Werewolf Wedding (24 page)

And, more importantly, the sooner Jake, Barney and Jeannie would be safe.

“Hey everyone!” Dane was shouting again, hooting at the top of his idiot lungs. “I have a surprise for all of you. My brother, Jake, you know, your weak, limp alpha? He was trying to run and hide. He lost the mating challenge, he lost his spot as alpha, and then he tried to run away to save his scrawny, ugly neck. What do you all think of that?”

There wasn’t much response, so he continued. “What kind of an alpha
runs
from consequences? Huh?”

Some general grumbling that time, slight irritation moved through the crowd in a wave. “This kind of alpha! I found him slinking around the mansion last night in the shadows, just where he’d have all of you live your lives. Bring him out, Norton!”

The entire crowd, some forty-odd wolves, all surged forward when Dane showed what he’d been lugging behind his motorcycle. In one disturbing, horrific, singular moment, two of his goons went to the back of his bike, and uncovered the trailer. Inside, in chains, screeching, writhing and yelping, was Jake.

Silence overtook the crowd. Utter, stultifying, complete silence.

With each heave of his body, every pained screech, Jake’s cries echoed through the entire crowd.

“Oh!” Dane said, in his standard, mocking voice. “Do you not
like
to see your weak little baby-man leader in this sort of position? Good,” he hissed. “Because if you think
he
could have gotten me into that cage?” He paused for a melodramatic laugh. “Oh no, baby, not for a second. But you know what he did?”

“Let him go!” Greta screamed. “He lost the challenge and he’s out of the pack, what more do you want?”

I realized she was setting up the stage for the drama that was about to unfold. In a strange, almost distant way, this all
did
seem like a stage show – like a long awaited production that had finally come alive. Tension in the crowd was palpable. Even though I hadn’t been around long, I’d been to enough family dinners to know that there wasn’t a single, unified opinion on... well, anything.

On the one hand, most everyone liked the calm and the peace, but on the other? Even if they didn’t like
him
, a lot of the wolves liked the idea of no more hiding, no more shadows. But this display seemed to bother even the most stalwart of the wolves.

“You want me to let him go, old woman?” Dane hissed at his stepmother. “Then you leave too. Everyone leaves. Out with the weak, old, thin blood. In with the new, with the strong!”

Someone in the crowd cheered, and then another voice joined in.

“This pitiful excuse for a wolf couldn’t even take a mate! How the hell do you expect him to lead the pack during this dangerous time? We’re being hunted! Humans
know
about us, they want us dead!”

Is that true?
I wondered.
I certainly didn’t know you existed
.

“And you want
this
infant to lead you?” Dane was stalking back and forth, whipping himself, and a few of his followers, into a wild frenzy. “Bring him to me! Let’s get this marking, and this execution, over with. I’m already tired of this game.”

Like a tired pharaoh, Dane stalked over to the dais set up at the front of the gathering space, the place we were supposed to mark each other formally. Instead, he grabbed an enormous glass of wine, kicked over the podium behind which an officiant would stand, and replaced it with a folding chair, where he sat like a slightly inebriated, sloppily dressed king.

One of his legs splayed out in front of him, and his hair was tossed wildly around his head from the speaking he’d done. “Bring my brother to me!” he demanded. One of his goons obliged, and Jake kicked at him as the bald headed, sweaty, warthog of a wolf dragged him out of the cage.

He turned those silvery eyes on me for just a moment, before letting his head droop on his shoulders. “Delilah...” I heard him moan, “it has to work, or I’m a dead man.”

Norton, his rough handling escort, grunted a laugh and dragged Jake directly through the middle of the parting crowd. No one said much of anything, except for Greta. “Quit blaming your brother for what your father and I chose!” she cried. “Leave him alone and take me, if you have to brutalize someone!” The pain in her voice broke my heart, but Jake’s words were fresh in my mind.

It has to work
, he said.
Or I’m a dead man
.

But I was frozen. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. An icy fist of dread had closed on my throat and constricted me like a lupine anaconda. Dane watched my squirming, looking on as I suffered for Jake. He narrowed his eyes, almost to say
I told you so
, in that mocking voice he used so often with me and with everyone else.

