Chapter Nine
They paused by a curved stone bench next to an enormous rose bush that was bejeweled with hundreds of fat white blossoms as big as fists. The night breeze ruffled Taylor’s hair and carried the perfumed scent of roses, and an enormous half-moon glowed overhead. Taylor had never been particularly conscious of the moon and its phases before, but she was now.
Two weeks. I’ll be something different in two weeks. I won’t be me anymore.
Cliff turned to face Taylor and put his hands on her shoulders, looking down into her face. For the first time since she’d known him, he looked rattled. “I wanted to make you feel like you’re part of the family, so you’d want to stay, but I can see it totally backfired.”
She wanted to stay angry with him, but it was hard when he was being so damn charming and concerned about her feelings. And he was upset about something that wasn’t his fault. Jerrold was the one who’d done his best to ruin their dinner. Also, the touch of his hands felt really, really good on her shoulders, and she never wanted him to let go.
She smiled up at him. “Oh, I don’t know, family dinners would never be boring here. And I absolutely love Serafina and Dax and Roger. Where are their parents?”
He managed a rueful smile. “Their parents… Their dad had the Dominus Gene. That can be a blessing or a curse, as you’ve seen with Jerrold. All that power coursing through your veins…if it’s not channeled properly, it can make you crazy and wild and hungry for sensation. Their father was a real thrill-seeker, and he chose a mate who was just like him. They were terrible for each other. Always running off and leaving the kids behind to chase excitement. Parasailing over volcanoes, base jumping... About a year ago, they decided to spend the full moon outside of pack lands. Strictly forbidden, because of the risk of exposure. They’d have been executed if they’d been caught. Instead, they were shot to death by a hunter.”
“I thought only silver bullets killed a werewolf,” Taylor said. “Or is that a myth?”
“No, it’s true that silver is extremely toxic to werewolves. And we do generally heal super fast from all other injuries. However, if we’re shot with a powerful enough rifle, right through a vital area like the spine or the heart or head, it’s fatal. They were shot with .700 Nitro Express cartridges, which could stop an elephant. Just their bad luck that they ran into a macho nutjob hunter…but if they hadn’t run into him, they’d have found some other way to kill themselves. It was only a matter of time..”
“Speaking of killing things…will you be able to stop Jerrold from abusing his wife?” she asked. Her stomach churned at the memory of Leota’s downcast eyes and frightened expression. “Because in all honesty, if you can’t say yes, there’s a good chance I’ll attack him some time soon, no matter what the consequences are.”
A pained grimace twisted his handsome face. He took his hands from her shoulders and shoved them in his pockets, staring off to the distant horizon. “I’m right there with you on that. All we have to do is wait until the end of the Alpha Trials, and he’ll be a dead man. We can’t do anything to him beforehand. It would violate the pack charter.”
He’d explained a little about the Alpha Trials, but not enough. At her questioning look, he nodded. “Right. I keep forgetting that you didn’t grow up in a pack. Okay, the pack charter is a set of rules that governs us, like the Constitution. Every pack has its own charter. Sometimes I envy newer packs that formed recently; they can make rules that reflect the twenty-first century. Ours was created in the sixteen hundreds, shortly after our people arrived here from England to escape werewolf hunters.”
Taylor shook her head in confusion. “But why would the pack charter prevent you from saving Leota from abuse?”
“It’s not specifically that. The charter says I can’t challenge Jerrold right now. Once the Elders call for the Alpha Trials, no one is allowed to challenge any of the competitors – with a very few exceptions, like if the competitor attacks someone else’s mate. We men hold our mates sacred here, and an attack on someone else’s mate is asking to have your insides rearranged so they’re on the outside. But I can’t do anything to challenge Jerrold before the trials, because it would potentially disqualify me, depending on how the Elders voted. In other words, if I try to help Leota now? It could end up backfiring and mean she’s stuck with the bastard forever. But don’t worry. At the end of the trials, there’s the physical combat portion. Every participant has the right to tap out, to surrender. Jerrold won’t tap out, and I’ll kill him.” His eyes gleamed with menace.
A sudden horrible thought seized her. “Wait. Does that mean that in theory he could kill you in a fight?”
Cliff smiled grimly, and the expression in his eyes – feral, deadly – was truly frightening. “In theory.”
Taylor began meandering aimlessly down the garden path, feeling unsettled and frustrated. She’d have to accept their rules and wait until the end of the trials. She just hated it.
Cliff followed her. “I hate the way he’s treating Leota,” he told her. “But once the trials are over, I will offer sanctuary to all the decent members of Jerrold’s pack, and the remainder will have to form a new, fucked-up, dysfunctional pack and stay out of our way or die.”
Taylor still didn’t like it. “Why do those old people get to vote on anything? I thought the Alpha was the boss.”
“The Pack Elders are like your congress and senate. Checks and balances. It’s required of all werewolf packs, because if you have an Alpha who goes off the rails, someone needs to be able to reel him in or we all risk exposure. So the oldest seven members of each pack are the Pack Elders, and they listen to a lot of minor pack disputes and enforce the charter.”
“Some of them seem to actually side with him.”
His brow furrowed. “Yes, unfortunately, Elders can be very tradition-bound. Some of them see Jerrold’s bullying and abusiveness as strength. Three of them – Minnie, Phineas and Sylvester – are squarely in his quarter. Herbert, Maurice and Juliet are with me. And Oswald is undecided.”
