To Seduce an Omega (3 page)

The way he cared for Tansy’s welfare made Viola’s heart melt, but she wished he’d care for her too. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had held her the way he’d held Tansy. Viola’s craving for sex coalesced into burning need—for Titus.

Loneliness pressed down on her. After she traded her stock of soaps, shampoos, and herbal flavorings, she’d renew her efforts to leave. Some of the pack had trained horses to tolerate a Lykae presence, and she dreamed of owning one. Those three gold coins Titus had flung at her were an unexpected bonus. A couple more, and she’d have enough cash to buy a horse and move on.

The thought of another winter—alone and freezing her butt off over a tiny fire—almost destroyed her. She glanced around the ramshackle hut and realized she wouldn’t have to waste time packing. None of her meager possessions mattered enough for her to keep.

“Daydreaming, hedgewitch? Wake up and see to your patient.” Titus’s voice cut through her like the lash of a whip. His nearness made her blush again, and her pussy clenched at the sound of his deep voice. Would it kill him to offer her one kind word? Given the sort of man she knew him to be, it probably would.

Ignoring Titus, she turned her attention back to her patient, but her hormones surged inside her. She told herself to get over him, that nothing could ever happen between them, but her body didn’t listen. It’d be easier if her heart didn’t race or her breasts didn’t ache. Feeling like this for one of Zebadiah’s goons was…sickening, really.

From outside, she heard the sound of ax chopping through a branch. Soon she’d be able to warm her hut and maybe add the surplus to her woodpile. Hopefully, though, she’d be long gone before winter hit. She’d been too busy making soaps and medicines to start chopping trees. One would have been enough to warm Tansy, but Titus cast a contemptuous look at Viola’s woodpile and chopped down another. Despite his connections to Zebadiah, this Titus had a good side.

Since she’d done all she could for Tansy, Viola cleaned the blood off the arrowhead with her rag. Whoever crafted it had smoothed and polished it into deadly perfection. When she held it to the light, it shone like solid silver. This arrow was designed to take down Lykae.

Absently, she wondered why the arrowhead didn’t burn her hands as it would a pureblood. If any trace of silver remained in Tansy’s wound, it would fester. Viola refused to leave Tansy with a permanent injury. Better to cause her some temporary pain now. Working quickly, Viola stripped the bandages from Tansy’s leg and washed her wounds with the last of her distilled alcohol.

Tansy jerked awake. “Daniel will kill you for this. Unless I get to you first.”

Viola always went to bed hungry. She only survived because Daniel had a soft spot for her. Besides, trading her excess produce beat surviving on homegrown veg and no meat. Her hunting skills sucked, and she’d probably end up being the only vegetarian Lykae out there.

Eating meat would soon be a distant memory, but worse, she’d never be able to buy that horse. Her poverty and her twisted knee trapped her into an endless lonely existence. Trekking to any outlying trading post was impossible for a cripple like her. “I needed to ensure the arrow left no debris or infection in your leg.”

“Get off me!” Tansy yelled. She struggled to sit up, but her eyes rolled back in her head as the effort exhausted her.

Viola heard the
swoosh
of a sapling toppling to earth; then Titus appeared in the doorway. Arms folded, eyes narrowed, he stared at her the way he would a cockroach. “What the hell did you do to her?”

He’d stripped off his shirt, and beneath all that anger and aggression, he had a body to die for. Sweat glistened on his muscles. When one drop ran down from his shoulder and over his left nipple, Viola wanted to follow it with her tongue. She decided he’d taste salty and fresh—like honey, vanilla, and sweet herbs brewed into a love potion. Not that she’d ever get the chance to find out.

She bit back a sigh and dragged her gaze from his chest. “The arrow—”

He growled, so angry his claws came out. “Elves’ blood, woman. Forget the blasted arrow and tend your patient’s wounds.”

Viola’s cheeks burned. No wonder he thought her incompetent. She’d been so determined to clean Tansy’s leg she hadn’t worried about the murder thorn scratches. She grabbed her tincture of carpenter’s herb and meadowsweet, tipped some onto a fresh rag, and cleaned the dried blood from Tansy’s body.

She moved with slow deliberation, all too aware Titus watched her.
Only a fool would sit here and moon over some hired killer who plans to marry my half sister. Well…I never claimed to be wise.

