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FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT Chapter Eight
She could look at Brian, and so she watched his eyes assess the wolves Shawn had brought like a general surveying his troops. His gaze settled on Michael.Lauren looked, too, seeing what the Marrok saw: old jeans with a hole in one knee, tennis shoes that had seen better days. It was very much like what she was wearing, except that her hole was in her left knee, not the right.“Will the time it takes to drive to Montana and back put your job at risk?” Brian asked. Thomas kept his eyes on his toes and answered, soft-voiced, “No, sir. I work in construction, and this is the slow season. I okayed it with the boss; he says I have two weeks.”Brian pulled a checkbook out of his pocket, and using one of the other wolves’ shoulders to give him a solid surface to write on, made out a check. “This is for your expenses on this trip. We will figure out a pay rate and have money waiting for you when you get to Montana.”Relief flashed in Michael’s eyes, but he didn’t say anything.Brian went thro
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT Chapter Nine
She could look at Brian, and so she watched his eyes assess the wolves Shawn had brought like a general surveying his troops. His gaze settled on Michael. Lauren looked, too, seeing what the Marrok saw: old jeans with a hole in one knee, tennis shoes that had seen better days. It was very much like what she was wearing, except that her hole was in her left knee, not the right.“Will the time it takes to drive to Montana and back put your job at risk?” Brian asked. Thomas kept his eyes on his toes and answered, soft-voiced, “No, sir. I work in construction, and this is the slow season. I okayed it with the boss; he says I have two weeks.”Brian pulled a checkbook out of his pocket, and using one of the other wolves’ shoulders to give him a solid surface to write on, made out a check. “This is for your expenses on this trip. We will figure out a pay rate and have money waiting for you when you get to Montana.”Relief flashed in Michael’s eyes, but he didn’t say anything.Brian went thr
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT Chapter Ten
“No,” she lied. She just wanted to get her apartment packed and get done with this, so she never had to see Scott and those like him again. “No.” This time she meant it. Brian tilted his head, and she saw his eyes shift, just a little, gleaming gold in the dimness of the outer hall. “Let him up.”She waited until everyone was in her apartment to leave the anonymity of the landing. Brian was stripping her futon down to the bare mattress when she entered her apartment, It was sort of like watching the president mowing the White House lawn or taking out the trash. Shawn approached her and handed her the check she’d left on the fridge door, her last paycheck.“You will want this with you.”She took it and stuffed it in her pants. “Thanks.”“We all owe you,” he told her. “None of us could contact the Marrok when things started getting bad. Leo forbade it. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent staring at the phone trying to break his hold.”She was startled into meeting his eyes.“It too
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT Chapter Eleven
“What will happen if he breaks out?”“It would be good if we get there before that happens,” was all he said. They left the expressway, and he slowed to the posted speed limit. The only sign of his impatience was the rhythmic beat of his fingers on the steering wheel. When he pulled up in front of the mansion, she jumped out of the SUV and ran to the front door. He didn’t appear to hurry, but somehow he was there before her and opened the door. She ran down the hall and took the cellar stairs three at a time, Brian at her shoulder. The lack of noise was not reassuring, Usually the only way to tell the safe room from the basement guest rooms was the steel door and frame.But great plaster chunks had been torn off the wall on either side, revealing the silver-and-steel bars that had been embedded in the wall. The wall paper from inside the room hung down in strips like a curtain, keeping Lauren from seeing inside.There were three of the pack in human form standing in front of the doo
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT Chapter Twelve
AFTER the disaster this morning, Lauren had dreaded the flight to Montana. She’d never been on a plane before in her life, and she’d have thought that it would be terrifying, especially in the little, six-passenger, twin-engine Lear Brian led them to. Brian sat in the copilot’s seat, which left all six of the passenger seats empty. Toby pushed her past the first set of forward-facing seats with a nudge of his nose and stared at the pair of backward seats until she sat down. When hesettled in the space on the floor and put his head on her feet, she set her box on the seat next to her, buckled up, and waited for takeoff.She didn’t expect to have fun, especially when Toby so emphatically was not.He rode stiff and grumpy at her feet, growling softly when the plane bounced a little. But riding in the smal plane was like being on the world’s tallest amusement-park ride. A gentle one, like the Ferris wheel, but with an edge ofdanger that just made it al the more fun. She didn’t really th
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT Chapter Thirteen
She glanced back at Hank. “Tell them what we are.”“Oh, this is Aspen Creek,” Hank answered her. “Everyone knows about werewolves. If you haven’t married one, you were fathered by one or one of your parents was. This is the Marrok’s territory, and we’re one big, happyfamily.” Was there sarcasm in his voice? She didn’t know him well enough to tell for certain.The air blowing in her face had warmed up, finally. Between that and Toby, she was starting to feel less like an ice cube.“I thought that werewolves have no family, only pack,” she ventured.Brian glanced at her before looking back to the road. “You and Toby need to have a long talk. How long have you been a werewolf?”“Three years.”He frowned. “Do you have a family?”“My father and brother. I haven’t seen them since…” She shrugged. “Leo told me I had to break all ties to them or else he’d assume they were a risk to the pack.” And kill them. Brian frowned. “Outside of Aspen Creek, wolves can’t tell anyone except their spouses
