Stay True To Me: An MM Vampire/Wolf Shifter Standalone Story Page 2

  This was it. Ven watched his beloved closely. The one thing guaranteed to make an alpha wolf lose his shit, was the suggestion that they weren’t the total leader of all they purveyed. Con, it seemed, was only mildly conflicted, but Ven was watching him so closely, he almost missed the blur coming at him from the side of the table.

  “I won’t tilt my neck for no bloodsucker.” The grumpy looking wolf shifter made his move, leaping forward, claws extended, his distended fangs causing him to drool in a most unattractive fashion. Ven barely reacted, simply lifting his finger and swiping it through the air in front of him. The attacking wolf froze, midair, suspended by magic, the hatred on his face unmistakable.

  “Now you see,” Ven said calmly, holding his hand up for the rope Mosh inevitably had on his person. “This is one of those instances where it’s handy to let someone else take control.” Dropping his feet from the desk to the ground, he stood up, rope in hand, moving around the floating wolf and making sure he was tied up tight. Only when he was confident the man was secure, did he run his finger in the other direction and the man dropped like a stone.

  Ignoring him, because it was Mosh’s job to take care of the trash, Ven turned his attention back to his stunned mate. “In most cases when a wolf disrespects his host in such an unseemly fashion, it is the alpha’s responsibility to kill the man for his insolence and pay out restitution to the host concerned. That host being me. However, I’m not going to hold you responsible for a wayward wolf’s behavior when it’s clear you had nothing to do with his archaic speciest attitudes. So, as supreme leader, I’ll take care of the problem and leave you to handle the rest of your pack.”

  “Are you going to kill him?”

  Ven wasn’t impressed when Con’s arm went around Megan’s shoulder, but then she was weeping so he supposed it could be allowed just this once. “We’re not barbarians,” he said, more sharply than he intended, because yeah, Con should have been concerned about the attack on him, not her. “The room is monitored with cameras. This wolf,” he kicked the man in question who was struggling with his bonds, “will get a fair trial at the shifter council, along with the evidence provided. Surely, you understand the severity of what this man has done? He can’t go unpunished.”

  “I do understand.” Con looked shattered and Ven wanted nothing more than to drag the man to his suite and ravage him until his beloved barely remembered his own name. But that wasn’t possible. Not yet. Especially not when he’s still got his arm around that woman.

  Struggling to find a smidge of compassion, not something Ven was noted for, he said more evenly, “I think it would be a good idea for me to meet all the members of your pack, don’t you think? That way we can both be sure there isn’t going to be any further trouble. How about tonight? We can dine here at the hotel.”

  “Excuse me, my lord.” Ven sighed at Mosh’s interruption. “You’re committed to the charity function at the country club this evening. It’s for the homeless shifters fund.”

  Damn Mosh, the man certainly kept him on track, which was probably a good thing. Thanks to meeting his beloved, Ven had totally forgotten. Shit. Joseph was meant to be my date for the evening too. “My apologies, that is one engagement I can’t get free of. Shall we say dinner tomorrow night, then? Six o’clock. Mosh will make sure my calendar is free for that, won’t you Mosh?” Ven didn’t wait for an answer.

  “Prince Semyonov,” Con stood, his chin tilted to the ceiling. At least he wasn’t still cuddling his sister-in-law. “I can’t apologize enough for the behavior of one of my wolves. If you’d rather us leave your territory….”

  “Nonsense man,” Ven said with more cheer than he felt. “We’re having dinner, remember? Tomorrow night. All of you. Don’t be late.” He strode from the room, leaving Mosh to take care of his visitors and that useless wretch still writhing on the floor. He had to leave before he did something stupid like mount the man trembling with misplaced honor and sinking his fangs into him. Damn, my fangs have never been itchy before.

  Chapter Three

  “You let him take Brian.” Megan started her shrieking the moment their car pulled out of the sweeping driveway. “You didn’t do anything to help him. You… you… you let that fiend truss one of your own pack members up like an old sleeping bag and left him there to be killed.”

