Page 11 of Primal (The Prey Drive #1)

Chapter 10

Rennick

I haven’t been here before. This is all new, and, yet, I’d recognize the small, warm hands sliding up the hard planes of my back anywhere. In no world, waking or dreaming, would I be unable to identify the brown sugar and spiced fig scent that trickles from her pores and wraps around me like smooth silk, tugging tight to draw me in closer.

The room we stand in is dark and every wall is lined with large windows, each one wide open, allowing the silver light of the moon to flood the space and the misty night air to enter. The white fog that is a constant in every one of my dreams slowly drifts over the window ledges, snaking across the wooden planks of the floor. And with it comes a breeze that shifts and billows the sheer white curtains around the open panes of glass.

A warm, soft kiss is pressed to the center of my spine. My muscles slacken, utterly relaxed by the minimal contact, but my cock has the opposite reaction. It grows heavy, throbbing. Begging for her attention.

“Noa,” I whisper, her name a prayer on my lips.

Her fingers trace across my shoulder blades, her touch featherlight, and yet searing. It scorches into my skin, branding me. I want more. No, I crave more of that blazing heat. I check in with my beastly side, curious to see what my wolf thinks of this, but I find him silent. At peace. Nothing more than a watching presence within me.

A trail of warmth follows her hands as they drift down the sensitive flesh of my sides. As she grazes my ribs, her body shifts, the front of her naked form gliding against mine. The top of her dark head reaches just shy of my collarbones, and as she stands before me, her delicate fingerstrace the defined muscles of my chest and abdomen, making my breath catch in my throat.

“Do you feel me?” she murmurs, pressing forward, her sleek, naked body molding against mine. The pressure against my aching cock is just enough to tease me.

I can’t stop the low rumble of a groan as it escapes. My hands find her waist of their own volition, grasping the warmth of her skin. The feel of her slight body in my hold sends a hum of pleasure through my chest. The moonlight makes her soft, pale skin glisten, and the primal side of me demands that I mark it. Mark it as mine.

Her focus remains on my chest, her face not once tipping up so I can make out her delicate features. I need to see her. The innate desire consumes me.

Sliding my hands up her body, pausing to caress the sides of her neck, I clasp her face and tilt her chin. Her pert little nose and plump pink lips are just as I remember them to be, but her eyes…

They’re made of the same white fog that is trickling into the room from the open windows. Within her irises, it moves with the same ghostly fluidity. The tendrils coil and float, restless, never settling. You’d expect her gaze to feel cold, lifeless, but I’m met with a warm intensity that beckons me. Imprisons me.

Her fingers wrap around my wrists, holding me in place, as she stares back at me. Here, in this dream, she is ethereal. Goddess-like. I am enraptured by her. A craving I’ve never felt before burns in my veins, burning for her. Every fiber of my being calls to her and demands that I claim her.

Noa lifts onto her toes, bringing her face just close enough that I can feel her warm, shaky breath ghost across my chin.

“Pick me.”

The words slice through the haze of need, an ache I couldn’t name tightening in my chest.

“I—”

Her hold on my wrist tightens, her fingers digging into my skin as though she’s afraid I’ll slip away. The broken look in her gaze guts me. My previously silent wolf rises within me, ears pricked, muscles coiled. He watches her through my eyes, searching for what’s caused our mate to look so crestfallen.

“You have to pick me.”

Her voice is a breath, a plea, that rattles something deep in my bones.

I open my mouth to answer, to make a vow to her that is as easy as breathing, but I never get the words out.

The dream shatters.

“Nick!” A strong hand grips my shoulder, aggressively shaking me awake and away from her .

My wolf charges forward, breaking through the barrier that keeps me in control. One moment I’m sprawled on the cream sofa in the den that’s entirely too small for my large frame, and the next I have the offender who dared to rip me from my dream—away from her—against the bookcase across the room. I’m vaguely aware of the distinct sound of wood splintering and the way paperbacks and hardcovers go flying, their pages fluttering as they fall to the floors.

Beastly side still holding our reins, I snarl in my wrongdoer's face, the force of my blazing alpha aura demanding their complete submission. It’s not until their distinct hazel eyes, ones I know well, fall and his head awkwardly turns to the side, baring his neck as best he can with my hand wrapped around it, that I fully return to my body.

