The Burning Claw: Book 10, The Grey Wolves Series (20 page)

D
rake needed to move. He needed to turn on his heel, walk away, and give his mate privacy. That’s what he needed to do. But his feet stayed planted firmly on the ground beneath him. Bethany had floored him with her actions. First, she’d declared him unable to touch her which infuriated him and tore at his soul. His wolf longed for that touch. Then she’d gone and talked with other females about their intimate,
or lack thereof
, relationship. Why couldn’t she see that he was just trying to respect her and do the right thing? Did she honestly believe that he didn’t want her? She was his true mate. He couldn’t
not
want her even if he wanted to, which he didn’t. He wanted her with every breath he took. His wolf cried out for her but she wasn’t hearing him because, unfortunately, she’d mastered closing the bond down quite efficiently.

When the girls’ conversation moved on to other topics, Drake decided that another run and maybe even some one-on-one fighting would do him some good. His feet started moving before he even finished the thought. As soon as he was outside and into the first layer of trees, he stripped from his clothes and phased. He welcomed his wolf and allowed him to take over, pushing aside the emotions of the man. He shook out his fur and stretched out his legs and back. Then his wolf threw back his head and let out a long howl. All of the things that had bombarded him, all the human emotions warring within him, were pushed into that howl. He felt free after the howl died away—as though his mixed up emotions had been carried away on the wind, dissipating with the howl into the atmosphere—at least for a little while. He heard his pack brothers and sisters join in response and felt the comradery of their kind. Peace flowed in his soul as his wolf took comfort from their pack.

Drake tucked his hind legs down and then lunged forward. His powerful muscles propelled him much further than a natural wolf, and when his paws hit the ground, his motions were as smooth and effortless as breathing. The wind blew through his coat and cooled the rage inside of him. The familiar smells and sounds of the forest comforted him, not in the same way his true mate was capable of, of course, but comforting all the same.

Drake ran around fifteen miles, covering the distance in about twenty minutes, much faster than his natural brothers in the wild. Just when he was turning back toward the mansion, he felt her. She’d opened the bond enough that he could feel some of her emotions. She was tired. His feet stumbled as another wave of emotion hit him. She didn’t want to see him.
Wow, talk about a knife to the heart
, he thought. He didn’t know what she was thinking, because she wouldn’t let him in that far. But when he felt her mounting frustration and agitation begin to grow, Drake picked up his speed. He wouldn’t deal with things tonight. They were both too emotional and exhausted. But he wouldn’t stay away either.

By the time he’d made it back to the mansion, his wolf was much more relaxed, and the man felt much more reasonable, despite what he’d felt from Bethany. Drake found his shed clothes, dressed, and walked back inside toward the suite he was sharing with Bethany. As soon as he opened the door, her scent hit him, and the contentment he’d felt while running through the forest increased tenfold.

He closed the door quietly behind him and walked over to the bedroom door. It was closed— not a good sign. He pressed his ear to it and could hear her steady breathing. Drake desperately wanted to see her, wanted to hold her, but she’d made it perfectly clear that that is not what she wanted. So he would accept, for now, that she was safe in their suite and he could keep her safe.

Drake eased onto the couch and laid back, letting out a tired sigh. There wasn’t much time left in the night so sleep would be short, but it would be better than nothing. With thoughts of his mate filling his mind, he let the call of sleep pull him under.

Chapter 10

“
Just once it would be nice to hear, ‘You’ve got a month, Wadim. Take your time, Wadim.’ But no, it’s always, ‘twenty-four hours, Wadim, fifteen minutes, Wadim, figure out how to save the world right this second, Wadim.’ It’s like they think I just have the information stored in my butt or something. ‘What’s that, Peri? You need the entire history of the vampire/werewolf conflict in fifteen minutes? No problem, just pass me that laxative and I’ll be back before you know it.’ My next shirt needs to say,
Before you ask, here’s your answer, right out of my ass!
Picture of a donkey wouldn’t hurt.” ~Wadim

A
t some point over the last few hours, someone had snuck into the archives and poured sand into his eyes. Wadim was sure of it. The multiple monitors in front of him were beginning to merge blurring into one big blob of unhelpful information. He blinked several times and rubbed his eyes, hoping to chase away the sleep that kept threatening to overtake him. He was sure that Peri would finally make good on her threats to make a wolf-skin rug out of him if she came in and found him drooling on his keyboard. When that failed, he stood up and started doing jumping jacks, trying to get his blood pumping again. He made it to four hundred and fifty before he finally felt alert enough to sit back down and refocus.

His fingers worked diligently across the keyboard as he searched through the many archives that were his own personal kingdom. Many dated back hundreds of years, and, like Caesar at the height of the Roman empire, he wasn’t sure exactly how vast his kingdom was. There was simply too much ground to cover.

