Untamed: An Alpha's Kiss (Paranormal Werewolf Shifter Romance) (3 page)

CHAPTER
SIX

"I'm going with you tonight." Even before Scottie's gravelly voice greeted her from the other end of the phone line, Charmaine blurted the words. "Come get me."

She'd thought about it all day during her cleaning frenzy. She'd scrubbed her bathroom so hard she threatened to wear down the tile and then reorganized her entire closet, seething about her parents' words as she stuffed unwanted clothing in bags for the charity shop and flung garments for the dry cleaner onto her bed.

He was shocked, but he promised to hurry before hanging up.

Her hands shook as she pulled on her boots and zipped into her black jacket. Going into Kreuger territory was not only stupid, it was also reckless, and she couldn't quiet the flurry of butterflies wings flapping in the pit of her stomach. But Scottie was right. She followed all the rules and it got her nowhere--not the promotion she'd earned, and not the respect from her parents that she deserved. She was tired of being a useless princess.

Time to find out what a walk on the wild side feels like. Time to let my wolf run a little.

Her heart thudded in her chest. She felt her senses sharpen as the adrenaline coursed through her body. She picked up the sound of Scottie's truck, easily a half mile away, rumbling up the road. Her nostrils caught the scent of the neighbor's fireplace, and underneath it the more subtle aroma of the chicken they'd roasted for dinner.

Time to stop being such a good girl all the time.

She appraised herself in the mirror, pleased with the way she'd made herself up for the party: smoky eye makeup around her blue eyes, her usually bouncy dark curls styled sleek and straight, dressed in black from head to toe.
She was a complete unknown to the Kreugers, and looking like this she was unlikely to be accurately described to anyone after the fact. She wondered if her own parents would recognize her like this.

She didn't look at all like herself. She preened a bit and admired her transformation. It was a change, for sure, from her usual business-casual look or the yoga pants she favored on weekends. She looked older. And she looked like the kind of girl no one would mess with.

Scottie was awestruck when she walked out to meet him. "You should get angry at your parents more often," he teased. "This sexy cat burglar thing you have going on tonight is
hot
."

She frowned. "Shit. I look like a cat burglar? Really"

"Yeah... but in a really sexy, please-God-let-her-burgle-me kind of way."

"Hmm. Not what I was going for, but I suppose that works. Think anyone will recognize me?"

He shook his head. "No. But they probably won't forget you, either."

"Right." She rolled her eyes. "Remember what I said. You promised! No getting too drunk. No acting like a knucklehead if someone flirts with me. No fighting."

He looked at her in mock offense. "Fighting? Drunkenness? Whatever do you mean?"

"I'm serious, Scottie. I'm not going if you're going to get us in trouble. Promise me we're just going to show up, have a couple drinks, and go." Her insides twisted as she closed the door.
Maybe this is a bad idea. Actually, this is definitely a bad idea.

"Just a couple drinks," he vowed solemnly. "An hour, tops. No trouble."

CHAPTER
SEVEN

Forty-five minutes later she was racing Scottie's pickup like a stolen vehicle down the back roads, praying they weren't being followed. He grimaced in pain as the truck's shocks strained with every bump and pothole, and whatever he had in the bed of the truck slid wildly back and forth as she took the corners with no mercy.

"I can't believe you,"
Her knuckles clenched the steering wheel until they turned white. "You
promised!
You're lucky you didn't get killed back there! What the fuck were you thinking?"

"I just--" Scottie's voice was thick and ragged.

"Shots? I say no getting drunk, and you do
tequila shots
?"

"It was part of my cover! I was fitting in," he slurred, grinning at her through grotesquely swollen lips.

"Were you 'fitting in' when you told that guy in the red shirt that his chin looked like a vagina?" she retorted.

That only brought cackling. "Oh my God, it
totally
looked like a vagina!" His laughter turned to coughing and a strangled, "Ow! Watch it! That hurts" as she purposely barreled over a pothole and gave the truck a good jarring.

"I'm glad it hurts!" She fumed. "You're such an asshole! We were barely there half an hour before you turned the whole party upside down. Not to mention you were brilliant enough to tell everyone who we were as I was dragging you out of there! What the hell do you think will happen now, you jackass?"

"Shit, did I really tell them who we are?"

"You said 'Grey Valley in the house,' you idiot. They don't have to be rocket scientists to figure out who we are!"

"Bu, I mean... 'Grey Valley' ... not our names or anything..."

You drunk idiot.
"Scottie! You're the only redhead in the pack. And I'm the only female who didn't go to the Council Summit. So it's going to be pretty easy for them to figure out who we are."

