Dire Needs Page 19

  He’d discovered early on that she was a mob kid, as in the Italian Mafia. She’d run from her family and that life and ended up in one surprisingly similar in terms of danger. “I couldn’t have ratted on any of them, and that’s what would’ve happened—I was being forced into doing something I didn’t want to. I came here to get away—to get out of that way of life.”

  It had stayed with her, though. Growing up in it embedded it in her.

  Lying in bed, in Liam’s arms, she’d confessed her dreams for a different kind of life, and he’d felt as guilty as hell.

  He could offer her only more of the same. The pack wars were gearing up and he was intensifying his training with his father and his wereguards. It was going to get ugly.

  When he’d finally worked up the courage to admit to her what he was, she hadn’t believed it. He’d shifted for her under the moonlit sky while her mouth hung open in astonishment. And when he’d shifted back, she’d responded, “You can offer me love, which makes it so different from anything I’ve ever had.”

  But she was completely weirded out, nonetheless. She’d run from him, and although he’d be able to track her easily, he didn’t.

  She’d come back on that cold spring night last year and she hadn’t left since.

  And now Teague called her “Liam’s pet.” Liam had heard him say it as he remained hidden, listening to his father die.

  Those screams and Max’s betrayal—no matter the reason—would be forever and inextricably linked in his mind.

  “If it was just me, I’d fight. But I couldn’t because… if anything happened,” she told him as if reading his thoughts. Hands on her belly, she turned away.

  “Max—”

  “You know my temper, how hard it is to control. You of all people know!” She fisted her hands and stared at the ceiling and breathed. “I’ll kill anyone who tries to hurt this baby once he’s born. Until then…”

  “Him?”

  She settled her gaze on him. “A boy. Next in line. You have to understand… I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “You could’ve come to me—we could’ve found a way around it,” Liam spat.

  “How?” Max’s eyes blazed, her hand going protectivel—instinctively—to her belly. He hated the silver circling her wrists. “I thought you were dead. They would’ve taken me in—studied me and taken the baby. I could never have forgiven myself.”

  “So you were going to let them take Gwen?”

  “It was either that or abort the baby. The boy is the next leader, Liam. To do that…” She shook her head. “I went to the bar—spoke with the owner about getting Rifter’s number to tell him what was happening. I know they help humans. And when Cordelia said Gwen was with Rifter two nights ago…”

  Liam left the room before he completely lost control. Closed the door behind him and tried to block out Max’s pain and the sounds of the Dires meeting in the kitchen with Gwen.

  Chapter 27

  Gwen had pulled herself together by the time Rifter finally came down the stairs, alone. He silently motioned for her to follow him into the kitchen. She did so with the fresh towels and medical supplies she’d collected in order to give herself something to do, plopped them all down on the table.

  “Sit,” she said, and he scowled a little but did as she asked. He wore a towel wrapped around his waist and there were marks on him that were already beginning to heal. But the medical professional in her couldn’t simply let that go without giving them some kind of attention. “I saw you get shot.”

  “I’m fine,” he told her, obviously irritated by the attention she was paying to his wounds.

  “I’m just making sure. You’d do the same for me, right?” she asked, and he couldn’t argue with that. The bullet had grazed him—she saw the long line that had already started to heal on its own. She checked the rest of his torso, her fingers tracing a bite mark along his back, right above the wolf’s ear. “The fight was intense.”

  “You shouldn’t have worried. You’ve seen me fight.”

  She had—and in wolf form. But it had been a blur. Wolf against man and seemingly no contest—even bullets couldn’t bring him down. “Do you win in human form too?”

  A small, well-deserved cocky grin emerged. “Always.”

  She didn’t doubt it. With his size alone, who would be foolish enough to go up against him?

  Beyond his brothers, of course. She went to the sink and wet a washcloth with warm water and moved it across his face first, getting rid of the dirt and blood more gently than necessary.

  The big man practically purred under her touch, and she continued her exploration, down his neck, along his shoulders. All the while, his eyes never left hers.

  Their relationship—which was supposed to have been a one-night stand—had gotten so complicated, she wasn’t sure where to begin, but she needed to. She bit her tongue for a few more minutes because she liked being close to him—and anything she said was sure to break this comfort.

  She traced the healed bullet wound from yesterday, gently patted down a long scratch next to it with a cotton ball dipped in peroxide. It had been deep—she probably would’ve stitched it under normal circumstances, but nothing about this was normal, and so she left it to the air.

  When she’d finished with his upper body, she knelt at his feet and began to clean him. He growled, softly, and she looked up, surprised.

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I know. I want to,” she said softly, and no, she never thought she’d want to do this. But barring the fact that she knew he wouldn’t follow her up to the shower, she did the best she could here, washing his calves and thighs. His arousal tented the white terry cloth, and there was no ignoring it. She breathed in the smell of night flowers—musky and unmistakably male—and the familiar achy need spread between her legs again. Visions of riding him on the kitchen table made her wet—and then made her blush.

  She refused to meet his eyes, concentrated instead on toweling him dry now instead.

  “It’s all normal, you know,” he said in a voice as heavy with lust as she felt.

