“Don’t make it sound like such an obligation.” She made a beeline for the door, but Noah was faster.
Stupid, Syd. She could have blurred up to the roof and jumped off and ran. Maybe she’d just stay gone. Let Noah run the pack himself. Inside of a week he’d be saying, “Sydney who?”
She hadn’t noticed until now that he hadn’t bothered to put on any clothes yet. Her eyes kept going from the muscles in his stomach to the vein in his throat. Eye candy. Dinner. Eye candy. Dinner. He could no doubt see she was losing the civilized fight as her gaze drifted back to the throbbing vein. All. That. Blood.
“I was afraid I would hurt you, okay?” Noah said. “That’s why I got distant. I kept seeing how natural the pack was with you and something in me wanted to challenge you and eliminate you. I think being locked up so long really messed me up. I worry you aren’t safe with me.”
“You’d never hurt me.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know the thoughts that were going through my head. I’m scared of myself with you.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Sydney…”
Her eyes glowed red; her fangs elongated. If she had any doubts about him, she’d be wise not to do this before she’d fed, but whatever other insecurities she had, the idea that Noah would actually harm her wasn’t one of them. They had too many other issues to deal with to be side tracked by this stupidity.
She moved into a fighting stance. “I challenge you for the pack.”
Noah’s eyes widened. “What? Take it back. You don’t know what you just said.”
“Sure I do. Which do you want more? The pack? Or me breathing? It’s up to you.” She punched him in the face.
His eyes glowed golden, and he began to partially shift. She knew it took everything in him not to shift completely to the wolf.
“Run, Sydney,” he growled.
“No.”
“I knew you were suicidal. First the sun, now this.”
Sydney rolled her eyes and shoved him.
Noah growled and pounced on her, taking them both down to the ground. Looking into his eyes, she saw more wolf than man. His fangs were inches from her throat. It would be such a simple thing for him to rip it out.
“Well? One simple move, and the pack is all yours.”
She closed her eyes when she felt his tongue run over the mark he’d left when he’d made her his mate.
“I told you,” she whispered.
“That was so stupid. You had no way of knowing I wouldn’t just kill you in a rage.”
“That’s not true.”
Noah raised his weight off her and gave her some space. “How did you know? You thought you weren’t even my true mate.”
“I thought maybe you marked the wrong person, but the mark still would have protected me. When we were kids, about a year before you got taken, I was on my way to see you when I stumbled upon your parents. They were in a fight about something and it was an alpha power struggle thing, an argument they were having about the pack. She didn’t use the words ‘I challenge you’, but she was definitely doing it. The fight turned physical, and it looked on the surface like he’d lost control. With her being a demon, she was stronger than him. But he pulled every one of his punches, anyway. He wouldn’t let himself hurt her. The mate instinct is stronger than the alpha instinct.”
“It could have been different with me,” Noah said, still angry with her.
“No. It couldn’t.”
He moved closer and pulled her into his arms. “Feed, and I’ll think about forgiving you for scaring the shit out of me twice today. And get out of those clothes.”
The killing urge Noah had pushed away, had transformed into something else. Not that she was complaining. She’d ran off as a kid when things had turned in this direction with Noah’s parents. She’d tried to bleach what she’d almost seen out of her brain with bunnies and baby deer. But as an adult in her mate’s arms, she was more than happy to watch the rest of it unfold in real time.
She wriggled out of her jeans and top. As soon as she bit him, he was inside her. They were both still. He didn’t thrust, and she didn’t drink. They just stayed that way. She couldn’t read his mind, but somehow she knew he felt what she felt. A completeness, as if the last day had been erased entirely. He began to move slowly within her as she drank, and everything felt right again.
13
Noah sat beside a stream with Sydney while she finished bathing, alert for anyone who shouldn’t be out here. He was both irritated and embarrassed with how she’d played him earlier, but if she hadn’t done it, things would have grown colder and colder between them. As long as he could trust that the mating instincts were stronger than the other wolf instincts, he knew he could protect her.
He’d been sure that being kept prisoner had turned him wrong somehow, but it was garden variety wolf nature—something he would have known if he’d been raised normally. If anything, the facility had forced him to suppress all the things that were natural, causing them to grow even larger in his mind.
Sydney put her jeans and T-shirt on. “We have to go talk to our parents. We should split up.”
Noah growled. “We aren’t splitting up. We’ll go together.”
“Noah, I need to talk to my family alone. And so do you. You know how they’ll be if we go together. And we don’t have time. We have to warn them so they can strengthen the wards. And we need our place warded as well.”
He sighed. “I know. Just be careful… If anything happened to you…”
“I know. I’m fast now. I’ll be okay.”
Noah watched her blur through the trees. When she was gone, he began to pick his way through the forest, his senses on high alert. If he could remember Sydney’s scent after all this time, surely he could also remember family.
After a few miles, he caught a scent he recognized and followed it through the forest until he saw the outline of the entrance to the hive. The hive was what the pack called their den because the interlocking network of underground caves resembled a beehive. It had always been heavily warded both with magic and tech. Noah had no doubt, given his dad’s nearly supernatural computing skills, that the cave’s technological security was as strong as ever.
He took a deep breath and began to pace. In theory, he’d wanted nothing more than to be reunited with his family and to be free. But now, with the prospect of them mere yards away…
Noah had to fight the urge to flee. It would be so much easier to run, but his mother had a direct connection to the demon world. They needed Tam and the demons. They needed to rebuild Cary Town.
He pushed past the large branches that grew over the mouth of the cave and stepped inside. It was dark well into the cave. He bumped into solid steel. A computer touch pad lit up at his nearness and a robotic female voice said: “Please state your business.” A second steel wall came down behind him, blocking his exit.
“Please state your business,” the voice said again.
Noah tried to speak, but the voice was too similar to the one he’d heard every day for years of his captivity, and the steel walls trapping him didn’t help. The logic that family and safety was behind this door couldn’t penetrate the flashback.