Rescued by Ryland: Deep River Shifters ( Book 1) by Lisa Daniels (41)

Chapter Three

They tumbled out together into the driveway of a small house, an actual house in the residential district of Marwen, a place that only had a few hundred people as part of the population.

“He will smell you, perhaps.  He will be so surprised!”

Arina wondered if Markus Spirova had killed, as well.  That sweet boy she knew was related to the one who chewed out the intestines of her little brother, a great uncle, a figure she had heard Markus talk about in great fear and disgust.

Those thoughts clashed with the hope and need to see him again.

Danny knocked on the door, after phoning Markus to say he was just outside.  Arina heard the rustle and click of a key sliding into a lock, and then the white door swung open.  Her heart hammered a thousand miles a minute.

Deep blue eyes set on an achingly handsome face, with trimmed sideburns and a beard greeted her.  His dark hair was left in small black tufts, and his body concealed itself under a navy polo shirt and casual black pants.

His eyes expanded in shock when he saw Arina standing there, as nervous as a schoolgirl.

For a moment, they remained still, staring into each other’s faces.

Then, with a bark of elation, Markus leaped out of the doorway and scooped Arina up in his huge arms. Her feet lifted off the ground in his enthusiasm.  “Arina!  Arina!  You found me!  At fucking last!” 

“Hi,” Arina said, her voice muffled in Markus’s shoulder.  “I heard it was me you were looking for.”

“Yes!” Markus said, squeezing her tighter, making her lungs expel out air, and her limbs flail slightly.  “I’ve been looking for you!  I followed you!  Or, at least, I tried to.  My stalking skills haven’t been so impressive.

“That’s cool.  Uh, Markus?  I’d like to breathe.”

Her childhood friend reluctantly broke off, but then gave another quick hug, before carrying her into the house, followed by a grinning Danny.  Surprise and happiness prevailed, as it occurred to Arina that her childhood friend had matured into an incredibly hot individual.  The kind of hotness that she went for.  She swallowed the thought down so she could focus on the two friends who had popped out of the woodwork at last.  Markus practically skipped towards his kettle to make coffee, when he heard Arina would take it strong.

“So, if we have you two,” she said, switching to Bulgarian, “Then where’s Ordri and Luelle?  What happened to those two?  Do you know?”  Arina idly tapped the side of the sofa as she considered the situation.  “They disappeared.  I worried a lot about Luelle.  She was miserable about needing to marry.”

“I don’t think the years have treated her kindly,” Danny said.  “I spoke to her a little before Gregorovitch, Spirova and Armanev decided to group together and attack the Lubanovs.  She made out to us everything was fine, but I guarantee whatever bastard hellspawn she’s with, she’s not having a good time.  She’s little more than a breeding bitch for that Russian clan so they don’t go extinct.”  Danny bared his teeth in a snarl.  “Acts proud but there was rage in her eyes, a plead for help that I couldn’t give her at the time.”

Markus was next to speak, after the pregnant silence that fell between them when considering Luelle’s fate.  “Ordri, last I heard was that she was in the U.K.  She joined a construction company there that is basically run by werewolves, and recruits them.  Haven’t heard from her in a few months, but she’s okay.  U.K is particular about co-existing with the humans.  Probably because they’re stuck on a tiny island.”

Arina scowled.  “Seriously, you werewolves are the most fucked up things I’ve had a chance to meet.”  She placed her firearm on the side, making Markus pick it up to examine as he brought her double strength coffee.  There were scratches on the underside of the weapon, revealing the use.  “It’s like, it can’t just be normal happy families with you guys.  No, you have to eat humans, treat each other like scum, even though you’re supposed to be proud of your race, but skulk in the shadows because it would be bad if regular people found out about your preference for human meat.”

“She’s not wrong,” Markus said, one side of his mouth curling in amusement.  “We are pretty fucked up.”

“I’d say it depends more on how isolated the clans are.  Most have been brought up with the old ways.  The more progressive clans live near the cities, the less, like our families, in the wilds.  The American ones seemed to have found a way to exist peacefully.  I made contact with a Belgium clan in Bruges, as well.  Snotty, because their country was the head of the EU.  I liked them, though, and a lot of them had married human males or females.”

