Chapter One
Hostile takeover. That was the best way to describe what the wanderer had done. Using the ancient rite of challenge, he'd infiltrated a minor clan at the base of the Bulgarian mountains, and used freakish strength and ferocity to decimate said members of that clan.
Ordri felt little grief for her husband – he had been a fool, a nuisance that simply held onto her out of a sense of obligation to his family, though he likely would have divorced her two years before, if he didn't value her family name above all else. She'd accepted him because he wasn't bad-looking, and he at least left her alone when she wanted, though he also spent most of his spare time screwing human girls in the local brothel.
So, no. She didn't miss him very much at all.
This newcomer, however, added a huge wrench into the natural order of things.
He examined his prize with the lazy glare of a predator, perfectly content with staying in his feral form.
“Do you want to, you know, shift out of that form now?” she asked, folding her arms as she regarded the bloodied werewolf, who still hadn't bothered to wash himself down from the fight.
“No.” He prowled towards her, white fur bristling, dark pink eyes glimmering. “I will claim my prize now.”
Without any ceremony whatsoever, he spun her around, and tore at her clothes.
What the actual fuck? She let out a dreadful snarl, fangs sprouting out of her mouth, hands lengthening into claws. “No. Fuck you.”
The albino wolf growled in surprise when she turned on him and slashed at his face. He dodged the blow, bewilderment written over his wolfish features. “I won you. Why are you attacking me?”
“Are you –” Ordri attempted to control her rising temper. “Are you stupid? Why the hell would I want to have sex with you like this?”
The albino werewolf appeared massively baffled by her resistance. “I won you in combat. Isn’t this what is supposed to happen? You should be happy to have such a strong werewolf wanting to mate with you.” He stepped forwards again, and Ordri snapped at him, her mouth finally formed into a snout. Through her werewolf eyes, she saw colors in bright hues, and patterns of heat and aroma forming as shimmers at the edges of any living target she saw.
“Fuck off! What century do you come from? This isn't the 1700s anymore.” She nipped at his hand. With an irritated exclamation, he lunged at her and pinned her against the living room wall of the former alpha's house. His teeth dripped blood on her neck as he placed his muzzle near her ear.
“You shouldn’t be resisting so much.”
At this, Ordri let out a derisive laugh, and brought her knee up to hit him directly between the legs. He let out a choking squeak of shock and pain, before collapsing to his knees.
“First, you stink. You have blood all over you. If you want me to actually have sex with you, that's not the way to do it.” Ordri stood above him as he wheezed, clutching his exposed parts as he glared up at her. “Second, I'm not a fan of being fucked with in feral form. We don't have the human orgasm parts, so it's boring as shit. Third, you just killed my mate. Can you imagine I might be a little hostile towards you?” Yes, she didn't particularly care much for her dead mate, but it made a good point nonetheless.
The wanderer examined her for a long moment, roping in the rage that had been building up behind his muzzle. “I don’t understand. You're mine by rights, now. Why do you resist? I can smell that you desire this.”
Ordri flushed. Yes, his display of power did some interesting things to her blood, but that didn’t change the fact that he was being pushy and dumb. “I might be yours by right. Yes, my body might like you. Doesn't mean I'm yours by heart.” Ordri snapped her fingers, lamenting at the albino's woeful ignorance. “You have to earn that respect and love.”
Slight desperation crossed his face, as he scrabbled for a point to make. “I’m fairly sure that if I want, I can take you right now and there's not a thing you can do about it. And you would enjoy it. Why bother putting up such a defense?”
Ordri sighed in exasperation. She'd been impressed by the wanderer's strength and virility, less so by his backward attitude. “Perhaps there’s nothing I can do. Or perhaps there is. If you take me right now, you will make an enemy of me. And if you make an enemy of me, you make an enemy of my family, and their allies.”
“I am a great warrior. Your threats mean nothing.”
Oh, dear God. It's like talking to a retarded puppy.
“Listen, jackass. I'm a Gregorovitch. If you threaten me, half of Bulgaria's werewolves will be on you and rip you apart before you can say 'oops.' So I suggest if you want to own this little part of the world, you learn to make nice with me and the people I associate with. Understand?”
The werewolf stared blankly at her. Whatever he'd anticipated, or expected, he obviously never imagined that his so-called prize would bite back. Also, he seemed rather dazed by the name drop.
“You're a Gregorovitch?”
Now it was Ordri's turn to stare blankly at him. “You didn't know who I was before you attacked?”
The wanderer shook his head, consternation now alight in his eyes. “No. I had intended to pick a small clan to take over. Not one affiliated with the noble families.”
“Tough luck. You just fucked with them.” Ordri raised one eyebrow, finding secret amusement in his sudden panic. “Guess you bit off more than you could chew.”
