Omega's Wolves: Hell's Wolves MC Page 6

  I knew he was right, I knew independence was what I’d broken out for, but now that Tristan was turning it on me, it no longer felt so sweet.

  “Fine,” I hissed. “I’ll leave you alone.”

  With more anger than I’d known I possessed, I leapt off the bed, tossing the book aside, and stormed out of his room. After a few bad tries, I located my room, and slammed the door behind me before breaking into tears, throwing myself face first onto my pillow.

  Chapter 8

  God, it was supposed to be easier once I was out of the compound. No more Brock, no more bears. Instead, things had become safer, certainly, but also infinitely more complicated. Because now, instead of focusing on just surviving from one day to the next, I was confronted by all these parts of myself that had laid dormant for years.

  What’s more, I was surrounded by three men, each attractive in their own way, each one of them calling to me. And yet, I couldn’t act on it. I had so many feelings, and couldn’t do shit about it. If I made a move on one of the men, as I’d almost begun to do with Tristan, it would destroy the pack. But if I stayed silent, if I forced myself to deny my humanity—well, then it was no better than being with Brock.

  I wept until, at last, I fell asleep.

  And with sleep came dreams of Caine, Daniel and Tristan. They were stroking my legs, running their hands down my cheeks, whispering into my ears. I was bombarded with sensations, completely at the mercy of my mind, which was churning out one image after another of the men. In my dreams, they shifted between their human and Wolf selves, back and forth, until man and Wolf coalesced into one.

  They leaned down, all six of them—each one as a man and a Wolf—toward my lips, in perfect unison. I offered my lips up, pursing them to the sky, ready for this touch.

  That’s when I was awoken by a noise.

  I rolled stiffly off of my pillow, freeing my ear from the fabric so I could listen. Was it Brock? Could he have come so soon?

  My pulse quickened, until I finally picked up on a stray sentence fragment, and realized it was just the three Wolves talking amongst themselves.

  “She’s something else, isn’t she?” The voice had to belong to Caine. “I mean, man, funny, kind, warm … she’s everything I want in a girl.”

  I smiled a little to myself. Caine was so hot, and so unabashed about his desires. Another voice emerged.

  “She’s beautiful too,” the voice said. That was Daniel, I was sure of it. “’Though she be but little, she be fierce.’”

  Okay, I didn’t want to get too full of myself, but these compliments were totally going to my head. I crept out of bed, and put my ear against the door, hoping to catch their voices more clearly.

  “Emma is all of that, and more.”

  I sucked in a breath. That was from Tristan.

  “But,” he continued, “she’s an unknown element. None of us can mate with her.”

  Caine groaned. “Why do you have to be like this?”

  “Because,” Tristan insisted. “It can’t end well. We’re all pack mates now, sure, but if we devolve into fighting over Emma, what we have could be destroyed. Someone would get jealous, another would be hurt. It doesn’t end well.”

  “Let the best man try,” Daniel opined. “She can have her pick of the litter, so to speak. That is fair, and just.”

  “No.” Tristan’s voice had shifted from even to curt.

  “Why not?” Caine pressed. “We’ve all got as good a chance as the next person, have got different things to offer. Or do you think it would be a moot fight, because Emma would just select you, the alpha?”

  “Back down,” Tristan snarled at his beta. “That’s an order.”

  “And what if I don’t?” Caine demanded.

  “That’s enough,” Daniel interjected, breaking up the fight between the alpha and the beta. “It’s agreed. No one will try to mate with Emma. That’s what’s most fair to her, anyway. All right? We put her first. I think she’s already been betrayed by enough men for a lifetime.”

  They went silent, and I leaned my head against the door, reeling from this interaction.

  So, all of them had thought about me in that way. They’d each been having the same racing considerations that I’d had—Should I do this? Can I do this? Ought I do this?

  At least I wasn’t alone, I guess. Wasn’t making it up, seeing attraction that wasn’t there.

  Not that it made the situation any easier. I wanted them all, and they all wanted me. But there was only one of me to go around.

