“Rosinée,” the Alpha rumbled in a voice like thunder and danger, “how very lovely to see you out and about. And with your whole club too. My invitation to this party must have been lost in the mail.”
All joking aside, even from my half-dead position on the ground I still saw the swamp witch pale at the alpha's words. Raphael LeRoux was not the sort of man who joked around. Nor was he one to walk away from a fight. His wolves were vicious, bloodthirsty and merciless. The rougarou stood no chance against a pure blooded pack.
“Raphael,” the swamp witch tried again, licking her lips nervously. “Leave us be. This is nothing to do with your pack.”
“I disagree, Rosinée. This very much concerns my pack. I'm giving you one chance to leave with your pathetic pets intact, and then I let my people off the leash … so to speak.” There was no mistaking the threat in Raphael's voice as his burning red eyes speared Rosinée.
For once, I stayed quiet. The wolves were saving my ass, but why? What interest did they have in whether I lived or died tonight?
The swamp witch clenched her fists at her sides and for a hot second, I thought she might actually be stupid enough to challenge the strongest alpha wolf this side of the Veil.
“Fine,” she eventually ground out from behind clenched teeth. “But I'm not fucking done with you, fairy.” This last part was directed at me as she turned her venomous glare to my face.
“I look forward to it, bitch,” I sneered back at her, unable to rein in my smart mouth for even a second longer.
“Ticktock, Rosinée,” the Alpha rumbled and the witch snarled. Throwing her leg back over her bike, she flicked a hand signal to her club and they all peeled out of there with the throaty growl of engines and exhausts.
In the resulting quiet, as the sound of the swamp queen's MC faded into the distance, no one spoke. My bones were broken in several places, and I was bleeding profusely where I lay on the gravel, but Raphael LeRoux just stared down at me. His face was blank, totally unreadable, as were his enforcers on either side of him, still in wolf form.
“Uh, thanks, I guess.” I broke the tense silence with my pained voice.
“We didn't come to help you,” the wolf's alpha replied in a carefully neutral tone which made it damn near impossible to work out if I had just jumped from the frying pan and straight into the fire.
“Well …” I winced, pushing myself up to sitting and feeling the ache and burn of all my many injuries. “Thanks anyway.”
Those old legends about never thanking a fae only applied to humans, and my mama had raised me with manners.
“Keep your thanks.” Raphael shrugged. “Saving you from that old hag served a double purpose. One, it pissed her off. And I do love to piss her off.”
He paused and I watched him curiously. “And the other reason?”
“Wait for it …” The scary ass motherfucker lifted a finger, his head tilted like he was listening for something. Seconds later, the familiar sound of motorcycles came rumbling from down the road toward us, pulling up where the rougarou had just departed from.
“Arlo!” a distinctive sultry sounding woman's voice exclaimed, and that damn Veil Keeper collapsed to the ground in front of me. “What the hell happened here?”
My lips tightened and I considered just saying nothing. Why should I? I owed this girl nothing. Goddess or not, she was no one to me.
Yet when my eyes met hers, and her vivid sapphire blue gaze screamed of such pain, and desperation and fear … How the fuck could I contribute to that?
“Rougarou lured me into a trap; the wolves here showed up just in the nick of time.” I nodded to Raphael over Ciarah's shoulder. It had not escaped my attention that the second my boys had shown up, the wolf alpha had eyes for no one else but our Gardien du Voile.
“Oh.” Ciarah turned her head as though she'd just seen the handsome silver-haired man and his two accompanying wolves flanking him. How she could have missed them though, was totally beyond me. Those wolves were the size of large donkeys, not to mention their inhumanly handsome leader.
I wasn't blind. Just as I could appreciate my own good looks, so too could I appreciate them in other men. And women.
Once again my attention had been drawn back to Ciarah. She picked herself up from the ground, wiping dirt off on her jeans and pushing her long hair over her shoulder.
Whatever she said next was lost as Killian took her place in front of me and clasped his palms on either side of my face.
“Hold on tight, brother. This will be a bumpy ride.” He met my gaze with his own cold blue eyes and the familiar sensation of his magic began crawling through me, blocking out the world around us and deafening me to whatever was happening between Ciarah and Raphael.
The man standing between the two enormous fucking wolves was watching me like … well … like a wolf might watch a piece of meat.
“Um, Reece?” I asked, flicking a quick glance over at the huge red-haired biker, but not wanting to take my eyes off this guy for too long.
“Raphael LeRoux.” Reece nodded to the silver-haired man respectfully and I raised my eyebrows in curiosity. The name rang no bells in my sketchy at best memory, but that meant nothing. “What's da Pack doin' in N'awlins den?”
“Reece,” the man nodded back but his red eyes were still locked on me. His voice rumbled like an angry dog and it sent shivers of fear and … something else, coursing through me. “Heard Le Gardien du Voile had resurfaced. Needed to see for myself whether the rumours were true.”
“Trè bon, Alpha. Now, you've seen. Ciarah, allons.” Reece tugged at my elbow to draw me back to his bike, but I was transfixed by the beautiful man and his gigantic wolves.
“Hello.” I smiled at him, not really knowing why. Something inside me, something instinctual, told me he was one of the good guys. He'd barely spoken, yet those words he did utter had glimmered with truth.
Unlike Arlo's explanation for his injuries. That hadn't been a lie as such, because fae couldn't lie. But it carried a jarring uneasiness that made me sure he was hiding important details.
“Ciarah, was it?” the handsome man inquired, his words polite but his voice threaded with danger and power. “Allow me to formally introduce myself. I am Raphael LeRoux, Alpha and President of the Louisiana Wolves. This here is my beta, and VP, Marcel.” He laid a hand on the slightly larger, chestnut brown wolf to his right. “And my delta, my enforcer, Amelie.” He indicated to the jet-black wolf on his left and it—she—bobbed her head to me in greeting.
“It's, er, lovely to meet you?” I didn't intend for it to come out as a question but it somehow did nonetheless. One corner of the Alpha's mouth pulled up in what I think was meant to be a smile and he finally blinked.