Tonight, however, he was focusing his efforts on a period of time stretching from the nineteenth century until the present day. Oceanside was on the east side of the continent, the first place to be settled by Europeans. Wadim hoped that he might save himself some time by narrowing his search to the early part of American history. Perhaps, some wolves had come over with the Pilgrims or other early explorers. If not, he’d have to delve into the history of the Native Americans…that would be like finding a needle in a needle-colored haystack.

“Blah, blah, blah, blah,” he droned as his finger hit the down arrow on the keyboard and the words scrolled up on the screen. He found nothing and his eyes were already starting to blur again.
“Nothing, nothing, noth—. Wait.” He paused and leaned forward as he backed his cursor up until he saw the sentence that had caught his eye.

The Missouri pack was established in 1850, but it did not grow strong in numbers until the early twentieth century. It was at that time that Tyler Reed took over the Alpha position. Reed challenged the previous Alpha, Robert O’Malley, who had become power hungry and dominant to the extent of being abusive to those in his care. Reed won the challenge and the pack thrived under his leadership, reporting no significant problems for decades. The peace lasted until the early 1900’s. During that time, an uprising occurred, led by a group of disgruntled supernaturals. The troublemakers were believed to be a collection of individuals representing several supernatural races that resented hiding their true nature while in the human realm. These individuals believed that their power and magic made them superior to the human race, and they sought to rule the human realm themselves. These ideas began to spread throughout the werewolf packs. Many wolves left their packs during this period. Some were never heard from again.

The Missouri pack was one in which the rebel ideas seemed to hit particularly hard. Many of Reed’s pack mates were influenced by those seeking to overthrow the humans. Reed learned later that this group had given itself the name, The Order of the Burning Claw.
While some believed that Reed should have dealt with these wolves more severely, he was a strong and just Alpha. He, therefore, gave the wolves who’d been swayed by the Order’s teachings a choice. They could renounce those teachings, be forgiven, and stay and live as part of the pack. Alternatively, they could leave the pack and serve the Order, but they could not do both.

Four wolves chose to leave the Missouri pack: Jericho McGregger, Cross Wilmington, Evie McGregger, cousin of Jericho, and Isa McGregger, also a cousin of Jericho. Records indicate that the two females travelled to America from Ireland, adopting the Missouri pack as their own. Jericho, however, was born in North America.

Since leaving the Missouri pack, the four wolves have been seen only sparingly, but always together. It appears that they have chosen to remain rogue, never settling in one place for an extended period of time. A few attempts by American Alphas have been made to find the wolves and bring them under pack law. Mysteriously, however, each attempt has met with failure as the wolves have never been located by any Alpha searching for them. The last known sighting of any of the wolves was in Oceanside, South Carolina.

The mate status of the group is unknown. However, it was suspected that Jericho lost his true mate before the Blood Rites could be completed. The four have—’

“Have what?” Wadim growled as he glared at the unfinished sentence. He tried scrolling to the next page but, apparently, the remaining part of the entry was lost. The next entry had nothing to do with Jericho and his little pack.

“What the hell? What happened to the rest of the record?” Wadim had found, in his years of acting as the pack historian, that his ancestors had not always been as diligent or detailed as they should have been. This really made him want to dig up their bones and gnaw on them a bit.

What he found would have to be enough. At least they had names of the douche bags. Okay, so maybe they weren’t douche bags anymore, who knows? But if they had anything to do with Sally’s disappearance, then they were definitely still douche bags—and soon to be dead douche bags when Costin found out.

Glancing at his watch, he saw, to his pleasure, that he would actually get some sleep tonight. “Thank you, Great Luna,” he mumbled as he stumbled to his room and crashed onto the bed, clothes, shoes, and all. He never gave it a second thought that he hadn’t called anyone, not even his Alpha about what he’d found. The exhaustion and stress, and something else he couldn’t put his finger on, had stripped him of any coherent thoughts. All he could think was sleep, he needed sleep…and that something else he couldn’t put his finger on.

S
ally’s most recent headache was the worst yet. She was pretty sure that, at any moment, her brain was going to turn to mush and ooze out of her ears. The pressure was intense and nothing she did eased the pain in the slightest. She’d tried everything. She’d taken every over-the-counter pain medication, sinus medication, and cold medication that the local pharmacy had to offer. Heck, she’d even rubbed pain reliever gel on her forehead and neck. All that had done was make her forehead and neck burn—though the new pain had taken her mind off the headache, if only for a few moments.

