Growl (59 page)

“This is my fight,” she told him when they were alone. “The only reason they're coming here is because of me.”

He looked like he was about to say something, then clamped his lips closed. Lips she'd just kissed not too long ago, which had whispered that she was his.

“You are the one I swore to protect,” he replied.

A part of her wanted to tell him she didn't need protection, but she knew that's what he did. That's what he needed desperately to do. Blaez took his position seriously. He was their leader and he would act out every part of that title, no matter what. And he hadn't been there to protect his family. Kira knew Blaez carried that guilt like weights permanently implanted onto his shoulders. It was that guilt that kept him from giving himself totally to her, from claiming her. She respected Blaez and his sense of loyalty and dedication; that's why she said in as level a tone as she could muster, “We can protect each other.”

He nodded. “You from here and me from out there.”

She shook her head. “If someone's coming for me, I'm not going to run. Not anymore. I won't sit down, Blaez. My mother did it and look where that got her.”

His hand had slid from her shoulder to the nape of her neck, where he held tighter, pulling her up close against him. “If anything happens to you…” he ground out through clenched teeth.

“It won't because you'll be right there to protect me, remember?” She'd given a light chuckle even though she knew that laughing was the last thing Blaez wanted to do right now. And that made two of them.

 

CHAPTER 13

Kira watched as a section of the wood-planked wall right beside the front door pulled away with a clicking sound, then slid slowly aside to reveal a control pad with lights and long numbered buttons that she knew would disengage the alarms throughout the house. It was the first time she'd seen this, and standing right beside Blaez as he punched in the code she wondered if maybe she should have looked away. She didn't and Blaez made no effort to hide the combination he was putting in from her view. Another button was pushed and the wall went back to normal, not so much as a seam showing to give away the panel access.

The breeze was cool as Blaez opened the door, lifting the hair off her neck and sending a chill down her spine. It had grown dark quickly, the trees out ahead looming like taller, stronger entities, the grass like an ominous field that would soon see blood. For right now it was quiet as she stepped out onto the porch behind Blaez, the moon shimmering in the sky, a giant orb of power and energy. She inhaled deeply, remembering now more of what her mother had taught her.

“She will be with us tonight,” Blaez said as if he were reading her mind.

“Who?” she asked abruptly.

“Selene. The Luna goddess. It is her power that keeps watch over us on these dangerous nights. Zeus doesn't know, just as he has no idea that…” Blaez trailed off, staring out toward the line of trees.

“What else?” Kira asked. “What else doesn't Zeus know, Blaez? And how could that affect us tonight?” She'd always thought that Blaez had more thoughts in his head than he'd ever expressed to her before. He always seemed to be holding something in, and as she stood by him, ready to fight or to do whatever was necessary for their continued existence, she wondered what that was.

The first lycan, teeth bared, face affixed in what to any human would be considered a scary-as-hell scowl, stepped through the trees, throwing his head back and howling long and loud.

Blaez had gone completely still while Kira took in a deep breath, her fingers wiggling at her sides. “He's telling the others that it's time.”

In the seconds that followed, there was another, deeper howl that rang shorter than the first and closer to her because it was louder. Phelan, she thought. Blaez must have used mindchatter instead of his own howl to communicate with his second.

“And so it is,” Blaez said, stepping down the steps slowly, intently.

He hadn't shifted. It was odd that she noticed that even as the other lycans from Penn's pack had also materialized from the dark veil of the trees. As the threesome approached, Dallas, Penn, and Cody, the skin at her fingers itched, her claws struggling to remain inside. She rolled her head again, feeling the burn of her shift pressing hard against her human frame.

Keep your mind clear. Focus on something you love with all your heart. Focus on your mother.

Blaez's voice was in her head again. Her heart skipped a beat at the realization that just like in the kitchen, it was because she'd allowed him there. She'd opened herself for him to communicate to her this way. There was a slight thumping in her temples and she faltered slightly.

He stopped, turning to her immediately.

