Allister, J. Rose - Disowned Cowboys [Lone Wolves of Shay Falls] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (24 page)

“Buddying up to one of Blaise’s bastards and banging a human slave,” he went on, shaking his head. “You trying to channel that ruthless cocksucker’s cold, rotting corpse?”

“It’s not like that,” Aimee said. “I’m not a slave.”

“Aimee,” Dillon growled in warning.

“You two outcasts shut the hell up,” the man shot back. “This doesn’t concern you. Yet.” His gaze, which was firing hotter by the moment, flicked back to Kyle. “Get the fuck out of that disgusting tangle and show me your submission. Now.”

Kyle’s hot flesh, pressed to her back, gave way instantly to sleek, satiny fur, and his black wolf approached the man with his head lowered and tail held between his legs. After lowering himself to the ground, he flipped over on his back, exposing his paler underbelly. Aimee swallowed. It didn’t take much deduction to figure that Solomon was Kyle’s alpha. His pack had found them out.

“Now get up on your knees as a man,” he snapped at the wolf.

Kyle complied and sat on his heels, facing away from her. Dillon, whose cock had gone flaccid and slipped out of her, was slowly trying to make a grab for Aimee’s clothes.

“Don’t you make a move,” the alpha boomed out, pointing at Dillon. “Jack. Adam.”

Without another word, the two men on the farthest ends of the group shrugged out of jackets and shirts and dropped to the ground as gray wolves. Two others followed suit, and within seconds clothing lay in piles while the pack stood at four-legged attention, with wild, gold eyes and lethal-looking fangs focused on Dillon. He tensed and pushed Aimee more fully behind him, but their stares flicked her way more and more often. She crossed one arm over her chest and the other over her pubic hair, but it did little to keep the leering hunger from their feral eyes.

“Care to tell me just why the hell you not only defied my orders regarding Blaise’s omega a-holes,” Solomon was saying, “but spun it around on its ass and perverted it to epic proportions?”

“The bond,” Kyle said. “I was settin’ up to make my move on him when I felt it.”

“You made a move, all right. Moved right onto hell’s path. I can’t believe that you, of all my wolves, would drag yourself down to the lowest of the low. Fuckin’ a lone wolf and his slave bitch.”

“She ain’t a slave,” Kyle said. “She’s his bond mate.”

“Bullshit.” Solomon strutted over to Aimee, along with two of his wolves. She scrambled away from behind Dillon and tried to press herself to the wall. Dillon slid back as well to shield her, but the wolves bared fangs and growled in his face. The pack alpha leaned down over Aimee, his dark eyes squinting as she tried to cover herself. He grabbed hold of her blazer and gave a firm tug to bare her shoulders “You’re lying, boy. She has no breeder mark on her.”

Her mouth fell open as she scrambled to shrug the blazer back on. “A
what
mark?”

He ignored the comment and sniffed at her. His mouth contorted into a vile approximation of a grin. “She smells like the devil’s dessert, though. I’ll give you that. Makes my dick twitch.”

“We were about to finish the claim,” Kyle said.

Solomon’s eyes narrowed. “‘We’ were? And just how the hell do
you
figure in to the claiming?”

Kyle raised his chin. “I aim to make the pack mark on her. Dillon has acknowledged me as his alpha.”

The laugh that Solomon bellowed contained zero humor but a good deal of incredulity. “
Alpha?
You’re in a pack that already has an alpha. I think the two of you are a bit confused on the subject of how the whole alpha thing works.”

“No, sir,” Kyle said. “I just believed it to be the only choice at the time.”

Her chest thumped in frustration, and she couldn’t help but ask Dillon, “Which is it, a pack mark, or a
breeder
mark?”

“Not now,” Dillon said to her under his breath.

“And when were you planning on telling me you want to
breed
me?” she whispered.

“It ain’t what it sounds like,” he whispered back over his shoulder. “It’s just the old term for a mate.”

“You cannot be in two packs at the same time,” Solomon was saying to Kyle, enunciating every word as though he was speaking to a child. “It’s impossible.”

“Apparently, it ain’t,” Dillon interjected. “His alpha bond took on me immediately. But his bond to you still holds true.”

Solomon’s fists flexed. “When I want your input, it’ll be for only one reason—to decide whether you want to die on all fours or as the pitiful excuse for a man that you are.” He turned and walked back over to Kyle.

The wolves followed him, and while their backs were turned, Dillon used the opportunity to snatch up Aimee’s blazer. She tugged it on while he sat on the ground beside her, wishing it was had buttons down the front and was long enough to cover her genitals. “And just what the fuck is your goal?” Solomon went on. “Did you figure you’d play alpha with this reject loser until you grew big enough cojones to take me on?”

Kyle shook his head. “I have no desire to challenge you for pack rights.”

“Well, what a relief to hear you aren’t one hundred percent moron. Then what is this about? Why did you take up with this disowned cowboy?”

He sighed and exchanged a glance with Dillon. “I was preparin’ to carry out your orders to kill Blaise’s old pack members on sight. But the minute I looked Dillon in the eye, I sensed the bond. I knew I couldn’t bring him into the pack because you would never accept him.” He glanced at the ground. “And I knew he was too wild to trust as an alpha.”

Aimee felt Dillon shift uncomfortably beside her.

“Got one thing right, anyway,” Solomon said. “Go on.”

Kyle looked up at him. “So, rather than renounce my pack and come in under his leadership, I offered to help him learn to control his nature, and he accepted me as his alpha.”

