Did this deep loneliness trigger a need for physical contact? Or was it the need for physical contact that created the deep loneliness?
She turned the corner to find herself in the "sexual wellness" aisle.
"When I said 'God help me' I didn't expect this kind of answer." She supposed that if the flesh was weak, she'd better be prepared. She had never bought condoms before. Her handful of sexual encounters weren't planned and such things as condoms were an afterthought. So far she'd been lucky. She didn't want to press her luck, not with a werewolf. She scanned the boxes.
"Almost as if wearing nothing at all. Forty condoms? Let's not get carried away; I'm not even sure if I'm going to be needing one. Flavors and Colors? What the hell? It's not a lollipop. Pure ecstasy? Ribbed? Extra large?" She'd purposely not gotten that good of a look. "He can't be huge if that wasn't the first thing that I noticed when he changed shape. Could he?"
The college students suddenly came swooping through the section. She blushed hotly and grabbed a random box. It wasn't until she was two aisles over that she saw that she picked up a thirty count variety pack.
"Oh, hell."
God worked in mysterious ways.
* * *
Greek was her comfort food and she was in serious need of comfort. There was a Greek restaurant in town that did takeout. She ordered skewers of lamb and pork souvlaki, pita bread with tzatziki dip, dolomathes, tiropita and baklava. It could have fed four people but she didn't want Cabot to have any excuse to be hungry.
When she came out of the restaurant, there was a pack of wolves waiting for her.
With one Thane dead and another badly wounded, she should have expected to be hip deep in wolves. The five males ringing her Jeep were in human form, but there was no mistaking what they were.
Cabot's blood and scent would be all over her car. She had explaining to do.
"Peace be between us for the good of both our people!" she said as she backed away from the restaurant door. She didn't want innocent people to get caught up in this. "Let us stand as allies, not as foes!"
She recognized the Wolf King's son from his file photos. He was a handsome man. He'd gotten his mother's alabaster skin, rich auburn hair, vivid green eyes, and delicate features. He'd cultured a regal appearance with a three-hundred-dollar haircut and an Armani suit. He looked more like a model than a werewolf, but there was no mistaking the magic that he radiated.
"You're soaked in wolf blood!" Isaiah growled. It was a deep menacing sound that set the hair on the back of her neck on end.
Elise would normally kill anything that made her feel this threatened. She didn't dare pull a weapon; she'd never get a second shot off. "Cabot tangled with a Wicker construct. He had silver poisoning; I needed to drag him to an Earthblood spring." She lifted up the bag of food as evidence. "I'm taking him something to eat."
"You closed with a wolf with silver poisoning?" Isaiah said with disbelief.
"He was lucid," Elise said.
"Why are we bothering talking with her?" one of the Thane at Isaiah's back snapped. By his thick Italian accent, he was probably Luis Silva, a grand nephew of the Prince of Rome. "The Grigori are nothing but homicidal leeches. The world doesn't need their kind anymore."
Isaiah shrugged and Silva took it as permission to attack.
The Thane leaped forward, roaring.
Something big, square, dark blue and flying fast hit Silva at chest level. It struck with such force that it smashed Silva sideways into the building. It wasn't until the object stopped moving that Elise realized that it was a big blue USPS mailbox still anchored to a square of concrete.
"Seth!" the other three Thanes cried while backpedaling quickly.
At first glance, the Prince of Boston was not impressive. Yes, he was tall and wide shouldered, but so were the Thanes. He was still puppy-lean, dressed simply in jeans and gray polo shirt. Nothing about his face and stance indicated he was angry, but his rage crawled over her like static electricity. He didn't need a silk suit to be princely.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" the prince said quietly. He carefully positioned himself out of striking distance from both the Thane and Elise. "What are you even doing here, Isaiah?"
"Bishop called." Isaiah stepped back. "He said we were to make sure you were safe or there would be hell to pay."
"He told you that there were Wickers in the area," Seth stated as a fact, not a question.
"He said that something killed Samuels and wounded Cabot," Isaiah said. "He said it might be Wickers. It's suspicious that there's a Grigori here, armed to the teeth, reeking of wolf blood."