  Thank the Fates our house isn’t too far. This noise is playing havoc on my ears. “You heard the man, Megan,” Con said hanging onto his control with every ounce of his strength. His wolf hadn’t stopped howling for them to go back since he got in the car. “Brian won’t be killed except under council orders. You saw what happened. We came here to ask for sanctuary, not to challenge a vampire for his territory.”

  “Don would never have allowed something like that to happen. He loved all his pack members, cared for them, nurtured them. He’d have fought until his last breath to save Brian, never giving up.”

  “For the last time, I’m not Don!” Con yelled, gripping the steering wheel so hard he heard it crack. “Don cared for his pack so much he invited men in who couldn’t be trusted, and a lot of good people died because of his mistake. If he cared about his pack, he wouldn’t have tried to force a mating when a treaty would’ve made more sense. If he’d listened to warnings the elders gave him, as well as mine, he’d be the one listening to you nagging now, not me.”

  “How dare you.” Megan folded her arms across her chest. “You have no call to speak to me like that. I’m the dowager alpha mate of this pack. I’m carrying the next alpha of this pack in my belly. If you’d taken the deal Don made with your best interests at heart, then my mate would still be alive, still running his pack and far stronger because of his efforts, not yours.”

  “His efforts got forty-three members of his pack killed that night.” Con swung the car into their new driveway hard, his anger clouding his vision. Slamming his foot on the brake, he shut off the car. Jonny, wise man that he was, dived out and disappeared into the house, probably to alert the others of the row and what happened to Brian. Turning in his seat, Con glowered.

  “I was never a commodity your mate could trade. How he could have even thought about doing that to his own brother is beyond me, and believe me, I know he didn’t come up with that idea on his own.” He narrowed his eyes at Megan watching a streak of red dust her cheeks.

  “When I mate and who I mate has always been my affair. Not yours. Not my brother’s. You can twist things around in your pretty little head all you like, but the one thing you seem keen to forget is that those men turned up at the pack house with guns, even though they still believed the mating between me and their precious alpha daughter was taking place.”

  Con watched as Megan’s face turned white. “Yes, you didn’t think I knew that did you, but I’ve got friends and they told me Don had full intentions of passing off Oscar as me at the mating dinner. I told Oscar not to go through with it, but he didn’t listen to me either.”

  “Oscar was a good pack member. He did what his alpha told him to do.” Megan bit her bottom lip.

  “And for that, he ended up dead. It was totally the wrong thing to do. I begged and pleaded with Don on the phone, only half an hour before those murderers arrived, telling him they couldn’t be trusted. He didn’t listen. Don never listened. Didn’t he get the slightest inkling something was wrong when none of the other pack females turned up? Including the so-called daughter who was being traded for the merger?” Con slapped his hand on the steering wheel. “Don sat his entire pack around a table and basically invited the visitors to kill them all, even the children.” That was the one thing Con would never forget. The sight of helpless children slumped dead in their seats.

  “He didn’t know the men had guns.”

  “He should’ve smelled the gun oil when the men came into the house.” Reaching out, Con palmed Megan’s head forcing her to look up at him. “We both know why he didn’t smell anything. How much had he had that night? Two jabs, three?”

  Megan pulled her h
ead away. “Someone else in the pack could’ve warned him.”

  “Like you for instance?” Suddenly the air in the car was suffocating. Megan’s perfume saturated the air, making it difficult for Con to think, and that nagging voice in the back of his head kept harping at him that Megan was lying. But he couldn’t scent it.

  “That’s something I’ll never understand. How any of you could stay with him when you knew he was a fucking addict? How many times had someone told him he was wrong, and he didn’t listen? How many ridiculous orders did his loyal pack members have to carry out all because he had no clue what he was doing?” Con’s heart ached for his drug-addled twin – his mind filled with the reckless smile the man always wore. A smile he still wore when death took him.

  “You will not speak ill of my dead mate.”

