Werewolf Wedding(62)

It has to work, he said. Or I’m a dead man.

But I was frozen. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. An icy fist of dread had closed on my throat and constricted me like a lupine anaconda. Dane watched my squirming, looking on as I suffered for Jake. He narrowed his eyes, almost to say I told you so, in that mocking voice he used so often with me and with everyone else.

“I don’t think so,” Dane said. “To replace the alpha, he’s got to die. You know the rules. Vita, get over here! Bring me more wine.”

In all my years, for all my life, I’d never been commanded like that. It flared every single liberated nerve in my body, but I knew that if I acted out, it’d just be worse.

“Now!” he shouted, startling me so that I jolted a little where I was standing.

My feet felt like they were moving forward without my input. I’d had my share of these weird out of body experiences in the past few days that I’d mostly attributed to, you know, a total lack of appropriate sleep, to abject terror, and to my mate being beheaded in front of me if a whacked-out plan failed. But now I knew they were caused by whatever influence Dane was exerting over me coming into conflict with my own will. It was like the two different minds were fighting one another, and my skull was the battleground.

“Oof!” Jake hit the ground, knees first, and then flopped gracelessly onto his face. Dane just started cackling like he’d seen the funniest thing in the world play out in front of him.

“Get up, brother!” he said. “There’s no reason to be all sad and sour. Come on, so what, you lost a challenge, are completely emasculated, and are about to have your head cut off in public? What’s it matter now? Have a little fun, why don’t you? Mate!” he was calling to me, because I had, apparently, lost every shred of humanity. “I said now!”

I grabbed the closest bottle, sloshing a little of the red liquid out onto my hand in anger. The sour smell of the wine hit my stomach a little funny. The next thing I remember, my knee was hitting the ground, and Greta was on one of my elbows, holding me up. Two others, who I vaguely recognized from family dinner with the wolves, were on the other. My stomach churned, my head swam, and all the while, Dane was sitting on his makeshift throne shouting about human weakness.

Right, because now is definitely the perfect time to go on a rant about what makes wolves better than people. Even though you’re marrying one!

“Why?!” I stood up, knees shaking, barely able to keep myself on my feet, and shouted. “Why are you doing all of this?”

The whole crowd – Dane’s goons included – went dead silent.

I looked around at a whole bunch of concerned faces, some of them a little hairy from the booze loosening them up. Dane’s eyes burned holes in my chest. He tipped his glass back and drank the last of what he already had.

“Why... why are you torturing your brother? Why are you punishing him for something someone else did? And why me? What did I ever do?”

Dane’s normal, arrogant chuckle grew more boisterous, louder than it was before. “Why?” he asked, twisting his words into a mockery of my voice. “Because I am the alpha! Because... I can.”

With that, he grabbed Jake by the hair, dragged him off the ground and held him aloft. The chains around his wrists were biting deep into the flesh, but he wasn’t screaming anymore. Either he’d gone numb or he was too dejected to bother.

“If she won’t bring me what I want, grab her. If these two won’t have any fun,” he turned to his little group of cronies, “then we’ll have it with them.”

Someone pushed Greta off my elbow. His face wasn’t familiar, but his sour breath and sneer almost matched Dane’s for looking repulsive. I took a swing at him with the bottle, but he just laughed as it bounced off his chest. “That’s enough, little girl,” he said, wrenching my arm and tearing the sleeve of the gown I’d been given. “You’ll learn at some point that you can’t fight the alpha without paying the price.”

“Oh, I’ve paid plenty,” I said, snapping at him as he grabbed my hair. “You dirty son of a bitch!”

My comment made the round-faced wolf smile as sweat ran down the sides of his pale moon face. He dragged me urgently enough that I had to kick my feet to keep off the ground, but eventually even that was no good. I slipped once, then again, and before I knew it, my kicking was just making tracks in the gravel driveway down which he pulled me.

At the end of the path was the big dais – a raised platform with fluffy white curtains installed on either side. Alongside the podium where the speaker was supposed to read the marking vows, where Dane now sat in his folding throne, there were rope circles where each person was supposed to stand.

But now, this solemn, honestly beautiful set-up was ugly and horrifying. And that’s to say nothing of the mess Dane had made of Jake, who was currently trying to claw his way up his brother’s legs to stand, or at least sit. And still, Dane was just laughing, smiling away. He hurled the wine glass he held at me. It exploded on the stones, shards of crystal flying everywhere.

Greta let out a squealing sound that complimented the grunt Jake made when Dane planted a boot in his ribs.

“Mate!” he shouted. “On your way up here, grab my bag off the table there. That’ll be great, thanks.”

The bald-headed wolf yanked me toward the indicated table, grunting an order that didn’t need words. I grabbed both the bottle, and the bag, which clanked with the sound of metal against metal as I scooped it up. “What is this?” I asked.