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Was that what Dustin
was feeling toward Holly? Was it the reason he kept saying they were mates? The
sensation wasn’t that different from her attraction to him when she’d still
only been a wolfkin. Not that different but about a million times stronger. And
was quite possibly about to get them both killed.

Ron gave Martin a firm
shove with a hand in the middle of that straining chest. “I want you, Tate, and
Sami on watch. Go.” The man and woman who’d been leaning on the SUV came to
attention at the mention of their names and stood waiting for Martin to descend
from the porch. Then to Eric, Dustin, and Holly, the alpha said, “We’ll talk
inside,
now
.”

CHAPTER
EIGHT

Talking wasn’t actually
first on Ron’s agenda once they had shut themselves in the cabin, away from
Martin’s disruptive influence. While Holly stood in the middle of the room, the
alpha and his second circled her slowly and appraisingly, boot heels tapping
ominously against the wood floor. Dustin tried to stand back and let them get a
look at her, get her scent. They had to do it, and he had to tolerate it.
Truthfully, even with her shoulders held high and tight and her hands fisted at
her sides, Holly abided the scrutiny with impressive calm and control. It was
Dustin who bristled, his wolf churning inside him in defiance at the sight of
other males sniffing around his lupa. When he could stand it no more, the scout
stalked into the midst of the other weres, beside his mate, positioning himself
between Holly and whichever of the pack leaders ventured closest to her.

Eric whistled again and
stepped back, finally taking off his sunglasses and giving Dustin that
incredulous look again. “You
are
serious. She’s the one.”

Of course she was the
fucking one, but that wasn’t something Dustin could have said before Holly had
accepted him—accepted him and submitted to him, presented to him to be taken by
him, bared her throat and her pussy and her soul to him.

Breathe,
two, three, four
. Dustin made himself relax his fists,
lower his shoulders, lift his head. “First and foremost, we need to talk about
the varg,” he insisted to his leaders. The snarl in Dustin’s voice actually
lessened, smoothed out, as he turned the topic from Holly to the more obvious
threat. “He’s still out there, and I gotta say….” The scout snorted through his
nose and shook his head. “He’s the biggest goddamn wolf I’ve ever seen. Bigger
than Eric. Bigger than you, Ron. Fuck, he’s nearly as big as Soren, and Soren’s
a goddamn
berserkr
.” A
bearskin
, an Odin’s Bear with the size to go with it.

“Bigger than Ron in
wolf form?” Eric asked doubtfully.

Dustin nodded. “Which
would make him older and more powerful in addition to bat shit crazy.”

The blond wolf shook
his head no and started to argue, but Holly cut him off. “He’s Russian, I
think. A black wolf. He told me his name was Ivan.”

Until she said as much,
Ron’s face had been lower, thoughtful but otherwise expressionless, maybe a tad
grim. Now his head snapped up, as he stepped forward and shoved Dustin out of
his way with one hand.

“Be still,” Eric
cautioned the scout. Dustin, shaking with fury, had a handful of Ron’s shirt
and Eric a handful of Dustin’s. “Let them talk.” Dustin didn’t let go of Ron,
but he didn’t step toward the leader, either. It took every bit of humanity in
Dustin to remind his wolf that this was Ron in front of him, not just his alpha
but his mentor, a man he trusted and a warrior he followed.

“Russian,” Ron whispered
to Holly, standing over her but not touching her. Dustin knew the alpha was
focusing all his sense on the lupa, searching out signs and smells that might
have meant deception. But there weren’t any to find.

“Russian,” she repeated
in a rasp, low and tired and wary but also steadfast. “Ivan.”

Ron didn’t move or even
breathe for at least two or three seconds, leaving both Dustin and Eric
fidgeting and flexing uneasily. “He’s dead. Ivan is dead,” the alpha finally
said, his voice a restrained mutter. Like he was uttering an unmentionable
name, speaking of something profane. “Or he’s supposed to be.”

As one, Dustin and Eric
released their grips and took a step back so the men could exchange hard,
questioning looks. “Who is he?” the scout asked.

