Little Red (Not Quite the Fairy Tale #5) (7 page)

Chapter Eleven

Trust

Panic. Pure, undiluted panic clenched his guts when they made it to the palace to find it wrecked, everything inside destroyed, as though there had been a tornado indoors. Everything was eerie silent.

The wolves growled and snarled around him. Turning to Lana for explanation, he realized she’d also morphed into her animal form, and was sniffing the air.

Chase ran his hand on her surprisingly soft fur, needing to touch her; the simple contact worked some magic, soothing both of their nerves – she leaned into his caress for a second but the next instant, she was back in her human shell.

“Underground,” she said tightly. “The Queen’s underground. I can smell her, but it's faint.” Seeing his expression at that, she clarified, “It’s a good thing. It means there's no blood.”

Chase nodded and immediately ran to the first corridor leading to the dungeons. He turned, frowning because no Wilderling was following him. 

“He’s still here. Don’t know where, his smell is
everywhere,
” Lana explained out loud, probably for his benefit as well as his soldier’s. “Tarik, first floor. Take Gyn and Weiss. Peta, second floor…”

She was ordering the wolves along with his men and both obeyed without question.

What a perfect Queen he’d found himself.

Chase hesitated for all of one minute before deciding that she had the situation at hand, and heading downstairs. 

Given the fact that he wasn’t blessed with any super sense, he settled for good all yelling, instead: “Grandma!” he screamed each time he opened a door.

Empty. Deserted. Nothing.

There were too many rooms down here, and he didn’t feel comfortable walking further and further away from where Lana could hear and scent him.

What the hell.

Chase stopped listening to reason for a minute, closed his eyes and tentatively sniffed the air, delighted there wasn’t anyone there to see him make a fool of himself.

Strangely, he did get a whiff of something that stood out.
Bad
, a weak, unfamiliar voice murmured.
Foul. Enemy.

Ok, that was weird and crazy, but he’d process that later.

Slowly, tentatively, he approached a wooden door, pulled the peg and the bolt fell.

His stomach recoiled at the sight before him.

There was no need to wonder how the wolf might have managed to mask his scent. He was covered in blood, from head to toes, as though he’d bathed in it. There was an arm on the floor just next to Chase, nibbled at like a common bone. In the midst of all this sat Mimi, blindfolded to a chair and mercifully, unarmed.

“Grandma, you’re alright?”

“Just peachy, deary,” the wolf replied in a high pitch tone, before laughing as though he’d come up with the best joke in the world.

Ok. The guy was mad. Chase liked that; he could use that.

“Well, I must say Grandma, you’ve got pretty big arms. Never noticed that,” he joked causally.

Strange as it sound, the wolf took the bate, smiling bright as he replied, “All the better to hug you, deary.”

Chase knew he was doing nothing more than buying time but there was no doubt – none whatsoever – that it was all he needed.

He wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t going to try to beat a six foot five mountain of muscles who could turn into a wolf all by himself. He couldn’t, he’d just die trying and he had shit to do – appointments to attend, laws to oversee, gorgeous brunettes to fuck, marry and impregnate, those kind of things. 

So, smiling back, he tried:

“Big legs, too.” As the three words only took a second, he added, “I mean, how do you get trousers that fit without bagging at the waist?”

“Well, I have to get them made to measure, which is pretty damn expensive, actually,” he replied in his normal voice.

Not good. The normal Alpha wasn’t the one he needed to speak with. Quickly, to change the course of the discussion, he added, “Big teeth...” Teeth were not good either, dammit! He wasn’t too keen on getting the lunatic flesh eating nutcase thinking about how he’d like to use his set of fangs, strangely extended although everything else about his appearance was human right now.

Nutcase, it seemed, had picked up on his alarm. He was fully focused, now. He smirked in a way that made what came out of his mouth utterly unsurprising.

“All the better to eat you.”

Chase just smiled.

Too late.

He wasn’t certain how he could feel that she was near – he couldn’t exactly hear her – but she was, of that, he was sure.

The brown wolf started its change. He was slow. Perhaps twenty, thirty seconds – and those seconds cost him his life. Lana ran in her human form, from the very end of the corridor, then in a flash, she was a wolf, already next to him, pushing past and launching herself at the morphing lunatic.

There should have been something a bit disturbing in seeing an animal close its mouth and rip right trough a man’s stomach, but Chase was actually fine with it, all things considered. It sounded worse than it looked – bone crushing was a remarkably noisy affair.

Oh well.

“Tell me that’s our girl ripping that vile animal to shreds?” the Queen asked from the chair where she’d stayed, rather indifferent to it all.

“Let’s put it this way: she may need a bath,” he replied, working on her restraints after he’d removed her blindfold. “What happened?”

