Releasing the Wolf (15 page)

She finally found her voice and to her relief it had some backbone to it. “What gives you the right to force me out of my home and my jobs?”

He moved fast.

He was towering in front of her in a blink of an eye, his nose in her hair, breathing…

Fuck it, her legs buckled – they actually
buckled.
She would have fallen down, but his arm caught her around the waist. His words feathered across her cheek.

“Taylor’s tears have touched your hair. Ryan’s pounded his scent into you so hard, he may as well have urinated all over you—”

Oh, GOD, how humiliating!

“—and my blood flows through your veins. Does that answer your question?” He lowered his head and licked her neck at the exact same spot he’d bitten her.

And she whimpered.

AGAIN.

And it wasn’t out of fear or surprise; it was out of pure, unadulterated
want
… to please
him.

In that second, she understood what Lawrence represented to her, and it sent hot rage surging through her … and hot lust. Not the playful hot lust that Ryan could muster in her with little more than a glance, but the consuming hot lust you could lose your identity in. He called to her wolf. He called to her primal side; the ancient aspect of her animal self that wanted to submit. It wanted to submit to
him
; to sacrifice all of who she was at the altar of his maleness and lay herself bare for his taking.

Fuck that! She brought up her hands and shoved against his chest, and hurrah for super-strength, because he didn’t seem to be expecting it.

He glanced at her in surprise, then anger, then his features became as icy as always.

Something inside her died. She’d denied him, and it didn’t sit well with the wolf in her – not one little bit. It paced furiously inside her – furious with
her
. An apology sat on the tip of her tongue, but before she could utter a single word, he’d gone, leaving her among the shadows he’d appeared from.

Epilogue

Once upon a time, before even the dawn of time, Himet, the Great God and Yemet, the Great Goddess, had a fight. In growing knowledge of their status and abilities, one was no longer willing to yield to the other, nor to share the space of the universe they had created together.

One day, their fight was so great, their anger so palpable across the cosmos, that their consumed rage tore them apart forever.

Thrown from each other, Himet soared up and became the sky, the stars, the sun and the moon; Yemet soared down and became the earth, the trees, the plants and the animals that walked upon it. But they were lost without the other, and there was no way to mend the great divide they had brought upon themselves.

In a plea for forgiveness, Himet dedicated the night to Yemet. Under the blanket of darkness, all the earth would be protected and allowed to rest; allowed to breath and renew its strength.

Touched by his gift, Yemet wept rivers upon rivers for their loss, until her tears became oceans and seas, which along with the sun, gave rise to the weather, and in the storm of their emotions their union could be felt: in thunder their hearts pounded as one, in wind, their spirits flew as one, and when lightning from the sky penetrated the earth, they became whole once more, if just for the briefest of moments.

In these moments, Yemet’s determination renewed, as did her anger, and she vowed to find a way to rejoin with Himet.

One night, under the full moon, which reflected Himet’s love for her when the sun could not, Yemet led her most prized and loyal animal – the wolf – to the top of the highest mountain. She let her grief, her sorrow, her loneliness and her anger pour out of her until she manifested a storm. Himet responded, joining in her dance, and at the exact moment he sent down his lightning, she placed the wolf in its path and infused herself with it.

Himet cried out in terror, but he could not pull back the lightning. It hit Yemet while she was in the physical form of the wolf – whilst she was mortal.

“
Why?!” he asked her, his sorrow consuming him.

“
I could not see, but now I do,” she replied with her dying breath, “to have all of you, I must yield all of me. Take my life, Himet. I trust you with it. I give it freely.”

What a load of bullshit. Lawrence slammed the book shut in irritation. Fucking fairy tales with their hidden meanings. His sister had loathed this story with all her being and – at eight years old – had proudly announced that when she met her end, she’d do it fighting, not yielding. Not to god, not to society and certainly not to any male.

Well, that was a promise she’d kept – she’d gone down fighting.

He sighed and pushed himself off his desk, too acutely aware that his sense of annoyance had more to do with the red-head he’d gone and mated with rather than the mythology he’d scoured through to try and make sense of what exactly had happened.

He was pissed off that he’d lost his temper. He’d spent over twenty years controlling his animal nature, for very good reasons, and now it was taking all of his willpower to not beat Ryan and Taylor to the ground to claim Lydia for himself. Which would be stupid because firstly, it would tear their pack apart, and secondly, he had nothing to offer her, or any woman. He couldn’t
be
anyone’s god-damn Alpha, which is why he’d stepped down and let Ryan take the lead.

He realised he was growling at his empty study.

Maybe ‘pissed off’ didn’t cover it. He couldn’t for the life of him see how three males, mated to one female, was going to work. Hell, he couldn’t even see how it had happened in the first place – it shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t have been
able
to.

But she was a storm-wielder. Fuck. She didn’t even know it – he’d have to train her. Double fuck. And make sure no one else ever found out what she was. Triple fuck.

Until he got back the information he’d asked his sources for on her family, there wasn’t much he could do. The mountain of complications ahead of them made his head hurt.

He picked up another book from his desk about lycanthropic molecular biology. Ryan had told him what The Trident had planned; that they had found a way to alter werewolf DNA so that werewolf became Trident. That had to be what he put his focus into. This whole thing with Lydia was bizarre, but not threatening. The Trident, however, threatened their very existence.

He could do this. Let Ryan and Taylor have her – he didn’t need to be a part of it. He just had to remember that everything he felt around Lydia paled in comparison to what he’d been through; to everything he’d felt two decades ago; to everything he’d quenched… She was just another female.

