by Sam Hall
My fangs had receded, but they came back at his words. He saw my snarl and nodded.
“Where does that leave you? If the fuck who murdered our alpha continues to walk the earth, walk through this town?”
“Fuck, you punch hard,” I said, my hand going to my jaw, feeling a click there, but he just smiled, knowing that I wasn’t talking about his hits.
“So do you. Whatever your mate taught you, you’re a goddam powerhouse.”
He let go of my shirt, and for some reason, I felt a sense of loss at that. It was minor compared to the whirling cyclone inside me, but still. I got to my feet, then bent down, helping Micah to his. Deliberate or not, he ended up standing a few finger’s breadth from me.
“I’m sorry.” Fuck, that was a lame response to what I’d done, my hand going out and touching one of the bites I’d left on him.
“Don’t be.” He shook his head, smiling just as bright as he did before, then leaned in to speak directly into my ear. “Next time your fangs are in me, I want my knot buried so deep in your cunt, you’ll never get free of me.”
At the sound of a growl, mine, Declan’s or Mason’s, it didn’t seem to matter, he pulled away, walking over to the kitchen where I heard the unmistakable crack of a beer can being opened. I didn’t have one, didn’t have it in me to have one, so I drifted instead to the now unprotected door. I opened it out onto the night sky and looked up at the moon as my feet crunched on the gravel, thinking I was finally free, even if every scrap of emotion was burned out of me. But that’s when Mason emerged out of the shadows.
I shook my head, feeling the ache at the back of my skull that told me I had to shift. I’d let my wolf come too close to the surface, let her savagery out, and she wasn’t going back in the box just because I said so.
“I’m not a little girl anymore, Mason. You can’t keep me caged up for my safety.”
“Were you ever?” The hard tone, the sadness there had my eyes swivelling around to meet his, as bright silver as mine were, I was sure. He snorted, then smiled, his fangs on display. “This wild girl, she had to be lurking under all those labels—heir, alpha’s daughter, nix. A little savage in a party dress.”
“That makes you happy?” I frowned, unable to reconcile that with my father’s beta, but maybe that was a label too. Which made me wonder what the hell we all were once we tossed them aside.
I was about to find out.
Zack’s car roared into the carpark, and Lorcan was out before the car rolled to a stop, yanking his shirt off, kicking his shoes off.
“What the hell happened?” Zack shouted, people spilling out of the enforcers’ quarters now, but I didn’t bother to answer.
“You need to run,” Lorcan said, looking me over with eyes that were almost black in a way that somehow perfectly contained all the desperation and need in me. Because there was an answering one in him. “We go to fur, go to the forests. Let’s go.”
His hands were on me, shoving my shirt off over my head as I tried to yank off my sweatpants.
“Paige?”
But no one was answering. Zack hadn’t felt it yet, but the others did, my mates, my pack. A howl built in my chest, but I swallowed it down. We would use it to power our paws over the asphalt, over the dirt. Silent as ghosts.
Lorcan pulled me to him and slammed his mouth down on me, forcing still swollen lips apart to admit his tongue, sucking on my bleeding flesh before he stood back and shifted into a huge black wolf. Other wolves milled around the carpark when I turned and stared back at Mason, blood trickling down my chin. He just nodded, something dark and satisfied in that, before he strode over to the gate and slammed his hand down on the button to open it. He was in fur moments later, the biggest black wolf of all, giving us only one look over his shoulder before taking off out the gap.
Fucker.
Instincts yanked me off my feet and after him, taking fur, a black wolf at my shoulder keeping pace, others, some grey, some pale, some reddish. We ran and ran, Mason’s wolf’s tail a red rag waved in the faces of bulls, our paws eating up the ground beneath us but not fast enough.
Cars beeped and veered as we moved through town, but on we ran until all the man stuff fell away and there was just this—grass, dew, bugs flying up in our wake, their chirrup marking our passing, and the moon.
