Wolf Ties (A Rue Darrow Novel Book 2) (14 page)

I grabbed the backpack I had thought to bring with me and headed to the door. Silvano’s voice made me falter. “Rue, vampires and werewolves don’t mix. The sooner you realize that, the better.”

“Hm, no idea why that sounds so familiar!”

Nathan and I took to the night, and we didn’t stop moving until we picked up the right scent. Then we went on the hunt.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised when after the merry chase Ella led us on, we ended up in a remote area with fewer houses around, farthest from both the wolf pack and the cat clowder. She holed up inside the place, and I heard her stalking about, knowing she was caged in.

“Nathan, can you change back? I know you’ll want to question her.” I dropped to the ground beside him. “And I know you’ll want to be able to understand everything she says to make sense of your loss. Try, please.”

He strained at my hand as I held him, but he didn’t pull enough to make me use all my strength. In a little while, I would need to hunt for my meal to replace the blood I had lost. There was no choice in the matter.

After placing the backpack on the ground, I rifled through it and removed clothes I had packed for him. “See? I have these ready for you.”

His canine eyes rolled at me, and I smirked.

“Be very grateful, and thank me later.”

During any given day, the werewolves could change with difficulty from man to wolf and back again. Nathan flipped to his wolf form almost the minute he lost control of his anger. Not quite but almost, and he didn’t become a man again until he calmed down, another challenge. During the nights of the full moon, their abilities flowed more easily. However, they often preferred their animal side to run free.

Thankfully, Nathan became a man, kneeling in front of me. After he dressed, he stood facing the house. He worked his jaw, eyes chips of amber as he wrestled his anger to a manageable level. With a few deep breaths, he looked at me, his expression grim. “You and I are going to talk about what you did to us.”

“I—”

He strode up the pathway to the door and promptly kicked it so hard the door sagged on its hinges. So much for control. We found Ella in a back bedroom, leaning against the wall, knees curled up to her chest, eyes wild. Was the moon affecting her too? I sensed anger that bordered on rage, and when she spotted Nathan in the doorway, she hissed.

“Ella.” Nathan’s voice was deep and scratchy the way a man’s might get when he first awakened from sleep. “I never suspected you, not in a million years.”

He sniffed the air and huffed in disgust.

“You don’t smell like one of us at all, not a hint.” He moved farther into the room, and I followed, ready to stop him if he attacked her. I wanted him to hear what excuse she would give, even if it was a flimsy one. Nathan’s sharp gaze narrowed. “No, there’s something there, a small hint of the wolf.”

A purse lay at Ella’s side, and she reached for it to rummage inside. Both Nathan and I stiffened, expecting another weapon. She didn’t bring anything out of the interior, and I attributed her movements to needing something to do with her hands. Her gaze remained on the purse as she spoke.

“That’s right. I can usually suppress one or the other side of my nature. I’m dual natured, if you haven’t guessed. I’m both a perfect werewolf and a perfect panther shifter.”

“Abomination,” Nathan spat.

“Let’s dispense with dramatics, Nathan,” I said.

Ella ground her teeth. The purse hit the wall, and she stood. Nathan bowed his head, claws forming on his fingertips. His shoulders appeared to grow wider, intimidating the chimera, even if she tried to hide it.

Don’t be afraid,
I willed to her.
If he smells your fear, it’s over.
Ella of course knew this, and she breathed deeply through her nose.

“I was born this way! There’s nothing wrong with what I am, and I’m not ashamed.”

“Yeah, you’re so proud, you never told us,” Nathan shot back.

“I know what all of you think of the cats.”

“You lived among us. You
were
one of us, and we would have accepted you as you are.”

She laughed, a mirthless sound. “Sure you would, an abomination, isn’t that what you called me? The wolves think they’re better. The cats think they are. Even vampires…”

At mention of my kind, she met my gaze. I straightened. “Why don’t you explain what happened, Ella? You said your baby was Dalton’s.”

