by Sam Hall
“Yes… Yes…”
Right when the perfect moment should have come, right when all the boundaries and bullshit should have been thrown aside and what was true should have come forward, Lorcan yanked away. I came, achingly empty as he slapped his cock down on my clit, pushing it to keep on twitching but not around what it should. He sobbed when his cum jetted out, his tears hitting my skin at the same time as his seed did. And what a sour harvest that was.
I pulled him down on top of me, cradled him in my arms, and fought the urge to growl when Zack came closer.
“You’ve only just met. I rushed things. I’m sorry.”
His excuses would make sense later, I knew that, but all my wolf knew right now was betrayal. This was part of my heart. I’d found him and been denied, and he wept from the pain of it.
I did too. That hurt at first, fighting to get free, my body warring with itself until it won. I stroked Lorcan’s hair and cried for him. I cried for all the women and their well-documented torture and murder in my Dad’s papers. I cried for Mum, being forced to endure this same pain by her own family. Worse because she didn’t even get this. And I cried for my dad, reaching out to strangers on the internet, trying to find a way to help me, right when I refused any help at all.
When we came back to ourselves, Zack was cradling me against his chest and Lorcan was wrapped around mine.
“It was the right thing to do,” Lorcan said finally. “I didn’t want it to be. Mother, how I didn’t want it to be. People make bonds hastily and then spend their life regretting it. I guess we’ve gotta see if there’s anything beyond this little experiment.”
When I reached up to touch his face, he rubbed his stubble against my palm, closing his eyes for a minute.
But of course, moments like this were always going to be short ones.
A loud crash alerted us to the intruders, then a shouted, “Lor! You in here?” confirming that. Both men were up off the bed, yanking on clothes to meet the threat head-on.
I was much slower. Imminent doom might’ve been, well…imminent, but I was drained, hollowed out, and just a husk remaining. My clothes felt weird and wrong against my skin, but I pulled them on anyway, especially as the noise got louder.
“Taking it up the arse, Lor?” one of several thuggish looking guys sneered, the three of them clustered together. Fuck, it was Jim, Marty, and Baz Engel.
“How the fuck did you get in here? I changed the locks.”
“Like that’d keep us out. Worried we’re gonna try and poach your boyfriend here?”
No one answered. No one said a thing as I walked into the room. The Engel boys, their eyes flashed silver as they watched me approach.
“You’ve got the heir here?” Eyes slid to Lorcan. “Why didn’t you ring us? Half the fucking town’s panting after her.”
“And you fucked her.” Marty was the smaller, weaselly looking one, his face screwing into a weird combination of anger and envy.
I walked up, slid between my two men, putting my hands on either of their waists, only then feeling the steady thrum of tension.
“Get out,” I said, shoving dominance into my words. Marty stumbled back and the others flinched, but they tried to stay where they were, growling in response. I stepped free of the men, Lorcan trying to stop me, but Zack shook his head. This was what he’d always trained me to be. “Pick your flea ridden corpses up and get the fuck out of this house and never come back unless invited.”
It took a lot, exerting this much will, shoving it into not one but three big men, but I saw their feet slid backwards, taking one step, then another, my determination beating down on them, breaking down their objections with each begrudging step, one after the other.
“You’ll regret this, bitch,” Baz, the oldest Engel said. “Lot of riled up, frustrated men in this town. Only so long before they start pushing back.”
“Don’t care about them. I care about you lot fucking off. So go!”
They stumbled out the front door, snarling as they went, but run they did.
“Pack a bag,” I said to Lorcan when he came to stand beside me. “I dunno how committed you are to this place, but we’ve got plenty of spare rooms at the alpha estate. If we go in the direction I think we will, we’ll be leaving Lupindorf, go to the city. You could come with us.”
His breath on my neck was my only warning, then a kiss, soft and sweet on the base.
“Being a kept man. Not exactly what I had on the agenda right now. But yeah, the only thing that stops me from lighting this place on fire is the arson charge. Gimme five.”
Cool air let me know he’d gone, but that was quickly replaced by another warm presence.
“You need to be careful with that meddling, Zack.”
“I know. That didn’t go to plan.”
I looked over my shoulder. “There is no plan now, only unchartered territory. You better be as foolhardy as I think you are, because this is gonna get messy.” I turned, softening towards him. “I love you with everything I have, but you are a micro-managing, manipulative fuck sometimes.”
“I know.” A long sigh and a soft hand against my face. “I’m sorry. I’ll tell Lorcan the same when he comes back.”
“Tell me what?”
He carried a bag stuffed full over one shoulder, and something told me he hadn’t really unpacked what was in it since he got home.
“I’m sorry, mate,” Zack said, holding out a hand. “I thought it was for the best. For both of you.”
Lorcan looked at it, then shook it with the hand covered in tattoos.
“Got it. Don’t do that fucking again though. You’re her mate, I respect that, but you don’t get between me and her. Whatever poly fucked-up thing we’re rocking here, that’s my bottom line.”
“Done.”
“Then let’s go home,” I said, looking out onto the suburban street. The banal arrangement of neat lawns and parked cars seemed ill-fitting with what had just happened between us. “All I’ve gotten today was more questions, and I need some answers.”