It made sense that we’d return to that clearing, the one where I’d howled my pain at my father’s passing. The need to do so again, a cry of a different kind, was harsh inside me, but I’d come back here and tell the moon of my father’s betrayal when I had his killer’s blood in my mouth. Instead, I went back to skin as they did, my mates. I knew them now, fur’s much clearer, cleaner instincts riding me. The five of them stepped forward, while the other enforcers stayed in fur, forming a ring around us as I moved closer. Lorcan stepped up first, but Micah was only seconds later. Declan’s eyes darted around the circle, but he took his step in confidently enough. Zack just nodded. He was already there, inside me, thrumming like a struck string. And then there was Mason.
Did anyone else see the fight in him, with all those tiny little micro expressions? Did they see under that mask of dutiful beta, of good man, of brother? I did, lifting my chin and staring up at him, proud as a queen, because I was his and he was starting to realise it. It felt like the earth shook when he stepped in, joining his brothers in more ways than one. And now it was my turn.
I walked into them, into their bodies, felt their fingers on my skin. I leaned up, moving close enough to kiss but didn’t, and just breathed them in until I came to a stop. They wanted it, felt the ache for it, my bite, but there was only one who would get it tonight. A dark star in a night sky, Lorcan hung back slightly as if not entirely sure about putting himself forward, which was maybe what drew me to him.
My hand snaked up and around his neck, his head coming down easily enough. His fingers were still clawed when he grabbed my arse, those sharp points dimpling the flesh there. But he was gentle, too gentle when I kissed him, and soft enough to fall head over heels into and drown me with all that swelled inside him, my teeth aching with need for him.
“Mine,” I said, stroking his jaw.
“Yes, fuck yes, Paige.”
“On your knees then.”
He dropped down with gratifying swiftness, staring up at me, the moon. Right now, I was his Moon Maiden and he shuffled forward to worship her.
His cunning tongue, his hungry mouth, I didn’t really need them. I was ready with every fibre of my being, but I tousled his hair as he lapped at my cunt, slurping lewdly on my slick. Then I pushed him down onto the pine needles while the others paid witness, covering his body with mine, and Lorcan’s eyes went wide.
“You OK?” I asked, my last vestiges of humanity there. He nodded furiously. “Then tell me you want this.”
He grinned, quick and spontaneous, his brows creasing.
“Fuck, I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.”
So I grabbed that thick, hard cock that had served me so well and made him mine in a series of rocking movements, the two of us gasping with each inch that sank in.
“Jesus…” His back arched as my body shifted, readying to take his knot. He kept babbling that as it eased in, stretching me to my limits, to the point where I began to doubt I could take him, and then it was done. I panted, feeling him locked down hard, his eyes wide and glowing like the moon, so bright, I finally had to shut mine and just feel.
They invaded my body like they did my heart. I took them into me, locking them inside me, as they did me. Lorcan… Lorcan came rushing in as the mate bond snapped around us, as I drowned in him, a flood of pain and shit, of teeth clenching tenacity, and finally, of love.
When I opened my eyes, he’d rolled up into a seated position, arms wrapped around me as we rocked together. Just tiny little movements, but it felt like the world moved with them. A tear fell free as we did, his finger reaching up to trace its path, and then he thrust up.
I don’t know how to tell you
what happened, it was all such a rush. He was a complete stranger and my mate, and he was buried inside me, my cunt clutching at him, like I needed to grip him harder, hold him closer, but he just shook his head. His smile, infrequent and all the more beautiful for it, came as he stared at me.
I heard a wolf howl far away, the sound growing louder, higher as I curled my body around his, pushing his head to one side. I felt my fangs snap down, the saliva fill my mouth as he filled me, driving up harder and harder, his strokes growing ragged and spasmodic.
“You’re gonna come for me now, beautiful girl, and then you’re gonna mark me hard, mark me deep, make my body ache for you like my fucking heart does.”
