A Guardians Passion (25 page)

“Perhaps. But the bargain was a good one.”

“What bargain?” she demanded to know, turning and finding Birathan’s eyes, which were glued to her backside.

He looked up, a smile upon his vicious face. “Females. A group of young, fertile females. My kind has so few, and yet Di’Amanda and her friends successfully bred them. Science, she says. The others will be so grateful. I, however, am pleased to just have you. The fighters that I could breed upon you, reeking of strength and magic like you do,” he said, vertical nostrils twitching.

He grabbed her suddenly, hand clapping around her waist to pull her upon his lap, seating her right over the bar of his enormous cock.

Despite her fury and every fiber of her being telling her that if ever there had been a do-or-die moment in the past hours, they had been nothing compared to this current one, Freya could not move. He had not penetrated her, but his eagerness to was all too apparent.

He leaned down to kiss the top of her breast, and Freya lost all composure, claws lashing out to rake gashes down Birathan’s face. Although her claws were sharp and managed deep gouges, the asprega healed quickly with masochistic glee. Even as she sank her claws into his throat, trying to gain some purchase with the skin melding around her talons, he moved forward, serpentine tongue darting out to flick against the roundness of her belly.

“The cub you hold is unique. Even I can feel its power. They don’t know. Idiots.” He chuckled as he nodded to the vampires so caught up in their auction. “Still, you carry some other’s child. With one such as you and I would create, vampires, wolves, they would all be swiftly annihilated.”

Freya couldn’t recall ever fainting before—blacking out from too much liquor certainly, falling asleep after withstanding her lovers’ passions, but never giving up consciousness due to fear.

But at his touch, she gave in to the quickest veil of darkness ever to court her.

* * * *

Rayne steadied Fenris, supporting the larger wolf as they descended the steps of the plane. With his arm around Fenris’s waist and his shoulder bearing the weight of the drowsy were, they put their feet upon the dark tarmac. He and Fenris were the last ones to exit the flight.

Vaegar was talking to his men, who had driven onto the runway of the private airport specifically to meet them. Gaea, Geraldine, and Cole were moving luggage that they had unloaded from the plane, undoubtedly packed with guns, blades, and various other tools of destruction. François was close beside, clutching the jacket he wore tightly. Even if vampires didn’t feel temperatures like the living, Rayne was sure that the vampire couldn’t help but feel the chill directed at him.

Everything was going as Vaegar had planned up in the air, with everyone gearing up for the chase. With François’s aid, half the battle would be over. The master vampire had given them the exact location of where the females were supposedly being held.

The other half of the battle, however, stirred up against Rayne’s body.

“Freya. Close,” Fenris muttered. He was still caught up in the haze of waking but was swiftly recovering. He separated himself from Rayne’s hold, gazing around and taking in the cool night air with deep, searching breaths. “Very close.”

Rayne moved before Fenris and placed his hand upon a chest already heaving with renewed excitement. Fenris looked into his eyes, the fire within revealing itself through the sheen of blue eyes gone black. He clapped a hand on Rayne’s shoulder and leaned down to Rayne’s mouth.

The touch of Fenris’s lips over his was a searing brand, conveying more than love or trust. Fenris’s brief caress was a confirmation in the face of the chaos to come.

Fenris would no longer hold back. And while Rayne had been able to recover some of his own strength during the flight, he was certain that he was nowhere near capable or willing to subdue what was growing anew within his alpha.

The inevitable.

Within seconds, Rayne’s assumption was verified as Fenris stepped away from him and began to tremble.

The transformation of a werewolf was usually considered only a mild inconvenience by the time they were teenagers; however, Fenris’s change and that of any other Luna were nothing to take lightly. Bones didn’t just re-form; fur didn’t just come forth—something wilder happened. There was no prescribed format. Lunas burned twice as hot as normal weres as they evoked not simply one facet of the goddess but every suggestion buried deep within their DNA. It was painful for Fenris, Rayne knew, sorting through millions of years of evolution, picking strands of avian, reptilian, mammalian traits and more with the impetus of insanity.

He also knew that it was empowering.

