Chapter Two
Bron stared at the female werewolf as she slept, a mix of confusing emotions raking through him. When he first chose to bring a final rest to his wandering, to settle down in a remote corner of Bulgaria and start a family of his own, admittedly by hijacking a ready-made family, using the ancient rite of challenge – he didn't expect someone like Ordri Gregorovitch to throw his plans awry.
Ever since he'd been cast out, the name of his former family burned off him forever, he roamed the wilds, living on nature, hunting in the highest mountains and the tranquil lakes, always careful to avoid detection. The moving made him lonely, made him miss the appeal of close contact, of people staring at him with adoring eyes and warmth in their voices. How long since that warmth turned to hate and ashes in his heart? How long until he finally settled down and placed that agony to rest?
Mad demon, someone had whispered. The only good place for you is six feet under the earth, buried in an unmarked grave. The memory incited a well of rage within, flamed his blood until it burned hot, and he shivered from the influx of emotion.
That same rage propelled him on the day he found that wretched little clan, with that female werewolf who smelled of repression and malcontent, and it struck him then, that maybe here lay an answer. Maybe he could simply take the female for his own, and mold her into something desirable and worthy, after he had helped coax her out of her grief... and claimed her, of course. This happened all the time, after all. Females liked strong warriors. Having the strongest mate meant the strongest children, and a good bloodline to bless their descendants afterward. Very rarely in history did a female werewolf reject the advances of a male conqueror.
Except, he hadn't realized she'd be a damned Gregorovitch.
Such strength, he thought, admiring her sleeping form, stroking at the stubble forming on his cheek. He tried not to think about how soft she looked, how it stirred the arousal in his loins and made it hard to concentrate. Oh no. He couldn't disrespect that Gregorovitch any more than he'd done already. A noble woman, of noble blood, stuck in a household where no one seemed to care for her or respect her for what she was.
And now I have to make nice with her family and vassals. And apparently learn how to treat a woman. He chewed the inside of his cheek. He still couldn't quite work out what he'd done wrong, exactly. Apart from not knowing she happened to be of noble blood. She certainly found a lot of things wrong with him, and didn't hesitate on telling him so. Stupid and ignorant were the nicest things she said of him.
Still, the more he lived with her, and found out about her stubborn, don't-mess-me-around ways, the more he liked her. The more he wanted to claim her, to keep that wild beauty as his own. Such luminescent orange eyes. Such a beautiful perk to her red, red lips. And those little spots that appeared in her cheeks when she smiled – or well, laughed at him – that caused interesting fluctuations in his heart. Yes. He had chosen well with regards to looks. In terms of personality matching – the wisdom of that decision remained to be seen. Nobles always held a lot of bite, and a vastly inflated sense of their superiority. The sort that got on your nerves.
There was some ground to that superiority. Nobles tended to be stronger physically than the average werewolf. They shifted faster into feral. And they controlled their feral forms better.
Theoretically.
It might be nice to have her like him for who he was, rather than for the power he exhibited. She already didn't seem to care about his freakish colorings – the white tint of a runt, a child that no one believed could grow up to become the boulder of muscle he lived as today.
He just needed to survive family negotiations. Without having his head lopped off during the debate.
“I know you're standing there staring at me.”
He blinked, startled by her voice and those liquid orange eyes popping open, to fixate a disapproving stare his way.
“I'll leave.” Curses, why did he always act like a tongue-tied idiot? I'll leave. Genius. Utter genius. He might as well just roll over and expose his belly and have everything torn out of him. Some supposed alpha he was, if he couldn't even talk to a potential mate without fucking things up.
“I recommend you get yourself dressed up,” Ordri said, glancing at the clock situated by the side of her bed. “Because I'd say you have about twenty minutes before the family delegation arrives to see what threat you pose.”
Right. The family “dinner.” Even while they were fighting an invasion of Russian werewolves from the borders, they managed to find time to see the new werewolf in their midst. He really didn't like talking, or being forced into that kind of situation. Something in his mind stirred from long ago, when he still possessed a name, a family to fall back on when the going got tough, and the snows piled up outside their doors. When he wanted to find a new home and a different name, Gregorovitch certainly hadn't been the one he had in mind.
Twenty minutes later, as a perpetually amused Ordri Gregorovitch stood by his side, lips curled up in a breath-taking smirk, arms folded over her substantial, incredibly perky chest, which had a navy blue jacket zipped up over it – the others waltzed into the house.
Not just Gregorovitches, either. Fucking Spirovas, too. Bron immediately started sweating profusely, seeing his life flash before his eyes. Fucking Spirovas and Gregorovitches. He was up to his ass in nobility, with nowhere to run.
He grunted out a greeting. “Good day, noble ones. I am Bronislaw, no last name.”
The female Spirova who emanated authority out of every pore examined him with her cold, startling eyes. Yes, this one was every inch the alpha. He imagined if you even dared breathing a contradiction to the fact, bad things would happen. Of the intestine unraveling kind. “Not a Russian. That's a good start.” And, completely ignoring him, Elinor Spirova went over to Ordri and hugged her. “I see what you mean. An impressive male specimen.”
