I shouldn’t have to make this decision.
That’s when inspiration struck. “Who do you guys think should be first?”
Twenty
Without hesitation, Liam and Dean both said, “Owen,” while Owen said, “Liam.”
“Okay, then. Who should be second?”
Dean and Owen both said, “Liam” and Liam said, “Dean.”
“That decides it, then. The order will be Owen, then Liam, then Dean.”
“Great,” Liam said. “I’ll get my sister to help you get ready again, if you’d like.”
“That sounds good.” We all stood, and the guys started moving around to clear away the dishes.
When I made my list, I’d spoken more definitively than I felt, and I found myself watching my guys for any signs of disappointment.
I didn’t see any, but I needed to make sure.
Placing one hand on Dean’s arm, I held him back until the other two had moved into the kitchen.
“Are you okay with being last on that list?” I asked.
He grinned, and the glint in his eye made me return the smile. “Babe, by night three, you are going to think you are all worn out. I’m looking forward to showing you that’s not true.”
Before I could even begin to process what he’d just said, he leaned over and drew me into a kiss that sent sparks flying through my body and promised much more.
I didn’t even have time to clarify that I’d meant to ask if he minded being last in the alpha-mate rankings before he’d pulled away and moved into the kitchen, leaving my whole body tingling, from my lips all the way down to my toes.
Oh, yeah. This was definitely going to be interesting.
I dragged Liam’s sister Tara with me to go lingerie shopping that afternoon. If nothing else, it would take up my day, since I didn’t have anything else to do to get ready for the ceremonies that would be taking up my next three evenings. And I wasn’t ready to think about what would be happening over the next three nights.
“You know,” Tara said, staring around the lingerie store bemusedly, “I don’t think wolves care about this kind of stuff as much as humans do.”
I paused, startled to consider that possibility.
“Maybe not,” I finally replied. “But this is as much for me as it is for them. I’m too nervous about tonight to spend today just jittering around my apartment.”
I flipped through a rack of lacy bras. “And besides, if I find the right clothes, I might be more comfortable when I’m finally alone with each of the guys.”
Tara tilted her head and gazed at me, confused. “Are you a virgin?”
“Good God, no.” I found myself glancing around the store as if she might have been overheard. “But this is my first time with…well, with these men.”
“But they’re your mates.”
Good lord, she was as naïve as her brother.
I puffed out a breath. “I grew up thinking I was human. I don’t think in terms of mates—at least, not yet. I feel like I’m in an arranged marriage three times over. And even though I really like all three of my…mates…I’m worried about how this might work out long-term.”
Tara’s mouth twisted. “I guess that makes sense.”
“And,” I continued, “I suddenly have all the wedding jitters that I didn’t have yesterday.”
“So in some ways,” my new sister-in-law observed, “you might as well be a virgin.”
Then again, perhaps neither Liam nor his sister was as naïve as I had thought.
“I guess I am.”
“Then let’s find you the right lingerie to make you feel powerful. Like an alpha.”
We went back to searching through the racks and drawers.
Ten minutes later, I was ensconced in a dressing room while Tara brought armloads of items for me to try on.
“Liam told me he thinks you’re nervous about the ceremonies, too,” she observed as she leaned against the door outside the dressing room.
“Some. I mean, you wolves sure have a lot of formalities to go through.”
Tara shrugged. “It makes everyone in the pack feel better to have formalities to go through when there’s a big change. It’s the same reason people have funerals.”
That actually made me stop. “Wait. Did the SoMa pack have a funeral for my uncle?”
“We did.”
“So why wasn’t I invited?”
“Well, for one thing, we didn’t know you’d been named pack alpha at that point.”
Right.
“And apparently, at least according to what Liam told me, your parents didn’t have any intention of telling you about your heritage.”
That really was odd. “I should ask them about that someday.”
“It’s not unheard of—it’s just not usual,” Tara reassured me.
I pulled on a two-piece lacy number in black. “Oh. I like this one.”
“Can I see?”
“Sure.”
Tara opened the door and peeked in. When she saw what I was wearing, she grinned. “I thought you might like that one. Wait here.”
She was gone for only a few minutes, and when she returned, she held the same item in two more colors—red and white. She pointed to the black one I was wearing. “Owen.” Then she held out the white one. “Liam.” And finally, the red.
“Dean,” we said together.
We cracked up laughing, and for the first time since I’d inherited my uncle’s pack, I felt almost normal.
Shopping with a girlfriend before a hot date. What could be more perfectly normal than that?
I simply had to ignore the fact that my hot date was designed to allow me to consummate my marriage to a werewolf.
To the first of three werewolves, in fact.
Yeah. That wasn’t the usual order of things in either the human or the werewolf world.
So much for normal.
Twenty-One
The pack held the ceremony at The Moon Moon, which I thought was a little odd. Especially given the fact that we were supposed to leave the ceremony and go straight to having sex.
