Ever After (19 page)

Lilliana fell to the floor. She couldn’t move. All she could do was yell. Her clothes vanished from her body. One second they were there, the next gone. How was that possible? Her mind couldn’t make sense of any of this. The pain was all consuming and soon she stopped trying to rationalize anything, all she could hold onto was the need to survive.

“They’ll be back. When your body returns to its human form, your clothes will be back. Just one of those things.” Cyrus petted her head. “You do smell good. I could take you to bed easily. Except you’re not mine.”

No, she wasn’t his. She knew that now too. She belonged to Travis. Where was he? Why hadn’t he come for her? Tears slipped from her eyes. Why was she having such unreasonable thoughts? They didn’t make sense. Of course, Travis hadn’t come. He had no idea where she was or what had happened.

Her body altered. Her bones crunched, and her muscles tore. Agony wrecked her body, and still she couldn’t move consciously control herself. She could only flop around uncontrollably. Lilliana managed to roll to the side before she threw up.

“Only happens the first couple of times. After that your stomach won’t object so much.” Cyrus sounded downright matter-of-fact about her puking on the floor.

Lake knelt down. “Shh. Most of our Pack looks forward to this pain. It means they’ve reached adulthood, that they are ready to be full members.”

“Most of our Pack doesn’t have you messing with their genes, trouble maker.” Cyrus growled, and Lake lowered her eyes before she whimpered. “Yes, now you’re suddenly respectful. Go clean this mess up. It’s the least you can do.”

A strong heat surged through Lilliana’s body. She roared, this time animalistic sounds exploding from her body. Cyrus grinned before standing up to clap. “That was fast, and you’re quite the werewolf. Fit for an Alpha.” He chewed on his bottom lip. “Just not me. Don’t you worry though. Travis will be coming for you. I’ll even let you live if he does just what I tell him to.”

He didn’t mean it. Lilliana sat back on her strange feeling hind legs. Now that she’d changed into this shape, she actually didn’t mind the looseness of her bones. It felt right, as though she could finally use a part of her body that had been trapped inside of her all this time. The same way that she understood that, she had the absolute knowledge that Cyrus had no intention of really harming her. He probably would if he had to—but that wasn’t what he’d set out to do.

This Alpha had not set fire to her building where so many could have been hurt. He protected; he didn’t injure without good reason.

Someone had, and unless a human arsonist had taken on her apartment for some reason, she would bet that she’d been firebombed because of something to do with the wolves.

A scent crossed her nose, and she sat up straighter. What was that? She shook her tale back and forth, sniffing at the air.

“That’s the moon, she-wolf.” Cyrus sniffed the air, and she looked in his direction. Lake’s body began to shake, and seconds later, she hit the ground. The other woman snarled and shook her way into her wolf body. She howled upward, and unable to contain the joy she felt in the noise, Lilliana howled too. Cyrus grinned.

“Our borders are guarded by my best wolves. Go find the moon, ladies, before the Night leaves us.”

Lake growled, and Lilliana realized she could understand her. The other woman wanted Cyrus to come, to shift, to go with them.

“Soon.” He walked to the window.

If the night hadn’t been teasing her senses, she might be interested in why he stood there resisting his own change. For now, however, all she wanted was to run.

On four legs instead of two, she took off into the night. Yes, this had been what she’d been missing. If only Travis could be here with her. She might temporarily forgive him for not telling her about this in the first place. Of course, he had a lot to answer for and from now she’d make sure he always told her the absolute truth.

****

Travis’ wolves waited downwind from the woods where he knew Cyrus took his people for full moons. It wouldn’t do to have a bunch of werewolves running around Manhattan. They’d all found their ways to cope. This actually wasn’t a bad location. Rural, hidden, and not easily accessible, Cyrus had done his best to protect his wolves.

Too bad he’d hurt Lilliana and destroyed whatever small regard Travis still had for him.

With a flick of his head, he padded forward on four feet with the fighting members of his pack behind him. They’d fight together, and when he was done, Cyrus would wish he’d never been born.

A growl sounded out in front of him and a line of Cyrus’ wolves surged forward. So this was how the battle would begin. He howled to the moon, already able to taste Cyrus’ blood in his mouth.

