Chapter 6

Castor

Briar May. A rose in spring. The memory of her, the scent of summer strawberries, the sweetness of a potent sugar on his tongue. She looked so soft, but underneath she was like a diamond. Too hard to break. Deceptively sharp. He’d felt it in her kiss, he’d never lost control before, but something had made him want her with a ferocity he’d never known. She’d tasted of life to him, of hope and possibility.

After a lifetime of tucking it away and pretending that it wasn’t there, the pain, the hurt, the wounds that turned into jagged scars, it should have been easier to deprive himself of sleep, of healing, of the simple touch he’d craved for half a lifetime, but he’d reached the brink. The self-surgery combined with the lack of sleep, the stress, the overcharged adrenaline, and the blood loss was too much.

Castor hadn’t slept the deep, undisturbed sleep of the dead since he was a child, and even then, it was before his mother died. He could barely remember a time when he felt safe enough to be so unguarded.

He blinked, his lids heavy and gummy. Disbelief surged through him when he noted the pink and purple dawn creeping like a blood stain with bruised edges over the rim of the sky. The horizon was still gray and the tall grasses in the rolling green fields had yet to unbend their sleepy heads to face a new day.

His eyes swept the perimeter of the small room and when they landed on the door, the shit he’d piled up there to keep them safe all pulled to the side, just enough for a slight body to slip through, he shot to his feet.

His heart raced, warrior training kicking into gear—the little wolf had gone. He knew he shouldn’t have let his guard down. He’d been right yesterday, she had bewitched him, that stunt in the Jeep… What had she given him? Powered by adrenaline he managed to get himself upright.

His wound immediately protested the movement, as did the pounding in his temples. She must have drugged him, that would explain why he’d blacked out. He did an internal scan as he rushed to the door—but no, he hadn’t been drugged. Those hours of respite were because his body needed them to survive.

He didn’t put much faith or trust in anyone, and there was a reason for that. People didn’t respond the way they should. They didn’t use common sense. They didn’t stay in a damn safehouse, in a safe spot, with someone who could stand between life and death. Because that’s why he was keeping them here, did she not realize it was for her own good? If Apollo and Zeus were after them, her only chance of survival was if she stayed by his side. Damn it.

He threw the door wide open, wrenching an old steel bedframe, the junky stove, and the other debris, clean out of the way. He let out a bellow of rage into the hazy early morning light. He didn’t want to hear the way it crackled at the edges, his fear tainting it.

He’d ditched the car miles away, thrown out the keys along their journey here as he carried Briar May in his arms, his weapons and pack on his back, so he doubted she’d be able to locate both and take off. He’d have better luck tracking her in his wolf form, but it was almost dawn. Anyone could see him. A wolf with a pack strapped to his back and battle axes? Not so believable.

He cursed and stormed back inside the farmhouse, gathering up his blood-soaked t-shirt. He wasn’t gentle about putting it back on and his side screamed. He slapped a hand there, batting the wound like he could tell it to shut up, at least it had stopped bleeding, so he had to be thankful for small mercies. He breathed deeply, let it out slowly, stuffed all of his anger, the sharp knives of fear that bit into his soul, the ragged edges of something he couldn’t even name, the physical hurt, down into that deep pit inside himself. In a few seconds, he was back to his natural state. Unfeeling, cold, and robotic. He’d turned his body off. Turned everything off in his brain except the laser sharp focus he’d need to track Briar May. He methodically packed the black bag, zipped it shut, and threw it on. He slammed his axes in place.

He had no bleach, but even if he did, it wouldn’t be enough to hide the scent of them in that house, especially not since he’d bled all over it. If he burned it to the ground, it wouldn’t have been enough. He’d left a trail simply walking there. This wasn’t his property. It wasn’t his right. He felt a stab of sentimentality for this old house, crooked and alone, abandoned and unloved. Plus setting a fire could draw more attention, better just leave it, and take his chances.

He hit the ground outside at a dead run. He could run for miles in any form without tiring. Briar May thought she could escape him? She was dead fucking wrong.

He’d track her to the ends of the earth.

He needed to keep her safe. Everything was complicated now, and he needed her in his possession to uncomplicate it. To complete his mission. To prove he hadn’t gone rogue and turned traitor. It was all business. Only that.

He didn’t feel any tenderness for her, and the raging need to protect her and eliminate all threats was just because without her, he had nothing to bargain with. Without her, he was a dead man. Without her he was the thing he’d always known. The one thing he’d feared, if he had any fear left in him.

That traitorous part of him that actually fucking called to her like she belonged to him, was pushed back down, along with his other emotions. It was strictly business.

He turned his face to the slight breeze and arced north. It was the most predictable direction.

***

Almost an hour later, still running at top speed, he caught the delicate scent of flowers and fresh fruit in the wind and knew he was close. He doubled his efforts and ignored the way it made his side throb. The rest of his body was fully on board. The sleep recharged him. He wasn’t letting Briar May go.

She’s mine. Mine, mine, mine.

The soul of him screamed something that his brain did not disagree with.

Mine to ransom, mine to protect until the time comes to give her back or hand her over, mine to exchange for my own life, mine to demand repayment for my brother.

