Midnight Reckoning

“You bolt, and I’ll run you down until you drop. I want some answers.”



Jaden didn’t move. He knew he ought to—the wolf was probably bluffing—but if all it took to leave were a few simple questions, that was preferable to running for his life.



“That depends on what the questions are,” Jaden said.



Dorien snorted dismissively. “You’re on my territory now, boy. Why you thought setting foot in it was a good idea is beyond me, but here you are. My territory, my rules.”



The words were typical wolf posturing, but generally best heeded. Jaden hadn’t yet met a wolf without a short fuse, Lyra included. He suspected she came by it honestly.



“All right,” Jaden replied. “Let’s get this over with. What do you want to know?”



“That should be obvious.” Dorien’s eyes glittered in the semidarkness. “Why did you have my daughter’s necklace? How do you know Lyra? And again… what the hell are you doing in the middle of my pack’s territory?”



Jaden shifted, then raised an eyebrow. “Just passing through?”



The attempt at humor fell flat as Dorien bared his teeth. His incisors were as sharp as any vampire’s. “This is a joke to you, then. My family, our honor, our kind… a joke.”



Jaden felt his hackles rising and had to swallow a hiss. His eyes saw a man, but his senses were screaming wolf… his natural enemy. Dorien likely fought much the same battle as he stood there, a low growl giving Jaden fair warning that the situation was deteriorating rapidly.



He might have fought the Alpha after all, had he not glanced up and caught a glimpse of Lyra’s face at one of the upstairs windows. Their eyes locked for the barest of seconds, but it was long enough for Jaden to see worry, fear… and the same strange longing that had pulled him here. The last sensation shook him to his core. He knew he was probably imagining it, just like he knew he was the only one reliving their last meeting over and over in strange, heated dreams.



But that glimpse of interest, of faintest possibility, was enough to pull him back from the edge.



Lyra’s face vanished. Time sped back up. And Jaden put his hands before him in a sign of truce.



“It’s not a joke, sir. I might be a vampire, but since I was a slave up until not very long ago, poking fun at other races isn’t all that appealing as entertainment.”



There was a moment where Dorien looked like he could go either way, and Jaden half expected to see the claws start to lengthen, the fur begin to sprout. Instead, with a deep breath, Dorien, too, stepped back from the edge.



“Yet,” Dorien said flatly. “We do hear things out here, from time to time. It’s in our best interest to keep an eye on your kind, just in case they decide the cities aren’t for them and that they like what we have even better. You’re one of the Cait Sith. I smell cat all over you. So I guess that means you’re newly respectable these days.”



Jaden knew he was skating on thin ice. “You could say that,” he hedged, unsure of just how much the wolves had heard.



The Alpha snorted contemptuously. “Yes, I could. Your kind has joined up with that demon bloodline. I’m not surprised, considering.”



“Lily MacGillivray is not a demon,” Jaden snapped, defensive at the first mention of his friend, the woman who had saved his bloodline from the gutter. “And I might not know much about the wolf definition of honor, but you obviously don’t know shit about my bloodline.”



For some strange reason, Jaden’s outburst seemed to please Dorien. His lips slowly lifted into a grin.



“Nope. Don’t want to either. But I’m glad to see you’ve got some loyalty, and some spine… for a vampire. It’s not the sort of thing we expect.”



“Yeah, well… I don’t expect to be standing here talking to an Alpha wolf after I’ve just torn one of his young wolves to ribbons, so I’d call this a new experience for us both.” He paused, then threw caution to the wind when he saw the calculating gleam in Dorien’s eyes.



“What do you want, Black? You want something, or I wouldn’t still be standing here.”



Dorien chuckled at that, and Jaden could see he’d been right: there was more. Dorien stepped closer to Jaden, shooting a look around them to ensure they were still alone. Jaden glanced around too, curious. The faces were gone from the windows, and all was quiet. He imagined the occasional tussle was the norm around here. To the casual observer, it likely hadn’t looked like any big deal. Still, he knew full well someone could be lurking in shadows, trying to figure out what was going on. There were so many wolves here… he wondered whether there were even any humans in this town. The air was thick with werewolf musk, though he’d acclimated to it somewhat by now. It surprised Jaden that he could manage to stand it so well. But then, he’d never been interested in finding out if he could desensitize himself at all. His nerves were still on edge—that was to be expected when you were continuously inhaling the scent of a natural enemy—but he could stand here and breathe normally, speak normally, without swinging between fight and flight.



