PAWN AMONG WOLVES CH. 07-PT2

Oh. Wow. Oh. So deep, so hard, so luscious. He was being tender with her, forceful, but careful with each long, slow thrust, and the burn of him forcing her pussy walls to stretch was writhing through her blood, tightening, tightening the aching demand in her belly.

"Please," Gemma breathed, eyes closed, head back, as she arched over him. Possessed. His warm, large hands slid down to cup over the smooth globes of her buttocks and he squeezed gently while he pulled her even deeper over his cock.

"Please, Mac. Faster." Her breathless gasp was fuelled by the burning need in her pussy, fire stoked mercilessly with each long, deep thrust up into her. The suckling mouth clamped around her breast tightened, the suction almost painful as his fingers dug into her bottom and he obligingly began to rock himself harder within her.

Oh god he was so deep like this. His cock was pistoning up through her belly, the relentless, steady build of this mating implacable, unstoppable. She sometimes thought she couldn't bear to come like this, it was so intense, almost painful, but she couldn't help it, the knot in her stomach just tightened and tightened and tightened with the accelerating, stabbing thrusts. Closer, closer.

Then he released her breast with his mouth and pushed a palm against her chest between them, pushing her back almost upright above him His hands captured her wrists in a blink and pulled them around to press her palms against her own buttocks, using them to curve her torso above him while he held her for his thrusts. She knew he loved this position, could feel his cock swelling harder within her as his eyes fastened fiercely on the swinging globes of her breasts displayed pleasingly above him, and his pounding began to increase in urgency, Gemma arched her spine further, pulling against his grip on her wrists, and forced her breasts out to the deepest curve, enjoying the intently fierce pleasure in his eyes even while they began to bounce almost painfully to the time of his harsh breathing and accelerated surging into her cunt.

Oh god, no. Yes. This. Was. Oh. The building intensity was slower, but deeper, and the approaching pleasure was drawing inexorably through her, melding all of her, every particle, forcing her together, to tighten, intensify, coming, coming closer, she couldn't - arg. No. No. No. The fire in her spine was burning harshly, almost painful in the intensity, muscles quivering, and she couldn't think, heaved by his urgent thrusts, tightening, tightening. Almost. No. Please. Yes. Wow.

Gemma whited out, exploding into orgasm, shuddering on a yelping cry above him as she felt the swell of Mac's cock bursting within her. The wolf yowled softly in harmony, arching his own back and grinding his cock up into her, his hands squeezing her palms into her own buttocks while he corkscrewed his hips urgently against her, forcing the shattering waves of pleasure to surge through her again and again as he spurted.

Shuddering.

Wow.

Oh.

Oh.

Long, motionless moments later, Gemma still couldn't see.

Wow, this was getting more intense.

She wasn't really sure whether her eyes were open or not - there seemed to be a glow like sun-blindness dancing in front of her, through her, and she was unable to do more than just lie here and bask, waiting, blood shimmering, waiting for Mac to kiss his way back to hardness. He didn't have far to go, even after all that seed he'd just spurted inside her.

Then she felt it, devastatingly, bewilderingly, when her mate withdraw his semi-hard cock, placed her gently on her rug, and rolled away from where he had just tucked her in her bower.

"Mm?" she managed to squeak a grunt of protest, still unable to open her eyes - or, if they were open, to see. She felt Mac lean back, felt the swift brush of his lips over hers.

"Cooking, picchu. It won't take me a second - don't worry, I'm not finished with you yet."

Her pussy cramped around a delighted rush of liquid. Never satisfied.

After another long moment she managed to flop inelegantly onto her side and slit open an eye, pulling the rug tighter around her as the sweat on her skin cooled. She watched, faintly revolted, fascinated as ever, while Mac casually extended and retracted his claws as if it was the most natural thing in the world, swiftly and expertly plucking, skinning, cleaning, and cutting up his latest kill, rolling the chunks in a little tin-foil packet of seasoning. A small smile curled at the corner of her mouth and she shut her eyes again, snuggling further into the fake fur. Those retractable claws. Boy, had she gotten into trouble for likening him a pussycat that time.