There was a bedroom upstairs at the bar and grill. Apparently, there was an entire apartment. My uncle Desmond had sometimes rented it out and sometimes used it as a place for wolves to crash—both wolves who belonged to the pack and ones who belonged to other packs and were just passing through town.
I hadn’t even seen the apartment until just a few hours before the ceremony when Tara showed it to me. It was nice enough. Small, but clean. And it had a queen-size bed in the bedroom.
Now I was using it as a place to get ready for the ceremony to make Liam my first alpha-mate, the one whose word was law in case I was incapacitated. I sat in my carefully chosen lingerie while Tara fussed with trying to get my brown curls to behave.
“They are pretty much unmanageable,” I assured her. “You want my hair to curl, it ends up straight, and if you want it to be straight, it curls.”
She laughed. “That’s okay. We’ll pin up whatever we need to in order to make you look gorgeous.”
She was right, too. By the time she finished my hair and I smoothed the slinky red dress we’d chosen for tonight’s ceremony over the black version of the lingerie I had chosen, I looked, at least to my own eyes, like a completely different person.
I was twenty-five years old and I’d spent most of my adult life so far working in retail. I’d never considered myself sophisticated, or even really all that sexy. I was pretty, and I knew it, but I had never thought of myself as all that special.
Not until the day three werewolves suggested that they were willing to all marry me.
No matter how nervous the entire situation made me—and it did—I was still in awe of this position I had been given.
I was also beginning to see the value of the wolves’ preference for ceremonies. Just preparing for it had impressed upon me how important what I was about to do really was.
It had been one thing to agree to this odd arrangement be
cause it saved my own life.
And it did save me—the guys had told me that if I didn’t choose to marry one of them, I would be challenged for my position and the outcome would almost certainly be my own death. After all, I was not equipped to fight werewolves.
But agreeing to marry all of them came out my recognition that I really needed all their help. It wasn’t enough for me to bond with one of them, to have his help running the pack. All four of us together would be a much better fit for pack-alpha status.
So that choice I made for the pack. And the ceremony the night before had really cemented it. As we had made our vows to protect the pack, to think about the pack in everything, it had hit home how much I wanted to be the kind of alpha who could take care of all the people who joined us, who came to support us as they watched the ceremony.
And as I stared at my reflection now, I realized that the next three ceremonies were just as important. They would cement my loyalties to the three mates I had chosen, just as the one the night before had cemented my loyalty to the pack I had agreed to take over.
Tara brought me a glass of champagne to help calm my nerves and ward off pre-ceremony jitters. But I was quickly figuring out that my new werewolf metabolism burned off alcohol almost as fast as I could drink it. I wondered what other benefits—or drawbacks—might be included in the whole I’m-a-werewolf-now package.
No chance of STDs. My werewolf mates can smell whether or not I am likely to get pregnant. I can’t get drunk any longer.
I wondered what other side effects might be in store for me.
When Tara finally looked at me and said, “Okay, it’s time,” I discovered I was shaking.
Still, I was ready. I walked down the stairs that led into the back of the restaurant part of the bar and inhaled deeply.
Increased sense of smell.
That was definitely one of the changes. I wasn’t sure if it was something that should go in the pro list or the con, but I could smell the burgers from earlier that day—the ones we had cooked even though the Moon Moon was temporarily closed.
More than that, from where I was in the kitchen, I could smell all the people milling around in the bar on the other side of the wall.
I could hear them, too, their glasses clanking as they were served pre-ceremony drinks. Their hushed mumbling as they waited for me to arrive.
And in all that cacophony of sound and smell, I realized I could pick out individual threads. If I concentrated, they shimmered like bright gold woven into a tapestry.
I couldn’t make out the words—not yet, although I had a sense that this might be developing—but I could hear Owen chatting with someone. He was at the front of the room. Up on a tiny stage where I’d been told sometimes they had bands play.
Somewhere in the crowd—it sounded like about the middle of the room?—I could hear Liam and Dean talking to each other in low whispers.
I opened my eyes, not even having realized that I’d closed them, and turned to Tara. “Let’s do this.”
We moved into the main room. The crowd had been talking in hushed tones up until my entrance, but now they fell completely silent.
James, the pack historian, was the one who stood on the small dais with Owen. I stepped up and took Owen’s outstretched hand.
James began talking, a brief discussion of the history of werewolf alpha matings.
“In Wolf tradition, the alpha takes a mate not only to share the burden of leadership, but to act as interim leader should something go wrong. Yesterday, our alpha Sienna chose not one, but three mates. Today, she begins the process of placing her mates into hierarchy. She does this to protect the pack.”
As he said the words protect the pack, everyone there tilted up their heads and let out a howl.
Hearing wolves howls from human voices startled me, but the sound also felt comforting and familiar. It sang to a part of me that I hadn’t even known existed.
Then James turned to the two of us and said, “Repeat after me.”
The oaths we swore were clearly based on the same ones we had sworn to the pack the night before. But they been transformed to match our particular situation.