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT Chapter Fourteen
Nothing fancy, just jeans and a plain white T-shirt, but she’d never known a werewolf who could do that. This was real magic. She didn’t know how much real magic he could do. She didn’t know a lot about him other than hemade her heart beat faster and nudged her usual state of half panic away. She shivered, then realized it was cool in the house. He must have turned down the heat when he’d come to Chicago. She looked around and found a small quilted throw folded over the back of a rocking chair and snatched it up. Careful not tobrush too hard on his oversensitized skin, she laid the blanket lightly over him.He lay with one cheek against the floor, shuddering and breathless."Toby?” Her impulse was to touch him, but after a change, the last thing she wanted was touch. His skin would feel new and raw. The blanket slid off his shoulder and when she lifted it to cover him again, she saw a dark stain growing rapidly on the back of his shirt. If his wounds had been of the usual sort, the c
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT Chapter Fifteen
She was hurting him. He’d almost quit breathing except in small, shallow pants. Giving first aid to werewolves was fraught with danger. Pain could make a wolf lose control like he’d done this morning. But Toby just held himself very still as she pulled the bandage tight enough to hold the pads where they needed to be.She used both rolls of the wrap and tried not to notice how good the bright pink looked against his dark skin. When a man is on the verge of passing out from pain, it seemed wrong to notice how beautiful he was. His smooth dark skin stretched over taut muscles and bone…maybe if he hadn’t smelled so good underthe blood and sweat, she could have maintained a distance. Hers. He was hers, whispered that part of her that didn’t worry about human concerns. Whatever fears Lauren had about the rapid changes in her life, her wolf half was very happy with the events of the past few days. She got a dishcloth from the kitchen, wettedit down, and cleaned the blood from his skin whi
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FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 61
When you failed, you and that other wolf—Brian would send only the best. You lie and lie as if it were the truth.” “You don’t want to believe me,” Asil said. “But you can taste truth—your link to Sarai is strong enough. You were a danger to yourself and us. We did it for your own good. It was that or kill you.” She flicked a trembling finger at him. “Shut up.” Asil’s face lost its cool composure, and he grimaced. As he continued, his voice was breathless with pain. “What you have done is an abomination. This thing you have turned Sarai into doesn’t love you, she serves as a slave serves, without the ability to choose, just as I do. Brian is more than you can handle. He will kill you—and it is your own fault.” “I won’t die,” she shouted at him. “I didn’t die when Linnea tried to kill me —she didn’t know how powerful I was or how much my mother had taught me. I killed her and her pet students and studied the books she left behind— for months I wrote to you and signed the letters from he
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 60
Brian would hold out for a while. First, the witch could make a mistake— especially if she didn’t know whom she held. Second, he was afraid that this time no one would be able to kill him. It had been Samuel who brought him out of it before . . . and Samuel wasn’t as certain of himself as he used to be. The control the witch asserted over him had to be won by blood and flesh, and the only flesh and blood bonding he’d done was to his own pack. She must have used Asil to insert herself into his pack—but how? While she looked him over, he searched his link to Asil for something that touched a witch. He paid very little attention to the witch as she talked at him. With the dexterity of a very long lifetime, Brian slid through Asil and found a dead woman—it could only be Asil’s mate. It was an impossibility. No one could link to a dead woman; he knew that because when Blue Jay Woman, Toby’s mother, died, he’d tried to hold on to her. But, impossibilities become possible when you added a wi
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 59
Since the cabin hadn’t kept him out and he didn’t feel the need to leave, he could only assume that the circle was the latter kind—which meant that there were more dead things under the floor. He took a deep breath, but the dead animal he’d already seen might account for the scent of death—and nothing was rotting. Either the animal she’d killed to draw her circle hadn’t been dead long—it had frozen in the cold— or she had a spell to disguise it to keep away scavengers. Changing what the senses of others perceived was one of the major powers of the witch. His father said that Toby might have been a witch if he’d chosen to study. Brian hadn’t urged him to do so, but he also didn’t discourage it, either; a witch in his pack would have given him even more power. But the subtler magics of his mother’s people suited Toby, and he’d never regretted the path he’d chosen less than he did right now, standing in the middle of this poor cabin stained with evil. The scent on the sleeping bag on the
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 58