“Males?  Really?” Markus ogled Danny in surprise.  “That would have never happened in Bulgaria.  Female werewolves are too valuable.”

“Yeah, well, they didn’t give a shit.  Makes sense – that country decided to run itself without a government for a year.

“Anyway, there’s two ways to make a werewolf.  Bloodline, or receiving the blessing.  The humans received the blessing so they could propagate.”

“Blessing?”  Arina scoured her memory, trying to recall if either of her friends had mentioned this in the past.  She remembered a werewolf couldn’t be made by being bitten.  They needed direct descent, to have the gene inside them.  “What’s that, then?”

Markus stared at her for a moment, his sapphire blue eyes contemplative.  “We can ask the wolf spirit in the area we’re in for a blessing.  Normally, humans and werewolves can’t have children.  With the blessing, it gives the human the gene, so they’re able to have a child with the lover.  Not to turn them into a werewolf, though.  That would be the lucky child in question.”

“Wolf spirit?”

“I’ve not spoken to one myself.  But that’s how it’s supposed to go.” Markus gave a shrug.  “Find the patron wolf spirit, get blessing, everything’s cool.  After all, werewolves had to come from somewhere, you know.  They used to be humans once.  Maybe they asked for a blessing for a successful hunt or something.  Most of my clan didn’t know themselves where they came from, except from looking into the old Slavic mythology.”

Markus examined the pendant that Arina wore, a faint smile playing upon his face. 

“I’m surprised you didn’t go into law enforcement in Bulgaria,” Danny said.  “Things are pretty screwy over there.”

A lurching, knotted feeling invaded Arina’s skin.  The mention of her homeland and the idea of her remaining in it made her queasy.  She reined down the sensation enough to explain, “I didn’t want to stay in Bulgaria.  Too many bad memories.  I wanted a fresh start in a new place.  Why not the land of the American Dream?” 

Both werewolve’s noses quivered, sensing her trepidation.  Danny Lubanov sighed.  “Yes.  That was part of our thinking too.  But… you?  I would have thought if you choose this… path, to be a cop, then you might have an ulterior motive for it.  More than just making it a job.  Though I could be mistaken.”

The unspoken thought lay between them.  Arina knew the werewolves had a good suspicion as to why their human friend had chosen to pursue a career in law enforcement.  Ricten Spirova’s leering face came to her mind out of the dark, frozen in the moment where he obliterated the remaining members of her family, reveled in it, loved it.  Stamping on human lives as if they were cattle.

She took deep breaths, trying to release some of the venomous whispers, that told her she should run as far as possible from anything to do with werewolves.  “He’s always on my mind.  But I did find thinking about it too much was destroying me.  I was spiraling down, you know.  It got bad.”

Arina shivered.  She didn’t like thinking about the years after she had turned up at the doorstep of her Godfather and his wife in Sofia.  It wasn’t a time she cared to dwell in, because it poisoned her mind, tainted all the neural connections like black tar, dragging things to a twisted place.  She’d tried everything, when she was old enough to understand, though not necessarily old legally.  Sex, drugs, drink – all the classics people employed to forget about the shit that had happened to them.  Nothing worked, because once the effects cleared, she was only left in squalor and misery, the gnawing feeling cutting at her heart, at the spot where her father, brother, and her four friends lived.  It was a hollow emptiness, even with those memories. 

Eventually, she crawled out of the pit, gathered the shards of her life together, and scrubbed everything clean.  Left the dirt and the despair behind, and sank into America, where she’d emerged out in success.  When she did reflect upon the past, she waded through the bad memories, the terrible things she’d done to herself, to remember the five of them together, in another lifetime. 

She much preferred thinking of her current status, content in a different country, the threads of her past waving in the wind. 

Except, some of those threads began tying themselves up again, congregating into the form of the two werewolves with her tonight.

“I’m glad you’re doing well, Ari,” Danny said, patting her on the shoulder.  We often thought about you, wondered how you kept.  Worried, a lot.  You had some heavy memories in your heart.  We were scared it meant we could no longer be friends.  I believed that idea for a while as well.”

