Devil's Mate (The Tribe MC: Chase of Prey Book 1) (8 page)

“I don’t burp,” she said primly, “and I most certainly never fart.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Sebastian smiled.

They turned onto the lively Avenue. The bar that they had gone to the night before was open again, and as usual, it was packed. Michelle greeted them with a friendly wave and tilted her head towards the private room that they had used the last time they had been there.

Cara wanted to say no. If she were alone was Sebastian there was no telling what would happen. That was untrue — she knew exactly what would happen, and she wanted it.  She wanted to lose herself in his body, feel his arms around her and his strong body against hers. She wanted him inside her.

Neither of them spoke as they went into that room, they didn’t have to. They were on fire with the need for each other and as soon as the door closed his mouth was on hers.

They fell to the bed, their hands going to each other’s clothes.

Cara’s fingers found the slippery buttons on his jeans and tugged them open, he opened the buttons on her blouse. Their moans and whimpers filled the small room as his mouth found her nipples and her hand encircled his stiff shaft and stroked it in an up and down motion that was delightful, but not enough.

Sebastian tugged her pants down, his fingers pressing into the wet cleft between her thighs. Her legs spread and she whimpered as he pressed his fingers deeply inside her oiled walls.

Cara managed to get her ankles free of her jeans and Sebastian pressed fiery kisses into her sweet pink inner folds and the thigh, throbbing nub of flesh at the top of her mound.

He didn’t waste too much time. He positioned himself between her legs and used his hand to guide himself within her heated and waiting depths.

The peak was not far behind, both of them were so excited that they cried out after just a few thrusts and he collapsed on top of her, his mouth seeking hers out once more. Sebastian buried his face in her shoulder and murmured, “If this keeps up, I’m going to have to marry you.”

The words were casual but they rang through her entire body like the silver bells Jaelle wore on her ankles. “Is that right?”

“Yes, that’s right. You’re the most incredible woman I’ve ever met.”

Her throat closed. Tears welled up in her eyes. Now was the time to tell him the truth, all of it. But how could she? How could she make him understand? He was not Tribe, and never could be. She had an obligation to her people whether she liked it or not… and right then, she didn’t like it at all.

Sebastian felt her withdrawal. He wished he hadn’t spoken. He knew that what he had just said was foolish. How could they be together? They were enemies, and when she discovered she’d been sleeping with a wolf, she would probably level a curse at him that would wither his penis or kill him instantly.

The silence grew until she said, softly. “I have to get home.”

“Yeah, me too.”

The silence continued. It was awkward and fraught. Cara’s heart was aching. It felt like it had somehow grown a large and violent bruise that was getting deeper with each passing second.

This was the last time she would see him. This was too painful.

CHAPTER 12

Cara was coming out of the gun shop the next afternoon. It was run by a man who knew the Tribe well and he had not blinked an eye when she told him what she needed. Nor had he seemed to find it strange that she did not want her father to know what she was getting. He was paid a high price for his silence on all fronts and it was obvious that he earned his money well.

The rumble of bikes was as familiar as her heartbeat, so she didn’t bother to look up at first. She assumed that it was some of the Tribe members, but as soon as the heavy reek of Wolf wrapped in flesh met her nostrils, her head jerked up. They were coming by, their bikes flashing in the sun. All of them wore the black and red insignia of the Fallen. Her heart thundered in her chest as she saw the first back patch go by.

She quickly turned around, pretending to be window-shopping, but really watching their reflection in the heavy plate glass window.

A familiar figure caught her eye and her heart dropped into her belly. Her throat went dry and and burned with acid; her shoulders rounded and her fists balled up so tightly that her nails cut into her palms. She tried to tell herself that it was not him, that she was mistaken. She tried to tell herself that the reflection in the window was so distorted that it could’ve been anybody on that bike.

But she knew it wasn’t just anybody.

It was Sebastian.

He was Fallen! Sebastian was one of the Fallen! Rage, hurt and humiliation crashed through her. Cara had never known such a mix of emotions before, and she was almost terrified by their power. The spells that always lay right below the surface of her mind leaped into bright being.

She could incinerate his lying ass! She should too, that would serve him right! How could he have lied to her so easily?

She knew that he actually had not lied outright; he had simply never told her that he was Fallen. But was that truly his fault? She had assumed that he was a Hunter. She had never thought to look past her own assumption.

Still though, he had known who she was. Maybe he had from the very start. Was that what this was all about? Had he somehow learned that she was Tribe and come after her just so he could learn more about her people?

