What is happening right now? I wonder, a bit dazed by this unexpected treatment.
All three males are staring at my wolf expectantly—which I anticipated when hearing I would be sent to Carnage Island, except it isn’t the kind of expectant glimmer I worried about seeing in their wild eyes.
Instead, they appear intelligent.
Not carnal.
Caring.
Not savage.
Patient.
Not demanding.
I swallow, uncertain of what I want to do. It’s up to my wolf, but she’s not moving. She just seems to want to curl into the Alpha behind me and bathe in that rumbling purr emanating from his chest.
“Carrying it is,” he says then, moving to stand.
My wolf perks up, irritated by the loss of his warmth.
But that rumbling sound from his chest lulls her into a placative state as she shuffles over to lean against his legs.
He’s wearing suit pants and nothing else.
I follow my nose and find his shirt, jacket, and shoes, piled haphazardly on the beach only a few feet away. He wasn’t wearing those when he pulled me from the water, which means he stripped them off before diving in.
“You got this, V?” the blue-eyed one asks, his attire of jeans and a bare chest similar to what I grew up seeing in the village.
“Yeah, I got this, T.” That addictive purr underlines his words, making me shiver again.
The one called T nods, causing his blond hair to fall into his face. He pushes it back with an errant hand before looking at Caius. “Let’s go break some hearts.”
“And maybe some jaws,” Caius says.
V glances at me, his expression suddenly tired. “Yeah, I think that’s a given.”
5
TIERAN
The female’s scent slithers around me, perfuming the air and filling my lungs with each breath.
There’s something intoxicatingly sweet about it.
Something I want to taste.
“She tried to kill Jack,” Caius says conversationally as we walk in the general direction of the main docks. It’s the location where the guards should have taken the girl. But instead they went to the opposite side of the island where they couldn’t anchor their boat.
Cowards, I think. “They were going to throw her cage in the water and let her drown. I think her assassination attempt is warranted.”
“He was technically helping her by letting her out of the cage and removing the muzzle.”
“Because he wanted to fuck her,” I return.
Caius’s silvery eyes gleam knowingly as he looks at me. “And you don’t?”
I grunt. “Entirely not the point. I didn’t try to drown her.”
“Fair,” he replies. “Well, it’s a good thing you anticipated their usual fuckery. She would have drowned if Volt hadn’t pulled her out.”
I grunt again, this time in agreement. Volt and I were disembarking the yacht when we saw the speed boat heading in the wrong direction around the island. The idiot guards didn’t even see us, too caught up in their own fuckery to notice.
Or maybe they just didn’t care.
Carnage Island is seen from the outside as an overgrown dystopian nightmare.
It’s the front we provide to scare them off.
And it works.
But in this case, it almost cost an innocent wolf her life.
“I fucking hate the archaic methods some of these packs follow,” I mutter. “She couldn’t swim because no one has taught her how to be a goddamn wolf.”
It infuriates me.
Black Mountain Pack is all about embracing our animal at a young age. Sure, we have our hierarchical nuances with Alpha, Beta, and Omega dynamics, but we never suppress our wolves. It’s forbidden to even try.
“She would have died,” I continue, my fists clenching with the urge to hit something.
“Do you think she can swim in human form?” he asks.
I shrug. “With the Nantahala Pack in charge of her upbringing? Who the fuck even knows. I’ll be surprised if she can even read.”
Caius sighs, dragging his fingers through his thick brown hair. It’s longer than usual, the ends touching his ears and falling into his face when he releases the strands. “I can’t believe she’s part Nantahala Wolf. She looks all Carnage to me.”
He’s not wrong. That white fur is flawless on her. “She doesn’t smell like a Carnage Wolf.”
Well, that’s not fully true.
She does smell like a Carnage Wolf to an extent. But there’s something underlying her fragrance that’s distinctly other and it’s throwing off my wolf’s ability to understand her.