Chapter Three
Adventures were things Pemma had only read about. She’d been content living with her pack in Europa—crowded but content—though Ewald promised she’d be much happier in the New World.
The ship’s front—oh, she meant bow—carved a path through the small waves and the scent of salt lay heavy in the air. She couldn’t wait to smell something other than ocean and ripe shifters. Being away from the city had had an unexpected result. Her sense of smell had grown much stronger. She wasn’t the only one. Many of her packmates had more acute senses now that they’d left the nose-blinding cities. Just yesterday, Fini scented a school of fish nearby. What a catch.
Reaching the New World would open so many avenues for her pack. Maybe they’d even meet some wild shifters like in the stories she’d read in Ewald’s newspapers. She had to keep this wish secret since he’d never discussed the news with her and he didn’t know she could read.
For weeks, all she’d seen was water. Flat calm water, raging gray water, even murky swirly water filled with merpeople glaring at them as they trespassed over their home. She shuddered. A mermaid had almost taken their alpha—her grandfather—with her siren’s song. This ship wouldn’t have been big enough to hold a wolf pack in crisis from the loss of their leader. Just the injury toll resulting from hunter challenges could have destroyed this adventure before it even really began.
Stiffening, she leaned over the side of the ship. Something caught her eye. It looked…yes, it looked green. Green water? “Ewald!” She called toward the captain’s quarters, where he still slept. The green grew thicker and didn’t move like the flowing water around them. Lifting the hem of her dress, she ran to the door and thumped on the hard wood. “Ewald, come quick and look.”
The door swung open. Her vampire master rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he pulled a suspender strap over his shoulder. “The sun is up already? I feel like I’d just gone to sleep.” He gave her a doting smile. “What are you yelling about, Pemma?”
She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the bow too excited to mind her manners. “Look.”
He stared and yawned. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”
She growled her frustration and pointed to the green plainly visible now. “Land.” Most omegas wouldn’t have dared growl at the vampire, but Ewald never reprimanded her outbursts. He wasn’t pack and ruled them by vampire law. Now, if it had been her grandfather, she’d have kept her gaze downcast and her frustration more guarded.
Ewald blinked a few times and leaned forward. “I don’t see anything. Maxim, bring me my eyepiece,” he called to the steersman.
Maxim jumped from the poop deck to land gracefully like all cat shifters. “Good morning, my lord. I see Pemma has you up early. Again.”
She made a distasteful face at him. Her mother wouldn’t have approved, but she was back in Europa with those who had refused to board the ship. Mother had raised her to act like a vampire lady. Pemma’s wolf nature was omega, which made being Ewald’s concubine easier. Omegas were the caregivers of the pack, the easy lovers, the artists. She didn’t care about climbing pack hierarchy. She just wanted to love them.
Maxim was always trying to get her in trouble, especially with Ewald. Ever since she’d turned down a chance to warm his bed last winter, he’d been her worst enemy. Too bad he had the courage to follow their master on what most called a fool’s journey.
Ewald held the bronze tube to his eye and scanned the horizon. The eyepiece was a vampire wonder. It helped them see things in the distance much clearer. “By God, Pemma, you’re right. Land ho!” he shouted.
Other sailors picked up his call.
She clasped her hands. “We’re almost there.”
Ewald hugged her and pressed a kiss to her mouth, branding his claim upon her flesh. The familiar touch sent a blaze of warmth through her body. His strong arms pulled her firmly against him. Vampires couldn’t mark females as shifters did, but no one could ever doubt whom she belonged to. He pulled away just enough to speak. “You saw that with just your eyes?”
She nodded, a little breathless.
“I shall call you Hawkeye Pemma from now on.”
“Oh yes, please do, especially when Maxim is around.” She shot a daggered look over their master’s shoulder toward the cat.
Maxim hissed and climbed back to the poop deck with his stupid grace.
Chuckling, Ewald released her. “You’re incorrigible.”
“I thought that’s what you liked about me.”
