Wolves’ Bane (6 page)

Chapter Nine

The Huntress

“What the hell is a Huntress?” I blurted as Cal shut the French doors behind us.

He motioned for me to sit, but I shook my head. Crossing my arms, I moved to gaze out the window instead, too wired for anything else. I wanted to go home. I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to ravage Cal right where he stood. I didn’t want to touch him with a ten-foot pole.

“What the hell is going on here? I feel like there’s some inside joke and I’m it!”

“You are far from a joke, Morgan.” His words were rough, almost a growl. “
You
are a Huntress. Or at least, you will be.”

I clenched my jaw. Cryptic answers—that was all Cal had given me. Promises of information to come but nothing that made any sense. I turned toward him, my anger burning. “Okay Cal, listen, I’ve been a pretty good sport so far—going along with you and your decisions without having all of the information, but that stops now. I need to know why I’m here and if you don’t tell me, then I’m going to walk out that door and get on with my life.”

Cal’s eyes grew wide as he moved toward me. “You can’t leave, Morgan.”

I took a step back, my hands raised to ward him off. “What does
that
mean?”

Cal sighed and took a few steps back. “Will you just sit down? Please.”

He moved to a wingback chair and sat, his huge body dwarfing it in a ridiculous way. I stifled a bitter chuckle, shook my head and sat across from him, eyeing him suspiciously as he rubbed his hand over his face.

“Okay, so we told you about Lazarus and the werewolves. You know about The Order of the Wolf.” He ran his hand along the tattoo on his arm.

I leaned forward. “Cal, what I want to know is what the hell is bonding and why did Candy seem to think it should have happened already?”

Cal sucked in a breath, swearing as he released it. “When did Candy…” He waved his hand. “Oh, never mind. I should have told you.” He sighed. “The Order of the Wolf has been in existence for centuries. We are Hunters, born from an ancient bloodline. Our purpose is to protect the Huntress—our Huntress. We are marked, we spend our youth training, and when we are called forth, when our Huntress is found, we must locate her before the wolves do. It is the Huntress, and only the Huntress, who can kill the beasts.” He motioned toward me. “
You
are a Huntress.”

I gawked at him, for once totally speechless, my mind reeling. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe him—hell, I’d swallowed the existence of werewolves whole and didn’t even choke. But to suggest that I was somehow an integral part of this new world was beyond me.

“It has been a long time since we’ve succeeded in finding a Huntress. Up until we had the Oracle, we relied on these ancient texts to help us locate the next girl and we weren’t usually successful. For years, we consistently arrived too late. The beasts are drawn to their Huntresses on instinct, stumbling into encounters by accident, usually. But that’s not the case with Lazarus and his pack. We’re not sure how, but it appears that he’s able to locate Huntresses just as we are, sometimes more efficiently. There have been twenty-four girls, before you, who have been found by Lazarus and his pack first.”

“Wh-wh-what happened to them?” I stuttered, my mind slowly working through the fantastical information.

Cal shook his head. “Dead. All of them. That’s why you’re so special—we got to you first. And there’s a link between you and Lazarus, something in you that he wants. If you fight and defeat him, you could save us all. Without their king, the other wolves will be easier to dispatch. And we need to get control over this situation. The wolves’ ranks are growing. Lazarus’s pack is huge, with lieutenants heading smaller packs under his command all over the U.S. They’ve begun attacking humans, killing the ones they don’t select as additions to the pack. It’s the role of the Huntress to protect the humans from the wolves—with her Hunter’s help, that is.”

“Okay, this is very hard to accept. I mean, look at me.” I raised my arms out in front of me and scanned my body. “I can’t fight, I can’t kill anything. I can barely fend off a bee. How am I supposed to battle a werewolf?”

Cal sighed again. “You’ve been chosen. It’s part of your DNA. You were born to be a Huntress, but you won’t feel like one until we’re bonded. The bonding that should have happened between us already.” He clenched his jaw briefly, clearly picking over his words, deciding what to tell me.

I reached over and touched his hand. “Cal? Will you please just tell me the truth?” Words from Cal, truthful words from him, seemed to be easier to take, and to believe for some bizarre reason.

