Leader of the Pack (20 page)

“The way he’s treating her, there are fairly solid rumors that he intends to mate with her.”

Rafe roared and threw a nearby chair across the room. “I want her back untouched!”

“It’s too late for that.”

“Then I want her back as unmarred as possible. Before he mates with her. She’s mine. I don’t care how you do it. Just bring her here.” Rafe moved in so close to the lycan that the lycan snarled at the proximity. An odor that made him sick permeated the air around them. He wanted to rip Rafe’s throat out but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Rafe smiled at the lycan as if he knew what was going through the man’s mind, and it amused him. “You’ll do as you’re told. You know what will happen to her if you don’t.”

Rafe swept out of the room, leaving the lycan standing there. A tear formed in the large man’s eye. Somewhere in the back of his mind he could feel fear and pain. He let his head fall back, on his shoulders and a howl bleeding with misery echoed through the building. Rafe smiled when he heard the sound. He looked over at the tiger that was walking beside him. “Bring me some more of their women.”

* * * *

Jenna was pacing back and forth in her room. She was getting increasingly antsy. The large lioness just stared at her with distaste. Kara mostly slept, but always seemed to be awake when Jenna wanted to try and get out. Jenna wasn’t stupid enough to think that she wasn’t a prisoner. It had only been a day and she wanted out already. Her brain was warring between knowing that Rafe wasn’t going to share his power with her and not caring.

Her logic told her that it wasn’t like her to not care, but every time she thought about it in detail, Rafe would float into her mind and she would give in and go take a nap.

Kara was watching her uncertainly. Usually they didn’t fight it this much. She was starting to think that Jenna had more of brain than Rafe was giving her credit for. The girl was playing him at least a little bit, and Rafe was far too full of himself to notice. She was going to be trouble. Kara watched Jenna pace and hoped that Rafe would be back soon to reassert himself. She didn’t want to have him summoned. He hated that. But she also didn’t want to get into a fight with the girl. She hated the smell of lycans.

Chapter 9

Is treasa dithis a’ dol thar àn àtha na fad’ o chèile.

Two should stay together when crossing a ford.

-Gaelic Proverb

Cullen had to give Keith credit. He was nothing if not efficient. Cullen was looking over the pile of reports on his desk. It had only taken Keith 24 hours to produce a background report on Rafe Senach. Cullen was reading over the man’s information. He looked relatively innocuous, if the reports were to be taken at face value. There really wasn’t much more to it than what Aislinn had told him the other day, except some previous addresses that Keith already sent people to check out, along with the address of the compound that Aislinn had been held at. The idea of what the man had done to her had Cullen contemplating the things he intended to do to Rafe.

Cullen also had a list of names. On the list were three bookshop owners, a couple collectors, and a librarian. All of whom shared the last name Senach with Rafe or, Keith had found out, were related to a Senach. Keith had done some digging and had pulled up some information on the family name. Apparently a lot of Senachs had been dying recently. They were a fairly normal family from public appearances. They didn’t participate in politics. Most of them were teachers or writers. Cullen picked up a history book that Keith had provided with the report. It was written by a woman who called herself Alissa Morgan and covered information on ancient Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. That hit a cord with Cullen. Keith had found out that ‘Morgan’ was her pen name, and she was one of these Senach. Keith was currently in the process of trying to find a couple of them. All of the unexplained deaths recently had Cullen wondering if the entire Circle was the problem or just this one member.

Cullen sat back in his chair and tried to remember what his father had told him about the Circle. Cullen hadn’t thought about his father in a long time. Dyfan Arnauk had died long before Cullen had become strong enough to be an alpha. Cullen always wished he’d been around to see the pack. The only thing Cullen knew was that the Circle had spent the last thousand years keeping their heads down and practicing pacifism to a fault. That was why the Pack Council, the leaders of the various were groups, and the Circle Council, the leaders of all the various druid groups, had parted company in the first place.