She squeaked a yelp when suddenly she was engulfed in wolf again, Mac swiping the wet fur of his cold river-washed fingers teasingly across her exposed belly, grinning when she tried to squirm out of his embrace and pull the rug closed again.

"Did you miss me, little mate?"

Her blood seethed with lust even as she growled grumpily, "No" Then she was proved a liar when her nipples tightened to a burning ache and moist welcome pooled anew between her thighs. Mac's nose twitched and he grinned again, dropping his head to burn her lips with a deep, fierce kiss.

Here we go again.

Yippee!

Gemma awoke next with a jerk, disorientated and shaken. Physically shaken - her heart was leaping into her throat while her body was tossed around in an unsteady, swaying motion. Her spine unhinged at the vicious challenge of the scalp-curling snarl lingering in the air underneath her. Where? What?

She was wrapped snugly in her rug, the hammock ends fastened securely, face buried against the fur. The sturdy tree that held the hammock was shaking, still reverberating against the shock of the weight that had been thrown against it. Echoing, bitter wolf voices were whirling around the ground beneath her, snarl answering snarl as the sounds of a furious fight battered around the nearby trees.

Gemma rolled, struggling to unwrap herself from the cocooning fabric and poke her head out into the warm evening slant of sunlight, blood pounding. Who had got this close? She peered down over the edge of her rug just in time to see a huge platinum blond lycan smash Mac back against the trunk of a neighbouring tree on the edge of the fire-break.

Her heart clenched, fear and anger.

Vanilchov.

He was leaping upon her wolf even as the name formed in her mind, claws extended in terrifying dagger-points, and she squeaked in a breath of fear when he looked about to take Mac's head off with the vicious tools. Then Vanil went sailing back under her tree while Mac twisted with a powerful thrust of his legs, back braced against the trunk.

Gemma's nostrils wrinkled as a rank, meaty smell assailed them.

God, he smelt.

Mac must have moved her while she slept. This new camp was on the edge a broad firebreak between two stretches of forest, the break curving right uphill toward more distant trees, there the gap blended into the mass of forest in the distance. To the left, the wildflower-strewn grasses of the open space flowed down to the grey, rippled water of a gently lapping lake, the bank perhaps twenty yards away.

Vanil rolled to his feet as he landed among the long grass and wildflowers. He twisted in one seamless movement, launching himself at the golden blur of Mac, who was leaping across the open space to engage him. Her wolf spun impossibly in mid air, one leg extended in a scything arch, and his foot collided with the side of the platinum blond lycan's head with neck-snapping force.

Gemma gasped, chilled and thrilled, but the challenging Alpha was on his feet again before the air left her lungs, twisting to return a vicious punch that sent Mac spinning in a roll across the belt of grass. As Vanil leapt onto him, her mate feinted, then raked a vicious paw up the side of his opponent's leg, and the attacking growl broke off in a yelp.

Before she could blink, Mac was atop the platinum Alpha, forcing him down into the flowers. Vanil snarled and struggled violently, unable to twist free while slowly Mac twisted his limbs into an immobilising grip. At the last second, the platinum wolf wrenched in a twist from his prone position to butt his head viciously into Mac's stomach while the tawny Alpha pinned him to the ground.

Stomach! Shit! Gemma's own stomach clenched in dread.

Sure enough, her wolf was doubled over, a noise that scared Gemma escaping from his throat. But he simultaneously dived into a roll over a vicious, clawing kick upwards from Vanil, hand pressed to his wound. Then her mate rolled to his feet and twisted easily sideways to evade a second, vicious swipe of one outstretched clawed hand.

The fight changed.

Vanil leaped again, claws extended, and Mac sidestepped once more. But even as the platinum wolf rolled to his feet, he twisted his landing with a low, extended leg sheering the air just above the grass in a blur of white fur.

Mac leaped lightly over the limb as though this was a child's skipping game.

With a small, frustrated yowl, the platinum Alpha leaped to recoil from the branch of a tree above the pair of them, swirling in mid air to pounce on her wolf from above. But Mac wasn't there. Vanil's extended claws spiked into the dusty earth where his opponent had been a second before, and he instantly ripped them out again in frustration, scattering flowers and earth, with a harsh, barking howl of anger.

