THIRTY-ONE
“Oh my God!” I gasped, looking around wildly. The sound of boots clattering down the wooden hallways of Tainer’s house drifted up through the attic trapdoor and I knew we didn’t have long before the soldiers were here.
“It’s my father’s men!” Jake exclaimed in my head. The huge black Wolf backed further into the shadows and seemed to shimmer for a moment. When he came back into the moonlight, he was Jake again, naked and with blood still smeared in the corners of his mouth, but definitely my stepbrother.
“I…I thought you said it was hard to change back?” I said, looking up at him.
“It’s amazing how panic gives you strength,” he said dryly. “Now listen to me, Ani—go in the bathroom and wash my scent off you and out of you right now! Then find something to wrap up in. Here—this should do it.”
He handed me one of the sheets from the bed, shoving it in a wrinkled mass into my arms.
“I don’t understand.” I shook my head. “You want me to take a bath? Now?”
“Yes, now,” Jake insisted. “You have to get every trace of my scent off your skin or they’ll know right away what we’ve been doing!”
“Look, Jake…” I ran a hand through my hair. “I know that my mom would be really upset and your dad would be really mad, but it’s not like we could help it—I mean, they made us. We—”
“Ani, listen to me.” He grabbed me by the shoulders and stared intently into my eyes. “The penalty for incest in the Were world isn’t shunning or banishment or being grounded to your room for a couple of weeks. The punishment for incest for Weres is death.”
“Death?” I squeaked, staring at him, wide-eyed. “Are you serious?”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?” Jake said flatly.
“N-no,” I stuttered—I had never seen him more grim, not even when Tainer held the gun on us and forced me to go down on Jake and swallow his seed.
“They can’t know—they can’t find out. No one can,” Jake told me. “Not if we both want to live. So get in the bathroom and wash my scent off you now!”
He pulled me off the bed and gave me a little shove towards the bathroom. Downstairs, I could hear the booted feet getting closer—there wasn’t much time.
I ran into the bathroom and locked the door. Twisting the taps on full, I jumped into the bathtub. There was no time to wait for the water to get warm so I began scrubbing my skin in the freezing cold stream, shivering as I did.
Get rid of his scent…get rid of his scent…how do I do that?
Plain water wasn’t going to do it. Frantically, I grabbed for the bottle of lavender-vanilla shampoo Ophelia had used to wash my hair. I squirted a big glob of it into my palm and began to rub it all over my body—my breasts and torso and most especially between my legs.
I felt a stinging sensation as I scrubbed between my thighs and had to bite my lip to keep back a gasp of pain. Had Jake’s shaft wounded me in some way when he was in his fur form? I didn’t know and I had no time to find out. I kept scrubbing grimly, despite the stinging, trying to make sure that any of Jake’s essence that might still be on or in me was washed away.
Long before I felt completely clean, I heard heavy feet on the wooden ladder that led up the trapdoor and then loud, angry voices.
“Hey, it’s me! It’s Jacob!” Jake shouted and I could almost picture him holding his hands over his head.
“Jacob Wulven? Last living Heir of the Royal line of the First Wolf?” someone demanded.
“Didn’t I just say so?” Jake snarled. “Don’t point that fucking thing at me! If my father hired you to find me, he’s going to be pretty damned angry if you shoot me instead of bringing me home safe!”
“Lower your weapons, a low, commanding voice said. “That’s the Heir—I can tell by his scent. What happened here?” he asked, apparently talking to Jake. “And where’s your little sister??
“What do you think happened here?” Jake asked, avoiding the question about my whereabouts. “I Shifted and killed them.”
In my mind, I pictured him pointing to the two bloody corpses—one human and one Wolf.
“And your sister?” the deep voice persisted. “Where’s the Second Royal Omega?”
“In the bathroom, washing the blood off her,” Jake told him. “She was kind of in the line of fire, so to speak when I ripped the first one’s throat out. Got it all over her.”
“Is she well? Unharmed?” the voice asked.
All this time, I had been washing the shampoo off my skin and drying off quickly with a towel. I wrapped the wrinkled sheet around my body toga fashion before I opened the door.