Raining Kisses (The Opeth Pack Saga Book 2) (3 page)

Katarina looked at Lukina.

Lukina nodded and took a sip of port. “It's safe here.”

Katarina nodded again, tentatively picked up her glass and looked at the dark red alcohol. Bringing the glass to her lips, she downed the entire contents in one shot. “Another, please.”

“Okay.” Lukina took her glass and refilled it. She looked up at Nicholaus, “We have business to discuss, Nicholaus.”

He moved closer to Katarina, aware of her free hand now in his and how tight she gripped him. “I gathered that. Is this going to be a really long night? It's already after two AM.”

“Well,” Lukina paused, took another sip and then set her glass on the coffee table. “It depends.”

He sighed, arching a brow in irritation. He'd once heard on the open mental channel between the pack that when Lukina showed up, she'd become the new pack messenger. Hearing from her usually meant terrible things were on the way. While he'd not maintained contact with anyone from the Opeth Pack, he’d still been informed of goings on through the mental pathways where words traveled with less restriction. “On what?”

“On whether you decide to help us or not.” Lukina's stare pierced through any hope he had for a short and simple resolution.

“Of course,” Nicholaus finished his glass and handed it to Lukina. “Refill it.” Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, he looked down at the hand in his, let his gaze travel up Katarina’s arm and stopped at her face. Tears silently slid down her cheeks from dark green eyes, making him ache to kiss those tears away like he had so many times in the past.

He shook the thought off. This was a new land and he was not pack.

Lukina acknowledged him, refilled all three glasses then planted herself in the chair beside the couch. “You'll want to sit for this.”

He shook his head, “I prefer to stand, thank you.” At least he did until he'd glanced at Katarina’s sad, desperate eyes. “Okay, I’ll have a seat beside Katarina.”

Nicholaus moved a pillow, plopped down beside Katarina. Reluctantly, he threw his arm around her. When she didn’t flinch at the contact, he pulled her closer. He found her body temperature warming slightly, probably from the alcohol.

As upset as he was for having his sleep interrupted, he couldn’t help himself. Snuggling closer to Katarina seemed natural, save for the absence of Krystyna on his other side as the third in their supposedly undying bond. “What’s so important?”

Lukina crossed her legs, looked back toward the mountains in the distance. “I love what you’ve done with the place.” She reached for her port.

Gritting his teeth, Nicholaus leaned forward. “While I don't mind the interruption of former pack mates, I do mind losing sleep. So you’d better start telling me why you're both here.”

Katarina began sobbing on his shoulder.

Smoothing a hand down her back, he pulled her tighter to him, holding her and rocking her back and forth gently just like he used to do when they were younger.

Her tears pooled on his shoulder. He used the cloth of the robe to gently wipe away her tears, then pushed her back and looked into her large, round eyes. It hit him then. “Where is Krystyna?” Another pack healer, she shared in the triad that should have included Nicholaus and Katarina before he left.

Lukina lifted her head. “You know we have a new Alpha.”

“Yes. And?”

“Józsi took over after he killed Kiba. The necessity of his ascending to the rank of Alpha is predicating Prophecy is coming true, despite some stubborn males’,” she almost spat the last two words out, “desire to avoid responsibility.”

He lowered his gaze. “I could care less about prophecy. Where is Krystyna?”

“Prophecy has dictated that Józsi would rule our pack for a time until his rule has passed. In such time, we would have great enemies.”

He narrowed his focus to just Lukina, glaring sharp daggers at her. She clearly wanted to remind him of duties he shirked years ago and nothing more. The least she could do was answer his question. “Again,” his impatience ran thin by now, “You're quoting bullshit nobody need bother me with. Where. Is. Krys?”

“She's been kidnapped.” Katarina blurted the words out, and then began to sob.

Nicholaus stiffened and felt his blood turn cold. “What? How the hell could that be? She's a strong warrior and can fend off any attackers. Who did this and who let this happen?”

Katarina sobbed louder and fell forward onto his lap.

“Son of a bitch…Who let this happen?” Nicholaus shifted his weight on the couch so he lay against the arm. He pulled Katarina into his embrace, stroked her sides and arms in an attempt to calm her.