With one last, low warning growl, I release him and back away.

He stumbles, catching himself before he can join the discarded books on the ground. Heaving to replenish his air flow, Canaan stares at me in bewilderment. “Fucking hell, man. I tried waking you up the nice way, but you didn’t so much as twitch. You were dead to the world.” He gestures in the direction of the coffee table. “Shifter or not, looks like a whole bottle of bourbon doesn’t discriminate and will knock anyone on their ass.”

Oh. Right. The bourbon.

Without the rush of adrenaline pouring through my veins, the lingering effects of my bad decisions creep back in. The most prominent of which is the pounding headache that makes my eyes hurt with it. It’s notoriously hard for a wolf shifter to get a hangover, but nothing is impossible if you really put your mind to it, and fuck if I didn’t put in a valiant effort.

Groaning, I slump my exhausted ass back onto the couch and cradle my throbbing skull in my hands. The faint morning light streaming through the big windows only makes the ache in my eyes worse.

I can feel Canaan’s concerned gaze raking over me, but he has the decency to give me a minute to fully wake up and recenter my alcohol-soaked system before speaking.

“Took me a minute to track you down. Searched the whole damn house. Obviously, you weren’t in your room. That’s where I checked first. Even checked out back to see if you crashed in that chair of yours again.” Grudgingly lifting my head, I find him glancing around the room, expression of poorly concealed understanding written on his face. “Probably should have guessed I’d find you in here sooner than I did.”

I stare back at him, waiting for him to acknowledge what we both know.

“Still smell like her in here?”

The way his chest expands and his nostrils flare has my wolf’s hackles rising. He doesn’t want another male, trusted friend or not, to scent her. The way my teeth are grinding, I’d have to reluctantly agree with his sentiment, but I find I don’t give two shits if it’s a male or not tasting her sweetness in the air. Male or female. Friend or foe. I don’t want to share it with anyone. Bottling it up and huffing it like a greedy bastard is more the lane I’m running in right now.

Scrubbing my face with my palm, I grunt, “It did last night.”

Subtly, I test the air myself and find it stale, her tempting fragrance nowhere to be found.

Last night, when I stumbled in here and collapsed on this sofa—a piece of furniture I don’t recall ever using in the past seeing as this room is rarely touched—her sweet and slightly spicy scent had bloomed from the fabric and wrapped around me. Bottle of Angel’s Envy in my right hand, I’d laid here and allowed myself to just breathe her in.

It was taking everything in me to not open the message I received from Mercer. The one that informed me of Noa’s location. I knew if I learned exactly where I could find her, I wouldn’t have the strength to stay away. Through my internal battle, I found solace in the fact that I had one of my most trusted men watching over her. My wolf, however, did not share that viewpoint. He didn’t, and still doesn’t, trust her safety in anyone else’s hands but his.

I thought drinking would take the edge off, but it wasn’t until I allowed myself to succumb to Noa’s scent clinging to this room that I found any semblance of peace.

With the last ounce of liquor burning down my throat, I’d fallen asleep with my brain wrapped in thoughts of her.

Noa.

Mine. The possessive growl comes instantaneously from my wolf.

Canaan nods, a quiet understanding and sympathy rolling off him, grating my exposed nerves.

The way he’s shifting anxiously where he stands finally catches my attention. Like a switch being flipped, I go from groggy and hungover to sharp and alert. My wolf perks up, his borderline sulking behavior ceasing. His focus narrows, scanning for threats.

“What’s going on?” I question as I drop the shield I’d placed to block my connection to the pack last night. The panic coming from my people is immediate, slamming into me like a freight train. I’m on my feet before my next breath, my wolf so close to the surface I know my eyes have shifted to his pale orbs.

“Enforcers found something on their patrol,” he admits, sounding and looking alarmingly grim. “It’s not good.”

There are sounds in life that stick with a person. A father’s voice the first time he tells his kid he’s proud of them. A lover’s laughter. A baby’s first earthly cry. All emotionally impactful in their own ways, but none compare to the sound of a mother’s anguished scream when she’s told her missing child has been found.

Or, more accurately, what is left of her daughter has been found.

