The Last Werewolf (The Weres of Europe) (16 page)

Rik glanced up and caught the gaze of Leevi. Seeing that Summer was protected, Leevi turned back to Jaakko, his growl almost one of delight, glad to be one-on-one. Out of the corner of his eye, Rik saw Jaakko had turned tail and ran, taking the fight outside with Leevi following. He knew Leevi was very fast in wolf-form and would catch the usurper.

Looking around, Rik could see that there was no one else left standing in the fort apart from him and Summer, who thankfully seemed unhurt. He breathed a deep sigh, and let his wolf return back into a human.

The other werewolf in the room stared at him uncomprehendingly. “Come back to me, Summer. It’s over. There’s no one else left. They are all down. Come on, sweetheart,” he crooned soothingly. Relief hit him as her body shimmered and changed. She threw herself into his arms, shaking. He held her tightly, running his arms over her back, instinctively checking her for wounds, wanting to lick the blood from her body—the blood of the wolf she had killed.

After a moment she pulled back. “Where’s the other one?”

“Leevi? He’s outside with the leader of this misbegotten rabble.”

“Hell, we’d better help him.”

He could feel her start to change form, and stated sharply, “No. Not this time. Stay human.” He could see she was uncertain, but she did as he requested, and they got to their feet.

She hung back, gesturing to the injured wolf on the floor. “What about him?”

Rik knelt down to check on Kimmo. “He’s unconscious and won’t be going anywhere fast, not with that leg. He’s fine.” He quickly checked on the other one by the door that was still in human form, but seeing his head was at an odd angle, indicating he was dead, Rik quickly ushered Summer out of the building.

They moved just outside the door. His leg was really hurting now, as they tentatively checked that there were no more wolves waiting in ambush and then viewed the fight taking place in front of them. Thankfully, the rain seemed to have suddenly stopped, or at least, moved away from the valley.

Jaakko had taken the high ground this time, having pounced onto a boulder twenty feet away. Rik could see Leevi tensing, unsure whether to back away or move in closer. This moment of indecision cost him as Jaakko suddenly leaped off the boulder at the Prime Alpha.

Summer instinctively lurched forward. Rik lunged, grabbing her around the waist, holding her tightly against his body. His lips against her temple spoke quietly. “No, baby. This is between them. We can’t interfere.”

Despite his own words, he winced as Jaakko’s body fell through the air towards Leevi, but thankfully Leevi dived to the side at the last moment, thwarting this move. Even Rik could see they were fairly evenly matched. Well, even only because Jaakko had held back earlier as his henchmen had attacked the three of them, knowing he had more guards on this upper level. Outnumbered as they were, Rik knew it had taken a lot of out them, Leevi more than he or Summer as Leevi was the Prime Alpha, and as the only full wolf among them, he had taken out the wolf in the room below, and then the guard at the door, not to mention the three earlier when they had arrived at the fort. Jaakko was now Leevi’s sixth confrontation, and unfortunately, as time passed and the battle dragged on, it was beginning to show. Just when Leevi needed his full strength to take down his former Beta, the next strongest wolf in the clan, he didn’t have it and the strain was beginning to take
its toll on him.

Christ, forget about Summer wanting to help Leevi, Rik felt he couldn’t stand by and watch the man he loved be killed. But he had to. It was the law of the pack.

An old quote came to his head, from Kipling’s ‛The Jungle Book’ he seemed t
o recall. “If ye fight with the wolf of a pack, fight him alone and afar, lest others take part in the quarrel and the pack be diminished by war.” Or something like that. He snorted. Of course, this was real life, and not a fictional story. And he wasn’t one of the pack as had been made very clear to him when he’d been here before, back when Leevi had turned him into a werewolf.

Rik gasped, and his reminiscences faded fast as he watched the scene unfold in front of him. Jaakko’s jaws came inches away from Leevi’s throat as he charged at him. He heard the clash of Jaakko’s teeth against themselves as Leevi jerked his head to the side. Urgency thrummed through Rik’s body, and he could feel the same desperate need to join in the quarrel from the body of the woman he held. That gave him enough pause to hold back. This was the person he was mated with. And being a woman, she just wasn’t as strong as they were, and she would get hurt. He wasn’t being chauvinistic. It was the laws of nature, female wolves were smaller.

