Girl from Jussara (2 page)

“How old are you?”

He hadn’t meant to snarl the words, and realized he needed to get a grip on his emotions when she visibly flinched in reaction to his hostile tone, her knuckles whitening around the handle of her machete. He was about to apologize when she raised her chin and answered.

“I will speak with the wolf baby doctor.” The haughtiness in her soft voice sounded forced.

He nodded, pausing to take a calming breath. Then another. “Yes,” he agreed. “I will have our doctor examine you.”

He thought a small measure of relief flitted briefly across her features at the prospect of him granting her what she so desperately sought.

“How old are you?” he repeated the question, taking care to use a less threatening tone.

She held eye contact but pursed her lips, saying nothing.

Even in this she was refusing to answer him? He was … impressed. And frustrated.

She was petrified. The stench of it saturated Alex’s office, overwhelming the scent of even her filth and the hormones that confirmed it was a wolf baby growing within her tiny belly. She was barely controlling her unconscious shivering. Yet she held firm, staring him down as if he were the one who was in no position to be posing questions or calling the shots. The hard set of his mouth softened in admiration.

“Let’s start over, hmm?” he entreated with a gentle smile, casually leaning forward onto his elbows atop the desk. “Why don’t you tell me your name, sweetheart?”

Green eyes narrowed and her petite nose scrunched in disgust. Gripping tightly to the machete in her lap, she straightened up in her seat until her spine bowed. “I am not your sweetheart,” she hissed.

Alcaeus’ full lips parted. He’d been charming women for over three centuries. He was damn near irresistible when he set out to be, truth be told. Every female being on the planet he’d ever encountered, both the young and old, found him so. But there was no indication in her scent or her demeanor that this little woman from Jussara found him to be anything but terrifying … and repugnant, apparently. Her reaction to him disturbed and rankled him far more than he cared to analyze.

“I won’t hurt you.”

Her breath hitched.

His concern was genuine. “Promise.”

Her heart rate spiked. She caught her lower lip between her teeth.

“You can trust me.”

Her eyes shone with sudden dampness.

“Please?”

She shook her head, rapidly blinking back the hint of traitorous tears before any could fully surface.

“I’d like to help you,” he offered, dumbfounded at how his attempts to reassure her seemed only to be frightening her worse.

She continued shaking her head in refusal, eying him cautiously as she transferred the machete to one hand in order to fish through the pocket of her worn, mud-stained skirt with the other. When she retrieved a gold coin and slammed it angrily onto the desk, Alcaeus was surprised at the force with which her small hand smacked the solid wood. He was reminded that she hailed from a farming village. Possibly she was used to hard physical labor and sturdier than she appeared.

“No,” she snapped. “Doctor,” she stated firmly, despite her voice cracking on the second syllable. “No help,” she insisted stiltedly after a beat. “I will pay.”

Alcaeus wasn’t a man to be struck mute, yet he found he had no words. His mouth dried up. Then it watered. For the first time since puberty, he feared for an instant he would lose all control over his wolf, as the animal demanded to feel the proud girl’s body beneath his.

But he was no pup. And she was a scared human child. Carrying another wolf’s child. He would never allow himself to touch her. Not even to comfort and shield her from the world of hurt reflected in her eyes, as his wolf was howling with the need to do.
Not yet.

Eventually he simply nodded his assent. Then he rose from Alex’s desk and went to fetch the house doctor for the girl from Jussara who refused to be charmed by him—not even enough to reveal her name.

As he went he was assailed by the most profound premonition that he would let this tiny human stranger lead him around by the balls for as long as she was willing to. The disconcerting part of this epiphany was just how much the idea appealed to him.

He decided then and there that he was keeping her. The complications and logistics of the situation mattered little to him. They were altogether irrelevant to his wolf.
She would stay with them.
Whether she wanted to or not.

He would convince her. He
would
charm her. And soon she would no longer fear him. He would see her smile and hear her laughter. Often. Daily. And in those limpid jade eyes he would glimpse growing affection. He’d see trust. He would earn those. No matter how long it took. He could be patient. He would have those things. He would have her.