"Oh shit," he murmured.

"Yeah, 'oh shit,'" she replied, "Shut up and don't speak to me until we get to the ER."

He had apologized a million times. He'd apologized through the stitches in his head, the stitches in his eyebrow, the x-rays, and countless needles, including the last one, the morphine, which made him alternately apologize and tell her he loved her. It was hard to be angry with him when he lay sleeping in the hospital bed, his battered face a mosaic of injuries, his ribs taped and his fingers splinted.

But it was very easy to be angry with him when she thought about his ridiculous behavior earlier that evening. Despite his promises to blend in, they'd barely gotten inside the door when he'd called attention to himself. She'd made small talk with a few of the other girls, pretending Scottie was her boyfriend, when he did body shots off some young woman's thigh and gathered a crowd. The other girls shot her disbelieving looks as she clenched her jaw and watched her 'boyfriend' make a fool of them both. And when the girl's Mate had showed up to tell him to knock it off, things went downhill from there.

It all happened very quickly. She didn't know who'd thrown the first punch, but within minutes the entire place was in an uproar. She'd trembled helplessly in the corner until she saw Scottie pinned down by two men while a third kicked him repeatedly. On the ground, with his limbs restrained, Scottie swore and thrashed. She feared they'd kill him as blow after blow rained down on him. Her inner wolf had cut through her human paralysis and she took matters into her own hands.

Without proper time to phase--or to let Scottie phase--she did the next best thing. She whipped out her pepper spray and squeezed it directly into the eyes of the man who was kicking Scottie. With an agonized yelp, he dropped to his knees and screamed like a child. When the others released Scottie to help their friend, she sprayed them, too. The men writhed on the ground, cursing and howling in pain, and she dragged Scottie out of there.

The few yards to the truck bearing a hundred and seventy-five pounds of drunk injured man was harder than she'd ever imagined. Only the fortune of a particularly strong breeze from behind them helped them escape. She emptied the remainder of the canister into the wind and shoved Scottie into the truck while the rest of them were held at bay by the noxious gases.

Now she sat next to Scottie's bed, holding his good hand, and her stomach twisted as she thought of the many rules they'd violated.

Going into Kreuger territory.

Attending a rival pack's party.

Assault.

The Treaty clearly stated the punishment for those offenses. She'd known them her whole life and heard about the unfortunate ones who had ignored the pact.

She had to tell her father as soon as he got back. He would figure something out. But in the meantime, she realized, she'd better sleep with one eye open.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

Charmaine didn't have to wait long for retaliation. She'd fallen asleep in the chair next to Scottie only to be shaken awake by a nurse what felt like only minutes later. The sky wasn't even light yet. Disoriented, she startled when the young woman touched her shoulder.

"M-M-Miss, I'm sorry to wake you--" the nurse stammered nervously. "There's--"

Charmaine was already on her feet. Someone was outside the door
--someone who was not from her pack. She could sense the presence of the enemy, smell the waves of adrenaline rolling off him. Oddly enough, she thought she could hear his heartbeat.
Just disoriented
, she thought with a frown, shaking it off as she stepped out the door.

He loomed over her, nearly a full foot taller, all lean muscle, his entire body poised as if ready to pounce. His eyes pierced her mercilessly, and she knew right away from his hostile look he had to be a Kreuger. Charmaine straightened herself up to her full height and stared back up with as much ferocity as she could muster. Between them, the young nurse looked nervously back and forth.

"I'll just--" she said meekly before disappearing down the hallway.

Charmaine folded her arms across her chest and tried to look tougher than she felt. She couldn't shake the feeling that she'd met this wolf before, but she shrugged it off. The bastard was staring her down like he wanted to rip her throat out. But surprisingly, he didn't look angry, just...
hungry
.

Six-feet-four inches of hungry, at least
. Scottie was six feet tall and this man would tower over him. Intense eyes, some pale color she couldn't quite make out in the shadows. Iron jaw with a day's growth contrasted with his neat clothing . Broad shoulders and a lean, solid frame. His hands looked like they could break her in half.

The man looked at her as if he recognized her But that was impossible. She'd definitely never met this particular wolf before. But yes, there was something. The way he moved, the light pale eyes... somewhere she had seen him.

Her heart hammered in her chest and she felt her skin flush all over, yet she never moved or took her eyes from his. She chose not to verbally respond, still searching the recesses of her mind for why he might seem so
familiar
to her.

