Alpha Trio 3: A Special Taste Read online

  “Why don’t you start from the beginning?” Cassandra asked, sliding into her chair.

  Kall’s fingers gripped the edge of the filing cabinet so hard Grig heard the metal dimple in protest. By the door, Drei straightened, nostrils flaring, a low growl beginning in his throat.

  “Cassandra, get away from her. Now.” His words were barely out before Cass slid to his side. Drei pushed her behind him. Em did the same with Cat. Both his brothers were bristling, their wolves clearly just beneath the surface of their twitching skin.

  Grig slid himself in front of Kall, lip lifting in a silent snarl. He’d moved without even thinking. From behind Em, Cat gave a long, low sigh.

  “While all the macho posturing is really interesting, and I am enjoying the view, we’re not really getting to the bottom of this, are we? Emilian, Grig brought her here for a reason. Maybe you want to listen before you go all grr on her?”

  “Your family’s not nearly as welcoming as you, wolfie,” Kall breathed in his ear. Remembering the few brief minutes in the concrete basement with her on his lap, Grig growled.

  “They better not be.”

  She’d spoken softly, her tone ironic, but he knew both his brothers had heard their exchange. He saw the flare of yellow in Drei’s dark eyes when Kall called him ‘wolfie’.

  “Alright,” Grig sighed. “Maybe you two could ratchet down the antagonism a little? Kall saved my life tonight. That earns her a bit of slack, I would think.”

  His words had about the impact he’d expected. Drei’s eyes narrowed on Kall. Em’s eyes narrowed on him. Both Cat and Cassandra peeked out from behind their respective Mates with wide, shocked eyes.

  “Are you okay?” they asked simultaneously.

  “Saved your life from who?” Em demanded.

  Drei’s gaze crawled up Kall’s petite form. “How?”

  “Only a bit of slack?” Kall asked, an edge of laughter in her voice.

  Grig answered her first. He threw a wink over his shoulder. “With them. With me, it earns the whole rope. I’m fine, by the way.” He directed this last to the group huddled by the door with a grin. “And as for who and how? Well, ironically, the answer to both those questions is the same. Vampires.”

  “Well, technically, the answer to how is just ‘vampire’.” Kall nudged him with her knee. Grig shrugged. Somehow, in the moment Drei and Em had begun acting antagonistic toward Kall, his own ambivalence toward the idea of her being a vampire disappeared.

  “You brought a fucking bloodsucker in here?” Drei snarled.

  Em wasn’t nearly as loud. His voice was cold and deadly. “What the fuck is going on, Grig?”

  “Seren is hunting your Mate,” Kall said to Em, ignoring Drei’s palpable anger. “Do you know why?”

  “Because –” Cat began, but Em slid his hand over her mouth.

  “You tell us.”

  Kall ran her fingers through the black satin of her hair, flicking the short bob back from her face. “Originally, he just wanted to shut her up. She was asking too many questions about things and he was worried his little pet project would be discovered. Then, he tasted her blood.” She rubbed her right wrist idly, staring at the thin, pale skin there. “Some humans have a little something extra. He doesn’t know why, or what it is... yet. What he does know is that when those humans turn, if they turn, they always possess extraordinary Gifts. Especially the women.” There was a tone in her voice that made Grig’s spine stiffen. He turned toward her.

  “Women like you?”

  She ignored him, peering straight over his head at Drei and Em. Em frowned. “What do you mean ‘if’ they turn? Humans get bit, swap a little blood, die, turn into vampires. There’s no ‘if’ about it. That’s just how it works.”

  “And Shifters never Mate with humans, right? That’s just how it works.” Kall quirked a thin brow. Grig’s lips twitched at her mimicry of Em’s tone. “You’re talking about normal humans... I’m talking about something... else.”

  “Other,” Cassandra replied softly, stepping out from behind Drei and returning to her seat at her desk. Drei scowled at her, but didn’t try to stop her. “Cat is... we are... something Other. Not quite human.”

  Surprise flickered across Kall’s face so quickly Grig wondered if anyone but him caught it. Then her expression smoothed, her red lips straightening into a straight line. “You too?”

  Cassandra nodded. “So this Seren... he doesn’t know about me?”

  “No. Though that doesn’t mean you’re safe. He’s got a major hate on for your boys here.”

  “And why are we trusting this vampire again? We don’t even know if she has any way of knowing any of this, or if she’s just guessing.” The lines of Drei’s furrowed brow were deep.

  Grig swept a hand down his shirtfront, drawing his brother’s attention to the torn, dirty, bloodied garment. “We’re trusting her because she killed the vampires that were about to kidnap me.” Heat stung his cheeks as he met Drei’s gaze. “I was stupid, and way too drunk to fight. Five of them jumped me a few blocks from here.”

  Cat gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. Cassandra sucked in her breath and Grig knew she was reading more than he was saying in his thoughts. For once, he didn’t care. “I managed to kill one, but at a high cost. They had me. And I think they were going to use me to force you guys to hand over Cat. If Kall hadn’t come along...” He didn’t have to finish. He saw the knowledge on his brothers’ faces.

