Pack Ebon Red (The Seven Mates of Zara Wolf Book 1) Page 24

  I let myself go completely, letting come what may. My mother's warning was still sharp in my mind, but there was no way I was going to force a mating either. I'd just … relax and see what happened instead.

  After a while, Silas and I rolled over so we were lying on our sides, front to front, and kissed some more. We ended up making out for so long that the sky was dark out by the time our breathing settled and our lips stilled.

  We both drifted off with our mouths just a hair's breadth apart.

  Sometime later, I awoke and found Silas dead asleep with one tattooed hand pillowed beneath his head. I very carefully untangled myself from his other arm and stood up, covering his half-naked body with a blanket from the back of the couch (even though I knew it was unlikely he was cold).

  Outside, the revelry of the Pairing continued, but these guys and me, we'd been through hell and back last night and deserved some fucking sleep. As I stood at the window looking out at the stars, Nic actually managed to sneak up on me, wrapping his arms around my waist from behind.

  “I've wanted to do this every day since sixth grade,” he whispered, nuzzling the side of my neck and giving me goose bumps.

  “Sixth graders do not dream of holding each other like this. No way. You'd have had to be in at least eighth.”

  “It was sixth.”

  “Eighth.”

  “Yes, Alpha.”

  I turned around in Nic's arms and hopped up onto the windowsill, pulling him between my legs for a kiss. I knew he could smell Silas on me, but for once, he didn't make a fuss. Nic just kissed me like I really was magic woven from starlight. When I reached down to unbutton my jeans, he helped me out of them and I had my second time right there in the window with moonlight streaming across my face.

  “Holy shit, it's snowing,” Tidus said, stepping outside on Sunday morning to a thin layer of white stretching across the clearing and frosting all the trees. Winter had kissed the forest with her last dying breath and it was beautiful, the snow glistening like diamonds from every blade of grass, every frozen drop of water, every spring bloomed flower.

  “Amber Ash is from California, right?” Nic asked Tidus, sounding suspiciously like he might be in a good mood. He flicked his eyes in my direction and I swear, my body became a sun, radiating heat and light from deep inside my belly. Last night, when Nic had slid his hardened cock into the slick warmth between my thighs, the pleasure had been so intense I'd wondered yet again if there was magic at work.

  I guess I just really liked sex?

  Tapping my cell against my thigh, the little moon and wolf charms jangled. I'd texted Faith to find out her plans, but she said she'd be in bed with Owen all day and wasn't going anywhere. Gross. But in a way, I was kind of relieved since that meant I could hunt with the boys, polish off the last day of the Pairing and then focus all my energy on the Contribution.

  As beautiful as it was out here, as much as I liked kissing Silas and fucking Nic, there were witches eating werewolves and vampires turning humans into revenants; there were faeries getting their necks snapped and old magic cracking sleepy eyes.

  I needed to puzzle it all out.

  “Yep. So Cal. We don't exactly get a lot of snow in San Diego.”

  Tidus tore his tank top over his head and dropped his pj pants, giving me a nice, long uninterrupted view of his golden body before he shifted into wolf form and went bounding out into the snow, tail wagging, paws tapping the ground in an invitation to play. Jax was sitting on the porch again and bared his teeth when Tidus came up and licked his mouth, essentially begging for a playmate. After several stupid moments of this, he finally acquiesced and joined the stormy eyed gray-gold wolf in the snow.

  “What are we hunting today, Alpha?” Montgomery asked, already fully dressed and covered in swords even though the day was just barely winking its way past sunrise.

  As the Alpha-Heir, I got to choose today's prey—the animal the boys and I would hunt together, feast on, and then take a trophy from. For example, my crazy mother had dragged my father into a fight with a full-grown black bear (whose fur had provided the trim for the dress I'd worn yesterday). And with that in mind, I had to remember that I had seven mates to help me hunt, not one like most alphas.

  Whatever we took down had to be big and mean and impressive enough to appease Majka, Nikolina, and the other alphas. Too bad humans had driven the grizzlies in this area to extinction in the thirties. I set my phone on the windowsill where Nic and I had made love last night and took a deep breath, fogging up the glass so I could use my finger to write a single word.