His pack leapt, and Cyrus’ did the same. Travis only had eyes for Cyrus. Where was the son of a bitch?

The largest wolf in the pack rushed forward, snarling.
Cyrus, there you are.
Travis leapt at him. This ended now.

A whimper in the distance caught his attention, and Cyrus darted out of the way. The wolf whimpered again. Why had that noise caught Travis’ attention when there was death to be had? He shook his head. Cyrus growled low in his throat. Not a threatening sound, more of a pay-attention noise. Travis howled to the moon, and his wolves stopped fighting. If he wasn’t going to surge, they shouldn’t either. A silence descended on the woods.

He sniffed the air. What had happened? Who had gotten his attention in the middle of a battle?

A small wolf rushed forward, banging her head against his side. Her eyes were lowered, and she whimpered, but he didn’t smell fear. No, he took a deep breath. He scented…Lilliana.

Gasping, he rubbed his head against her until she raised her eyes to look at him. Yes, those were her brown depths. In a wolf’s body? He whirled around. As Alpha, he could shift or not as he chose, even if not staying furry hurt like hell on a full moon.

He wanted to be able to talk to her. Shifting back, he let the magic within him transform his body from canine to human. He stretched his neck. Ever since an attack, the same one that had killed his parents, he’d had to move it right away after a shift or it tightened up.

Kneeling down, he looked at Lilliana. She stared the ground, unable or unwilling to make eye contact with him.
No
. This was not how his mate should behave. Lilliana had never been this submissive to him.

At first her ability to defy him had struck him as odd, but now he loved it. Who wanted a mate who wouldn’t look you in the eye? No, his woman told him what she thought and said it straight to his face.

“Lilliana.” He stroked her head. “Won’t you look at me, beautiful?” She raised her eyes and then dropped them. “Are you scared?”

Lilliana had turned out to be a beautiful wolf. Gray, white, and black. Her fur felt soft and clean.

He turned to Cyrus. “How did this happen? Or can’t you shift to talk to me, Cyrus? Does your power not extend that far?”

Cyrus shifted back, his eyes hostile, and if looks could have actually scorched a person, Travis knew he’d be dead. Still, Travis suspected he could erase the other Alpha from existence with the way he stared back at him right now.

“Well?” Travis turned his hand into a claw. On full moon nights, he could do all sorts of useful tricks.

“Threatening me?” Cyrus grinned, changing his own hand. “Anything you can do, I can do, cousin. It’s all part of the genes.”

“Answer my question.” He really would claw out the other Alpha’s eyes. In fact, it might make him feel better.

“My healer does what she does. She fixed her. Now she can shift, and I imagine she’s somewhat worked up because she had to know you were about to die.”

“I have my own healers, wolf.” He growled. The moon called to him to shift. His head throbbed, and he wanted to wrap up his mate and take her home after he killed Cyrus once and for all. “If I’d wanted to magically force her body into a shift, I could have done it myself.”

“You don’t have any healers like Lake. I doubt she could have even controlled herself. She has to fix, and so she does.” He snarled. “I don’t explain my actions to baby killers.”

“What did you call me?” Rage surged through his body. He lunged forward, and only Lilliana’s whimper stopped him down before he struck.

“You kill my pregnant women and you think you deserve any other name?”

Travis snarled. “I have never hurt your pregnant women. I would never in a million years do that. Unlike you, who firebombs apartment buildings to take mates.” Just the thought brought the taste of death to his mouth.

“I saved her life. I’ll admit to following her in the hopes of staking you out, but that is it. Your little not-so-latent-anymore woman would be dead without me.” Cyrus rubbed his forehead. He had to be feeling the same compulsion to shift, the same nausea at not being in his wolf form. “You didn’t order my pregnant females killed?”

“No.” The very idea made his stomach turn. Females were to be protected, cherished. “If I took you out, I’d still care for your women.” That was the way of wolves.

“Shit,” Cyrus whispered. “Someone’s playing with us.” Cyrus howled, still in his human form but letting his wolf voice out. Travis wished he could join him. If he let loose at all, he’d have to shift. “New York.” Cyrus called out to his people. “Go run. We’ll deal with this later.” Before following them, he looked at Travis. “I don’t like to be fucked with. Let your people run if they want. You and I… we have business in the morning.”