Carly vanished at the same time as Yrsa’s daughter. They were best friends. Where one went, the other followed, and for that reason, we had briefly contemplated the possibility the two wild spirits had run off. That theory went up in smoke when my enforcers tracked their scents to the western side of the lake where they were taken. There’s an inlet there that has always been popular with the pack’s teen population. There were notable signs of a struggle left behind in the sandy shoreline and a bloody earring that looked like it’d been ripped out in the skirmish. We’d done our best to track them, but any trace of them disappeared about two miles away from their abduction site and we ended up losing the trail. That, coupled with the fact their captors didn’t leave behind any scent markers of their own, left us to believe they’re using military-grade scent-neutralizers to conceal themselves. I’ve also been silently pondering the possibility of a witch or charmer assisting this band of bastards and their cause. The way they are able to wipe away any evidence of their presence on my land is borderline magical. The direction they were headed in before we lost them was clear, though. North. Toward the border.

It was after this that I banned omegas, mated or not, from going anywhere without escorts. Until I can figure out how these assholes have been able to slip past our patrols and move about our territory without notice, I can’t risk it. The very fact that I can’t seem to keep my people safe in their own home is a weight I don’t know how much longer I can bear.

I thought I’d found a solution by allying with McNamara, but now as I stare at the abused and mangled body of one of our missing omegas, the realization I’m still failing my people nearly brings me to my knees. The grief and pure, liquid anger are eating away at me. It’s hardwired into an alpha’s very DNA to protect and care for omegas. It is, at our core, what we were put on this planet to do. That is why fated scent matches are a phenomenon shared between just alphas and omegas. Our existences go hand in hand. And yet, I’m failing at it.

It's a battle to momentarily tune out the heart-wrenching and guttural sounds coming from Carly’s mother so I can focus and determine what our next moves are.

“Canaan,” I bark, my attention still locked on the remains. The remains we only know belong to Carly because of her scent. Her once memorable facial features are indistinguishable from whatever horrors she’s been forced to suffer through these past months.

The crunch of snow at my left alerts me to my second’s presence. “Alpha?”

“Assemble two teams of enforcers. Have them sweep the surrounding areas and track down any trace of the ones responsible. I need to know how they got onto our territory with her body and how they left without anyone noticing.”

“Consider it done.” He dips his chin. “I already sent a couple guys back. They’re going to drive one of the side-by-sides out here. It’ll make transporting her— Carly —back easier.”

“No.”

Canaan’s brows shoot to his hairline. “No? You don’t want to bring her back? Nick, her mother and siblings are going to need time to properly say goodbye?—”

Hand rising, I cut him off. “I’ll carry her home. There’s no need for the side-by-sides.”

He holds my gaze, the silence between us heavy with grief and a simmering rage we can’t yet act on. Not here. Not now. With a single solemn and understanding nod, he turns and strides toward Rhosyn, who kneels in the snow beside Carly’s mother. She’s trying desperately to console her, but how does one mend the soul of a mother shattered by unimaginable loss? Her world has just been ripped apart at the seams and there are no words that we can offer her that can repair it. Canaan whispers something in his mate’s ear that has her bloodshot green eyes shooting to where I stand. Not looking away, she reaches for the extra flannel blanket she’d brought and hands it to him.

Something pinches in my chest when I observe the tender way he presses a kiss to her temple. I don’t currently have the time nor the mental bandwidth to try and identify what that emotion is.

Canaan returns and passes me the blanket before tucking his hands into the front pockets of his worn jeans.

“Do you need help?” he asks, keeping his voice low. It doesn’t matter if he’d yelled the question, we can both already feel the loitering pack members’ attention falling on us.

I don’t bother with a response. Words feel empty in the face of this. Back straight, shoulders squared, I force myself forward, each step heavier than the last as I approach where Carly has been unceremoniously left. No one deserves an end like this. Cold, discarded, stripped of their dignity. But the thought that this is how a bright, bubbly nineteen-year-old’s life was stolen from her is a dagger to the gut.

I kneel beside her, my hands trembling despite the tight grip I keep on my emotions. The flannel blanket is soft, a painful contrast to the broken, bloodied body I carefully wrap inside it. I try to be gentle, though I know it doesn’t matter now, but it’s all I can offer her in this moment and she deserves it. Lifting her into my arms, I nearly falter. She’s too light, too fragile. Another painful reminder of all she endured before death stole her.