  At a loss, I stood up, carefully making my way back to bed. No way could I go into the kitchen now; they’d know I’d been listening. The best thing to do is sleep, I reasoned. In the morning, you can figure out the other stuff. Whatever ‘morning’ meant now.

  Sleep didn’t come, so I lay awake, looking at the ceiling and trying to keep their faces from my mind. Daniel, Caine, Tristan. If I could have one, who would I have? The thought weighed on me, even though I knew it wouldn’t matter—seeing as how I couldn’t have any. It was more of a sadistic thought experiment.

  Though I mulled it over for what must’ve been hours, I never came to a conclusion. There were parts about each of them I liked and hungered after. If only I could smash them into one perfect man.

  But that wasn’t it, either. I didn’t want them to be perfect. I liked each of their flaws: Caine’s immaturity, Daniel’s taciturn nature, Tristan’s coldness. They were each complex, and fragmented like diamonds. Flattening them would take away their very appeal.

  So, the question was never answered, because I wouldn’t be satisfied with just one; my desire was far too vast for a single person. I was an omega, and my thirst was boundless.

  At some point, I gave up the farce of sleep. I jumped out of bed, still wearing my clothes from yesterday, or the same day, or whatever, and hoping they didn’t smell. Padding out from my room, I saw Daniel at the table, head bent over some sketches, his perennial position.

  “Hello, Emma,” he said, eyes still on the paper, strands of hair falling into his vision.

  “Hey.” I swallowed and tugged my curls away from my face, as if in response to Daniel’s askew locks.

  He glanced up, expression inscrutable. “I suppose you heard our conversation from earlier.”

  Crap. Had I been that obvious? I opened my mouth to say something, but Daniel spoke first, as if responding directly to my thoughts.

  “I could see your shadow from the door,” he explained, his voice devoid of judgment. “You must have left a light on in your room when you went to sleep.”

  Well, that was it. I’d been caught.

  “Don’t worry,” he continued. “I didn’t tell the other boys.”

  “Thanks.”

  With a small smirk, he added, “Though, apparently, we’ll have to cover stealth in our next lesson.”

  A laugh burst from my throat, and I was relieved to feel a semblance of normalcy again.

  “Deal,” I agreed, and began to cross toward the bathroom.

  “But Emma,” Daniel interjected, halting me in my tracks. His baleful eyes found mine, their depths piercing and all too watchful. “You know it can’t go on like this forever, right? Regardless of what Tristan says. We each have desires. And you do too, I think.”

  “I know,” I whispered. “I do, I understand. But what am I supposed to do about it?”

  He shrugged his bony shoulders, angles visible even through the outline of a black turtleneck.

  “Couldn’t say,” he replied. “To be frank, I’m not sure there is a solution. Because—”

  Daniel stepped closer to me, and all at once, his slim figure and quiet nature no longer struck me as submissive; rather, it was the ultimate power play. To be recalcitrant when met by other, more stereotypically masculine figures, ones who threaten your reproductive possibilities … To do that was the truest show of self-assuredness I’d ever seen. I’d been attracted to Daniel’s mystery and looks before, but now, now I wanted what those sealed
lips seemed to promise me.

  “Because,” he continued, his voice an octave lower, “one day, our spats won’t end so peacefully.”

  And I knew he was telling me the truth. That Daniel was, with more words than I’d ever heard him speak in one setting, trying to warn me. I couldn’t hang around here forever; it would tear them, and in turn, me, apart. To co-opt Sun Tzu, a divided pack is a useless one.

  “All right, Daniel,” I replied. “I’ll be careful.”

  His green eyes bored into me, and I got the distinct sense that being ‘careful’ wouldn’t cut it. I was here on borrowed time.

  Daniel’s hand reached out and his long fingers fell upon my neck, brushing aside a lock of brown hair so that they could graze the naked flesh.

  With a small smile, he added, “Be careful. But don’t be a stranger.”

  Before I could reply, Daniel turned on a booted heel, strolled into his room, and slammed the door. I was alone, in every sense of the word.

  Chapter 9

  After the boys had what Daniel referred to as their ‘spat’—and what Caine and Tristan hadn’t referred to, period—we fell into a routine of sorts.