Mine.

His heart rate was even, until he spotted a dark shape in the distance. She was running along the side of the gravel road. Her dress billowed out behind her, her hair like a cape on top of that. She’d either given herself a break, or she had incredible stamina.

Never mind that it must have taken her most of the night to reach the same spot he’d arrived at in just over an hour. He was a seasoned veteran, and she was a tiny woman who had all the appearance of a spoiled little princess, well-kept as the alpha’s daughter. She was used to being loved and pampered and doted on. Rough and wild living was probably saved for her wolf on a half-hour run with her pack whenever the full moon came out.

She didn’t turn around until he was almost on top of her. When she finally realized he was there, her sense of danger so off that it infuriated him because he could have been anyone intent on harming her, she stopped. That threw him off. She snarled like she had in the woods and charged straight at him. He met her headlong, half expecting her wolf. He could handle the animal, even in his current form.

Their bodies collided, but he had his arms out, already cushioning the blow. Even as he took her down to the ground, wrestling her into a grassy ditch, he made sure that his arms were behind her to keep her from being hurt. She thrashed against him, screaming and growling, trying to tear at him with her nails. He kept her arms locked and pinned her down. He straddled her with a broad thigh at either side of her slight legs. He tried to wrest her arms over her head to subdue her, but she managed to get one free.

One swipe and she’d left bloody claw marks on his cheek. He was stunned for a quarter second, and then he let out a growl of his own and grabbed both wrists in one hand to stretch them above her face. Her eyes shone the color of whiskey, bright with anger and shock.

“Why?” he snapped near her ear. She shivered at the warmth of his breath.

Oddly, he shivered too. The position he’d put them in, he could feel the shape of her body. She might be slight, but she had curves that had been hidden by that dress. He noticed her now in a way he’d refused to before, when he had her in his arms. He was no longer a robot. He was firmly a man, slammed back into a man’s body with a man’s hunger, and he wantedher so fiercely that his cock was instantly so hard it hurt, punching at the fly of his fatigues.

“Why do you think?” she spat in his face.

The wetness spraying over his cheeks only turned him on more. He was so close that he could take those full lips under his and brutalize them until she was moaning and screaming. Her nostrils flared as she tried to rear up, bucking straight into his hard cock. Her eyes went wide with shock. She froze and stared up at him, so surprised that she forgot to guard herself. It was clear that she found him attractive. He’d seen the way her eyes swept over him and lingered in that farmhouse, and he could scent her arousal yesterday when he’d kissed her. And now, he could feel her heart racing, it wasn’t fear driving it, but desire. She’d been disgusted with herself for the attraction. He wasn’t supposed to desire her either. She was a means to an end, now more than ever.

“If you wanted to kill me, you should have done it while I slept.”

She blinked. “What? I don’t want to kill you. I could have, and I didn’t. I could have injected you with anything or everything from that kit.”

“That’s not who you are, little wolf. You’re not a killer. You don’t want to be one, but you left me back there and you took off out into the unknown. That was very foolish. Either you do want me to die, and you have a death wish for yourself, or you’re just plain stupid.”

The anger rose up in her again, refreshed by his taunts. She wriggled, trying to get a knee between them so she could do his balls in. “Go to hell, you asshole!”

“It should be quite apparent, darling, that I’m already there. Been there for a while. It’s not so bad, really. But then, we’re all used to it by now. We’ve all been born there if we’re living on this planet.”

The blasé words had more of an affect than he thought. She stilled and blinked up at him, her eyes a soft honey now through that thick dusting of fine pale lashes. She made a strangled sound, but otherwise remained still.

He wasn’t used to reading people wrong, and he’d clearly been way off with her. When she’d helped him rather than run off while she had a chance, he’d thought it meant that she’d wanted to stay. But clearly, she’d just wanted to make sure he was okay before leaving. He should have taken some comfort in the fact that she cared enough to wait, but he shook that thought away. He’d given her too many hours alone. Too much time to think and panic, “I thought you’d accepted your fate.”

“I thought I had too.” It looked like she was trying hard not to breathe, not to touch him more than she had to. “We need to go back to my pack. I need to go back. I can’t be kept in a cage.”

“There’s no cage for us. Only death. I’m not holding you captive. I’m trying to keep you alive.”

“Hiding and running isn’t living.”

“We need time. I need time to think.” What he needed was a plan, and so far, he hadn’t come up with much of anything except the barely defined notion that if he held onto Briar May, he could still use her as some sort of bargaining chip for both their lives.

“What if there’s already a war over us and we’re not even aware that it’s happening?” That hit him like a blow. He hadn’t even considered it.

Her face gentled. “We need to go back to my pack,” she insisted. It sounded more like she was begging him, and when he imagined her doing it on her knees, it was almost more than he could bear.

“We do that and I’m as good as dead.” He needed to get the hell off her. Being in such close proximity wasn’t helping him think. All the blood was leaving his brain and heading straight to the wrong parts. He wanted to take her right now, mark her, own her. Fuck, what was she doing to him? He didn’t operate like that, he’d never take a woman by force. His little wolf was safe with him—if anything, it was himself he was worried about in this set up. He’d never felt so close to losing himself as he did right now.