Gemma almost laughed. But the worry choked the sound in her throat.

Before, they had been slogging it out viciously, attack following counterattack as each tried to gain the upper hand. She was pretty sure Mac had been about to win. Now, Mac wasn't playing. He sidestepped, blocked, and rolled to dodge each advance of his opponent, one hand pressed over the patch on his belly, breath hissing through clenched teeth, but he didn't engage.

Yet Vanil couldn't catch him. Couldn't land a single blow.

The platinum Alpha seemed faster, which made the fight just bewildering to Gemma, amazing. The speed with which Vanil moved made it impossible that Mac could evade him. But every time, every time, her wolf sidestepped or rolled past each blow at the last moment, hopped over a whirling clawed foot, or just leaned backwards lightly out of reach. It was as though this was a beautifully choreographed, breathtaking action scene, and the pair had rehearsed this match a thousand times. Her Alpha knew exactly what each move was going to be before Vanil made it. Read him like an open book.

How did he do it? Gemma smiled gently to herself, awestruck. Her Mac.

Vanil's attacks were getting more vicious, he was losing his temper, and with it, some of his precision. He sprang furiously in an all-out, curved attack, and landed in the lake when Mac spun out of the way at the last moment. Then suddenly Mac pounced, diving on top of the second Alpha from behind as the water slowed his challenger's movements.

Her nose wrinkled again. God, Vanil was repulsive, really repulsive to be so rank from this far away.

The sheets of spray that shimmered around where the two Alphas were fighting in the water made it hard to see the action, and Gemma's self-absorbed stomach instead led her eyes to seek out the source of the mouth-watering fragrance underlying that rank old meat smell. Her eyes were drawn longingly to Mac's usual leaf-wrapped packages roasting gently on a flat stone in the middle of the fire; she swallowed, stomach roaring, despite the rotten overtones from the platinum wolf tainting the air.

Shut up, she told her inopportune stomach crossly, trying to focus back through the blur of water sheeting in the lake. Her stomach growled at her.

Wait a sec.

She glanced again worriedly at the fragrant packages baking on the stone, then back at the waterspout whirling in the shallows.

The meat was closer than the wolves, so why was she still repulsed by the overlay of that strong, horrible scent?

Gemma's whole body stilled suddenly in tension, time echoing endlessly in her ears, the fighting Alphas in the water seeming to move in slow motion. That scent. The scent reminded her of - him. Nick. Her heart spluttered back to race in fear and she began desperately searching the view below her branch, her eyes darting around the clearing, the nearby trees, the long grasses below her, from where the smell must be emanating.

Her heart stopped. There.

Two tiers of branches down, just visible around the curve of the trunk, she could see the tips of four black fingernails curled around the top of a small branch, just visible between the sheltering leaves.

Her stomach heaved. So close.

Four vicious-looking black fingernails. Wolf nails. Claws. Nick - she was sure it was Nick - was hidden from the fighting Alphas by the trunk, but when she leaned carefully, noiselessly, to the right and curved her body further out of her furry hammock, she could catch a glimpse of a flop of well-groomed black hair and the rut of his jawline.

And she knew his rank smell. Nick. Eugh.

The bile roiled again in her stomach, rising in her throat in protest at how close to her he was - how close he had crept. Crept while she slept peacefully, unawares. Anger spiked. How the hell had Mac let him get that close?

Then the Alphas exploded back out of the water, rolling together in a snarling, twisting blur of tawny and white-blond fur to slam sickeningly against the foot of a nearby trunk. Why did they not know Nick was here when he smelt so damn vile to even her insensitive nose? Why didn't they attack the Grey instead of messing around with each other? Mac was pinned underneath Vanil, heaving to buck off his opponent, scything with his legs.

Then Gemma's bitter anger and fear were suddenly incinerated by a white sheet of terror that ignited when her eye was caught by a glint of light under her branch.

Light gleaming along the barrel of the gun which the Grey was sighting down, levelling carefully at the pair on the ground.

NO!