CHAPTER TWO

She fell in love with the wolf baby doctor’s touch the moment his probing fingertips first entered her vaginal canal. His name was Kai, and he was the sole reason Alcaeus was able to convince the girl from Jussara to remain with the Reinoso pack through her pregnancy. She knew instantly there was no other wolf-person she’d trust to deliver her baby.

It was the way he looked at her. And the way that he didn’t. The way he saw what others missed, but left those observations unsaid. He never ask her to be happy, didn’t try to make her laugh like Alcaeus tirelessly did. She felt an instant connection to the house doctor, her heart identifying him as a kindred spirit. Perhaps because he was dead inside, and yet still breathing—
like her.

Even so, she declined to tell the doctor Kai her given name as well, steadfastly refusing to reveal her identity to anyone at the Reinoso compound. As such, Alcaeus took the liberty of christening her “Guadalupe,” after the patron saint of the Americas. Or so he’d said.

She knew Guadalupe meant “river of the wolf,” and Lupe, her preferred nickname, simply, “wolf.” It was no secret Alcaeus wanted her to stay and become a permanent member of the Reinoso pack. But that was not her wish. She saw her time there as temporary—a necessary means to ensure the safety of her unborn were-child.

As for Alcaeus, Lupe dubbed him “old man” upon learning his true age was nearly 360 years. She’d sensed his romantic inclinations toward her from the start and hoped to put him off. Although he meant well by her, the adoring, puppy-dog look in Alcaeus’ eyes was often unsettling, reminding her of the way Nahuel had looked at her. And in Lupe’s limited and highly traumatizing experience, the flipside of werewolf adoration could be homicidal rage with no foreseeable warning.

Kai noted her unease. Unbeknownst to Lupe, he counseled Alcaeus to back off and to better school his emotions and attraction where the girl was concerned, often reminding him that she was, in fact, a girl.

Alcaeus introduced Lupe to every single human pack member living at the Reinoso compound on her second day there, hoping the others might allay her trepidation about living amongst wolves. But she preferred to keep to herself rather than make friends, forging a connection with just one human pack member during her initial stay.

Hector Varela was a quietly fascinating 103-year-old Argentinian gentleman who had been with Alcaeus since the age of nine. Lupe found out Alcaeus had also given Hector his surname. When Hector winked at her and teasingly wagered that she couldn’t keep her given name a secret from the wolves for as long as he had kept his last name a secret, she smiled a genuine smile for the first time since her parents’ murder.

Hector was a widower, having outlived his much younger wife. They’d had one child, a son named Mateus. Mateus had been living abroad for the past several years, working on some special pack mission in America. Alcaeus explained that Hector enjoyed a prolonged life due to a healing procedure administered early in his youth by a very powerful werelock.

Eventually, Lupe learned that Hector had suffered a history of loss and violence even more gruesome than hers. More disturbing, she learned the same werewolf pack Nahuel had belonged to was responsible for the slaughter of Hector’s entire family. This did little to comfort her about her chances for survival.

For the most part, Alcaeus and Kai kept her separated from the rest of the pack, persuading her to accept private living quarters in Alcaeus’ home, which was located through the woods at the farthest edge of the property, far from the main estate. Proud and stubborn as Lupe was, she despised the idea of accepting their charity, so Alcaeus convinced her he was in desperate need of a housekeeper and petitioned her to stay on through her pregnancy as a guest and paid human staff member in his home.

Kai and Alcaeus purposely downplayed Lupe’s importance to them to Alex, the Alpha. She was never introduced, but she caught brief glimpses of him in passing on her visits to the human quarters adjacent to the main house, where she would go to check in on Hector and listen to his stories. She was told the Alpha didn’t trouble himself much with the human help, and Lupe was glad for that because the Alpha looked decidedly mean.

Alcaeus and Kai had repeatedly tried to convince her she was safe, but she refused to be separated from her machete, carrying it with her whenever she left Alcaeus’ home, often concealing the blade at her side within the folds of her skirts.

