LickingHerWounds (7 page)

Chapter Ten

“The cats are too fucking powerful. We can’t risk losing any
more of our pack. They never bothered us until Jock went after the humans they
protect. I think we will all be dead if we stay here. I say we move to hunt in
another territory and live.” The red wolf had shifted to his human form and lay
panting on the floor of the den.

“And who are you to say where we hunt, Rico? You aching to
claim Jock’s place?” The older male, Buck, was also in his human form, gingerly
touching a bad bite on his shoulder. “Well, there are two of us who might argue
with you about that.”

Rico rose slowly to his feet, his emerging fangs bared
menacingly at the older brown Lykos. The only other male left, Paco, rolled on
the floor in a submissive gesture and Rico ignored him, stiffening and glaring
at the older male.

“Rico will make a good leader, old wolf…” Gia slipped up
beside Rico and nuzzled him, pressing her thin breasts against his naked ribs.
“And now that we are without an alpha female, he must choose a mate.”

Buck snarled at the impertinent bitch. “You, who couldn’t
even make the half-human bitch stay in one spot?” His sarcasm was thick and
harsh.

“She tricked me!” the female snapped.

“Then she would make a far better mate than you, Gia.” Rico
growled at the bitch who was trying to ingratiate herself. “At least she had
the guts to stand in your face as a helpless human and scare you off.” He
huffed out a sound of disgust. His challenging gaze returned to Buck.

Buck sniffed the air. Then the older wolf lowered his head
and backed off. “I’m too old to fight anymore. You’re younger and can still
breed a bitch to gain pups for the pack. My breeding days are through. I’ll
agree to your leadership so long as you use your head instead of your balls.”

Rico aimed his cock to piss on the older male and the
supplicant brown wolf that had not shifted to human form. He glared at the
female, then turned his eyes to the likewise thin black female who had run off
the moment the huge black cat had appeared. “I doubt either of these could
whelp a healthy litter. Jock only fed his own bitch.”

Gia reclined on the dirt floor and rolled onto her back in a
submissive attitude and whined, “You could breed both of us. More chances to
whelp a strong litter.”

Mia lifted her ears hopefully, eyeing their new alpha male.
She was still in Lykos form too.

Rico bent to sniff the black wolf and replied, “I want to
find the half-human bitch. With three breeding females we could regain the
power of a full pack again.”

Buck rose from the floor of the den and said roughly, “That
will not be easy. Jock said that the female is mated to the younger cat. You
intend to take the cat’s female?”

Rico considered that for a moment, then pissed on the old
one again. “Let me worry about that.”

Buck flung the piss off with a rolling shake of his head and
replied with deceptive mildness, “Yes. We will let you worry about that.”

She heard the entire conversation from her hiding place
outside the den, and she shuddered to think of the foul-smelling Rico fucking
her. Never! She might not be worthy of Cal but she was far too good for the
likes of Rico. Jessie slithered back from the cleft in the rock that allowed
their words to drift up to her, and she moved stealthily back through the trees
to the small, well-hidden den she had made for herself long ago, when Jock used
to kick her out in the cold to forage for herself.

She did her best to cover her smell with the scent sac of a
muskrat she had killed just a few days ago—days that seemed more like years
now. She curled up into a small ball for warmth, wishing she could shift back
again and enjoy the protection of her thick coat.

Wishing that she had not failed her mate.

Wishing he would come for her and carry her back to his bed
and make love to her all night again. But she had run away. Too cowardly to
stay and face him, she knew he certainly would not want her now.

As she lay huddled in the small nest of grasses and leaves
she had made for herself, she closed her eyes and thought about him. Even as a
cat he appealed to her, and that was just not right.
But it feels right. He
wants me too, doesn’t he? At least, he did…

Her belly tightened at the memory of his body moving on
hers…in hers. As a human, he was able to make her body sing. A small shiver of
fear for her own future went through her. She was alone now. Rico wanted her to
breed up pups for a new pack but she wanted nothing to do with the smelly old
bastard. She would rather live alone, facing an uncertain future, than return
to the pack.

Oh, who was she trying to fool? She couldn’t live without
Cal.

She knew that she could feed herself by foraging for small
animals. Once she could change back, she would simply remain in her Lykos form
to stay warm. But somehow, that thought held no appeal. She wanted her mate.
She wanted to thrill to his touch again. To feel his mouth touching her body in
all those wonderful places. And as she drifted off into a weary sleep, she knew
that she must return to him and beg him to take her back. She would never shift
again. She would remain in this weak human form and live the remainder of her
existence as Cal’s omega…since she had lost the right to stand proudly with him
as his blood mate.