She breathed deeply and tried to clear the lust fogging her brain. A silver arrow could be a death sentence for some unsuspecting Lykae. She couldn’t tell Titus, not when he’d poled up to ally with the alpha. Suppose Zebadiah’s band of killers had hunted and shot Tansy? She must have been desperate to hide in a murder thorn.

With the silver arrow in her leg, Tansy wouldn’t have been able to shift. That must have been why she’d threaded her way into the heart of a murder thorn. The spikes were needle-sharp and just short of a foot long. They stuck out from the branches like closely packed nails.

She hoped Titus wasn’t the one who’d hunted Tansy and hurt her. But even when he snarled at her, Viola had never felt threatened—except for the risk of losing her heart.

She laid a homespun sheet over her patient and piled a couple of hand-knitted blankets on top. Then she wondered how to dispose of the arrow. Silver burned Lykae flesh and bound them in whatever form they held while it touched their skin. She wanted nothing to do with it, but taking it to Zebadiah wouldn’t achieve anything. Hell, he’d probably shoot some poor innocent wolf with it to see if the legends were true.

She shoved it beneath the blood-soaked rag. Since she didn’t want it tainting her food supply, she’d bury it in the woodlands well away from her garden after Titus left.

Titus’s growl brought her crashing back to reality. “Daydreaming again, hedgewitch?”

Her vocal cords felt as tight as guitar strings, and her voice came out with a high-pitched squeak. “She’ll be fine, so why don’t you head on to Prowlerville and join Zebadiah’s army? I’m sure they’ll be glad to see you.”

Chapter Three

Titus hated that the healer’s eyes were so deep blue they reminded him of star-filled midnight skies or that her breasts were the perfect size to fit in his hand. He’d taken his perpetual bad temper out on her, but he could see she cared about her patient’s welfare.

He thought he didn’t have any romance left in him, but he wanted to bring her flowers and coax her into a smile. Instead, he tried to convince himself she was as hard-hearted as she’d first appeared. Ever since Jilly, his true-mate, rejected him, he’d given up on the idea of love and romance. His relationship with her had always been one-sided, with him giving everything while she kept her distance.

Viola’s rose-and-lavender essence pulled at him the way the moon did the ocean. Desire hardened his cock, and he pictured her naked beneath him, begging for more.
No. She’s not mine
. His inner wolves chuffed and settled inside him as they added an unspoken,
Yet.

Disgusted that he could even consider bedding Viola when he was promised to the alpha’s daughter, Titus swallowed hard. His mouth had never felt so dry. He’d never looked at another woman, let alone had a cockstand for one. Now his boner threatened to burst out of his pants for a money-grubbing hedgewitch he needed to walk away from. Fast.

Those eyes of hers bewitched him, along with her sweet floral essence and her soft voice, but for once he’d think with his head, not his hormones. Time to do what he did best—walk away and beat up some idiot with a big mouth and inferior battle skills. Picking fights came easier after his mate rejected him. Hell, punching idiots’ lights out and drinking whiskey were the only things Titus had done well recently.

His response to the healer betrayed everything he’d felt for his Jilly. Despite the guilt eating at his gut, he wanted to crush Viola against his chest and breathe in her rose-and-lavender perfume. But he didn’t.

Ravaging her lips and stripping her naked sounded good too. That way he could feast on the liquid honey in her cunt. Just thinking about fucking her gave him a humongous hard-on. Hell, he’d probably walk with a limp when he headed off toward Prowlerville.

He almost reached out to her, then pursed his lips and turned away. Women and him just didn’t mix. If he ever took a lover, she’d have a soft heart, overflowing Lykae curves, and eyes that didn’t make him think of moonlit walks beneath starry skies. Everything about Viola infuriated him. Not that it took much nowadays.

When he’d first spotted Jilly, she’d been too young to take a mate. Hell, he’d felt like a child snatcher when he’d tried to befriend her, so he stayed in the shadows while he waited for her to mature. He’d never heard of a Lykae male bonding with someone so young. Although their bond had snapped into place the moment he laid eyes on Jilly, it would strengthen as she matured. Just after she hit puberty, that redheaded witch—the one who always turned up when there was trouble in the Lykae kingdom—carried her off and blackmailed him. Jilly’s family should have protected her better, but when her brother visited the Lykae King, the redheaded witch took her from her bed. Just thinking about the things he’d done to keep Jilly safe set Titus’s primal wolf howling. To him, protecting his mate had mattered more than keeping his honor intact. Then when the Lykae rescued Jilly, she’d taken one look at his torn ear, crooked nose, and solid muscles and screamed for days.

