The Mating Rite (Big, Beautiful Werewolf) (Werewolves of Montana) (2 page)

“How’s your mother doing?” Sam’s frail mother suffered from a weak heart, the same condition she’d passed on to her eldest daughter, Marcia.

Her smile slipped. “Physically, better, but she keeps fretting about the time I spend with you. If she saw us together, she’d be real upset. She says you’re all wrong for me and the worst thing I could do is fall in love with you. Love is for fools. Family is more important.”

Darius felt cold all over. “My father doesn’t like us spending time together, either. He told me last week if he catches me wasting time with you he’s going to find more work for me.”

“Your father and my mother. What’s wrong with them?”

Wanting to cheer her, he smiled and teased her. “Race you back in wolf form. Loser has to do all the dinner dishes.”

“Hey, not fair,” she yelled, but he’d already shifted into a large gray wolf and bolted, sprinting down the pathway toward home.

He slowed considerably as the lodge came into sight. Sam passed in a streak of gray fur. At the bottom of the stairs, she shifted back and swiftly clothed herself, then squatted by his wolf.

“I won again. Loser.”

He butted his head against her thigh.

“You take good care of yourself, Darius.” She hugged him tight. “I never want you to leave me. Understand?”

Never would he leave her here, alone and unprotected. She would be his mate.

Darius watched her scamper off to her cabin. He sat on his haunches, his keen gaze scanning the grounds. The lodge’s front door opened and his eldest brother bounded down the stairs, jingling a set of keys. Shayne stopped and squatted down. Of all his four brothers, Shayne was the only one who ever showed affection.

“Darius, you’d better get going to patrol before Dad sees you. He was looking for you.”

A familiar scent hit his nostrils before the large, brutish male came into view. He felt the ground trembling beneath the pounding footsteps.

Maxim Bryant, alpha of the Bryant pack, smiled at his eldest as Shayne straightened. “Taking your new truck into town to sow your oats?”

As Shayne nodded, Maxim clapped him on the back. “Have a good time.”

Darius’ stomach knotted as he watched his sire hug Shayne. Maxim had given Shayne a brand new pickup for his birthday, while Darius’ birthday went unnoticed.
Because it was the day my mom died
.

Maxim noticed him and scowled. “Boy, what the hell are you doing loitering here? You’re set to patrol the north territories.”

Darius shifted back and faced his father. “My shift doesn’t start for another twenty minutes.”

“It takes twenty minutes to get there. Are you defying me?”

“Why would I do that,
Dad
?”

The smirk hid all his inner angst. His father was hard as steel. Once he’d been kind. Shayne said so, anyway. Deeply in love with Lisa, their mother, Maxim had doted on his mate. He never looked at another female and would have given his life for Lisa. But Lisa had died giving birth to Darius, and all Maxim’s love had died with her.

And
I look like her
. His father raged on about Darius’ incompetence.
What must it be like, to confront a reminder of the person who caused the death of the only woman you’ve ever loved, every day?

This is why he fucks females with no more thought than a rutting beast. He hides his grief behind his actions.

“Defy me more, pup.” Maxim advanced, getting into his face. “Go ahead, challenge me. You know you want to best me. One punch.”

Smiling, the alpha spread his arms wide. “Take your best shot.”

Glaring, Darius shook his head. “And give you a reason to kick me out? Never.”

He turned, heading for the assigned section of forest he was to patrol. His heart wrenching, Darius silently vowed to never become like his father. No matter where destiny led him, he would never become a careless womanizer, hiding his pain behind the casual use of women.

No matter what.

A smile played on Sam’s face as she sat at her dressing table, brushing her hair after a shower. Marcia was at the movies with a friend, and their mother was fast asleep upstairs.

Color flushed her cheeks and a spark lit her eyes.

You’re in love
, she sang to herself.