No thought, no plan, Gemma rolled desperately in her hammock and dropped head-first onto the Grey wolf, yanking herself sideways by a small branch to slam shoulder-to-shoulder into him. His neck snapped upward and sideways in realisation just before she connected, and with a quiet snarl he ripped his head around, teeth tearing through her neck while the gun exploded, and they collided. Gemma screamed in pain and fear.

They toppled together in a heap, a branch lashing Gemma's face when the teeth tore back out of her, the air rushing past. Then there was a heavy collision shoulder-first into solid ground, an elbow grinding deep into her stomach where he landed on her, and spinning sunlight and leaves above her while she almost blacked out from the pain and lack of air.

The world shorted, white and grey rocking on the edges of her vision while she lay, lungs suspended, unmoving, and the creature atop her spun, heaving himself around on that excruciating elbow in her belly to face the resounding, furious snarl approaching at speed. The sound almost didn't register through the echoing pain inside her head, neck and abdomen.

A flash of platinum blond in the corner of her blurred vision jerked in mid air and seemed to deflate, collapsing heavily to the ground while Gemma registered belatedly that the gun in the Grey's hand had sounded a second time. And a third. Then the air was silent.

Vanil was down. Mac?

The grey wolf rose cautiously to his feet beside her, gun swinging to point beyond her head, beyond the white-blond heap of fur just visible on the edge of her vision.

Mac?

Slowly, slowly, air filtered back into her lungs. It was immaterial really. She didn't need air to listen and that was all she was doing; listening, desperately, for some sound to break the silence where he lay. Over there. Beyond her head. Silence.

Please, Mac.

Nick was steadying the gun again, carefully sighting down towards the tawny body lying motionless beyond Vanil on the ground. Gemma's mind was seething with desperate thoughts. The Grey was going to shoot Mac again, just to make sure, to riddle him with holes, not daring to go closer. Coward. And Mac was deathly still, silent.

Please, Mac.

Dead, or dying, and she couldn't do anything, couldn't make her body move so much as a twitch. The Grey was going to make sure he killed her wolf, like he'd killed Vanilchov, she couldn't stop him. But she had to. Something. Somehow, please. HAD to.

Abruptly, her mind sparked with a clear-cut douche of insight, and then ruthlessly, frantically swept clear all thought but one - the memory of the feel of Mac driving into her, stretching her deliciously when he'd taken her by the fire pit last night. The slow, deep lunges while he had held her thighs wide and savoured their third mating. Her body shimmered into ever-ready heat, burning for her mate, melting in desire.

And the rank grey lycan standing over her stilled, his hands trembling as he drew in a deep breath.

The empty, echoing keen, pleading for Mac, was hovering at the edges of her thoughts. The fury was bitter on her tongue, the fear and disgust lingering on her skin, but Gemma fiercely ignored all the distractions and melted further into heated memories. Her mate's tongue, teasing, taunting her when she'd begged no to a fourth coupling two days ago. Swirling deep, around her nub, swirling her back into begging again, begging more, for a different reason, lifting her hips and crying out...

The gun hand lowered slowly, unconsciously, as Nick began to pull in long, savouring breaths, deep shudders wracking his body. His head dropped and his eyes locked suddenly onto hers. The bestial gleam in them, the glitter of lust, sadistic anticipation and victory swirled jet-black through the grey irises, and the wolf licked his lips, panting lightly. He dropping down to wrap her hand bruisingly, briefly, around the butt of the gun, and then tossed it swiftly into the long grass above their heads, ripping open the fly of his black jeans to release his racing erection while he urgently yanked her thighs apart.

Mission accomplished, Gemma whole body erupted into mindless rage, and she flew, biting and clawing into his face despite the agony wrenching through her at the movement. The Grey sneered back into her eyes, glaring down, and pinned her hands effortlessly above her head in one of his. Gemma screamed with incoherent anger and bucked, twisted, screaming Mac's name, fighting to get this thing away, off, assailed by his disgusting scent, his vile excitement, his wrongness. Murderer. Him. Kill.

The Grey lay heavily across her squirming, fighting body to hold her still and enjoyed the frantic, furious jerking of the little wereem's delicious form under his as she howled again with rage. The howl was abruptly cut off in a whimper of pain when he yanked her head viciously sideways, fingers twisted painfully into her hair, and bent and bit deeply across the join of her neck.