Chapter 27
Zack had told me to get in the back seat with Lorcan. He couldn’t stop meddling, I knew that, but I saw the wisdom in his words when I settled against the seat, the warmth of Lorcan’s body against mine.
I’d known him a few hours, but damn did I feel that pull. I took his hand because not touching him physically hurt. I thought he felt it too because he stared into my eyes as his thumb rubbed across my knuckles. No, there seemed to be no postcoital regret there. He leaned forward, kissing me slowly, thoroughly, as Zack turned the ignition. We only pulled back when we were gasping for breath, and even then, we both went back for more.
He grinned at that, his face becoming radiant. So much so, I wondered what the hell had happened to him to make something as small as this change things for him. Initially, I felt ridiculous. We’d known each other for just a few hours, and a bunch of them were not especially conversational, so why did I notice these things? Why did I care?
Because I did. I turned as far as I could towards him within the seatbelt’s constraints, put my hand on his waist, then plucked at the hem until I could slide in under his shirt and to him. He let out a little hiss in response, frowning for a second.
I was making something out of nothing. This was just heat, my call, skin hunger. I knew this guy’s first and last name, the name of his grandmother, where he lived, and that was about it, and I was gonna get all moony eyed? All my conditioning rose up and shouldered forward, wanting me to pack what I was feeling up and away to protect myself from what was surely coming.
So why did my eyes drop down as I rubbed my hand across his taut abs, feeling the muscles quiver slightly at my touch? Why did my eyes meet Zack’s in the rear vision mirror? We hadn’t moved yet. He was waiting, but for what? Why was there pride shining in his eyes as he watched me, along with fear and jealousy, but mostly pride? Why would I have been just as happy if the roles were reversed and it was Lorcan driving?
; For some reason, as I stroked Lorcan’s satiny skin, hearing his breath pick up with every stroke until finally he gripped my wrist tight, the contents of Dad’s papers came back. For all their historical record of the ways women had been hurt, judged, or even massacred for displaying any kind of power, right now, they coalesced in my mind as something else. Despite knowing what their future was, the consequences of pursuing their nix nature, they had anyway.
Because that was the thing. People tried to use social mores to condition people into certain forms of sexual and emotional relationships. Some things were normalised and some were taboo. And while that made sense in some instances, like taboos against sexual assault, animals, and grooming or abusing children, others tried to flatten the great myriad of sexual identities into neat little boxes, and woe to anyone who did not conform.
But under repressive dictatorships where same sex attraction equalled death, the human heart persisted and people reached out for those they loved, damn the consequences. When people were raised under strict religious rules that outlawed certain forms of consensual sexual activities, some were forced to step beyond them to be who they were. The human world was teeming with countless attempts to tame love and sex, make it neat and tidy, and support existing power structures.
Just like my family.
“It’s either stop or I end up coming buckets all over your mate’s back seat,” Lorcan ground out. “Fuck, I’ve never felt anything like this. You hit me like a freight train.”
We could do just that. We could turn the car off, go back to that sad little room, and strip off again, be exactly who we were meant to be on that bed, over and over until we collapsed, or I bit him, or any of the many possible endings.
Or we could move bravely into the future. That’s what Dad had wanted, what he’d been trying to do for me all this time. I saw him lying on the dais, on the bed in the hospital, watching me leave on the night of my eighteenth. If I was going to honour his memory in any way, it was to find a way for me to be happy.
When I unclipped my belt, when I crawled onto Lorcan’s lap, his arms went around me, his lips found mine, and I devoured it, the potential, the possibility, him. Right now, he was mine, I felt that intensely, and only time would tell us if that was a feeling that would stay, one he shared. Then I pulled away, even as his hands grabbed at me and his lips followed, while I turned around and put my hands on the centre console and kissed my mate, my Zack.
“Something’s changed,” my mate rasped when he pulled away. “Something’s different.”
“I’m me.” He frowned a little. “I know what I am, what I will always be. This is a gift from the Mother, no matter what people think. I get to have you, have all of you in all the amazing, intense ways a shifter can have their mate…” Zack’s eyes shone suspiciously at that, boring into mine. “And I get to do that with more than one person.”
Our eyes slid over my shoulder towards the backseat before returning to each other.
“Then you know what to do, going forward?” he asked.
“I do. Let’s go to the alpha residence, do what’s needed.”
Chapter 28
“Where the hell have you been?” Mason snapped out the words, taking in me, Zack, and Lorcan in quick succession, breathing deep and then frowning. “You fucking stink of sex.”
“That’s because we’ve been fucking, Mase,” I replied.
Declan let out a snort of laughter, then tried to cover it with a cough, and I just winked at him.
When we’d arrived back at the alpha residence, the creepers who liked to lurk on my front doorstep had multiplied. There was a big cluster of guys there, all shouting something as we passed, so we’d gone around to the rear carpark, protected by the high back fence. Mason had come barrelling out, glaring at us when we got out of the car.
“Well, you need to stop doing that and start sorting out the bouts, because Aidan has the men riled up.”
