Werewolf Consort Read online

  One way or another that was what our wolf selves pushed us to do, and both of us were new to our wolf ways, so we did what we thought we were meant to do. I think we’re somehow bound to each other. As in he bonded himself to me and me to him and I don’t know how. I’m not sure how to undo what has been done.

  “Booker,” I start. I have to make this clean, I have to be strong and do this now or we’ll never grasp it. It’ll get worse as time goes on, because time glorifies memories, because we want meaning and purpose in our lives. We don’t want to think of how much we’ve fucked up. I’m in a real relationship now, the first one out of the three wolf boyfriends I’ve had.

  And If I look back at me and Booker and our past history, I can accept and move on from my first boyfriend being not so much of a boyfriend too me, as a confused newly minted lycan who had to figure out again, how to be a wolf in a human body, with a woman.

  “I know you love him.” Booker cuts me off. “…and I’m not asking you to give that up, I’m just.” He lets out a heavy breath and seems to mull over a thought. “I want you too.”

  I nod my head. “I know.”

  4

  Booker and I are fixated on one another. Or more correctly, our wolf selves, are.

  So how do I know if what I feel for this other wolf is real then? Maybe it’s just a trick the wolf inside tricking the human plaything’s emotions. Who’s controlling who here? We’re bound together in something that isn’t seen, can’t been made tangible and yet, seems unbreakable. This lycan and I. I don’t even know who bound who. It probably doesn’t matter. So if I can’t break this attraction, this thing between us because our wolves won’t let it happen, then how the hell do I manage it? Booker runs his hands up my jean covered legs, up to my thighs before I push his hands off me entirely.

  “Don’t.” It’s all I can mutter as he let’s his hands fall off me onto the kitchen bench top either side of me and leans forward. “Book, you have a girlfriend, doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  “Problem is, you mean more to me than that. Always have.”

  I begin to lean away from him. “You don’t get to say that now, after all this time when it was you who pushed me away. I wanted to be with you!”

  “I know! So let’s make it right now, let’s be together.” He husks and I see his eyes darken with desire, and realize I am almost flat on the kitchen bench top with him over me. How did that happen?

  “Let me up wolf.” I utter. “Now!” I growl loudly and Booker straightens up and retreats back to the sink. Booker is a gentlemen, he’d never force himself onto me. He knows about my attack, and he would never try such a thing on me. But the way he feels about it me, sometimes I think he gets lost in it and I think that’s dangerous.

  He looks distressed again. Shit. Do you know how much that hurts to see a big, strong guy like him, crumple? “We broke up went our own ways, but stayed, on the edges of one another’s lives. I mean, you’re friend’s with Paris and I’m,”

  And that’s when another realization hits me. “You’re friends with Paris.” I repeat. “You always told me you knew him before you became a Breukelen.”

  I slip off the kitchen bench top till I’m standing with it at my back. “Is that true or have you been lying to me, all this time? I mean, that’s some connection isn’t it? You know my future pack mate before we date, and then after we date and end, eventually I find out you’re friends with my pack mate. Are you keeping up with me here Book?” Booker’s not making eye contact with me. He can’t. Oh shit, say it ain’t so. Tell me he’s not a worse manipulator than Conall Wakely. Please. Not Booker. Please?

  I feel the shaking again and I clench my fingers into the palms of my hands tightly, pressing them into me. Hoping to bleed. I need to feel something very real right now, so I don’t let anger consume or cloud what I’m trying to figure out here, how and why Booker Parish and I are like….this. I have to figure it out, because it’s about to jeopardize the best relationship I’ve ever been in and I don’t fucking want that!

  Being a werewolf in this world, is hard enough, thank you. Being a werewolf female trapped between two wolves in her life, is a complication I do not need to add to my life in general. Been there before, done that. Really not looking to do it again.

  “I knew Paris, around the same time I met you, actually, a little time after, about six weeks after the attack.” Booker finally gets out and I find myself letting out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. Six weeks after the attack, seems….specific? Significant?

  “But how? You’d already joined the Breukelen by then, right?” I ask trying to figure out what he’s getting at here. Male wolves and they’re fucking loop de loops on talking.

  He lifts his head and brushes brown hair out of his eyes. “Paris uh, tracked me down through the Breukelen. He’d been trying to sort things out with his pack leader.”

  I frown. “I’m not following.”

  “He was trying to bring me and my brother some sort of closure on the attack.”

  “But he’d only do that if either, he was responsible for your lycanthropy, or if he knew who was.” I mutter slowly.

  “Right.”