“Assuming he’s the same
Ivan, the same black wolf….” Black wolves were too rare for it to have been a
coincidence, and all three men knew it. “He was part of a Fenris-blooded pack
that had set itself up back east, but that was years ago.” Ron snorted and ran
one hand through his thick black hair. Dustin sensed the alpha tensing, saw it
in the sharpening of sinewy muscles beneath his skin. “I was a just a whelp
then, twenty or twenty-two, and barely able to shift on my own. That pack, they
were way beyond anything most of us had ever dreamed. Half of them were at
least fifty years old, with thirty or thirty-five years of shifting behind
them, almost out of their minds with the wilding, all of them.”

Ron took a step back
from Holly, shuffling, practically stumbling, lost in memory. “All of them but
one. Their youngest member. He was a Russian immigrant they’d picked up working
his way through shit towns and jails in the Appalachians. He’d have been a
little order than I was, so maybe…sixty years old now.”

Holly shook her head.
“Not him.
The
were who attacked me was thirty,
thirty-five.”

“Shifters age more
slowly than humans after they’ve turned,” Dustin told her, which made her
narrow her eyes at him. “I’m thirty, lupa, not a hundred. Stop looking at me
like that.”

When she focused on
Eric, the blond lieutenant shrugged. “I’m holding up pretty well for forty, I
think.” And it was true, as he looked at least a decade younger than that.

“I, on the other hand,”
Ron volunteered, “could qualify for my senior’s discount next birthday, were I
still using the name and social I was born with.” A full twenty of those years
didn’t show on the alpha, battle scars notwithstanding.

Holly’s brows dipped
with worry. “So it could be him. Why did you think he was dead?”

“The strongest Odin’s
pack in the eastern United States went after them,” Ron responded. “The battle,
the bloodshed, the damage…. They practically demolished a mining town. The
Agency was on high alert for months afterward.”

“It wasn’t your pack?”
Dustin asked.

“No, we just took in
the survivors, for a little while. Out of two packs, more than twenty shifters,
there were only three who walked away, all Odin’s Wolves. And they, well, they
were so close to wilding after that kind of prolonged hunt that they were
retired.”

Dustin perked.
“Retired?”

“All their needs taken
care of for the rest of their lives. They ultimately settled somewhere remote.
No more shifting, if they could help it, to stave off the progression.”

“And none of the Fenris
Wolves survived?” Eric asked.

Ron’s gaze shifted from
Eric to Dustin and back. “We didn’t think so at the time, but…maybe one. Being
as young as he was then, he wasn’t one of the primary targets. He could have
found refuge with others of his kind for a few years here and there, before going
rogue. If he didn’t….” The alpha growled low, raising the hackles on Dustin’s
back and probably Eric’s, too. “If he’s been without that pack bond for more
than twenty years, he’s beyond crazy and more dangerous than any varg we’ve
seen in our lifetimes.”

The second in command
slid his sunglasses back into place and started toward the cabin door. “Then
the hunt is our first priority.”

“Second,” Ron corrected
him, and Dustin went still, from breath to heartbeat. “We don’t know where he
is right now. He may well come to us, as we have what he wants.”

“The girl,” Eric
sighed, coming back across the room.

“Holly.” Dustin stepped
in front of her again. “Her name is Holly.”

“Dustin,” the alpha
sighed low and slow, “you know how these things work. The pack brings new
shifters along over time. That’s not just about learning pack law and the
discipline of a soldier to Odin. It’s what makes us
feel
like brothers instead of just mimicking the traditions.”

“It’s what makes us
loyal to one another,” Eric added. He glanced pointedly at the lupa, then
pointedly away, half-turning from her. “And protects us from outside
influences.”

“You mean the Agency,”
Holly snapped, and Dustin saw Eric’s brow twitch just above those sunglasses.
Very few people flared at the six-foot-four wall of muscle that was the blond
lieutenant. Considering her usual restraint, Dustin had to wonder what was
going on with the lupa. Her wolf asserting itself? Or did she instinctively
realize what she had at stake? Was it too much to hope she was invested in not
just surviving but in becoming one of the pack, a member of Dustin’s true
family, as a true mate would have been?