“Damn, there goes the afternoon DP I had planned,” Lorcan drawled, sidling up to me and pressing a kiss to my forehead. I knew he was joking, but a little shiver went through my body at that idea. “Watching your arse stretch to take my knot would be one of life’s considerable pleasures. If you take it anally, does that still count as claiming you as my mate?”
His tone was light, teasing, and I knew he was just saying shit to stir Mason, but why did I feel a gush of slick at that idea? Something Mason detected too, if the sudden clench of his jaw was anything to go by.
“Paige, you’ve kept these men placated by promising them a fight for dominance and the opportunity to ask you out. You need to honour that if we’re to have any chance to keep them out of here.”
“Fine. Anyone who’s a contender can gather in the foyer of the house. If they want to take me out, they can put their offer on the table, and if I respond to any of them, I’ll go out with them.”
Zack nodded approvingly.
“Zack and Lorcan will attend.” That had Mason spluttering. “In their present state, stinking of sex, as you say, because what else would give them hope? They’re proof that I put out, and if that’s not an incentive for those who want me, then I don’t know what is.”
It took Mason a while, but finally, he nodded.
“They’re going to know what you are.” His voice was much softer now. “You marked Zack, made him your mate, yet you’ve obviously slept with Lorcan. I…” His eyes dropped down. “I wanted to protect you from that.”
I felt it, a quiver, a flutter of fear. Wolf shifters valued monogamy above all other things in a relationship. In my mind, I could see the men’s faces, the sneers and the sly smiles when they worked it out, what I was. It meant the gloves were off, that I wasn’t a ‘good’ girl, exclusively someone’s mate or potential mate.
“I am what I am. I’m still trying to work out what that is, but I’ll be damned if I let this town take that from me. It’ll be a useful screening tool in my negotiations. If a guy isn’t man enough to accept me the way I am, then he can fuck right off.” Mason flinched at my words, and so he should. “Doesn’t stop them from becoming alpha though. To me, that’s a separate issue. I’m not staying after this is done.”
I looked around me, at this castle of a house, and it hurt to think about leaving, but what else could I do? It was going to be hard to get acceptance for what I was in the city, let alone here.
“The men aren’t gonna like it,” Mason said.
He was right—they didn’t.
Zack and Lorcan moved in closer to the big chair we’d dragged into the foyer. It was enough like the throne kept on the stage to convey the same impression, and I’d sat down upon it with each of my guys standing behind me, the enforcers fanning around the back. And then I told them what I told Mason.
“So, as I said,” I continued, “for some of you, becoming alpha is the issue. You have a mate or you know who yours is, and it’s not me. You can compete in the fights, show your dominance, come out on top, and me and mine will vacate this building and transfer ownership over to you.”
I scanned the crowd, searching for the disgruntled faces.
“As for the rest of you, you know the drill. Deep down, you do. If I have to take this to the whole town… Fuck, if I have to take this to the human police, I will. I’m not yours to win like a meat tray in a pub raffle, no matter what you might think. From my research, my understanding from my father’s papers, unlike most wolf shifters, I don’t have one true mate, I have several.” A rumble went through the crowd. “What you’re feeling right now is my call. It’s obscuring things, stopping you from being able to find your actual true mate in some cases. It makes you…responsive to me, up until the point I either leave town or I find my true mates.”
The ‘s’ in mates seemed to go on forever, a hiss taken up in the crowd until it coalesced in one word—nix.
“A nix, yeah.”
The hiss became grumbles, a rising wave of comments, judgements, declarations, all threatening to drown me. I saw the lo
oks, silver eyed and hungry. I saw the balled up fists, the drawn back lips, the flash of fangs, and the snarls, right up until Mason stepped forward.
“Enough!”
There was a reason he’d been Dad’s beta. The way they measured dominance here, he was second only to Dad, and when he spoke, his will smashed down on everyone. You could’ve heard a pin drop.
Just not for long.
“So we should’ve fought things out that night,” Aidan said with a sneer. “We could have settled things there and then. You would have been under the winner before the moon fell.”
“And whoever did that would have been raping me.”
The quiet was instantly restored. Sexual assault was way more taboo with wolf shifters than humans. I’d have loved to tell you it was due to our matriarchal religion and tradition, but it was more practical than that. Taking what a woman didn’t want to give meant you were assaulting someone’s future mate. The thought of someone attacking the one person who was your other half was enough to deter almost anyone.
Aidan’s sneer faltered at that, the subtle shift in body language of his supporters telling. They moved farther away from him, as if not wanting to be tarred with that brush.
“Zack, Mason, and I will be visiting the local gym today to start the ball rolling on the fight for succession. We still have five days until the nominations close. I’d spend my time bolstering community support to make sure you get to compete. And for those feeling the pull of my call, wanting to see if you’re one of my mates?”
I shifted on the chair, taking a deep breath to try and just get this out.
“You can step forward today, make your case. I’ll consider the offers, and anyone I feel drawn to, I’ll make time for. Just like any wolf shifter, I want to find my mates as quickly as possible. It’ll alleviate the…pressure some of you are feeling and allow me to leave Lupindorf, get back to my life.”