He knew how to subdue a victim. And would take particular pleasure with this one.

His ready cock swelled to aching hardness with the feel of her quelled stillness; the quivering, breathless pain under him. Shuddering with excitement, bathing in her scent, he smeared his swollen organ down, across her hip, nudging between her spread thighs, sliding in the moisture, seeking her entrance while he slid his teeth further, more painfully into her neck to hold her still while he mounted.

Hold still.

The order drenched into Gemma's mind and she whimpered, urging herself to move, trying so hard to force herself to fight, to tear those teeth from her neck, the fury battering inside her frozen limbs. But no. The feel of his breath fouling her tender skin, his hands pinning her, his weight on her and those deep, fierce teeth laying claim held her frozen. Revolting. Repulsive. The words battered inside her raging mind, and deep instinct locked her limbs and forced her still underneath him.

Tears pricked her eyes as finally, fatalistically, she understood what Mac had warned her of. Couldn't say no. Wereem, she cursed herself, bitterly. Fucking feeble cunt. Her eyes closed as the tears leaked out. Mac. He must be dead.

Gemma drooped under her rapist, mind sinking into dull despair. Let him do what he wanted. Dead. Nothing mattered. Death. Mac. Mac.

As the wereem stilled under him, the Grey lifted back, licking her blood slowly from his teeth, eyes glittering with fierce, possessive pleasure as he took deep, harsh breaths of her delicious doft and his cock hardened impossibly further against her labia. He yanked her head back, blood from his bite welling to trickle down her throat, and stared into her tear-drenched, bitter eyes, glaring the knowledge of what he was about to do into her while he positioned the cum-beaded head of his throbbing, intense erection at the entrance to her pussy. This time she wouldn't fight.

Open your legs.

Horror drenched into Gemma when she felt the new order burning into her brain, bending her under the urge to submit. Then she felt a spark of renewed, cold anger fire through her sorrow. Mac would want her to fight. To die first. Like - Mac. Please wait for me.

"Shot with a silver bullet - he's dead now, girl," Nick taunted softly, reading her mind. "No one to stop me biting you and making you my sweet little pet fuck-wereie instead."

Please.

Nick was abruptly yanked backwards off her, a blood-covered, black-nailed hand striking from behind him to clench ferociously around his throat, his windpipe crushed in a vicious choke hold, breath gargling as the extending claws slid deep into his throat. Gemma's heart leapt, life flooding back into her limbs, washing pain through her, the agony crowned with delight.

Mac. Alive.

Her mate was ashen, blood pouring from a deep wound on his upper thigh where it looked as though he had ripped into his own flesh by the tearing, gaping scars and the blood smeared all over his hands, thighs, and stomach. A further thick trail of blood dragged across the flattened grass from where he had lain, and he clearly couldn't rise to his feet. But Mac had an implacable, cold look on his face, eyes boring up into the Grey's, one arm reaching up from his position on one elbow on the grassy floor while her mate tightened, tightened that death grip around the slighter wolf's throat.

Nick struggled to his feet, back bent so his torso was almost horizontal over his assailant, both hands clenched desperately to the fist in his throat, trying to loosen the grip or prevent it from tightening fully while he smashed vicious, heavy kicks into the pouring wound on the bloody thigh of the Alpha. He also stomped heavily on the wound in Mac's stomach, and with his back claws raked fierce fresh cuts deeply through her mate where he lay exposed, unmoving.

Gemma heard a little whimper, but it was her. Mac held on silently, still, unmoveable under the deluge of blows, his eyes boring into the Grey's, his face a grim mask while slowly the blood drained out of it and he turned paler, whiter. But he wouldn't let go.

He wouldn't let go.

Gemma bit back a sob. Of course Mac wouldn't let go - she knew it. It was in his eyes, his face, the whole damn wolf that she knew. He would die first. He was dying, rather. And her proud, stubborn wolf probably still wouldn't fucking let go even in death.

A gasping sob raked through the air, and Gemma rolled herself desperately to her unsteady knees, ignoring the aching agony that wrenched through her from the deep bite on her neck, and the inconvenient inability to breathe that still didn't seem to have sorted itself yet.