Rayne took a step back as Fenris fell to his hands and knees, teeth gnashing at the great agony of becoming, his breaths coming like bellows. He noticed Vaegar and his men approaching curiously; Gaea and Geraldine cautiously maintained their distance. They knew the sort of monster that would soon be among them. And while it wasn’t doubtful that Fenris would notice them, even in his Luna state, there was no better chance than caution.

“Stay back,” Rayne shouted as Vaegar boldly moved within twenty feet of Fenris and himself. “We’re going to hunt.” Pulling off his clothing, Rayne willed a change within his own body, emitting his fur and fangs before dropping to all fours. It didn’t matter whether the others were ready or not. Fenris stood upon six powerful legs, with tusks to rival any bull elephant’s and fangs that would frighten the heartiest of crocodiles. Nostrils flaring, Fenris the beast turned to Rayne and snorted.

“Everyone. To the vehicles,” Vaegar chimed in, pulling at his own clothing, surely and foolishly planning on running with them. It would be a farce. Fenris could outrun all of them, especially in the form he had chosen.

Rayne looked to Geraldine and found that she already had her tracking rifle raised and aimed.

He heard the report of the gun and traced the trajectory. Fenris had already moved nearly a quarter of a mile, oblivious to the tracer bullet Rayne was sure had struck home.

They would follow in the vehicles, bringing up the rear with the men and equipment. It was a part of their plan, not his. Setting off in a lightning sprint, Rayne ran hard to catch his alpha.

He too was hungry for the return of their female and the worst sort of vengeance for those who had taken her.

Chapter Fifteen

As Freya came to, she immediately wished she hadn’t. She scrunched her eyes closed, begging the darkness to come back to her, but the quaking within her bones denied her any sort of peace. She felt trapped within the shuddering construct of an embrace, disbelief keeping her in the paralysis of shock. She couldn’t stop the vibration, nor could she do a thing about the hot tears stinging at the corners of her eyes as she felt the fleshy spear within her body.

Fuck no. This shit cannot be fucking happening
. Freya chewed her lip, tasting sulfur in her anger at the flickering tongue within her, the gentleness of the thrusting length stretching the folds of her pussy. The clammy, hot paw upon her breast, flicking her nipple, meant nothing in comparison to the horror she faced.

She had been violated.

The act of vomiting, stomach hitching violently, brought Freya’s eyes open. She bolted upward. Although there was little to nothing in her belly to regurgitate, bile came up and past her lips to spill upon Birathan’s forearm.

Heaving but unable to produce anything other than stomach fluids, Freya wiped her mouth with her arm and turned to the fiend looking at her.

“Get. The fuck. Out of me,” she growled, bringing forth her deadly talons in an instant. Attacking Birathan’s face with ten stabbing blades of her own, she penetrated the flesh of his forehead and cheek, dragging jagged gouges downward.

She managed to pull his right eye from its socket, but no sooner had the ruined pulp spilled out onto his cheek than the repair began. A flurry of Freya’s blows made Birathan’s face a shredded rag of flesh before exhaustion born of futility struck her.

Only when Freya lowered her hands did the asprega prime pull his tongue out of her.

Running his tongue over lips that healed before her eyes, he chuckled, unfazed. “I haven’t begun to get inside of you. Soon, though,” he said, squeezing her hip before lifting her from his lap and setting her down upon the floor. “I wish no distractions or voyeurs when I introduce your cub to my cock.”

“Fuck. That.” Freya exhaled, surprised at the smallness of her own voice.

Birathan winked down at her. “Soon. I promise.”

Her thighs covered in Birathan’s spittle, Freya felt herself shorting out with the strength of the murderous rage within her. It wasn’t orderly, not like she would have felt for a mark. She couldn’t think clearly enough to focus on a plot for tearing Birathan apart, piece by fucking piece. She could only envision him dead at her feet, rocked with the desire for it. Even if she couldn’t contemplate how, or what she was willing to sacrifice for his suffering, she dwelled on the possibility.

“You traitor!”

Freya heard Helena’s voice, filled with rage and contempt. She didn’t want to turn her head away from the fiend that had assaulted her, but already Freya was divorcing herself from her physical body.