  “He was my twin, Megan. Long before he ever met and decided to bond with you, he was my brother.” Con shook his head sadly. “I loved him as much as I could possibly love another person and there will always be a hole in my heart where he used to be. But I was never blind to his faults, and instead of following him like a lost sheep to the slaughter, I stood up for myself as an alpha in my own right, something else Don always failed to see.”

  “You’re useless as an alpha,” Megan scoffed. “You didn’t save Brian. You didn’t even try and stick up for him.”

  “He tried to kill the most powerful vampire in the States, Megan. What did you want me to do? Tell the Prince it was all a misunderstanding? Brian didn’t mean to attack him? He just got up, tripped over, and oh yes, it was sheer fucking coincidence that his claws and fangs were out at the time?”

  “None of us wanted to be here.” Her lips in a pout, Megan stared out the passenger window of the car. “It wasn’t my idea to move into vampire territory. The house could’ve been cleaned up. We could’ve stayed where we were.”

  Con couldn’t believe what was coming out of Megan’s mouth. “Bartholomew Jones automatically took over the pack territory when he killed the ruling alpha. Murder or not, until the shifter council determine their findings, we had no right to stay there. Unless you wanted to tilt your neck to the new alpha and warm his bed like Don told me Jones wanted you to do?”

  “You could’ve challenged him. You could’ve beat him. I want things to go back to the way they were. I want to go home. Now!”

  Con clamped his lips together. He had a host of reasons why he didn’t challenge and kill Alpha Jones, but Megan was beyond listening to reason. Losing even a bond mate was terminally difficult for any shifter, and Con guessed the only reason Megan hadn’t died alongside her husband was because of the pups in her belly. Con pitied the youngsters and worried what their upbringing might be like if Megan didn’t get her head screwed on straight. The pups were the only reason he’d listened when she called and implored him to return.

  Getting out of the car, he strode around, pulling Megan’s door open and holding out his hand. She took it and stepped out, refusing still to look at him. She did a double take when he turned her away from the house and pointed down the driveway. “You want your old house that badly, then start walking. Turn left at the bottom of the driveway and get your butt out of town. I’m sure Alpha Jones will happily turn down his bed sheets for you, after he’s slashed the pups from your belly. But remember this. If you change your mind and stay, you will respect me as the alpha of this pack. I didn’t want the job. I was happy as a loner, but out of respect to my brother’s unborn children I took you on, and the rest of the misfits. I believe this is the safest place for you and those children. Even the council agrees with me, but if you want to be just like my brother and not listen to commonsense, then start walking. Make sure you leave the Prince’s territory before you call Alpha Jones to pick you up.”

  Giving her a slight push on her shoulders, Con released her, walking into the house, without looking back. The six weeks since Don’s death had been hard on everyone, him included. Walking through the house, ignoring Jonny’s questioning glance, Con went straight up to the master bedroom, closing the door firmly behind him.

  Sitting on the bed, Con ran his fingers through his short hair. Tugging on it didn’t help pull his confused thoughts into line. Megan’s outbursts weren’t the first he’d put up with since getting the news about his brother’s death. She’d been pliant originally, begging even, in the first few hours – her heart-breaking cries mingling with her need to have an alpha to lean on. Con could understand that, respect it even, and as she was his brother’s widow, he knew he had a duty to keep her safe.

  The other pack members, Con shook his head. He barely knew them and that hadn’t changed. At the time, they’d been cowed by all the violence, glad to be given orders as they struggled to make sense of what had happened. It was Con who cleared the master bedroom, Don’s office, and private sitting room of the drug paraphernalia. Contrary to what Megan had said about him fighting to his last breath, Don was still sitting in his chair when he was killed. So was everyone else who died that night.

  That nagging thought… Con shook it away but it came back more persistent than ever. If the entire pack was sitting at the table, then how did Megan, Jonny, Brian, Morty, Roseanne, Piper, and Anthony escape injury? In the panic that followed the attack, Con had barely time to think about how that happened, but in his quiet moments like now, his brain whispered at him, prodding him, letting him know there was something vital he was missing.

