Werewolf Wedding(38)



He narrowed his eyes, and ran his tongue along my jaw to my chin. “So wonderfully simple. Whatever the stakes, the first one to claim a mate takes it all.”

I felt a wave of heat creeping down my belly. It was like he had some sort of power, or ability, to manipulate my nerves. In my mind and my heart, he gave me nothing but rage, but my body felt like it was rebelling against all of that. I tried to force myself to look away, but he grabbed my jaw in his massive hand and forced me to stare at him. I closed my eyes to give myself one last refuge from this crazed, ferocious, monstrous werewolf.

I heard Jeannie scream.

“Leave her alone,” I warned him. “She’s got nothing to do with this except being my best friend and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

He chuckled in that menacing, horrifying way he had. “Then open your eyes, mate,” Dane growled. “You want to save your friend? Then give in. Give me what I want. Be mine, and destroy my brother. Give me the pack, and give me the company. I’ll have everything I need to put things right.”

Dane was starting to get really riled up. Every word he said, his eyes seemed to flare brighter, his voice grew higher and louder. The things he was saying hardly made any sense. I tried to ask him what the hell he was talking about, but whenever I eked out a word he gave me another warning squeeze.

“The only words I want to hear coming out of your mouth are ‘yes’ and ‘sir’, do you understand? Nod.”

I was able to turn my head enough to see that Jeannie had pushed herself into a corner. In one of those bizarre moments of trauma where the mind wonders somewhere else, I remembered Barney’s pitiful moaning. I nodded. Weakly at first, but the longer it went on, the stronger my resolve grew.

Dane narrowed his eyes and studied my face. “If I let you go, and you try anything stupid, you’re going to watch your friend’s neck snap. Get it?”

I nodded harder and more insistently. I hadn’t even realized I was trying to shout until he let go of my throat, and I shouted “yes!”

“There’s no way this is going to be this easy,” he said.

“You have to let Barney go, too,” I said quickly. Time was running out, and I was tempting the damn devil with every word I said that wasn’t exactly what he wanted to hear. But, he shrugged.

“Fine,” he said. “Say the words,” his voice was low and hot against my skin. “Say them now, Delilah. I don’t have much patience, if you haven’t guessed already.”

It was like I was outside of myself. Just like before with the epoxy, I was a spirit in the corner of the room watching the whole mess play out. There were so many heroic, defiant things I could have said, but I couldn’t sacrifice Jeannie just to try and save myself. I couldn’t let this psychopath kill Barney – who had protected me for no reason other than he thought it was the right thing to do.

So, I did the only thing I could think to do.

I felt my lips framing the words, heard a voice that didn’t sound much like my own speaking them. There were teeth on my neck. Sharp, jagged, dangerous teeth. I wanted out, I wanted to run, I wanted to fight... hell, right then I would have accepted dying over the way he made me feel.

“Say the words,” Dane whispered.

His teeth brushed against my neck. “Make a choice, change the world. Save your friends.”

I swallowed, hard. “Yes, sir,” I said, my voice cracking halfway through.

“Say it again,” Dane said with a devil’s grin. “Louder.”

Go f*ck yourself, I wanted to say. Go to hell, Jake is coming, I wished I could say. I wished I could believe it. But it was just us. Jeannie in the corner, Barney groaning in the next room over, and Dane with his thumbs on either side of my neck and his teeth brushing my throat.

The last thing I wanted to say is what I actually did.

“Yes, sir,” I repeated, louder and clearer than before. My head swirled, my thoughts a mess of confusion, pain, anger and terror. “Yes, sir!” I shouted, like I was owning the phrase and making it mine.

I heard him laugh. “You humans really are all the same,” he said.

And then I felt those teeth prick my skin, and I was sure that I’d be dead before morning.





-13-


“It sounds like a hell of a cliché, but I mean it. Murder really IS too quick.”





-Jake


––––––––

He couldn’t stand it anymore. Three days and not a single word from Delilah, and worse than that, Jake had no idea what he’d done to upset her. George told him that maybe things had just gone too fast, and that made sense. After all they went from zero to almost hitched in record time.

Jake rolled onto a side and looked out the window of the nondescript, almost empty apartment he’d rented out years back. The window in his bedroom overlooked the fringe of the woods where he liked to go when he needed time to himself, and the apartment was – as far as he knew – completely unknown to anyone in the pack, which meant that no one bothered him.

And on top of all that? It was about as far from the grand mansion living he dealt with on a daily basis. He wished his father had given that awful place up and just moved out to the country with Ma, but that wasn’t going to happen. The house was ancient, it had been in the family for hundreds of years, and had been constantly renovated because that’s how his dad dealt with not knowing what the hell to do with Dane – fiddling around with house projects.

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