  I don’t know how much more of this kind of talk my body can take. I feel like I’m wound tight here and need to hit things. Violently hit them. With a side of yelling and screaming thrown in.

  “What are you saying Booker?” I mutter softly.

  “I know who attacked me and my brother.” We hold each other’s gaze. This is a new development. A big fucking deal that he’s kept secret from me for the whole time we’ve known each other.

  “You always told me you couldn’t remember the attack or anything about it.” I say back at him.

  “And I couldn’t. I still can’t really. It’s a block to me, I’ve only ever managed to recall the night, the surroundings, some blurred color. Then nothing. I mean, there’s no detail in that.” Booker says opening up to me.

  “My brother’s the same, he couldn’t recall it beyond the feeling of being ripped into and having his body savaged with pain, and the feeling of rain on his skin.” I cross my arms over my chest and will him to go on. If he says Paris is responsible for his attack, I’ll go him. So fucking hard, he really won’t know what hit him. “Paris figured out it was some Manhattan Maen werewolves, he found out because my brother and I weren’t the only ones attacked that night. Paris and Addison were patrolling and they came across another victim, Damon.”

  Damon, I know a Damon. Damon the lycan. Paris’s kind of friend, acquaintance would be more accurate. He’s this shy, lycan who lives, somewhat secretly in a garage in Manhattan Maen territory, he’s a nervous wreck. A hermit. Paris has always said he was under his protection, but never explained why. It’s a closed subject. But the attacks, the timeframe, sounds like it lines up with when Paris had just become pack leader of the Manhattan Maen Pack.

  “Whoa.” I press back against the bench for something solid to feel. “Why didn’t you tell me this before now?”

  Booker shrugs those large shoulders of him and it looks effortlessly casual. “I don’t know, why revisit it?”

  “Because it was, is, important to you.” I state looking at him and see something flitters across his face. “Because I’ve been there for you with this, I was there for you when this started!” I am practically yelling. Now I’m angry. He’s denied me this thing I’ve held dear in my knowing of him. Wanting to help him heal from the thing that altered his life so drastically, made him a wolf.

  Booker is no match for masking his emotions with me as Paris is. “Was. Past tense.” He says and leaves the words hanging for me to taking in.

  “Book, what do you mean, by that little statement.”

  “Cadey, I’ve moved on from it, you should too.” Okay, you see, if he’d called me by my pack nickname of Bg or even his name for me, Baby Girl, I’d have let that comment slide. But he used my real name. There are only a few times when people ever, use my real name. And they
’re all genuinely serious reasons for using it. Booker’s a serious kind of guy, not a light hearted personality. Another sort of trait he shares with Paris. Jesus, I really do have a type don’t I?

  “Why, would I move on from something that is important to you Booker? I didn’t back down with my father, and I won’t back down now. I’m a werewolf, we don’t back down. We fight. Tell me, everything Booker Parish or so help me god, we’re done here, for good, damn the fucking consequences!” It’s horribly manipulative to pull that line on him, but it works. Booker doesn’t want to be apart from me. Not forever.

  “We uh, dealt with the culprits.” Booker says in a low voice, unlike him at all. “Eventually.” My eyebrows arch up in horror and surprise. “Paris helped me.”

  “Oh.” He nods his head and we fall into strained silence.

  5

  The light is fading outside by the time I realize I’m actually famished. I haven’t eaten all day. I feel tired. I woke up to the worst emotional fight I could have and now the emotional bombshells keep coming from my ex lover. The wolf I’m supposed to be telling to back off so I can get on with my current relationship. It’s that simple right? A little voice in my head says, just say that to him and be done with all this dragged out bullshit. But as much as I am a werewolf and full of ferocity and reason to fight. I am also female and just not built that way.

  I glance at my bag in the doorway, my phone hasn’t rang once all day. Even when I left Manhattan Paris didn’t have another werewolf accompany me to Brooklyn, like he would normally for my body guard detail. This makes me feel more miserable than I thought I could currently be.

  Well this is an unexpected development in my already complicated werewolf life. Lovers will love you, even if it means making a mess of things. I don’t need any more complications in my life, but it appears being a werewolf pretty much ensures that is the case. At least for me. I’m not you’re average pack wolf and I seem to attract all manner of trouble. Not always my own. And when I thought I’d come to Red Hook to resolve a personal issue of unspoken, long running attraction to another wolf, it turns out, the lycan in question, is connected to more than just me. He’s got a connection to my pack mate, the pack leader of the Manhattan Maen werewolf pack, that has been hidden from me, for something like fifteen years. Darkness and werewolves, they really go hand in hand as much as we try to push it down. It’s that part of our nature that makes us werewolves.