  Moose.

  “That's pretty gutsy of you, Alpha-Red,” Che said, using a seriously antiquated term for alpha female. A long time ago, before Majka was even born, alpha males would be referred to using the eye color from their pack name and alpha females with the hair color. So, whichever boy I chose as my mate would be Alpha-Ebon; I would be Alpha-Red. I had a feeling Che was mocking tradition again.

  “A large herd migrated onto pack lands a few years ago,” I said as I watched Jax chase Tidus in circles through the trees, their tongues lolling, their hot breath turning to clouds in the icy morning air. “There's a big bull, about a thousand pounds. I scouted him out several weeks ago.”

  “We'd be better off fighting a bear,” Nic said, and he was right. An adult moose was about ten times as dangerous as a black bear. If we were regular wolves, we'd only hunt a moose in extreme situations of starvation or if we'd found one that was sick, injured, or young. Hunting a healthy adult male was likely to get several pack members killed.

  But we weren't just wolves … we were werewolves.

  “Moose,” I said aloud, smearing my hand across the frosty window. “I name our Hunt.”

  Today's Pairing ritual was much less dramatic than the others, much more casual. Basically, all the attending pack members dressed up in their finest and lounged around eating from the banquet tables while they waited for us to complete our Hunt. After the kill, we'd have to drag what was left of the carcass back to the Hall, get all dolled up again, and officially present it to the Alpha.

  It was a test of independence, a way to gauge the strength of the future alpha pair—or in my case, the strength of my own miniature pack.

  Since I'd last seen the moose herd near the edge of the pack's land, up by the national park where my wildflower professor often took our class (the place where Julian had found me standing next to Nic's discarded boxers), that's where we started.

  Miles and miles of untamed, snow swept forest stretched out before us, this blanket of glistening white and brown and green beckoning the wild spirit inside of me, calling to the part of me that was wolf.

  I stood on the edge of a small crest, seven lupine bodies arranged around me in a random assortment of colors, and lifted my muzzle to scent the air.

  We'd started in the right spot. Already, I was picking up that faint musky-muddy odor that I'd been hoping for.

  'Bingo,' I said, using wolfspeak to address all my mates at once.

  'You may be the first alpha ever to start a Hunt with the word bingo,' Che said, stalking forward on liquid black paws, smoothing across the forest floor like he was made of shadows. 'How very modern of you.'

  'I try,' I told him, doing my best to affect a sarcastic-snooty lilt without actually speaking aloud. 'All I ever hear from my alpha-mother is how useless and unremarkable I am; I had to come up with something to define our generation.'

  Che Nocturne opened his mouth in a wolfy grin and then kicked up tufts of snow as he hopped from one rock to another, pausing with his dark head held high, violet eyes scanning the thick spindles of trunks that took up most of our view.

  I padded along between the rocks, almost silent on thick pads that took to the frosty landscape like snowshoes. Nic was in his usual spot, behind and to the left of me, his auburn form much more conspicuous in the whitened landscape than Jax's or Montgomery's or mine—even if I did have bloodred speckles that gave me away.


  Putting my nose to the ground, I tried to pick up the moose's scent but found that it was too far off to track like that just yet. Instead, I let Silas scent the wind and guide us west, through a copse of trees with such thick, needle heavy branches that the ground was dark and moist and brown beneath them, completely bereft of snow. Large green ferns dotted the earth around us, their fronds swaying gently in the breeze. In the distance, I could hear one of the curved portions of Coyote Creek swinging toward us before it ventured back into pack lands, the water bubbling melodically over rocks. Right now, we were technically in the national park.

  But those were arbitrary human boundaries.

  For us, the land simply was out here and we did as we pleased.

  'It's on the move,' Montgomery declared after a few moments of Silas trying to pinpoint the source of the smell, his gray-brown form launching up off the ground to join Che on a nearby rock.