She rested her head against his stomach and wrapped both arms around him while his robe muted her cries.

Nicholaus ran his fingers through her long dark red hair. He massaged her scalp, tried to send calming energy into her but found himself unable, probably from exhaustion. Of course he hadn’t had to use much energy since he'd been in the States.

No need when you rarely went out other than to function as a human and occasionally as a wolf.

Of course his body couldn't ignore the fact that her head was by his hardening groin. Of course he’d felt the throes of lust the second he’d spotted her earlier but he’d refused to acknowledge them, preferring to retire alone with his hand for the night.

Her nails dug into his bicep, bringing him back to the matter at hand.

“You did.” Lukina glared back at him, daggers in her gaze.

He stiffened. “Little girl—”

Lukina loomed forward, hard to do for such a little girl compared to Nicholaus, but she still could cut down a grown man with her sharp tongue. “No, you left, you bastard. You left your mates to die at the hands of a murderous Alpha just like my bastard mate did before we recovered him.” Lukina’s voice rose in pitch, indicative of her infamous temper.

Nicholaus’s jaw set. Yes, her seething expression put him off but he couldn’t be bothered with that. The first course of action was to figure out who kidnapped Katarina's lover. “Skip the past bullshit, woman. Who took her?”

He tried again to ease Katarina’s sorrow but found himself lacking in the energy department. The heat in the room rose along with Lukina’s seething expression.

“The males of this pack are fucking stupid.” She cocked her hand back to toss the glass toward the island in his kitchen.

Before he clenched his fists, Katarina lifted her head.

In an instant, the air calmed, Lukina’s energy waned and things returned to normal.

Surely this was Katarina’s healing power.

“I'm sorry.” Lukina drew out a sigh. “I’m just so frustrated.” She closed her eyes, let her shoulders relax, then faced Nicholaus. “A rival pack is waging war against us, Nicholaus. They’re trying to throw the Hungarian wolves out of our lands. They’ve succeeded already by overtaking a few of the smaller packs on the outskirts of the country and have decided to move inward.”

“Do you know who is leading them?”

She shook her head. “No, not a clue. We know it’s a bunch of Turkish wolves and that the night I left to come back for Józsi and Ilona, they ransacked the village Krystyna was healing in. They kidnapped her and a few others who were loyal to Kiba.”

“Kiba’s dead now. It shouldn’t matter.” He rubbed his chin and breathed out a sigh.

“Right. But we’re a new pack now with Józsi coming into his true position.”

Nicholaus rubbed his chin. “So what now?”

“We need you to come back with us and assume your position beside Józsi.”

The blood in his veins turned to ice. He stiffened, jerked back against the couch and felt like he’d been punched in the gut. No. Not again. That was not the fate he'd had in mind for himself. Quiet retirement among the humans suited him better than being the one responsible for more blood being spilled. “I don’t understand. You can’t mean…”

“You have a gift. You used it to protect your lovers once. You can—”

“I used it to protect them, but I had to deal with the aftermath and fall out. Do you know what it's like being an outcast? Because you did what supposedly came natural to you? We’re killers and aggressors, Lukina. That is our nature.”

“And we’re pack mates and a family. That is also our nature.”

Katarina’s words stunned him into silence.

“You don’t have to,” she sniffled, “If you don't want to but…”

He didn’t want to hear this shit. Not after what Lukina was asking of him.

“You don’t have to come back and slaughter an entire hoard, that’s what I’m saying,” Lukina cut into his thoughts. “We need all the males we can get to help. Józsi as Alpha is doing the best he can but he’s only helping us build and gather resources while we go out and find the lost members of this pack. Some of you didn't leave by choice.”

“You say that as though my leaving was a bad thing.”

Lukina glared.

He looked away, turning his gaze on the mountains in the distance. At this hour, the urban hip hop club was shut down and their neon blue lights had been turned off. Street lights remained the only way humans could see. His wolf’s vision trumped humans and allowed him to see into the mountains. He sighed, unable to fathom the consequences of what Lukina asked of him.

“Has the pack not solidified under Józsi's rule to become a force again?”

Lukina shook her head. “He’s having trouble adjusting, going through mood swings, addictions, time differences and relearning the cycle of what it means to be a wolf. Something some of us will never forget.”