  I’m getting to a point where I don’t think I can think anymore. My feeling is becoming numb too. The two male wolves in my love life that mean so much to me and they both have held out a rather important secret on me for the whole time I’ve known them.

  “I need to eat.” I mutter slipping down off the bench top and pushing Booker back, away from me. “And there’s nothing in the house.” I state walking past him and back over to my bag. I don’t spend enough time in Brooklyn these days to fill my fridge up with anything much other than drinks. I should really think about getting a smaller, more eco-friendly fridge or sorting out some sort of other automatic food delivery arrangement. My wallet is near the top of the bag and I pick it up, standing up and walking back out of the kitchen. I hear Booker a few steps behind me following.

  “Can I join you?” He says as I head to the front door without looking at him.

  “Do I have a choice?” I mutter opening the door and stepping back outside. Booker doesn’t bother to answer me, he just closes the door behind him and follows me down the steps.

  “What kind of food do you feel like?” Booker asks me falling into step with me, totally ignoring my hostile attitude towards him.

  “Soul food.” I mutter.

  “I know a place.” Booker says and starts off down the street. I walk with him in silence. I’m somewhere between shell shocked, surprised, and angry and ready to just not care. “Are you going to move past this Bg?”

  I finally look over at Booker, to deliver a death glare. “I’m going to do what is right for me. Because both my ex and current lover seem to think keeping a rather important secret from me is the done thing. Which tells me something about both of you.”

  “What does it tell you?”

  “That I have a type of guy I go for. And maybe It’s the wrong type of guy for me.” I see the place Booker is thinking off immediately as we round the corner onto the street with food cafes and restaurants. Booker is silent now and I push the door open into the small café.

  “Bg,”

  I turn and look up at Booker. “You know what? For like the next hour, can you just drop it, no talk about this, about you or me or lovers or past relationships, none of it. I just want to eat and relax.”

  Booker sighs and nods his head. “You got it.” He says back at me and we stand beside each other, in silence, staring up at the hot food menu on display in the café, wondering what to order and to do next.

  It bothers me, that the day has gone fast, and I’ve been filled with frustration and anger through out it and my cell phone hasn’t rung once. I’ve been watching that thing like a hawk. Paris isn’t going to call me. And I’m not going to call him. I will not cave in. He needs to realize I tried this morning when I was with him in person, to make him see the reality of the situation. Not have some stupid phone call when things can be misconstrued.

  I sigh heavily and return to eating my food in silence. Booker does the same. Our off limit topic has actually turned our interaction into no conversation at all. But then the strained silence is broken when my cell phone lights up and rings, bouncing on the tabletop before me. I pick it up and swipe the screen open.

  “Bg, it’s Addison.”

  “Hey,” I reply softly.

  “What is going on?” Addison blurts out immediately with absolutely no subtlety. “Paris is in one hell of a black mood and won’t hear reason on anything. We’re going to do a training session with the Bezerkers for fuck sakes.” Addison doesn’t scare. At least, I’ve never known him to be scared of anything. But anything to do with the Bezerkers is like Addison’s least favorite task to do, ever. And it’s not because it’s a chore that has to be done. It’s because they rattle him on some level. But I can hear Addison’s frustration and think, he has nothing on me.

  “Ask him.” I say back as my only answer.

  “I have.” Addison growls back at me angrily. “He won’t tell me shit. I was hoping you could tell me what the hell is going on with him. Or is it both of you? You don’t sound good either. Did you have some kind of fight with him?”

  I feel my face flush with heat. Did I have a fight with Paris? Like it’s my fault he went all mental this morning? What I want to say to Addison is, “No Addison, I woke up with my pack-mate this morning and he decided to kick me out of his life, he broke up with me because I had an erotic dream that faded faster from my memory than the sleep from my eyes when I woke up.”

  But what actually comes out of my mouth instead, is “You know what Addison? He’s your best friend, your pack leader; you’re a lieutenant, why don’t you figure it out. I’m not his fucking nursemaid. Or for that matter, anything to him, so fuck off you’re interrupting my lunch!” I yell down the line at him and disconnect the call before staring back at the phone all-wide eyed and terrified. I can’t believe I just said those words. Not all of them, the part where I realized I’m nothing to Paris. That I have no meaning to him.

  “Oh shit.” Is all that comes out of my mouth. My hand starts to shake with the phone in it. Very visibly. Booker reaches across the table and put his hand on the phone, taking it out of my hand. I look back up at Booker.