So I did and he did, our bodies exploding the moment my fangs sank into him, pulsing and pulsing, one orgasm triggering the next and the next, until finally, when the moon was lower in the sky, we had no more to give.
A black wolf with eyes like the moon sat at the edge of our clearing, but when I noticed it, it turned and ran away.
I was lightheaded, loose kneed, and stumbling when I got to my feet, but hands shot out to hold me up.
“Fuck,” someone said. “Anyone think of bringing a car out with us? Because it’s a long way to walk back to town.”
Chapter 33
When we finally got back to the house, I said a few words to the enforcers, thanking them for their forbearance.
“You’ve found them,” Will said, “your pack. The hot and cold running Viagra feeling seems to be settling down. You’re a mad woman, being prepared to take some of those fuckers on, but…” He nodded, and some of the others did too. “It’s good. Look at you. You’re all glowing. Micah looks like a fucking streetlight.”
“Get fucked, Will,” the man in question snapped back.
“We’ll be able to strap him to a bullbar and use him for a spotlight when we go rabbiting,” someone else said.
“As I said previously, get fucked.”
And with that, they all filed inside to celebrate with the time-honoured Australian tradition of getting pissed. Especially when I said they could ring Stevie and order some more piss on my tab.
“Did you guys want…”
I was gonna ask them if they wanted a beer or something, anything to process what had just happened, but with that dense, implacable gaze they all had, focussed entirely on me, I could see that wasn’t needed.
“Just you,” Lorcan breathed into my hair, rubbing his chin against it, like a cat marking its territory. “Just you. God, how the fuck do you keep your hands off her and get anything done?” he asked Zack. “I can’t get her close enough or touch her enough.”
“You just do, because she needs you to. You’ll find that more and more, that you’ll find depths inside you that you didn’t know you had, because she needs them to come to the fore. Everything becomes about her.” Zack looked around at the rest of my men. “If you come upstairs with us, you’ll sleep curled around her body, will be ready to answer what’s in you. You need to be prepared for that.”
“I’m in. Have always been in,” Declan said. “I’m just wishing I hadn’t lost all that time, that we’d known this before.”
“One hundred percent.” Micah shifted on his feet, those eyes glowing in the darkness again. “I know I’ve got a way to go, that I don’t know her like you mob do, but I want to. There’s a hunger in me, in my blood. It can’t stay away until I know there’s one in her too.”
Mason looked slightly uncomfortable when everyone’s eyes turned to him, his eyes dropping, his head shaking. My breath stopped, trapped in my chest, waiting for his response.
“The most important thing your dad taught me was hope. I came here a fucked-up, angry kid, and he turned me into a man. He said that wasn’t possible without some kind of hope. Hope for the future, hope of finding a mate, hope of moving past the chaos I grew up with and finding something healthy. I took what he meant too literally, thinking I had to have something that was as far away from my parents’ relationship as I could to be happy.”
When his eyes met mine, it was like looking into a whole other man’s gaze. We’d shared caring looks and hot ones, desperate ones and sweet ones, but none of them were like this. It was like finally, finally, he stopped seeing what he thought I was and saw me.
“You know I’ve always loved you.”
No, no I did not know that, and I needed to hear it a lot more to really take it on board.
“I loved you as a little sister first, I guess. Then I loved this woman-slash-child who was taking her first steps towards adulthood, and then you were an adult and I wanted to hold you to me, protect you from all the shit in the world, and lock you away in my heart, where I hurt most for you. But I look at you now and know that you don’t need that from me. You’re a fighter. That’s what I love about you now.”
He shook his head.
“I knew that really deep down. Zack didn’t make you into something you weren’t before, he just taught you how to direct that instinct.” A strange smile spread across his face. “I was worried that would terminate things between us. What the hell did I have to offer you but protection? I still don’t know, Paige, but all I can offer you is me. That’s it, that’s all I have.”