  I started the day (or night, depending on when we awoke) with a run, a fast one, accompanied by Caine. He pushed me harder and harder, and I could feel myself slowly beginning to improve. Caine promised that, in due time, we could work on training my human body, too, if I liked. In the name of self-defense, and all that.

  Once I finished with Caine, there was a meal, usually something I scrounged from the cupboards, which grew barer every day. The men seemed to never be all in the same place at once, save for one meal a day (I’d reckon the meal as being dinner, if it ever happened at a consistent hour).

  I thought it strange that they so dutifully managed to stay in their rooms, or in any case, keep clear of the common area, for such a large portion of the day. Until, at one point, I reflected that perhaps this was new and intentional; there was every possibility they’d all agreed to not congregate when I was around, for fear that tensions could rise. I felt guilty, and at the same time, helpless. I understood, intimately, what it was like to have a shifter’s desires. To try and merely “talk it out” would not be enough.

  After that meal, it was Daniel’s time. I got the fire after the second day, and from there, we moved on to creating a comfortable shelter, which involved a number of twigs and too many dirty leaves for my liking. I might have an animal spirit, but I’d say my tastes run to the distinctly human side—sleeping in mulch isn’t my idea of a good time.

  Upon completing my work with Daniel, it was another meal, and then time with Tristan. We’d moved on from Sun Tzu to studying famous shifter battles. Are those a real thing? you ask. In short, yes. See, shifters walk amongst humans, but we have our own histories that run, sometimes parallel and sometimes perpendicular, to human history.

  Sometimes, our kind were at the scenes of infamous events—the fall of the Library of Alexandria, the War of the Roses, the conquering of Ghengis Khan. And in some cases, we are absent entirely, and our history diverges completely. For instance, the Bubonic Plague. Shifters have stronger immune systems, and rarely get ill. Hence, we pretty much missed the plague, and were instead consumed by a war between tiger shifters and elephant shifters, somewhere in the south of Africa.

  I studied shifter battles with Tristan, to see what we could learn. We searched for cases where shifters were mismatched in size (Wolves, however large, were still smaller than the average bear), and in number. The results weren’t promising, but I tried not to let that get to me.

  By the end of what I would guess was a week, I was getting comfortable around the den. The boys were on their best behavior, as it regarded me, and I tried to do the same in kind. I forced myself to think of them as colleagues, maybe even friends, but nothing more. Never mind the fact that, once I was asleep, my mind let loose all the dirty thoughts I’d been holding back throughout the day.

  It was on that day, the one I thought to be the seventh, that Tristan asked me to make a run with him.

  “A run where?” I asked. “You mean through the woods?”

  “No. For surveillance. To get information.”

  “Do you think I’m ready for that?”

  He looked at me as though I’d just asked a very stupid question. “You’ll have to be.”

  So, I agreed. Not that I had much of a choice, but I would’ve said yes anyway. I was going a little stir crazy in the HW den. I knew I could leave any time I wanted, technically speaking, but I also knew I didn’t have my strength back and didn’t have any info on Brock’s whereabouts. Going out by myself was a suicide mission.

  That’s how I ended up on the back of Tristan’s motorcycle, arms wrapped around his waist, his leather coat supple under my touch.

  “How do we get out of here?” I questioned as he revved the engine up.

  “Hold on tight, and you’ll see.”

  I leaned into his shoulders, squeezing him with some of the fervor I’d been restraining for days. I’ll let it out like water from a faucet, I reasoned. Desire dripping little by little.

  With a start, the wall in front of us split open, revealing a ramp. So, this was how this did it—a ramp into the ground, one that could be concealed as needed. Not the most subtle, but also fairly clever.

  “Neat handiwork,” I said admiringly.

  “But not smooth,” he warned, and I was about to ask what he meant when he kicked the engine into gear and shot up the ramp. It was at such a steep incline, with such uneven ground, that I felt the bike nearly tipping back.

  “Oh my god!” I screamed, clinging to Tristan for dear life.

  The bike roared from out of the basement and onto the green moss of the forest floor, its wheels leveling out, the ground becoming slightly more solid.

