Beauty Dates the Beast (30 page)

I shivered and pushed the horrible memories aside, my entire body tense. Wolves pushed out of the woods, two … three … six … seven. Beau had told me that the Anderson wolf pack had eight male wolves and one female, so two were missing. I craned my neck, looking for them until I heard Bathsheba’s gasp. Her gaze was on the pack, and I looked back to them. They had stopped and now
were crouched, changing back to human form. As I watched, one naked man rose and stretched as if he had not a care in the world. He looked over at me and winked, unconcerned that he was naked.

My sister averted her eyes.

I stared back at the man. How the hell had he shifted so very fast? My own shift was always painful and drawn out, leaving me aching and heaving. This man acted like he’d woken up from a pleasant nap.

As the others quickly changed, they lined up behind the other man. He stepped forward and looked at Beau. “You brought the wolf girl?”

I tensed. Roy had always called me “girl” too … just before he beat me. Was I going to be just a nameless, faceless creature to abuse? Again? The skin on the back of my neck rippled and I bit down on my cheek again, willing my body under control.

“We brought Sara, yes,” Beau said. “Where’s Savannah?”

The lead werewolf glanced back at me. I remained where I was. I wasn’t moving forward until I had a nod from Beau or Ramsey. My stomach churned hard, and I forced myself to relax my sweaty hand so I wouldn’t accidentally squeeze the hell out of Bathsheba’s fingers.

The lead wolf raised a hand in the air and motioned
someone forward. I heard the rustle in the woods, then a man about my age and a young, dark-haired woman emerged. She smelled like the wolves and her clothes looked borrowed, but underneath I could smell the faint scent of cougar.

“That’s Savannah,” someone murmured to my sister. As the only human at the parlay, she missed the subtle signals that put the shifters a page ahead of her.

Savannah slowly moved forward. One of the Russells breathed out hard, and I wondered at the angry sound. Savannah gave the wolf shifter at her side a long look, then rushed toward us.

The Russells enveloped her in warm hugs, patting her on the back and clapping her shoulder, but their expressions remained grim. A short distance away, Beau looked furious. Savannah’s smile was wide and she wiped relieved tears from her eyes. Her scent was heavy with wolf—one wolf in particular. And noticing her calm demeanor I realized why the Russells were mad.

Savannah was no longer in heat. That meant …

“She’s all yours again,” the Anderson wolf leader drawled. “Give us Sara.”

I fought the sick feeling in my gut and gave my sister’s hand a squeeze, and then released it. I stepped forward, past the Russells, past Beau and Ramsey, and approached the naked pack of wolves.
All of them were tall and muscled. The leader had a beard and a rather stern face. The others were younger, but I was still the youngest—and smallest—one. The leader’s gaze was assessing as I approached, studying my figure, my face, testing my scent on the air. I knew what he was looking for.

He was judging me as a potential mate.

The skin on my back bunched and rippled, and I inhaled sharply. The scent of wolf was almost overwhelming, and my legs were cramping up. Shit! I bit my cheek so hard that I drew blood. I would
never
take another wolf as my mate. I’d die first.

“Hello, baby doll. We’re gonna treat you real nice,” he said in a mild drawl, clearly sensing my nervousness. His gaze was oddly hypnotic, and I avoided making eye contact. An alpha could control the wolves in his pack, couldn’t he? I felt that strange thread of compulsion and I wasn’t even officially in his pack. It frightened me.

I didn’t dare look back at the Russell clan. Instead, I took another step toward my new “family.” I tried not to shudder. “I’m going with you of my own free will,” I announced, using the phrases we’d decided on to bring the plan into action. “A trade is a trade.”

The werewolf alpha nodded at me.

I turned back to Beau. “A trade is a trade, right?”

He nodded at me, his body tense. Beau didn’t take his eyes off me. “Agreed.”

“All right then,” I said, hating how small my voice was. “I’m now part of the wolf pack.”

The alpha smiled, a possessive, smug look. My entire body tensed as I waited for the plan to kick in to motion. Waited for rescue.

Behind me, heavy feet stepped forward. A large hand clasped my shoulder and yanked me backward against a massive, firm body. Ramsey said, “In accordance with the law of the Bjorn clan and the were-bear clans, I claim this one as my mate.”

The wolf leader’s face flickered with confusion, then contorted with rage. “What the fuck is this?”