But she was fiercely struggling in his arms. Jaakko now had Leevi on the ground, his body covering the Alpha’s. Leevi howled as claws dug into his side as Jaakko clung on tenaciously despite Leevi’s frenetic movements to dislodge him.

Things seemed to stand still for a moment as Rik saw Leevi look him in the eye. Jaakko’s mouth was about to close on the neck for a killing bite, and Rik realized in that moment that he had left it too late to help his other mate. His heart lurched in pain and the look Ri
k gave back said, ‛I will always love you.’ He pulled on his were-power for a moment just enough to let his scent change, so that Leevi would know the truth of his feelings, letting his scene carry through the air.

This seemingly gave Leevi the support for
one last rush of power as he surged to his hind legs, twisting his body as he did, heaving his opponent off him.

Even Summer cried out at the strength that must have taken, and both he and Summer jerked forward to help, only to stop dead in their tracks when Jaakko’s body went flying, his grip on Leevi’s body broken, his four legs clawing the air gripping nothing.

An unearthly scream followed as Jaakko’s body was impaled by the branch of the tree behind him.

Summer screamed, and fell to her knees in horror, “Oh dear God.”

Rik felt sick. He might have hated the man, but the sight of the former Beta’s body, now turned back to its human form, skewered on the branch, twitching as he died, was not one he would have wished on anyone. An injury like that was beyond even what a werewolf could recover from. Leevi, meanwhile, raised his head and howled, the howl of the victorious Alpha.

Lethargy left Rik’s body, and he moved forward to Leevi, who stood, trembling, but alive, also back to human form now, bent forward, his chest heaving, tongue still hanging out instinctively. Rik wrapped his arms around his love and held him hard before pulling back to inspect him for wounds.

Leevi laughed hoarsely, “I’m all right. Just a few slashes and bites. Mostly just exhausted. How’s Summer?”

Rik turned on his heels, feeling torn. He had forgotten her for a few moments to see to his other love.
Christ, what a mess
.

Chapter Nine

It was Leevi who moved toward Summer, holding her tenderly in his arms as the realization of the events of the last hour hit them all.

She had slumped to her knees, the hard, stony ground digging into them, her hand covering her mouth as nausea threatened. She felt sick to her stomach, not only because of seeing Jaakko impaled on the branch, the sight of his body, back to its human form, twitching as he died, the piercing sound of his dying keen, but she was now recalling in vivid detail the moment she had killed a man herself.

As she had rounded the top of the spiral stairs into the room with the windows overlooking the valley, there had been a man there moving toward her, clearly intent on finding out what was happening on the floor below, a simple wooden club in his hands.

Her instinctive reactions had been fear, panic, and the need to defend herself. Without a second—human—thought she had leapt at him, her claws digging into his chest. She had known that her claws were not as sharp as a normal werewolf like Leevi, and that she had to take other action, and so, as his head jerked back when she had flown at him, her jaws had automatically closed around his throat, hot liquid and soft flesh in her mouth. He had dropped his club as his hands had come up and clenched around her head to try to force her off him, but it was over in seconds, and he had fallen to the floor dead.

Immediately a dark brown wolf had come up the stairs barking at her. It had been Rik, and suddenly there were lots of beings, men and wolves, in the room, and she had forgotten about the man she had killed, until now. Now she could taste his blood in her mouth, and she remembered her own ferocity. Now she could feel the moment his life had been extinguished, and with a cry, she shuddered in Leevi’s arms, before turning away to heave the contents of her stomach on the ground, still wet from the storm.

“Shh, it’s okay. It’s over now.” Leevi’s calming voice filtered through as he stroked her back, reassuring her, crouching by her side.

“Is she going to be all right?” She heard Rik’s concern as he too bent over, brushing her hair from her face.

“She will be. Go and get our clothes, will you? I’m going to take her down the path, away from here. There’s the old storeroom at the base of the fort, remember?” Leevi sounded in charge, and that helped. She instinctively knew she could trust him.

“Oh. Okay.”

“And while you are there, see if there is anyone alive and immobilize them if they are. We don’t want them coming after us.”