The distraction of Simon’s attack seemed to have done Jaden a world of good after all.



After a moment, Dorien seemed satisfied that they weren’t being listened to. “What do you know about werewolf Provings?”



Jaden thought the question was an odd one, but he tried to be accommodating.



“Hmm. Bunch of wolves ripping one another apart while the pack cheers? Winner takes all?”



“That’s… an interesting simplification,” Dorien said blandly. “It’s how the pack chooses who will be the next Alpha. It’s a test of strength, of skill, of wits. And the winner has the honor of becoming the current Alpha’s apprentice, what we call a Second.”



“So you’re telling me it doesn’t involve tearing one another to shreds?”



Dorien exhaled loudly, looking annoyed. “That’s sometimes a part of it. Think what you like about it. Vamps are plenty vicious in their own way.”



Jaden thought about the long scars on his back from the Ptolemy’s whip. “You won’t get an argument from me on that.”



The wolf looked slightly surprised at Jaden’s response. “Well. Good.”



“So what does this Proving have to do with anything?” Jaden asked, shoving his hands in his pockets against a chilly breath of wind. Maybe it was because his natural temperature was already cooler than a mortal’s, but he preferred the warmer weather.



“We have one coming up, actually. At the next full moon. There, I’ll choose my Second.”



“Exciting,” Jaden replied in a tone that indicated he thought it was anything but. His life had been full of violence, but it had always been something he’d considered necessary, not something to be enjoyed. Werewolves, on the other hand, were known to draw one another’s blood for the slightest things, just for the hell of it. The line between animal and man was very thin there, at least with some. There were reasons why they’d been hunted so fiercely in the Dark Ages.



“Lyra has declared herself.”



It took Jaden a moment to process what Dorien was saying. “Lyra has…” Then he realized what the Alpha meant. He looked at Dorien, typically big and bulky as the males of his kind tended to be, and then thought of Lyra, who was long and lean as both a woman and a wolf. He tried to picture her throwing herself into some bloody fray with a bunch of enormous beasts, but he found it was too disturbing to think about in any detail. Maybe he was wrong about these Provings… maybe there was more to them than he’d thought, that she felt she had enough of a chance at winning to enter.



And hell if he knew what to say.



“She’s ambitious,” was all he could think of.



“She’ll be killed,” Dorien replied flatly. “It’s as simple as that. Most would just hurt her badly enough to take her out of the running early. But her cousin, my brother’s boy, has been waiting for an excuse to get his teeth in her throat. He’ll win. And then I’ll have to train the wolf who killed my only child, and who I’ll always know enjoyed doing it.”



Jaden stared at Dorien, stunned at the man’s blunt assessment of the likely outcome. Finally, he noticed how tired the wolf looked, the faint smudges beneath his eyes that told the tale of plenty of sleepless nights. And though Jaden had no children of his own, or many people he cared enough to worry like that about, he felt something surprising for the wolf.



Sympathy.



“Can’t you get her to see reason? Lyra doesn’t seem like a stupid woman. Stubborn, but not stupid. She must know what the chances are—”



“Of course she knows,” Dorien interjected. “I think if she thought there were a better candidate here than Eric—that’s my nephew—she might consider throwing her support behind whoever that was. She doesn’t have a death wish… or at least, she didn’t used to. I don’t blame her for being angry about the way women in the packs have always been shunted aside for leadership. But I didn’t make our ways, and I can’t change them. We rule by fang and claw, we follow the strongest… and it doesn’t get much stronger than a full grown male werewolf.” He sighed and shook his head, looking away. “She’s afraid of what Eric will do to the pack. Besides, so many look to Lyra for advice, for leadership, that I think she has an idea they’d accept her if she managed to pull out a victory in the Proving. Maybe they would. But she’ll never get that far.” He looked back at Jaden wearily. “This would be a lot easier if she’d just find a mate to fight for her. But she’s never done what she was told. I shouldn’t have expected she’d start now.”



Thinking about Lyra’s stubbornness made Jaden smile a little, despite the pall that had been cast over the night. The shame was that someone so spirited had to be born into a race that would likely never appreciate her. She would have made a hell of a vampiress, Jaden thought, and then pushed the tantalizing image aside as his smile faded. Thoughts like that were stupid. She wasn’t, she wouldn’t be. And the reception she’d given him here hadn’t exactly been warm.