Plagued by nightmares throughout her pregnancy, she’d awaken to the sound of her own screams in the night. Alcaeus would rush to her room; he’d try to hold and comfort her, but she’d shoo him away every time, apologizing for waking him and insisting she was fine. She never cried. Never broke down in front of him or anyone else. In truth, she never broke down in private either. But every so often the pressure would build up behind her eyes to the point it became a physical pain, as if her body was demanding the ducts be drained. And yet, strangely, she still found it difficult to cry for her loss.

Then, in July, during her second trimester, the first Brazilian telenovela aired. Though she’d officially been appointed Alcaeus’ housekeeper, he hadn’t actually allowed her to clean anything yet, having a staff of servants who already performed those chores. Nonetheless, Alcaeus insisted he required her supervisory skills to make sure everything was getting done properly around the house. This left Lupe with more down time than she preferred. So when she started watching
2-5499 Ocupado
to pass the time, the telenovela became both an escape and a vehicle for her emotional release. She logged hours crying over Emily’s plight in the São Paulo prison—sobbing harder than perhaps the storyline required at times.

While the telenovela eased the pressure build-up in her tear ducts, the nightmares persisted. She dreamt Nahuel’s family was coming for her—for her baby. The dreams were disjointed and confusing, but they always ended the same way. A wolfman with one green eye and one blue one would ultimately find her. He would laugh at her. And then she’d wake up. Every single time.

Sometimes she dreamt Nahuel still lived and was coming for her, and she would spend days afterward paralyzed with fear that it might be true, that somehow dismembering and burning him hadn’t been enough to stop his supernatural body from regenerating—and subsequently locating its severed head that she’d burned and buried 300 miles from said charred bodily remains. In some dreams, Nahuel was angry and confrontational; threatening, like her dreams of his family. But in most, he was repentant, continually begging her forgiveness and understanding.

Then there were the dreams in which she relived moments between them before his psychotic killing spree. Those were the cruelest of all. He would touch her—and she would like it. He would murmur words of love in her ear like he had in her parents’ barn. She would melt for him all over again, letting her battered heart pretend that it was all right—that the horrors that had followed had never occurred. And she would awaken utterly disgusted with herself, physically nauseous.

After one such occasion, she wound up on her knees in the bathroom retching and dry heaving to no avail. She jumped when she felt warm, masculine hands gathering her hair atop her head, away from her face.

The big guy had a knack for sneaking up on her.

“Only me, Lupe,” Alcaeus’ deep, sleep-roughened voice said in the darkness. “It’s okay. You’re safe now.” One big hand held her hair while the other spread warmth along her spine.

She felt an irrational urge to turn into his arms and cry. She shoved it down.

“I’m fine,” she croaked, pushing away from the toilet bowl, her voice sounding broken and hollow in the tiled room. “Sorry I woke you.”

He released her hair and gave her space as she rose and crossed to the sink, where she proceeded to wash up, splashing her face with cold water and rinsing her mouth. She took her time, thinking maybe he’d get the hint and leave. But as she toweled her face dry, she turned and started when she found his hulking frame towering in the doorway, casually watching her—
with golden wolf eyes
. She backed up a step.

He stepped forward. “S’okay … don’t be afraid. It’ll pass in a moment.”

She held her breath and tried to be brave. She had no choice. He was blocking her exit. And he kept coming closer.

“Please, understand, my wolf would never harm you, Lupe.” His hand rose to her face, his fingers ghosting her cheekbone. She closed her eyes and willed herself to nod rather than back up another step away from him. She wasn’t sure how his wolf would take it. What if he flipped out and attacked?

“Fuck,” Alcaeus swore, dropping his hand. She cringed. “Why do you have to be so afraid of me? I would
never
lay a finger on you to hurt you. Lupe, my wolf comes out because he feels so protective of you.”

It was partly true. His wolf had also emerged because he’d scented her arousal. He wanted to press his nose between her thighs—to lap at the cream that had soaked her underwear beneath her short nightdress. But the man shook those thoughts aside. She was just a girl, as Kai too often reminded him. A scared girl.

Still, he pushed forward, even as she retreated from him. Even though he knew he was frightening her. Because there were things he had to know.