He's trying to talk to you. Your alpha.

She shook her head immediately at those two words.

He's no longer my alpha. That was over the day my mother was killed.

Blaez only nodded, touching his fingers to her temples, then letting them slide down to her cheek.

“You can do this,” he told her. “Find your control.”

Kira let out a breath and nodded to him. “I got it.”

And it was a good thing too, because in the next second, like flashes of light through the darkness, Penn and the others had closed the space between them, racing across the field to come to a quick stop. Dallas stood directly behind Blaez while Penn had materialized behind her. Without even blinking at her, Blaez bent forward, wrapping his arms around to grab Dallas behind the knees, then flipping the lycan over so that he landed flat on his back on the ground between them.

Penn wrapped his arm around Kira's neck, pulling back hard so that she had to gasp for breath.

“This is mine,” he said over her shoulder to Blaez, and her body screamed with rage.

Her claws instantly extended and she raked them across the arm that was clutching her neck until he yelled, letting her go abruptly. She turned out of his arms, looking back at him with all the pent-up anger she'd held for the past year. “That's a lie!” she shouted back at him, then staggered slightly when something flashed before her eyes.

It was her parents' bedroom back in Seattle. Tora, tall, slim, beautiful with her straight auburn hair reaching down to touch the small of her back.

“You're a liar!” Penn had come through the bedroom door yelling at her. “All these years you've been lying to me about my own child.”

Tora had stood straight, shoulders squared as she stared at her alpha. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“The hell you don't!” he roared, storming across the room to get right in Tora's face. “She's marked and you knew! You knew she bore the mark of the goddess and what that means.”

“No,” Tora had whispered, her eyes blinking furiously, hands fisting at her sides. “How did you find out?”

“It doesn't matter how I found out!” Penn continued to bellow. “I know now and I know exactly what it means.”

“Penn, you have no idea what it means for her, for the future of the lycans,” Tora tried to tell him.

“It means that she's going to be powerful. In a few months when she turns twenty-one she's going to be a powerful bitch that was made to rule. That's what I know! And I'll be damned if I let her go and rule some other pack.”

Tora shook her head. “It's not up to you,” she said quietly, and moved around the alpha to head out of the room. “Her fate has been sealed by the goddess. She will come into her power and she will seek her alpha, the one that has been Selected for her. And there's nothing you can do to stop that, Penn. Absolutely nothing.”

Kira gasped. Her father had known she was Selected.

“You're a liar,” she whispered before her temples throbbed once more and another scene flashed in front of her.

“She's going to tell her and then she'll leave. You promised her to me, Penn. You owe me.” Dallas had frowned, his wide nose flaring with his words. “Tora has to be eliminated.”

“I don't know how this selection process works,” Penn had told him. “My family wasn't big on passing down any of the stories of the gods, since all of them are controlling bastards that we'd kill if we could.”

Dallas had stared at him for a couple seconds, his dark eyes assessing, calculating. “I have to claim her. On her twenty-first birthday I can claim her. Then I will rule the pack; the power stays right here with you and me.”

“Are you certain?” Penn had asked, looking as if he hadn't actually believed what the beta had said.

“I can claim her,” Dallas had said, lifting his hands so that his deadly nails detracted with a clicking sound.

Penn seemed to contemplate, only for a minute, because then Dallas with those nails had stepped closer to him, aiming the nails at his neck. Penn had immediately shifted, growling at the beta, but Dallas had only laughed. “I could have killed you at any time, you old fool. But I kept you alive. Last night when I snuck into Kira's bathroom, about to make her see which beta she should be with once and for all, I saw the reason why I hadn't killed you. That little moon hovering right over her fat ass was all I needed to know. The time has come for me to take my rightful place in this pack, and claiming your thick-assed daughter is going to be the one that puts me there.”

“You bastard!” Kira yelled the second the vision faded, her eyes trained on Penn. “You killed my mother! You killed her so that you could give me to this beast!” She swung an arm catching him off guard, her lycan nails scratching his face the same way she'd done his arm.