The various pack leaders weren’t willing to go quietly into the night, so to speak, and the Circle Council hadn’t been willing to stand and fight, when Rome. They wanted the Pack to play guard dog, but avoid direct confrontation. It just went against Pack instinct and after a few hundred years the Pack left the Circle on its own. It wasn’t a bad separation. Both sides of the issue agreed that they weren’t compatible any longer. Like an amiable divorce. That was what the Circle had been like: live and let live.

After a dozen decades or so, the Circle had been hidden for so long most of the people who had been a threat to them were either involved in different wars or dead. Another couple hundred years and even the lycans started to forget about them. By the time Cullen’s father had told him stories about the Circle, they were legend. Most lycans didn’t believe the stories any longer. The main legend that had survived was a story about how the were races were created by druids. But that couldn’t have been true could it? Lycans were born, not created. All the ridiculous werewolf movies the humans liked to make up and the biting caoch drove him nuts.

Most lycans thought of the creation legend as similar to the Greek legends the humans had. No one really believed it. If you wanted to make a lycan, or any other were for that matter, two of them got together and had a good rut. Biting could be fun, and with the human obsession to be more than a boring old human, he could understand why they made that crap up. Everyone just assumed the druid stories were similar. Or the druids were trying to look like Gods in the eyes of the lycans. He didn’t even know if the stories were told to kids any more. Could there be something more to it?

Cullen was debating over what he should say to Aislinn about it. She seemed to have accepted that Rafe had done something to her. The way that it sounded, from her description of the compound he was calling the Circle, he was either recruiting weres or he might be creating them. If he was creating them, who knows what he had done to Aislinn. If he had been trying to turn her into something Cullen didn’t understand why she couldn’t change. Rafe couldn’t make someone half into a were could he? It didn’t make a lot of sense. Cullen pushed the thoughts out of his head and went back to the reports. There really was no guarantee that’s what was happening anyway. It was incredibly unlikely, wasn’t it?

Keith hadn’t been able to produce any concrete information on anyone in their pack causing trouble, but there was a list of tentative names of men who had been acting more agitated than usual and people who had been out of contact. That list included reasons for the inability to get a hold of them.

As far as the bonfires and Jenna went, there wasn’t anything new or helpful on that front either. Jenna was still missing, and the Tairneach were threatening war. Cullen had even had a phone call from one of the feds who kept an eye on the pack interactions. He’d spent part of his afternoon reassuring the man that he had it all under control. He just wished he believed what he had told the fool on the phone.

The questions about the bonfires led to omegas. The omegas said that Jenna had told them to build the fires, and she gave them bags of plants to throw on the flames. Cullen had been given a small pouch containing an assortment of plants that the omegas had put on the fire to turn it green. Apparently Jenna had said that it was for decorative purposes. Now half the omegas who had been at the reservation that night were panicking and thinking it was all their fault.

There was a knock on his door and Cullen groaned. He had too much information floating around his brain at the moment. He didn’t want any more. When Aislinn popped her head in the door and smiled at him, he couldn’t help but smile back with relief. He waved her in, and she closed the door behind herself.

“I was thinking about dinner. You interested,” she asked, as she walked around his desk and stepped up to him.

Cullen grabbed her hips and pulled her down onto his lap so that she was straddling him, her hands on his shoulders. She was nose to nose with him. He nuzzled her playfully.
Gods I got it bad,
he thought. “You have no idea how glad I am that you’re not Keith.”

Aislinn smiled wickedly. She settled down onto the growing erection beneath her and chuckled. “I think I can guess how glad you are that I’m not Keith.” She put her arms around his neck and kissed him passionately. This whole experience was scaring her, but not in any of the ways that Cullen thought it might. All she could think about each time he touched her was that every time she had found something good in recent history, Rafe had shown up and destroyed it.

“How has your afternoon been?” Cullen pushed her hair away from her face. He was contemplating shoving the reports off of his desk and taking her on it.

