Killing the Alpha: Fangs of Anarchy part 1 (2 page)

Irish’s delectable lips hovered near hers, making her gulp. “Do they ever with you?”

“Oh, c’mon. I’m pretty organized. But I admit, I’m better at planning a library fundraiser than I am at…this.” She stumbled over actually using the word to describe what “this” was. Her chest pressed against his heightened her lust, yet apparently dampened her vocabulary.

“They’ll kill you.” He hissed the words as though her death mattered to him.

“I’ve always said I’d rather be dead, haven’t I?” she challenged. When she’d spoken those words, she’d meant them. She’d said them loud and clear for two years, right up until just last week, when the full moon of her last birthday as a single woman was just around the corner.

She’d said it in front of her patrons at the library. She’d said it at the Pick and Pack while she shopped for rope and ant killer. She’d said it to her best friend Freya smack in the middle of a church supper.

In fact, she’d said it so much and so often, she might as well have wandered around with a sandwich board around her neck.

Irish lifted her, his fingers digging into her waist, plunking her down on top of the bar with a hard jolt. He spread her legs and stood between them, resting his hands on either side of her hips. “Was death really preferable to mating with Gannon?”

Claire shivered, goose bumps breaking out along her arms, bile rising in her throat. Just the mention of Gannon Dodd’s name made her want to projectile launch her lunch.

She stared Irish square in the eye. “Hmm. Let me count the ways. Being flayed alive and having vinegar poured into my raw wounds was preferable. Boiled in oil was preferable. Mating with the Abominable Snowman and the Lock Ness Monster in a ménage of sharp snowman claws and slimy water was preferable. So death was no big thing, as far as I’m concerned.”

“So you did this to avoid the mate? You couldn’t have just run off? Gone shopping out of town forever? Skipped over to one of the other paranormal territories? Hidden away?”

“Oh no. Make no mistake, Irish McConnell. I did this because Gannon’s a deplorable pig. But now that you mention shopping, a new pair of shoes might be in order.” She wiggled her feet encased in a pair of sparkly flats. They were ruined now—all the dragging and scuffling had ripped some of the rhinestones off.

Boo. A perfectly good pair of shoes and a dress trashed all in one night was so wrong.

Irish gripped her jaw, his long fingers curling into it. “Not a time to joke.”

Claire glared back at him even while his fingers on her skin drove her mad. He damn well knew what Gannon was like. Violent, angry, abusive. “Not a joke. I can’t go around without any shoes.”

“
Claire
,” he warned in that low, thick-like-caramel voice he had.

“
Irish
.” She mimicked his tone and his ultra-serious expression.

“
Enough
.”

“Or?”

“Or I’m going to hand you over to your pack. Lock, stock and fresh mouth.”

Leaning back, she felt around the bar for her phone and held it up for Irish to take from her. “Do you think a text is too impersonal? Is telling your pack via text that you just murdered their alpha and your intended mate too much like breaking up with someone in a text? I’ve heard that’s rude. How would you word that to Gannon’s brother Courtland, anyway? Dear Second Pig in Charge, surprise, you’re the new alpha of the pack! Claire Montgomery just murdered your fuckknuckle of a brother in cold blood by luring him into her web with her feminine wiles and big words he was too stupid and too uneducated to understand. All input welcome.”

Chapter Two

Irish glared at Claire, trying his best to ignore the frissons of heat she pulled from his body as easily as she pulled the books she loved from her library shelves. He clenched his hands into tight fists on either side of her generous hips.

Jesus Christ, she was everything. From the fiery cascade of auburn hair falling around her shoulders in shiny curls that he wanted to grip in his hand, to her pretty blue eyes. Claire was alluring, sweetly rounded, strangely olive-skinned for a redhead, and luscious-lipped.

Also forbidden, Irish.

Always.

Werewolves and vampires didn’t mix in this town. Ever. They
really
didn’t mix when the one woman you wanted more than you wanted to drink to sustain your immortality was mate to the alpha of a rival biker club. A rival biker club you were forced to live with.

But that had never stopped him from wanting Claire Montgomery. From wanting to splay her legs, rip off the scrap of panties she wore beneath her demure dresses, spread her wide, and take a long lick of the flesh he’d craved for five years.