“She can help us,”
Dustin insisted to his pack leaders. “Holly can be our in with the local cell
at the Agency. Intel on
vargs
, Fenris packs,
operations that might target Odin Wolves….”

Eric huffed. “Assuming
we could trust her not to play us.” He stepped up over Dustin and clearly
enunciated, “She’s not bonded to us.”

Dustin stared into
Eric’s eyes despite the difference of six inches and at least thirty pounds.
“She’s bonded to me.”

“Prove it.”

When Dustin hesitated,
feeling himself go cold, Holly stepped around him. She was watching his
expression, reading, weighing.

“Fine. How do I prove
it?” she asked. “Dustin? How do I prove it?”

Ron was the one who
answered. “He wants us to put you through the frenzy.”

Dustin found he
couldn’t say it, now that the alpha had. It was dangerous, potentially
scarring, mentally and physically. How could he even consider putting his lupa
through that? Except, of course, that the alternative was allowing the pack to
put her down. So how could he
not
subject her to the trial? She wasn’t just the key to staving off his wilding.
This was his lupa, his responsibility. This was
Holly
, and he’d promised not to leave her.

The woman shook her
head and threw up her arms, apparently tired of all the pomp and drama. “Fine.
Let’s do it.”

Slowly turning his head
to look her in that gorgeous, innocent apple face, Dustin rasped her name.

“Did you explain it to
her?” Ron asked, and the scout shook his head no. “Well, Holly Parker, that’s a
lot to commit to so blindly. The frenzy isn’t the most pleasant thing you’ll
ever feel. Instead of coaxing out your wolf over months or years and gently
introducing you to your pack, we bring that beast out snapping and clawing and
make it…. Well, make it bond or die trying.”

Holly huffed out her
breath impatiently. “Either I’m not making myself clear, or no one is listening
to me. I said let’s do it.”

CHAPTER
NINE

“Why, Holly?”

Ron and Eric had gone
back out to the porch with the rest of the pack, giving Dustin and Holly time
alone to prepare. She sat cross-legged, still barefooted and not even caring,
on the foot of the bed with the heavy ceramic mug Ron had given her. Well, he’d
tried to give it to her. Dustin wouldn’t let the alpha oversee this first
stage, insisting on taking the cup filled with the hallucinatory mixture of
mead and herbs and lord knew what else and handing it to Holly himself. It was
sweet, a bit thick, maybe a little medicinal-tasting with the add-ons. Under
other circumstances, she’d have enjoyed the drink.

She took another deep
swallow that almost finished the cup. “What do you mean why?”

Dustin was crouched on
one knee on the floor in front of her. “Why are you rushing into this?”

After draining the mug,
and definitely feeling a heavy warmth spreading up into her head and down into
her chest, Holly let the cup rest in her lap. “Do I have a choice?” she asked,
noting her words were coming out slower than normal. Dustin didn’t answer. He
must have known the only alternative was death, plain and simple. It hardly
mattered that Holly didn’t really understand the trial or what was expected of
her.

Starting to feel
lightheaded, she turned her face
so
slowly
to regard the shifter, her protector. Dustin wouldn’t look at her,
like he’d taken on the guilt and responsibility for her accidental shift, like
he’d somehow done this to her. She wasn’t being fair, and she knew it. It was
just her stubbornness coming out, her defensiveness, that fear of rejection
that had haunted her for half her life and made her run away from people as
often as they’d pushed her away, truth be told. Strange that was so clear to
her with such a foggy head.

“Because I want it,”
Holly confessed abruptly. “I’m doing this because I want what I felt that night
I shifted. The energy and the freedom.” Dustin finally turned those deep
chocolate brown eyes up at her, and she couldn’t help lifting one hand to
thread her fingers into the silky ruffles of hair at his crown. Like she’d
fantasized about doing so many times. His hair was just as soft and thick as
she had imagined.
 
“I want a place where
I belong, like you do. The pack won’t let you run away from them. And the way they
look at you, Dustin…. Like your brothers,
really
like your brothers. No one since my mom has looked at me that way. Except you.”