“You know, if you are going to keep coming down here and bugging me, you could at least tell me your name,” Lara grumbled, struggling to speak past the growing dry lump in her throat. Still tied to the chair in the dark, damp, and disgusting basement, the Italian werewolf had been her only company for days. She was growing increasingly uncomfortable, thirsty, and hungry. Only her wolf was helping to keep her strength up with its aggression and its desire to rip out the asshole’s throat. “Well, I do suppose you are right,” the black-haired man shrugged and smirked at her. Lara struggled not to breathe a sigh of relief when she saw the plastic water bottle he was holding in his hand. “It’s not exactly like you can run off and go telling anyone about me, is it?” Lara bit the inside of her dried lip to stop herself from snapping at him that he was the biggest dick she had ever met in her life and that was saying something because some of the men in her own pack could be pretty bad
Still in his designated room at the Silverdale Manor, Jason was most surprised when his phone began to ring, and he crossed the room from where he had been getting dressed to pick it up from the bedside table, only to find that it was Harrison calling. With a raised eyebrow, Jason thought, Why would the New York alpha be calling me? Though they had known each other throughout their studies at Silverdale University, he and Jason had never seen eye to eye, and it had only ever been Layon's decision for them all to hang out together. Sure, he visited with Layon from time to time and the packs had grown closer since they helped Harrison take back what was rightfully his, but still Jason couldn’t understand why the werewolf would be calling him. "Only one way to find out," he grumbled aloud before pressing the answer button and pressing his phone to his ear. "Hey, Harrison, what's up?" "I tried to call Layon, but he wasn't picking up,"Harrison's voice sounded fairly urgent on the pho
All Lara could do was pray that Jason had managed to get away before Tyson and his men returned from wherever they went off towhenever he wasn't down in the basement trying to talk and torture information out of her. He hadn't been gone very long before Tyson hadjoined her again, and Lara found herself keeping one ear pricked for any sign that his men might have captured Jason. Yet there was no sound ofgrowling or snarling or even the tell-tale smell of blood coming from the open door at the top of the basement stairs.She was still reeling from Jason's appearance. Not only had she been astonished that he had actually been able to hear her wolf calling to him, but she had also been terrified by the state of him. Although in the near darkness she had struggled to actually see his handsome face, she had sensed the damage left by Tyson's men after their attack on him. She could practically feel it as though they were wounds upon her own skin and it made her feel worse than she alre
Rushing directly to Layon's office at the manor, Jason found it empty and followed his best friend's scent from the door of the study through the manor and out into the gardens where he found Layon and Angel walking up the lawn from the copse of trees beyond. A wave of jealousy hit Jason the moment he thought of the fact that the two of them had likely been sharing a shift, transforming into wolf form and frolicking through the trees with little care for anything else. He would have given anything to do that with Lara. We've come a long way from hating each other’s guts, he realized, his insides twisting as he half wished he could go back to a time before he had approached Lara at the Silver Moon Bar, before he had helplessly fallen for her, before his wolf finally realized that she was his… Growling to himself to stop getting distracted, he began to race down the lawn toward Layon and his mate, determined to finally make them listen. "Whoa, Jason! You smell like a trash heap!" An
“Jason?” Lara groaned, barely able to lift her head when she distantly heard voices. Having been hallucinating due to the lack of food anddehydration, she had no idea whether she was actually hearing anything at all. The heart palpations she had been experiencing for the last day or so were growing worse and her hands and feet were so numb that she could nolonger even move her fingers or her toes.Yet she was holding on to hope, praying that the next time the basement door opened it would be Jason coming to rescue her. She strained her ears trying to listen beyond the door and to the floor above and when she did, she heard the words. “We’ve caught one of them.”Her heart instantly skipped a beat before continuing with its annoying, off-rhythm beating. Trying to wriggle just a few inches to move closer to the door, to be able to hear just a little better, she strained her ears as much as she could.A second voice sounded, “He wants to speak with you.” Lara’s skin began to crawl
He wasn’t sure whether his reckless plan was a good one or not, but as he was shoved out of the warehouse, Jason realized it was too late to turn back. After having allowed himself to be caught on the foreign pack’s territory, he faced down against their alpha with no trouble at all. What came next, however, might prove to be twice as difficult. Struggling to remain calm as he was led out into a barren field at the edge of the estate, he tried to reach out with his mind, feeling for Lara’s mind just as he had felt her when her wolf had been calling to him. Even as he was lashed to a post with wolfsbane-soaked rope, all he could think about was Lara. Was she alright? Was she in as bad a state as she had been the last time he had seen her? Was she even conscious? Because he certainly couldn’t sense her right now as he faced off against the three werewolves who had been ordered to ‘test’ him. He didn’t like the thought of whatever it was they were about to do to him and from the wol