Irish gritted his teeth. Claire didn’t know it, and he’d probably eat two heads of garlic followed by a swig of Holy Water before he’d admit it, but at all costs, he’d protect her.

And she was right. Gannon
was
a pig. A douchebag piece of shit who didn’t deserve someone like Claire Montgomery. But in the interest of keeping the peace, and keeping alive the gig he had going with Dodd’s club for synthetic blood, he stayed the hell away.

When she’d admitted how she felt about him last year at the town Christmas party, when she’d pressed her soft body to his, tried to capture his mouth in a kiss, his head had almost exploded right off his neck.

And he’d shunned her. Just like he was going to do now, even though he’d go home with her vanilla-wafer scent filling his nose and the memory of her breasts pushing at his chest, begging for him to run his tongue over her tight nipples.

The threat of vampires dying because they couldn’t live without the blood Gannon’s club provided was too real. Dodd would have taken that shit away in a heartbeat if he’d had even an inkling that Irish wanted Claire.

Irish and the Fangs ran the synthetic blood illegally. The same kind of blood on which humans had placed a tax so high three years ago, lower-middle-class vampires were starving, even dying painful deaths by the dozens.

Just another “fuck you” from the human government after they’d discovered it was unconstitutional to round up the paranormal and kill them all, which had been the original plan until the otherworldly revolted with the threat of a blood-sucking, entrails-eating uprising the likes of which humans had never seen.

Yet, even after the peace treaties and bullshit summits between both human and supernatural leaders, they were still at the government’s mercy just by virtue of their minority in numbers. The government used that against them, subtly, while trying to take them out by withholding vital necessities.

It was also considered too dangerous for paranormals to mingle with humans, so they’d sent them to obscure places like Rock Cove with the threat of mass extermination if they didn’t comply with the new laws. They’d given them towns to call their own, and left them to run them as they saw fit, leaving some paranormal territories in states of anarchy.

But not Rock Cove, Maine, where Irish had been forced to settle with his clan when the government had run them out of his home in New York, where he’d been a corporate attorney and only part-time bike enthusiast.

No one knew where Gannon got the blood, or who created it. But he’d cornered the market, and Irish had no intention of sacrificing the many with his painful lust for just one woman. It was a battle he fought every day, but he did it.

Still, this whole scenario wasn’t sitting right. She was hiding something—he just couldn’t pin it down. Claire wasn’t a murderer. Not without cause. He knew that much…smelled that much.

Claire swung the phone in his face, baiting him. “So, text? Or the more personal phone call?”

Irish pushed off the bar, mostly because he couldn’t stand another second spent so close to her. Even in the midst of this mess. “So, explain why you killed him. Please.”

“I’m not explaining anything to you, vampire. The less you know, the better.” She hopped off the bar, her feet slapping the floor.

She made her way over to Gannon’s awkwardly sprawled body, grabbing him by the feet and pulling him toward the door as though she were pulling a sack of potatoes from her car after a shopping trip. No emotion. Not even a twitch.

Irish blocked the exit. “What are you going to do with him, Claire? Bring him back to the Dogs at the club and just drop him off? Did you also lose your mind during your killing spree?”

“I wouldn’t step foot in that filthy club, and this was not a spree. A spree suggests more than one kill. A binge, if you will. Gannon was just one kill—even if it felt as if he had the grubby paws of a spree of people. Can you even believe I ended up destined to him? Me, a quiet, educated librarian with
him
, a disgusting…”

Irish’s ears went on alert. “A disgusting what?”

She shook her finger at him. “Never you mind, Coffin Lover. I’m not saying another word. No way am I letting you get in the middle of this.”

Irish crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head. “Uh-uh-uh. That still doesn’t tell me where you’re taking him.”

“Know any demons?”

She amused the hell out of him. Which he’d never show, but it made it damn hard not to indulge her. “A few, why?”

“Because Hell is as good a place as any to dump him. It’s where he belongs. Do they sell one-way tickets there?”

God. This woman. “Claire, stop being so damn difficult. I’m not letting you leave until you tell me what you’re going to do with him?”

