Half Truths (A Helheim Wolf Pack Tale) (34 page)

‘Well, the way
your eyes are always changing colour, how you heal really quickly, and how you
scare people just by being—it’s very animalistic.’

He sighed.
Lycanthrope’s eyes were always the giveaway. The quick healing was just a perk.
All that other stuff, well, that was just Vaile being a beta. ‘So, now you
know,’ he murmured, watching her carefully, still waiting for the running and
screaming to begin.

‘Is that why you
could smell things that I couldn’t?’

‘Yeah. My wolf’s
nose is about one thousand times better than a human’s. But Larissa, I’ve got
to know, why aren’t you scared by what you just saw, by what you know about
me?’

She smiled sadly
at him. ‘Oh, Vaile, if you don’t already know, I don’t know what else to do.’

‘What do you
mean?’

‘I love you,
Vaile.’ She leaned into him, kissing his mouth so slowly and sweetly that they
were both panting when they came up for air.

‘You love me?’
he asked.

She nodded. ‘I
love you. I never thought I’d find someone ever again.’

Vaile didn’t say
the words he wanted to say to her. He loved her more than his own life, but
that could wait. All he wanted to do was take her right on the sofa that
minute, to mark her as his. He kissed her again, harder this time, his tongue
probing her mouth. She opened for him, moaning his name. Her hands roamed his
bare chest, and when he broke free from her mouth to kiss her jaw and neck, she
dug her fingers into his skin—drawing blood.

‘Be my mate,’ he
whispered into her ear. He hadn’t meant to just blurt it out like that, but it
seemed like the perfect moment to say it. Larissa’s answer came no more than a
second later.

‘Yes.’ Her
answer was breathy, and Vaile’s entire body answered her needs.

‘Mate with me
now?’ he asked; his voice raw and desperate. He knew there was never a chance
for children, but he didn’t care. All he wanted was her.

Larissa pulled
away from him and smiled. ‘Now? How?’

He licked his
lips. ‘We share blood, and make a promise to one another to be the only one in
each other’s life.’

‘Okay.’ Again,
there wasn’t a pause. She was so sure.

‘Wolves mate for
life, Larissa,’ he added, waiting for her to change her mind.

‘So we’ll be
together for life then.’

He kissed her again,
slowly and deeply. ‘Go grab a knife from the kitchen,’ he told her. She stood
up shakily and returned a few moments later with a sharp-looking paring knife.
She handed it to him, sinking into the couch beside him. Vaile took the tip of
the knife to his palm and drew a line across his skin. Blood welled instantly,
his wolf rushing to the surface. Taking Larissa’s hand, he repeated the action.
She sucked in a quiet hiss.

‘Now what?’

Vaile dipped his
thumb into his bloody palm, rubbing his blood onto her bottom lip. ‘Don’t lick
it off yet,’ he warned. ‘Now, do the same to me.’ Larissa ran her blood-covered
thumb across his bottom lip. ‘Okay, now repeat after me: I take this wolf …’

‘I take this
wolf …’

‘To be my mate.’

‘To be my mate.’

‘No other shall
come between us …’

‘No other shall
come between us …’

‘With blood we
bind ourselves.’

‘With blood we
bind ourselves.’

‘Now, lick your
lips,’ he instructed. Larissa sucked her bottom lip into her mouth while Vaile
did the same. Her blood tasted like home to him, like no matter how bad his day
has been she would always make it better.

‘And so we are
bound,’ he finished.

‘And so we are
bound,’ Larissa repeated.

The second
Larissa uttered the last sound of the bonding pact, Vaile could feel the pack’s
magic flow around them, binding them together—forever.

Larissa was
looking around her; a look of pure happiness on her face. The gentle wind of
magic lifted the hair from her face. ‘What is that?’ she asked breathlessly,
looking around them.

‘Magic,’ he
replied.

Larissa was lying in bed a few
hours later, the warmth of Vaile’s body next to hers as she knew it would
always be. As she lay there, her mind went back to when she’d let him into her
apartment. She’d been wearing one of Brad’s old shirts, but it didn’t smell
like him anymore. She’d washed it too many times. Her candy-striped, Victoria’s
Secret cotton boxer shorts were sinfully short, but the woolly socks took the
whole outfit from sexy to frumpy in a matter of seconds. She’d been so
embarrassed when she’d opened the door that she could hardly look at him. But
when he had moved to leave straight away, she knew she’d had to do something.

