Claimed (The Cull Book 1) (2 page)

Conor’s Ultimatum

Watching Anna stare at him with such defiance and courage,
Conor couldn’t regret his decision. This close, she smelled of earth and
nature, and beneath those scents, he could smell her desire. Her gorgeous body,
so thin with illness the day before, vibrated beneath him with restless energy.

If Anna told the pack she hadn’t chosen to be part of the
culled, they would punish Conor outright—no defense and no trial, only
judgment. It didn’t matter that his father was a tribal elder or that he was a
first gen. They would not show leniency.

He’d resisted the urge to run his thumbs over her bra—the
blue satin fabric barely concealed her tightly drawn nipples. He’d always loved
her sexy curves, the ample shape of her ass, her round hips, and full breasts.
More than her body, her indomitable will and inner fortitude had made him fall
hard. She’d always been the most spirited woman, human or lycan, he’d ever
encountered. He couldn’t give up on her. The disease had taken her will to
fight, and he’d taken this measure to help her find her strength again. The
strength to live.

Her gorgeous brown eyes, deep set and large, were wide as
she kept them averted. She had a small nose with a slightly broad tip that
twitched when she became nervous. It twitched now. Conor wanted to soothe her
fears, but it was all he could do to keep his beast from completing its claim
to Anna.

Finally, she turned to him—her pupils so dilated only a hint
of her chocolate irises remain. Her rounded lips parted in a soft
pah
as her warm hand pressed into his
chest, keeping inches between them. If he tilted his head forward their lips
would meet. They’d only kissed once when she’d worked as his assistant, and he
would give the world to taste her again.

Anna’s eyes shimmered with unshed tears as her unwavering
gaze held steady with his. She finally spoke, her voice tight and strained.
“Conor. Don’t.” Her fingertips caressed the hair on his chest in an act of
betrayal to her words.

The musk of her arousal made his cock hard and made him ache
to touch her. He deeply inhaled her again. The sweet, pungent odor of cancer
had disappeared. Her scent—the one he’d memorized all those years ago, the
scent he still smelled in his dreams—had reverted to its healthy state.
 
When her fingers grazed his stomach he bared
his teeth.

Fuck!
He wanted to
sink his bite into her flesh—to mark her as his own. Without thinking, he
snapped his jaws.

Anna gasped. She dropped her hands to the floor, clenching
fistfuls of the blankets beneath her. “You’re scaring me.”

He could sense her fear mixed with anger and another
emotion, one that had very little to do with being afraid. Inside, he cried out
in rage and triumph. Rage, because he’d never force his claim on her, and
triumph, because he knew she would offer little resistance if he did. “I won’t
hurt you.”

“You already have.”

“Let me save you, Anna.”

She blinked—a tear spilled down her cheek. “Oh Conor. How
little you’ve changed.”

Conor wiped the tear with his thumb, placed it to his lips,
and drank her sorrow. He couldn’t keep the truth from her. Not anymore. “If you
want to leave, you can go.”

“But I can’t now. You’ve taken away that choice.”

He caressed her face. He loved Anna, and real love had a
price. He chose to let her go if she truly wished to be free of him and his
world. “You’re still human.”

Shock and disbelief animated her expression. “How can that
be? I’m not sick. I feel stronger than I ever have in my life. My sense of
smell, my hearing, my sight… Hell, my body.” She cupped her large breasts.
“It’s like I’m thirty again. I don’t understand.”

Explaining would have been complicated if Anna had been a
layperson, but she’d spent time at his side in the lab. “I’ve developed a serum
using the enzymes from lycanosapien saliva. Its effects are…temporary,” he said
ruefully. “You can go back to your life.”

Her eyes widened, and she couldn’t keep the excited tremor
out of her voice. “Am I cured?”

The question felt like a kick to his gut. “No.” He couldn’t
keep the anger from his tone. “The cancer will come back after the effects of
the serum wear off.” He gripped her by the shoulders. “Please. Let me change
you, Anna. I—”

Conor froze as the energy in the room shifted. Anna tensed.
Her eyes widened for a moment—and he knew Rebecca Johnson had entered the den.
Anna’s gaze narrowed in on the woman behind him. He cursed himself for not
sensing her sooner.

Rebecca’s sultry, low voice echoed in the small space. “I
can’t believe you spurned me for a bitch who doesn’t even want you.”

Conor’s stomach clenched as a growl rumbled through his
chest. How long had Rebecca been listening? The concrete dens on the tribe’s
property were built to keep sound muffled, especially in their human forms, but
if she’d been at the door… He couldn’t think about the consequences. If Anna
agreed to the culling, the point would be moot.