THE darkness bothered Brian not at all as he followed Tag’s directions to the place he and Toby had thought would be the best starting point. He passed Asil’s Subaru and hesitated—if Asil had been going after Toby, he’d have known the fastest way there. But Toby would be headed back to his car if something had gone wrong. So Brian kept driving. Other things he might do ran through his head. There were witches in the pay of the wolves. Not his pack—he didn’t deal with black witches, and most white witches weren’t powerful enough to be useful. But there were witches available to him. If he had a two-hundred-year-old witch capable of holding and torturing a werewolf for two dadsys—he had no intention of advertising the fact and encouraging other witches to imitate this one. Especially since she, like Brian’s mother, might have gotten her ability through some kind of binding to a werewolf. No. Best keep the witches out of it. He could call Toby back. That was a harder thing. Telepathy was
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 57
LAUREN opened her eyes in the dadsrkness, certain that something had wakened her again. She raised her head from Toby’s warm, sweet[1]smelling skin and looked around. Dennis was nowhere to be seen, and sometime in the night, she and Toby had reversed positions, so he lay between her and dadsnger. The wind and snow had ceased, leaving the forest silent and waiting. “Me transmitte sursum, Caledoni,” she murmured. Too bad Scotty wasn’t around to beam them to safety. There was something about the heavy atmosphere that was frightening. She listened hard but heard nothing. The weighted silence pounded on her ears and made the beat of her heart even louder in the stillness of the winter night. Her heartbeat, her breath was the only thing she could hear. “Toby?” she whispered, touching his shoulder tentatively. When he didn’t respond, she shook him. His body fell away from her. He’d been lying on his side, but he rolled limply out from under their barely adequate shelter and onto the snow. Th
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 56
AS soon as Toby went out to talk to Asil, Lauren had begun her change. She needed to deal with that wolf with her tongue rather than fang and claw. He was too good at riling her mate—and Toby was still volatile from his encounter with the witch. She didn’t give any thought to Dennis until she was naked and panting in the cold night air. She might have had three years to get used to being nude in front of people she didn’t know well, but he hadn’t. She glanced at him, but he had his head turned away from her and was staring intently at a nearby tree trunk, the perfect gentleman. She quit worrying about him and scrambled into her chilly clothes and boots because she could sense Toby’s rising rage at Asil; Asil had put the Marrok and his pack at risk. But more than that, she was worried that neither Toby nor Asil realized how close Toby was to his breaking point. She found it curious that she did. Boots on, coat on, Lauren rolled out of their sleeping place and onto her feet. She didn’t
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 55
He called the magic to him and let it rip through his body, changing as he walked. It hurt, but he knew it didn’t show on his face or make his limp any worse. If he’d been healthier and the spirits willing, he might even have been able to conjure up a new pair of snowshoes instead of having to wade. At least the snow on the bench, regularly scoured by the wind, was only a foot or so deep most places—half of that had fallen tonight. Asil smiled a little, as if he recognized Toby’s power play for what it was, but he dropped his eyes. Though Toby knew better than to trust the submission in the other’s body language, it was enough for now. Toby kept his voice low. “How did you find us?” It was an important question. They were nowhere near the place they’d have been camping if he and Lauren had followed the trip as he’d outlined it with Tag. Had he done something stupid that would let the witch find them, too? The oddities of the past twenty-four hours had badly shaken his confidence—and t
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 54
Afterward, she lay panting and miserable on the ice-crystal-covered snow, too tired to move. Even cold, she discovered, had a smell. Gradually, as her misery faded, she realized that for the first time since last night, when Toby had curled around her and surrounded her with his warmth, she felt toasty-warm. As the initial agony faded to aches and pains, she stretched, making her claws expand and lengthen like a big cat’s. Her back popped and crackled all the way down her spine. She didn’t want to go back and curl up with a strange male only feet away. The wolf wasn’t afraid of the male. She knew he wasn’t likely to behave like the Others. But she didn’t much like the idea of touching anyone other than Toby, either. Near but out of sight, a wolf, Toby, made a quiet sound, not quite a bark or a whine. Wobbly as a newborn foal, she staggered to her feet. She paused to shake the snow off her pelt and give herself a moment to get used to four paws before starting back, her clothes in her
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 53
Did she still regret that? Toby was overcome with the wild desire to kill them all again, Leo and his mate, the whole Chicago pack—but at the same time he was pathetically grateful that his mate was a werewolf who wouldn’t fade and die the way Samuel’s wives all had. Brother Wolf stirred and settled down, just like Dennis had. “The wolf who attacked you didn’t come back to you, then, after you Changed?” Toby asked. Usually when a wolf Changed someone, it was drawn back to the new werewolf for a while. Mostly, Samuel had theorized to him once, some genetic imperative to make sure that an untaught, uncontrolled werewolf wasn’t going to draw too much unwanted attention. Dennis shook his head. “Like I said, I tracked her down myself, after the first full moon—she and that woman. What is she anyway? She sure as hell ain’t human—sorry, ma’am— not with the things I seen her do. She tried to call me to her the first time I Changed. I didn’t know what she was, only that she smelled bad—like th
