Hello my dearies!
Let's all pretend that April 2017 didn't suck as bad as it did, why don't we? It's raining almost nonstop around here in Central Europe, which is rather unusual. I mean, a little rain, okay. But it's raining so much that I had to remove all the flower pot trivets because my poor plants got flooded and started to mildew, and even this was only after I tried emptying them daily and finally gave up.
After the harsh frosts in March and April ruined half of my trees and sent me cutting my previously wild garden like a madwoman, I had hoped things would get better, but you know what they say about hope.
Since I can't continue my DIY renovation of my old windows, I decided to renovate- or rather rejuvenate- my blog and threw on a new coat of paint. I've had enough of that hopeful pinkish background! I hope this one didn't get too, well, brown :D
And to make up for my imitation of a snail when it comes to writing "Unwilling", here's a snippet from the next chapter, almost unedited but better than nothing!
Please click on "Continue" to read more!
Snippet: Unwilling Chapter 12
~*Darwin*~
Seeing his father after the days he’d been having was the best thing Darwin could imagine. Hugging him was even better; for a while, Darwin didn’t want to let go of the old man at all. As grown-up as he had thought himself to be, right now he was happy with just being a son and clinging to someone safe. If only he could have his mate and his best friend back, the world would be alright again.It hadn’t taken him all that long to distinguish Margo’s moods by the tone of her voice. Margo had a very expressive set of vocal cords and was more than happy to yell through the whole roadhouse, shooing him from one place to another and shouting encouragement at the same time.
When she remarked on the people outside, Darwin could picture her face, matching her suspicious voice. It was Mary’s call, however, that sent a jolt of fear through his body.
“No, no, no, no,” he breathed as blood from his extremities rushed towards the center of his body, leaving his fingers cold and shivery. “Please, dear god, no.” Darwin jogged to one of the windows, carefully peeking through the blinders and swallowing down gunks of saliva as his mouth ran dry.
Three cars were parked haphazardly on the parking lot in front of the entrance. Familiar people were milling around, looking at George’s car, the roadhouse and the area around it, probably checking for escape routes or back exits. Carl was standing behind one of the dark blue SUVs, mobile phone in his hand and typing away, but his attention definitely lay on the roadhouse. Even a blind man could see the preparations for a frontal attack the Banes Pack was making, but Darwin still turned to Margo.
“Those people are going to attack you,” he said, hating how his voice trembled. “That’s my old pack, our old pack, the one we’ve been running from.”
Another shiver ran through the crowd of slightly hungover werewolves, but none of them got up. The jukebox bleated its last notes and fell silent. Margo cocked her head to one side.
“Why would they attack us? This is our territory and they’re far away from home, what use could they possibly have for a piece of crap heap of houses in the middle of nowhere?” She paused, frowned and added, “And don’t get me wrong, kiddo, you’re cute as a button, but you’re just one submissive. That’s not enough reason to drive halfway through the country and start a fight with another pack.”
“This isn’t about a runaway submissive, Margo. They are here to kill me and after they’ve done that, they will go up to the cabins and kill my mate and my pack.” A small drop of sweat lazily rolled down Darwin’s temple, itching and tickling on its way down. He swiped it away with numb fingers and palmed his forehead, trying to think through his panic. “That man out there with the mobile in his paw is Carl. He’s the Alpha of the Banes Pack and he already tried to kill me twice. If he finds me here, he’ll try a third time, and this time around, I won’t be getting up afterward.”
One of the regulars huffed and shook his head. “You’re talking shit, pup. It’s impossible to kill a submissive on purpose.”
“I’d try to prove it to you, but then I’d be, you know, dead,” Darwin bit out. Funny, it was so much easier to get snarky with people when he was afraid for his life. All the agitation made his spine tingle with the first warnings of change; he stumbled back as he concentrated on breathing and closed his eyes.
“My son is telling the truth.” George’s voice rang out from next to the bar. “That man out there was my best friend, but he’s not right in the head anymore. Last night, he sent three of his men to kill me in my own home, just because I had a conversation with my son. And we don’t think that his murder attempts on Darwin are a first. He’s done it before, multiple times, I’m sure of it. We’re sure of it. Our pack has not one submissive left, not one! If it weren’t for that, if Carl hadn’t taken away everyone who kept his people sane, he’d be alone out there. But those people aren’t sane anymore. You can’t negotiate with them.”
Margo was watching the discussion with tense calmness, looking out the windows ever so often as not to lose sight of the brewing trouble. “We can at least try,” she said without inflection, shrugged and turned towards the doors. Her moving had the whole room rustle, swish and click as a dozen guns and rifles found their way out of pockets, holsters and off the floor. A few of the men got up and snuck towards the windows, those at the bar just turned around, but each of them was armed.
Mary had enough presence of mind to grab George’s wheelchair and jostle him towards the stairs and the back room, out of the death zone and out of sight. A few of the patrons also went back there, throwing worried glances back to their pack mates as they sought shelter where bullets wouldn’t stray too easily. Darwin followed in a quick trot, fighting against the deep, dragging pain in his back. The need to change was still there, teetering on the edge like a dry orgasm, but he didn’t try to suppress it altogether, just enough to hold it off for now. If for some reason a fight broke out and Carl actually made his way inside, Darwin would not sit there and take it, oh no. He would change, and dominance be damned, he would die trying to kill Carl right back.
Margo walked to the door in all her average, beautiful, over-painted glory, opened it and stepped outside, arms akimbo. Her voice was a declaration of war, a tumbleweed in a frontier town, echoing through the guest room as she yelled: “So, what the fuck are you doing in my territory? Did you at least bring cake?”
Darwin, Mary and George froze, looking at each other wide-eyed. George mouthed ‘Alpha?’ at Darwin, who could only shrug. He hadn’t known either.
