Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

K ira

There's blood fucking everywhere. I have seen dogs fight before, and I saw Cain deal with my cousin Colton, but what's happening now is a fight to the fucking death. The snarls and growls coming from both brothers are beyond feral. They are ferocious and terrible, and they are frightening.

I am far too vulnerable in my human form, so I shift, the change coming over me in a moment of desperation and fear. We are all animals down here with nothing to save us from our own brutal instincts. Cowering in the corner, I feel hot splashes of wolf blood spattering over my nose and fur.

Cain's fury is biblical. His jaws tear flesh, snap bone. This is what it looks like when an alpha reaches the end of his tether. I am not witnessing a fight. This is a straight up murder.

Cain is killing his own flesh and blood for me, for my freedom, for my safety. For everything he always said I deserved, for everything he has tried to give me and failed because these wolves would not allow it.

It is done quickly, and the sights I see as it is done will never leave me. I will see them when I close my eyes, when I sleep, and sometimes for no reason at all.

We flee, the two of us coated in his brother's blood. I am in shock, and I think he is too. What just happened was the most brutal thing I have ever seen in my life.

We run for a long time, first in our wolf forms, then in human guises. After seeing what I have seen, I feel as though I am more animal than human. The human form I used to mistake for being my true self now feels like a costume I put on from time to time.

Abel has stashes of cash and supplies already planted to allow him to escape a bad situation when necessary. We collect and use those to get as far away from the Pacific Northwest as possible.

He will not speak of what he did in the dungeons. We hire cars, drive them for a while, then swap them out again. We spend only cash. We change our hair color, our clothing style. We are running as fugitives, because that is what we are.

Desert flashes by the window. The windows are down and hot air is blustering through the interior of the car, playing with discarded wrappers from gas station food. Cain is beside me, his beard grown out half an inch, his eyes covered by big sunglasses. I wouldn't have thought a billionaire could go incognito this easily, but once you cover his eyes, Cain Lupin looks just like every other tall chisel-jawed man with dark hair.

"I am sorry about your…"

"Don't," he says coldly. "We will not spare a word for him again."

I shut my mouth, and I grieve for all Cain has sacrificed for me. I was supposed to be the monster, but he became the original beast for me. He has given up absolutely everything, and there is no way for me to ever make it up to him.

"The reward being offered for information about fugitive billionaire Cain Lupin, wanted for the murder of Abel Lupin, has been doubled."

A television presenter reads the ongoing news about the hunt for us in excited tones. The Lupin Murder has really got the attention of everybody in the country, probably in the world. There are endless conspiracy theories about us online, memes, reels, stories, and yes, law enforcement. At this point, we fear teenage girls with cellphones who work at fast food joints more than any police officers.

We are sitting in a shitty hotel room and wearing matching sweaters and sweatpants that say FLORIDA IS JUICY . I am wearing a ginger wig, and Cain has shaved his head and is wearing thick rimmed glasses.

An open box of orange juice sits between us. We've drunk half of it between us, straight out of the carton.

There's a decadence and a freedom to being on the run that I would be afraid to admit I am enjoying. The stuffy ambiance at Denholm always felt like a pair of hands wrapped around my throat, squeezing gently, but insistently. And as much as I wanted to work at Lupin Industries and be a good little assistant for the great Cain Lupin, that could never happen.

"They seek him here. They seek him there," I mutter to myself.

Cain snorts with laughter. I look up at him, testing a little smile.

He smiles back.

"I know you don't want to talk about it, but…"

"Come here," he says, his tone dominant.

I do as I am told instantly, standing up and going to his side. He reaches up and pulls me down to sit in his lap.

"I did what I did because it had to happen," he says. "And I don't regret it. I could have done it some other way. I could have had someone else do it. I could have staged it and made it look like an accident…"

As he talks, his hand reaches down between my legs. I am wearing a skirt, so his fingers easily find the gusset of my underwear and start to stroke me there. It feels wrong to have this conversation while being toyed with, but if this is how Cain wants to do it, then this is how he can do it. I am his. He has given up everything for me, and I will give up everything for him.

His fingertips circle around my clit, then down the smooth fabric to press lightly against the entrance of my body.

"I did it the way I did it because that was the way to satisfy all parties. He needed to know why it was happening. I needed to do it because I had been cornered for too long. And you needed to see it, so you could understand that finally, I am ready to give you everything. No more half-measures. No more putting a pack of vicious, simpering strangers who alternate between jealousy and craven greed first. My world changed when I found you."

He slips my underwear to the side and starts to finger me slowly, sensually. He stretches me open for his use while my hips dance in his lap.

His devotion is unending. He would quite literally do anything for me. That makes me want to do anything, and everything, for him. I spread my thighs, and I give myself to him. I arch my back and grind my ass back against his cock. I submit, like an alpha's mate is supposed to.

A knock on the door startles us both.

"Ignore it," I whimper, not wanting the pleasure to stop for even a moment.

"I have to see who it is," he rumbles, patting my pussy and returning my underwear to its proper place.

He goes to the door and looks through the peephole. I see him hesitate for a moment, then take the chain off the lock. Did he order food? I don't remember him talking about ordering food.

A man steps into our room. He is in his mid-fifties, powerfully built, graying hair. I smell the wolf on him immediately and back away. We don't trust anybody, but there's something about him I especially don't trust, even though he has one of those faces. The generic, trustworthy kind. He could be anybody or anything, from a math teacher to a checkout assistant at a grocery store.

Cain let him in, but he's not looking at Cain. He is looking at me.

"Kira," he says in a voice that is just faintly accented. "You've grown so beautifully. Just like your mother."

"I knew it," Cain growls under his breath, shutting and locking the door.