  I heaved in a deep breath. “We … could’ve … died,” I panted.

  Tristan laughed, an almost giddy sound that was totally at odds with everything I knew to be true about him.

  “That’s the point!” he shouted over the bike’s gears.

  “You’re screaming,” I pointed out, as the bike raced forward, moving with breakneck speed onto a quiet forest road, Tristan urging it between trees and around rocks. “Doesn’t that defeat the whole point of hiding?”

  “It would. If we weren’t trying to get someone’s attention.”

  We were firmly on the road now, though it was too old to have any kind of yellow line down the middle. Despite the fact that I was now relatively certain the bike wouldn’t fall backward, I still held on to Tristan. For once, his ever-straight back was arched, curving like a shell over the handles of the motorcycle.

  From out of nowhere, a shape appeared on the road.

  “Stop!” I screamed in Tristan’s ear. “There’s someone on the road!”

  He continued to drive, speed mounting with every passing second. The shape didn’t move, and I felt sweat pool beneath my arms. Was this a surveillance mission, or an assassination?

  “Stop, stop, stop!” I begged him.

  The person, now distinguishable as an elderly woman, was only about twenty yards from us. I closed my eyes, hoping the impact wouldn’t be too sharp, and that I could escape afterwards, run away from the scene of the crime. Goddammit, why had I fallen in with the Hell’s Wolves?

  Just then, with an abrupt screech, Tristan’s bike skidded sideways, coming to a halt. I opened my eyes, scared to look at the mangled body on the ground but knowing I only had a brief window in which to get out.

  But there was no body. Just a woman with stringy gray hair and a semi-toothless smile, cackling to herself.

  “Howdy,” she said amicably, as though we hadn’t almost just killed her.

  “Tristan?” I asked, voice trembling but rage holding strong. “What the hell was that?”

  He removed his helmet, and pushed a hand back through his hair, before explaining, “Just my way of saying hello to Pelt.”

  “That’s
me,” the woman clarified with a grin (though, is it a grin if there are few teeth, or just a gaping maw?). “It’s our little game. Tristan always thinks he can get me to play chicken, to brawk brawk and run away. But I never fail to stand my ground. Ain’t that right?”

  Tristan swung a leg over his bike, carefully extricating himself from my grasp and stabilizing a foot on the ground before helping me off. Or, at least, trying to—I scorned his hand, choosing, instead, to hop off myself. Predictably, I stumbled and barely righted myself.

  “That’s right,” Tristan agreed, stretching out a hand which Pelt grasped. “Pelt, this is Emma.”

  The woman sucked her remaining teeth. “Oh, I know who you are.”

  “Um, what does that mean?” I asked, trying to play it cool and failing miserably. I knew I had a reputation amongst certain shifter circles as being a major omega, but I figured that was more amongst my generation—in other words, the Wolf shifters still capable of reproduction. To put it in human terms, I was, at best, a C-list celebrity.

  But Pelt didn’t seem to think so.

  “You’ve been making a name for yourself round these parts. By which, I mean, the whole country. Word is, Brock’s out looking for ya.”

  I could hear my heart in my own ears. I’d known he was looking for me, but being in the Hell’s Wolves’ den for a week had allowed me to pretend otherwise. Now, I was back in the real world.

  “Is he getting close?” Tristan asked.

  The woman held up her hands in a mixed gesture. “Hell if I know. You guys staying around here?”

  This rung an alarm bell in my ear. I grabbed Tristan’s arm, and said to Pelt, “Could we have a sec?”

  “Sure,” she snorted. “You two go canoodle, I’ll pick at my ear wax.”

  Gross.

  “What’s going on?” Tristan asked as I pulled him a few feet away, trying not to think about how thick his bicep was beneath the leather jacket.

  “I don’t trust her,” I whispered fiercely. “Should we really be telling her our location, or disclosing any other info?”

  Tristan sighed. “Emma, I know it’s hard for you to trust people, I understand, but Pelt is an old Wolf shifter without a pack. She doesn’t pick sides. She’s just part of an information network. We trade new intel, that’s our deal.”