Leader of the Pack (10 page)

Aislinn’s mind was racing. She was trying desperately to think of something she could do. But it wasn’t as if she was really there. When she looked back to the scene playing out in the stone circle, she saw that Jenna had dropped to her knees in front of Cullen. He was breathing slowly and looking about as she sucked eagerly on his erect cock. Her hands toyed with his balls and inner thighs. He had his hands clenched into fists at his sides and was staring up at the sky with a frustrated expression. Aislinn was torn.
If he truly didn’t want this then why is he letting it happen,
she thought.

“Because he has no choice,” Rafe answered her thoughts.

“Get out of my head,” she spit at him.

For a brief moment Rafe seemed pained. Aislinn realized that she had done something. She needed to think. But she couldn’t if he was listening. She did her best to clear her mind and try to understand without thinking anything specific.

Rafe wasn’t surprised at all. He knew she would learn quickly. But he was annoyed when he felt the wall go up and was thrown from her thoughts. He would have to get to her quickly when this was over. He needed to shake her up more. Her spirit wasn’t completely broken yet. “You see, Arnauk doesn’t realize that the real danger is sitting between his legs,” Rafe chuckled. “Jenna was easy to manipulate. She truly believes that when she gets rid of Cullen that I’ll take her as mine and together we’ll run the two territories. The woman is blinded by ambition. She has no idea what’s important.”

“Fine, so what is important?” Aislinn said, deciding to play along. Carefully, she kept her guard up and watching as Jenna ran her tongue along Cullen’s shaft. She felt chills run through her body. She wanted to rip the woman’s throat out.

Rafe smiled and looked at Aislinn. His eyes were shining silver in the darkness, giving his face an otherworldly glow. “Power. Not political, or physical. But power like we had when we created them.” Rafe walked forward and stared at the closest set of wolves rutting in response to their leader’s example. “Look at them. Not even God himself was clever enough to create these creatures. These were made by our ancestors. Yours and mine. The power of life and change. They’re magnificent. And I’ve improved on them. If you hadn’t left so quickly you would have come to see what I mean. When I have you back, I promise that I’ll finish.” He smiled at her in a way that she was certain was meant to be sincere.

“What did you do to me?” she whispered in fear.

“I gave you the gift of the change. Oh it’s not complete yet. But as I said, it will be.” He walked over to Cullen and Jenna. She had reached between her legs to play with herself. Her fingers danced deftly over her clit, down into her wet slit, and then back to her clit. She was trying to convince Cullen that she needed him to mount her, but he wasn’t going for it just yet.

As she reached down between her legs again Rafe became more excited. At first Aislinn figured it was because he was getting off on watching the woman toy with herself. But then she noticed that the movements of Jenna’s hand weren’t real consistent with any kind of masturbation that Aislinn could think of.

Rafe smiled at her pleasantly. “You are a bright one. Our children will be amazing.”

“So what’s going to happen when she does whatever it is she’s going to do?” Aislinn asked hoping he was one of those moronic bad guys who liked to monologue before his big plan could come to fruition.

“His death is the signal for the others to attack. First, his own men that I’ve gotten to, then my men will come out of hiding. It’s exceedingly simple.”

Aislinn closed her eyes. There had to be something she could do.
Fuck it, if he can get into my mind because he wants to, I should be able to get into someone else’s.

“In time, pet,” Rafe said with that awful smile. “I’ll teach you in time.”

Aislinn thought back to the earlier vision. The one that showed her Cullen’s friend and she realized that there had to be a couple of lycans who had finished rutting and were sleeping off their exhausted energy lying around here somewhere.

Rafe glared at her and she glared right back. She turned away from watching Cullen and Jenna only to hear Rafe call after her that it was too late.

