“You can’t go with me,” Damon said. His voice commanding. I’m your Alpha and you should be submissive to me.
“I’ve been hunting on my own since I was very young. Is that why you wanted, to mate with me and treat me like a beta? If I’m your mate then I’m Alpha too just not like you.” And she crossed her arms and stared at Damon. “What about your brothers? Didn’t they hunt with you as a pack?”
“I didn’t mean that. I meant...”
“I know what you meant. You don’t want a female along on the hunt. Does it make you insecure?”
“The only thing that will make me insecure is to have to worry about you.”
“Then don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself. I think I survived out here in the wilderness alone without parents. You had a mother and father and a pack to feed you. I didn’t have that, so don’t tell me I can’t go with you. Anyway you will soon leave me out here. I’ll be all alone.”
“Do you think I would leave you?” He pulled her to him.
“I heard your uncle tell you that I have to go back. You can’t disobey him. He’s the Alpha and you are nothing but the beta in your father’s and uncle’s pack.” Damon didn’t like hearing that word. He was the beta under Wilder and the beta under Tracker and Thorn. The only way he could pull away was to go on his own.
Damon grabbed the girl by the arms. “If I breakaway from the pack then I can be with you.”
“How can you do that? You need them for protection. If the Alaskan pack discovers that Wilder didn’t return me to them, there will be another threat of war. I heard him tell you he had worked hard for this peace treaty,” the girl said.
“I don’t care.”
“You have to care. They will be vulnerable.”
“Let’s discuss that later. I’m hungry,” Damon said turning and heading for the entrance to the cave.
“You never want to discuss anything. I need to know how I fit into your life when you can’t have me around your family.” Damon didn’t answer. He discarded his clothes and shifted into a handsome white wolf.
“Are you coming?” He asked.
“Yes, if you stop calling me girl.”
“What do you want me to call you?” He sauntered up to her. He moved close. A sensuous light passed between them. He wanted to claim her in the cave at that moment but maybe he would wait and make love to her in the woods in the snow against a tree if the snow wasn’t too deep but it was.
“Call me by my name,” she said looking up at him. There was a tenderness of his gaze. There was a sexual magmatism that flowed through him to her with him standing so close. She blinked, “Naja. My mother called me Naja.”
“That’s a strange name. But a beautiful one. Does it have a meaning?” Damon said before trotting out of the cave. Naja shifted into a small white wolf. She caught up with Damon and he turned staring at her. “I thought you would be a gray wolf.”
“I’m like a chameleon, my fur will take the color of the environment. In the snow I will be white and among the trees it will be the color of the bark in winter or summer.” He stopped and nuzzled against her and then smelled her. She nudged him away with her nose, and trotted off into the thick wooded area.
They were playful. He nipping her neck, and him running from her and stopping to wrestle with her. They rolled over a glen and down a white thick leaf carpeted hill, and landed at the bottom near a lake. Still they didn’t notice the pack of werewolves watching behind the trees and because Damon enthralled with Naja’s scent and playfulness, didn’t notice they were in grave danger until the pack of six werewolves surrounded them.
Snarling and biting at the air, they came closer and closer to Naja and Damon before they turned to see them. Damon was able to get off one howl in hopes that Tracker or Hunter someone in the pack would hear him.
Two of the wolves tore into to him while the other two circled Naja. She bit and snarled at them when they approached her and smelled her. But the largest of the four kept Damon busy as they bit him and he protected his neck.
The biting and snarling, tearing of flesh went on for fifteen minutes before the two wolves dropped on top of Damon. He had bitten one around the neck and lanced the other’s Achilles heel where he couldn’t move, and then Damon showed his muzzle and tore a gash in the last wolf’s hind leg where he dropped on Damon bleeding profusely.
His father had taught him there was more than one place where the werewolves were vulnerable and make sure to protect those areas. Maybe these wolves hadn’t been taught that.
When Damon woke, he was missing an eye. One ear was severely lacerated and there were paw prints the length of his neck to his shoulder. He was lying in a river of blood. The blood came from more than him.
Blood was everywhere and Naja was missing.
The pack or what was left of them had taken her. He raised his head, and to his right and left and on top of him with Damon beneath them, lay two young dead werewolves. They had bleed out. He remembered that the two attacked him first probably trying to prove something to the alphas. It was clear that they wanted Naja and they wouldn’t risk the loss of anymore in the pack.
Because he was lying beneath the two, the others assumed he was dead too. Obviously they were young and inexperienced.
Maybe a group of lone werewolves had band together to establish their pack and they needed a female. They had sacrificed so the pack could exist. Or the fight was too intense and the others thought it best to take the female and leave. At any rate, they had left Damon alive out of sheer inexperience.
Damon knew from his father’s teachings that he had to find all of them and kill them. He pushed the two dead werewolves off of him. He tried to get to his feet, but he was weak. He lay there until he could feel his legs, and then he rose. His body had been bloodied with cuts and bites, but his jugular was intact. One bite there and it all would have been over.
Watching at the two lifeless werewolf bodies covered in blood, Damon drew in a sharp breath. He had been lucky because according to the size of their teeth they were pups. Not yet yearlings.
The first thing Lycell taught his sons, protect their throats because they were exposed to the sharp teeth of any animal out to take their lives.
Trying to shift back to human form, Damon didn’t have the strength. If he didn’t have the strength to shift, he wouldn’t have the strength to engage four matured werewolves. He would go back to the cave and wait until he was strong enough. He thought about calling Tracker because he was the only one who didn’t have a family, but he didn’t want to admit to him that he needed help.
How could he start his own pack and be the Alpha if he had to accept help from one of his brothers. Thorn would come, but he hasn’t healed from the previous problems and he had a family coming.
Was that the lesson his father wanted him to learn? In this world of men and werewolves, he needed the safety of his pack and the safety of his family.
Damon found himself back at the cave. When he entered, he found Saadia sitting waiting. “I was wondering when you would make it back. I heard your call and I wasn’t doing anything but taking care of your cantankerous father and I don’t know where Tracker is so I thought I would let him worry about me.”
“Tracker worry. Now that’s a good one.” Saadia rose and rushed to Damon who fell into her arms.
“They really did you in. How many?”
“Six.”
“Six? You’re lucky you’re alive.” Saadia looked around. “Where is that girl you left with?”
“Naja. Her name is Naja.”
“You sound like you have found your mate.”
“They took her.” Damon’s voice unsteady.
“You won’t be able to travel for a day and let me look at your eye. There’s blood all over it.”
“I can’t see in it. What kind of werewolf am I if I’m blind in one eye? What kind of mate am I going to make if I can’t hunt.”
“You’re not living in the middle ages. You’re rich. You don’t need to hunt. Let that little werefemale hunt for you.” Saadia didn’t say that to make Damon feel better, but he did.
Saadia dropped him into bed and rushed to the medicine kit and found something to clean his wounds. She examined his eye. There was no way to tell him what he already knew and that was he wouldn’t be able to use it again.
“Sometimes when you lose a sense the others become sharp. Take your ears. I bet you can hear better than before. And your manhood. I bet it gets larger,” she said trying for a much needed laugh.
Damon looked up and smiled broadly even though it hurt all over to open his mouth. “That’s not a sense.”
“Don’t tell that to Tracker because all his senses are there,” Saadia said with a small laugh. Then she gave Damon something to make him sleep. She knew he would feel better after he accepted what had happened to him.
When Damon closed his eyes, Lycell’s eyes opened.
He searched around the room like a hungry dog who had missed a meal. His body healing and his energy returning and he needed to get out of that bed and get to Adrienne.