  “What’s that?”

  “Your needs. They’ll be stronger than human ones—and nothing to be ashamed of. Wolves celebrate them. Revel in them.”

  Like the party. Finally, she met his eyes and wondered if hers looked remotely lupine. “I still can’t believe any of this.”

  “Come here.” He helped her up and she sat in the chair next to him, the intensity between them more electric than the lightning flashing through the windows. He glanced toward it, his brow furrowed, and then looked back at her, but didn’t say anything.

  “There can’t be any more secrets—please,” she told him.

  “I’m just trying not to scare you.”

  “More than being a wolf scares me? I don’t think so.”

  Rifter gave a wry grin, and she realized that the bond she’d felt earlier was far stronger since they’d made love.

  There was so much more she wanted to know, and she believed Rifter was ready to relent. She stared into his eyes, which were completely human—for now—and repeated, “No more secrets.”

  When Rifter relented with a sigh, ran his hands through his still-damp hair and waited, she continued, “The first night in the bar—were they all wolves?”

  “No. We mix with humans. Most of the time, they don’t know it. We just stay away from them around our moon call. Because we’d hurt them otherwise. We’re too strong, need too much sex. Too much of everything.”

  “I didn’t seize during sex last night, did I?”

  “No, I guess you didn’t.”

  “So what’s happening to me?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “About a little girl born a wolf.”

  “Technically, half wolf.”

  She tried to get up, but he took her wrist and kept her in place with an easy hand. “You wanted me to think I was crazy.”

  “The truth wasn’t an option.”
His tone was unapologetic, but his eyes told a different story. “I have to protect my family—they’re all I have.”

  That stung, but… “You protected me too.”

  “Yes. I had to.”

  “I can’t wrap my head around this.” She started to pace. “I’m really…”

  “You’re a Dire wolf. And there are a lot of implications that go along with that.”

  “And you’re going to share them,” she said, but he’d stopped talking and was in fact listening for something she couldn’t hear. Actually, that wasn’t true, because the second she began to concentrate, she heard it too, a low rustling. Movements so quiet she shouldn’t be hearing them, the way she couldn’t have possibly heard the conversations on the third floor when she was on the first.

  It’s the wolf, the rustling told her, and then that was silent.

  She looked up and saw the other Dires standing in the kitchen with them, and instinctively she moved to back away. Rifter caught her and shook his head. “It’s not like that. There’s something in your blood that can kill them. And in centuries, that’s the first thing that’s ever promised to end a Dire’s life.”

  “You live… forever?”

  “Yes. So they want you dead—they’re confused as to whether they want themselves to die,” he explained. “So far, immortality’s been a bitch—and not ours.”

  “They want to die?” she asked, and he shrugged. “And you?”

  “I used to want that, yes.”

  “And now?”

  “Not a chance,” he told her.

  Dissension among the Dire brothers because of Gwen was something Rifter couldn’t allow to happen. It appeared she didn’t want that either because she told them, “I think I need to hear everything.”

  “If she’s one of us, she deserves to know,” Vice agreed.

  Slowly, the Dires moved forward and stood around the massive kitchen table, watching for her next move. When Gwen nodded and sat, they joined her in doing so. Rifter took the seat next to her, because if he remained calm, perhaps she would as well.

  There was so much to take in—so much to tell.

  “These men are my cousins—my brothers,” Rifter started, and Gwen looked at each of them.

  They all looked basically the same, not really aging over thousands of years, just changing their style. Vice looked the most changed with the piercings and the tattoos, although he’d been doing that long before it was the fashion.

  “You grew up together?” she asked.

  “We were all part of different packs scattered across Norway—we’ve known one another since our Running,” he explained. “It’s when young wolves are sent out after their transition in order to learn to blend with humans. We have six months to play—go wild without letting on what we are—before we return to the pack for more serious business.”

  “You always go back?” Gwen asked, and Vice shook his head.

  “Not all. Some decide to stay away,” he said. “At the time, Rifter and Jinx and Rogue and I planned on going back. Harm had already broken away and left us.”

  She cut her gaze to Stray questioningly.

  “I was alone until fifty years ago—they found me in Texas,” he said quietly. “My original pack was in Greenland. I was on my Running when the Extinction happened.”

  “And so it’s only the six of you,” she said.

  “Until you, yes,” Rifter answered. He didn’t want to go back to those days, but for her sake, for the history she needed, he would. And then he would tuck it away in those deep, dark places memories slid into and not think on it again.

  He’d set out after his first three shifts, alone, with a single bag and some cash tucked into his boot. Headed toward the more populated cities, he’d had a sense of fear and excitement.

  The Running was a six-month experience to see if the young wolves had learned enough to mingle in the world among humans without exposing what they were. Like spies in a game of covert ops, the men and their newly emerged wolves mingled among humans, took their pleasures and then would return to their packs to mate. And most of those deemed alpha wolves would lead their own packs.

  Rifter was an alpha—son of an alpha and expected to mate Roslyn when he returned. They would move to another area and create their own village of Dires. And while Rifter knew what was expected of him, he’d felt so damned young and inexperienced.

