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Chapter Twenty One
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FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT Chapter Twenty Two
the scent of wildness, of sickness, faded. Hestared at her, the whites of his eyes showing brightly while his irises narrowed to small bands around his black pupil.“Omega,” he whispered, his breath coming harshly. Behind her, Toby stepped closer, but he didn’t touch her as the cool flesh under her fingertips warmed. They all stood frozen in place. Lauren knew that all she had to do to end this was to remove her hand, but she was strangely reluctantb to do so.The shock on Asil’s face faded, and skin around his eyes and mouth softened into sorrow that grew and deepened before tucking itself away, where all private thoughts hid from too-keen observers. He reached out and touched her face lightly, ignoring Toby’s warning growl.“More gifts here than I’d believed.” He smiled tightly at Lauren, eyes and mouth in concert. “It’s too late for me, mì querida. You waste your gifts on my old self.But for the respite, I thank you.” He looked at Brian. “Today and tomorrow, and maybe the next da
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Northwestern Montana,Cabinet WildernessDennis didn’t know why he’d survived the beast’s attack, any more than he understood how he’d survived three tours of ’Nam when so many of his friends, his comrades, had not. Maybe his survival both times was just luck or maybe fate had other things in store for him. Like another thirty years wandering alonein the woods.If his survival after the beast’s attack had been unlikely, the rest of it was just plain weird. The first thing he’d noticed was that the aching arthritis that hadbhaunted his shoulders and knees, the throb of an old wound in his hip, had all disappeared. The cold no longer bothered him. It took him a lot longer to realize that his hair and beard had regained the color of his youth he didn’t carry around a mirror. That’s when he began paying attention to the oddities.He was faster and stronger than he’d ever been. The only wounds that hadn’t healed with the same remarkable speed as his belly were the ones on his battered sou
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT Chapter Twenty Four
His father’s touch, his voice, and something more helped him gather his thoughts. He was out of control. He closed his eyes and drew on his father’s touch to soothe the beast until he could think more clearly.“I did it again, didn’t I?” he asked, though he didn’t really need Brian’s affirmative. He took a deep breath and nodded. “Sage would be good.”He didn’t like anyone in his house: his father and brother, yes, but other people only as necessary. Still, he didn’t want Lauren alone, either. Sage would do.She wouldn’t hurt his Lauren and could protect her until he was there. Keep the males away. Something restless inside settled down a little more firmly. But he watched as his father cal ed Sage on his cell and listened to him ask her to go meet Lauren. Then allowed himself to be towed off to the clinic in Samuel’s car.His father followed in his Humvee.“Dad told me you had to kill Gerry,” he told his brother. Gerry had been Doc Wallace’s son, responsible for hurting any number of
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That and a little reluctance to bare his wounds. He didn’t like other people knowing his weaknesses, even his brother and father. He reluctantly skimmed his slacks down. Samuel was frowning even before he’d gotten the bright green wrap cut off. Once he did, he put his nose against it and jerked back. “Who cleaned this out?”“The Chicago pack has a doctor.” There weren’t very many doctors who were werewolves. No one but Samuel as far as he’d known: the Chicago pack’s doctor was one of the new ones Leo had been hiding from the Marrok. Being around all that blood and flesh made it pretty difficult for a werewolf to keep his mind onhealing though he’d never noticed it bothering Samuel.“He was a quack,” growled his brother. “I can smellthe silver from six inches out.”“Poorly schooled in being a wolf,” corrected Toby. “None of Leo’s new wolves know what to do with their noses including Lauren. I doubt he thought to sniff for silver.”“And I am under the impression that he was pretty frig
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“Who is he dreaming of?” Samuel asked.“His dead mate,” Brian said. “She was tortured to death. He won’t speak of it, though I know he feels guilty because he’d been traveling when it happened.He told me he’d quit dreaming of it when he joined our pack but it started again last month. He wakes up disoriented and…sometimes not where he went to sleep.”Dangerous, thought Toby, to have a wolf of the Moor’s powers out and about under its own direction.“You think his death can wait?” asked Samuel.Brian smiled, a real smile. “I think it can wait. We have an Omega to help him.”His father looked at Toby, and the smile broadened to a grin. “She’s not going to leave you for him, Toby, no matter what Asil says to tweak your tail.”Toby’s living room, though expensively decorated, was stil warm and homey, Lauren decided. It just wasn’t her home. She wandered restlessly through the rooms before she finally settled in the bedroom, sitting in a corner on the floor with her legs pulled up, huggin
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT Chapter Twenty Seven
“when Toby is here.” The hesitation robbed her statement of much of its strength. Sage smiled, her whole face lighting with delight. “Yes, Leah, why don’t you come back when Toby is here? I’d like to see that.”But Leah wasn’t paying attention to her. Her eyebrows lowered in puzzlement as she stared at Lauren. “Sit down,” she said, her voice low and rich with a power that once more slid over Lauren and did not touch her.Lauren frowned back. “No. Thank you.” She thought of something, and before she could stop herself, she said, “I saw Sage at the funeral, but the Marrok was alone. Why weren’t you beside him?”“He had no business there,” Leah said passionately. “He killed Carter. And nowhe pretends to mourn him? I couldn’t keep him from going. He never listens to me anyway, does he? His sons are his advisors, all I am is a replacement for his lost love, the incomparably beautiful, self-sacrificing, Indian bitch. I can’t stop him, but I won’t support him, either.” By the time she was f
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He couldn’t help smiling at her understatement. “No.”She tucked herself under his arm. “Come on, you’re swaying. Let’s get you to bed before you fall down.”He didn’t mind her help at all. She could even have called him Toby, and he wouldn’t have objected, as long as her side brushed his. She helped him out of his clothes he hadn’t put his suit jacket back on, so it wasn’t too painful. While he got in bed, she pulled down the blinds, shutting out the light.When she started to pull the covers up, he caught her hand.“Stay with me?” he asked. He was too tired for talk, but he didn’t want her alone with whatever his father had noticed was bothering her, either. She froze, and thebscent of her sudden terror tested the control he’d found since his brother had rid him of the last of the silver. There was nothing for him to kill except ghosts, so hecontrolled the surge of protective rage and waited to see what she would do. Hencould have released her hand, and he was ready to do so but on
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT Chapter Twenty Nine
Lauren methodically rummaged through the cupboards; Toby was going to wake up hungry. Happily, the man had his house stocked for a siege. She thought about Italian she had gotten rather good at cooking Italian foodbut she didn’t know if Toby liked it. Stew seemed a safer choice. The chest freezer in the basement was fullof meat wrapped in white freezer paper, neatly labeled. Shebbrought up a package proclaiming itself to be elk stew meat to begin thawing on the counter. She’d never eaten elk before but assumed that stew meat was stewmeat. In the fridge she found carrots, onions, and celery. Now all she needed were potatoes. They weren’t in the fridge or on the counters; they weren’t on top of the fridge or under the sink. Anyone as well stocked as Toby was bound to have potatoes somewhere unless he hated potatoes. She was bent over with her head in a lower cupboard singing softly, “Where oh where have my little potatoes gone,” when the sound of a cell phone made her jerk her head up
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