“From what I understood of all of his whining, his people turned on him – he heard that practically all of them had decided to leave the woods and go find our Little Red. So he decided it wasn’t fair – and his brilliant idea was to take back what he considered stolen from him. Typical villain shit.”

Chase wasn’t certain that he’d ever heard his grandmother say shit. Of all things that had occurred today, this was the most shocking.

“I was threatened, kidnapped, and bored to death by a psycho. I’m entitled to a few bad words, dear,” she said, pinching his cheeks as she did every time he walked close enough to allow her to.

Lana shifted back to her gorgeous self; she walked to him, grabbed the metal chain he’d been fiddling with in both hands and simply pulled it until it tore. She did the same with the ones on Mimi’s other hand, and her feet, too.

“You know,” he had to point out, “that’s ever so slightly emasculating.”

Everyone prioritized: Chase needed to know how many of his servants had died, and do what he could for their families, his soldiers needed to go home and hug their relative, the Wilderlings had to help the rest of their pack – the three thousand shifters who were now leaderless – and Lana needed a shower.

He would have expected her to be the first to go to the woods, but actually, she didn’t show any inclination to, and no Wilderling had even seemed to wish she would. The strangeness didn’t escape his notice, but frankly, he’d just embraced that life was weird now.

“Fourteen people,” he sighed.

That wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but it also was fourteen too many. Chase stood there, wondered what he might say to the husbandless woman, the motherless children, the daughterless parents he would have to talk to, when he noticed that the sound of the shower had stopped.

He’d led Lana to the bathroom in his own suite – he wouldn’t have had her anywhere else right now.

The sound of a few steps made him turn, and he was so taken by the sight before him, he didn't even think to freak out about the fact that his hearing had never been that good.

Fuck
. She was dripping wet, and there didn’t seem to be anything under the white towel she’d wrapped around her chest.

His brain short circuited as all the blood in his body converged to one particular point.

“Working on anything?”

Way to kill the mood.

“I’m trying to decide what I should say to the families.”

They’d agreed that the soldiers he trusted could be let in on the secret of the whole wolf thing… but the rest of the kingdom wasn’t aware of their existence. If their introduction to Wilderlings was on the nine o’clock news, next to the picture of a dozen of victims…

“Tell them the truth. Tell them there are wolves. Tell them that one, amongst three thousand, four hundred and nineteen of us, became addicted to human flesh. Tell them another wolf put it down.”

When she put it that way, it
would
work, actually. Especially if he mentioned in passing that that particular wolf had also saved the Queen, the Prince…

And that she would become their sovereign just as soon as he’d convinced her to take him.

Chase got up and walked right to her. She opened her mouth and there was a possibility that she might have wanted to say something he didn’t care to hear, so he didn’t let her get a word out, capturing her lips again.

That felt so freaking
right.
Echoing his thought, she moaned out loud and that was all he could take.

He was pleased they were in his room. Her grandmother had long relinquished the Sovereign’s quarters to him, so it was the very best in a kingdom known for its craft.

Good. 

She deserved to be taken to the plushest, nicest bed in this place, and treated like the princess she was, because he was going to fuck her like a whore. There was no way around it. Sure, he’d try to be nice about it but the whole pounding into next decade was on the menu.

Fuck, he needed her right now.

“I want you so badly,” he breathed in between against her skin, running his tongue on the bite mark he’d left there. “But I need you to understand: I am Prince. I come with a crown and a lot of responsibilities that…
Fuck
.”

She must have had enough because she’d opened his fly, freed his painfully hard length and pumped it, too.

“Sorry, what was that. Responsibilities?” she asked sweetly, getting on her knees to wrap her red lips around him.

Oh
hell
. 

“Lana… Shit… I wanted to say…”

He couldn’t have sex with her without getting everything out in the open, dammit.

Well, he could have if he used a condom, but he was pretty sure any protection in this place would have been pierced with a needle, to ensure that the Mission Grandkid Mimi had been on went off without a hitch.

“Lana, listen to me,” he hissed between clenched teeth. She didn’t stop bobbing her head up and down, but she looked up and his balls tightened at the sight of the big, smoldering eyes.

Not. Helping.

He went for the short version.

“I’m going to marry you. I want babies. We’ll practice now.”

Chapter Twelve

Mission Puppies

Now was the time. She really needed to get it out in the open. He’d hate her later if she didn’t.

Reluctantly, she removed her mouth from his shaft and explained. 

“Chase, right now, you feel like making babies because of this.”

She pointed to the bite he’d left on her neck.

“I
am
a wolf as much as a human. I don’t know how it works, but you’ve claimed me, without meaning to. That’s a pretty basic thing – you know. Fuck, mate, reproduce. You’re probably not in your right mind.”