  'And it's moving quick,' he added, just before he took off and I followed, Nic and Tidus on my heels, Anubis taking up the rear. The other boys ran in front of me, spreading out through the trees and putting some space between us. To take down the moose, we'd need to come at it from all sides.

  'Straight ahead,' Che told us, his voice getting rough with the excitement of the Hunt.

  As soon as we broke through the next dense thicket of trees, I saw it and let out a sharp yip to alert the others, veering abruptly off to the left to flank the massive hulking animal.

  I didn't think most humans even knew how large a moose really was. I mean, the one I was looking at now was technically a smaller subspecies (the big ones live in Alaska), and yet it quite literally towered above us.

  As soon as it saw me, it raised its massive brown head and let out a bellow, a rack of antlers perched atop its skull like a chandelier. And then it took off, plowing through the snow like it was no trouble at all, cutting across a large clearing that was so heavily compacted with ice and frost that if I'd been a normal wolf, I'm not sure that I could've kept up.

  Lucky for me that I wasn't.

  I flew after our prey and for a brief moment, I was all alone in the clearing, just me and the cold blue sky above. As soon as I hit the tree line, I ran into Che. Our strides matched up until we were running side by side, kicking up powdery clouds of snow in our wake, listening to the not-so-distant howl of one of our pack mates—it was Anubis.

  Where are you? that sound asked without words, without wolfspeak, just the haunting echoes of an ancient song.

  Right here, came another howl, this one even closer. Tidus.

  Che and I didn't stop to signal the others; we just kept running.

  'We're gaining on him,' I said as we hit a portion of the icy creek and followed the moose right over it. At that point, my blood was pumping hot and fierce in my veins, my heart thundering so hard inside my chest that I felt almost dizzy, light-headed.

  'The cliff, Zara,' Che said, slamming his massive body against my shoulder and pushing me off-track, keeping me from going down the side of a rocky incline that would have hurt like hell had I plunged off it. The moose, however, had no such problems, skidding down a steep, snowy incline and releasing a low, gruff bellow when he discovered that Nic, Tidus, and Anubis were already down there waiting for him.

  Tidus—for all his bubbly, bright-eyed energy—went in for the kill with a vicious baring of teeth, grabbing for the moose's left rear leg and nearly getting nailed in the throat when he missed.

  Che and I continued running, weaving through the trees with our shoulders touching, breath panting as we followed the chase from up above. He moved like a dark ghost beside me, so silent and fluid in the environment that it looked like he wasn't quite a part of it, just a restless spirit paying a brief visit.

  His violet gaze met mine and that initial shock I'd felt when I'd first laid eyes on him came rushing back to me, this surging fire in my belly, this desperate curiosity. Who was this hulking enigma of a man that had gotten me this close to mating with him at our very first meeting?

  'I'm still interested,' he whispered in my mind, knocking his shoulder into mine again. This time, it was a playful, flirtatious gesture.

  We kept running, rubbing our heaving, panting bodies together as we sprinted through the trees, tasting the bloodlust in the air, the nearness of the kill. I could feel through our pack bond that it was close, close, close. Hot fresh blood would spill, stain our lips with red, fill our bellies with meat. It was about as primal a feeling as there was, the most basic of urges.

  Or at least, very close to it.

  There was one other basic urge that was sweeping over me during that Hunt, this strange need that Nic had awakened, that the Bonding had piqued, that Che was teasing as he rubbed his muscles against mine and then knocked me over.

  As I rolled, I shifted into human form, ending up on my back with Che on top of me.

  But he damn well knew that submission was not the name of the game.

  My arms wrapped around the thick dark fur of his neck, his pelt as black as a starless night, rippling away into the pale softness of his human skin.

  “Alpha,” he grated, just before I spread my thighs for him and he entered me with one long, deep thrust. I threw my head back into the frostbitten leaves beneath us, my breath steaming in the cool air, bloodred hair coiled in the snow.

  Che lowered his lips to my throat and kissed the most vulnerable spot on my body with just a hint of teeth hiding behind that sensual touch of his. I had no idea who he was as a person, but Majka had been right about one thing—I did have a natural attraction to Che. It was this deep, dark bestial thing inside of me that rose to the surface the night of the Bonding. I didn't quite understand it yet, but I liked it.

