Chapter Five
The door slammed behind. Milev followed Isabelle to the bed, where they proceeded to engage in a lively wrestling match on the covers.
One date later, and they had already both reached breaking point. Isabelle knew she needed to go home at one point, to let everyone discover that she lived, along with the inevitable questions that would pop up. She first wanted to enjoy every moment she had gained with Milev.
Going to the restaurant had been so awkward, because they spent most of the time staring at one another, making excuses to touch one another's bodies, and it took every ounce of control for her to not just ravage him in the restaurant, right in front of everyone.
“I'm glad we waited,” he panted against her neck, in the middle of removing her bra and then working on her lower half. “Though I admit I might have been a little sad... to not have you earlier.”
“Oh, I was kicking myself,” Isabelle assured him. He sniffed her blonde, vibrant hair, running his hands over her soft, pale skin, golden eyes hazed in lust. Once those kind of eyes terrified her, revealing the person she saw with them as a werewolf, a beast. Now she loved the shine, the way they dedicated themselves to her, and she kissed each eyelid, before descending to his lips and grasping them long and hard, tugging the flesh slightly away from his teeth.
Milev helped her out of the last of her clothing, and pushed off his clothing as well, kissing her during short pauses, wanting to keep the close contact, to feel her against him.
Jolts of arousal crackled between them, supercharging the atmosphere. The sheets scratched over their naked bodies as they rolled, her briefly on top of him, then Milev taking back control, now sucking at her neck, leaving a sore, delicious feeling there that would well into love bites later.
His erection brushed against her lower entrance, slipping in the juices that had accumulated there, though he chose to tease her, enjoying her gasps and her glares of annoyance.
Eventually, she couldn't stand it anymore and grabbed his hardness, steering it inside her with a sigh of relief. He moved in deep, groaning at the sensation, the sound thrilling her. Her cheeks burned, her body trembled in lust, and she encouraged him on with cries of pleasure. The air filled with the aroma of their combined arousals, of his addictive scent that stirred a frenzy in her brain, and made her scream out as he sped up his thrusts. She loved it when he used force, bumping his hips into hers, as each jolt of impact sent a small wave of ecstasy through her.
They spent a good thirty minutes rousing each other to orgasm, with him coming first, and then fingering her to a roaring one of her own. They flopped in bed, not quite exhausted, but content, and spent a few quiet moments surveying one another.
That silence was quite the achievement, given Milev's garrulous nature.
He really is handsome, Isabelle thought, reflecting upon his face, his rock-hard body, and that little curl of his lips denoting deep satisfaction. Isabelle ached in all the right places.
Her heartbeat calmed down enough for her to just smile languidly at him. “Less than a month ago, I probably would have killed you on the spot.”
He blinked in slight confusion, though the smile widened. “Funny what a few hours stuck in a cellar with someone can do, right?”
“More than I could have ever imagined,” Isabelle replied, her voice soft. The truth needled into her. How did he affect her so profoundly? How had he punched through that mantle of rage so fast?
It was like she had been waiting for him her entire life. Of course, when she finally met someone who struck those chords in her heart, he had to go and get himself almost killed by doing that dumb, heroic dive in front of a spray of bullets.
Even then, she might have shot him in her fear.
She had so much rage bottled inside. It wouldn't go away just because of the rewarding attentions of Milev Spirova. She had people who would be missing her elsewhere, hunters curious about her fate, in case she had somehow survived.
She'd have to face the people who abandoned her as well. That notion didn't exactly light the fires of her heart.
“I feel like I've been dropped in some weird, alternate reality. I can't... part of me doesn't understand how I can go from doing what I did, to being here with you. And that werewolf, the one who wanted revenge – sometimes I think about him, too.”
“You did what you thought was right at the time,” Milev said. “Hunters do tend to harbor undying resentment for werewolves. But you seemed to accept me quickly, without as much resistance as I might have expected from your type of people.”