  “That’s what this shit’s all about,” Vice had told him when he’d first met the wolf on his way to the city. He’d stopped for the night under the half-moon and found Vice stripping and preparing to shift.

  Vice couldn’t wait to go back, he’d told Rifter. Harm, whom they’d met in the woods the next night, told them he had no intention of returning.

  They’d both recognized Harm as the wolf who would be king of all the existing Dire packs—he’d been handpicked by the Elders to take over for the current alpha, Jameson, once he returned from his Running. With Harm’s magnetic charm and skills as an orator, it had been easy to see why he was the best choice.

  But the Dire had never been comfortable with the idea of staying with wolves. Always more comfortable around humans, his plan was to remain among them. That would leave Rifter, the next in line, to take over as king of all the Dire packs. It was a job he was uncomfortable with because of his curse, but a role he would accept as his destiny.

  However, Jameson wasn’t happy about giving up the throne at the Elders’ behest. He wanted dominion over Dires and humans, didn’t want to follow anyone’s orders but his own. Rather than follow the orders of the Elders, he’d led the packs on a massive killing spree of humans that threatened to expose the Dire wolves.

  Rifter supposed the Elders had no choice but to follow through with the Extinction. Still, it had come as a blow to the young Dires.

  The wolves returned to Rifter’s village, the first stop from their Running together, where they discovered that the Dires had been slaughtered, throats slashed, villages burned to the ground. The devastation was apparent from miles away.

  They’d gone in cautiously, helping Rifter look for his family, for any remnant of his former life, and found only more death and destruction than they’d ever wanted to see.

  There were no survivors. It was apparent to the young wolves, and it hit Rifter harder than a punch to the gut.

  There was nothing left for him there. Rifter couldn’t speak as he shifted and picked through the smoking wreckage and the bodies of the men, women and children he’d grown up with.

  “Rift, we can’t stay here,” Rogue told him quietly but firmly, led him back to the other three.

  “Suppose they’re all like this,” Vice said, voicing what he couldn’t hold back the way the others had. “The Elders did give the warning about the Extinction. Maybe our packs rebelled?”

  There had been some talk of rebellion before the young wolves left for their Running, done in hushed tones. The young Dires had assumed it was merely a few disgruntled pack members, that Jameson would never risk the future of the entire race.

  They all shifted again and headed to Vice’s village. They watched him, numbly, and subsequently, Jinx and Rogue, discover that their packs had been dealt the same cruel hand of fate.

  “It’s only us,” Rifter said after they’d visited the last of the villages. They were the only surviving Dires, along with Harm. The only wolves, as the Weres hadn’t existed during the age of the Dires. And the four of them decided it wasn’t safe in their old country any longer, gathered up what supplies they could and took off on horseback with as many provisions as they could carry for their human selves.

  That was so many centuries ago, when they’d all been twenty-one years old.

  They hid among humans and after a while found it suited them best. The Elders didn’t make themselves known for another year. But one night, when there was blood around the moon, the Elders appeared and Rifter asked them one question.

  Why?

  But they’d already known the answer.
>
  “The warning,” Rogue whispered. “They didn’t heed the warning.”

  Of the four, he’d been the most angry at that. Self-control was something he’d prided himself on. He’d worried while they were on their Running, but Jinx had soothed him.

  But Rogue’s contacts with the dead had forewarned him months earlier—he felt most guilty that he hadn’t been able to get any of his pack to listen.

  Vice had taken it the hardest, though. He was tied to excess, and those extreme, primal urges on the part of the Dires—which led to coveting what humans had—was what drove the Elders to destroy them.

  And even though Rifter alerted Harm immediately after they’d discovered the massacre, Harm still refused to come back. Whether the guilt of what had happened was too much for him or whether it was pure relief that he had no responsibility of kingship, Rifter was never sure.

  None of them ever understood why the Elders didn’t enforce any rules on Harm, and they’d been smart enough not to question their ultimate authority. Not to their faces, anyway.

  What would happen to them had been unknown. They were supposed to come back from the Running and be mated. Raise families. Live until they were one hundred.

  At the time, it had felt like forever.

  If they’d only known, Rifter thought wryly. If they’d only fucking known.

  From that moment on, Rifter traded one family for another. They mourned. Planned. Ran with the full moon, that celebration more like a funeral, but their wolves necessitated the change.

  And still, the Elders hadn’t come to them. Not at that time anyway, and the young wolves mourned for their families. It wasn’t so much that there was love lost. No, it was different with the Dires. Bred for battle, not hearth and home, the pack was more hierarchy than hugs. And although they’d all mourned the loss of their packs, it was more about loyalty and vengeance than love.

  It took the Elders four months to pull the remaining Dires to a meeting, and they told them then in no uncertain terms what the Dires already knew—they’d been the ones to smite the pack.

  “We were cold and starved, waiting for a death that never came,” Rifter now told Gwen, who had been listening intently. She continued to as he told her how they’d mourned and hovered at death’s door for what seemed like forever. “We had to repent. We’ve been doing that for thousands of years, but it’s not doing any good at all.”