Allister, J. Rose - Discarded Cowboys [Lone Wolves of Shay Falls 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (19 page)

“Vanje
was
doing what needs to be done. You can’t keep me prisoner forever, Father. And I won’t change my mind about the men I love, not ever. I will never submit to another.”

“Such bold words for a woman who has tasted the delights of a man’s touch.”

“Enough to know I will never want again.”

“Even years after your mates fail to reclaim you?” He moved closer with a mocking smile. “You
will
go wanting, sooner or later.”

Waves of seething anger from her mates washed over her palpably but were largely drowned out by her own.

She shook her head. “You’re wrong.”

“No, I’m not. Eventually, human nature will win, and you will give in to your burning need. Your mother did.”

She blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Your mother was like you. She, too, fell under the dangerous thrall of night creatures, believing she was destined to be theirs.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That lie about fate is merely part of their supernatural power, child. It is a magic that holds you false, because it is the only way their kind can snare females. No woman would ever agree to become the consort of evil otherwise.”

She gaped at him in shock. “I don’t believe you. My mother was not a werewolf’s mate.”

“Do you not remember the mark she bore on her shoulder? The one she told you was a birthmark? It bore a startling resemblance to the one you now own, did it not?”

She glanced at the now-faded tooth marks, recalling the pair of faded pink divots near her mother’s neck. They were almost identical.

Her mouth opened in a silent gasp. “Why?”

“She was deceived, same as you.”

Talaitha folded her arms. “I mean, why did she marry you if she was bonded to werewolves?”

How could it be? If she’d belonged to a mate the way Talaitha did, surely she never would have betrayed them to run off with another man?

Then a cold, hard thought hit, and it yanked on the stomach already squeezed by the unrelenting rope. “The wolf you killed the night you found Mother wasn’t just a random animal you were saving her from, was it? It was her mate.”

He stared at her for a moment, and she saw the answer there before he even said it. “Our caravan ran across the wolf by accident. The struggle was fierce, but in the end our magic and combined strength defeated the beast. That’s when I heard crying and found a woman from another Gypsy clan naked and huddled in the bushes.”

She nodded, the story she’d heard before making a newly twisted, awful sense. “I always thought she’d been crying because she feared the wolf would win. But it was because you killed him.”

“She was very upset at first. Fought like a wild beast when we brought her to the camp. She kept going on about another wolf, though we did not encounter it. I was proclaimed a hero by my clan and hers for saving the poor, victimized woman. Her father gave me her hand in marriage as my reward. No one knew she’d been with the beast willingly.” His tone turned to sarcasm at the end, and Talaitha frowned.

“The
abiav
was held immediately, but my bride rejected me just as you did your Yoska. She tried to flee and return to the other mate until I convinced her I would have him hunted down and killed if she did so.”

Talaitha’s blood ran cold. “By the Gods. You kept her a prisoner, too.”

“She was prisoner only of the terrible, seductive power werewolves wield over the women they choose as mates. I knew her mind had been so corrupted that she would never let go unless she knew the cost would be the other mate’s life.”

She leaned weakly against the bars. “I can’t believe she ever forgave you enough to accept you as her husband.”

“She had no choice. She had to save you.”

Talaitha’s head snapped up. “Me? I don’t understand.”

His smile turned hard. “You had been conceived the night I found her.”

“You aren’t my real father?”

“No.”

As her stomach roiled, threatening to empty its meager contents, pieces of her life fell into place. Zakono’s callous way of treating her, the easy disapproval, the way he would occasionally stare at her as though trying to glimpse something in her that he couldn’t find. Now it all made sense.

It took three tries before she could speak. “You said she wanted to save me. From what?”

“The clan, of course. Had they known what you were, you would have been destroyed.”

Sick dread washed over her. “Werewolves are made, not born. I posed no threat to the clan.”

“You bore the blood of darkness. Evil blood, spawned by a monster. Such tainted blood could be capable of anything.”

“Just like you.”

He sneered at her. “I do what I must.”

She blinked at him in shock. Her real father was a werewolf. And he was dead and gone.

“Why save me, then?” she asked weakly. “Why not let the clan have their way?”

His eyes glimmered. “I loved your mother from the moment I saw her. I promised to keep your secret if she agreed to live as my wife. As we were already wed, the child was assumed mine. No one knew that we had not consummated that union.”

Guilt rose in her chest, threatening to choke her. Her mother had cut herself off from the second mate to protect her child and the surviving mate as well.

The second mate. She flashed on the memory of her mother leaving the women’s tent to speak to a man she seemed to know. A man who turned out to be a werewolf.

Talaitha gasped. “The werewolf in our camp the eve of my wedding was her other mate,” she said. “He came back for her.”

His nostrils flared. “After all I’d done for her, all I’d forgiven. I raised you as my own, never knowing for sure what kind of evil might live inside of you. She was going to tell you everything and then leave me for him.”