  If Kall hadn’t come along, the vamps would have had him, and Em and Drei would have been faced with an impossible decision. Em especially. Betray his brother, or the woman he loved?

  The sudden silence in the room was heavy with unspoken emotion. Kall’s husky voice slid softly into the space. “And I know what he’s planning to do to Cat, because he’s done it before. He did it to me. A year ago, I was human. Or, ‘Other’, I guess. Seren attacked me outside of a club. He meant to kill me, but when he tasted my blood...” She shrugged, a smile twitching her lips. “I guess we taste different.”

  “That’s when you disappeared. He took you?” Cat’s tone was inquisitive, her face open and guileless, the expression in her eyes warm. Interested, but not pushy. Grig could see why she was such a good reporter. She made you want to tell her things.

  Now Kall really did smile. “You don’t even know you’re doing that, do you? And if I wasn’t a vamp, I doubt I could tell. Wow.” She shook her head. Cat frowned.

  “What? Doing what?”

  “You’re... I don’t know what you’d call it... projecting, maybe? When you ask a question, you send out this little pulse of mental energy. It’s calming, makes the target feel relaxed. Guess that comes in handy at work.”

  Cat blinked. Everyone else turned to look at her in surprise. Her cheeks flushed. “No, I didn’t know I was doing that.”

  “What about you, Red? Got a little something extra? Are you really good at guessing people’s weights or finding lost things?” Kall’s tone was light, but Grig could tell by the intensity of her dark eyes that she wasn’t joking. They all could.

  “It’s Cassandra. And I can read thoughts. Usually. But not yours.”

  Kall hopped off the filing cabinet, pacing. Or attempting to pace. In the close confines, she could only take two steps before having to turn back around.

  “No, you wouldn’t. That’s my little perk. I guess you could say I’m invisible.”

  “I see you just fine.” Grig winked.

  Kall snorted. “Not like that, wolfie. Not exactly. It’s like... you see that episode of Buffy where she gets the mind reading abilities and she tries to read Angel’s mind and he says it’s like the mirror thing? They don’t cast a reflection? It’s like that. I’m here, you can see me, but I don’t register on the psychic radar. That’s just the baseline though. I can push it out and...” She trailed off. Her fingers twitched at her sides and her shoulders tightened.

  Cat gasped.

  Drei barked, “What the hell?”

 
Em scanned the room, jaw hard as granite. Cassandra just cocked her head to the side.

  Grig frowned, glancing from Kall to the others. She looked the same. Tense, a little white around the mouth, but otherwise exactly as she’d looked a moment before. “You’re really obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, aren’t you?”

  Everyone’s eyes flew to him, but it was Kall’s that held his gaze. Wide, dark, amazed.

  “You see me.”

  Cat twitched at Kall’s words. Drei grimaced. “That’s really unsettling.”

  Kall relaxed, closing the small distance between them, staring up into Grig’s face. “You saw me.”

  “Uh. Yeah. You were standing right there.”

  “She was gone, little brother. One second standing there talking, the next...” Cassandra shook her head.

  “That’s why I can’t smell you,” Em said, exhaling what sounded almost like a sigh of relief.

  Drei cracked his knuckles. “I just thought it was because she’s covered in Grig’s scent.”

  “That’s why you can’t smell me,” Kall confirmed, though her eyes were still on Grig. “Vamps can’t either. When I was human, I just thought I was supremely unremarkable.”

  Grig eyed her slender body, the pert curve of her breasts, the exotic beauty of her face. ‘Unremarkable’ was not a word he would ever associate with Kall. But his brother’s words confused him.

  “What do you mean you can’t smell her?”

  “You can? Does she smell like a vamp to you?” Drei sniffed. “Because right now I smell you, me, Cass, Em, and Cat, but no one else.”

  Kall’s full lips turned downward. “You smell me? Not even Seren can smell me. He thought for sure he’d be able to sense me somehow, since he Made me, but he can’t. It drives him crazy. What do I smell like?”

  Mindful of the others in the room, but suddenly uncaring, Grig encircled her arm with his fingers and lifted her wrist. He inhaled slowly, brushing his nose back and forth against her silky skin, drawing that soft, fresh, floral scent into his lungs. “Roses.”

  “Oh great,” Drei muttered. “Leave it to our little brother to Mate with a vampire.”

  Em chuckled. “Just imagine what mom’s going to say.”

  *****

  They sat in silence, the thick walls of the barracks at HQ blocking out all outside sounds. His mother, Elena Lupei, commander of the Alpha Trio, had cleared everyone else out when they’d brought Kall in. ‘For her protection’. But he knew it was because she didn’t trust Kall.

  His mother’s treatment of the gorgeous vampire had set Grig’s teeth on edge, but he’d kept his mouth shut. After his brothers’ words at 5tM, he was hardly about to add more fuel to the fire of their ridiculous speculation.

  On the bunk below him, he heard Kall sigh. The bed creaked, but she didn’t speak.

  It had taken several hours for Kall to tell them everything she’d learned about Seren’s scheme while he’d had her in captivity, and then even longer to hash out a plan to take him down. Luckily for the Lupei brothers, and Cat and Cassandra, the skeletal vamp had only shared his mad plans with a small group of his fledglings.