My throat tightens, but I manage to whisper, “Okay, honey, let’s bring you home.”

There’s no longer any room for doubt. The internal battle I’ve been waging with myself and my wolf is irrelevant. The choice I’ve been wrestling with, the price I’ve been dreading…it’s inevitable now. For my pack. For their safety. My duty demands sacrifice, and this one may just haunt me forever.

“You have to pick me.” Her achingly sweet voice cuts through the chaos in my mind, a ghostly echo of her plea.

I can’t.

Please forgive me, sweet Noa.

“You’ve finally pulled your head out of your ass and decided to not go back on your word, huh?” Cathal’s ruddy brow arches as he takes a long drag of his hand-rolled cigarette. The casual way he sucks on his cancer stick and leans against his shiny silver sports car—a vehicle that makes little sense in our mountainous climate—irks me. Especially after what my last thirty-six hours have looked like. “You going to honor our alliance, Fallamhain?”

“I don’t recall ever saying I wasn’t going to honor it, McNamara.” I match his emotionless tone and cold indifference with my own, a skill I’ve been learning to hone since I walked the six miles to the healer’s cabin with Carly’s lifeless body in my arms. The constant pull in my chest, persistent and aching, makes it harder than I’d like to admit, but ignoring it is another skill I’ve been sharpening. “You came to that conclusion all on your own.”

The unimpressed sound that rumbles from his throat ignites a violent urge in me to wrap my hand around it and squeeze until his eyes pop out of his skull. It takes every ounce of control to shove the impulse down, barely keeping a lid on it.

“The Alderwood girl isn’t going to be a problem, then?” he questions, an incredulous gleam in his dark gaze.

“No.”

My wolf balks at this, his teeth bared and hackles raised. At me . The budding disconnect that started to form with Noa’s arrival has turned into something vast, an open chasm stretching between us that’s deepened drastically over the past day and a half. His defiance, his refusal to accept my decision, has forced me to lock him away deeper than I ever have before. Right now, I don’t trust him enough to let him loose, to shift, and I have no idea when that will change. His unwavering devotion to the woman who is not my betrothed leaves me with a gnawing worry because if I set him free, I don’t know what he’ll do.

“Hmm…” Cathal hums around the unfiltered end of his cigarette.

I snarl at this, the sound I emit purely animalistic. “I don’t take kindly to being doubted.”

This has his lips curling into a cruel grin. “And I don’t appreciate my daughter being made to look like a fool. A second choice.”

“Your daughter is hardly my first choice, McNamara. That’s no secret,” I remind him, my newly sharpened iciness settling back into place. “This is a strategic alliance, nothing more. A means to protect my pack. Let’s not pretend it was ever a matter of emotional sentiment.”

He knows exactly what I’m sacrificing by taking his daughter as my chosen mate. He understands the future I’m tearing away from my bloodline, from the pups I’ll possibly father. The Fallamhain Alpha dynasty will die with me, a cost I’ve accepted. But Cathal doesn’t care. To him, this union isn’t a sacrifice, it’s an opportunity. A way to secure his beta daughter a place of prestige.

“Nonetheless, if you want me to continue with this partnership, you’re going to fix it.”

My jaw tics, teeth clenching. “And how, precisely, do you propose I do that?”

Never, in all the years I’ve known Cathal McNamara, have I sensed any real joy or happiness when he smiled. Each time before, it always read like a threat. A taunt of sorts. But now, as he drops the butt of his cigarette and stomps out the embers with the sole of his leather dress shoes, the grin on his face is alarmingly gleeful.

Bracing for what he has to say, my defenses strengthen.

“If you want what my pack can offer you—your omegas —you’re going to reject her. Publicly,” he declares, his posture turning smug. “The little wolfless bitch claimed you publicly, it’s only fair you return the favor, don’t you think? For Talis’s sake, that is.”

My wolf wars and rages against the restraints I’ve been forced to place on him. The very notion of this is unfathomable to him. The tugging sensation in my chest surges, sharp and relentless, yanking so hard I almost stumble forward. I haven’t admitted it, but deep down, I know exactly where it’s trying to pull me.

“That isn’t necessary. She’s not?—”

My blatant denial is cut off.

“Are you willing to risk another dead omega being dumped on your damn doorstep? You want this treaty? This is my price.”