It had to be here somewhere.

Shaking hands scrabbling through the grass, she couldn't see past the burning wetness in her eyes, furious with herself for the useless tears. Now was not the time. She couldn't bear him to die a second time. Please, Mac. Hold on.

She couldn't find it.

Desperately searching through the long grass stems, the wildflowers, she blanked out the sickening, heavy thuds of Nick's feet echoing across the clearing, sweeping her arms in urgent arcs around her.

Please, please, please.

There!

Her wrist grazed against something hard, and the fading sunlight glimmered on the metal as the gun skittered sideways a few inches. She pounced on it. It seemed impractically heavy in her small hand, hard to lift, hard to focus with the black spots of pain dancing in front of her tear-blurred eyes. She lurched unsteadily on her knees around to where the Grey was hunched over the prone figure of her wolf, ruthlessly slamming kick after kick into Mac to free himself from the claws still clenched to his neck. Mac was a deathly still heap, white, his body flopping like a lifeless corpse under each heavy blow. But his fist was still clenched implacably in Nick's throat.

No!

A faint whimper escaped Gemma as she steadied herself and lifted the gun, and the Grey's head snapped up. His enraged black eyes hollowed with fear and he blanched when he focussed on the shaking barrel facing him.

In deathly panic, he wrenched himself sideways when she fired, tearing a deep chuck from his throat with a spray of blood where he ripped himself free of Mac's unmovable grip. The bullet thwacked into a tree way off to the right, but the panicked Grey was already out of the clearing, hand clamped to the pouring wound, blood running over his fingers, and he choked loudly as he spat out his own blood.

The sounds of the Grey's flight receded while Gemma stared, eyes burning, at the tawny, blood-covered heap lying in the blood-speckled flowers. Sobbing breaths were choking in the air around her while she heaved herself to her feet and staggered over, dropping down beside Mac, the gun skittering unnoticed back into the grass.

God. The blood flow was stopping, the pools on his skin drying and she knew what that meant, when the heart stopped pumping blood. No, please. She winced at the deep purple mottling over his stomach, thighs and chest and the raw, deep cuts that had shredded him, again and again. Another sob escaped and she slid urgent fingers down to close over the gaping, seeping wound on his thigh, pulling together the raw flaps of flesh of the most urgent injury. Eugh. Her bruised stomach heaved on emptiness. No. Not now.

She bent and pressed her lips to his chest, unable to reach his face from her position, and her tears leaked onto the shredded plastic decorating his stomach as she whispered to him, "Please, Mac. Please." Another sob escaped.

Blood-covered fingers dropped lightly over hers, and she heard a low groan from his lips.

"Mac?"

She twisted so that she could shuffle up beside his torso, stretched, arched across him to hold the wound closed as best she could with one hand while she settled painfully beside his face. Gemma bent to press soft kisses to his lips, his jaw, his cheek, tears falling in their wake.

Mac's fingers closed around hers, and he gently lifted her hand away, pinching his semi-extended claws to hold his own flesh closed. A long sigh escaped him.

"Gem?"

She kissed him. His lips moved gently under hers, returning a brush of feeling, and her heart suddenly expanded, whole. He was alive.

"You OK?" His voice was a thread of sound.

Why the hell was he asking about her when he was the one covered in blood and fading?

"I'm fine," she half-snarled, half-sobbed. "It's you I'm wo-." She choked on a sob.

Sticky, blood-covered fingers from his other hand wound unsteadily into her hair and he tugged her head back lightly, easing her down so he could lick gently over the stinging fire of the bite in her neck.

Gemma felt a faint tingle of the healing burn, and gasped, wrenching herself out of his hold with a yelp at the pain, incandescent with fury at her damn stubborn wolf.

"You're the one who needs to heal, Mac."

The fact that she could break his hold that easily proved it.

"Need to heal you." His voice was weak, a hoarse whisper.

"Dammit, Mac. I'll be fine. You can heal me when you're better."

"The others. Angry. Stay close."