His apology to
her was sincere, she knew that. She knew that because Vaile was just one of
those men who said what they meant to say. There was no false bravado with him,
no big-noting himself. He was humble and honest, and he was hers. And as
shocking as it had been to see a gigantic white wolf come towards her, the
instant she saw his ice-blue eyes, she knew it was Vaile and he wasn’t going to
hurt her.

Her mind had
been going crazy when he’d disappeared into her bedroom. She was wondering
whether he’d come out wearing her underwear, or something as equally stupid.
She was actually a little relieved when it turned out he was a wolf. She laughed
to herself. She’d always loved stories about werewolves and vampires and the
fae. She’d just had no idea that at least one fairytale was real.

She sighed,
rolling over onto her side. Vaile was at her back now, and the smell of his
skin—that musky, earthy scent that was his and his alone swallowed her whole.
Touching her bottom lip, she remembered the taste of his blood in her mouth. A
deep, warm burn had filled her body up as she repeated the words he’d told her
to say. Vaile had said it was magic, and she’d believed him. They’d made love
afterwards, and a flood of memories returned in that moment, making the
juncture between her legs slick with equal amounts of desire and need.

‘Again?’ Vaile
murmured from behind her. She rolled back over, wearing a smile and very little
else. Her shirt and boxers were nothing more than shredded material on the
floor of her living room now. Vaile was still deliciously naked, but a sheet
was slung low on his hips, hiding the lower half of his body. Swinging her leg
over his waist, she playfully ground herself into his erection tenting the
sheet in his lap. His eyes flashed colours, and she touched his cheek.

‘Your wolf has
blue eyes?’ she asked. He nodded. ‘He comes out sometimes, doesn’t he?’

Another nod.
‘Any strong emotion will unsettle him. I have to keep him locked away within me
otherwise he could force a shift and do some serious damage. It takes a lot of
practise.’

She kissed him
then—half because she just could, and the other half because she wanted to take
that haunted look from his eyes. He’d explained that it was like having another
soul inside him. Vaile kissed her back. His hands slid down her back, cupping
her ass and lifting her off him for a second. When Vaile lowered her back down,
the sheet was gone, leaving them touching intimately—skin to skin.

Larissa lowered
her head to his chest—kissing and licking and biting her way down to his navel.
His skin tasted of salt and man, rain and woods. She rimmed his belly button
with her tongue, savouring the flavour of his skin. His muscles were hard under
her mouth, his skin hot. Earthy and sweet, she inhaled his scent; loving how it
made her feel safe and loved.

Vaile’s hands
were pulling her up before she could get to where she really wanted to be. She
wanted to put her mouth on him again. She loved drawing low groans from him,
loved having more power than him in just one thing.

‘Can I ask you
something?’ he asked her gently, tilting her head up to meet his eyes. They
were swirling with colour.

She bit her lip.
‘Sure.’

He looked away,
nervous, and uncharacteristically Vaile. ‘That ring you used to wear. Will you
tell me about it?’

Larissa jerked
away like she’d been slapped. He wanted to talk about it? Just mentioning the
ring made her heart jump into her throat. She swallowed it down. ‘Y-you want to
know about the ring?’ she asked in case she’d misheard him, but painfully aware
that she hadn’t. She’d heard him just fine. ‘The ring,’ she repeated when he
nodded. Her mouth was suddenly desert-dry. She rolled off him, sitting on the
mattress beside him in a yoga pose with the sheet pulled into her lap.

He rolled onto
his back, propping his arms under his head in a relaxed, nonthreatening way.
‘You told me once that it belonged to your fiancé,’ he added, prompting her gently
with the coarseness of his voice. ‘But he died. How did he die, Larissa?’

Her heart began
beating against her ribs with invisible fists. She licked her lips again, ran
her tongue across the front of her teeth, chewed the inside of her cheek—
anything
but talk about Brad.

‘Larissa?’
Vaile’s warm hand found her cheek, his fingers brushing against her skin until
she melted beneath them.