  My lids were heavy and hooded, purple eyes staring up at the canopy of trees as Che thrust his powerful hips into me over and over and over again. The sounds he made … were less than human.

  But we weren't human now, were we?

  I moaned, too, tainting the quiet forest air with lust and need, raising my pelvis to meet him. Our naked bodies were cupped in soft, cool earth, leaves rustling with every sinful movement, the distant howl of wolves echoing around us. The pack. My pack. I needed to check in with them—they were looking for me—but first, I needed to finish mating.

  And there was no doubt in my mind that that was exactly what we were doing.

  This was Zara Wolf, not Zara Castille, the girl Nic had made love to. I was thinking with all of my wolf brain right now, squeezing Che's naked muscular body between my thighs, digging my fingers into his raven-dark hair and letting him suck and kiss and bite my throat.

  I did not kiss him on the mouth, not yet. That was a human thing and there were no humans here.

  Che's body pressed mine into the dirt, rubbed along the length of me, touching everywhere, claiming everything. He really did feel like my alpha male in that moment, my Alpha-Ebon. And I … felt like his alpha female, his Alpha-Red.

  My breasts, my clit, my cunt, all of it responded to his strong, deep thrusts, to the sweat that beaded on his skin, the growls that scraped past his throat. His wicked wild rhythm is what drove me over the edge, and we came together, my thighs locked tight around him at the same moment I felt this instinctual flutter of muscles inside my core.

  My body urged his to finish, to give me pups—which thankfully would not happen because of the buttercup birth control I'd been taking—and then we both shuttered, cried out, clung to one another … and then went still.

  Che slid off of me and rolled onto his back, panting harshly.

  As I sat up and stared down at him, he cracked his amethyst eyes to look back up at me.

  Neither of us said anything; we just stared at each other. What was there to say with words that our bodies hadn't already said for us?

  'Zara.' It was Nic, this awful, tight strain to his wolfspeak voice that made me feel sick to my stomach. At first, I thought he'd seen or heard or somehow felt what I'd just done with Che—not that I was go
ing to hide it from him because I wasn't—but then I felt a ripple of wild, confused fear hit him first, then Anubis, Silas, Montgomery, Jax, Tidus.

  I was on my feet in an instant.

  'Where are you?' I asked as Che stood up beside me, still panting and sweating. I ignored the warm wetness between my legs, the vibrant pulsing of my body, the frantic flutter of his heartbeat. Something was happening. Something bad.

  'Don't howl. Don't make any sound at all. Just get down the incline and follow the game trail.'

  I didn't hesitate to shift back and neither did Che. We let our bodies melt into wolf form and carefully, slowly picked our way down the cliff. As soon as we were safely on the ground, we loped along the small cleared path through the foliage—an obvious game trail used by deer, elk, moose—and found six wolves crouched at the edge of another incline.

  'What is it?' I asked, trying not to let my imagination get the best of me. Images of Diya's blood-soaked bed would not stop flashing through my mind. 'Goddamn it, Nic.'

  I scooted forward until I was close enough to see what they were all looking at.

  My mind paused, mentally rewound the image, watched it again.

  I shifted carefully back to human form and curled my fingers around the edge of the cliff, pulling myself forward as much as I could, blinking in shock at the sight that greeted me down below, buried in a patch of pink and purple wildflowers that were frosted with snow.

  It was Julian, the Julian from my science class, the Julian that I was supposed to work on my final project with, that always smelt like vampires and who we'd planned to follow come Monday morning.

  His mouth was buried in the throat of a man I recognized from his passionate and often whimsical depictions of native Oregon wildflowers—Mr. Heath, my professor. Rivulets of red blood ran down his neck as he clutched helplessly at Julian's dishwasher blonde hair. Most vampires rolled their prey before they fed—as in, basically hypnotized them so they weren't aware of anything but the pleasant rush of pheromones from the bite—but Julian hadn't even bothered.