The Luna's Bodyguard [a mature werewolf romance]

Ch 12: Our Girl

FALLON'S POV

I was loaded with shopping bags like a common mule, plodding after Addy from shop to shop. The brisk air was my only respite from the quiet fury that was always simmering just below the surface, stoked with every demeaning job I was slugged with over the years. Page. Squire. Bodyguard. And most recently, bounty hunter.

I'd hated hearing the words drop from Fell's lips. As if all that I was, all that I'd suffered, could be reduced to such a banal occupation. A sell-sword without scruple. A knight with no code.

In another life, she would have called me prince.

In another life, I would have courted her without relent, with all the resources of the Dornoch Pack at my disposal. We would have bound our hands together by the sea and sealed our marriage pact with a salty kiss, not unlike the one we shared on the Kirkwall pier. She would have butted heads with my proud father and endured the constant fussing of my mother. She would have taught my bratty younger sisters how to practice their mischief more discretely, and they would have clung to her like pollen to my fingertips when I made her a moon-daisy crown, as my father had done for my mother when they became Anam Cara.

In this life, my parents were dead. Slaughtered along with all my family's loyal staff when the Crown Pack invaded, headed by Reginald Pendragon, greedy brother to the Wolf King in England, who wanted lands of his own to lord over.  They killed Anna and Susa and took Mila, the youngest, and spirited her away, holding her hostage against me. They let me live as an example to the last resisting packs, that even the mightiest bloodlines could be quashed under heel, and that even kings and queens in the making could be fashioned into humble servants. I was a martyr to my people dead, but alive...

Alive, I was just a disappointment. A lap dog body guard turned bounty hunter.

If only Carn Liath had learned from my example. Instead Alpha Alistair had refused to hand over Aurora's hand in marriage, inviting destruction to his home and exile for his people. In the space of a single night, the van Arsdale dynasty was reduced to rubble. Glamours were cast over the remains of the castle, making it look like it had been that way for hundreds of years, reducing Fell's rightful land to a tourist destination for mortals.

"There they are," Addy grumbled, crossing her bony arms. "It's about damn time."

I shook my head free of unhelpful memories, refocusing on the streets of Glasgow. What a foolish lapse in concentration; I was experiencing them all too frequently at the moment, ever since I laid eyes on the scarlet beauty. She'd taken the snow globe of my world and shaken it to the core.

Fell was wearing a new pair of designer shades and a flowing black sundress instead of the blinding raiment from Addy's closet. Her skin was flushed and glowing, and her hair rippled proudly behind her like a flag, making me want to surrender on the spot.

It was hard to tear my eyes away, but something was wrong. Nate's expression was unusually pinched, and a small line had taken up residence between his eyes. I was about to drop all of Addy's ridiculous bags and demand to know what was wrong when the wind changed and their scents hit me: lust and pheromones, sage and spices, amber and sugar all intertwined.

The paper bags crumpled in my grip. He'd bedded her. Worse; there hadn't even been a bed. He'd taken her like an animal and hadn't even had the decency to find her a place to wash, and now I could practically taste the residue of her arousal in the air, the last traces of it coming off her glorious thighs, where it must have dried sticky in the aftermath. Anger burned a hole through my chest; I would have licked every last inch of her clean.