That had to be it. He had been playing her all along. He had been slowly but surely pulling information out of her. She had trusted him, she had told him things about her family she never would’ve told anyone else.

She’d done that because she’d thought he was a Hunter, and that she could trust him. She had betrayed her own family by letting Sebastian into her life.

She was an idiot. Of all the times for Ion to be correct…

Ion had tried to warn her. He had been able to see right through Sebastian, and she had not been able to. She’d been blinded by her own mate–lust and the romantic whirlwind that had been their courtship.

She had no doubt that Sebastian had known that, that he had even planned it. She’d fallen for him so quickly and so easily. He had probably bragged about that to the rest of his kind. That thought made her face burn with humiliation.

Cara found herself grateful for the fact that she had never told Sebastian about her royal lineage. That was one trick she still had up her sleeve.

The worst part about it was that she could not even go to Nico and give him any information at all about the Fallen’s plans or even where they nested. Sebastian had always been so careful to meet her in public places, and to never betray his own kind.

She could go to her father, though. She did not want to — the idea of telling her father that she had gone to her first mate-lust with a werewolf was not the most appealing idea she had ever had.

It would be embarrassing. She would have to stand before him and the rest of the Tribe and admit that she had been taken for a fool. She was going to have to bear up under the recrimination and accept her punishment.

What would her punishment be? Would they Shun her? That was the most hurtful of all punishments for the Tribe. To be outside of family, to be exiled and alone in the world of the
gadjo
, was considered the worst punishment of all. And what she had done was unforgivable.

Cara leaned against the building, her eyes still fastened on the vanishing taillights of Sebastian’s motorcycle. He hadn’t seen her. Perhaps she could sit down with her father and come up with a plan that would allow her to get even with him. To use him for information about the Fallen.

She made it home and strode into Nico’s chambers. He looked up from the papers on his desk. “What is it?”

There were others in the room and she gave them a long, meaningful look. Nico read her expression and said, “I need you all to leave me with my daughter, please.”

They left, but Ion was the last to go. He had a vicious little smile on his lips and his walk was cocky as he went. The door slammed and Cara looked at Nico.

Tears filled her eyes. The hurt surfaced again but now it was directed inward. She’d been a fool! “Tati… I… that Hunter…. he’s Fallen. I didn’t know, I swear.”

“I see.” Nico leaned back in his chair, his eyes searching her face and she knew he was also seeing her aura. She wasn’t bothering to hide it form him; she could not have even if she had wanted to. Her thoughts were loud and clear, and she knew he was reading them as well.

“I’m so sorry.” Her throat was clogged and the words were a mere whisper. “Can you forgive me?”

“Yes. But right now we have larger problems than just you being taken in by a wolf in tight jeans.”

Her heart twisted painfully in her chest. Her father would forgive her, that was a relief, but something much worse had to be on his plate for him to dismiss her transgression so easily. “What is it?”

“The Queen is dying. We are gathering to hold the circle. You must dance for the Kris, Cara. It’s your duty.”

It was. There were other women in the family, all of whom would have loved to have been given that honor but it was hers, as her destiny — her ka — had long since decreed. Tears splashed down her face. “Yes, Father.”

“There’s more. The war we have tried to prevent for so long is here. We can no longer allow the Fallen to roam the earth. We must take them out now.”

“But we had a truce!” Was he serious? Open war? That would be dangerous and many would die, including humans who got caught in the middle…

“We have been attacked, Cara. Not just our family, but the Manoli as well. We know who the rogues are too, since we caught them shifting. Ion saw with his own eyes who they are, and he took pictures. Cameras in the phones — who would have thought that would be the way we captured the devil these days?”

Cara’s eyes went to the papers on her father’s desk. Her heart beat even faster. His slender fingers pushed the printed-out photos across the desk. She felt her mouth go dry and she stared at her father.

“Why not just tell their king he had rogues capable of shifting?”

“This rogue is their king, Cara,” Nico said softly. “Their king and his son.”

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Jekh dilo kerel but dile hai but dile keren dilimata.”

“One madman makes many madmen, and many madmen make madness.”

— Romani proverb

CHAPTER 1

Cara was stunned into speechlessness. In just a few short days, everything had changed, and changed drastically. How had this happened? It had started with something as simple as a stroll alone through her neighborhood and ended with her heart being broken by a Wolf named Sebastian and a declaration of war between the Tribe and the Fallen.