Cal locked eyes with me again. “Okay. The truth.” He ran his hand along the back of his neck. “So the truth is, when we bond you take on my powers, and you adopt part of my strength as well. You become infused with my knowledge. You will know everything you need to know.”

I pulled my hand away. “How exactly does one bond? I mean, it sounds like some kind of union…like sexual…are you saying I have to have sex with you to realize my full potential…because if you are, that’s the lamest…”

“It’s not necessarily about sex, Morgan.” He paused and frowned. “Although one usually comes with the other.”

When I opened my mouth to speak again, he shook his head and continued, stealing my words before I could utter them. “I know it sounds like a shitty pick-up line or something, and technically, I suppose we don’t have to have sex to bond…but it’s kind of…unavoidable. When the bonding process begins, we’ll both be overwhelmed by the desire to be with each other in every possible way. I don’t know why it works that way—it’s not explained very clearly in the texts. It’s something to do with both a spiritual and physical connection that helps a bonded pair to defeat the beasts. It’s meant to be a deep connection. I’ve been told that it’s the strongest relationship you’ll ever have.”

I swallowed, my mind racing ahead of me. “So that’s why you climbed into my bed last night? You expected to have sex with me when we
bonded
? If it’s so important, then why did you let me stop it from happening?”

Cal lowered his gaze to the floor, his hands clasped in front of him. “I won’t make promises to you that I can’t keep.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

When he looked back up his expression was pained. “I can’t promise to love you. I can’t promise that I won’t hurt you.”

Realization donned on me and I pulled my lips into a tight smile. “So you expect to bond with me but not become
one
with me, not to have that deep relationship you mentioned? And what? If sex is a byproduct of that union, then it’s all good for you? Is that what you’re saying? It’s all business.” And I thought I’d been in control of the situation. His admission stung more than it should. I’d stopped the intimacy because I needed to know more, and now that I knew more, the romantic aspect was filling my head with a fantasy world of being loved and cherished to a degree I’d never known in my whole life, just as I’d always craved. Just like the psychic said. The only problem was my hero wouldn’t give me his heart.

Cal shrugged. “It has to be.”

“It has to be?”

He stood and walked toward the window. “When a Huntress dies, she takes part of her Hunter with her. He will never be the same again. Those twenty-four girls who have died over the years? Most weren’t even Huntresses yet, but their Hunters were changed, made weaker, less stable. They can never fight again for fear of critical injury. They become our scholars, tied to the texts, questing for answers and constantly burdened by tremendous grief over women they didn’t even know. But at least most of them had it somewhat easier. Their women died before they were actually bonded. The wolves got to those women before we could bring them here.” He paused to suck in a deep breath before releasing it in one long sigh. “Only a few have lost their Huntress after the bonding took place, after they’d allowed themselves to fall in love.” He shook his head. “Those men, they lost everything, sometimes their will to live, but usually their sanity itself. I can’t open myself to such vulnerability. I have to stay distant. I can’t allow myself to let deeper emotions form—I’ve seen what it does to a man.”

I swallowed a lump in my throat. “So you’re worried that I’m going to die?”

Cal kept his back to me but shrugged. “It’s more than that. But yeah, I guess I am.”

“So you’re doing this to protect yourself?” There was something about his words, the tone, that didn’t seem quite right, like he wasn’t being totally honest. “Turn around and look at me. I want to see your eyes.”

Cal’s shoulders tensed. When he turned to face me, his expression was hard. “I’m doing this to protect both of us. I can’t promise you sunshine and rainbows, but I can give you strength and power.”

I stayed quiet for a moment. This time all I heard was truth, his eyes unable to hide the conviction of his words. “You said that I mean something to Lazarus—what is it exactly?” Without waiting for him to answer, I continued, “He said that I’m his bride, so he believes that we’re destined to be together.”

“Yes, he wants you because you’re the only female, his bride, who would be able to carry his young.”

“But he’s a werewolf!” My stomach lurched.

“Not all the time. He can transform into a man as well.”

So that was the other half of Fiona’s prediction—this was the choice I needed to make. One man, part beast, wanted me as his queen to propagate his pack, while the other wanted me to fight while keeping me at arm’s length. It seemed like heartbreak and pain no matter what the decision. Status quo as far as my love life was concerned
.

