The Jaguar’s—at having something of hers while they were separated, at having a reason to return to her side as soon as possible.
The man’s—at having been entrusted with the necklace in the first place.
Aryck took the first step toward the alpha’s home. Reluctant in a way he hadn’t experienced since he was a child summoned for a misdeed.
The smell of cooking meat greeted him. Pork, Aryck thought, following the scent of it to the fire pit in back of the cabin.
His stomach rumbled and his mouth watered, both reminding him of how long he’d gone without food. Koren gestured to a log carved vaguely into the shape of a chair. “Sit.”
It wasn’t quite a command and yet it wasn’t an invitation either. Aryck sat as his father turned a slab of meat over on a salvaged piece of metal grate.
Grease hit the fire underneath and sizzled. Hunger pangs, a much less painful version of the Jaguar’s clawed insistence, raked through Aryck’s belly.
“The healer?” Koren asked.
Aryck tensed despite himself, silently cursed at reacting when he realized his father had been surreptitiously watching for it. “She sleeps. Phaedra bathes her.”
He put indifference into his voice, though heat throbbed through his cock as he imagined Rebekka naked on the furs, her eyes beckoning him to join her. Her body a temptation he couldn’t resist when she rolled to her hands and knees, calling him to her with a sultry glance over her shoulder.
Aryck nearly rose to pace. Would have if not for his father.
This time there was no mistaking the origin of desire. The fantasy of Rebekka wanting him to cover her wasn’t an image forced on him by the Jaguar.
Koren prodded the meat, letting the silence build between them. Aryck clenched his jaw to keep from filling the space between them with words, grateful his father intended to hold this conversation orally instead of mentally, where suppressing the Jaguar might become impossible.
Koren transferred slabs of pork to metal plates, handing one of them, along with a knife and fork, to Aryck. They ate, the silence continuing, moving into a comfortable lull until all the meat had disappeared and the plates were set aside.
“The healer is not what I expected,” Koren finally said, leaning forward and placing his forearms on his thighs in a relaxed pose, though the air between them was laced with edges. “For all her human frailty there is strength at her core.”
Aryck acknowledged the comment with a shrug, as if neither the strength nor the weakness mattered to him. By the narrowing of his father’s eyes, he knew it was the wrong gesture to make.
Koren stood, abruptly shedding the feign of casualness. He paced, as Aryck had wanted to earlier. Ten steps forward, then back again to reclaim his seat and shock Aryck by saying, “She reminds me of your mother.”
Their eyes met. His father’s expression hardened. “I understand the attraction of a female who needs a strong male to keep her safe. Your mother preferred the human form but even when she wore fur, she was no fighter. Her nature was too gentle. If she’d been pure animal instead of Were, she would never have survived to breeding age.”
He rose again. Paced. Ten steps forward, then back to his seat.
“I knew I should stay away from her. I knew she was not the right mate for an alpha. But dominance is bred into our line and submission attracts us. One coupling and no other female could hold my interest.”
His shrug mimicked Aryck’s earlier one, as if the past wasn’t unimportant. But the seriousness in his voice and the fact he’d never taken another mate gave lie to it.
“In the end my lack of control and my choice cost me. The man might desire a soft mate, but the Jaguar needs a strong one, an equal in both will and form.”
Aryck nearly laughed at his father’s erroneous assumption. But he had no desire to reveal the battle that had raged since the Jaguar encountered Rebekka.
The silence descended once again. It grew heavier when Aryck didn’t rush to reassure his father that he understood the warning and planned to stay away from the healer.
Koren’s eyes darkened and his mouth firmed. Aryck braced himself for the strike of his father’s verbal claws. “As soon as the cubs have successfully shifted between forms, and the healer has rested and eaten, I will assign others to escort her to the Lion camp so she can return to Oakland and the outcast brothels.”
The Jaguar screamed denial, animal soul unraveling into a nearly separate entity and trying to take its true shape in order to offer a direct challenge to the alpha. Aryck turned his head quickly, hoping his father hadn’t seen the beast looking through human eyes.
He wrestled to remain in control, a small part of his rational mind welcoming his father’s plan. If he could hold out until she was gone, then the threat she represented would lessen immediately and, over time, fade completely.
His earlier fantasy flashed through his mind, of her naked and welcoming him. He pushed it away. Another female, a Jaguar, would come along and—
Searing pain raked through him, the kind preceding a change of form.
His father rose and shed his clothes in preparation for shifting.
It was enough warning for Aryck to accept a truth he still didn’t want. It wasn’t just the Jaguar who saw Rebekka as a potential mate, who needed to spend time in her company. “I promised to personally see to her protection while she was on our lands.”
The words settled the Jaguar enough so Aryck dared to look at his father. Koren’s face showed nothing of what he was thinking, but his voice was little more than a growl. “Guard the cabin if you wish, but stay away from her until she wakes.”
Caphriel’s Pawn
RADEK rolled off the prostitute and stared at the ceiling as she slid the used condom off his semiflaccid cock. He spared her a glance as she padded naked across the room to drop it into a twisted piece of salvaged metal serving as a trash can.
The sight of her swaying breasts and round buttocks didn’t hold his interest. His mind raced, and despite the release of sex he could feel the restless tension building in his chest, the uncertainty gnawing at him.
By now there should have been some evidence the smart-virus he’d poured into the pond was working. There hadn’t been, and because of it irritation sizzled through him.
His leaving the compound several times a day was drawing too much attention from his brother’s lapdog, Nagy. But he could hardly send men out and order them to look for signs of dead wolves or elk.
Having to handle this himself was wasting valuable time. Time better spent analyzing the recovered files and determining which of them could be turned into the wealth that was now only part of his nightly dream.
Radek closed his eyes for a moment, hoping the imagined cheering of the crowds would soothe him. It didn’t. If anything it increased his restlessness, made him feel as though he were in a race against some unseen opponent and victory was far from assured.
The bed dipped as the whore returned. She took his cock into her mouth.
Radek kept his eyes closed. He shifted his concentration to the feel of the prostitute’s lips and tongue, hoping to use physical pleasure to recapture the golden glory he experienced in his dreams. It didn’t work.
His frustration grew, taking on an ugly edge as his penis softened further and the whore released him to ask, “Should I leave now?”
Radek’s eyes snapped opened. Worthless slut! To imply with her tone that her failure to provide a distraction was somehow his fault and she’d just as soon go service the convicts and dregs of society.
He rolled off the bed and stalked to his desk, opening a drawer with a jerk. He’d intended to retrieve the bottle of brandy he kept there, to soothe himself with a glass of it, but the sight of the canister with the picture of a hyena scratched into its surface turned frustration and irritation into giddy exhilaration.