As Cal neared the old house he felt unreasoning fear grip
him. The only scent he could pick up besides the rangy musk of Lykos was his
mate’s human spoor. She had not managed to shift—and his gut wrenched to think
of her facing even one of the pack in her tiny human form. He raced into the
house through the gable, calling out to her in vain. He quickly checked to see
if she had managed to get inside the fruit cellar to hide, but the place was
deserted and his rage at his own stupidity flared hot inside.

He retraced the path through the woods and followed the
pack’s trail to the last spot where her scent stood alone once again. No blood.
No sign of a battle. He called out with his mind but there was no response. He
followed her spoor for miles, until her scent simply vanished. He caught the
combined scents of the remainder of the pack and he sought her wolf signature,
but she was not with them. Had she somehow evaded them, then? If so, why wasn’t
she at the house? His wild thoughts were disjointed. Had she decided she feared
him more than the now-dead alpha? Had she bolted and run from him too? He
growled ominously. Had they killed her and eaten her? No. He would have smelled
her blood.

He sank into a weary heap, nosing the spot where her sweet
human scent simply ended. He rumbled deep in his chest and rolled in her spoor
in frustration. His open wounds still pained him. He desperately needed rest.
But he wanted to find her too badly to allow himself the luxury of healing
sleep.

He rose and backtracked the trail. Unmindful of possible
danger to him in his weakened state, he followed her weak spoor back to where
it was strongest. He sank to his haunches and panted, his long pink tongue
lolling from the side of his mouth to attempt to taste her on the breeze.

He was weak from blood loss. He had to find a morsel to eat
to sustain his healing. Any small creature would suffice. The scent of muskrat
caught his attention. Even one of those noxious little things would fill the
hole in his belly and give him some strength.

Moving slowly off the spoor trail, he allowed his nose to
fill with the strong and cleansing scent of fresh earth and rotting leaves, and
he froze. The scent brought his body to full alert and his thoughts to total
confusion. He sneezed the confusing scent out and sniffed again. His heart
hammering hard against his chest wall, he tested the breeze to find the source,
then he moved on stealthy paws toward the hidden den he had just located—and
his mate’s stimulating yet extremely confusing spoor.

Buck lifted his nose and drew in a deep whiff of the damp
air. “Cat!”

Rico shifted instantly, as did the others.

It was not just a cat—it was
him
. He had found their
den…and he was alone. The new alpha glanced around at the shivering little pack
that remained, and he growled deep in his chest. There were five of them to one
of him. And he was wounded. Jock and Helga had torn him up pretty badly when
the pack had caught him just before the black shifter had intervened. He could
smell blood still dripping slowly from those wounds. The cat had to rest to
heal, and obviously, he hadn’t.

Whipping up the pack’s remaining courage, he slipped from
the downhill entrance of the den, on the far side of the narrow highway, and as
the pack followed he planned their attack.

Her body arched as her dream faded, leaving her throbbing
and aching for her mate’s touch. Never had she dreamed such vivid, erotic
things. The chill of her little hideaway was gone, replaced by the heat of her
burning skin and the warmth of her panting breaths. She had drifted through
strange, frightening things…and hot, sensual things. She had dreamed of looking
into the cracked mirror over the small ancient sink in the bathroom where Cal
had licked every sensitized inch of her hot skin after they had made love for
hours…and seeing her face as that of a wolf that slowly contorted into the face
of a cat. She had seen Cal’s face staring at her from over her shoulder as he
had ridden her deep and hard, his cock filling her to perfection…watching her
face shift from Lykos to human…
then to Seronta
. Her body throbbed from
the memory of the visions. One after the other they filled her restless sleep,
and the last one had been the most shocking…and erotic.

Her body throbbed with need. Her gums tingled. Her nail beds
burned. She arched against the now-warm grasses and leaves and an odd rumbling
noise escaped from her throat. Her own hands cupped her aching breasts, her
thumbs and fingers tweaking and pinching her nipples. Dear gods, but she had
never before felt so completely needy! Something was happening inside her.
And
it is delicious.

Her pussy ached to be filled. Her breasts ached to be
devoured. Her fingers slipped down to touch her throbbing knot of nerves and
she bit her lower lip as she felt her rising orgasm wash over her to claim her.
What on earth is wrong with me? I feel as if I might die unless I have Cal’s
hot cock inside me!