He didn’t miss the bite of her words. Nicholaus narrowed his eyes. “Go on.”

“So yes, we have a new, non-crazy Alpha but he acts erratically sometimes. No, before you ask, he’s not sick. He’s not adjusting well.”

Józsi never wanted the position of pack alpha?”

“No. But he can't fight fate.” Katarina lifted her head again and met Nicholaus’s gaze. Her green eyes burned with desperation, pleading with him to ask more questions.

”No,” he sighed heavily, rested a hand on the back of Katarina’s head, “I suppose no one can in the end, can they?”

She shook her head. “It’s all you have to do. Come home. No one is asking you to use your gift, just give us one more able body in search of Krystyna.”

The syrupy softness in her voice made his heart pound. Imagine that, after all this time.

Not like he’d ever forget.

She batted her eyelashes.

Air fled his lungs at the simple gesture. Yes, she would use her body to pull him; all the women of the pack did that with their true mates. Nicholaus fought the urge to swallow, lest he show fear and renege on his vow to avoid pack politics.

Her hand slithered up his chest, fingers spread.

Warmth flooded his chest, spread throughout each limb, including the one currently cradled beneath her belly and his pants. “This isn’t fair, Katarina.”

“Neither was letting us go, but you did it anyway.”

Even she could hold onto spite. Tilting his head, Nicholaus closed his eyes, let himself succumb to the comfort of her power before it sunk into his body. He saw the fertile lands of Hungary, the smell of Lake Balaton on the wind. Then he saw the village and the faces of those who feared him after he’d slaughtered her family in cold blood. He’d heard the screams from her brother and father, his teeth remembered the feel of soft flesh filling his mouth along with their blood.

The eyes of those lecherous men vowing revenge on him kept him awake at night. And now they stared back at him, wicked grins across their distorted faces.

Laughter, maniacal and high pitched, echoed through the night.

“You’re the one who could be the downfall of our entire race if we let you ascend to your position and impregnate them. We do what we do to these girls out of protection.”

“Never!” Nicholaus found his voice though his throat was parched. He remembered very clearly rushing Katarina’s father first, then things went dark.

Nothing, not even the pale moonlight shining brightly could erase that memory.

Then, the vision was gone, returning him to see Lukina standing in front of him, glass precariously held with two fingers while her eyes were closed and she drew in steady, slow breaths.

“You’re seeing something incorrectly again, aren't you?”

He looked down at Katarina, felt, rather than saw her body curl into his.

“I'm seeing nothing.”

“Fine,” she sighed. “Come home, please?”

Nicholaus closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. Her ability to make him function when he didn't want to kept him going after he’d murdered her father and brother. She had been the calm to force his hand, make him get out of bed daily. At least until he stopped visiting and decided to make haste to America. “What can I do that others cannot?”

“You have more power and physical strength. You have a distance from the events we do not. Józsi would trust your word,
drágám.
You would be able to help steady him and provide us with one more pillar of strength. Józsi needs that, as does the pack.”

Nicholaus blinked and waved a hand beside his face. “Let me get this straight. You want me back to help rescue Krystyna and stabilize a pack that has turned its back on me? Fuck that shit.”

“It didn’t turn on you. It feared you.” Katarina’s soft voice cut through the red he began seeing.

“You’re right. They did fear me. Then they ostracized me. So I did the only responsible thing I could.”

Lukina walked back toward the kitchen, brought back a whiskey bottle. She refilled all three glasses, “You don't get it, do you? They didn’t fear you; they feared the unknown. Your behavior was no longer consistent because the change forced you to fucking
grow up
!”

Katarina moved, rolled to her side and cuddled closer. “You only needed—”

“Skip it.”

“Fine.” She huffed and reached for the now full glass. Bringing herself to a sitting position, Katarina took a sip of the whiskey, wiped her lips with the back of her hand, then faced Nicholaus. “You are going to remain hard, aren’t you?”

He didn’t reply. What was there to be said? The choices he’d made in life were the ones best for everyone else. Prophecy be damned!

Of course it would have helped him to know what fate he was truly avoiding by living a solitary existence. Without the large details, he could only remove himself, thus keeping his mates safe from the danger of his rage.