Of course, Carl reacted just like Darwin expected. “Give us the boy and we’ll spare you,” he yelled in return.
A few subdued snickers wafted through the roadhouse at that, but Margo didn’t laugh. “What’cha want with the boy?” she asked dryly, not bothering to sound surprised. She actually sounded interested, and that made Darwin nervous. She had hidden her being the local Alpha, so what else might she be hiding? Had he tried too hard to win her over, said too much?
“None of your business! Send him out, now, or we’ll come in and get him,” Carl snarled. He sounded rather pleased with himself, probably because of the fifteen werewolves he had brought with him.
Darwin looked around. In hand-to-hand combat, there would definitely be a lot of casualties. Carl’s wolves were unhinged, itching for a fight and they outnumbered Margo’s pack. If it came to a brawl, they wouldn’t stop until they killed their opponents, or died themselves.
Luckily, there would be no hand-to-hand combat, there would be a gunfight. It was highly irregular for a pack to go into a conflict armed with firearms, but this was not a territorial dispute or a challenge, this was an assault. Shooting the invading werewolves was a-okay with common pack law. The police would disagree, but that was a problem for another time.
Margo still stood in the entrance, but a few of her fingers twitched, pointing to those inside the roadhouse. It had to be some kind of code, because a few of the men switched positions and one of them even elbowed his way past Darwin, Mary and George to reach the back door.
“You are trespassing on my property and I’m asking you to leave. You’re not welcome here,” she said in a tone of voice that suggested she herself didn’t believe they would listen.
Then the world sped up past the point Darwin could follow. A bark from outside marked Carl’s command to charge, Mary screamed and the back door and front windows shattered as warm bodies barreled through them.
A shuddering breath later, a half dozen of guns and rifles came to life and screamed death against the invaders.
A still shrieking Mary jumped onto George, shielding him with her body and opening a path for panicked submissives to flee the brawl at the back door behind them. A moment later, one of Margo’s enforcers who had taken the guard post at the back door threw a burly man towards the front and guest room, grazing Darwin and catapulting him out into the madness in front of the bar.
Gasping with pain from the impact, Darwin tumbled through feet, broken furniture and bodies. He came to a halt beneath a table and twitched back as a bullet-riddled girl fell back and crashed through it, landing at the almost exact spot Darwin had occupied a moment before. Her dead eyes stared right at Darwin, moved only by the last twitches her body made as it fought for futile breaths and heartbeats that wouldn’t happen ever again.
The noise was unbearable, loud enough to deafen him as he squeezed himself beneath a bench bolted to the wall. The room stank of gunpowder and blood, hot metal and broken wood, nose-blinding him and filling the air with foggy smoke.
The fight lasted maybe two or three minutes, but it felt like an eternity. The only sign that Margo’s pack was winning came with a sudden rush of gun-wielding truckers towards the front door, followed by a panicked call from the outside as the survivors turned heel to run.
From one pained gasp to the next, Darwin suddenly was alone in the guest area. His ears still rang, his brain played an echo of the gunshots and screams to dim the quiet, and the air was still thick with smoke and dust, but the fight had moved outside.
Darwin carefully extracted himself from beneath the bench, doing his best to avoid the dead body blocking his path as he crawled out from under the table, keeping low to the ground and pushing a hand against his hurting ribs to ease his breathing. Six other dead bodies lay strewn in the roadhouse, but except for the enforcer at the back door- and the remaining submissives who were crouching huddled beneath the stairs, no live body had stayed inside.
Mary and George were where they had been. As soon as Darwin’s and George’s eyes met, George seemed to calm down enough to let the nurse fuss over him.
Darwin careened back and grabbed a hold of another table to stay upright as his thoughts raced. Where was Margo? More importantly, where was Carl? As far as Darwin could see, Carl wasn’t one of the dead strewn around the roadhouse, but that didn’t mean anything. Or did it? If Carl was still alive, Darwin had to know. If he was dead, all the better, but if not, he would have to make sure that crazy bastard didn’t keep on breathing.
A wave of urgency rushed through his body, intensifying the panic in his chest. What if Carl had gotten away and found his trail? It would lead him directly back to his pack, his people. And Jared. Darwin had no way of knowing how many of Carl’s pack had survived, no way of knowing if he had enough henchmen to overpower Jared, Rayne and Darla, and only Rayne knew how utterly powerful Carl really was beneath the crazy. They’d be sitting ducks, for all he knew.
But would running after Carl help? Darwin was no match for him, as much as he wanted to deny it. The urge to simply take off after them and to hell with all logic was strong, pulling at his sinews and biting at his spine, but he stayed put and watched George roll closer. Clutching the edge of the table, he relayed his thoughts to his father, trying to hold as still as possible so he wouldn’t have to yield to his impulses. It was a hard thing to do.
George and Mary listened, then George nodded and frowned grimly. “We need Margo.”
“We need to go save them!”
“Yes, but to do that we need Margo. You’re a submissive, Darwin, you can’t fight an Alpha. I know it’s hard, but try to be reasonable. We need dominants, another Alpha, something to overpower Carl, then we can go.”
George’s words felt like a punch in his gut. Always too weak, always helpless, always needing others to save him. He would have vomited if his stomach wasn’t empty, but rage still tightened around his innards and made him swallow convulsively. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. He was supposed to be strong. He had survived years of ever so careful navigating a potentially lethal environment, had taken more punches than a person was ever supposed to be exposed to, had survived multiple attacks on his life, and now he was expected to sit back and let others fight?
Darwin felt his face go cold. A calmness washed over him and settled deep inside his chest as he nodded, avoiding Mary’s hard glance and waiting for his father to turn his wheelchair and call for Margo. Then he turned and ran, deaf to his father’s calls, obeying the itching pain in his back.
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