“No one knows exactly how, either,” Owen interjected. “The idea that the fae could control werewolves is terrifying. And it’s one of the first things that your comitatus had wished to discuss with you as soon as we were done with the ceremonies.”
I chewed on my bottom lip for just a second, considering everything I’d learned.
I turned to the three wolves who had brought me information. “Thank you. That was good work. Be sure to get something to eat if you need it, and rest while you can. We will quite probably need your help soon.”
I dismissed them and then turned to Liam.
“Meet me downstairs,” I said. “Make sure all of the pack is there. I want everyone to hear what I have to say.”
Twenty-Six
This time, when I strode downstairs in my third bright red dress, I didn’t pause in the kitchen to see what I could smell or hear. Instead, I stepped out into the main part of the Moon Moon.
James, the pack historian, was waiting on the dais, but of course Dean wasn’t there.
I stepped up next to James and spoke. “Thank you. I’ll let you know when we need you again,” I said. “After we bring my mate home.”
James tilted his head at me. “He’s not entirely your mate until after the ceremony,” he began.
I didn’t let him finish. I spun around and faced him, eyes blazing.
“I don’t care what anyone else says or what this ceremony might or might not add to it. Dean is my mate, and I will find him.”
James fell back from the intensity in my eyes, and I turned to face the pack again, swept along by the energy of my potential loss.
“I need everyone to listen to me,” I said, my voice cutting through the chatter in the room. “The Winter Queen has taken Dean. I don’t know what she intends to do with him, or how she plans to use him, but whatever she wants, we will not allow it.”
I spoke the word we as if were an indication of my will and the pack’s will—and for the first time, I understood why queens used “we” instead of “I.” My will was the pack’s will.
“Owen and Liam will be breaking all of us up into search parties. I’ll be leading one group.”
“It’s customary for the alpha to remain behind —” James began.
Without looking at him, I threw my hand out to one side and pointed directly at him. “Hush. I will help find Dean.”
“And if he is somehow under the Winter Queen’s spell?” Liam asked quietly from beside me. I clenched my teeth. I didn’t want to think about that possibility.
Owen and Liam started to move down to begin sorting the rest of the wolves to search groups. They hadn’t taken more than a couple of steps, however, when the front door of the Moon Moon blew open in a gust of cold wind, slamming against the opposite wall.
A tall, thin, white-blonde fae woman—one who was not the Winter Queen—stepped into the room, bringing little eddies of what looked like snow with her.
“My Queen has a message for you,” she announced, staring straight at me.
I growled. I could feel my canines lengthening, sharpening. For an instant, all I wanted to do was rip this creature into pieces.
That’s when I realized for the first time that I shifted when I got truly angry.
“Don’t kill the messenger, Sienna,” Liam said, his voice low and calm and soothing.
I needed the reminder not to rip into this fae.
I needed to save that for the one who had taken Dean from me.
Liam was right. I gathered myself together and faced the messenger. “What does your mistress have to say?”
“She says that she will release your wolf into your custody. But only if you will swear that the SoMa pack will support her when the time comes for her to break away from the Winter King and his court.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because otherwise, your beloved will die.” The little smile on her face, almost a smirk, made me want to damage her. However, I managed to refrain.
“What should we do?” I whispered to my two mates.
“Don’t do it,” Owen said, sounding more strident than I had ever heard him before.
“The fae are tricky,” Liam agreed. “You can’t trust anything they say.”
I stared at the messenger for a long moment, and then I asked, “Can your mistress speak to me like she did last night?”
The fae woman nodded her head once.
“Then tell her that I will speak to her in my room upstairs in one hour.”
I hated to leave Dean under the fae Winter Queen’s control one moment longer than necessary—but I wasn’t about to try to work out a deal of this magnitude through an intermediary.
No. This had to be done face-to-face. Or at least, face to holographic-style image.
The fae woman swirled out into the night, and Liam and Owen followed me upstairs, obviously worried.
Periodically during the next hour, they tried to explain why making a deal with the fae was insane.