“Me, too,” Arina confessed.  She licked her lips, steepled her fingers.  “Easier to think you’re all monsters.  But I’ve seen my fair share of human monsters, too.  It’s not so straightforward.”  Her eyes briefly flickered to her gun.  Friends or not, she didn’t know fully the status of the two men with her tonight, how much they kept from her, and what truth they chose to share.  She didn’t feel in danger from them, but she would be a fool to trust instantly with two decades of extra existence stamped upon their souls.  Except, she finally faced Markus again, and the fluttering in her blood persisted, bringing something else she had tried to bury.

Love.  She had loved that little boy.  Had even declared to him that they should marry when she was eight, because marriage was what people were supposed to do when they loved each other.

A child’s dream, but the memory made her smile.

“What are you thinking, Arina?”  Markus had been gazing at her softly, lips curled, drinking in the sight of her.

“Nothing,” she lied.  “Just… amazed that I got to see you both again.  I should be heading back soon, though.  It might be crowded in here for the three of us.”

“Oh, no!  No, it won’t!  Please stay.  There will always be room for you.  I insist,” Markus said, a tiny edge of desperation in his voice.

Arina allowed a smirk to play about her lips.  “Well, I suppose if you’ve been looking for me all this time, it would be a shame to leave you so soon.  But we can also stay in contact.  Catch up.  See what changed.”

“Yes.  Of course.  But stay with us one night.” A sliver of black invaded Markus’s dark blue irises.  His nostrils flared.  The gaze made Arina shiver, and a bolt of arousal streaked through her spine.  A faint hint of desire creeped onto her cheeks.

Drat.  She knew about the werewolf magnetism.  She knew if she stayed here too long, she wouldn’t be able to resist.  She’d take Markus, every inch of him, grope him in the darkness and whimper out his name, because the tentative fantasies she harbored for the boy she loved had stirred into thrilled hope, drawing her to him, into the snow-lake scent of him, that took her mind to far away mountains and cold, pristine lakes, and of bird calls in the trees, and the red squirrels, with their little tails flickering, scratching up and down the evergreens.

Danny Lubanov regarded the exchange smugly, clearly smelling the attraction.  “I knew it.”

Arina shot him an irritated look.  “Nothing untoward will happen.  We’re going to catch up, share, and then go to sleep like good people.  What you think you’re seeing or smelling isn’t actually happening.”

Markus shook himself, and flexed his arm muscles.  “Right.  Absolutely no attraction at all.  We’re just old friends.  Catching up.  With things.  That need to be caught up with.”

“Uh huh.”  Danny sat back, clearly enjoying this.  “You can keep telling yourself that, mister alpha werewolf and hotshot cop.  Whatever makes you sleep at night.  Or doesn’t.”

Arina and Markus simultaneously lashed out at Danny, and he blocked the hits, roaring with laughter.  “I need to tell Tia this.  She’ll love it.”

“Don’t you dare,” Arina hissed, clawing for Danny’s phone, but he danced out of reach, furiously tapping.  Markus ran a deep pink tongue over his top lip, apparently distracted by the barest of hip flesh that had been exposed under Arina’s blouse.  Danny waved her aside, giggling.

“She says that I should make my excuses and give you two a quiet moment together to explore the differences.”

“Fuck off, seriously,” Arina growled, both turned on and exasperated at the same time.  She was annoyed with herself that she could feel the desire, annoyed because her heart and body craved the idea of staying behind, of doing something with Markus Spirova, that even hearing his deep, rumbling voice was enough to make her wet, though she tried to hide it.

It annoyed her as well, because these people were damn werewolves.  A connection to a dark legacy, a world hidden in plain sight.  Another, heinous thought wormed in.  Markus was also a connection to Ricten Spirova.  If she kept him close, it invited that danger, the memories that she wanted to discard back into her life, like a body crawling out the grave.

It also put him closer within the reach of her gun.

One step forward, two steps back.  She had flourished in Fort Tyr, gained friends, stability.  She dreamed about her friends, but would have accepted never seeing them again, leaving them as a crystallized link to the good segment of her past.

I would have forgotten that I loved him.

As Danny continued sharing the messages he sent to his human girlfriend, Markus and Arina kept finding excuses to look at each other, occasionally touch, brushing limbs.

Sometimes, it was just best to go with the flow.