The thought of her mate pressed to her back, his engorged
cock deep inside her as he rammed into her over and over, brought her to a
panting, groaning climax. She imagined his rough hands crushing her breasts as
he bit her shoulder and fucked her into oblivion, and those thoughts kept the
amazing climax alive as she shuddered and curled into a ball in her warm little
nest. Her own scent swirled around her in the little den and her senses came to
roaring life as her body seemed to burst into flames.

Cal was so immersed in the strange scent that held the
signature of his little mate that he had no idea he was surrounded until the
first wolf jumped him from the rear, sinking wicked teeth into his neck. He
gave a shriek of challenge and reared and rolled back onto the wolf, clawing at
the scraggly gray female that leapt for his throat. She gave a terrified yelp
and, as his hind claws gathered between their bodies and found purchase in her
thin underbelly, her death gurgle was the last sound she made as he tore her
open and snapped his powerful jaws shut over her thin neck to finish her.

The big male on his back had a hard hold on him, his jaws
not relaxing as blood poured from the earlier neck wounds as well as the fresh
ones. Another brown male danced in and bit deeply into the muscles of his
flank, tearing the flesh as the last thin black female surged forward to
attempt to bite his genitals and tear them from him to let him bleed out. In
moments, he would be dead.

He pictured Jessie in his mind, and told her how he loved
her, knowing that without Gar there to save his sorry ass, he would die
here…now.

As the black wolf planted her teeth into his belly just above
his genitals, he couldn’t hold back the scream of agony. He brought up his
powerful hind legs, despite the grip the brown male had on his joint, and his
claws sank in for one last effort to save himself. The sharp yelp of pain from
the female was the last thing he heard before his thoughts grew dim and he slid
into a whirling black pit that swallowed him whole.

Chapter Eleven

Her thoughts swirled as his voice filled her head…her
spirit. He loved her…and he was expecting to die! The miasma of sexual need
evaporated to be instantly replaced by a rage so deep she had no way to control
or contain it. Her soul mate was in danger. Her body shifted without conscious
thought, splintering into silver-white as she surged from the nest of grasses
and leaves and burst from her hiding place almost in the middle of the battle
that was taking place. Her shriek of rage held not just anger at what she saw
before her, but also a challenge. The brown Lykos she recognized as Paco
released his death grip on Cal’s rear leg joint and slunk back, rolling
instantly into a submissive posture. The only other wolf standing stared at her
as if seeing a ghost before he backed up and disappeared into the trees. Buck
was never one to stand and fight, with his poor teeth and his weak foreleg.

She leapt easily from the entrance of her small den to the
bloody scene a few feet away, and without hesitating for even a split second,
she reached under Cal’s limp body and her powerful claws found purchase in the
flesh of Rico’s scarred neck. As she dragged the newly proclaimed alpha off his
senseless victim’s torn neck, the red Lykos snapped and snarled, then simply
froze. His eyes widened with shock as Buck’s had, and she hissed in sibilant
fury.
Move, asshole, or you are dead meat.

He was panting in terror as she released her grip on his
bleeding scruff, and he instantly cowered away to join Paco on the
blood-smeared earth. Not taking her eyes from the trembling pair, she nosed her
mate and growled softly as she licked at the deep, open tears that bled so
freely.

Dear gods, Cal…don’t you go and die on me!

Turning her attention back to the terrified males, she
snarled viciously and hissed,
If he dies, I will find you if I have to track
you to the ends of the known world. Get out of my sight. Never come back here.
If I see you, I will not hesitate to tear you to pieces.

She didn’t have to see them go. She knew they were gone as
she shifted back to her human form and ran her hands shakily over her mate’s
blood-matted fur and buried her face against his weakly beating heart. “You
can’t die, you big fucking alley cat! I want my cubs to have a father! I swear,
if you die on me, I will follow you into Hell and drag your mangy ass back
here. You hear me, cat?”

“Sex with his soul mate will revive him,” Gar’s deep voice
rasped close beside her, and she almost fell over in shock that he had been
able to approach so silently that she hadn’t even noticed him. She scrambled
back to her knees as she ran her hands over the hot blood that seeped from so
many wounds. He would soon bleed out.

“Sex? And how do I manage that with this big half-dead cat?”
she snapped waspishly in her panic. The sound of Gar’s deep growl didn’t scare
her at all. “Dammit! Tell me!”

He had feared that he had come too late. But after what he
had just witnessed, he had not a doubt in the world that Cal would survive. Gar
now knew that the Lykos omega was not what she had at first appeared. It had
shocked him to see the silver-white snow leopard bristling at the cringing
Lykos pack. It had amazed him even more when she had hissed at them and sent
them packing, tails tucked between their legs.