She dropped Gannon’s legs, now becoming quite stiff. They plunked to the floor at a strange angle. “Listen here, Dark One. It’s none of your damn business. Wasn’t it just you who said you were going to turn me over to my pack? You have some phone calls to make, don’t you?”

“This is suicide.”

“Which rhymes with homicide. The noun used for what I just committed.” She reached back down, lifting Gannon’s legs again and throwing them over her shoulders to drag him outside, her heart-shaped face red, her chest rising and falling beneath the square cut of her neckline.

“Homicide does not rhyme with suicide. They only share the same suffix, Librarian.”

Claire stopped what she as doing for a moment and looked up at him, laughter in her almond-shaped blue eyes when she batted her thick eyelashes. “You stop. You know what a suffix is? Why, Irish McConnell, have you been practicing your Dr. Seuss?”

He gave her his best angry glare. “On fish, two fish, red fish,
dead
fish. Put him down, Claire,” he warned, letting his voice drop to a threatening decibel.

“Epic fail. It’s blue fish. Phew. For a minute there, I considered sleeping with you, Grammar Guru. Now you’ve gone and ruined it.” She leaned at the waist again, ready to hurl Gannon over her shoulder.

“Stop!” he bellowed, yanking Gannon’s legs from her grip and hauling his body over his own shoulder, cracking Gannon’s head on the exit door. Angry that her situation was forcing him to reveal a side he’d rather keep to himself. “The hell I’m going to let them kill you. You do remember the last werewolf to die for an infraction much smaller than this, don’t you?”

He watched Claire visibly shudder, smelled her ripple of fear. Good. Something needed to remind her she was on a suicide mission.

“I do. I remember. Joe Green.”

“And what did Joe do?” Irish asked as Gannon hung from his shoulder, his bulky body swaying to and fro.

Her nose wrinkled in cute distaste. “Had an affair with another club member’s wife or his old lady, or whatever you crazy bikers call them.”

He hated the disgust she held for bikers in general. Hated hearing it in her tone. Hated knowing she thought they were all ignorant, filthy scum of the earth. Someday he’d love to tell her that before the government interfered, he, too, had hidden amongst the humans, working as a very successful attorney, which was what paid for the synthetic blood he bought from Gannon while Irish searched for someone to recreate the formula.

“Right. They strung him up, stripped him of his patch, and burned the club’s tattoo right off his back. You werewolves might self-heal, but I’d bet my immortality it damn well hurt while it was happening. Remember Joe’s screams coming from the woods, Claire? How could you forget? You could hear it clear across town. A little bump and grind is nothing compared to murdering the alpha of your own damn pack. You’re bent out of shape right now, but you might change your mind damn quick if they come for you.”

Her beautiful blue eyes fell to the floor. “Fine. So what do you propose we do with him?”

“I propose you not ask questions. Just clean this place up—clean it good. Use your speedy werewolf skills, run home, get a bottle of bleach and get back here pronto. Leave nothing behind. Who knows who else comes out here? Someone might walk right into this mess if you don’t leave it spotless. Someone who might smell your blood mingled with Gannon’s. I haven’t seen many of the kids in town out here much because we’ve instilled fear in them about getting too close to the borders, but you can’t afford not to be careful, Claire. When Gannon turns up missing, you’re the first person they’ll come looking for. Be ready.”

He saw her bravado hit low tide when she said, “Shit. I didn’t think of that.”

Irish clenched his jaw. “There’s plenty you didn’t think about. Now handle this.” He turned to leave, wishing like hell he could stay. Claire put her hand on his back to stop him.

Just that small touch was all it took to create a rush of need in him so deep, so primal, it would scare the hell out of her. It scared the hell out of
him
.

“Thanks, Irish,” she whispered, the sweet lilt of her voice wrapping around his eardrums.

Walk away, Irish. Use those vampire legs and get the fuck out.

He nodded his head before pushing his way out of the bar and heading for his bike, trying to shake off the indelible scent of Claire.

The crunch of icy snow beneath his feet made what he was about to do real. Very real. Something he’d die a gruesome death for if he were found out.

Setting Gannon’s body on the back of his bike, he used a bungee chord to tie him upright to the seat. His silhouette under the moonlight made for a macabre image.