hums her approval against my skin.
And that's it.
My hips jerk carelessly as my cock surges with the need for release. The whole world goes white, and for a second there's nothing but pleasure.
For just a second, I forget about everything.
The wedding, the clans, the wolves, the uncertain future. I forget everything.
All of a sudden, I'm exhausted. It hits me like a ton of bricks. I collapse back on the pillows, and Delilah - Livvy - curls up next to me.
Then, everything goes peacefully black.