Darius, the handsome Lupine who was her best friend. With his mop of black curls, piercing blue eyes and sculpted features, the alpha’s youngest son had a leanly muscled frame disguising strength as brutal as his sire’s. She’d seen Darius throw another male across the room for insulting her, all the while displaying a friendly smile. And then he’d gone for the Lupine’s throat, the charming smile gone, replaced by lethal concentration. The male had been only a heartbeat from death when he’d stammered an apology.

Lifting her left hand to the light, she admired the gold’s glint. Darius had given her a promise, and he would not break it.

When Sam, her mother and sister first arrived at the Bryant pack four years ago, Darius had treated them with arrogant indifference. Soon, she came to realize his snobbish attitude was to disguise his true feelings from Maxim.

Life had taught her male Lupines could be heartless. Her own father had abandoned her at birth, forcing Ellen to leave her pack with two young and earn a living in the Skin world. Darius’ father seemed kind, giving her family a cabin away from the lodge so they’d have privacy, but Sam saw through the generosity. Sam suspected Maxim isolated them because Ellen was weak, and he didn’t want her selecting a new mate and passing the weakness onto offspring.

Although Darius’ father treated her mother with nothing but respect and courtesy, Sam didn’t trust him. She worked hard to earn their keep to thwart any reason Maxim might have to oust them.

Sam set down her brush and rubbed her forehead with the heel of one hand. Two years ago, while hiking in the woods, she’d stumbled upon Maxim having sex with a pack female. She’d hidden behind some trees, unable to look away. Kneeling behind the female, the alpha had been rough and brutish, fisting his hand in his partner’s hair and slamming hard into her as she moaned and squealed. And then they had shifted into their wolf forms, the grunts and squeals turning to snarls and howls…

It terrified her, that kind of savage sex.

Darius would never be like that.
He’d be gentle and tender and sweet, whispering endearments into her ear as they made love. Her mate would never wish to shift into his wolf form during sex and violate her that way.

Her mother warned her to avoid Darius because
“the son is as lusty as the father.”
But Darius was noble and civilized.

She stood, giving a long stretch. The pink silk robe rose and fell with the movement of her breasts. A heavy knock came at the front door. Darius, probably wondering why she’d skipped dinner. As she reached the living room, the door swung open.

Maxim! Rattled, she took three steps backward.

Her alpha staggered inside.

“There you are. I did not see you at the evening repast,” he slurred.

Such formal tones. Eloquent speech mocking the cruel set of his wide mouth, the darkness in his blue gaze.

Her body trembled under it.

“I-I was not quite hungry, sir.”

“Ah.” His eyes darkened as he gazed at her nipples poking through the sheer silk. “Be in my bedroom at nine o’clock.”

She couldn’t, wouldn’t, mate with Darius’ father! Sam clutched the lapels of her robe. “
No
.”

“Defiant.” His gaze darkened. “You will be in my bedroom in two hours or I shall throw you and your family out on the streets by tomorrow. The choice is yours.”

The door slammed behind him as he left.

A tiny sob escaped her. She’d longed to save her virginity for Darius. But Maxim had the power to evict them.

Sinking back into a chair, she buried her face in her hands. Her alpha’s bed, the hellish place of her worst nightmares…

Darius did not see Sam at supper. He hoped her mother or sister hadn’t fallen ill again. Widowed, with two young females, Sam’s mother had run from a pack in upstate Washington whose alpha thought sickly Lupines should be left to die. Ellen Evers had sought a place in Maxim’s pack when Sam was only twelve. His father had granted them refuge and medical treatment for Ellen and Marcia.

Maxim treated the frail and elderly with great respect. It was the younger females his sire had a reputation for seducing. When Maxim began eyeing a virginal female, Darius seduced her with a gentle, tender introduction to sex. It gave him great pleasure to thwart his father, and his natural sensuality made the experience enjoyable for the grateful females.

Now that Sam had agreed to mate him, Darius would never again seduce another female.