I didn’t care. I wanted to get Dean back.
Besides, I was the alpha. I was in charge.
This time, when the ghostly lightning seemed to hit the floor, I ignored it, waiting for the Winter Queen. When she finally resolved herself into a complete figure in front of me, I nodded my head gravely.
I had chosen to sit in a chair with a straight back as if I were sitting on the throne and she had to stand. Otherwise, I would’ve felt at too much of a disadvantage. She was much taller than I was, after all.
“I understand you wish to negotiate?”
It wasn’t exactly a question, but it wasn’t exactly rude, either. So I didn’t complain about her opening.
“Yes,” I said. I do.”
“You heard my handmaiden’s offer?”
“I want to hear it from you.”
The figure in front of me shrugged. “It’s simple. I will return your wolf to you unharmed if you will swear to support me when I break with the King of the Winter Court.”
I considered for a moment. “I have a counteroffer,” I said.
“Yes?”
“I will agree to your offer if you will return Dean to me unharmed and also unchanged in mind and body.” I began counting off my points on my fingers. “And if you will also swear that, should you prevail in the battle against the King’s Winter Court, that you will never again seek to harm or attempt to enthrall the SoMa Pack in any way.”
The Winter Queen seemed to consider my offer for a moment and then she cackled with laughter.
“I will give even more. I swear not to attempt to influence your wolves unduly, either, for that matter,” she said.
“Why would you add that?”
“Because when your wolves see what is being done to other packs, you will all join me willingly.”
“I don’t know about that. But I agree to your terms,” I said.
The Winter Queen laughed in a way that made me deeply uncomfortable, but at that point, I wasn’t willing to risk my wolves against her if I could get Dean back simply by joining with her.
“Done,” she said. “Your Wolf will be returned to you within an hour.”
With another crack of lightning, she was gone.
Twenty-Seven
I was waiting inside the bar with everyone else, but sitting entirely alone at my round booth, having dispatched Liam and Owen to keep the pack away from me while I waited.
I tried to look calm and cool, but I was afraid I just looked frozen. I was terrified I had done the wrong thing. That I had put my pack at risk later—maybe even more risk than they would’ve been just going to get Dean now.
But we were not ready for any kind of battle. Not yet. We needed a chance to get to know each other, to work together.
No. This has to have been the right choice.
It still terrified me.
When Dean strode through the door an hour later, my heart leaped in relief. I pushed through the crowd—or would have if they had gotten in my way. But they parted i
n front of me, and I was able to throw my arms around Dean before anyone else got close to him.
I had James complete the ceremony for us right then and there.
“I should probably change clothes,” Dean protested.
“Absolutely not. I am not letting you out of my sight until this is done,” I said.
This ceremony had a slightly different ending from the others.
As it ended, James said, “Wolves, come give your oaths.”
Every wolf in the room stood in line to bow down before the four of us and pledge their loyalty to the pack, and to my three pack-alpha mates.
But when we got upstairs, my hands were still shaking.
Everything about Dean—from the way he spoke to the way his teeth flashed white when he spoke to the banked heat I saw in his eyes—made the thought of sex with this man even more appealing. But I didn’t want to push him if he’d been traumatized.
Still, from the expression he wore, I suspected he felt exactly the same way—like he didn’t want to wait. We had been eyeing one another since we walked into the room. Now, with no reason to hold back, Dean and I were free to tear into each other.
Sex with a werewolf—it was something I’d never even thought about.
I should have.
God, it was hot.
His lips burned a path down my neck, his tongue flicking against the hollow at the base of my throat. I tilted my head back against the wall to give him even more access.
When he moved back up toward my mouth, I moaned at the loss of his warmth on my neck. He captured my lips with his, swallowing the sound. His tongue swirled in my mouth, filling it with the steam of our kiss.
When he pulled away enough to gaze at me for a moment, his irises flashed yellow, his wolf dancing behind them, carefully restrained to keep from hurting me, even as he pressed every part of his body against me.