Isabelle shrugged. Her thoughts considered George, now dead with the family she had slain. They encompassed Milev, and the whole confused ideology that animated her, once upon a time. “I suspect it's something to do with you.”
“Because I'm magic, right?” His smile was gentle, teasing, and he cradled her in his arms, tugging the bedsheets over to protect from the night chills. His warmth bathed her, securing her in his company.
Maybe it really was just to do with Milev himself.
I actually fucking fell down hard with this idiot. I've doomed myself. She grinned, however, and burrowed into his embrace. “Does it bother you I'm a hunter, Milev?”
“Does it bother you I'm a werewolf?” he countered. She shook her head, nose brushing his chest.
“No. Not as much as I thought it would. And it's confusing me. A lot.”
“That might be a good sign.” He nuzzled her hair. “And no. It doesn't bother me. It might if you point a gun at me, though.”
“I'll try my best not to do that, then.” Isabelle let out another sigh. “Thank you for saving me. I don't think I ever thanked you properly.”
“I'd say you already have,” he smirked, prompting her to give him a light tap of the cheek. He sobered up, and held her face in his palms. “Seriously, though. There's something about you that speaks to me somewhere. Like having you around just, clicks.”
“Same,” Isabelle eventually managed, her heart palpitating faster at the announcement.
Something about Milev indeed just clicked for her.
She still had a long way to go. She still needed to find a place for all her thoughts, but part of her worries could be laid to rest at Milev's feet. The werewolf illuminated the dark, sordid parts of her mangled soul, letting her breathe freely, without stress or panic or hatred for the first time.
Wherever she went next in her life, where the carousel of her thoughts and emotions took her, she knew she wanted to share the ride with Milev.
Maybe then, staying with someone with a light heart, boundless affection and a fresh perspective on life would finally lay her demons to rest.
He added laughter to her soul that had never been there, formerly sucked dry by years of anger.
He was the smile she was missing.
The love she needed.
The truth she never saw.
She fell into a dreamless, content sleep, safe in his arms, and in the knowledge of a brighter, positive future.
The End
Ordri’s Mate
Shifters of the Bulgarian Bloodline
Book 7
Prologue:
When the white wolf came, death followed. His footprints sunk into the wet, rain-sloshed earth. Pink, blooded eyes gleamed in the darkness, under the light of a full moon, which hung huge, as if someone had roped it in closer to the earth.
The darkness in his expression made her shudder and think of the oozing advance of lava, creeping over the land and tainting it with its smoldering touch. In his full glory, a white, muzzled snout and white-furred body pacing closer without any clothes to confine the hulking muscles that ripped out of him, he stopped in front of Ordri.
His lips twitched upwards in a vicious, needle-toothed smile. His eyes dilated in lust, and his nostrils flared. Ordri shivered, feeling alone and vulnerable, even though she knew her alpha was nearby. The alpha she didn’t care about. The alpha she wanted to die.
The scent of the newcomer sent the others from the house outside. In the biting wind, under a cold moon and the jagged sway of leaves, life stood still.
Her alpha, her husband, still in his human clothes, pea-green eyes cautious, twitched in anger.
“You have no right to look at my wife like that,” Timaeus snarled, already morphing as he spoke, russet fur popping out of his human chest. The snout formed with a crunch of bone.
The newcomer paid Timaeus barely any attention at all. His eyes stayed on Ordri, taking in her dark hair, her pale, alabaster skin, the hint of freckles that covered her nose and cheeks. It was as if he was already undressing her with his gaze, capturing her naked and exposed under the weight of his desire, leaving her unsure whether to feel frightened or aroused.
Something about those eyes suggested a superiority, a sublime confidence that he could do what he wanted, act how he pleased. Could this be the one? The challenger that would kill her husband?
The strange desire made her guilty. It might be the werewolf’s way to crush the weak and claim the allegiance of others through force, but she still knew there was a terrible wrongness about the way she disregarded her husband, even though he had disregarded her years back, practically on their wedding night.