Briar May was dangerous. She made him less of a weapon when he needed to stay sharp and deadly for the both of them.

He rolled off and yanked her up to her feet. She glared at him as she brushed grass off her dress and out of her hair.

“They can help,” she insisted after a beat, still finger-combing plant debris out of the long cornsilk strands.

Strands that looked so soft he wanted to take them between his fingers and savor the feel before wrapping it around his fist to pull her head back and—

“I can make them understand.” She was completely oblivious to his dark thoughts.

“Understand what?” He wished he was oblivious as well. This was the wrong time to be in the wrong sphere, to become a man he didn’t recognize, to have a body that refused to obey his every will and command. To start feeling something. “If we’re found by my pack, they’ll say we colluded together. Some plot to take down my alpha. They’ll say it’s been going on for a long time, maybe they’ll accuse my brother of starting it all when he left to run with the Rangers. Snares and traps. That’s their way of reasoning. I won’t be given a chance to prove that I was always loyal.”

“But that’s ridiculous!” He didn’t like that fine sheen of moisture in her eyes. Didn’t like that she felt things for him just when he was numbing himself out again.

“You don’t know my pack. Our alpha doesn’t want war, but we are warriors through and through. Peace never lasts, the ones who want a fight will overrule the ones who don’t. The majority will have no qualms about installing an alpha who will give them what they want.”

She looked truly sickened. “What kind of a life is that?”

He lifted his shoulders in an uncaring shrug. “The only one we know.” That was the truth. And it was his pack’s truth and his truth. It had been his since birth. He didn’t know any other way to live.”

Her eyes searched him, and he didn’t like what he saw flash across her face. Anger. Tenderness. Resignation. She looked up at him, “Fate has clearly decided something for us.”

“I don’t believe in fate. What happens to us is written by our own hand.”

She looked like she was about to protest, but when she opened her mouth, their attention was drawn to the distant woods by the call of a raven. The sharp cry pierced the sky, the golden sunlight slanting down and bathing the entire world in its glory.

An alarmed cry was quickly hushed by a hand pressed firmly over her mouth. He didn’t believe in portents. Birds were just birds. Nature was just nature. The world moved on, full of mystery beyond their understanding, but life or death? That came down to a person’s own choices and their own skill.

“Do you have the sight?” He wasn’t sure why he said it. He didn’t believe in the old stories.

“No.” Her hand fell away from her mouth, fluttering at her throat. “I have nothing at all. I am nothing at all.”

He wanted to surge forward, to take her arms and shake her, to make her recant those words. The sensation was so deep and vital inside him that his lungs had trouble expanding. He felt like he’d just been gutted a second time. He wasn’t going to stand there and be the kind of man who held her and stroked her hair and promised her that everything would be alright. He would never be that man. That man died when his mother did, bleeding out right in front of his eyes.

“We need to leave.” That’s the man he was. Hard. Practical. The kind of man who knew how to stay alive. The kind of man who took life from others. “Now.” They’d wasted enough time already.

“You’re not well enough.”

“Believe me,” he snorted, “I’ve been in much worse shape and lived. Unfortunately for you. But then, they would have sent someone else. Someone who wasn’t me. If it had to be anyone, you’re lucky it was me.”

“And if it had to be anyone,” she swore with force, thumping her chest above her heart, “I’m glad it was me too.”

“You’d sacrifice yourself for your pack?”

She seemed annoyed by his tone of disbelief. “Wouldn’t you?”

“Yes.” But out of duty and obligation. Because that was a warrior’s death. She’d do it out of love.

“Come on.” His hand closed over her upper arm, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to let her know he was serious about her not pulling anymore shit and wasting time they couldn’t afford when they were already running out of that precious commodity. “We have to find a vehicle. We stand zero chance if we don’t have that.”

“Where will you go? Back? To the coast? North? Do you just plan on driving forever, until we reach the water, and continuing on?”

A boat wasn’t a bad plan, but even then, they’d eventually be found. No matter how many years it took, he knew he’d be hunted until proof of his death could be obtained. Unless… unless he could make his pack see reason. But that would involve going there, and they weren’t the kind of men who liked to listen to the truth and take it as such. They had a tendency to kill first and ask questions later. They would be far more willing to believe in betrayal than claims of loyalty and innocence.

He was starting to see that Briar May was right. This woman who had probably zero world experience and certainly zero experience getting her hands bloody or even dirty.

The life he’d been living with his pack, what he’d thought was a warrior’s life, was missing something vital. He’d prided himself on surviving for years, but all he’d done was stay alive. That shouldn’t be such an accomplishment.

And running and hiding was no life at all. It was just another cage, and wolves couldn’t live locked behind bars.

He made the decision in an instant, before he had time to wonder at it and regret it and change his mind because it went against every single one of his instincts. “I’m taking you back to your pack.” It wasn’t the best option, but it really was the only one left to them. If he returned to his pack alone, then perhaps he could talk his way out of whatever accusations had been made against him. That’s if her pack didn’t kill him first.

A rock and a hard place.