I quivered, flinching at the alpha’s rage. Normal anger scared me, but the alpha’s rage made my entire being shiver. It affected the other wolves, as well—they shifted anxiously on their feet.

Ramsey’s arm looped over my chest, protecting me.

The wolves frowned and muttered, exchanging glances. The bearded alpha gritted his teeth and glared at me and Ramsey. A low growl formed in his throat. “This is a trick.”

Ramsey’s arm tightened, and I squeaked when I realized his protective hand had accidentally cupped one of my small breasts. I didn’t think he’d realized it either, and his hand shifted lower.

“Not a trick,” he growled back, the rumbling in his throat much deeper than the alpha’s wolf-like growl.

My mouth filled with saliva again. God. Not now. I couldn’t go wolf now.

The alpha’s eyes flashed with anger, anger that he focused on me. “She don’t look excited to be your mate, Bjorn. She looks scared.”

Uh oh. I put on my chirpy smile and gave Ramsey’s hand a little pat. “I’m just surprised that my Huggy Bear decided to declare our love openly. He’s kinda private.”

Someone snickered. I felt Ramsey’s arm tighten on me, and he leaned down and kissed my temple. The oddly tender gesture threw me for a loop.

The wolf leader didn’t look convinced. “You two aren’t a couple,” he declared. “This is bullshit.”

“We are too,” I blurted, desperate. I turned in Ramsey’s arms and looked up at him. He stood at least a foot and a half taller than me, and weighed twice as much. I grabbed the collar of his shirt and tugged him downward, then planted my mouth on his.

I felt a tremor of surprise rip through him but ignored it, kissing his hard, unyielding mouth. I had to make this look as real as possible so I slid my tongue against his lips, coaxing them apart, and
then sucking on his lower lip. Ramsey hesitated a moment, and then I felt his big hands cup my ass, pulling me closer against him, and his tongue flicked against mine. I made the kiss deeper, wrapping my legs around his big torso like I wanted to ride him, making small noises of pleasure in the back of my throat for the audience’s benefit. Ramsey’s sharp inhalation took me by surprise a moment before his tongue stroked deep against mine. Startled, I broke off the kiss and stared up at him. His brown gaze met mine and he gave me another light kiss, as if reluctant to let the contact end. It sent a shiver all the way through me, the way he was looking at my mouth.

Perhaps I was not the only great actor here.

I turned in Ramsey’s arms, unwilling to unwrap my legs from around his torso, and glanced at the wolf pack.

I shouldn’t have looked. All the naked men were staring very pointedly at me. And several of them had erections.

Oh jeez. Had I just made things worse? What if they didn’t believe us and I had to go with them? What if I left with them and they all held me down and raped me? Would they even have to hold me down? Or would the alpha bark a command and I’d just drop to all fours?

Fear quickened my breath, and I felt the tight,
uncomfortable band of a headache surge through my scalp. Oh no. That was another sign of an imminent shift.

The wolf leader put his hands on his hips and stared at Ramsey, then at me, then at the Russells. His body looked tense, his posture wary. “If she’s your mate,” he growled, “then why’s she so fucking scared?”

Ramsey’s hand on my ass tightened. “You,” he snarled.

The leader looked surprised. “Me?”

“She doesn’t like wolves.” Ramsey’s bass voice rumbled through his body.

“She must have liked wolves enough at some point,” the Anderson leader said crudely. “She let one between her legs.”

Ramsey’s response was a low growl.

A chorus of growls rose from the throats of the wolf pack. Fuck. This was getting worse, not better.

I unhooked my legs from Ramsey’s body and slid down him. “Let’s be reasonable about this,” I said in my cheeriest voice. “There’s no reason to—”

The wolf alpha leveled his gaze at me. “Get over here, girl.”

Caught by that compelling stare, I shrank my shoulders and moved away from Ramsey, dropping
to my knees. I couldn’t stand tall in front of the alpha; had to show my submission—

Ramsey roared—a feral sound—and I heard the Russells surge forward, though I wasn’t sure if they were going to stop Ramsey or stop the wolves. The Andersons rushed forward as well and I was suddenly surrounded by a pack of naked men as their leader tried to pull me away from the furious Ramsey.

“A wolf belongs with her alpha,” the Anderson leader snarled.

