With Katrina being a member of the Mordhaus pack, he’d never even tried to act on his attraction, and he wouldn’t now. He was an Alpha, and his responsibility to his pack came first. Mating with the enemy? Never.
In fact, when he’d seen her and Joy in town, he’d almost debated pretending not to notice them and letting them both escape. Having her here so close to him would be incredibly distracting.
So why had he ended up letting Joy go and just taking Katrina? Well, Katrina was the Alpha’s stepdaughter, so that would make the biggest statement. Or that’s what he tried to tell himself, anyway.
She glowered at him and yanked at the copper collar.
“Take this damned thing off of me.”
“Here, let me help you with that.” Maddox walked over, pulled the key out of his pocket, and unlocked it. His fingers brushed against her warm, velvety skin, and he felt blood rush to his groin. Her scent was intoxicating; he could smell her musky arousal mixed with honeysuckle shampoo. He fought the urge to lean in and inhale deeply. Instead he moved away from her quickly.
She ripped the collar off and hurled it across the room as Maddox walked back to his chair.
He’d had Katrina placed in a room at the end of a wing off the pack’s main house. The house was a sprawling thirty-room structure where Maddox and many of the other single males of his pack lived. The room where they’d keep Katrina was sparsely decorated, and secure. There was a wooden framed bed. There was a table and chairs. There was a small bathroom with a cast iron tub and basic toiletries – toothbrush, shampoo and conditioner, soap. Towels. Toilet paper. He wasn’t a complete savage, after all.
The windows had bars on the outside which could swing open in case of fire, but they were locked up tight.
There was a bookshelf full of books and magazines, so she’d have something to do. He didn’t expect her to sit there and stare at the four walls while she was there.
“So. Comfortable?” He gave a lazy smile, easily hiding his raging arousal. He was a master of stuffing his feelings down and putting on a poker face when he needed to.
“You son of a bitch!” Katrina let loose a stream of curses.
He waited for her to finish. It took several minutes.
“I’m going to kill you!” she shouted. “I’m going to rip your throat out!”
“Based on past performance, I tend to doubt it. You’re welcome to try, however.”
Fur rippled across her face, and her jaw lengthened. White fur, he noticed, as her ears sharpened to points and laid flat back against her skull. Black claws shot out from her fingertips, and her fangs descended. She didn’t shift fully, only her head. Probably didn’t want to ruin her clothes.
He didn’t even bother to shift. She’d make a cute little wolf, one he could bat aside easily with one swipe of his paw if necessary. He just sat there and stared into her caramel brown eyes without blinking.
After a minute, she growled and shifted back to human form.
“Now here’s what’s going to happen,” he said calmly. “Your pack has been playing dirty with our pack’s property lines. I assume that you know about their challenge to the Council of Elders?”
“What challenge?” she scowled.
“They’re trying to annex a large section of our property. Pulling some crap about how we falsified the property lines a century ago and our land belongs to your pack. They tried to appeal to the state council, and were smacked down, so now they’re taking it to the Council of Elders. Kind of a cowardly little bitch move, whining to the council about something like that. I was surprised that Roman didn’t just issue a challenge if he wanted to steal our land so badly.”
She let out a low, rumbling growl at the insult to her pack’s Alpha.
“And this affects me how?” she asked sullenly.
“Keeping you here lets Roman know his place. Which is beneath me.”
“So what happens now?”
“I send a message to Roman that you will be staying here until after we’ve resolved his property dispute, and if any male members of his pack set a paw in town, we’ll kill them. Basically, there’s no way that he won’t issue a Death Challenge at this point.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “Why don’t you just challenge him if you’re so eager for a fight?”
He shrugged. “I’m never eager for a fight, Katrina. I just do what has to be done. I don’t issue Death Challenges lightly, because I always win. There’s the possibility that your stepfather will regain his senses, back down, and start treating the people of Greenville with respect.”
“And if you don’t succeed in bullying him into submitting? Which you won’t.”
