He’d dreamed of having a woman he could call his own, one who would hold him and love him, not one he had to kidnap and threaten and rape, although rape was something he was not capable of. He wanted a woman who would be kind to him, someone he could share his life with, and when he’d come across Rose—and God help him but she was beautiful—he’d let the misguided lessons he’d been taught from birth convince him she could be his. He hadn’t known until he’d come to Sanctuary that those marked with the main scent had a second scent, a mated scent that only a destined mate could smell.
He’d been taught that those with the scent were marked for lycan pleasure, and once he’d learned of the mated scent, the guilt had been near crippling. Over the years, he’d witnessed the abuse of many women, and even though the urge to aid them had surged in him, he’d been helpless.
Scavenging for food and blending with shadows for safety honed skills of evasion not fighting technique, yet he wasn’t so sure that excuse made him feel any better. What kind of man did that make him? A coward?
The knowledge that he’d witnessed countless marked women robbed of the chance to meet their intended mate gave him nightmares and a forever-burdened heart. And the thought that the same fate might have befallen the one woman in the world who could possibly love him, accept him for whom and what he was, made him wish at times that Knox Slade hadn’t given him a choice about dying.
Bubbly laughter jerked him from his dismal thoughts, and his attention was drawn to Rindy, Brent’s mate. She was a tiny thing, barely five foot tall, with blonde hair nearly the color of wheat, and clear gray eyes. The ancient was nearly twice the size of Rindy, but he handled her as if she were fragile 5
Lycan Christmas
S. K. Yule
glass. Lorent smiled when Brent picked her up by the waist and held her up to a fir tree so she could string some lights on the branches toward the top.
Rindy and Brent’s property butted up against Anthony’s and Karen’s—
another ancient and his mate—property. Those two properties combined made up the hundreds of acres called Sanctuary.
“Hey, Lorent. You decorating your place this year?”
Lorent, lost in his memories, wallowing in his guilt, sucked in a startled gasp. He should have noticed Shannon’s approach much sooner. Great.
Haven’t you learned by now that distraction is the number one thing that can get you killed? Not that he feared for his life—only his sanity—from Shannon, but another situation and a wandering mind could cost him dearly.
Shannon Levy was the only unmated girl who lived at Sanctuary. He had participated in her rescue from rogues five months earlier. Fortunately, they’d gotten to her before any real harm had been done, and he considered her rescue the first real step in making up some ground for past sins.
Shannon was twenty, five years younger than him, and was pretty enough with her slim, tall frame, dark skin, pert mouth, turned-up nose, blue eyes, and long brown hair. While he found her to be nice, she made him a bit uncomfortable at times with her overly friendly behavior.
She wasn’t his mate, but he sympathized with her, as he figured she was grappling with trying to deal with how she’d come to be at Sanctuary and being a marked mate for a lycan. He understood the struggles of trying to figure out who you were and what was expected of you, especially after living a life with a completely different outlook of what was and was not reality.
“Um, no.” He took a step back when she crowded his personal space, which she did quite often.
“I could come over and help you, you know?” She batted her long lashes at him and slowly ran her tongue over her lips.
The urge to run away was strong, but he’d look like a fool if he hightailed it into the woods because a girl made him nervous. He took another step back and almost threw caution to the wind when she walked two fingers up his chest.
6
Lycan Christmas
S. K. Yule
“It would be fun, hon. We could hang out and get to know each other better.” She leaned closer. Her breasts brushed against him as she stood on her toes to slip her mouth up by his ear. “You know I’d like to get to know you better, right, Lorent?”
He felt the hot rush of blood to his cheeks. She had to know that if he got to know her in the way he thought she was insinuating, it would be his balls, because once Anthony found out, he’d rip them off if Brent didn’t get to him first. Anthony and Karen played integral parts at Sanctuary. Anthony kept the reformants in line, which sometimes required a good ass-kicking, and Karen helped the newly reforming rogues with the mental side of things.
While Karen had worked in an office before meeting Anthony, it hadn’t taken her long to find a new interest in psychology. She’d taken several online courses in the subject and was currently looking into becoming a full-fledged psychiatrist.
There were rules about touching the mate of another. Hell, there were rules about everything, but this was the only real home Lorent had ever known, the only home where he felt people actually gave a shit about him—
even if just a little—and he wasn’t going to screw it up by letting his hormones get the best of him.
“I’m sorry, Shannon, but you know I don’t get