She plunged into the darkness outside of the Circle of stones and willed it to be as she had seen it before. Suddenly the forest in her mind lightened and shifted. She looked around and managed to find a couple of sleeping wolves. She knelt down next to them. She didn’t really know what she was doing. She tried touching them, hoping that something would just happen like it had before. There seemed to be nothing until the woman stirred. Aislinn touched the woman’s face and closed her eyes. She brought into her mind pictures of what she had seen Jenna doing and tied a fearful emotion to it. The woman suddenly sat upright as though she had awoken from a bad dream. Aislinn didn’t know if it had worked, but she leaned down and did the same thing to the man. When he sat up and looked at the woman they spoke to each other. Aislinn couldn’t hear what they were saying, and she was feeling drained. She looked around the clearing for more sleeping lycans. Everyone she found, she woke in the same fashion. Aislinn was unsure how many she had touched when she dropped out of the vision into darkness again.

“NO,” she screamed into the black. “I need to know what happened!”

* * * *

The only thing keeping Cullen hard throughout the blow job was the image of Aislinn in his mind. He was praying the attack would come soon. He wanted it to interrupt the mating, buy him time to figure a way out of this. After having held Aislinn in his arms earlier that night there was no way he could go through with this. But with the prospect of an unknown enemy surrounding them he couldn’t take the chance of starting a war with the Tairneach right here and now. If he stopped this mating ceremony at this point he would need a better than damn good reason.

Jenna was bringing him dangerously close to coming. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. The relentless assault of her tongue on his cock was getting to him whether he wanted it to or not. He looked down and watched her pretty face bobbing up and down on his shaft. Her eyes half lidded staring up at him with a terrible devious glare. She seemed pleased by what she was doing, but not because she wanted to be sucking him off. Something she was thinking was pleasing her and he was afraid of what that was, especially since he was in such a vulnerable position.
Muin galla,
he thought angrily and wanted desperately to say it out loud and throw her off of him.

He watched a number of his own gathering at the perimeter of the standing stones. They looked concerned and they were watching the mating. Jenna finally pulled her mouth off of him. She had been going at him for so long her jaw and neck were sore and he was showing no signs of stopping her any time soon. She glared up at him and turned onto her hands and knees, presenting herself to him. The group that had taken up position between the stones started to advance. Cullen looked at Ranaild. His eyes were stone and Ranaild shifted his look from Cullen to Jenna in warning. He looked frightened.

Jenna started to panic. This wasn’t how Rafe said it would go. He made it sound so simple. She almost thought the plan had been hers. She had a short stiletto blade, tipped with poison held nicely in her cunt. Since it was a stiletto the sides were dull and wouldn’t pierce her flesh. But the tip would jab Cullen the minute he penetrated her. The poison was virtually instantaneous and Cullen would die, the fight would start and the Tairneach would take over.

As she watched the advancing Arnauk she knew that something had gone wrong. As she began to think about it, she wondered why she had agreed to this anyway. It was far too obvious for her. She looked around for Rafe. He said he would be here. Every time she thought his name she seemed to become more confident in the situation. She knew that he would come and save her.

“What is this Arnauk?” Brennus growled at the interruption in the ceremony.

Rafe continued to watch from the shadows. He was getting tired and was cursing himself for bringing Aislinn here. That was a miscalculation. He would see that she paid for what she had done. But at the moment it was all he could do, even with using the power from the stone circle, to keep the lycans’ minds from noticing the enemy hidden among them. He was trying to come up with a way out of this. He needed more numbers and the only way to do that would be to take on a pack. He didn’t like direct confrontation. Staring at Jenna at Cullen’s feet calling out his name, he realized that he needed the bitch. As Cullen began to argue with Brennus, Rafe extended his influence over the lycans’ minds to hide Jenna from them and to bring Jenna to himself.

“You tell me Brennus. Your daughter seems to be following in her mother’s footsteps,” Cullen growled back.

“She’s done nothing save try to please you,” Brennus replied coming toe to toe with Cullen.

“She has a knife,” someone yelled. Cullen turned to see what was going on but Jenna seemed to vanish.