  The crazed vampire had known for some time, it seemed, that some humans possessed something more, ‘other’ as Cassandra referred to it. He’d suspected that if these special humans were turned, they would make powerful vampires with all kinds of extra abilities. He wanted to make an army of them, to rule over vampires and Shifters... and humans too, most likely. Basic world-conquering megalomania stuff.

  But not all of these Others could be turned. In fact, of all the ones that he’d kidnapped and attempted to make into his army of super-vamp soldiers, only Kall had survived. Seren believed it was because she was young and female. That’s why he wanted Cat so badly.

  Tonight, it would all come to an end. Kall knew where Seren performed his twisted experiments – she escaped from what he called his ‘lab’ only a week ago – and they were going to destroy it, and Seren. Grig should be going over the battle strategy, making sure they’d thought of everything.

  Instead, he couldn’t force the picture of her face out of his mind, dark eyes wide, soft mouth parted as she whispered ‘You see me’ in wonder. And then his brothers’ words... Could he really be Mated to her? A vampire? It was wrong. And impossible.

  Like being Mated to a human was impossible? They’d all believed that, until a few months ago. But both Em and Drei were proof that they’d been wrong. It did happen.

  “Are we going to talk about it?” The words came out harsher than he’d intended. He didn’t mean to snap at her. But the muscles of his jaw were tense as he stared up at the ceiling.

  Below him, he heard another soft sigh. Her fresh, sweet scent wafted up to him. His dick was instantly hard. He gritted his teeth, ignoring it, waiting for her answer.

  “I...” She began, but trailed off. The springs of the bunk gave a piercing squeak as she shifted position. He heard her boots hit the floor. “It... might not be for the reason they think.”

  Kall was up now, pacing. Grig swung his own legs over the side of the bunk and sat up. He watched the black silk of her hair shifting as she spun, her lips a bright crimson slash in her pale face. Pale, that is, but for two bright spots of color high on her sculpted cheekbones.

  Was Kall blushing?

  “What do you mean?” Grig curled his fingers around the edge of the bunk, resisting the urge to reach out, snag her and yank her against him. They were supposed to be resting up for tonight.

  Kall shoved a slender hand through her hair. The gesture made her pert breasts jiggle. “This... thing... between us.”

  “You can think of another reason we were all over each other within minutes of meeting? I hadn’t even seen your face,” he growled, angered that she would try and deny what was between them. The fact that he’d wanted to do just that a moment ago seemed of little consequence now.

  She stopped pacing, twirling to face him, hands fisting at her sides. “But you’d tasted my blood!”

  Each word slammed into Grig’s gut as if she’d hurled knives. “What?” He felt the blood drain from his face.

  “You were dying.” Kall gritted the words out, eyes blazing. “You’d already lost too much blood. I didn’t know what else to do! I just acted. I dragged you into that basement and put your mouth to my throat. I cut my flesh and made you drink.” She took a single stalking step with each sentence, chin lifted. Her chest rose and fell in quick, panting breaths. Her nipples were hard, he saw.

  Grig remembered awakening in the dark with the copper taste of blood on his tongue. He should be disgusted at the thought of feeding on a bloodsucker, but instead, her words made his blood heat. Tasting a vamp that way? The thought was abhorrent.

  But tasting Kall? Taking her very lifeblood into him? He licked his lips. No, abhorrence wasn’t the word for how the thought of that made him feel.

  “It worked. You healed me. You saved me.” His voice was gruff. Her lip lifted in a silent snarl, as if she’d expected him to argue more. Her fangs, sharp and white and wickedly curved, were lengthening.

  Grig had been bitten by vamps before, while fighting them. He knew what it felt like to have those razor-like teeth slice into his flesh. It hurt like a motherfucker. Not so long ago, the night they’d discovered Cassandra’s mind reading ability in fact, he’d fought a poisonous vamp that injected venom with its fangs, like a snake. A glancing blow from one of those deadly teeth had left him sick and reeling. It had not been a pleasant experience.

  Yet, the thought of Kall sinking her fangs into his flesh made his heart thud and his cock throb against the fabric of his jeans. He could picture her, long, pale legs wrapped around his waist as she rode him, licking his throat before piercing him with her teeth and sucking. He shuddered. Kall’s eyelids fluttered.

  “So...” Her already raspy voice was a dry croak. She stood mere inches from him now, her small, lovely face even with his thighs. Her gaze dropped to his groin and she swallo
wed audibly before clearing her throat. “So that could be why we’re feeling this... um...” She licked her lips.

  Grig imagined her lush, red mouth wrapped around his cock and almost groaned out loud. He tensed his jaw, biting it back. “Maybe,” he said, reaching out to touch her cheek, unable to resist.

  The second his fingertips touched her skin, fire raced up his arm to his heart. Like sticking his finger in an electrical socket, only better. More pleasurable. “That might explain why I feel drawn to you, why I can see you and sense you when no one else can... though I think it’s a stretch.” He thought it was bullshit, actually, and he thought she did too. She was grasping at straws. “But it doesn’t explain your reaction to me.”