Darius finished washing the last plate and stacked it. He dried his hands on a clean dishtowel. Where was she?

Movement sounded downstairs. His father and his friends were playing poker in the basement. He could smell the liquor. And then he overheard Maxim’s gruff laugh.

“I shall leave you to your game soon. I have a treat waiting for me in my bed. The runt thinks to best me by stealing away females from me. Aye, I shall show him. I’ll fuck Samantha and spill her virginal blood upon my bed before my son can take her.”

Darius’ heart leapt into his throat. “Sam,” he whispered.

He tore out of the kitchen, racing upstairs to his father’s room, and kicked the door open. Clad only in a thin silk robe, Sam sat on the bed. Her terrified gaze met with his.

“No,” he said thickly.

“I have no choice,” she whispered. “If I don’t give myself to him, he’ll throw us out.”

His heart constricted as he watched her quiver. So brave, trying hard not to cry.

Only one deed would dampen his father’s lust. But Darius couldn’t do it. Not like this, quick, rough sex that would leave her bitter and fearful. He’d promised to wait until she grew older.

He jammed a hand through his curls. Nor could he leave her to his father’s brutalities.

Maxim has targeted Samantha because he knows how I feel about her. All the times I’ve tried to hide it, but he knew. And this is my fault.

He inhaled sharply, the sharp smell of her terror stinging his nostrils. He knew what he must do to save her.

Darius brushed a lock of hair back from her pale face. “You truly want to mate with me?”

She nodded.

“Take off your robe,” he ordered.

Fear shimmered in her wide eyes, but she did as he asked.

He looked at her soft, high breasts, the gentle slope of her belly and her long legs. Desire bit, hard and sharp. Inside his jeans, his cock throbbed. Aroused by the sight of a naked female, his wolf clawed and snarled to the surface, wanting to mate.

“Get on the bed,” he told her.

He was ready. Darius removed his shirt and joined her on the bed, a growl rumbling deep in his throat.

“Darius? What, what are you doing?” Panic edged her voice, and she backed up against the headboard. “Your eyes…they’re yellow, feral. I’m scared.”

His fangs lengthened and sharpened. Darius grabbed his friend and flipped her onto her stomach. Bigger and stronger, he easily held her down. Sam whimpered, the sound shredding his heart. He managed to speak through the red haze of lust. “Trust me,” he told her.

Darius closed his eyes.
Forgive me, Sam. I’m so sorry. But this is the only way.

With one knee pinning down her back, he brushed back the long fall of her hair. Darius nuzzled her neck and licked her soft skin.

He tasted a sweet, honeyed droplet on the tip of one fang. Now.

Snarling, he bit down hard. She cried out.

Warm blood flooded his mouth. Male instinct prodded him to close the wound with his tongue. Instead, he drew back, letting the blood trickle down her neck to the white sheets. Her scent suddenly flooded his nostrils, along with the unmistakable fragrance of female arousal. His cock hardened to stone.

“What did you do? It feels so good, so warm and throbbing between my legs. Please, Darius, please, tell me what is this? What are you doing to me?”

Something I can’t finish right now, darling
, he thought with keen regret. But she was safe from his father’s lust.

After a minute, he reached down and tenderly closed the marks with a flick of his tongue. She rolled over, confusion on her face, the flush of passion tinting her supple body. Her nipples hardened from the bite’s erotic sting.

Darius swallowed hard. Lust raged through him as she glanced at the erection tenting his trousers. He fought to keep from touching her plump breasts. His wolf growled, urging him to complete the act by mating with her.

Crossing her arms over her chest, Sam stared. “Your eyes are yellow,” she whispered. “Like your wolf has taken over, savage and feral. I’m scared, Darius. What are you?”

Drawing in a deep breath, he climbed off the bed. Darius turned away. After a minute, he fought the beast and managed to control himself.

Sam’s welfare, and her safety, came first.

Facing her, he opened his eyes. “Better now?”