“It’s one of your finer traits.” He rested his arm around her slight shoulders and leaned into the ocean breeze. “Smell that?”
“The salt? It’s hard not to.”
“No, freedom.”
“Oh.” Freedom meant different things for different people. For her, it meant no more mother hovering over her every decision and a chance to actually live like wolf shifters should, out in the wild and out of the cities.
Ewald tossed her one of those looks. The kind that said “you’re still a pup”. In his defense, his age tripled hers. His idea of freedom was running from the marriage his father had arranged for him to an older female vampire. She must have been at least two hundred years old. Young by his kind’s standards yet still older than him.
Heavy footsteps fell behind them. Pemma’s alpha had joined them staring at the land. “My, it looks green.” He bent and gave her a small kiss on the forehead. “Good morning, Pemma.”
“Good morning, Gramp.” She fingered a new tear in his leather kilt. “I can mend this.”
“No doubt you can, but you’ve other duties.” He didn’t mention what those were. She already knew. Ewald was her duty.
“I saw the land first without using the eyepiece.”
“I don’t think the rule of finders keepers will apply to this,” Gramp teased as his eyes traveled to where Ewald’s arm rested on her shoulders.
The vampire stared ahead at their destination and didn’t notice.
Gramp gave her an approving nod. For as long as their pack had been owned by Ewald’s family, there had been an omega in one of the family’s beds. This task had fallen upon her ever since she’d caught her master’s eye. It was the easiest way for the pack to keep apprised of information. Her alpha had known of Ewald’s plans to journey to the New World before Ewald’s own father, and Gramp had acted upon this plan quickly.
The promise of open land with hunting rights was a mighty draw for Europa shifters, especially the wolf packs. Cats didn’t mind the crowded cities as much.
“I don’t want it all. Just a little piece with deer living on it.” She’d never been on a hunt, but the prospect had even her omega blood pumping. “Oh, and rabbits. I love rabbits. They taste so divine when they’re fresh.”
Darkness didn’t frighten Benic. He used it like a blanket and insulated himself from the world.
The fire in the hearth crackled with green uncured logs. He enjoyed the pop that sap made within the wood when heated. Benic emptied his glass and refilled it with fine Payami wine. His last bottle. He should savor it because they wouldn’t let him purchase more. Not after he had attempted to kidnap the alpha’s only daughter.
As vampire lord of this region, he could demand both wine and female from the pack, but experience had taught him he’d enjoy neither if taken in such a manner. Kele should come to him of her own free will, but how could he woo her from a distance? Especially with Peder lurking in her shadow.
The door to his private study slammed open. “There you are.” Inacio, his incubus pet, stormed into the room. “How many more days do you plan on hiding in here?”
Benic ran his fingers around the rim of his glass so he wouldn’t gulp the last of it. “I’m not hiding.”
Inacio crossed the room and tore open the thick curtains. Sunlight poured into the study like liquid fire as the incubus did the same to the other two windows.
Benic squinted in the sudden glare. “Have you no mercy?”
“I let you lick your wounds for months. Your castle is falling to ruins in your absence.”
Pulling open his unlaundered shirt, Benic stared at the scar on his chest then poked it with his fingertip. “My wound appears healed. You cured me. It’s a miracle.” He laughed and kicked an empty wine bottle across the floor. “Why don’t you get us another bottle and we can share it?”
Inacio picked it up and grimaced. “Your cellar is empty.”
“Oh, the Payami wine. I know this.”
“No, all the wine, you drunkard.”
“What?” Benic set his glass down. “That’s impossible.” Had he really gone through his stock? That was quite an impressive feat.
“You look and smell like something the shifters have pissed on.” Inacio had been with Benic for years, and with time, his talented tongue had grown loose with Benic. Maybe he should have it cut out.
“Thank you. It took a lot of effort to achieve this state of dishevelment. Now, unless you’re here to undress me, I’d suggest you leave in the opposite manner you arrived before I get nasty.”
“Nastier,” he corrected. “May I suggest a bath before you continue your poor attempt to seduce me?”