  Roseanne’s, Piper’s, and Anthony’s escape were easily explained. They said they were in the kitchen when the attack happened. As Omega wolves, they rarely ate with the pack and Don would’ve wanted them serving the food to their guests. The food was still congealed on the table when Con arrived. Bartholomew Jones had one tiny ounce of honor at least. He didn’t eat before he killed his host. Morty, the only other young beta, was down in the wine cellar, found cringing behind the shelves. He said he’d been in the bathroom when the first shots were fired.

  Megan, Jonny, and Brian should have been in the dining room too. Con cast his mind back, thinking about the scene when he’d first arrived at the house he’d been born and raised in. There was barely any evidence of a struggle, no sign of the perpetrators, and only a macabre tableau in the dining room. The scent of foreign wolves and gun-smoke fought with the stench of blood, but of the actual murderers there was no sign.

  Megan… where was Megan… Con saw her in his mind’s eye as she was that night. She was dressed for the party, as were the two men with her, but as he thought back, Con realized there was no blood on the pale blue silk gown she wore. Even her hands were clean. Hadn’t she touched her mate’s body at all since she found him? And why wasn’t she in the room with their guests when they all sat down to dinner?

  Pushing at his memories harder, Con recalled Brian and Jonny on that night. They were both in suits. Black. Typical formal dress for a wolf shifter. But as he ran his mind back over the details, Con realized both men were as clean as Megan. Brian was Don’s second, Jonny his trusted adviser. They both should’ve been sitting with Don. Don’s inner circle knew of their alpha’s propensity for being off his face. But they were deeply loyal to him.

  Or were they loyal to Megan? Once that thought had wound its way through Con’s conscious thoughts, he couldn’t shake it. More memories intruded. Megan laughing with Brian and Jonny mere hours after she’d broken down in front of him. Her insistence they shouldn’t be made to leave their home, even when shifter law decreed the man who’d taken out the alpha, no matter how crudely, now owned the territory she and Don had once enjoyed.

  You could’ve challenged him. You could’ve beaten him. Megan’s words from the car rang through his head, but now Con was seeing them in a different light. She was referring to Alpha Jones, of course, and yes, she was right. Con could’ve taken him in a fair fight.

  If Bartholomew had been there.

  If it’d been a one-on-one challenge organized and held in accordance with the rigid shifter laws that bound all those who shar
ed their forms with an animal spirit.

  If Bartholomew was actually the killer, because that hadn’t been determined yet, either. The whole supposition that it was Bartholomew who’d conducted the killings was based on Brian and Jonny’s testimony after the fact. No evidence pointed in his direction, except the invitation to dinner.

  Flinging himself back on the mattress, Con recalled even more evidence that something was afoot. Megan’s outburst when he called the shifter council, her claim being it would tarnish Don’s reputation. The way she burst into tears, pleading her grief and pregnancy as to the reason she couldn’t be questioned by the shifter guards – not once, but three different times.

  Then there was Brian’s and Jonny’s weak excuses for not being with their alpha. They were getting more booze for the party, so they said. But the cellar was full, so why did they imply they were heading to town to do it. Had Megan left the house with them?

  When the head of the council guard pulled him aside and told him they had to find somewhere else to live, Megan’s meltdown had gone nuclear. Con hadn’t even been aware she’d been listening in, still struggling with his own sense of loss over his twin. It’d been Brian and Jonny who’d escorted her away to her room that day.

  It was that same council officer who told him about Prince Semyonov’s coven, and how he was happy to take in and protect shifters in danger. The council guards weren’t certain Alpha Jones was the culprit, or any other established pack. They even suggested there was a hunter group in the area, which meant it made sense to leave pack territory, especially with Megan’s pregnancy. Con remembered doing the research on Rockville, unable to find a single picture of the elusive Prince online, but he and his wolf agreed it was the right move to make.