~*~

“It’s done.” Her aged face looked menacing under the low lighting, but then, she kind of looked like that in broad daylight too.

He breathed out a sigh of relief that Lydia was safe – that she’d survived – although his heart bled for the fact that he’d lied to her all these years. Her own father. Surely she’d have realised that by now. He wondered if she hated him.

“Get over it, James,” scolded Aunt Gladys. “You did what was right. You did what you had to do.” She covered her crystal ball, and cleared up her saucer and cup lined with tea leaves.

“For whose benefit?”

She glared at him. “She’s safe, isn’t she? She’s mated now.”

“Are you sure—”

“My Guides don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not suggesting they do,” he mumbled. Although he wondered if they omitted certain details as they saw fit – sort of like how he had done with Lydia all of her life. Guilt ate at him.

He didn’t know if he completely believed in his aunt’s mumbo-jumbo, but he did know that he’d been witness to some inexplicable things over the years, attributed directly to her, so he decided to trust her clarity over his lack of it. “So, what happens now?”

She smiled through her many wrinkles and he was reminded of an arid desert floor that would leech the water right out of anywhere it could to satisfy its own thirst. His aunt was a woman who would ensure she survived before she ensured survival for anyone else.

“Now, we wait.”

~*~

“What do you mean, gone?”

“I mean, gone. Vamoosh. Au revoir. The removal men were here Thursday. You should have seen the size of them – who was I to argue,” he shrugged.

Brendan regarded the man in flat 2 warily. He was obviously a drug addict. If the bleary red eyes didn’t give it away, the needle marks on his arms, coupled with his too-thin frame, did. He’d clearly been expecting someone else at the door or he’d have covered those arms up.

“What did they look like?” pressed Brendan.

Drug-man sniffed and shrugged again. “You know – big.”

“No, I don’t know,” he seethed, impatiently.

The man sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Well, they were tall and with muscles, though one of them was more bulky – looked like a body builder or something. Other guy was blond – white-blond hair – and he gave me the shivers. Won’t forget his eyes. Colour of ice – if ice had a colour – and I reckon he could kill you with a look too.”

Lawrence. And the ‘body-builder’ would be Ryan.
A knot tightened in his gut.
Guess they lied about Ryan being missing then.

“And they took everything?” asked Brendan.

“Yeah. Do you want me to let you in?”

“Let me in?”

“Yeah.” He pulled a credit card from his back pocket and winked.

Jesus Christ, Lydia was sharing her building with these kinds of people? Shit. “Yeah, let me in,” he replied, grimly.

The guy grabbed his keys—
how ironic
—shut his door and walked down the corridor to Lydia’s. Flat 4.

Brendan battled with a wave of anger. He should never have left her alone Wednesday night. What the fuck had happened? He’d arrived at work this morning only to have his dad tell him that Lydia had left. Handed in her notice. Except her notice wasn’t signed by her – it wasn’t signed at all, just printed. Besides, Lydia simply wouldn’t do that. Okay, so he’d only known her for little under four months, but he knew she wouldn’t do that without a word. If something bothered her, she was the kind of woman who picked up a phone and shouted expletives at you – as she’d proven – not the kind of woman who just fucked off.

The guy shoved his credit card into the gap at the side of the door and wheedled it down until it hit the catch. Then with frightening ease, he lifted the door by its handle, just a fraction, which created enough of a shift so the card slipped between the catch and the wall, and he pushed the door open.

Brendan grabbed him by the front of his T-shirt and barrelled him against the wall. “You ever been in here without her knowing, you piece of shit?”

“No! Man, what’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me?” He bunched his hand up against the man’s neck so his breathing laboured.

He wheezed. “I’m helping you out here.”

“And I’m grateful. If I ever find out Lydia felt uncomfortable in her own home, that she found you creepy in any way, I’m coming back to let you know about it.” He threw him out the door. “You can go now.”

The guy didn’t argue, but hurried back to his own flat. Maybe he was due his next fix.

Brendan gazed at his surroundings. Yeah, the place was completely empty. He cursed and entered the bathroom. That had been cleared out too.

He grabbed his cigarette packet from his back pocket, lifted the lid and pulled out a Marlboro with his teeth. He wouldn’t light it in here, but he was done anyway. He turned to leave.

Lydia had said something about Lawrence owning the theatre, hadn’t she?

Time to pay the bastard a visit.

~*~

From a distance, he watched her on her knees, digging into the bed of flowers in her front garden. She was clearly good with her hands. He wondered what else she could do with those hands while on her knees. The thought got him hard, and it was such shame it was a busy, bright, Saturday summer’s evening, and he couldn’t just reach into his trousers and bring himself off as he stared at the creamy tops of her breasts swaying slightly as she dug into the earth.

This wasn’t the one he’d originally been looking for; he knew that – although he hadn’t known it at first. It wasn’t until yesterday that he’d finally been a hundred percent satisfied she wasn’t a wolf. She was human.

That female Trident bitch was an idiot. She’d left the warehouse in a mess, and almost lost the syringe to boot. But he had predicted her clumsiness. She’d been so wrapped up in that Alpha – Ryan – for her to focus properly … for her to see the bigger picture.

He’d created a diversion on the High Street for the police by setting a building on fire, then he’d crept into the warehouse after the storm had passed, cleared all the dead bodies, found the syringe that held everything they’d spent so long working for … and he’d found this little treat too.