“Baby?” Nathan growled. He stared at her stomach. “That’s it, the subtle werewolf I smell.”

“No.” She spat the words in disgust. “My baby is not a werewolf, and it’s not Dalton’s.”

A bit of that superiority seeped out of Nathan. I say seeped when I mean poured. He folded his arms over his chest and straightened. “Dalton knew better. He was always careful with his seed.”

Both of us women cringed at his choice of words, and I rolled my eyes. That was a bachelor for you.

“Ella?” I nudged, hoping she would just tell us everything and get it over with.

“I was a part of the wolf pack and…” She peered up at Nathan through her lashes, a fierce and defiant look. “And I was with the panthers.”

The room went deathly silent. I watched Nathan digest her words and their meaning with the feeling he was seeing Ella as a double agent—to put it dramatically. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that’s how he saw Ella’s alliances.

“Why. Would. You. Do. That?” Nathan enunciated each word, speaking slowly, either for her benefit or for his own. I wasn’t sure which, but he didn’t move, and that’s all I was concerned about. Keeping my senses open, I watched for his muscles to tense more than they were right now, which would tell me if he was about to spring at Ella.

The chimera raised her chin. “Because I didn’t see a reason to deny any part of myself.”

What she said seemed reasonable to me, but I avoided voicing my opinion.

“Neither side would have let me stay with the other, or both would have kicked me out of the group,” she said. “So I hid what I was doing. I used an old empty house to change in. No one even bothered with that side of town, and I never came close to being caught. Then…”

“Then?” I prompted.

“I got pregnant.”

My curiosity rose at this point because Nathan knew her history on the side of the wolves. I didn’t. Neither of us knew what she had done with the cat shifters. “Ella, were you involved with Dalton?”

“In the past.” Nathan answered instead of Ella. “He’s been with all the women in our pack at one point or another.”

He had lived up to his reputation. I’d give him that.

“Yes, like two years ago,” Ella reiterated, “but Dalton couldn’t stand the fact that I was the one who ended it between us. He’s used to women throwing themselves at his feet, begging for his attention. I don’t feel the pull of the alpha.”

Nathan’s mouth fell open. I looked from him to her and back again. “What does she mean ‘the pull?’”

Nathan said nothing, so Ella explained. “You should have the same thing or something similar. It’s a draw, an attraction others find it hard to resist. The werewolf alpha attracts women like a magnet, and they all bask in his light.”

Her small nose curled in disgust.

“He encouraged it, worked his mojo on every female that came near him.”

“Wait, Ella, I’m pretty sure you’re wrong,” I said. “Are you telling me Dalton used a werewolf lure to get women,
human
women?”

“No!” Nathan exploded. He took a step toward Ella, but I moved in front of him and pressed my hands to his chest. His angry gaze never left her face. “That’s a lie.”

Behind me, Ella sighed. “He’s right. That’s not what I meant. The alpha’s abilities don’t work on human women, but he was a good specimen. You have to give him that. Even they would like it. The werewolf women, he seduced them, but he couldn’t seduce me. Dalton hated it, and that’s why he never gave up on getting me back in his bed.”

“You’re saying because he kept trying to seduce you, he deserved to die?” Nathan growled.

She laughed. “No. I could handle him.”

I turned to study her. The small, frightened woman was gone to be replaced by a cold-blooded killer. The deadness in her eyes and the way she held her head at an awkward angle, I believed she had done it. She had killed Dalton. Up until now, I had wondered and doubted, even entertained a few scenarios that it was all an accident.

The way Ella spoke of Dalton might lead a person to believe he had pushed her beyond her limits, trying to get her to be with him again. He was dead wrong in not accepting her rejection, but there was more here. I sensed a strong aversion to the werewolves and even to the cat shifters in Ella. If she disliked both sides so much, why did she bother being with either?