"Eleven people are dead!" the young prince shouted and then got his voice back to a low growl. "Half the police in New York are here. Of course there's going to be Grigori looking into it. That's what they do."
Isaiah cringed back. The Thanes retreated a dozen feet, whimpering in fear.
"Go find Samuels' body!" The prince pointed toward the heart of town. "He deserves a decent funeral."
The four Thanes fled, obeying him instantly.
Isaiah took a dozen steps after them before managing to stop and turn. "Father wants you back in New York City where you're safe. If you're killed, Cabot won't be able to take Boston. It will turn him feral."
"Jack is not your concern," the prince said. "You made that clear."
"We couldn't get through to Samuels or Bishop," Isaiah stated.
"Is that the royal 'we,' Isaiah?" the prince asked.
"One day," Isaiah stated like a promise. He turned on his heel and stalked away.
Seth's lips curled back into a silent snarl. He made it clear who he thought was more dangerous; he ignored her until Isaiah turned the corner. Only when they were alone did he turn to look at her.
It was faint, but she could see the resemblance between him and Cabot. He was a younger, darker version of the Thane.
"Do you have enough for three?" Seth asked.
It took her a second to realize he meant the food.
"Yes."
He nodded and pointed toward the bed and breakfast. "I'll follow you to where you've got Jack holed up."
* * *
Cabot had stripped off the coveralls and climbed under the linens while she was gone. He came thrashing out of the bed when the young prince followed Elise into the hotel room.
"What---what the hell!" Cabot half-fell out of the bed, naked. "Seth?"
"Clothes!" Elise threw the Kmart bag at him.
"Why aren't you still safe in Mexico?" Cabot fought with the plastic shopping bag. "What are you doing here?"
"Looking for you." Seth paused to take in the red walls and nude paintings. "This is not how I thought I'd find you."
"This is not what it looks..." Cabot paused, staring into the bag. He glanced up to give her a confused look.
She'd forgotten to take the condoms out. "I-I-I like to be prepared for anything."
"Ooookay." He took the package of colored briefs and tossed the bag on the bed. "You can't be here, Seth. It's too dangerous. Go home."
Elise tried to find someplace safe to look as he pulled on the briefs. She hadn't noticed Leda and the Swan on the wall by the bathroom door. She didn't recognize the artist but the subject was unmistakable. Unlike other more classical versions, Leda was a petite woman lying prone under a massive swan. Her back was arched in ecstasy. Her legs gripped tight her avian lover, urging it on, instead of fighting it off.
Elise blushed hotly.
Still not safe to look in Cabot's direction. Maybe she should have stuck with the extra large.
The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife was on the wall by the door. Who the hell furnished this room? No wonder the owner had asked if she had children with her when she checked in.
"You can't be here," Cabot was saying. "Go home."
She risked looking back at the Thane. The briefs left little to the imagination but there was actual clothing covering him.
"I'm not leaving without you." The young
prince hugged his cousin roughly.
Cabot winced in pain. His wounds hadn't completely healed yet. "Seth, please, I'm a Thane first before a Tatterskein. My duty is to my king before my prince. He set me on a mission. An important mission."
"You're all I have left." Seth released him to pace the room restlessly. "Isaiah is here with Silva, Russo, Tawfeek and Hoffman. They can deal with the Wickers."
"I have things yet to do." Cabot fished one of the T-shirts out of the bag. "Please, please, please, just go home."
"Ilya isn't in Utica anymore," Seth said.
"Who?" Elise asked.
"Ilya?" Cabot stood a moment, mouth open, as he worked through some mental problem. When he came to the solution, he swore loudly. "Ilya! Oh, how could I be so stupid? Ilya! He's alive? Where is he?"
Seth spread his hands in ignorance. "He bolted. He could be anywhere on the East Coast."
"Damn it. I can't believe I screwed this up so bad." Cabot attempted to put on the blue jeans. He would have fallen if Seth hadn't caught him. "We need---we need to..."