“Then pretty soon I’ll be the one issuing the challenge. He’s left me no choice.”
“I see. My condolences to your pack, in advance.”
He just grinned at her.
“You’re cute when you’re mad.”
She curled her lip in scorn. “You’ll be cute when you’re dead.”
Damn it, why did he keep provoking her, when he got more turned on the feistier she got? He had a raging hard on and it was all he could do to keep himself from pouncing on her. Yeah, that would go over real well. Him molesting a hostage. He imagines his parents spinning in their graves at the mere thought.
He stood up abruptly. He had to get out of here. He should have sent someone else in the first place; something about Katrina seemed to fog his brain and steal his common sense. “Someone will be by with dinner later.” He’d have one of the other pack members bring all of her meals. It was hard to think when most of the blood in his body had left his brain.
She stared at him, and he could see the bones in her face ripple as she forced her wolf down.
“One favor, before you go?” her voice had gone saccharine sweet.
“What?” He grinned at her, baring some fang. “Rip my own throat out?”
“I was just wondering if you’d mind shifting,” she said in a saccharine sweet tone. “I want to remember what color your pelt is, to see if it’ll match the décor in my room.”
“Is that right? You want to rub yourself in my fur while you lie in front of your fireplace?” He heard his voice go low and seductive. Damn it – he’d just done it again. He was an idiot. Why couldn’t he stop himself from flirting with her?
“No. I want to step on your stuffed head every day on my way out the door.”
He burst out laughing at that. He had to say, he admired her. She was strong. A definite Alpha. He loved a woman who didn’t take any crap. Although she was short, a good five three, and maybe 130 pounds, there was something about the way she carried itself that said “Mess with me and I’ll chew your face off.”
He was about to walk out when the door flew open, and he turned towards it with a growl. Nobody was supposed to be here.
His eight year old niece Heather was standing there, with a woebegone look on her little face. He felt anger and frustration welling up inside him. Who had let her wander over to this side of the house? And why wasn’t her father watching her?
Because Bruce was still drowning in drink to dull the sorrow of the loss of his mate, that was why.
Before he could growl at her to leave this part of the house at once, she announced loudly, in a deeply wounded voice, “Nobody will French braid my hair! Everyone says they’re busy! Tara and Emma have French braided hair, and nobody will French braid my hair.”
“Oh, that’s easy. I’ll do it,” Katrina called out, and Heather ducked under his arm and ran over to her, beaming.
Maddox could have easily stopped Heather, tucked her under his arm, carried her off and sent her to sit in her room for the rest of the night, for coming into an area of the house where she was forbidden to go.
With any of the other cubs, he would have. They needed to learn early on that the Alpha’s word was law.
However, with Heather, he tended to cut her some slack. She was basically a good kid, never openly rude or disrespectful. She lost her mother a year ago to a hunting accident, and now she’d pretty much lost her father, too, because of the drinking, which was going to need to be addressed sooner rather than later.
He watched as Katrina knelt down next to Heather and skillfully wove a braid, her slim fingers skipping over Heather’s long blonde hair.
She paused. “Got a brush?” she asked Maddox. “There’s a few knots in there.” She said it politely, with a smile, but Maddox picked up on the faintest hint of reproach in her voice. He glanced at Heather’s hair and saw that there were more than few knots in there. And he could see grime on the back of her neck. Katrina slid behind Heather so the little girl couldn’t see his expression, and shot him a look that had more steel in it than he’d seen in the eyes of Alphas coming at him in the Death Arena.
“I know,” he said to her unanswered question. “Yes. It will be dealt with.” He glanced at Heather, who was leaning in to Katrina.
“I’ll be right back with that brush,” he added, and headed out. He shut and locked the heavy door behind him.
He knew Heather was perfectly safe here with Katrina. If anything, he hoped she didn’t latch on to her too much. Katrina wouldn’t be staying, and the last thing that Heather needed was to get too close to someone who was going to disappear from her life again.