She knew what he meant. Somewhere, somehow, the awareness had settled on her skin, and she knew that there was now a dense ring of wolves circling the three of them, glowing eyes reflecting the last light. Angry wolves. They glared at each other across the clearing, and the air sparkled with seething, unsettled rage.

"I'm fading into a coma, picchu," Mac's voice was a crack of sound, and his eyes remained closed. "Help Vanil. Remove the silver. The bullets. Or he'll die."

He managed to force out a little more, "They can't. Pure silver."

"What?" Gemma sat back, poleaxed. Her wolf was lying at death's door, and first he tried to heal her, then he wanted her to go and help his bloody challenger? "But you! - You need help! And he tried to -."

"Win you," interrupted Mac, the broken whisper fading. "No crime. Need him." Mac was visibly sinking, struggling brokenly to get the words out, "No time. Please, picchu. Help him." The effort her injured mate was making hurt her, and she bent back over him, pressing her fingers against his lips as her tears fell onto his bloodstained fur.

"Ssh. Sssh. He's dead, Mac. There's nothing we can do."

Mac flicked his head feebly sideways in irritation, away from her fingers, a wince escaping, and then his eyes suddenly cracked open revealing burning black flame, boring straight into hers. Gemma felt the sensation of - Please - surge into her mind, felt the hum of the power, the truth of it, burning through her. She lurched to unsteady feet before she thought, stumbling over painfully toward the platinum wolf.

Wow. The power of it. She had never felt the power of him in her mind before. A flicker of irritation surfaced, but was smothered under the urgent feeling behind the plea. It was a request, she was aware. She could say no, but no way was she going to. The method of communication - conveying - had also seared her with the knowledge of just how damn important Vanil was to Mac. How he knew he was alive, could sense him. And - deep, deep affection mingled with pain, a barrier. Hurting. Why? The brief flash had only shown the emotions, not explained them.

She was also aware, somewhere inside, that her mate could have made it an order. And could she have said no? Bitterly she remembered that she hadn't said no, hadn't been able to move under the Grey's order. First order. Eugh. She didn't want to think about the second - open your legs. And Nick wasn't even her Alpha, her mordeur. Her thoughts were flickering despondently as she bent over the Vanil.

She understood why a were went insane, if they could question this power inside their own head, but couldn't fight it. Damn, she understood it now. Feeble wereem, she cursed herself bitterly, revolted, reviling herself, reliving her submission to Nick. Eugh. She felt - smirched. From within. Sickened.

Please. The feeling, the urgency, had settled heavily inside her head and she pushed aside the memories, the pain of the bite and her bruises, to concentrate on what was important now.

Gemma bent carefully forward to stroke back the smooth blond hair on Vanil's heavily muscled back, looking for bloodstains. How to remove the bullets? The only knife she had was his claws, still extended in the attack position. Double eugh.

Later - aching, long sickening minutes later, Gemma sighed, painfully exhausted, as she crept in behind the comatose figure of her wolf, and eased herself to cuddle into the comfort of the long fur of his back. Dimly, she was aware of the tight packed mass of intent, fierce eyes around the tree break, glaring at each other, hackles raised, watching over them silently. The wolves had parted grudgingly, still silently, to let her through to the lake. Though still keeping her penned, they had let her pass to rinse the blood from her fingers - eugh. That field surgery was not an experience she ever wanted to remember.

The watch circle had re-sealed when she had returned, and dimly she had seen the lips of some lift at her as she neared them, eyes glowing eerily. She'd been too shocked for it to register at the time, but - what were they doing here? Why the rage? At her? Gemma shivered lightly, but was too worn and wrecked to really care. She sighed as she slowly relaxed into the warmth, the scent of her mate.

At least Mac's thigh had closed over fully while she'd worked on Vanil, except for the little hole where the silver bullet had burned an entry. She'd checked. The platinum Alpha was also slowly knitting back together now that she'd dug the bullets out of him. Eugh.

To please Mac.

No longer under the pull of that request, her pain-wracked, shattered body was demanding that she keel over, even the prickling fire of her neck swamped beneath the rising tide of exhaustion. She hadn't washed the bite. It hurt too much. Gemma snuggled carefully up to her wolf. Mac would deal with it when he woke up.