Growl (49 page)

Now his arms were holding her tightly, her back against his front, her head thrashing over his shoulders. The screams had subsided, but her fear was still live, still potent enough to have her eyes closed tight, tears trickling rapidly down her cheeks.

“I'm right here,” he told her. “Right here. Nobody will hurt you as long as I'm with you. I promise you.”

Her heart was still hammering against her chest. He could hear it and feel it as his hand stroked along her arms. He had no idea when he'd begun rocking her back and forth or why, but the movement seemed to calm her, so he continued. Her hair tickled his cheek and Blaez leaned into it, until his cheek rested against the top of her head.

“They'll never hurt you again,” he said when her sobbing had ceased, her body jerking slightly with her heavy breathing.

He moved so that he was now sitting on the bed, his back against the headboard, her body still cradled against him.

“Tell me what they did to you,
lýkaina
?” he asked after a few more moments. “Tell me so I can make them pay.”

She didn't speak at first, the silence slicing through Blaez like a painfully familiar knife. He gritted his teeth against his own personal memory and vowed to focus only on her, on what she'd been through and what had ultimately brought her here to him.

“It's all so stupid” was her response. One Blaez had not expected. He'd half-expected an argument before the admission because since they'd met that seemed to be the formula that worked for them.

“What's so stupid?” he asked.

She shook her head, attempting to turn away from him and to move out of his grasp, but he held her firmly. Not to cause her further harm, but to keep her close because every instinct he possessed said he needed her to be near him.

“A beta can become an alpha and form his own pack if he claims an alpha female. He can claim her without her permission, without her love! It's stupid!” she yelled.

Blaez clenched his teeth, temples throbbing at her words. She sounded just like his mother as she'd made that declaration, but he didn't want to think of that. “Someone wanted to claim you, and you disagreed.”

“Yes,” she sighed. “That's why I left, because he wanted to claim me. He waited until the night of the full moon, my birthday.” The last came out quietly and she closed her eyes momentarily as if wishing whatever emotion she was feeling would go away. “The others had already been sent away. He'd made some plans for them at some bar where they could have sex with whomever they wanted as much as they wanted until dawn. They knew about those kinds of places. I didn't.”

“And the bastard tried to force you.” Those words stuck in Blaez's throat in a wad of disgust, threatening to actually choke him as the visions of someone attempting to forcefully claim her surfaced in his mind.

“He was going to take what he wanted regardless of how I felt, or what he truly thought of me. He didn't like me. Never had. Called me names to my face and behind my back. Told me that I would change the moment I was his bitch. I would lose weight and I would wear the clothes he wanted me to wear, cook the food he wanted me to cook. I would be his and there would be nothing I could do about it.”

Blaez felt the rage boiling inside him as he listened to her words, heard both the anger and fear in her voice as she remembered that night.

“He was wrong,” she said, taking a shaky breath. “I stabbed him in the shoulder and would have killed him if Penn hadn't shown up and stopped me. He said that I was a disgrace, that my mother hadn't done her job training me, and that I should accept whoever wanted me despite whatever my mother told me, because that's the best I was ever going to get. I told Penn and the rest of the pack to go to hell.”

“Bravo!” Blaze almost cheered. “Fucking bravo!”

Her father sounded like an ass, a clueless alpha whose pack was probably itching to turn on him. Blaez remained quiet, letting her words sink in, as he cursed inwardly when her body had gone tense in his arms.

“Which one was it?” he asked, trying like hell to sound as calm as he possibly could. The last thing she needed right now was to see how pissed he really was about what she was telling him.

She took in a deep breath and said, “It was Dallas. He's closest to Penn and probably had Penn's blessing over the others.”

“You ran away because a beta in your pack tried to force himself on you and your alpha, the sorry bastard, did nothing to stop it! Even when he knew—” Blaez didn't finish the sentence. What if Penn didn't know his daughter was a Selected? After all, it didn't seem as if Kira knew herself what she really was.

“Yes, he knew that I didn't want Dallas. I didn't want any of them and I'd made a point of telling them on more than one occasion. They'd backed up for a while, but then after my mother's death … I don't know, it just seemed like they became more determined after she was gone. At least Dallas had. I hated how he looked at me,” she said, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes.

“Dammit. I didn't mean to tell you all that. I'm fine now,” she said, clearing her throat. “Sorry I woke you with my nightmare. You can go now, I'll be all right.”

“I won't leave you,” he told her adamantly. “I will protect you.”

“From the boogeyman?” she asked with a light chuckle. “Seriously, I'm good now.”

She'd turned a little, so that she was now looking right up at him. He glanced down, saw her hazel eyes, still red from her crying. Honey-toned cheeks streaked from tears, hair a wild mass that for all that it was worth, aroused him just as much as the feel of her soft body pressed against his. No, Blaez did not believe in the selection process because if it were true she wouldn't be here with him; of all the lycans in the world it would not be him.

“I'm not leaving,” he replied adamantly, ignoring his thoughts. “Turn around and go back to sleep.”

She huffed and acted as if she were about to say something else. Blaez only stared at her with every bit of intent that he possessed. He meant it. Alpha female, Selected, homeless woman on the streets, who- or whatever Kira was, Blaez had no intention of leaving her or letting her go. It was that simple. And that damned complicated.

He'd never slept with a woman before. Never held one in his arms in this way before either. Had never wanted to.

“You cannot sleep if you keep staring at me,” he said, this time not looking down at her.

Something happened when he looked deep into her eyes, something stranger than what was happening now, and Blaez figured he could only deal with so many anomalies at one time.

“Are you really planning to stay with me every second of every day from now on?” came her tired inquiry.

“I already told you I don't plan on letting anything happen to you.”

“That's not an answer to my question, Blaez. Why would you want to keep me here knowing that my family is intent on hunting and killing yours?”