Aghast at being completely ignored by an alpha, Bron turned to the next, a Kostya Gregorovitch. According to the mouthy Ordri, this was her brother. Kostya gave him a wan smile. “You really killed Timaeus? You look like a pup that can barely tell its rear end from its front.”
Bron growled at this insult, fangs beginning to emerge from his thin lips. “Why don't you challenge me, then? Then you'll see how much like a 'pup' I am.”
“Relax, man,” Kostya said, patting Bron on the chest, forcing him to take a step backwards. “You're not going to get anywhere if you threaten the brother of your new bride. Or, well, anyone she knows, really. Oh boy, you got yourself in a mess.”
He skipped past Bron with barely suppressed glee, wearing the exact same fucking smirk Ordri had stamped on her lips. After the two alphas came a small delegation of others that Ordri had conveniently neglected to brief him on. And, was that an Armanev? A fucking Armanev as well? Jesus Christ, had he aggravated every single fucking noble in the country?
Bron felt positively ill as he followed the delegation of six new werewolves to the living room, with a table carefully prepared with drinks and eight chairs, some filched from other rooms. The place itself stank of grandiosity, with walls over two hundred years old, holding residual decorations of a place once ruled by the Ottoman Empire. A pattern of eyes lined with blue dominated one wall.
Seated at the table next to Ordri, Elinor Spirova started the barrage of questions, drilling his character into oblivion.
“What's your purpose in choosing to settle at the base of our mountains, and conquering one of our allied clans?”
He glanced to Ordri in slight desperation. She mouthed to him: truth.
“I wanted to settle down. I had been cast out by my former family, whose name I have been forbidden to reveal.” The name danced in his mind for a moment, before it crisped out, retreating to a murky corner, where he locked up everything else he wasn't supposed to think or feel. “My only aim was to give myself a name again. I... did not intend it to be Gregorovitch, however. That came as a slight surprise, when your sister kicked me in the balls and proceeded to declare her nobility.”
Kostya snorted, grinning like an imp. “Seriously? You did that, Ordri?”
“Uh huh.” Ordri nodded. “He seemed to think that I was his property, to do with as he wished. Don't worry. He's keeping his hands to himself now,” she added, as a spark of anger coated her brother's expression.
“So, you have no affiliations? No allies, no one who might be looking for you, and no ambition above receiving a name?” Elinor kept the relentless questioning up. Her mouth twisted obnoxiously, though her eyes remained calm, and her scent undefinable. Excitement radiated off Kostya and the Armanev man who dropped his name as Yanus, and pride from the ancient Gregorovitch codger, Filip. How old must that one be? He looked about a hundred. And who were the other two, again? A Spirova – Markus, someone said. And... Sebastian. Another one of Ordri's brothers. God, how many brothers did she have?
“No affiliations,” Bron admitted, though it grated him to do so. Announcing his lone wolf status triggered those low-lying strands of pain, the echo of the things that once were. No one wanted to be alone. Not really. Werewolves, like humans, were pack animals. Loneliness drove them peculiar, mad. It ate at souls until nothing remained.
“Interesting,” Elinor said. She drank out of the glass in front of her, which sparkled with white vintage wine. “You don't smell of deception. You are afraid, though.”
“Wouldn't you be?” Bron muttered. “I made a choice with unintended consequences. I only picked this abode because Ordri smelled like misery.” Okay, she was hot as well, but they didn't need to know that. “I had no clue beyond that.”
“Misery...?” Elinor glanced sharply at Ordri. “Is there something you haven't been telling us?”
Kostya and Sebastian glared at their sister, the same question written over their faces.
Under the penetrating glares of three families, Ordri nervously shuffled her feet, some of that former confidence gone. Filip blinked rheumy eyes, one white eyebrow raised in an approximation of unhappiness.
“Yeah, about that,” Ordri almost whispered, and Bron watched the guilt creep onto her face. He didn't understand what she needed to be guilty about, but observed her expressions anyway, enthralled by her beauty. “Timaeus and I hadn't been getting on for a while. He slept with women in brothels, and he only really made sure I was catered to, because he enjoyed the honor of being granted the Gregorovitch family name.”
Kostya and Sebastian simultaneously hissed. The brothers shared virtually identical expressions of anger at this point, and Bron admired their protective attitude towards their sister. This was good. This was how families should be.
“Is this true?” Filip's voice came out, querulous, his brows now furrowed in question. “If so, then, dear child, why not say anything?”
Ordri shrugged helplessly. “I didn't think it would matter. He was not technically mistreating me. He never said a bad word, or anything that would give you cause to disengage him from our alliance. And he did contribute a lot to Gregorovitch business.”
“Apart from the little slight of not bothering to assist us in the clan shitfest going on at the moment,” Kostya pointed out.