Travis didn’t know what had suddenly brought Cyrus around to the idea of being reasonable, but whatever it had taken, he’d be glad for it. A peace accord between them would stabilize the entire area.

He looked at his wolves, smelling all their scents, knowing each of them as well as they knew themselves. “Go. Don’t kill any wimpy New Yorkers. They’re not as tough as you.”

Happy barks of laughter answered him, and they took off running. All except Lilliana. She stared up at him.

“I wish I could speak to you out loud. Stay with me.” He shifted. She couldn’t be out of his sight. Not with so much left to be said.

Chapter Five

Lilliana came to slowly. Her head clouded over, and her whole body had taken on a lethargy that wasn’t normal. She picked up her head, which felt as though it weighed two tons, before she groaned. They were inside—somewhere, she really had no idea where and wariness made her too uncomfortable to care—and she lay on a bed.

Travis squatted down in front of her. “It’ll get easier. The first time I shifted I thought for sure I’d wake up dead.”

“That’s…” Her voice sounded scratchy. “Impossible.”

“Right. Well, I was eight. There’s no accounting for my thought processes.”

She looked away from him; she had so much to say and no idea how to deal with any of it well enough to actually vocalize her thoughts. All she knew was that looking at him made her want to cry.

“Please don’t do that.” He sat on the edge of the bed and stroked her hair. “Don’t look away. Nothing has changed between us, not really and—”

She interrupted him, despite the fact that her insides cringed when she did so. “Are you out of your mind? Nothing between us has changed? We’re both werewolves now. Well, I mean, you always were, but I wasn’t, or at least I didn’t know anything about it. Now I’m something out of a monster movie, and you are apparently my supreme leader. My Alpha, or whatever.”

Travis sighed, and she could see wariness in his eyes, and little lines she would swear were not there days earlier had appeared.

“You’re much more than just another member of my pack.” He put his hands on her knees. “I think you know that. I don’t romance members of my pack. I was going to tell you. Remember I said I had to show you something? Well, this was it, sweetheart.”

“That would make me your…mate.” Saying the word brought butterflies to her stomach. The day before it wouldn’t have meant what it did now. She understood what that meant.  He was an Alpha, so that meant he was in charge, he took care of a pack, and she belonged to him differently that any of the other pack members did. Walking on four legs under a full moon had altered something inside of her on a cellular level. Things that wolves knew instinctually — Alphas, mates, pack — she not really grasped for the first time.

“If that’s what you want. Usually, mates both know, but I recognize that this is different. You’ve been, essentially, human your whole life. That must mean that this is different for you. From the little I know of these things, when a werewolf loves a human, it’s sometimes possible that the human won’t like him or her back.”

Warmth roamed through her body as he spoke. “I’m not a human.”

“I know but—”

She interrupted him again. It occurred to her that she might be the only person on the planet who didn’t let Travis finish his thoughts. “And I liked you just fine when I was. In fact”—she swallowed.
This is hard—
“I’d fallen in love with you. I kind of expected this weekend to be our first time together. Only, now, I’m feeling sort of lost and vulnerable.”

His eyes narrowed into little slits. “Lost and vulnerable.” He growled, and she shivered but not from fear, rather from the surge of energy his noise pushed through her body. “No one who belongs to me should ever feel that way.”

Yes, that what was she wanted, to
belong
to him. Travis would never let her go, and she craved that kind of possession more than she’d ever imagined. She leapt forward.

He caught her in his arms before stumbling back a step. “Are you okay?”

She kissed him, hard on the mouth. He’d told her he didn’t want her submissive, and right at that moment, her instincts were not telling her to be. They were demanding attention.

He groaned, pulling back from her lips. “I thought you said you were feeling vulnerable.”

Lilliana swallowed. “You growled, and for some reason, it passed. Now all I want is you in my pants. Why did that happen?”

“It reassured you. Pretty soon you’re going to understand all the different sounds and movements that come with being a werewolf. It was instinctual. You said you were vulnerable, and I pushed it away. Making that noise was instinctual for me. I didn’t even think about it.”