The question had caught Blaez off guard, but he didn't show it. He should have known she knew who he was. She was a Hunter after all. Gritting his teeth, he said, “This is not the time for a question-and-answer session. It's the middle of the night. You need to get some sleep.” And he needed to think. He needed to figure out what the hell was going on here and how he actually planned to deal with it.

“And what do you need, Blaez?” she pressed.

He was the one to stiffen this time.

“Why are you doing this when there's a very real possibility that I could be setting you up to be killed?”

Blaez looked down at her this time, ignored the urge to push a few thick strands of hair from her forehead. “Are you setting me up?” he asked her simply, seriously.

She shook her head. “No. I'm not.”

He believed her. That was simple and also very serious.

“Then go to sleep. Tomorrow you're going to tell me all about your pack and why one of them was stupid enough to try and claim you against your will.”

“Why do you care?”

Blaez had no answer to that question. None that he was ready to admit anyway. “We'll talk more later. Go to sleep now,
lýkaina
.”

She blinked up at him. “Why do you call me that?”

Another question. Blaez should have been amazed, but nothing about her was as it should have been. Nothing was normal or self-explanatory. That was a big part of the problem.

“Because you're one spitfire of a lycan.”

“It's the Greek translation of the word,” she continued. “There are books in the library written in Greek. They're yours, aren't they?”

“Yes.”

“I could tell some things from the pictures and a few words looked familiar. I think I'd like to know what they say.” She paused momentarily. “I read the book about your family.”

And that's how she knew who he was. Or had she always known? Blaez couldn't think straight, not with her lying so calmly in his arms, her body soft and warm against his. He knew who she was and who he was. For all intents and purposes that alone caused a problem. If that sign on her back had any real significance, the issue was magnified. When all of this came to a head the damage could be irreversible. His head pounded, even while his body hardened reacting to her proximity, the innocent whisper of her voice in the still of the night. It had been a very long time since Blaez had been this conflicted, since the decisions that he needed to make weighed so heavily on his mind.

“I can teach you the Greek words,” he said finally. “After you get some sleep.”

She actually looked as if she was contemplating his response, her brow furrowing slightly. Blaez slid down so that he was now lying on the bed, pulling her to him, and settling them both against the two pillows that still remained on the bed.

“Good night,
lýkaina,
” he said, this time praying to every god he did believe in for her questions to cease. At least for tonight.

She moved then, an action that pressed her flush against his hard cock, her back to his chest. The fear was gone now and she smelled like rain. Her hair brushing against his chin smelled like coconut, which matched the shampoo that he knew was in her bathroom.

“Good night,” she replied finally, the sound of her voice like a fresh breeze on a summer's day.

Minutes ticked by, then hours, Blaez was sure. He did not sleep, did not close his eyes or even relax. Instead, he remembered.

His mother had been born in Greece, in a small town at the base of Mount Olympus. His father had moved there after years of traveling, attempting to find solitude from the role he'd been cursed to play. Alec Trekas had no idea that he'd been going to the very place he needed to be to continue his part in this war that Zeus had begun. Kharis was a believer in the Moirai, or the Fates. She knew that meeting Alec on that summer's day was a thread in the life she was meant to lead. Ten years later Kharis and Alec had moved to the United States to raise their three sons and daughter. And Kharis had begun to tell her middle son, Blaez, the stories of the Fates, explaining that his life had a purpose and that he would one day find that purpose and act accordingly. He would live up to the power of his bloodline.

And on that fateful day while Blaez was in basic training at the Marine Corps, his family had been killed by a group of Hunters. In the blink of an eye his fate had been sealed. He'd tried to run from it, joining the human military and getting as far away from his family and their beliefs as he possibly could. Yet he had been unable to run from the threads of fate that were steadily twining together to form his life.

Kira was a thread.

The thought had hit him some time just before dawn. The Moirai had brought her here and that knowledge was the intrinsic reason why he could not let her go. He'd held back a curse as once again what he wanted no longer mattered. His destiny had been pre-ordained by powers beyond what even he and his many books on their history could comprehend.

So, yes, he would keep her close and he would protect her and he would face the pack of Hunters that he knew were coming for her. He would face them, all the while praying that they had no idea who and what he really was, because that would be a game changer.

That would be the beginning of the end.

*   *   *

Kira awoke with a whoosh of breath escaping her lungs, her eyes cracking open to see a great ass … naked, flexing much closer to her face than she thought was good for her sanity. Or anyone else's sanity for that matter. Her palms itched to touch each tight globe, to run her fingers along the deep dent on each side. She'd just been moving her arms closer, her fingers wiggling with anticipation, when it dawned on her what was going on.

A door slammed and she jolted upward, or at least she tried. A strong arm across the back of her legs and the fact that she seemed to be moving despite that had her about to scream. Only something told her that she wasn't in danger, at least not in the traditional sense. No, this was different; this was the type of trouble that started with a capital
B
and seemed to be right up her alley as of late.

“What the hell are you doing? Put me down!” she yelled at his back … the exceptionally great-looking backside of this man she couldn't seem to keep out of her mind or her personal space.

“I need a shower,” he said while he continued walking.

“You've got to be kidding me,” she said just after her feet hit the cool ceramic tiles. She looked down at her feet, light against the dark gray of the floor, then up to see that mouthwatering ass again as Blaez leaned over into a shower stall that looked the size of half the room she was staying in. He turned the silver handle and looked up as water instantly began to fall … from the ceiling.

Kira looked up then to see one of two sleek silver showerheads that blended seamlessly with the stark white ceiling. The walls surrounding the shower were gray tiles that matched the floor, clear glass doors encasing the entire structure. A bench lined the entire wall, with three inlays that housed bottles of body wash and shampoos, she presumed.