He must be the only Lykae ever rejected by his true-mate. Jilly should have been his world, but she’d never been more than a kid he watched over daily.
Yeah, some guardian I turned out to be.

Each night he’d gone home and brooded. There’d never been a loving word between them, but he’d lost the most precious thing he possessed. His true-mate. The way Jilly cold-shouldered him after her rescue had gouged deep wounds in his heart.

After less than six weeks of freedom, Jilly had left her brother a note and vanished. Titus she’d ignored—just like always. Her loss damn near destroyed him. Alcohol had helped, but it had fed the wildness in his soul. He’d spent too long picking fights or drinking himself senseless. Finally, King Caleb had ordered Titus tossed in a cell until he sobered up and calmed down.

The Tundra Toughs, his adopted pack, had watched over his recovery; then King Caleb sent Titus on this mission. If he married, not mated, the alpha’s daughter, he could remake his life as the Rock Prowler alpha.

His primal wolf—the seven and a half feet of violence and rage that lived inside him—hated the idea. His natural wolf—the part of him that would pass for a wolf on the mundane world’s Russian steppes—howled with outrage. Even his human side wasn’t sure it was sensible to bind himself to a stranger, but since losing Jilly, he hadn’t been rational at all.

His stupid natural wolf prowled through his psyche, demanding to run its tongue over the scratches in the healer’s arm. Afterward, his wolf would have licked at the soft flesh of her breast before it moved on to taste her pussy. Then, when she moaned and thrashed with need, he’d turn human and screw her until she screamed his name.

His inner wolves must be so desperate for sex that they’d settle for any woman they could get. It couldn’t be more than animal lust that drew him to Viola. Not after everything he’d endured to save Jilly.

Viola’s sweet floral essence reminded him of the open hillsides where he’d run as a pup. She made him think of family, home, and pack—all the things he’d given up to keep Jilly safe. Titus wondered how the healer would look naked and smiling, her nipples peaked and her cunt wet with desire—for him. Then he snarled, and he cursed himself for a fool.

One woman—his true-mate—had almost broken him with her lack of compassion. He refused to let another she-wolf bring him down again, least of all a healer who preferred cold, hard cash to caring for those in pain.

Every pack needed a healer, but given this she-wolf’s greed, he understood why the Rock Prowlers didn’t offer her the support she deserved. Other packs revered their healers and treated them as second only to the alpha female.

When he thought of how Viola had demanded coins before she so much as looked at Tansy, a growl rumbled in his throat. Bedding any female but Jilly—especially the Rock Prowlers’ healer—wasn’t in his game plan, no matter what his inner wolves thought.

Wise men fled from his angry glare, but the healer had lifted her chin and held his gaze. Her courage could prove addictive, and the sooner he put some miles between them the better. Time for him to leave. “Where do I find her true-mate?”

Viola kept one hand on her coin purse as if expecting him to wrest it from her. “He runs the general store in Prowlerville, but the town’s no place for strangers. Best you keep moving, especially if you rouse Daniel’s jealous streak. He’ll come looking for her the instant the drayman tells him she’s here.”

Titus pulled his shirt back on. “Did I ask your opinion? I have business with the alpha and his daughter. Besides, I should reassure her mate that’s she’s fine. And don’t even think about making him pay you again.”

She flushed and would have walked off, clearly unwilling to look at him any longer, but he grabbed her chin and turned her face toward his. “I mean it, hedgewitch. Bad enough that you insisted on payment up front, but I won’t let you cheat the woman’s family.”

She jerked away and grabbed her knife. “I refuse to be bullied in my own home. Get out. Now.”

Titus didn’t know what amused him more, her show of spirit or that she thought that bitty blade would scare him. He should turn and leave, but he’d never been a turn-the-other-cheek sort of guy.

He grabbed her wrist and twisted until she squealed and dropped her blade. Her sharp intake of breath made his natural wolf growl that he’d hurt her. His primal wolf roared, dominant and eager inside him, demanding he fling her to the ground and fuck her until she begged for more.