That sent Summer heaving again.
Please, God, let this be a dream
.

When Rik left them, Leevi gathered her in his arms, holding her head against his shoulder, his hand stroking her flank—no, her hip, she wasn’t in wolf form anymore. He then lifted her, cradling her as he started down the path, his steps slow but sure as he traversed the steep path.

As her sobs began to quiet, her hands unclenched, and she started to notice the man holding her. He was taller than Rik, but leaner, although, held closely like this she could feel his raw muscular strength. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on his body. His chest was covered with a light dusting of fair hairs. She ran her hand over his chest, and felt a tingle in her fingertips, and had a sudden urge to jump down from his arms and present her backside to him in a gesture of submission.

She shook her head.
Leevi might be an Alpha, but I’m not in wolf form anymore
.
I’m human again.
She was finding it hard to adjust back. Looking up, she could see he was staring down at her. His expression was a mixture of concern and surprise. She wondered what he was so surprised at. Summer dropped her hand and just enjoyed the feeling of being securely held as he confidently walked down the winding path, which was not the easiest to see in the dim light as the sky was still overcast. She trembled at the coolness of the late morning air, and looking around her, she took in the smell of damp earth saturating the air, the sound of forest critters flitting about, and the shadows of the imposing cliff face as it loomed over the valley.

Leevi hadn’t said a word so far. It was very peaceful—if one forgot the events which had just unfolded. She then recalled he had just been in a life and death fight himself, and was injured, and jerked in his arms.

“What?” His voice was deep, more accented than Rik’s, probably because Leevi lived in the country, unlike Rik whose apartment was in the country’s capital city. “Will you stop fidgeting?”

“You were hurt. Please put me down. I’m all right now.”

Leevi didn’t accede to her wishes, but simply said, “We’re there now.”

“Where?” She craned her neck around and saw Leevi was moving toward the door of a small camouflaged building at the base of the cliff as the path had taken them down to the bottom of the fort. She struggled violently. “I’m not going back inside.”

Unable to keep her in his arms, Leevi had to let her down, but he still held firmly onto her waist. “This isn’t inside the fort. It is just an external room, a kind of hunter’s lodge. There’ll be water where we can wash.”

That took the struggle out of Summer. “Oh. Yes, please. I would very much like to clean the blood off me.”

“Well, come on then.”

Leevi led the way into the small, dark room, turning on an electric light as he did. It wasn’t much, so he left the door open to provide more. She looked around her. It was about ten feet in diameter with a simple metal sink in one corner. Around the sides of the room were crates and boxes of varying sorts, and, bizarrely, some abandoned clothes lying scattered.

Following her gaze, Leevi explained, “I guess those clothes were ones that were forgotten.” When she frowned trying to comprehend how anyone could forget their clothes, even after shifting back from wolf form, Leevi grunted defensively. “Rik said that you had grown up around humans. This area is on pack lands. We are careful around humans—in fact, as this is in the National Park, we have to be extra vigilant—but there are times when the pack might go hunting here, say on full moon, and then go straight home afterwards, forgetting they had left their clothes here.”

“This is so—so alien to me.”

She felt the man, or should she call him wolf she wondered, tense and she resisted the urge to step back. She wasn’t short, but he towered over her, and that scared her slightly. She guessed it was because he was somewhat brooding and sullen.

Needing to explain what she meant, Summer continued, “I just meant it’s not what I am used to, not having been around other wolves before now.” She shivered. Clearly noticing this, Leevi wrapped his arms around her in a soothing manner, and she felt a jolt go through her body. It felt similar to the first time Rik had touched her, when he had bumped into her at the airport, and she felt that urge again to submit.
Stop it. I can’t be attracted to two men. Anyhow, Leevi is gay
. Then she remembered that this was the man Rik had been in love with, and Rik had clearly stated that he was bisexual. Did that mean Leevi was too? Pulling away, she made a determined effort to stay a few feet away. His closeness was unnerving her. Leevi might be attractive to her, but she wasn’t going to get involved with him. But it wasn’t easy. There was almost a coercion to touch him, stroke him, lick him.
Dammit. It’s the wolf in me again
.