She stared at him, horror snaking its way around her spine. “The wolf didn’t kill my mother at all. You did.”

A spark fired in his gaze. “She died because she chose to give herself to vile creatures of night.” His hand went to a leather sheath on his belt, unsnapping it to slide out a bone-handle knife. “And so will you, if that is your decision.”

She drew back tighter against the cage and tried to swallow down her rising panic. “I’m not even your real daughter. Why do you care who I choose as a mate?”

“You have been claimed as part of this clan. You are family and a Gypsy by blood, whether or not you share that blood with me. I cannot allow a member of my clan to be taken by perverted, unnatural creatures.”

“But you can murder a clan member who is also your wife? Or a daughter?”

The knife came up as he walked forward. “Better a woman should die than spread her legs for demon filth.”

A white wolf leapt forward. Drew planted himself in front of Talaitha, his neck hairs bristling and fangs bared at Zakono. The threatening growl stirred gooseflesh on her arms but seemed to have little effect on her father—or rather, the man who had killed her father. Blood ran cold in her veins at the thought. No wonder he hadn’t thought twice about putting a knife to her throat.

Zakono shot the wolf a mocking smile. “Good. I’d wondered whether you’d come for her, just like the other mate tried to come for my wife. That’s all you are, of course. Just the other mate. Not the true partner.”

Drew’s growl grew fiercer.

The knife flashed, and Talaitha knew the glittering blade must be silver. “I’m sure you heard how it ended for Talaitha’s mother and her filthy animal lovers. It won’t go any better for you.”

The wolf crouched down as if to spring, but the sounds of men calling out froze the animal in place. Zakono’s men emerged from the camp, looking very much the part of an angry mob as they bore torches and crude weapons. Marko, wielding the cattle prod and a vicious smile, came up beside Zakono.

Drew began a series of growl-barks. Although he was still staring the men down, Talaitha knew he was vocalizing instructions to Russell. He must be lurking somewhere nearby. She could feel the tension coursing through both their canine bodies, stringing them as tightly as she was roped to the cage. Her joy at seeing him again battled with the terror of knowing her wolves had come to die, coalescing in her mind the fear that must have been much of her mother’s existence.

“I am not fluent in wolf speak,” Zakono said. “Or have you forgotten you’re on all fours? Perhaps you cannot control the curse enough to address us as humans.”

Fur pulled back into Drew’s naked, muscled form as he rose to full height, but his eyes kept their fiery, golden gleam. “Why should I bother to address you as a human when you have no right to call yourself one?”

“Ironic, coming from a creature of night.”

“And you are a murderer intent on killin’ his own daughter.”

Some of the men shot questioning looks at one another. Apparently, not all of them had been listening.

“I saved her from what the clan would have done had they realized she has ruv-tainted blood in her veins.”

Drew scoffed. “Saved her for what? To keep her here miserable, tryin’ to force her into a marriage she didn’t want and then holdin’ her prisoner? Tell me, just who have you been punishin’ all these years? Talaitha for havin’ a werewolf father, or her mother for never lovin’ you?”

Zakono’s smile faded into a snarled lip. “I hear your perverted lover was sliced up by silver during your escape. I presume that’s why he isn’t here to join us.” He flashed his own blade in front of him. “Such wounds are most slow to heal, if not fatal, aren’t they?”

“Not as fatal as you’d like,” came a voice Talaitha had longed to hear outside her recent dreams—any time but now.

Russell emerged from the brush with his hands in the air and Tomas’s pistol pointed at his head. He, too, was naked, and she could see that the ugly wound was nearly gone. Nothing but a thin, red line remained. His cock swung between his thighs as he stalked forward, glowing eyes darting quickly her way before fastening dangerously on Zakono.

“Found this one hiding nearby, just like you said,” Tomas said to Zakono.

Zakono nodded. “Good. This can end more quickly than I’d hoped.”

“Thought I told you to back off and keep out of sight,” Drew said.

“Well, you know how I hate to miss a good hootenanny,” Russell said.

“Kill him,” Zakono said.

“Don’t!” Talaitha shrieked, struggling against the ropes. “No, Papa.” The word came off her tongue before she could stop it.

Drew still had himself sandwiched between her and Zakono, but she reached out to tug him aside. “You win, Father.” The term had a thick, unnatural feel now. He was not her father. He never had been. “I’ve changed my mind. Let them go on their way safely, and I’ll stay with the clan. I swear it.”

Drew whirled on her. “Tal. No.”

Zakono growled. “Such promises from your mother failed me. I won’t make that mistake again.”

Without warning, he lunged for her. Drew moved to intervene, but she shoved him aside with all of her might. “Run!” she cried. Then she felt the steel of her father’s blade pressed to her throat yet again.

“Move and she dies,” Zakono spat, and this time it was Drew who froze, the blue disappearing in his gaze. “Get back.”

Drew’s hands rose as he stepped backward, rage and fear charging the air around him.