The white wolf turned his gaze onto Timaeus, and those lips bristled with derision and scorn. “A weakling like you does not deserve a wolf like her. She is like a jewel, but she does not smell like freedom. She smells like she is kept indoors, saturated with the filth of your ugly stench. She smells of misery.”
He faced Ordri once more. “I will free you from him.”
Ordri’s heart hammered faster. Her husband wasn't perfect, and he got insanely jealous and paranoid over any attention to her. Funny he did that, when they never did anything together. When he chose to make his bed with other women, and keep her for the strength of her family name only. She was just as bad, really. She kept him for the convenience his wealth gave her.
“Leave, or die.” Timaeus, fully morphed, stood protectively in front of Ordri. His two betas joined him, flanking, knowing they had the numbers to challenge the impudent wanderer who dropped into their midst.
The wanderer, however, gave a dangerous smile and a low, rumbling chuckle. “I challenge you for her hand. To the death.”
Ordri Gregorovitch shivered. The last challenge rite in western Bulgaria had been thirty years before.
“You challenge for her hand? You plan to usurp my clan?” Timaeus shivered in rage, the whites of his eyes showing. “Die!”
Timaeus fell upon the wanderer, and his two betas sought to join the fight.
Ordri expected the foolish wanderer to lose. One against one was even, but scary odds. Three against one, with nothing but bare teeth and claws? He may as well have buried himself alive. Her husband planned to cheat – not that she could blame him. The white wolf was built like a demigod, taller than all the rest, with muscles screaming their power.
She crouched by the porch where she had been seated, admiring the evening and the ponderous moon that hung so low in the sky. She had seen the white wolf, like an omen of death, hailing from the distant hills.
The wanderer shrugged off the odds. He ripped and tore at his foes, moving with blinding ferocity, rippling with unbridled power, an aura of destruction around him. Ordri stared in horror as what should have been a rout by her dishonorable mate turned instead into a slaughter of said mate. Lloyd and Gary, his faithful henchmen, had no idea how to handle such explosive strength.
The white wolf lunged at the throat of Lloyd, and in a fountain of hissing blood, tore out his throat with enormous jaws and startling power. He took advantage of Gary's hesitation to pounce on him, and in a brief tussle, clawed at Gary's face, slashing his throat in a red smile.
Timaeus was left alone to deal with the threat, his advantage whittled down to nothing. Fear emanated from his craven skin, and the wanderer gave a loud, exhilarating laugh. He danced around Timaeus with mocking amusement, lunging in to nip him and duck back out, leaving the befuddled and enraged alpha unable to react in time, to do anything to the white wolf’s skill.
“Put up a fight,” the wanderer said, dancing out of a swipe, a desperate lunge at his elusive, phantom foe. “Pretend like you actually give a damn and fight for your honor.”
“Fuck... you,” Timaeus spat, before grabbing the white wolf in a headlock. The white wolf simply twisted out of the lock and latched his jaws onto Timaeus's stomach, snapping and snapping his teeth, digging into bubbling red innards.
The alpha gave a distraught and agonized scream, and frantically scrabbled at the wanderer, who took advantage of the distraction to lock his jaws onto the alpha's throat and yank.
In an explosion of gore, bone and mess, Timaeus flopped to the ground with his betas, body twitching before it fell still.
The wanderer smiled with crimson smeared lips, and flecks of blood on his formerly pristine white fur.
Under his scrutiny, Ordri gritted her teeth. Her alpha had been defeated. Annihilated. By all rights, this wolf could take her. He could claim her as mate, as per the custom of the rite of challenge.
He strode up to Ordri, sniffing at her appreciatively. Pink eyes glimmered, and his clawed fingers brushed over her jacket.
“You're mine,” he growled.
Fear lanced Ordri's heart, along with a slither of grief and guilt. Grief for her dead husband, guilt that she had never loved him. Now he lay dead and bleeding upon the ground.
All because this wanderer desired her. Because she desired her mate’s demise.
“Mine,” he repeated softly. His fingers became tight and painful.