He’d been family-bound to Rebecca. They’d both been first
gen—littered together—and their parents had made arrangements for them to mate
in their fortieth year when they’d become adults.

He turned to look at her, unsurprised to see her lean body
completely naked. “What are you doing here, Rebecca?”

She tilted her head sideways. Her long red hair brushed
against her arm and fell over her small breasts. She pursed her lips, her
cheeks flexing as she scrutinized Conor and Anna. “I’m trying to figure out why
you’d turn your back on me. On us.” She pointed at Anna. “For this pathetic
human.”

When Conor had petitioned the tribe to receive special
dispensation to go to college and study medicine, the elders had granted his
request. This had effectively changed the terms of his binding contract with
Rebecca. He’d been working to find a treatment for the infertility in
lycanosapiens when he’d met Anna. He’d kept up the research until the day he’d
found out Anna had developed cancer. From that moment on, he’d turned his
efforts to curing her instead.

He’d failed.

In his research, he’d discovered an enzyme in his saliva
that made his kind impervious to human diseases. He’d tested the isolated
enzyme on several terminal patients in the end stages of cancer, and while they
initially exhibited signs of being healthy, the effects wore off in days.
Subsequent injections were less and less effective. Four out of the five
patients in his trial study had accepted his invitation for transformation, but
only two had survived long enough to take part.

Conor regretted his inability to save the other two
patients, but it was too dangerous to change a human outside of an organized
culling. The reconstruction of a person’s body to that of a lycanosapien could
be extremely painful and deadly. It’s why the tribe only changed people in a
controlled environment and only after they’d pumped the invited full of
sedatives. Even then, the newly converted werewolf would need the support of
the tribe upon awakening.
 

Because he’d been born a wolf, Conor would never know what a
culled member went through when altered by bite and blood. But he knew with
certainty, if Anna didn’t allow him to change her, she’d return to her fragile
state of health in a couple of days, and be dead in a couple of months. All his
work would be for nothing.
 

“My wolf claims you as mate, Conor Evans.” He heard Rebecca
drop to her knees behind him. “If your woman won’t submit, then you must allow
our second natures to decide.”

Rebecca, by right, had first claim on Conor, but she’d never
have him where it counted. He kept his gaze trained on Anna. She seemed
strangely calm now—her demeanor almost cold. “I have chosen you, Anna Davis. In
all my life, I will never love another. You are the ruler of my heart and body,
but if you refuse the invitation, then I’ll let you go.” He squeezed her
shoulders for emphasis. He needed her to decide now. “I want you, but I will
take Rebecca. It’s my duty to my kinsmen and to my tribe to take a mate.”

The pull of Rebecca’s wolf was hard to resist with his own
animal so close to emerging. When she rubbed her breasts against his back, her
fingers tangling in his hair as she kissed his neck, he didn’t respond but he
didn’t stop her.

 
“I won’t let you
go,” Rebecca whispered fiercely.

Anna threw herself forward, wound her fingers into Rebecca’s
long hair, and yanked her sideways. “Don’t fucking touch him, bitch. Conor is
mine!”

Anna makes a discovery

Anna had felt tricked and betrayed, but on learning Conor
hadn’t really changed her, only given her a short reprieve, another emotion
occurred. Disappointment. It felt like the first time she thought she was
pregnant. She hadn’t been ready for parenthood, hadn’t been sure if she loved
Robert enough to share the responsibility of a child, but when the test had
been negative, she’d mourned for all the possibility of that new life.
 
She hadn’t wanted Conor to make her a
lycanosapien, but now that she knew he hadn’t, she grieved the life that might
have been.

She’d been prepared to let him go, but when the tall and
lanky woman, with her perfect face and perfect body had skulked into the room,
Anna’s disappointment turned into bitterness and jealousy. If she rejected
Conor, his life would go on without her. Worse, his life would go on with
Rebecca and her perfectly buoyant breasts.

Even when she’d been married to Robert, she’d never been the
jealous type, and he’d given her plenty of reason to go through his clothes and
check for lipstick stains on his collar.
 
Maybe I didn’t care because he
wasn’t Conor.

She yanked Rebecca’s hair again, resisting the urge to punch
her. The man-stealing bitch rolled to the side of Conor, coming up on the balls
of her feet and fingertips. An attack stance. Rebecca’s lips curled back
revealing sharp canines, unnaturally large, designed to tear into prey and
enemy alike. Her eyes were golden and wolfish, her nails elongated into claws,
and her muscles bunched on the edge of transformation.