Sally squeezed her eyes tightly shut, while she continued to wipe down the bar, trying to will the pain away. She knew that she was going to have to go see a doctor soon if something didn’t change in a hurry, not that she had health insurance or anything. Frustrated by this thought, she huffed and gripped the towel tighter. Hands suddenly rested on her hips and pulled her back against a firm chest.

Suddenly, the pain in her head throbbed even more. Something about this action, being pulled against a tall, strong body, felt so intimately familiar to her. And though Jericho had done this more times than she could count, she knew that the hands she was remembering did not belong to him. It was like someone in her past, someone long forgotten, had once done the very same thing. That was impossible, of course. She’d never been in a serious relationship before Jericho—not that they were planning nuptials or anything. She wasn’t actually sure how
serious
they were, or how serious she wanted them to be for that matter. But he certainly seemed to want to take things further and he was intense. She found it terribly difficult to disagree with him.

“You okay?” Jericho asked, his breath warm against her skin.

“Headache,” she murmured.

“Maybe the headaches are because of your hair. I mean…it’s beautiful…don’t get me wrong, but it’s long and thick. I’ve heard my cousins complain about their hair being heavy, causing their head to hurt at the end of the day,” Jericho said, resting his chin on her shoulder so his mouth was next to her ear. “I love it, but it wouldn’t change how appealing you are if you wanted to cut it. You know, just to see if that helps.”

His logic did make sense. Her hair was long and it was thick. She had gotten headaches in the past if she kept it up in a ponytail too long. Maybe it was time to get a trim.

“I guess I could give it a try,” Sally agreed. “It will grow back if I don’t like it.”

“Why don’t you go right now? While we’re slow?”

“Will Cross be okay with that?” she asked, turning her head to look at him over her shoulder.

“I’ll deal with Cross,” Jericho told her, as if he was the boss and not the other way around. Then again, Sally had begun to suspect that the two men had a relationship that Sally didn’t understand. She’d noticed that occasionally Jericho gave Cross this…look. It was a look that seemed to put the other man in his place. It gave Sally the impression that Jericho was actually the one calling the shots, and Cross was just some kind of figurehead. She made a mental note to ask Jericho about it later.

“Alright.” Sally stepped out of his hold and untied her apron, folded it, and tucked it under the counter. She grabbed her purse and turned to tell Jericho goodbye, and she had to back up to keep from smacking into his chest. He wrapped his arms around her to keep her from falling on her rear and tugged her close to him.

Jericho walked her backward until she was trapped up against the counter. His eyes were intent upon hers as he stared down at her. Moments like these were becoming more and more frequent. Sally was sure that he felt more strongly about her than she did him, and she didn’t know how to handle these situations. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she definitely needed some space.

One of his hands remained on her hip, while the other rose and pushed her long hair away from her neck so that he could wrap his hand gently around it. Sally had come to realize that Jericho enjoyed dominating her. Maybe not in a weird freaky way, but he liked having her in a submissive position, like holding his hand against her neck so that he could control its movement.

He tilted her head back and slowly leaned down. His eyes continued to hold hers and his warm breath blew across her face as he got closer. Finally, after what seemed like an hour instead of mere seconds, he pressed his firm lips to hers. It started out slowly, as his kisses often did, and then progressed as his passion grew. He pressed closer to her, wrapping his arm fully around her waist. His body was hard under her hands while hers yielded to him, even though she had huge reservations about allowing him so much access to her.

She didn’t hesitate because he wasn’t a good kisser or because his touch wasn’t also very nice. But every time he looked at her seductively, touched her, kissed her, or spoke things in her ear that made her blush, she felt as though she was betraying someone—someone very important to her. She tried to search her memories for any reason as to why she was feeling this way, but she was still blank on anything that happened before her parents’ deaths. Not only that, every time she tried hard to remember past that point, she’d get these sharp, stabbing pains in her head and that was enough to keep her from trying very often. So, instead, she continued to date Jericho and tried her best to keep the physicality of their relationship to a minimum. He didn’t make it easy. True, he might not be her soulmate or whatever, but she was still female and he knew exactly how to kiss and touch a female.

When his hand slipped up the back of her shirt and his warm flesh met hers, he groaned. Warning bells went off in Sally’s head. Too far, they yelled at her. She quickly pulled away and smiled, shyly attempting to cover up her rejection.

“I better go before it gets busy,” she said as she slipped from his hold, effectively moving his hand away from her flesh.

He smiled at her and nodded. “I’ll see you later. Be careful.”

She nodded back and then trotted out. Once outside on the sidewalk, she let go of the breath she’d been holding. What was she going to do? A teeny part of her liked Jericho. She didn’t know if she could say it was necessarily in a romantic way, but she liked his personality and his playfulness. He reminded her of someone else, but she couldn’t put a finger on whom.
I must be thinking of some celebrity,
she thought to herself.