“Child,” Filip said, glaring at his granddaughter's stupidity, “I don't know what impression you have of me, to even think of comparing me to those treacherous Armanevs – no offense,” he added to Yanus.
“None taken.”
“But I do harbour some problems with the idea of infidelity. I might be a stuffy old man, but I'm not that stuffy an old man. We're your family. All of us. We do have interest in your personal wellbeing.”
“Aw, shit,” Ordri said. Was that a tear forming in her eye? “Well. I actually... thought you would be angry at me for even suggesting divorcing him.”
Filip appeared sad at this, his watery eyes staring at his glass. “I did not live my whole life to have my children, and my children's children, afraid of me. I know what it is like to not have choices. All I saw was that you went into that marriage willingly, and you never said a word on the matter. How are we to know the truth if you don't speak?”
Now, somehow, instead of the family dinner turning into a grilling of Bron and whether he might be fit enough to wear the mantle of Gregorovitch, it instead seemed to have reverted to an emotional flaming of Ordri, regarding her implicit silence over the years for a marriage she didn't care about. Bron wondered what would keep someone stagnant for so long, until they smelled like the despair he had discovered. Surely there came a point where you held your head high and said, no more. Surely a noble wouldn't have stood for it.
But she did. A wave of purpose injected him. He had saved her from that. Inadvertently. And she was right. He needed to take responsibility, instead of flee this family madness. He needed to somehow make this work.
“I'm sorry,” she said, shame burning her cheeks. “I summoned you happily to deal with Bronislaw over there, but not to examine the shambles of my own marriage. I'll be honest. I forgot about it most days. It was easier just to not think about things, and to accept that things could always be worse.”
Bron's attention diverted elsewhere. His nostrils flared, as a new scent carried to him, faint and fair, perhaps imagined rather than real. A scent of danger.
“Excuse me,” he said politely, causing all eyes to turn upon him. He recognized that scent. It made the hairs tingle upon his skin, and the hackles rise on his back. “But how is the fight between you and the Russian clans going on?”
Elinor pursed her lips thoughtfully. “It's not great, though we do have superior numbers, now. We routed them in Sapareva Banya, but they've whittled down our numbers elsewhere. As it stands, they've lost about thirty-four werewolves. We've lost forty-five.”
Big numbers for the fact that werewolves barely went over two hundred in any established country. The threat loomed closer.
“What will happen if they kill all of you?”
Elinor exchanged a look with Filip. “It would put them at an advantage.”
Bron nodded, and started morphing on the spot. “Get your battle forms ready. I sense danger on the horizon.”
“What?” Elinor stared at him. “I sense nothing.” She paused, nostrils twitching. The others followed suit, giving a comical display of wriggling noses.
It might have been worse, if the enemy hadn't chosen to stalk them upwind – which suggested that they opted for surrounding the property, rather than approaching it from one side.
How had they known? How had they followed?
“Shit.” Elinor grabbed her phone. “Everyone, call for backup. Ordri, where can we go? Hide?”
Yanus, Kostya, Markus and Elinor assaulted their phones, calling for help, as the impending scent of doom neared. Bron inhaled the familiar scent, his hands clenching into white, balled fists, his hackles rising in anger and the overwhelming sense of loss and betrayal.
Was this his fault? Did they follow him?
No. Impossible. No one had cared about him for years. And he would have known, would have caught wind of them months ago.
Ordri, trembling with eyes now wide in terror at the realization that they were all in terrible, terrible danger, pointed a shaking finger out back. “We have... a safe passage. A tunnel that leads to it from the library. Timaeus liked his old-fashioned hideouts. Bron... did you?” She swallowed the words, then continued, “did you know this would happen?”
No. I really didn't. “I didn’t.” He gritted his teeth. “I am sorry. My timing... not the best, is it?”
“No,” Elinor agreed. “But you did warn us. So that's something.”
Heart heavy, Bron stood up with the rest of the werewolves, morphing into their feral forms, a vibe of savagery permeating the atmosphere. A surge of protectiveness overcame him, and his instinct sent him over to Ordri's side. She examined him with those glowing orange eyes, her gray and brown flecked muzzle twisted in a grimace.
“You better put that combat talent of yours to good use,” she growled at him. Fiery determination soared in her eyes, made him consider the power she emanated. Where had she been his whole life?
“To protect you, I will,” he promised. In a bizarre quirk of fate, Bronislaw the wanderer, Bronislaw the nameless, found himself fast embroiled in an oncoming battle.
Against the side that had conquered his original family, and given him no status.
That was the scent he recognized, like his own back hand.
A scent that came heavy with years of black cigar smoke, of haughty judgements and grand ambitions. A leader of the name he was forbidden.
An enemy of his new people. His new family. He placed a reassuring paw on Ordri. “You are mine. And I will defend you until the end.”
He knew his words sounded absurd, puny in the face of everything occurring, but he saw the relief etched in her face, the reassurance.
“Big words for someone you've known a week,” Ordri said, though she leaned her furred head onto his shoulder. “But thank you.”