“No,” I gasped, but I was unable to rise from the ground. My legs tightened. One of the Andersons reached for me, taking my arm in his hand. To my horror, my skin rippled in his grasp. The Anderson wolf gave me a look of surprise and let go of my arm just in time for a convulsive wave to crash over me.

Not here. Not now. My back arched and my body undulated with pain. I cried out and dropped to my haunches, my panicked body beginning the painful transformation to wolf.

I
n humiliation, I endured the endless rounds of agony. My jaw cracked and shifted, my nose elongating, every muscle stretching like a rubber-band pulled taut. My skin shivered the entire time as the wolf worked her way through me. I tried not to cry out, but this change was so hard and sudden that I nearly blacked out with the pain of it, and I’m pretty sure I made a few whimpering noises.

The clearing was deathly silent except for the sound of my labored breathing and the roaring of blood in my ears as I became the hated half of me. I struggled to go back, turn the tide and remain human, and that made things harder. It was like torture as my hands turned to paws, and I felt each excruciating twist of tendon and bone acutely. Long minutes passed and then my shredded clothes fell to the ground. I gave a long,
humiliated body shiver, then rose shakily to my feet. My wolf feet.

Both sides stared at me—the Russells in something like chagrin, the Andersons in surprise. Ramsey’s expression was one of disappointment. For some reason that made me feel worse, and my stomach lurched and gagged. I threw up blood in the grass, unable to keep it down. On some of the more painful changes, I vomited blood. Today, it seemed, was one of those days.

The Anderson leader pointed at me and the stink of wolf rolled off him, my nose attuned to the scent. “That,” he said, his voice an echoing boom in my sensitive wolf ears, “was a fucking disgusting show.”

A small whine crept out of my throat.

“You’re letting her kill herself!” he continued. “She keeps transforming like that and she’s going to slaughter herself. And you assholes ain’t helping her?” The Anderson leader spat at Ramsey’s feet. “I thought you said you wanted to be her mate.”

I heard the creak of Ramsey’s knuckles as he clenched his fists and I looked up at him. He didn’t look at me.

The Anderson leader moved toward me. I shied back, but he held a hand out, fingers extended, and the wolf in me felt compelled to sniff them. I did so, and he touched my ears, then ran a hand down
the ruff of my neck. I endured it, feeling the wolf’s need to please the alpha.

“Ain’t supposed to be slow and painful like that,” the Anderson leader said, his voice softer. “Ain’t supposed to make her puke blood. If that’s what she’s doing, she’s gonna be dead before a year is out.”

My sister’s breath caught in her throat, the start of a soft sob. “No.”

My body was still radiating pain, though it was ebbing slowly. Humiliation tore through my thoughts, along with fear. Was this a trick? Or was he right and I was going to die? What could I do? I didn’t want to go with the wolves. I whined. I wanted to go back with my sister. I wanted to run away. My tail flicked.

As if sensing my thoughts, the Anderson leader tried to put a hand on my ruff again but I flinched away, skittering back a few feet, human fear overriding wolf instinct.

“We can help her learn how to change,” he said in a calm, low voice meant to soothe. “Send her with us and we can save her. Even wolf babies know how to shift better than she does. Not only is she putting herself at risk, she’s putting others at risk. What if she changes in public?”

Ramsey looked down at me, into my wolf eyes, and must have seen the fear there. He looked back
at the Anderson leader and took two steps forward, getting in the man’s face. To his credit, the wolf leader did not back down.

“She is my mate,” Ramsey said in a low, dangerous voice. “She stays with me. The laws make it so.”

The Anderson leader looked at me, then back at Ramsey. “If you aren’t gonna let her come with us, then one of us is going to go with you. I’m not gonna let you kill her. She’s one of us.”

Ramsey growled.

Beau stepped forward. “Hang on. This is an arrangement I am interested in. I want to hear what you have to say.”

A half hour later my flesh began to ache and crawl again, and I hurried off to the woods, my sister trailing behind me with my clothes. Several long, agonizing minutes later, I lay in the grass, naked and panting and human, waiting for the nausea to pass.

My sister crouched next to me and handed me my clothes. “Oh, Sara,” she said softly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

I sat up and took the T-shirt from her. “Tell you what?”

“About the changes. How it hurts.”

I shrugged, slipping the shirt over my head and
then dragging on my jeans. My bra and panties had been destroyed in the change, and the shirt was in tatters. “I didn’t know it
wasn’t
supposed to hurt. How could I have known?”