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ChapterFour
Isaiah packed the Tupperware container of fresh bread into a canvas bag similar to the kind people used for groceries instead of plastic or paper.
Only this one was made of materials from long ago. Woven, hand-dyed cotton, pale gold threads added accents to the red fragments stitched together. Remnants of a tapestry that had graced the walls of aDargah. The sacred structures where Cana brought the Fenrir across the bridge had occupied every inhabitable place across the globe.
By the time Isaiah had been born, they’d shrunk to a handful between Europe and Asia.
If there’d been any left in the Americas, they hadn’t survived the Cataclysm. But few Varu lived through the agony of having their wolves ripped from their bodies. And the ones who had were now doomed to walk with the most important part of life haunting their shadows.
Isaiah’s ghost watched him from the narrow path of the motorhome between the kitchen table and window.
Sometimes the Fenrir felt so close he could almost hear its voice. Other times, it drifted at the edge of where it’d come from. Like Isaiah, it was trapped, existing and not existing, surviving but not living.
He’d still been fairly new to his wolf before being separated from it. Not nearly enough time to truly know the creature. It took him a while to realize the only ones who had survived were those who’d had their Fenrir for no more than a few centuries.
Those without wolves had also died, but time had been their killer. Or the depression of knowing what they were meant to have would never come.
That they’d lost their reason to exist.
Isaiah put the rest of the containers with the first; gravy, meatloaf, cookies—food from the plate of each Varu made in offering to the Cana they loved.
They could have gifted modern treasures, but cell phones, TVs, and MP3 players weren’t the same as rare jewels, golds, or beautiful tapestries woven by skilled hands, reminding the Varu who they owed for their wolves and a promise to the Cana that they would always be worshipped.
Food was their most valuable possession now, so it’s what Isaiah wanted to bring. He picked up the bag and headed out the door.
Tanner stood on the steps.
“I guess I shouldn’t have said anything to Cassie and disappeared without telling anyone where I was going.”
“She didn’t break her promise. I just know you that well.” Tanner entered the RV, ducking his head, but his shoulders still raked the doorframe.
“I will not let you kill yourself.” Tanner forced Isaiah back.
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
“I’m not and you know it.” Tanner took the bag from Isaiah’s grip.
If Nash Kelli wanted to kill him, there was no stopping the man. Isaiah wasn’t even sure Luca could stop him.
Tanner tossed the bag onto the small table and pinned Isaiah against the edge. The heat of his skin moved through Isaiah, wrapping around his bones.
A faded dream of what it used to feel like when two wolves wove together, driven by desire, fidelity, or a hunt spurred by testosterone or the estrogen of an egg bearer’s cycle.
It didn’t stop Isaiah’s body from reacting. Tanner was one of his betas. Greater Alphas might not occupy the role of directly leading a pack, but most had betas bound to them through blood ties.
Not that a beta needed any kind of connection to drive them to mount. It’s why egg-bearer packs preferred them over Alphas to sire theirget. They had no problems breeding multiple egg-bearers in a single night, then doing it again, and again, and again, for however long they were needed.
Even after a year or more servicing dozens of egg-bearers, they’d return to a pack just as sexually aggressive for mock hunts as they were when they left.
Tanner leaned closer. Pine-scented sweat filled Isaiah’s inhale, and Tanner slid his hands over Isaiah’s hips.
“I have to go see him.” Isaiah couldn’t even be ashamed at how desperate he sounded.
Tanner ground their bodies together, his thick cock an iron bar behind his jeans. “And we need you to stay alive.” He dragged his touch higher. “Because you’re the Alpha to every beta here and the Greater Alpha to the other clans.”
Clans. That was a joke. What they had was a poorly knit scattering of pack leftovers. But Tanner was right. Isaiah was the only Greater Alpha known alive, which meant if he died, there wouldn’t be enough Varu to take the wolves the Cana called.
A Greater Alpha’s entire existence was to ensure the survival of their species by interbreeding with humans. Using their bodies to bring forth the next generation. Only a few seed-bearers could sire get and fewer egg-bearers were capable of carrying young. When egg-bearers got pregnant, they rarely had more than a single set of twin offspring.