What made it worse was that I felt something for Cal, and I knew he felt something for me. Was it only lust? I wasn’t sure, but I certainly wasn’t going to test it out and risk losing my heart again, and I definitely wasn’t going to be either a pawn in anyone’s power struggle or the victim of some beast’s violent desires. I stood from my chair. “So when exactly am I supposed to fight this wolf?”

Cal frowned, my detached tone clearly catching him off guard.

I motioned for him to speak, sighing when he didn’t. “You said I was special, that I’m the only Huntress available to kill Lazarus. So when is this supposed to happen?”

“The lunar eclipse is three weeks away. Lazarus is the most vulnerable on that night. It’s the one night that you have the best chance of killing him. He’s too powerful otherwise, even for a Huntress,” Cal said.

“Three weeks! I can’t be ready to fight a monster in three weeks!”

“You would be if you bonded with me. If you had my power.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “And I’m the only one who can do it?”

Cal nodded slowly. “Kelly is incapacitated and Candy is too young to bond with Jeremy yet, but besides that, you’re the only Huntress who can get close enough to Lazarus while he’s vulnerable. The Hunters can wound the wolves, but they’ll always come back. It’s only the Huntress who can kill them.”

“So the way I see it, there isn’t really a problem.” I tapped my fingers on my arm, my voice rising as I lost my cool edge. “You need me to kill the king of the wolves, to help you save humanity, but in order to absorb the power that I need to do that I run the risk of losing control of my desire and being intimate with you.”

Cal nodded again, a flicker of hope crossing his face as he took a tentative step toward me.

I glared at him. “And I’m not willing to take that risk. I’m not going to have sex with you just for the sake of killing Lazarus.”

He stopped as if slapped, his eyes narrowing.

“Do you have any idea how demeaning that is? How…how…sexist?” I pointed at him, stabbing the air with vigor. “I’m not loose, Caleb. All I ask for, all any woman would ask for, is someone to care about her. Maybe I don’t deserve that kind of respect and love, maybe it’s just not meant to be for me, but for the first time in my life I feel like I have some measure of control over what happens. The thought of having sex with you…” I swallowed uncomfortably, nearly choking on the words I was trying to force out. “Well, I’m not going to deny that there
is
something between us. I won’t deny that I want you like I’ve never wanted another man in my life. But I won’t warp intimacy just because it’s a byproduct of some magical bond, not if it’s supposed to be more. And I feel like it is…supposed to be more than just a physical thing.” I shrugged as I uttered my last words, suddenly feeling silly for speaking my heart to a near stranger.

“It’s just the attraction you’re feeling, lust,” he offered, with no conviction in his voice. “That
something
you feel, the attraction between us, is supposed to be there. It doesn’t mean we’re meant to fall in love.”

My anger flared, eradicating all other emotions as I glared back at him. “Don’t tell me what I’m feeling. I didn’t say I was in love with you. I’m saying that I can’t abide the idea that after all of this is over, after I’ve given up everything to become a Huntress, to go along with this crazy plan, that I’d have to give up my dignity as well. I’m not interested in a one-night stand. I’ve been down that road and I don’t like it. It’s insulting that you admit there should be a deep emotional commitment between Hunter and Huntress, but that you won’t allow it.” I turned my back on him. “What are you really scared of, Caleb? Me dying? Or me choosing the king instead of you? You might be some big, bad Hunter to the Order, but what I see is a coward.” I didn’t give him a chance to respond, storming from the room without a backward glance.

Chapter Ten

Debriefing

Cal sighed as he melted into the chair. “Well, that went well.”
So much for the no emotion thing.

A light knock sounded on the open door and he looked up to see Andrew hovering outside.

“Did Kelly see it all or did you just hear the shouting?”

Andrew moved into the room and closed the door. “Part Kelly, part shouting.” He took the seat across from Cal, the one that Morgan had been sitting in moments before. “Why didn’t you tell her what she wanted to hear?”

Cal looked up at Andrew with surprise. “What, lie to her?” He shook his head. “I can’t lie to her. She can read me—she can tell when I’m not being honest, wants to look into my damn eyes to see if I’m telling her the whole truth.”