He frowned down at her, and then chuckled.

“Mhh… No. This,” he said, pointing just like she had, but towards his cock, “Isn’t exactly new around you. Like,
at all.
I need you now because I’ve had a near death experience and because you’re naked. You’re a wolf; I’m not. I’m a human guy.”

She was ready to interject, needing to inform him that question was actually left to be determined.

He’d bitten her: there was a chance that he might have injected some of her blood. That being the case, he may very well be a few night away from howling his heart out.

Chase kissed her to shut her up – a habit he’d developed quite quickly – and when she’d forgotten her own name, he carried on:

“I don’t need a reason to want to fuck the sexy, gorgeous, pretty damn strong woman I’ve come to consider as mine. Now shut up and get on the bed. On your front, ass up. I need to spank it for even suggesting I might not want to be buried inside it.”

Her mouth fell open in shock.

One, because
no one
spoke to her like that. No one. Norman never could have – the only person who had been able dominant enough to, her mother, had chosen not to.

Two, because somehow, Wolfie Puss liked it. She was all turned on about his voice. It was firm, unwavering.

Three… because Lana Vermeille, the sentient creature fully able to formulate thought processes and words, felt herself wanting to comply.

What the heck, let’s do this.

Wolfie had never been as happy with her.

She slowly walked towards the silken, dark covers, and rested her head as comfortably as she could on a red pillow. Then, she closed her eyes, biting her lip as she heard his steps, felt the bed give in when he joined her there. Her entire body was tense, expecting the blow, wondering why it was looking forward to it...

But instead of a hit, it was a wet tongue on her folds she felt.

Oh, yes. His hands caressed her from the waist down, lingering everywhere she wanted to feel them, and she was savoring the soft, delightful rhythm… then
smack.
Right on her left ass check. It wasn’t painful, but it was surprising sharp and quick, honing her senses. He went back to his caressing, unexpectedly punctuating it with a hit on her awakening flesh.

She had no clue how that worked but she felt herself grow hot, bothered, wet, restless with need.

And all of the sudden, both his hands were firmly planted on her ass and there was a hard, warm pressure on her clit.

“Aaaah,” came out against her will, as Chase pushed his cock between her lips, rubbing it from her clit, upward, without pushing past them, for a time.

Then in one thrust, he was inside her. 

Lana was grateful he did it over pretty quickly because
oh fucking hellish shit, that hurt.

“Lana dear?”

“Mh.”

“Would you like to explain how you can possibly be a virgin, given the fact that you look like a cover girl and run around half naked most of the time?”

“I could… Or you could just fuck me, it’s up to you.”

“Oh. Well, nevermind.”

And on that note, he withdrew a little, and plunged back in, making her gasp as pain morphed into a weird sensation she couldn’t name.

At the sixth thrust, she was quite certain she liked this. By the twentieth, he was drawing his hips right back and pushing inside her hard, quick, all the way in, his legs slapping against hers and she was screaming, promising bloody murder if he ever stopped.

Eventually, the built up was just too much, she needed something to give – anything – and while she’d thought it had been quite intense before, Chase anchored his arms either side of her and pounded. Oh hell, yess!

“Lana?”

“Mh?”

“You wouldn’t be inclined to do this again soon, would you?”

“I believe I very well may, Chase.”

“Oh. Very well, then.” 

Mimi, Queen of Enom, felt pretty darn smug, and with good reason.

Frankly, the moment she’d seen the adorable puppy turn into an even more adorable baby, she’d had her mind set on a shifting granddaughter-in-law, but when she’d met her, she’d wanted Lana. The girl had a good head on her shoulders; she’d take care of things when she passed away.

Mimi wasn’t delusional. At eighty-three, she knew she had another ten, perhaps twenty years on earth. She’d been so worried for Chase, focused as he was on his work and nothing else.

No more. He’d have a wife and a baby-slash-puppy by the end of the year.

She’d done good work there.

“What is this?” she asked Little Red’s mother, watching in dismay as she popped a jewel on the cushion, just next to the Enomian crown.

Mary Vermeille shrugged.

“A family heirloom. I figured Lana might as well wear it on her wedding day. It will just go under the Hunter crown, no one might see it but…”

The diadem was thin, finely crafted and frankly, more gorgeous than anything Mimi had ever had the pleasure to wear. She was outraged that such a thing might have existed without her knowledge.

“Well then, let’s be practical about this.”

On that note, she grabbed the boring old crown she’d had to put up with for too many decades and put it away.

“There – all better now. This isn’t about Lena becoming a Hunter – it’s about this kingdom belonging to the Reds, too.”

“You mean, the Vermeilles.”

“Whatever.”