"My name is Ivan," he says. "And as you may have gathered, I am your father, Kira. I was sorry to hear what happened with you, Mr. Lupin. Condolences. I myself had to kill three of my brothers. It gets easier."

I stare at him, my previous arousal turning into a very unpleasant case of coitus interruptus.

The absolute fucking nerve to walk into my life after twenty-three years and start talking to me as if he has known me forever is wild. But what else should I expect from a man who impregnated my mother, left her to die, and allowed me to be raised by the worst people in the world?

"You are the White Wolf," Cain says. There is respect in his voice.

"That is what I have been called, though not recently," my father says. He smiles at Cain, and then at me. I think he expects me to run into his arms, hug him tight, call him daddy, and be ever so grateful for his presence. He has that kind of smug aura about him, as if he did us all a favor just by being here.

"Get the fuck out of here."

"Kira!" Cain snaps my name in shock.

"You don't get to come here… after all this time, after everything you did." I turn to Cain. "Weren't you saying he's a complete fucking monster? Everybody is afraid of him?"

Next thing I know, my back is against the wall. There is a knife up against my throat. It happened so fast that neither I, nor Cain, had any time to react. This man might be older, but he has the reflexes of a snake.

"I am a complete monster," he purrs down at me. "And I will not be disrespected by my own pup, so sheathe that tongue, before I cut it out."

The friendly store clerk energy is gone. There is nothing but malicious murder behind those eyes. He would do it, I think. He would maim me if I dared disrespect him. I should hate him all the more for this, but I feel the dark part of me, the part that has been swimming all my life, settle. I take a deep breath as I calm down for him.

"She's not accustomed to any of this," Cain says. "It's been a very unsettling time for her. Forgive her."

Ivan laughs, sheathes his blade, and pats my cheek before he lets me go, hard enough for it to almost be a slap, but not quite.

"Girls take time to tame," he says, turning back to Cain. "I imagine mine would take a lifetime. But I did not come here to argue with my pup. I came here to offer you a new life."

"What do you mean?" Cain is on guard, as am I.

"You've killed your brother. The law is hunting you. The pack is hunting you. For now you are several steps ahead, but we both know it will not stay that way. You need a proper out. A true exit. As my pup's mate, I wanted to extend the invitation for you both to come to Russia and live with my pack. There is no extradition treaty. We will leave at once."

Ivan lays out his plan in clipped tones.

I watch Cain struggle with the decision, but I also know this isn't really a decision. This is another one of those fated points in time where choice is just an illusion. We can keep running. We can use his money to travel to far-off places, but we will always be watching our backs because wolves hunt in packs, and we can easily be picked off. We need protection. We need the White Wolf—and lo-and-behold, just as we hit our point of greatest desperation, he has arrived to strike the final blow in fate's little plan for us.

"Thank you," Cain says. "That's a very generous offer. We accept."

I narrow my eyes. "We?"

I let the question hang in the air. I never thought I had daddy issues, but now I'm starting to think that's just because I didn't have time to indulge them. Now that my father is in the same room as me, I am feeling the very teen urge to yell at him and tell him what a fucking awful person he is. It wouldn't go well, obviously, but I want to anyway.

"Good, then it is settled. Come."

Ivan really expects us to just drop everything and go. I suppose we don't really have anything to actually drop, but still.

"Respect your father," Cain lectures me under his breath as we follow Ivan to the trap he obviously laid out for us a long time ago… I mean, the car he has waiting outside to take us to safety from the consequences of our actions.

"I don't, and I won't."

"Then you're going to be spanked like a spoiled little girl," he warns me. "Ivan is all that stands between us and international law enforcement. I know he wasn't a present father, but you have to keep a civil tongue in your head."

"No. I don't."

I am being bratty, because I know there's no option. There's never been an option.

We get into the car, and all the juvenile fantasies I once had of my secret father coming to rescue me from a desperate situation come true as Ivan drives us to a private airfield.

"You may hate me," he says as we settle into his private jet, along with several armed members of his pack, who all studiously pretend Cain and I are not there. I think it's a show of respect, unlike when the Denholm wolves just ignored me.

"But?"

"But what?" Ivan laughs. "You may hate me. You are blood of my blood. Flesh of my flesh. You may have all the terrible, twisted feelings you need or want to have. We're leaving America. No need to pretend you are having a nice day."

I allow myself a little smile. He can be funny, I guess. Maybe that's what my mother liked about him. Oh wait, it didn't matter if she liked him or not. The mate bond ensured she'd let him fuck her until she was knocked up regardless.

"She's a good girl," Cain says.

"No, she is not!" Ivan laughs. "I can see it written on her face. I can smell it in her scent. The both of you will like Russia. It is made for people like us, Kira. This American world, it was never for you. The decadence does you no good. Russia is a place of harsh handling. Your mate will learn what you need. You will be happy."

For a brief moment, I consider what I have to say to all of that. I can feel Cain's eyes on me, boring into me, demanding that I be pleasant. And then I see my father in front of me, sitting quite charmingly, his friendly mask back on. I have every reason to be a good girl right now.

"Fuck off."

Oh dear. Guess I failed.

"Kira!" Cain snaps my name again, grabbing me before Ivan can. "That's enough!"

I let out a laugh, a laugh that is echoed by my father.

Cain slaps my ass, hard enough to get my attention, and the laugh dies on my lips. I realize in this moment, that Cain is just as dangerous as Ivan. Perhaps even more so. Cain has lived his entire life thinking that he was one of the good guys, but he's not anymore. He's a very bad man. At this moment, I am surrounded by very bad men. I have never been so loved. And I have never been so safe.

The End