The next time the basement door opened, Lara was confused. The last thing she had heard before she passed out from sheer exhaustion and dehydration had been Tyson and his men leaving behind Jason and the others. No footsteps thundering above her head had woken her as they usually did when she passed out because even exhausted and hallucinating,she was still on edge and prepared for whatever else would be thrown at her.What she wasn’t prepared for at all was Jason creeping down the basement steps toward her. She smelled his scent almost as soon as heopened the door, laced with blood and herbs, and she guessed that whatever had happened after he had been brought in front of Tyson, it had been quite painful.At least this time he had brought a torch with him, and when he crouched before her, he laid it on the floor so that they could see each other.She bit her lip the moment she caught sight of him. His clothes were torn and there were claw marks and bite wounds all over him, the
It had been a few hours since Jason first infiltrated the foreign pack. He knew so because he kept glancing at his wristwatch whenever he believed that nobody was watching. Having snuck out from seeing Lara in the nick of time before Tyson returned for whatever twisted game he had planned for her next, he had found his way up to the second floor of the main building. He quickly learned that he had been right the first time he entered the warehouse. He had really heard women and children on the floor above his head when he first entered. Moving among their ranks, Jason quickly came to realize that there were actually many more women and children than there were men in the pack. The men could have been counted on his two hands and so he did, counting only nine of them including Tyson. Whether there were more elsewhere, Jason couldn't be sure. But for every man, there was a woman and a few more besides. Each woman seemed to have young children or even a babe in their arms. All looke
“You have got to be kidding me!” Emily’s exclamation startled Tyson. It had been the last thing he expected her to say when they stopped walking outside a psychic’s shop in a small human town just outside of Silverdale. “What’s the matter? Didn’t the tracking spell work?” he asked, feeling his gut beginning to churn. They couldn’t possibly have traveled all this way just for Emily to tell him that the spell had failed, that it had brought them to the wrong place. The tall and slender witch who wore a long, velvet gown cinched at the waist by a leather corset, stood at the bottom of the steps that led up into the shop and glowered up at the store front window. “No real witch would advertise herself in this way!” Emily snapped, practically spitting, and Tyson struggled to stop himself from shrinking away from her, reminding himself firmly of his reason for even being there in the first place. This is for Barach. “Then your outburst has nothing to do with this being the wrong pla
At first, everything was darkness. Then she felt it. One minute it was just the gentle brushing of something soft against her lips. Then she felt the suddenness of a most passionate kiss pressed upon her. Hands stroked down her ribcage, causing her to suck in a deep breath and then those same hands cupped her hips, drawing her closer to the warmth of the person they belonged to. Though at first, she could not see him, she could feel him. She could feel the smooth softness of his skin, the tender tautness of that skin pulled tight over thick bands of muscle. She could feel his callused yet somehow soft hands moving around her hips and back toward her buttocks, hooking her into place against him even as the lips upon hers added pressure and the kiss became even more passionate. Then finally, he pulled back and she was able to open her eyes. Dazed at the sight of him, Barach could only smile. She opened her mouth to speak but found there were no words to say. Instead, she wrapped he
Sitting by her bedside, Tyson couldn't help but think of the moment when he thought he had lost Barach forever. He had held her in his arms in the center of the small warehouse, cradling her on his lap as he watched all of the color drain from her face and her eyes roll back in her head, helpless to do anything else. Only the gentle sound of shallow breathing, that he would not have picked up had he been human, alerted him to the fact that she was still with him. I should never have let you go in the first place, he told himself even as he thought of how he had ditched everything, thinking of nothing else but getting her to safety. He had picked her up in his arms, alarmed at just how light she had become. The last time he had carried her, she had been kicking and thrashing and doing everything in her power to get him to put her down. Now she was deathly still, her face so pale and her eye sockets going so black as she lay in a bed at the Silverdale Manor, that he felt as though h