She knew that she was partly to blame for the situation. When she’d come across the rogue Wolf attacking a man in an alley, she’d allowed her magic to show. When Sebastian had shown up to help her she had assumed that he was just a Hunter. How was she supposed to know that he was, in fact, a werewolf himself? Since when did werewolves hunt down their own kind?

Things were dire and they were only going to get worse. Cara’s father, Nico, had the proof right in front of him that the Fallen werewolves had somehow become able to shift at will. Or, at least, their king had.

Like the Tribe, the Fallen had many families. In the Tribe, they were called just that — families — but in the Fallen, they were known as packs. The pack that had settled here in New Orleans had a king who was a rogue.

To make matters worse, the Tribe’s Queen was dying. That meant that the strongest woman of every Tribe family would have to dance in front of the Council of Elders. They would have to all display their powers in the hopes of being the next Queen of the Tribe. Of all the women who would gather in that dance, only Cara had pure Tribe blood running through her veins; only her family, the Kris, had never diluted their bloodline by marrying outside of the Tribe.

Once, long ago, all werewolves had been rogues. Rogues were werewolves who were unable to shift back into human shape; they lived for the blood and the hunt and attacked humans gleefully. Rogues had no taste for non-human meat, and centuries ago, they had almost created more devastation than the wars that swept across the lands.

During that time, a Queen beyond compare had been born into the Kris family: Carida. Carida was young but almost too powerful. Kris meant justice and those that held that name had held their duties sacred. When Carida became Queen, she cast a spell upon the Fallen that would change the way that werewolves lived forever. She gave them back to the ability to live within their human form and shift only at the turn of the moon. But like all spells, this one needed constant bolstering. It had rules that had to be followed.

Many of the wolves accepted her spell gratefully.  Others rebelled, unable to live within the confines of Carida’s spell. For centuries, the Tribe hunted down and killed these rogues; finally, a truce was created between the Tribe and the Hunters, a group of angry and determined humans who had banded together in order to banish monsters of the night from the corners of the earth.

Hunters hunted both Wolves and Tribe — or Gypsies, as they were sometimes known — back in those days. The Tribe suffered greatly in the religious wars and the Inquisition because of their birthright of magic. But after the truce, the Hunters eventually began to accept that the Tribe wanted the same thing that they did: to be left alone. 

In the centuries that had followed, the spell had been threatened many times but had never been broken. The war that the Tribe had dreaded so much never came, mostly because the old rogue kings died off and wiser heads prevailed. When Cara had been a little girl, she had asked her father why that was; Nico had replied wryly, “It’s a little hard to rule when you can’t even walk upright.”

At the time, Cara had not understood what he meant by that but as she grew older she understood it. Rogues had no control over their own bodies, much less an entire pack — that is, unless the pack they were commanding was a pack of rogues.

Her heart sank at the very thought. A pack of rogues could decimate the city easily. Their lust for human meat, blood and bone was so great that they would kill not just one, but many, in the course of a single night. Neither the daylight nor the waning of the moon could halt their killing sprees; they remained in Wolf form no matter what.

“I’m sorry,” Cara said to Nico now. Cara knew she was apologizing for having fallen for Sebastian. She had thought he was a Hunter, but that was no excuse and they both knew it. She was apologizing for not trusting her father enough to talk to him when she met somebody. She was apologizing for not listening to Ion, her fellow Tribe member, when he told her that Sebastian stank of Wolf. She was apologizing for having allowed a Wolf to create mate–lust within her and she wondered if her father knew that, if he could read her thoughts even now.

God, she hoped not!

Her eyes went back to the pictures on her father’s desk. So, the King of this pack of the Fallen was a rogue, as was his son. Did Sebastian know? He was Fallen — she’d seen that with her own eyes. Like the Tribe, the Fallen had taken to riding the giant chrome motorcycles that they loved so much, adding humans to their gang in order to swell their ranks and to engage in lucrative criminal activities.

That made Cara’s heart ache, too. Once upon a time, her family had stood for justice and righteousness. Now they were just common biker outlaws: drug runners, gun runners and more.

“You have other things to think about right now, Cara.” Nico’s words were terse and they stung. “You must dance at the gathering and you must make us proud. You alone have enough power to stop this.”

Cara didn’t bother asking what he meant. There was no way to prevent the war; what he meant was that she could stop the open rebellion among the Fallen’s ranks. There were rogues in power, rogues who had the ability to shift back to human form! It was impossible and yet it was true. Somehow, some small part of the spell had been broken or transformed. It would be up to whoever was declared Queen to repair it — even if it meant her own life.

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