“I do solemnly swear, from this moment forward, to consider all my actions in light of my mate’s needs, and to act, in word and deed, for the good of my mate and the pack. I will always do whatsoever is necessary to strengthen, support, and aid in the survival of my mate. This I swear in the name of all that I hold dear and holy.”
As I spoke the oath, I felt it in the air around me, almost if it is if it hovered over me. When Owen repeated it, it seemed to settle down around us, wrapping us like a warm blanket in winter, then sinking down into my skin, and settling in my bones.
It felt like magic.
“Welcome Pack Alpha Sienna, and her First Mate, Owen.”
When James said Owen’s name, the pack once again howled its approbation, and it was like everything clicked into place. I was as inexorably bound to all these people—all these werewolves—as I was to the three I had married.
Different bindings, but no less strong.
I blinked in surprise, and James leaned toward me. “Pack magic,” he whispered. “You feel it, don’t you?”
I nodded, my eyes wide.
“Not every alpha does,” he said, reaching out and patting my hand. I hoped that meant it was a good thing.
Owen and I ended the ceremony with a light kiss, and the rest of the wolves began cheering and shouting a chant that I didn’t understand.
“What does that mean?” I whispered to Owen.
“It kind of translates to, Go have sex now. But it’s a little cruder.” He grinned, and I blushed. But we headed to the stairway.
Twenty-Two
“This is nice,” Owen said once we were in the room, as he ran his hands along my side.
“I got three dresses in the same color,” I confessed. “I felt bad spending the pack’s money when really, I could wear the same dress all three nights.”
Owen laughed. “Don’t worry about that. The pack can afford to buy you a few new dresses.” Taking my hand, he led me over to the bed and sat down. I stood in front of him, not certain of what to do next.
“Where should we start?” I asked, turning suddenly shy.
“I thought maybe we could begin here,” Owen said, slipping my dress up over my hips and then my head. He dropped it into a red puddle on the floor. Somehow, even that was hot.
“Wow,” he breathed, taking in the lingerie I had chosen for him. “This is nice.” “I thought it might be something you’d like,” I replied, still feeling shy.
“I like it. Classic, but—” He ran his hand along the lace curved around my hip. “Yeah. Also incredibly sexy.”
He stared up at me for a long time.
“So what’s next?” I finally asked.
Owen—the one who was the strongest, who seemed most in charge of all three of my wolves, said, “I thought maybe I should let you take control tonight.”
I froze, arrested by the thought.
I stepped up a little closer so that I practically straddled him, and then I wrapped my arms around his neck and wound my fingers into his hair.
The sensation of his chest pressing against mine, the slight scrape as I adjusted my arms, caused my nipples to tighten, sending almost painful tremors of desire flashing through every part of my body. Sitting up high on my knees, I tilted my forehead down to touch his.
“Something like this?” I asked softly.
“Oh, it’s definitely a start.”
With his hands that were so enormous compared to my own, Owen spanned my hips, exerting a gentle pressure designed to slide my body down the front of him until I settled comfortably and tightly against him.
“And that’s even closer,” I whispered, before pressing my lips against his. And when he pressed his own tongue into my mouth to tangle with mine, it was everything a kiss should be.
Even so, we were tentative at first, gently exploring each oth
er through the kiss.
It didn’t take long, however, for us to add our hands to the exploration. When Owen’s thumbs brushed across my nipples, I found myself arching toward him, silently begging for more. And Owen obliged, cupping my breasts with both hands, lightly squeezing the nipples until I gasped.
He bent his head to take one of my breasts into his mouth.
“God, I want you,” he whispered as he dropped kisses into the valley between my breasts.
I took off the lingerie slowly, making sure he watched me.
Finally, when I was naked, I began kissing him, teasing him.
Carefully, I positioned him at my opening, and then slid down onto the long, hard length of his cock. When he was as deep inside me as I could manage, he reached up to grasp my hips, his fingers digging in tightly as he stared into my eyes and pulled me down even farther. I began rocking back and forth.
Owen clenched his jaw as he fought to remain completely still.
Finally, I nodded at him, the gesture enough for him to grin at me and start matching my movements, stroke for stroke. And as we moved together, I felt something building inside me.
It swirled through me, over me, under, inside and out, until I could almost see it surrounding me in a swirl of light that pulsed with the rhythm Owen and I maintained.
And as it pulsed, I felt Owen begin to swell inside me, growing as we moved faster and faster.
My body convulsed around Owen at the exact moment his own orgasm hit, and he pushed himself up hard and fast inside me, holding my hips down against his cock, the broad heat of him stretching me around him as he cried out my name.
And again, I felt the pack magic settle further into me.
Twenty-Three
The next morning, I awoke with a smile on my face, snuggled up against Owen. His arm around me made me feel safe, secure.
I continued smiling most of the morning, especially after Owen kissed me goodbye and went to deal with some of the pack issues.
Wicked Souls: A Limited Edition Reverse Harem Romance Collection Page 56