"We are going to have to work quickly," Barach whispered. Though they had managed to secure themselves in one of the outer buildings on the industrial estate, just close enough to every point of the area that her spell would reach Layon and Jason no matter how far they moved, she knew all too well that the longer they remained, the more danger they were placing themselves in. Having added all the ingredients to the spell in the small cauldron she'd placed in the center of the room on a pile of old boxes, she had only one final thing to do. Holding two bundles of sage, lavender, and fennel in front of her with a lighter in her other hand, she pointed out, "This may well attract Tyson's wolves to our location, but I can't do the spell without it." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tyson stiffen. It was clear that he didn't like the thought of her being put in danger at all. She could feel his concern in the way he stared at her, feel it in the way his entire body tensed. Being
The pack was clearly restless. They stood all around the dining room awaiting Lester’s return, unable to stay still, several of them murmuring among themselves about what was taking so long. Tyson remained silent, watching Barach as he stood close by, unable to stray too far from her for too long. With everything going on, he was on edge and in full protection mode. Everyone fell silent the moment that Lester returned to the room and settled back into his seat at the head of the table. “So you’ve located her?” he asked, looking at Barach, who stood at the far end of the table, close to the doors, looking like an outsider. Even against Lester’s steady gaze, Tyson felt the urge to protect her, and he was barely able to stop himself from stepping between them. Barach nodded. “She’s in the industrial estate just as I said she’d be,” Jason snarled through gritted teeth and Lara, who had taken a seat beside him, quickly placed her hand on his shoulder again, warning him silently to be
When she had left, Silverdale had been on high alert, but on returning, things appeared to have gotten ten times worse. Though on the outside things looked entirely the same, the moment Tyson's truck passed through the gates and they closed automatically behind them, Barach felt as though a weight had landed heavily on top of her shoulders. She could practically feel the tense energy coursing throughout the streets of the locked community, and she was certain that something serious had to have happened since she left. If Tyson attacked us in New York, then he knew I wasn't keeping my eye on things here, Barach thought grimly, glancing at Tyson in the driver's seat to see if he had thought the same thing. Was the attack on us just a distraction from something going on here? It was clear from the way that he glanced at her, his hands gripped tightly to the steering wheel and his body so tense he looked like he might snap a bone, that he was having exactly the same thoughts. They wast
She tasted just as he might have expected, like cherries and cream, and her lips were plump and soft and smooth as if she were wearing Chapstick. When she opened them to him, he dipped his tongue into her mouth, tasting her further when she offered the same in response. They kissed as though it was their first and their one hundredth time all wrapped into one.Everything was heightened, the pleasure and desire and the sensation of having her close to him and yet he felt as though it was practiced, something they had done many times before, something they had been meant to do together. It was then that the need started to pulse between them. He could feel it coming off Barach in waves even as he realized he could fight his own urges no longer. When he felt her beginning to pull on the hem of his t-shirt, yanking it up over his muscular torso, he knew there was no turning back. Instinctively, he shrugged off his jacket, barely hearing its zips clattering onto the hardwood floor behin
The moment they stepped out of the truck, Tyson became even more on edge. He felt far too exposed standing out on the front steps of the shop, waiting for Barach to open it up. The shop itself was just as Tyson had expected. Two huge display windows out front were decorated with candles, gemstones and small statues, glass bottles and vials, and all manner of other witchy things. Even though the place was locked up tight, he could faintly smell the scent of all manner of herbs coming from under the front door and guessed that inside the smell would be almost intolerable. Though he hadn't been inside many witches’ shops, he had been in enough to know that his senses were about to be irritated big time. Gritting his teeth, he stood by, waiting for Barach to do what she needed to do. "Well, do you have a key or not?" he asked when she didn't pull one from her pocket. Glancing down at her, he realized there wasn't much chance of her having anything on her. All she was wearing was a v
Why the hell did I just tell him that? Barach thought grimly even as she relaxed back into the passenger seat of his truck and crossed her arms over her chest defensively. Although he was driving like a maniac, it wasn't that telling her she should have him stop the car. It wasn't even the fact that she was still feeling the urge to turn around and go back for her grandmother's body. It was the fact that she was suddenly alone with him, trapped in a confined space and with no hope of escape until the truck drew to a halt. The worst thing was, Barach wasn't sure she wanted to escape him. Although there was plenty of room inside the truck, Barach could sense how close their seats were, how easily she could reach out and touch him. No, this is not going to happen, she told herself firmly before she spoke aloud through gritted teeth, "We should go back." Tyson flashed an incredulous expression at her before turning his eyes back onto the road, still speeding well over the limit and g