Anna should have been frightened. The display should have
made her recoil in terror, but she was a dying woman with little to lose but
her life. So instead of cringing and cowering, Anna barked a laugh.

The abrupt sound stopped Rebecca better than a full on
assault. The woman jerked her head to one side, as if the noise Anna made
confused her.

Anna fixed her gaze on Rebecca until she forced the other
woman to look away.
That’s right. I’m not
scared of you.
“Come near Conor again and I’ll give you the fight you’re
spoiling for,
bitch
.”

Conor stared at Anna as if she’d just grown a second head.
“Go, Rebecca. Now.” His expressions shifted as if he were sifting through a
gambit of emotions and couldn’t land on any of them. When Rebecca withdrew from
the room completely, he sat back on his heels. “Does this mean you want me,
Anna?”

His hesitant question gave her pause. She could see a
fragile hope in his expression. So fragile, she worried the wrong word might
shatter him. Did she want him? Yes. She’d wanted Conor Evans since the first
time they’d met. But she had other responsibilities, even now. How could she
justify having an existence where she would outlive her own child? Dying before
he could marry and have children of his own was bad enough, but to outlive him,
outlive his children—the idea was too painful to consider.

Did she love Conor? Yes. Did she love him enough? The answer
came with two suitcases full of uncertainty and doubt. “It’s not that easy,
Conor.”

“Because you won’t allow it,” he said with a rise of
irritation. “I’ve always known you were more, Anna.”

“More than what?”

“I don’t know if I can explain it in a way you’ll
understand.”

What did he see in her? She’d never been certain. “Try me.”

He rubbed his face briskly, his eyes turning up in
concentration. Finally, he looked down at Anna. He held his hands out. “Okay.
For lycanosapiens, there is a structure. A hierarchy.”

Anna remembered him telling her about this when she worked
for him. “An alpha system.”

“You remember.” He smiled and took her hand. “You are a rare
anomaly. A human who has the traits of an alpha, even if you don’t have the
supernatural strength.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You made Rebecca look away.” He circled her palm with his
thumb. “You dominated her without lifting a finger.”

“You knew I could do that?”

“I suspected.” He shook his head. “I’m very dominant, Anna,
and there have been times when I’ve felt the strong urge to bend to your will.”
He shook his head. “I’m doing a lousy job of explaining. You drew me, Anna.
From the first time we met, I never wanted another woman the way I want you.”

She wet her lips, her breath hitching while her lower parts
tightened with desire. “So, you are like… what? A moth to my flame. A fly to my
bug zapper. PMS to my chocolate.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way.” He leaned in close to her
again and brushed his lips against her ear. “But if you want me to eat you, I’m
definitely up to the task.”

Anna’s pussy clenched with a jolt of strong desire as she
imagined Conor “up to the task.” She craved his hot mouth all over her body.
When the heat of his hard length brushed against her thigh, she groaned. “Why
are you naked?”

Better question, why wasn’t she naked? The bra and panties
she wore might as well have been chastity belts. They were thin reminders that
she had a choice in what happened next.

“I went for a run while you were sleeping.”

“You mean unconscious,” she quipped. She narrowed her gaze.
“You don’t mean jogging, do you?”

He smiled sheepishly. “No, not that kind of running.”

“Didn’t think so.” She’d watched him transform to wolf one
time. The process had been quick and painful to watch, but the result… His wolf
form had astounded her.

His lips caressed the side of her neck making her body
constrict with lust.
 
She couldn’t think
with him this close—touching her. “Maybe you should go back to the other side
of the room.”

“Is that really what you want?”

“No.”

When he licked the side of throat, she moaned and blindly
reached for him. He kissed and nibbled his way down to her shoulder, but when
his teeth grazed her collarbone, she jerked away. “No, don’t, Conor. Please. No
teeth.” She knew how lycanosapiens were created. Bite and blood. He’d explained
the process to her all those years ago, and while she knew she wanted to wrap
herself in the warmth of his body, she didn’t want to commit beyond the moment.

“I won’t,” he panted.

“Promise me.”

“I promise.” He kissed her shoulder. “Not without your
permission.”

Anna laced her fingers into his hair, allowing his green
eyes to drink her in. “Oh Conor. I feel like we’ve waited forever.”

“We have.” He closed the distance between them, burying her
mouth with his own. His lips parted, making room for her tongue as they sipped
and drank the passion already blazing between them.

In all her years, even when she’d been healthy, Anna had
never felt so alive.