Aislinn giggled at the look in his eyes. She knew exactly what he was thinking. “Didn’t you get enough last night and then this morning,” she teased, knowing that if he wanted more she’d willingly give it, and she hoped the smile on her face told him as much. “All the women are avoiding me,” she responded to his question. “So it’s been a pretty uneventful day. I guess Meredith told them all that I broke her arm. If I did,” Aislinn looked skeptical, “I really didn’t mean to. But she has it all wrapped up and keeps whining about it. There appear to be two groups of people.”

While she was talking Cullen was running his hands under her shirt and heading for her breasts, causing her to smile through the annoying topic. She breathed out with an odd soft growling purr that had him listening more to her breathing than her talking as he cupped her breasts and pushed his hard-on against her. Aislinn tried to continue but was finding it more and more difficult. “Half the people I run into seem curious about me, amused for some reason, and inclined to sniff and move on. The other half, mostly women, are acting as if I insulted their mothers.” If Cullen kept up his play, then she’d never get to talk to him about what was going on.

“They’ll get over it,” Cullen said in dismissal and pinched her nipple, causing a delicious moan. He smiled and moved her off of his lap onto the desk. He sat her on the edge of the desk and nuzzled her nose with his angling her face up. He was pleased that she seemed to be taking this all with such acceptance. “As long as you think putting up with them is worth it.”

Aislinn put her hands on either side of his face and stared into his eyes. “Tell me that you want me,” she responded softly, with a seriousness that nearly drove Cullen back into the wall. Normally a woman speaking and acting like Aislinn would find herself assigned to some job as far from the den as possible. But Aislinn inspired him to want to do any number of things to her, most of which involved his bed and her on her hands and knees.

Cullen stared into her eyes. Emotions crashed over him like a tidal wave. “Aislinn, I-“ A knock on the door interrupted him, and Keith walked in without waiting for a response. When there was no smart ass comment about walking in on Cullen standing between Aislinn’s legs with such obvious intent, Cullen knew that something serious was happening.

Keith didn’t wait for Cullen to ask what was wrong and only briefly considered suggesting that they send Aislinn out of the room. There were some things he wanted to know about Aislinn that Cullen didn’t seem willing to broach with her, and he figured that this would be as good a time as any. He had never seen his friend so obsessed with a woman. There wasn’t a lycan in the pack that couldn’t see where this was going. Hell, half the women who had been chasing him for decades had already given in and moved on to lesser targets. The only problem was that most of the elders were uncomfortable with Aislinn. She was too much of a mystery. What was worse, Cullen didn’t seem to be in any hurry to figure it out. With all the time they spent together, if Cullen had been talking to her, then he’d know her family life history by now. Keith stared at her contemplatively, and Aislinn stared right back. That was another reason to be nervous about her.

Keith didn’t bother to wait for an invitation. He just started his latest report. “Jenna has turned up. Apparently, there’s a mating about to take place. Brennus and Gregor are both dead and Rafe is to be the alpha of the Tairneach.” Keith sat down in the chair across from Cullen’s desk. He propped his feet up and waited for a response.

Cullen took a deep breath and stepped away from Aislinn. “When did this happen?”

“This morning I guess. Our contact in the Tairneach says that Rafe showed up with Jenna on his arm and a group of weres of all shapes and sizes backing him up. Odd weres too. A bunch of them were mix-breeds. Made some pretty speech that had everyone growling with approval, and then Brennus promptly handed the pack over. Shortly thereafter, Brennus’s body was found along with Gregor’s. The story is that the two men killed each other fighting over Brennus’s decision. No one is contesting it. I wonder why. Who knows what Rafe’s doing to their brains as we speak.” Keith shifted uncomfortably and looked over at Aislinn. “You can’t do that kind of caoch, can you?”

Aislinn looked confused. “What? Mind control? No. But Rafe seems to think I have the potential. He talked about teaching me. I think that it’s part of the reason he won’t back off and let me go. He keeps saying that I’m like him.” Then she turned to Cullen. “But I’m not.”