The “beast” being Dallas, who was just about to mimic her scratching motion with his claws aimed at Blaez as he leapt up off the ground. Of course Blaez was faster, reaching out and grabbing both of Dallas's wrists, lifting him up off the ground, then tossing him even farther away.

Blaez grabbed Kira then, pulling her close to his side. “You don't want to do this,” he told Penn.

For the first time in she couldn't remember how long she saw what might be true emotion in her father or, rather, the alpha lycan who stood across from her. His mane of wild black hair stood up wildly, his fangs long and sharp as he opened his mouth to howl his response back to Blaez. His body surrounded in a gruesome dark haze depicting that of the evil and demented, sparks of red representing his deep anger adding to the mixture. She knew what it was she saw now, knew what she'd been seeing for the past couple of weeks. It was the lycan's true form, his most inner emotions displayed on the outside for only her to see.

With her heart pounding at what Kira realized must be the power she was promised as one of the Selected, she spotted Cody in her peripheral, charging forward. He too had looked red in the night, his quickness met by Phelan's mighty growl as he crashed into the younger lycan's chest full on, knocking him off his feet. As for the others, Kira heard growling and thumping in the distance and knew that they were fighting.

Channing and Malec were battling to save her. Phelan had just taken a blow from Cody but was retaliating with double blows of his own, jumping on Cody as he fell on his back this time, growling with the full force of his beast in Cody's face. That's when Kira felt it, the pull and tug against her own skin, the ripping of her claws as they extended even longer. Unlike Dallas's, hers weren't poisonous, but they were still deadly and inches longer than the other lycans'. Her claws were like knives attached to her fingertips, and as her own fangs elongated she opened her mouth to match the growls sounding around her, rolling her head once more, this time feeling the immediate growth of her hair, the drooping of her forehead, and the bunching of her muscles.

“Mine!” Penn said again with more persistence before reaching out to grab her arm.

Dallas surprised them all by moving from his place near Blaez to stand in front of Penn. “No, old man. This is my bitch!”

The air around her sizzled, like there was a lightning bolt or some strange sort of energy emanating in the area. The cool breeze that she'd felt the moment Blaez had opened the door picked up until even the trees rocked back and forth, the ground beneath her shaking so hard she stumbled forward, landing on her hands and knees.

Cool grass ruffled beneath her fingers, the surface still vibrating as a familiar scent permeated her senses. That feeling of togetherness, of being two connected instead of one, washing over her immediately. It was strange and then again it wasn't. A part of her knew exactly what was happening, exactly what needed to happen.

And that's when she saw it. Standing right next to her, with a body as tall and broad as hers, its fur a glistening white and gray, eyes sparkling sapphire blue. It was a wolf, the same one from her dreams. Its flanks moved in and out, in conjunction with her own breaths, its fur blowing in the breeze. There was a great power in this wolf; Kira felt it in the air around them and going deep down to the ground beneath. This was definitely the wolf she'd dreamed about. The one that now bared its teeth, leaning toward Dallas in a definitely predatory way, its power rippling straight through the earth, surfacing where she stood, and wrapping its protective aura around … her.

 

CHAPTER 14

The first bite was to his leg, knocking Dallas onto his ass, in a more permanent nature this time. The lycan fell back, howling in pain as Blaez, in his wolf form, climbed atop him, growling down into his face.

“No!” Penn yelled. “Don't!”

“He tried to rape me and you still protect him!” Blaez heard Kira yell. He knew she was talking about Dallas and that's why he'd bitten the lycan the first time. Now Blaez continued to growl, thoroughly enjoying how afraid and confused Dallas was looking up at him, just before he took a bite out of his other leg.

There was no other lycan walking the earth who could turn into a full-fledged wolf. None who had the strength, the cunning and intuition that he had. They didn't have the power of a god because the only blood that ran through their veins was that of Nyktimos with the wolf traits he'd inherited from Lykaon.