The werewolf sighed, now running his claws over his chest in agitation. “Well, fuck. That didn't quite work out as intended.”
“Have you been living under a rock or something the past few years?”
The wanderer ignored her, instead getting up and striding into the kitchen. “I'm going to have to go. I didn't intend for this to happen.”
“What? You can't just come in here and kill everyone, then leave me to pick up the pieces. Are you stupid? Take responsibility.” Ordri followed him into the kitchen, just as he began pacing up and down.
“What should I do then?” His panic seemed sincere. Behind that menace, that overwhelming power that emanated from his body, lingered a mind that seemed oddly... innocent. And possibly a bit delusional. What kind of rational mind would complete the ancient rite of challenge, claim his new female, only to realize that, oops, maybe it was a bad idea, sorry, goodbye?
If this guy ends up having children, they better pray they get his body and not his brains.
She repressed a wild instinct to laugh, controlling herself in the wake of his bafflement. “Look. I'll help with the whole Gregorovitch thing. Since you are now claiming territory, you need to go around to the adjacent clans to this one and, uh, explain things at some point. And we'll need dinner with my family and their closest allies to introduce you. It's been a while since anyone's killed someone around here for small territorial gain, so I bet my grandfather's gonna love you.”
The albino continued to stare at her with that edge of panic, now that the impact of his casual choice to take over a Gregorovitch subsidiary clan had kicked in.
“Might help if I know your name, too. I'm Ordri Gregorovitch.” Ordri melted back into her human form, revealing glimmering light brown hair, olive-toned skin, and a casual black top and jeans. She was showing off now – partly elated by the growing fact that she was free of her former marriage, free to pursue personal interests on a broader scale.
Maybe she could work on wrapping this chunk of rock around her finger.
The albino blinked. “Oh. Um. I'm Bronislaw. No last name.”
No last name? Exiled from his last clan, it seems. Now Bronislaw, whom Ordri had already started addressing as Bron in her mind, finally began shifting out of his werewolf form.
Into a handsome and alarmingly naked male with bright pink eyes. Silvery hair curled from his head in soft tufts, giving him a roguish appearance with features that looked as if they had been sculpted out of marble. Despite her opinion on his intellect, and his rather abrasive and befuddled attitude towards her, a further nugget of arousal deposited itself into her system. Damn, that was one good-looking man. Really packing something down there.
Not that she was looking or anything.
“Oh,” Ordri said, finally forming one syllable out of the many whirling through her mind. She should have expected that extreme nakedness, really, given that he was walking around with full fur and nothing over it, like some Jungle Book or Tarzan kid. Maybe he really was some hippy wanderer from the edges of some unknown forest in God knows where. Who had, in a clueless manner, come blundering into a world he hadn't done much research on, pushing into Ordri's sphere of influence like a car crash. A naked and handsome hippy with certain parts that seemed larger than life dangling between his thighs. She tried hard not to stare at that for too long, or she'd be going nowhere fast.
Down, girl.
“My last clothes got torn up,” he said. “I had an altercation with a bear.”
“Seriously?” Ordri this time couldn't control her laughter. Bron flinched at her amusement, unsure if she mocked him or found some other idea unbelievably hilarious.
A slight pang of guilt stopped her mirth. She should be grieving for her husband, even if she didn't care for him or his betas. Any nodes of affection had long since dried up, leaving her bereft of anything warm or positive regarding Timaeus. It was like drifting in a cold tide. Her head might be above the water, she might be living and have nice and pretty things surrounding her, but that was it. Nothing else blessed her. If he died, as she'd suspected for a while, she just wouldn't care.
Now that the event came to pass, the reality of her emotions and mindset became true. It made her wonder if there was something fundamentally wrong inside that inhibited her from feeling the emotions she expected she was meant to feel, other than lust and physical attraction.
In all those years she'd been with him, she'd never said the words I love you once. Timaeus never said them either, never showed any hint he cared for her beyond making sure her needs were accommodated, in a bid to stop her complaining to her family about him. Sure, he'd been wealthy, living in a big house in the middle of nowhere, and she had the freedom of the forests, to visit her family at any time and tell them things were going okay. She was just alone most of the time. Alone in what should have been her own home.
She believed her grandfather wouldn't understand why she'd refuse such a mutually beneficial marriage, even if Timaeus did have that small flaw of sleeping around with anything that breathed.
And now, this odd albino from nowhere had come plummeting out of the darkness with a red smile to shake up the order of things. Almost as retribution for her husband and his close relatives for not choosing to aid the clans in their fight against the Russian werewolves. He stood in front of her, a perfect physical specimen, pink eyes stamped on a face framed by silver hair that made him look like a ghost in the shadows of the kitchen, where the light didn't touch.
“We're gonna have a lot of work to do,” Ordri murmured. “And you need some clothes. Like, right now.”