Then he cleared his throat. "I'm Parker Kreuger, rising Alpha of the Kreuger pack. I'd like to thank you, first of all, for not escalating the incident to the Council level. I think we can come to an agreement without filing an official breach of the Treaty."

"The
incident
?" She cast Scottie's battered frame a look before returning her gaze to the man staring her down. "Is that what we're calling it? Look at him!"

"He violated the agreement." His voice was even and somehow she felt more nervous because of it. " I'm sure I don't need to remind you the punishment for that ."

She knew the punishment well enough. Death.

"You're saying they should have finished what they started?"

"No. But it would have been their right to do so."

"He wasn't doing anything
wrong
!" she cried. "He was there to socialize, and he got carried away! He wasn't invading Kreuger territory looking for a fight."

"Part of the reason for the Treaty," he explained calmly, as if talking to a young child, "was to establish a common code of behavior and remove the guess-work from pack members going into each others' turf. If he knows about the Treaty, which he must, and he chose to ignore it, which he clearly did, then it follows that he was there for the wrong reasons. It's not our job to try to interpret his motives. He was where he didn't belong."

"Then why are you so insistent that I don't escalate it?"

"Because it was an isolated incident that was handled. I got a call telling me what happened, and I came out to assess the situation. I hardly felt it necessary to go to Council level." His pale green eyes bore into hers. "But this conversation is changing my mind about that."

"You bastard!" She hissed, stepping closer to him. He held his ground and looked at her like she was crazy, which infuriated her even more.

"Your emotional reaction doesn't change the facts."

"My emotional reaction! You son of a--It's not about me, it's about the safety of my pack. It's about common decency."

"The Treaty clearly states--"

"I don't give a flying fuck about the Treaty right now!"

"I see. And your rank within the Vella Pack is...?"

"César Vella is my father." She shot back without thinking.

His eyes widened slightly, but he recovered himself quickly, a maddening model of self-control. "That's not what I asked. Your father might be Alpha, but I asked about
you
. What decision-making authority do you have within your pack?"

How dare he?
"I am my father's daughter!"

He registered that information with a curt nod. "You just answered my question. You have no official authority, which means that I will need to issue you the same warning that I would issue anyone who entered our territory, particularly when in breach of a very old and extremely important treaty: If you come on Kreuger land again, there will be immediate consequences."

"You'd kill me?" she challenged, looking up at him with as fierce a demeanor as she could muster.

The man stepped closer, his lean frame just inches from her body. Behind her bravado she felt the first inkling of true fear she'd ever experienced. He could kill her, right now, and it would be easy for him.

For a moment they stared each other down. She couldn't break away from the overwhelming intensity of that pale green gaze--his sea glass irises, with just the faintest rimming of charcoal; the fringe of impossibly long, dark lashes. His measured breath tickled her skin as they fixed on each other, her pulse marking time, for what seemed like an eternity.

Finally he spoke, and the slight crack in his voice was the first chink she'd seen in his armor.

"It'd be difficult to bring myself to kill someone so beautiful," he murmured, his eyes traveling slowly down her body, reveling in her curves before reluctantly returning to her face. "But if it came to it, then yes, César Vella's daughter. I would kill you."

***

Just then, several attendants came racing down the hallway with a stretcher, yelling, "Stay clear!" and in a flash he protectively pinned her to the wall, covering her body with his, to let them pass. The second he touched her she came alive, her heart galloping in her chest, her blood shuttling through her veins like liquid fire, an answering flush between her thighs. His arms closed around her and she sank into them, cocooned from the world. She was sleep-deprived and her brain was temporarily confused by the sudden flurry of activity. All she knew was how right it felt to be held by him.

But as he slowly released her from his grasp, stepping back with a look of shock on his face at having grabbed her like that, it dawned on her why he seemed so familiar.

That hyper-vigilance. His immediate, protective reaction. Getting her out of harm's way. Those clear green eyes, alert and caring.

Pine. Wind.
She caught his scent and her whole body answered, pulling her as if attached to him by invisible threads.

"You," he murmured, his eyes searching her face. "It's
you
?"

She couldn't speak. Couldn't move. Couldn't wrap her mind around what he was trying to say. Her pulse roared in her ears.

His face was a mask of shock. Two steps ahead of her, he figured it out before she did. His hands clenched at his sides as he backed away from her, shaking his head in disbelief. He met her eyes one last time before saying an abrupt goodbye and striding down the hallway. As she stood stunned, watching him walk away from her, she realized that Parker Kreuger, the tall stranger in the hospital, was the wolf from her dream.

Her Mate.