His snort turned into a laugh. “Very well. Have the servants draw me a bath.”
“When have you last fed?”
It was Benic’s turn to grimace as he rubbed his aching head. The blasted light was giving him a headache. “I don’t know.”
“A bath with a wench it is, then.”
He shook his head. “No wench. I’ve had my fill of females.”
Inacio knelt in front of him. “If I had known the white shifter meant so much to you, I would have seduced her into never leaving your side.”
“That would have been cheating.” He couldn’t meet Inacio’s gaze. The incubus already knew too much about his weakness for Kele. A smarter vampire would have killed him as a result but after recent events, he believed he was very, very stupid. Why start doing smart things now? Benic sighed. “Have them bring me some ale while I wait for the bath. You could feed me afterwards.”
“Very well, master.” He didn’t leave his place at Benic’s feet.
“What else?”
“Nothing.” He rose to leave.
“Tell me.”
Inacio hung his head. “The shifters are gathering around the Temple. There are whispers among the servants that it’s a sign of pending war.”
He chuckled. “It’s not war, Inacio. It’s worse. It’s a mating.” He sneered the last word. Inali and his bitch wife, Chaska, had the gall to send him an invitation to Kele’s mating ceremony. The dark cushioned him from the world but it hadn’t blinded him. He knew very well what had been going on outside his study.
The crops had been sown, his castle shifters had popped out seven more pups for him to feed over the winter months, and Inali had arranged a mating with a hunter Kele had never met. A fine fate for the female who’d scorned his affection. May the bastard be fat and smell like elk ass.
“The wild shifters aren’t thinking of war. They’re thinking of fucking and making more pups. Tell the staff so they can ease everyone’s minds.” Benic gestured toward the study’s door.
“That soothes my heart. Fucking is something I understand much better than fighting.” Inacio’s smile grew crooked and his gaze darkened with secret promises.
Benic had to laugh again. The act seemed strange after months of solitude and alcohol. Time healed all wounds, and what else did a vampire possess in great amounts but time? Unfortunately, Kele didn’t have many years to remain young and he’d been a romantic fool to think she could bring him any kind of joy.
“Will you go to the mating?”
“No.” One half of the Payami pack wanted to kill him and the other to eat his liver. “I haven’t time to fool around with such mundane things. We have a wine cellar to fill, which means we should embark on a trip to the finest market.”
“New Berg?”
“Yes, I think a trip to New Berg would place me in much better spirits.” He hadn’t paid his respects to the Grand Lord Weis in decades. It was about time he gave vampire politics in North Amerigo his full attention. Who knew, maybe the Nation had decided to allow vampire females to finally travel to the New World.
He’d let the wild shifters living in his forest rot for all he cared anymore.
The noise in his courtyard traveled through the windows. Most of his people were domesticated wolf shifters, procured during the battles as the vampires settled this new land. None remembered that time, but the vampires who remained under his care did.
The castle shifters were nervous about the hurt feelings between him and their wild cousins. Benic’s memories of those battles had not faded yet. “We’ll send Kele a mating day present in our absence.” He scratched his chin. “What do you think would be appropriate? Something that says, ‘Sorry for stealing you and let’s try not to kill each other over it.’”
Inacio rolled his eyes. “I’d suggest one of the new pups, but I know you’d say no.”
“True, that’s not acceptable.”
“Maybe one of your mother’s amulets?”
“Jewelry?” The shifters beaded their clothes for special occasions. Some decorated their hair with feathers and wore simple jewelry. An amulet could be a good choice. “How about the one covered with small rubies?”
“It would sparkle on Kele with her pale hair and skin. I think it’s an excellent choice.”
“Send it now with my swiftest omega.”
“A shifter? One of your mounted guards would arrive faster.”
“Yes and he’d be returned in pieces. They won’t kill a submissive. Maybe they’ll just keep it.” He shrugged. “Go, I want her to receive it before the ceremony.”
Maybe this way, she’d be thinking of him tomorrow instead of her precious Peder.