He’d stared in amazement as she had shifted back to her tiny
human self and started threatening his unconscious sibling. With renewed hope,
he rolled Cal over, placed a large palm over the golden leopard’s heart and
helped his sibling to make the shift back to human form. His eyes lifted to the
blood-smeared human. “Mount him,” he whispered.

He saw the confusion in her eyes but she obeyed without
question. He watched her slide over his brother’s cock, cradling it in her slim
fingers as she lowered her shaking body down his length.

When Cal’s cock was buried inside the trembling little body
of his mate, Gar growled, “Bend down…give him your neck.”

“He can’t bite it…he’s almost dead!” she sobbed as she
obeyed.

“He won’t have to.”

Jessie leaned down as ordered and watched out of the corner
of her eye as Gar lifted his brother’s head until the bruised and bloody face
was less than half an inch from her, then she felt a sharp stab of pain, and
realized that Gar had just sliced a small slit in her neck. Her hot blood
poured down over Cal’s face and Gar forced the slack jaw open and pressed Cal’s
mouth over her vein. She was sobbing helplessly, begging her lover to swallow
the blood and take her strength. She closed her eyes and clutched his body
tight, holding his massive weight with only her slim arms.

Gar was speaking to his sibling, his dark-gold eyes closed
and his own powerful body trembling with the effort to revive him. She joined
her inner voice with his to call her mate back to her.

And then she felt it—the slightest movement of his lips on
her skin. The light drag of his tongue over her bleeding vein. Then the cock
inside her surged and her pussy felt as if it might burst, it was so full. A
deep, rumbling growl vibrated against her throat and his fangs broke the skin.
Her head fell back as she screamed in orgasmic ecstasy and began to rock her
hips madly in answer to the need that curled through her body and heated her
blood. She had never so desperately needed sex before—never before ached to
feel a cock buried hard and thick inside her as she humped wildly. She feared
she would injure Cal, but he held her to him hard and lifted into each downward
stroke of her body on his.

Jessie felt her orgasm building…swelling…sweeping her, body
and soul, into the estrogen-induced hysteria that all Seronta females felt when
they first came into their mating frenzy. She turned her head to take her
mate’s mouth, tasting her blood on his tongue and lips, and she knew. How it
had come to be, she had no idea. But regardless of what she was, her soul mate
had found her and she had no intention of ever letting him go—even to death.
She would beg him to keep her.

She fell across Cal’s body and buried her face against his
throat, where his strong pulse throbbed beneath her cheek.

“I’m so sorry I failed you. I will do anything you ask if
you will just let me stay close to you… Just don’t send me away.”

Cal’s hands slowly slid to the twin globes of her sweet
round ass and he pulled her closer, driving himself into her again. And again.
When he could speak, he whispered huskily against her soft throat, “Just try to
leave me again, Jessie. I will run you to earth no matter where you try to
hide. You are mine. Do you understand?”

She jerked her head up to stare down into his gold eyes,
tears running down her face. “You still…want…me?”

His eyes slid lovingly over her wet face. Her heart caught
in her chest. “I will love you for as long as I live.”

She swallowed the tight knot that threatened to choke her.
Love?
So this was what love felt like? She laughed shakily and as she moved her body
to pleasure them both, she heard him groan weakly, “Sweet gods, Jessie…don’t
ever stop.”

Gar stared at them, unable to fathom what he had just
witnessed. He would never have believed it possible had he not seen it himself.
He closed his eyes, his mind wrapping itself laboriously around the sight of
his brother’s mate bursting from the earth on the hillside…

Silver as she had been in her wolf form, but dappled with
soft darker spots, the female his sibling had mated with and shared his blood
with had become something he had never expected to see in his life…doubted that
anyone had seen in over a thousand years.

Legend told of the great leopard mother—the white alphea—but
legend had not prepared him for the real thing.

Cal still had no idea what his mate was…and Gar could
imagine his sibling’s response when his sweet little blood mate changed again.
He had never seen a silver-white leopard face-to-face before, and he greatly
suspected that Cal would have the shock of his young life if he expected his
tiny mate to continue to be submissive and timid. The creature could easily
wipe the floor with either of them. Despite his amazement, Gar had to chuckle
softly. Of course, having her in the clan would prove extremely beneficial,
after seeing the way she had handled the remnants of the Lykos pack.

Now all he had to do was explain this to Hallie…

If everything is all right I want you home now. The boys
are asleep, and I need you.

He didn’t need further urging. He had a mate to pleasure,
and sitting around watching his sibling being ridden deliciously into the earth
was more than he could handle.

Coming, my love…