“I don’t think so,” Dane said. “To replace the alpha, he’s got to die. You know the rules. Vita, get over here! Bring me more wine.”

In all my years, for all my life, I’d never been commanded like that. It flared every single liberated nerve in my body, but I knew that if I acted out, it’d just be worse.

“Now!” he shouted, startling me so that I jolted a little where I was standing.

My feet felt like they were moving forward without my input. I’d had my share of these weird out of body experiences in the past few days that I’d mostly attributed to, you know, a total lack of appropriate sleep, to abject terror, and to my mate being beheaded in front of me if a whacked-out plan failed. But now I knew they were caused by whatever influence Dane was exerting over me coming into conflict with my
own
will. It was like the two different minds were fighting one another, and my skull was the battleground.

“Oof!” Jake hit the ground, knees first, and then flopped gracelessly onto his face. Dane just started cackling like he’d seen the funniest thing in the world play out in front of him.

“Get up, brother!” he said. “There’s no reason to be all sad and sour. Come on, so what, you lost a challenge, are completely emasculated, and are about to have your head cut off in public? What’s it matter now? Have a little fun, why don’t you? Mate!” he was calling to me, because I had, apparently, lost every shred of humanity. “I said
now
!”

I grabbed the closest bottle, sloshing a little of the red liquid out onto my hand in anger. The sour smell of the wine hit my stomach a little funny. The next thing I remember, my knee was hitting the ground, and Greta was on one of my elbows, holding me up. Two others, who I vaguely recognized from family dinner with the wolves, were on the other. My stomach churned, my head swam, and all the while, Dane was sitting on his makeshift throne shouting about human weakness.

Right, because now is definitely the perfect time to go on a rant about what makes wolves better than people. Even though you’re marrying one!

“Why?!” I stood up, knees shaking, barely able to keep myself on my feet, and shouted. “Why are you doing all of this?”

The whole crowd – Dane’s goons included – went dead silent.

I looked around at a whole bunch of concerned faces, some of them a little hairy from the booze loosening them up. Dane’s eyes burned holes in my chest. He tipped his glass back and drank the last of what he already had.

“Why... why are you torturing your brother? Why are you punishing him for something someone else did? And why
me
? What did I ever do?”

Dane’s normal, arrogant chuckle grew more boisterous, louder than it was before. “Why?” he asked, twisting his words into a mockery of my voice. “Because I am the alpha! Because... I can.”

With that, he grabbed Jake by the hair, dragged him off the ground and held him aloft. The chains around his wrists were biting deep into the flesh, but he wasn’t screaming anymore. Either he’d gone numb or he was too dejected to bother.

“If she won’t bring me what I want, grab her. If these two won’t have any fun,” he turned to his little group of cronies, “then we’ll have it
with
them.”

Someone pushed Greta off my elbow. His face wasn’t familiar, but his sour breath and sneer almost matched Dane’s for looking repulsive. I took a swing at him with the bottle, but he just laughed as it bounced off his chest. “That’s enough, little girl,” he said, wrenching my arm and tearing the sleeve of the gown I’d been given. “You’ll learn at some point that you can’t fight the alpha without paying the price.”

“Oh, I’ve paid plenty,” I said, snapping at him as he grabbed my hair. “You dirty son of a bitch!”

My comment made the round-faced wolf smile as sweat ran down the sides of his pale moon face. He dragged me urgently enough that I had to kick my feet to keep off the ground, but eventually even that was no good. I slipped once, then again, and before I knew it, my kicking was just making tracks in the gravel driveway down which he pulled me.

At the end of the path was the big dais – a raised platform with fluffy white curtains installed on either side. Alongside the podium where the speaker was supposed to read the marking vows, where Dane now sat in his folding throne, there were rope circles where each person was supposed to stand.

But now, this solemn, honestly beautiful set-up was ugly and horrifying. And that’s to say nothing of the mess Dane had made of Jake, who was currently trying to claw his way up his brother’s legs to stand, or at least sit. And still, Dane was just laughing, smiling away. He hurled the wine glass he held at me. It exploded on the stones, shards of crystal flying everywhere.