“So can they challenge the results of the Alpha Trials?”
“Only if there were a tie, or a draw, or some reason to question the results. Then the vote of the Elders could select the Alpha. And that would be bad. If the Elders voted in Jerrold’s favor, the pack might feel obligated to support them. If the pack defied the Elders, that would mean we’d be cut off from all other packs. We wouldn’t be able to ask for help from another pack, or mate outside our pack. So that’s why it’s vital that we don’t do anything that might disqualify me before the trials.” He kicked viciously at a rock in the dirt. “And yes, it makes me sick to let Jerrold get away with abusing Leota. But it’s not for much longer.”
A thought occurred to her. “What about Jerrold’s Elders? Can’t they keep him under control?”
He shook his head. “They’re all his family members, so unfortunately anything goes in that pack. Several Elders who weren’t his family members mysteriously died over the years.”
She frowned in thought. “So much new information. I feel like I’m cramming for final exams.”
“Ask me anything. I’m all yours.” He flashed her a roguish grin when he said that, and she felt a swarm of butterflies take flight in her tummy.
“You won’t let anything happen to Serafina and the kids, will you? Even if Jerrold somehow, against all odds, wins?”
“He won’t win,” Cliff said firmly. “And no. Austin is very close to them, and he’s not a man to be messed with. He’d take them and hide them, if necessary. Austin does security work, of a kind that I don’t even want to know about, but I suspect he’s involved with the Network.”
At her questioning glance, he said, “They work with lone wolves who aren’t members of any pack. Sometimes they smuggle them to places of safety. Or take out lone wolves who are posing a threat to us all.”
“Yikes. Speaking of Austin, why is he competing to be Alpha if he hates this pack so much?”
“Only because he’s required to. The three of us, the sons of the Alpha, are required to compete in the Alpha Trials. If he didn’t compete, he’d completely forfeit his right to visit the pack, speak to anyone from the pack, or have anything to do with any of us ever again. I’m honestly a little surprised that he didn’t go ahead and forfeit, but I think he just wants to be able to keep in touch with Serafina, Dax and Roger. He has a soft spot for them because his upbringing was a lot like theirs. They’re practically growing up without parents, and so did he.”
She gave him a puzzled look. “He’s your brother. He had the same parents as you did.”
“My parents were most definitely not True Mates. They married to combine two powerful packs into one, and they hated each other from the start. By the time Austin was born, it was an utter disaster,” he explained. “My dad was openly banging other women, bringing them back to our house right in front of my mother – and she was bitter and humiliated and took it out on whoever was closest, which included Austin. Which made Austin lash out and behave badly, and then my father really started disliking him and beating his ass on a regular basis. Our mother would just sit there and watch. In his teens, we had to send Austin off to our version of military school. And Austin escaped from the school and didn’t even talk to any of us for years before he resurfaced.”
“Aha,” she said, nodding. “Well, I’m out of questions for the moment. My brain is just about full up.”
“You sure?” Cliff quirked an eyebrow. “I’m here all night. And for the rest of your life,” he added hastily.
Taylor hesitated. There was something else she wanted to ask, but it was embarrassing, especially after she’d made such a big deal about how she wasn’t going to have sex with Cliff.
“You want to ask me something. Ask away. I’m an open book.”
“I was just wondering about something that Shelley said,” Taylor admitted. “She mentioned one of the other girls you’d been sleeping with. Have you had sex with a lot of women in this pack?”
“A fair number, as well as women in other packs, but always with the understanding that it was for pleasure only. Werewolves are very physical creatures. It’s our animal natures. We’re extremely sensual and tactile, and before we pick a mate, we tend to have a lot of lovers.”
Oh. His explanation didn’t actually make her feel any better. She looked away with a frown. “I see.”
“What?” Cliff said.
“Well, you said that you’re very sensual, but you’ve pretty much been physically avoiding me all evening.”
“You said that we weren’t going to have sex. I’m certainly planning on changing your mind, but I didn’t want to come on too strong and push you. That was James’ suggestion.”
At her baffled look, he explained. “James likes you a lot and wants this mating to succeed. So he’s offered me some advice, which I’m trying to follow. But it’s taken every scrap of my self-control not to…” He stopped walking and looked away, avoiding her gaze.
“Not to what?”
“You don’t want me to answer. Because if I talk about it…”
“I do want you to answer.” Taylor had no idea what wild impulse had seized her, to make her say that. The next thing she knew, she was up against a tree trunk with her hands pinned above her head, his right hand firmly gripping her wrists.
“I want to fuck you. To kiss you all over. To bite you. To lick you. To…” He kissed her hungrily.
She moaned, twisting her wrists in his grasp, not in an attempt to get away but because she wanted to pull him closer. She felt boneless, almost molten, sandwiched between the scratchy bark of the tree and Cliff’s body. He pulled away for a moment, panting against her lips. “This is why,” he said urgently against her mouth. “Because touching you…knowing I can’t have you…it’s torture.”
She pulled at her wrists again, and this time he released her, hooking his arm behind the dip of her waist and pulling her against him. She curled both hands into his hair, kissing him back hard, arching towards him. He growled as he trailed his lips from the corner of her mouth to her throat, grazing the flesh with his sharp teeth and making her shudder with need.
A chiding voice piped up. “Uncle Cliff, why are you biting her? Her blood isn’t really chocolate, remember?”