"We need to eat." Seth steadied Cabot as he finished dressing. "And then sleep. You're not going to be any use to anyone the way you are now."
Cabot sighed. "Fine, but you need to stay with me where it's safe."
Everyone knew that hungry wolves were dangerous wolves. Elise decided to hold her questions until the two had a chance to eat.
* * *
It was a surreal meal. The room had no tables or chairs, so they sat on the floor and ate with their fingers. The food was comfortingly familiar even if the company was not. Elise was careful not to get between the werewolves and the skewers of meat. She filled up on the stuffed grape leaves and cheese pies.
Cabot yawned his way through repeating much of what he'd told her earlier, only in greater detail. He ended with, "The teacher who told us that the kids were at the barn must have been a puppet working off a script. He handed us a flyer that had a map and everything. There were posters for the haunted house all over the school, so we didn't stop to think that it was odd that he gave the flyer to us."
"The chief of police is a puppet," she warned them. "He passed out silver ammo to all the men on the wolf hunt. He was so tightly scripted he barely knew what way was up. The head of the coven is a powerful witch. I'll have to be careful around her."
"I thought Grigori are immune," Seth said. "We are."
"We can be taken by surprise and held long enough to kill us. Nothing more than that, but still, a few seconds..."
"I should warn the Thanes." Seth took out a cell phone. He typed on the screen for a minute and then sighed and put it away. He took out a second phone.
"Two phones?" Elise asked.
"This one is Jack's." Seth tried to hand the phone to his cousin, but Cabot had fallen asleep sitting up. Seth pulled on the Thane's shoulder so he ended up slumped across Seth's legs.
Yes, the thirty-count box of condoms was complete overkill. She obviously misjudged the Thane's healing abilities.
Her dismay must have shown on her face.
"I'm his alpha." Seth patted his sleeping cousin on the head. "I can speed up his healing by strengthening his connection to the Source but I need to be in physical contact with him."
Which meant it wasn't going to be her and Cabot in the big poster bed. She was going to be spending the night on the tiny fainting couch. She salved her disappointment with baklava.
The prince tapped on Cabot's phone, unlocking it. "I don't have contact information for Isaiah or any of the Thanes that are with him. If I'm going to warn them, I'm going to have to use Jack's phone." He typed in a message. "Assuming the idiot will actually read anything from Jack."
He meant Isaiah.
She'd been surprised at how hostile the older werewolf had been toward the young prince. She assumed it was because Seth was protecting her against the Thanes. That Seth didn't have Isaiah's phone number indicated a deeper reason. "Why wouldn't he?"
"Because Isaiah hates me and Jack is mine."
"Yours?" Surely he didn't mean it the way it sounded.
"My heir. If something happens to me, Jack is the only---was the only wolf left of the Tatterskein bloodline. Heirs have a tighter connection to the Source than a normal pack wolf. It makes them higher rank because they're more dominant. Before I came to New York, Isaiah was the uncontested leader of the Thanes. His father leaves much of the day-to-day business of the Castle to Isaiah. There was an assumption that Alexander would shortly hand over New York to him. It was the entire reason for Isaiah's existence. His mother Raisa Artemyeva had been the result of a thousand years of careful breeding."
"The Wolf King has been breeding his own people like dogs?"
"He needs to. If he didn't strengthen the bloodlines, there wouldn't have been wolves strong enough to hold the more powerful territories. New York wasn't the first city Alexander had to hold himself. It was Athens first. Rome second. Paris third. London fourth. He was in Moscow before coming to New York. Each time he had to move and stand as the city's prince until he could breed a bloodline strong enough to hold the territory."
"I was taught the names of the cities he's held, but not why."
"The other failures weren't as public," Seth said.
It was a polite way to say that Pritt Eskola, the heir to the first prince, had gone feral after his uncle died. Eskola mowed his way through colonial New York. He'd killed nearly ten percent of the population, including his entire pack as they attempted to stop him. The deaths were later blamed on a yellow fever outbreak. Luckily Alexander got to North America before Eskola could lay waste to the entire continent.