Helena was standing amid the monitors, her clothing removed as Freya’s had been. Silvery-gray fur covered a physique still firm as Helena stood in wolf form. She had her teeth bared and was snarling at a familiar face.

Standing behind the monitors, alongside the diligent technicians, was a pregnant female with chestnut hair, very much clothed and not distressed in the least. Emily McTavish.

Swiftly putting two and two together, Freya realized why it had been so easy for the asprega to approach the retreat. They’d had someone on the inside.

Helena surely knew it too as she lunged toward the girl. Before her curved talons could reach Emily, Helena was swiftly pulled back by the asprega closest to her. Jerking within his hold, the silver wolf displayed the strength of her wrath by nearly pulling free. “We extended our hand to you, welcomed you, and yet you would turn on your own kind?”

Wary, as if she doubted that Helena could be contained, Emily took a step back. “I’m not turning on my own kind. I’m turning on you,” she snarled. “You and all those who pant at your feet for handouts and scraps, as if you are any better than the rest of us.”

“That was never our intention, you stupid, stupid girl. You stand there as if you are female enough to lead your pack. What did the vamp offer you? Money? A title?”

“She offered me the opportunity to see you fall. You, who made your way without a care for others,” Emily insisted. “Oh, so you recently decided to give back, to do something for other packs. You think I don’t know how you rose to power? I know.”

Freya knew the stories—that Sohon business deals had been ten shades of shady in the old days—but she was also certain that Emily was too young to have been so offended.

Helena knew it too. “You weren’t even born, pup. What did your alpha tell you? That we cheated him? We slighted him in some way?”

Emily’s silence spoke for her.

“How touching and how irrelevant.” Di’Amanda sighed, clearly unfazed by the tension brewing around her. She looked to Emily and shook her head. “Don’t worry, Em. Everything will be fine,” she said.

Oh no, it won’t. Not ever
. Freya was certain, but quickly she found her attention pulled back to a more imminent threat than a brawl between Helena and Emily.

Freya flinched at the touch of Birathan’s tongue upon her thigh but didn’t dare turn toward him. Instead she kept her eyes on Emily, directing her anger on the true cause of her fucked-up situation. Freya wondered at the depth of hate stirring within the girl. It could have been valid, but revenge didn’t need plots, games, or deceit. And it damned sure didn’t need to be carried out on innocents. No. If Helena didn’t get to Emily, didn’t tear her limb from limb, then surely, Freya swore, she would.

The beast holding Helena wrapped its forearm around her throat, the thick, furred column that it had become. Her voice, impaired though it was, still sounded like thunder. “Your pack chose to wallow in self-pity, petty jealousy. Me and mine had nothing to do with that. What we did was never about feeling better or thinking that we were better, only about keeping us from being underfoot as slaves again, as lost as we once were. And you struck a pact with them? You fool.”

Emily was trembling. “No. You…you are the fool. You and your clan—living in your glass fucking houses with your rules to judge others by. Let’s see how much respect the Sohon name has after this, allowing so many to fall prey during a meaningless party.”

But it wasn’t meaningless.

Freya had thought it was too at first, but she had been wrong. There was so much that she hadn’t known about cubs and birth, about comfort and relaxation. She had benefited from the Sohons and felt offended at the notion that the retreat held no value.

Darkness building inside her chest, Freya added Emily to her personal Do Not Revive listing. Certainly Birathan was at the top of the list now, flicking the dark tongue that he had dared to penetrate her with.

That would be the first thing she would have to tear out.

“On to the last but certainly not least item up for bid.” Di’Amanda carried on as if there had been no argument and certainly no stench of hatred in the air. “We have the final wolf up for bidding. Helena is not just a Sohon like the last morsel, Benna, but she is
the
Sohon matriarch. Although outside of prime breeding age, the prestige of owning such a valued prisoner, such a symbol of arrogance, is worth the price. Bidding will begin at one million five.”

“It will not,” Helena snapped, much to the surprise of everyone in the room, including Freya.

The matron showed a side of herself that Freya had never even suspected, managing to break free of the asprega’s grasp, pulling its arm from its socket. While the beast’s injury was not debilitating, it was enough of a distraction for her to shoot toward the monitors and tackle the stone-still Emily to the ground.