Solomon sneered at them. “And the two of you lived happily ever after. Oh, wait, that’s not it. You turned thousands of years of tradition inside out, lied to your alpha, and snuck around behind your pack’s behinds in hopes that you’d get away with it. Not smart, Kyle. Not smart at all.”

A thick cloud of added tension descended when talk ceased, and Aimee’s heart began pounding against her sternum as she watched the man stare down at Kyle. At least while the man was jawing on about alpha rights and such, nobody was getting hurt. With silence, however, came the sharp edge of threat that Solomon or his pack of fanged dogs would strike at any moment. She felt Dillon tense beside her and knew he was thinking the same thing. Kyle, for his part, met the other man’s eyes in the same calm, poised regard he wore like a mantle.

After what seemed an unbearable span of quiet in which nothing echoed through the cave except the sound of Aimee’s pulse in her ears, Solomon whooshed out a sigh. “Normally, when a wolf tries to jump packs and the alpha disputes the claim, he would challenge the new alpha to either retake his wolf or to a winner-takes-all pack rights fight. But now you present me with the little problem of you being the alpha. If I kill you and win the challenge, I still lose you. But if you think I’m going to stand by while one of
my
wolves runs off to tie on an apron and set up housekeeping up with one of Blaise’s protégés, you’ve got another fucking thing coming.”

Kyle rose, brushing off his knees, standing naked and silent while facing his alpha. Aimee watched the men’s profiles shift into grim resolve as they stood a few feet away.

The other man growled in obvious disapproval. “Yeah, I see just how well that
bond
to me has held. I don’t recall giving you permission to get up.”

“I’m not risin’ as your beta.” Kyle set his hands on his bare hips. “I’m standin’ in defense of the pack you are threatenin’.”

Solomon’s dark brows rose to comical heights. “Well, now, look who’s talking like someone looking to take the old man on, after all.”

“I ain’t lookin’ for that. I never wanted to renounce you or leave my pack. But I don’t see as how you’re leavin’ me much choice.”

“Choice is the one weapon a man always has.” Solomon’s measuring stare slid along Kyle’s tense, firm body. “Even if he’s broke, starved, and naked as the day his mama squirted him out.”

“Then you can make that same choice.” Kyle glanced at Dillon and Aimee, and she felt the small current run through her when his eyes found hers. “Let this go. Don’t turn this into somethin’ it doesn’t have to be.”

“Well, that’s just the thing, boy. This
does
have to be something because I don’t think you’re playing this hand with a full deck.” He turned and gestured to Dillon. “You know the shit he comes from. Disowned by his own alpha. You saw firsthand how they treated your pack. How can you turn around and wet your dick with one of Blaise’s vicious dogs after what they did?”

“It was never my choice to be part of Blaise’s pack,” Dillon snapped off with a bitter tone. “And I never agreed with what he did.”

“But you still obeyed, didn’t you, you son of a bitch?” Solomon said. “You went out and did unto others at Blaise’s command. You did unto
mine
.”

“There are ways of showin’ submission without strictly obeyin’,” Dillon said.

Solomon laughed. “A strategy I see you’ve rubbed off on Kyle.” His gaze flicked to Kyle. “I suppose you figure you can control one of Blaise’s betas when he’ll flat out make a claim like that right in front of his alpha?”

“This was never about control,” Kyle said. “It was about honorin’ the bond I knew was inevitable between us and helpin’ Dillon find his way back from his experiences in Blaise’s pack.”

“I just don’t understand how you can look at the man who killed your pack mates and want to bond with him.”

Aimee’s eyes widened. Dillon had told her his past had made him despondent enough to choose death. But she hadn’t ever thought of him as a killer.

“I don’t pretend to understand it,” Kyle said. “The bond chooses us. We don’t choose it. And Dillon wasn’t involved in the campground battle.”

“Don’t lie!” Solomon’s control cracked as he shouted the accusation. “I recognize the little bastard’s scent.”

“I was there that night,” Dillon said, and Aimee’s head whipped around to him. “But I didn’t kill anyone. I’ve never killed anyone. Blaise and his betas did the killin’. I refused to play any part and retreated into the woods until it was over.”

Solomon snorted. “So, you’re a pussy omega, then. You are still one of his, groomed by the bastard who ripped apart three of my wolves that night. And for what? The right to walk within the boundaries of a public campground.” He stalked forward and spat in the dirt. “So you see why there’s no way I can allow you to live.”

Aimee’s heart seized. Jesus, what would happen to Dillon? To her?

Kyle stepped in front of Solomon. “And as alpha, you can see why I cannot allow you to harm one of my own.”

“Your own are the ones standing behind me.”

“You’re no murderer. Don’t let what Blaise did four years ago change you into a creature no better than he was.”

The man pointed a finger at Kyle’s face. “You may fancy yourself the alpha of that no-account little prick over there, but you do not give
me
orders.”

“You’ve never been opposed to hearin’ counsel from members of your pack.”

“That was before one of my pack lost his fool head and ran off to join the enemy.” He pushed up his sleeves, eyes glowing with golden menace. “So let’s call this what it is and declare the stakes.”

“No,” Dillon said, jumping to his feet. Four wolves immediately planted themselves in a line in front of their alpha, snarling at Dillon. Aimee pressed herself tighter to the wall and silently prayed for the nightmare to end without bloodshed, even knowing she wanted the impossible.

“Dillon,” Kyle growled. “Back off.”