Jenna braced herself for the attack that never came. “Come here girl,” Rafe said to her in annoyance. “I can’t have you killing him now. This plan will have to be changed. Complications have arisen. If we want your father to believe that Arnauk was the cause of the bad ending here then you have to leave him to be the target of Brennus’ anger. That will make it easier for me to convince him that you should be mine and that we need to go to war.” Jenna smiled at him dully. He hated the simpering look they got when he had to use his influence on them. He couldn’t wait until he was done with this one.

* * * *

With Jenna’s disappearance the mating ceremony was over and when the attack never came the pack was generally confused. Everyone seemed to have a headache or felt sick. No one even considered looking for Jenna. They all took turns being angry about her disappearance for different reasons, but a search party was never even suggested. The Tairneach left with promises of retribution for the embarrassment caused this night and threats should Jenna not reappear in short order. If Brennus hadn’t been standing there when she vanished, arguing with Cullen, he would have blamed it on Cullen and possibly started the war right then. As it was, Brennus figured it would be best to remain on tentative terms at least until Jenna was home safe.

Cullen had his hands full explaining away the events of the evening. There were at least a dozen people who claimed to have dreamt that Jenna was going to knife Cullen with a stiletto that she had hidden on her person. No one said exactly where, but the implication had most everyone chuckling.

By the time everything was sorted out and calmed down dawn, was on the manor. Cullen took one look at the rising sun, felt his body begging for sleep, and looked around at the tired faces of his men. The best he could do was pray that Aislinn was safe.

It took a great deal of convincing and then finally an order to get a set of keys handed over so that he could drive back into town without sleep. He just had a bad feeling and knew that he wouldn’t rest until Aislinn was safe inside the den. Keith insisted on going with him, but fell asleep halfway there. Cullen let his friend rest. It had been a long night for everyone.

Chapter 6

Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.

-Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Aislinn could feel herself falling through darkness. The black was throbbing around her. Somewhere in the void there was a pounding. The echo became more and more insistent, louder. Then she felt herself being moved. She was aware of the black shifting around her. Someone was trying to reach her. Aislinn could feel an urgent voice pulling at her. Suddenly the black turned into the street outside of her apartment. She felt drunk as she watched the street lights pass above her. The lights passed over her one at a time.
Where am I going?
She thought.
Madadh-Allaidh Saobhaidh. I need to get to Madadh-Allaidh Saobhaidh.
But she couldn’t make her body obey her mind. She was so tired. She closed her eyes and drifted into the black again.

* * * *

Rafe sat in the back of the long black limo. Jenna lay naked and prone across the seat opposite and a large lion lay purring at his feet. She would periodically look up, agitated, at the naked lycan that had her master’s attention. As he stroked her head she went back to her patient waiting.

Rafe growled angrily. “These lycans are becoming more troublesome than I had originally thought they would be.” The lioness sat up with interest and attention. Her large yellow eyes focusing intently on Rafe. “Look at her,” he said in disgust. “So easily manipulated. She actually believes she’ll be leading the Tairneach to glory. She has no concept of how inconsequential she truly is. Now Aislinn and Arnauk, they will pay for putting me in a position to have to soil myself with this bitch. I don’t like interruptions or delays. What’s worse, I had my hands on the stones themselves tonight and now I’m driving away from the power. I could feel it. I used it. It would take so little to learn how to truly manipulate the forces that sleep there. The lycans have no concept of it. How could anything like that,” he indicated the unconscious Jenna, “be capable of using the power there to its full potential?”

The lioness sniffed at Jenna with distaste. When a buzzer sounded the large cat growled and Rafe pushed a button on the panel. “Yes.”

“We’ve arrived at the address you requested,” the limo driver said.

“Finally,” Rafe growled, opened the door and got out of the car. He looked around at the rundown buildings and the bums lying about the steps in garbage. He thought it fitting that she ended up here.
Serves her right for leaving me,
he thought. The lioness stepped lightly from the limo onto the street. She paced a bit. As she walked she lifted her paws from the ground as though she was stepping in something that was burning her feet. She looked up to Rafe for orders.