Greta let out a squealing sound that complimented the grunt Jake made when Dane planted a boot in his ribs.

“Mate!” he shouted. “On your way up here, grab my bag off the table there. That’ll be great, thanks.”

The bald-headed wolf yanked me toward the indicated table, grunting an order that didn’t need words. I grabbed both the bottle, and the bag, which clanked with the sound of metal against metal as I scooped it up. “What is this?” I asked.

“I didn’t say ask questions,” Dane snarled. “I said bring it to me.”

Every word he spoke was punctuated with a slam of his fist on his thigh. As Jake almost got to his feet, Dane kicked him down again. He landed with a hard thump and another groan of pain as he grabbed his ribs.

“Stop, Dane,” I heard him groan. “Just kill me. Get it over with. Leave her alone, leave her friends alone and take the pack. They had nothing to do with any of this.”

“I could,” Dane said, sticking out his bottom lip and nodding. “But then I’d be going back on my word. And lying? That’s no trait for an alpha, is it?”

Lying maybe not
, I thought.
But cleverness? Yeah, being clever is definitely a leader thing. Oh my God I hope this works
. I wasn’t so sure. In fact I was almost completely sure we’d both end up dead one way or the other. I was going to watch my boyfriend get his head chopped off and then I’d be married to a psycho.

Great
.
This is exactly the way I thought my February would go. Oh wait, no, I thought I’d be paying bills, making some dumb dog statues, and complaining about my shitty old tools over too many beers on Friday nights. Oh, and don't forget the bad dates. God what I wouldn’t give for a shitty date right about now.

One more kick to Jake’s ribs sent him sprawling to the wooden floor. I felt a rush of anger, a pulse of hate, and thought for a split second about lunging at Dane and swinging whatever I had straight at his head.

As I approached the dais, Jake rolled his head toward me, and for just a moment – a split second of a shred of an instant – his steel-colored eyes sparkled, and he flashed me the tiniest smile.
Oh my God, he’s been planning all this
? It didn’t immediately stop the horror, or the fear, but knowing that he wasn’t out of control? Even with the very obvious problems, it gave me some hope that maybe...

“Get
up
here!”

I shrugged off my escort with a rough twist of my arm and shot him a nasty glare. In one hand I had the wine, in the other the heavy leather sack with the clanking metal. Whatever was about to happen, I was just glad it was almost over.

Dane stood, and my stomach lurched violently. The blood streaming down Jake’s face hit me in a way that blood on someone’s lip never had. It was like perfection had been beaten, like kindness had been punished just for being kind.

“Give me the bag, mate!” Dane roared. “Give me that bottle!”

Jake tapped his fingernail on the dais so quietly that only I heard. I shot a quick glance in his direction to see him curling his finger against the floor. Dane was busy roaring about how much of a stupid baby I was being, his goons were busy laughing and everyone else was busy being stunned.

In the middle of another of Dane’s torrents of verbal bile, Jake tapped again. “Throw it here,” he whispered. “Quick.”

I’m gonna need this
, I thought, lifting the bottle of wine to my lips for a long pull. As I started to drink, Dane roared his approval. “Finally, someone wants to have some fun! Maybe I didn’t pick the wrong mate after all!”

I swallowed two mouthfuls, then three, and went for four before the sour taste of pinot noir got to be too much. I choked it down anyway, closing my eyes as the alcohol’s warmth spread to my toes.

“Yes!” Dane crowed. “Yes, yes! Now hand me that bag and let’s have a damn party!”

“No,” I whispered. “Not this time.”

––––––––

“Y
ou
idiot
! You’ve done it now!”

Dane spat with rage, but that’s all it was. An impotent sputter of squawking anger with no force behind it. Before the bag hit the ground, Jake snatched it, and tore it open. I didn’t see exactly what he had grabbed from within, but whatever it was gleamed in the dying sun’s light.

I’d never seen anything, or anyone, move as fast as Jake did in the next second, and from the way he just dumbly stood there and took the cut in his chest, neither had Dane.

A collective gasp entered the chests of the pack’s wolves as the smug alpha-to-be looked down at his chest, flattened his palm against it, and watched as red slowly seeped out of a wound, soaking his shirt.