The second failure had been under Alexander's close supervision and quietly eliminated. The two attempts had been a hundred years apart, which had always confused Elise in their timing. She realized now that the Wolf King had a house of cards; he had to maintain the strength of existing packs while building a new, stronger bloodline. This explained the arranged marriages and the fact that he often juggled brides from all over the world. Seth's parents were a prime example; his mother had been a careful blend of ancient bloodlines of Spanish princes sprinkled lightly with native Caxcan. Guadalajara might be only an Earldom, but the Wolf King had obviously bred it up so he could bolster old bloodlines without fear of inbreeding.
"He fathered Isaiah solely to become the Prince of New York?" Elise asked.
"That was his intent. The question remains if he was successful. Raisa had been the daughter of the Prince of Saint Petersburg and the granddaughter of the Princes of Istanbul and Kiev. She was fiery tempered and none of the Thanes could stand before her anger, except Jack's father, Anton. They were second cousins through Anton's mother." Seth patted his sleeping cousin's head. "After Raisa killed herself, though, it seemed like Alexander might have inbred her bloodline too much. It was obvious that Alexander was afraid that Isaiah would go feral; he sent Isaiah to Saint Petersburg to be changed by his grandfather."
What was the Wolf King waiting for? Considering that Seth became Prince of Boston at thirteen, Isaiah should be old enough to become the Prince of New York.
"Isaiah is what? Thirty?"
"Twenty-nine. Every year that Alexander doesn't hand over New York to his son, the more like a spoiled brat Isaiah acts. Lately, it's like he's only nine years old, jealous of every little imagined slight. Isaiah hates me. He hated that I was my father's heir when I showed up at the Castle and could meet his gaze. Then I became Prince of Boston at thirteen while he was still just a Thane at twenty-six."
Seth leaned over to press his face into Jack's shoulder. "I felt my entire family die. One by one. My mom. My aunts and uncles. My cousins. My little brothers. And then my father---which thankfully hit me like a freight train---so I didn't have to remember." He laughed bitterly. "And Isaiah's jealous of me. Jealous! The first few months, he'd pick fights with me because I didn't know how to use my power yet. I tried to get Alexander to stop him but Alexander would only say 'you're a prin
ce, you stop him.' I figured out how; that's when Isaiah started in on Jack. And Alexander only said 'learn to protect what is yours.' I never thought Isaiah would actually let Jack die just to hurt me until Friday."
And Elise thought her family was psycho.
Seth rubbed his eyes. "I'm completely fried. There's no way I can drive back to the city. We'll go back tomorrow."
Elise nodded. It was too dangerous to keep the teenage prince in the line of fire. If he would only leave with Cabot in tow, then so be it. It only went to prove that God had a sense of humor.
12: Decker
The house was silent and still.
Decker felt his heart go cold when he stepped out of his sleeping chamber and realized that his puppy was gone. He should have woken Joshua up last night and asked him plainly to stay.
It was night, as usual, but it seemed darker than normal.
He sat in the lone chair without bothering to turn on the light. Dawn was twelve long hours away. He couldn't believe that, at one time, he felt as if he'd never have enough time to do everything he wanted. Now he wished that he could sleep whole seasons away.
"Rally," he whispered to himself. "Rally. So maybe it's not to be with that puppy, but I could get another puppy."
But that was so unlikely that he couldn't fool himself into believing it. Werewolves guarded their children fiercely. They'd never let someone blithely take one away. Decker was over three hundred years old and he'd never heard of a stray puppy before. Even the young Prince of Boston had been snatched up by the Wolf King to be kept safe in New York City. Joshua was a rare, rare prize.
One that someone was desperate to capture.
"He really shouldn't be left running around the city alone." Decker stood and paced in the narrow cleared space in front of the chair. Joshua could have left minutes after sunrise and Decker wouldn't know. All he could know was that the boy left sometime during the day, which meant he could literally be anywhere in the world. Humans travelled at insane speeds this century. Zip. Zap. Zoom. He could have taken a plane to the other side of the country. Or the other side of the world.