Andrew nodded. “Ah yes, that was something Kelly could do to me too. It sucks. I forgot.”

He nodded and rolled his eyes. “You’re telling me.”

“You should have bonded with her the other night.”

He shrugged. “I know, but I couldn’t willfully hurt her. She hinted that she’s been through heartbreak before.” Well, that and the fact that she seemed to have the world’s worst opinion of her worth.
Maybe I don’t deserve that kind of respect and love, maybe it’s just not meant to be for me…
that had caught Cal off guard. It had taken everything in his power to not grab her and give her a shake before ravishing her lips in a sincere showing of her worth to him. But he couldn’t do it…he couldn’t do anything that would reassure her or deepen that connection. It would be better for her as well if they didn’t fall in love with one another.

“Cal, you of all people know the consequences of forming an attachment to her. It’s too risky, especially if she is Lazarus’s bride.”

Cal pursed his lips and nodded, his eyes never leaving Andrew’s. Ah yes, his cursed heritage. He’d experienced the fallout from a mating that involved one of Lazarus’s brides—his childhood was filled with hushed conversations about his mother’s dishonorable death, how she’d betrayed the Order and ruined his father. It was the reason why he’d taken his vows to the Order so seriously. He would not carry that legacy forward. He would not blacken his vows with betrayal. It was just his fucking shitty luck that his Huntress was linked to the king. Déjà fucking vu.

“So what do you suggest I do then? I can’t tell her the truth, can I?” He sneered. “I can’t tell her the real reason why I won’t form an attachment to her.”

Andrew shrugged. “No, I don’t think that would go over well either, but this bullshit about fearing her death is only half the truth. You’re walking a fine line, especially if you feel like you can’t lie to her.”

“Yeah, it’s how she could die that I have a problem with.”

Andrew rubbed his temples briefly before returning his gaze to Cal. “You’re going to have to convince her somehow. Every day that goes by without the two of you being bonded is wasted time.”

“Convince her without lying to her.”
Oh sure, that sounds easy. Hey hon, I need to bond with you so that you can take on your destined role…oh, and if we have sex, which we probably will, then no strings attached because I might have to kill you later, and I couldn’t handle having to do that if I was in love with you. Sure, easy as pie.

Andrew nodded. “You’ll have to find a way. She’s a young, passionate woman. I’m sure that you can convince her to bond.”

“It would be a hell of a lot easier if she’d been raised in the culture of the Order.” Cal blew out a harsh breath. “She says she has no family, which I’m assuming means she was never told anything about her heritage.”

Andrew nodded. “We can’t expect her to feel the same sense of duty that we do. There’s no reason for her to commit—other than through her connection to you. We got lucky with Kelly and Candy, but we can’t count on all of the chosen coming from families who have kept the traditions alive. It’s a new challenge for us to face, trying to convince her to buy in, to be willing to make whatever sacrifices are necessary.” He slapped his knees before standing. “I’ll go and talk to her later, after she’s had a chance to cool off.”

He eyed Andrew warily. “What are you going to say?”

Andrew smiled and patted his shoulder. “She needs to start training, right?”

Cal nodded. “The sooner the better.”

“So, I’ll convince her to start her training. I’ll set her up with Lance or someone to get her used to the idea.”

He growled, standing to glare eye to eye with Andrew. “You’ll do no such thing. She’s my Huntress. I will train her.”

Andrew chuckled. “I’ll set her up with Lance for one or two training sessions. Just enough for her to calm down and stop hating you. Then you can take over.” He moved toward the door. “You can be there to watch them. Lance won’t do anything to piss you off.”

He growled again. “Of course he will—it’s Lance, for Christ’s sake.”

Andrew shrugged. “He’s the best fighter next to you. Don’t you want her learning from the second best?”

He sucked in a deep breath and blew it out forcefully as he rubbed his jaw. “I suppose. Fine. Yeah, okay, go and talk to her. But Andy?”

Andrew stopped at the door and looked back. “Yeah?”

“I wouldn’t go in there too soon. She’s got a wicked knee jab that could floor you if she’s angry enough.”

Andrew’s laughter echoed off the walls as he headed down the hall, leaving Cal to stew over what he was going to do.