She swallowed
thickly. ‘His name was Brad. We’d been dating since I moved to Buxton with my
family fifteen years ago. He was my next door neighbour, and the first boy that
I ever loved.’ Vaile tensed beside her, only relaxing when she rested a hand
onto his chest. She could feel his strong heart beating powerfully beneath her
fingers. ‘I had so many firsts with him,’ she murmured softly. The muscles in
Vaile’s neck corded then, bulging under his skin. She looked at him, puzzled.

‘I’m sorry,’ he
replied gruffly. ‘I get a little jealous. Keep going,’ he added, gritting his
teeth.

She swallowed.
‘H-he joined the police while I was in my final year of university. I was
studying veterinary science, and I’d just started a job at a vet practice in
town. I was at work when I got the phone call to tell me that there’d been an
accident … that he’d been …’ her words broke off.

She could feel
the burn of tears. And even though she tried to suppress them, wracked sobs
broke free from her throat. Vaile pulled her down to his chest, her ear over
his heart. He stroked her back, her hair, waiting until she was ready to talk
again. She stayed tucked against his chest for a long time. Mentally, she was
rebuilding the wall she usually put Brad behind to stop herself from falling
apart.

‘He’d been
killed—shot during a routine traffic stop.’ Her voice was flat now,
emotionless. That was just the way it had to be if she was going to get through
this story. ‘He’d only been out of the Academy a week when it happened. We’d
only been engaged a week too. I had to go identify his body. I was hysterical
when I was in that room. He was just lying on a steel slab like he was asleep.
I kept waiting for him to just wake up and tell me it was all a joke.’ She was
suddenly back in that room. The stench of death was clinging to her. His eyes
were closed, and there was nothing the pathologist could do to hide the high-powered
nine-millimetre round in the middle of his forehead. ‘I wanted to leave that
room, but I stayed because I was all that he had. His parents had died in a car
accident the year before, and he didn’t have any brothers or sisters.’

Vaile’s arms
tightened around her, offering her support without her having to ask for it.
She sniffed. ‘I buried him with the money we’d managed to save as a deposit on
a house, and the very next day I joined the police. It was his dream to help
people, to wear the uniform. He’d wanted to be a cop since he was ten years
old.’ She paused, waiting for the tears to clear from her eyes. ‘So, I wore his
ring after he died because he hadn’t been able to buy me a diamond ring at the
time.’ She gazed down at her naked ring finger. ‘No matter how terrible my day
at the Academy was, or what was going on in my life, if I looked down at that
ring, everything else just melted away.’

‘Why did you
take it off then?’ Vaile’s voice was a vibration through the side of her head—a
gentle buzzing.

‘I was speaking
to my mother, and she was telling me that Brad wasn’t the ring. He’s gone now,
but his memory is with me and it always will be. But since I met you Vaile, all
those feeling of loneliness and sadness are gone. I don’t think about Brad as often
as I did. Going to the morgue again brought the trauma back up for me, but I
don’t miss him like I used to.’ She looked up at him. ‘Now, when I close my
eyes, I see only you.’ Larissa leaned forward and kissed Vaile. His mouth moved
against hers, his hand cupping the back of her head and dragging her closer.

When she broke
away from the kiss, Vaile was frowning. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

He cleared his
throat roughly. ‘You’ve just told me everything, and I should do the same.’

‘Oh, Vaile, no,
you don’t have to if you don’t want to.’

He shook his
head. ‘We’re partners, and now we’re mated. You should know about my past.’

Larissa shut her
mouth and listened. This was the first time he was willingly sharing
information with her, and she’d be damned if she let that opportunity slip by.

‘I had a mate
once, a long time ago. Her name was Sophia, and she was my alpha’s only
daughter. I was an enforcer back then—kind of like hired muscle, a soldier,’ he
explained when Larissa opened her mouth to ask. ‘We had shifted, and were out
running. It was dusk. Sophia was a lot faster than I was. She was built for
speed. We were having a race when she took off ahead of me. There was a change
in wind direction, and I smelled them: hunters.’ Vaile’s top lip pulled away from
his teeth in a sneer. It was both frightening and fascinating. ‘They shot her
before I could warn her, but I was a coward. I hid away from them and their
guns, only emerging to find that they’d taken her body with them—to brag about
it no doubt.’ He swallowed, and Larissa noticed that his eyes were ice-blue,
but distinctly vague like he was lost in the past. ‘I hunted them down, every
single one of them, leaving the man who pulled the trigger for last. He was a
sheep farmer, so I shifted and feasted on the flock.’