Then I considered how isolated I had felt, so lonely when Ian first left, and I was, to my knowledge, the only vampire around. To fit in meant a lot, and by Ella’s dual natures, she didn’t belong with either side of her chosen groups.

“You never accepted the werewolves or the panthers,” I guessed, “and that’s a shame. In the end, we are all people, and you could have built lasting bonds that have nothing to do with species.”

“Don’t lecture me,” she snapped. “You don’t know anything about me, vampire.”

“You’re right. I don’t. And I don’t care to.”

Her eyes widened at my admission, and she compressed her lips into a straight line. After some moments, she spoke. “That day I was leaving the werewolves for good. My pregnancy was causing me to lose control of the suppression. Since the baby’s Hyatt’s, I figured why not. I could give up the wolf in me for my child.”

Give up part of herself for her baby. This I understood and didn’t fault her for it, although it was sad. The fact that Hyatt was the father of her child also didn’t surprise me and answered my question as to who he looked for when I read his mind.

“Did Hyatt know?” I asked.

“About the baby?” She shook her head. “I planned to tell him after I made the break with the wolves, but then that stupid Dalton found me at the empty house. He had followed me. I can’t believe I didn’t scent him. When I changed, he smelled the cat and demanded to know why.

“He said I needed to come to the pack and explain about myself and what I had been doing all that time. What was the point? I wasn’t going to stay. I told him no, and that…
wolf
…tried to make me go back anyway.”

She slammed the side of her fist against the wall. I wondered if she knew her canine teeth had descended or that her eyes rolled as if she were mad.

“The moon?” I whispered to Nathan. The low growl in his throat rose a few decibels. He bumped me from behind, making me stumble forward, but I dug my heels into the floor. “Wait, Nathan.”

Ella started talking again, but I didn’t think she realized we were still in the room. Her gaze was unfocused, and she clenched and unclenched her fingers over and over, the knuckles cracking.

“The werewolves would kill me if I went back, especially with my panther unsuppressed. I was so nervous, I couldn’t hide it. I wouldn’t go, and he spouted some nonsense about owing it to my family. They aren’t my family!”

“Oh, Ella,” I murmured.

I felt something shift in Nathan and looked up at him. Sadness in his gaze told me what I suspected. He couldn’t be a part of the pack, and here was this woman, different but accepted, and she tossed the gift back into their faces.

“So you killed him,” Nathan said, his voice flat. “You cut off his head so he couldn’t possibly heal.”

Ella hugged herself. “That’s right. For my baby.”

I shook my head in disbelief. Not a shred of regret or grief at what she had done. “But you went back to them.”

“I had to! If I didn’t, everyone would suspect me. When Nathan was arrested, I thought it would work out. He would take the blame. I never counted on a nosy vampire to get in my way. Even you weren’t a problem since I could resist the wolfsbane.”

“You weren’t unconscious?”

“I was for a little while. I suppose I should thank my trouble with suppressing my nature. When I sleep, I lose control. That’s why I didn’t plan on going running with them this month. When you put me under with the rest, my body released enough of the feline that I was able to shake off the wolfsbane.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “That’s when you hid the blade to carry along with you to the warehouse.”

“Yes, and I would have killed you while you slept and gotten out of there while everyone else rested. For some reason, you woke up.”

“I have protection you don’t know anything about.”
And neither do I.
When this was all over, I needed to find out who the voice in my head was and thank the person.

“Too bad.”

“There was another way,” I said. “You could have—”

“Shut up,” she shouted. “I did what I had to, and you and him, you can die.”

“Not happening.” At the same time Nathan spoke the words, he thrust me aside and launched at Ella. The chimera growled at him and in an instant half shifted to her cat form to attack Nathan. I expected them to collide in the air and begin a terrible battle in which I wasn’t clear on what my position should be. Ella had been protecting her unborn child and within her right not to be forced to go back to the werewolves. On the other hand, she openly triumphed in her defeat of the alpha and admitted to planning to kill me as well.