I felt that night on my skin as I walked towards Mason. I was just a girl, standing in front of a wolf, asking him to love her. And when he reached out and pulled me into his arms this time, dropping his mouth to mine, everything I’d ever wanted that night came rushing in. He cradled my cheek with his hand, trying to pause and just look at me, but we couldn’t.
I’d needed to kiss Mason Klein every day since that night five years ago, and I hadn’t been able to. A wave of resentment threatened to swell, but it couldn’t get traction, not when he was here, now, in my arms, touching and kissing me.
I’d need to deal with it, the pain, specifically the pain caused by his goddamned stubbornness. I needed assurances and apologies and, to be honest, proof that he wasn’t going to pull that pigheaded bullshit again. But not now, not tonight, not yet.
“We need to set up a bigger bed,” Zack said when we finally drew apart. Always the practical one. “Packs stay together, sleep together, bond.”
“I’d be clawing at your door in fur if you sent me back to the enforcers’ quarters,” Declan said. “I need…well, a lot of things really, but skin contact.” He drew me out of Mason’s arms and then tucked me under his chin, arms wrapping around me. “I’m done sleeping without that.”
“We need to take your father’s bed, then add one of the spare ones next to it,” Mason said, eyeing me to see if that would be OK.
I remembered crawling into that same bed and crying my eyes out when I’d just gotten back, but nodded anyway. It was just furniture, not him.
“And then there’s…”
Dad’s murderer. I couldn’t say the words, my fangs already returning at the thought of them, but every man grew solemn, nodding, showing they knew exactly what that meant.
“Every man here will make it their full-time job to investigate what happened to the alpha,” Mason said. “We’ll tear the place apart if that’s what it takes.”
“We can get a PI in from the city,” Zack said. “I know some guys in the business who are good and reliable.”
“No one will rest until the alpha’s killer is brought to justice,” Declan said, surprising me the most, his usually light-hearted demeanour thoroughly thrown aside as something much darker and more intent bled through.
“But not tonight.” Lorcan pulled me close with fingers a little tight with need. He thrust his nose in my hair, breathing me in. “Just tonight, can we have this, us?”
I wasn’t sure if he meant me and him or all of us, but I was going with the latter. I kissed him, just a long slow steady press of the lips until the tension leached out of him, and then we walked inside, up the stairs to my father’s door. They waited for me to open it, and then we all moved in, working as a team to strip the bedclothes off and replace them with new on
es, remove the bedside tables, and shift the massive bed frame to allow another to be put alongside of it. And then, when everything was fresh, new, and remade, I looked around and saw all of them, waiting.
They watched me with hungry eyes when my first knee was put on the mattress, then each movement until I was lying on my back, staring at Dad’s ceiling. Lorcan moved first, sliding down beside me, pulling me to face him before tucking me against him. Then the rest came, each dip in the mattress a weight on my heart that steadied, stilled me.
Did they feel it click into place? Something small, temporary, an acknowledgement of the step we’d just taken, but also a promise for the future. I’d claim them all, take all of their knots deep inside me, dig my fangs into their necks, formalise what I already knew, that they were mine, mine, mine. But right now, I was content, with this, with what I was and what we were.
We were pack.
We were strong, we were united, and when we found whoever did this to my father, we would be bloody of tooth and claw, and then we would be triumphant.
Strange things to fall asleep to, I guessed, but we were not human. We dreamed the dreams of wolves, of running together free, of blood, of Mother Moon.
Chapter 34
In the end, it was the lack of hydration that got me.
At some point in the night, I woke up and saw the moon starting to fade, her last rays of light coming in through the gauzy windows in front of the bed. It formed a circle across the bed, and that made sense. I smiled to myself, then felt what had woken me. My throat was bone-dry from all the screaming, fighting, fucking, and mating, but not enough H2O. I was seriously going to need to start carrying a water bottle around again with these boys. It took some work, but I eased out from under the bodies that had pinned me to the bed. Jesus, Zack had always smothered me, but now I had five willing to take up that duty.