The hard length of him smoldered against my abdomen.
Holding his gaze with mine, I pushed him back gently, giving myself enough room to pull up my dress and shrug it off.
His eyes glowed as he took in my lingerie-clad form.
“You are beautiful,” he said, his voice thick with passion.
“As are you.” His muscled height made me want to climb him, to pull the thick length of his cock into me.
With one hand, I reached out and touched his chest. It should have scorched my hand from the heat rolling off him, but it simply tingled, sending chills racing up through my arm and down into that core of me—the part of me that I’d shared so far with only my other two wolves.
But I knew, instinctively, that Dean’s touch would not burn away the others’ connections to me. Those bonds could not be destroyed.
I had a space for each of them.
Dean ripped my lingerie away from me, leaving it shredded on the floor. Then he stopped. Almost reverently, he reached out to touch my bare breasts, his hands setting the passion smoldering within me ablaze.
“Please,” I whimpered, begging him to singe me with his mouth, pushing my chest up toward him even as I stood on tiptoe, lifted one leg, and wrapped it around his waist.
Dean understood what I needed from him. Sliding one glowing hand under my ass, he lifted me up and allowed me to wrap my other leg around him, too, even as he bent to take a nipple into his mouth.
I jerked at the contact, the movement brushing my clit against the top of his cock, and pure lust spun through me. As Dean rolled the hard peak of my nipple around in his mouth, his second hand joined the first to support me over him.
The wall behind me was cool and slightly rough against my bare back, a contrast to the burning-hot wolf-shifter before me.
“Now,” I whispered.
Dean gave my nipple a final lick, and then tightened his grip, situating me over him. “When you are ready.”
Everything behind his eyes burned now—and behind his skin, as well. His cock shone like a beacon, and all I wanted was to be impaled upon it.
“Now.” I tilted my hips, pushing down, and Dean let me control the moment.
I gasped as I lowered myself onto the hard blaze of him, losing myself to the passion, sliding down and down as far as I could go, clenching around him, until Dean lifted me up again.
Over and over, our bodies moved in unison, intuitively.
I lost myself in the bliss of his body. After some time, Dean knelt, and I clenched around him, determined not to lose our connection.
He smiled, and then gently lay me down on the floor.
Up until that moment, he had been careful with me. Gentle.
Now, he let the wolf out—not enough to hurt me, but enough to almost make me wish for that.
The pack bond hit hard at that moment, and we both lost control.
Without warning, pleasure ripped through me, and my voice rang out in ecstasy.
Dean’s gaze delighted in this, relishing his ability to pry screams from me as he thrust into me, burying himself deep inside me over and over.
I tried to pull him even deeper, and we fought each other for control. I tried to work my way back on top of him and failed as he pinned me to the floor.
Eventually I wrapped my legs tightly around his waist, digging my heels into his ass as I strained against him.
My own breath turned hot as I whispered, “Harder.”
I lost track of the magical threads burning through me, of the power I knew was ready to explode through us both as Dean pumped faster and faster.
His orgasm blew through me like molten lava, setting every nerve ablaze as I screamed his name again.
The power of the pack magic flew apart from my core, searing us together as wave after wave of passion burned through us, leaving only me, Dean, and our connection to one another.
Afterward, we lay together in the dark, still panting. “You’re mine,” I whispered.
“I am,” he said, his voice contented.
“And so are the others.”
“Yes. And it’s perfect.”
I could learn to love these men.
In fact, I was pretty sure I was already beginning to.
Epilogue
The next morning was the first time the four of us had met since the final piece of the pack magic had settled down onto me. It was also the first time we’d all met privately since Dean’s return.
“What did the Winter Queen do to you?” Owen asked Dean.
“And how do you feel?” Liam asked.
Both of them, as usual, asked the kinds of questions that showed just who they were. Owen, my political and martial advisor. And Liam, the one who was kind and loving and would help me watch out for the souls of my people.
Characteristically, Dean just laughed it off. He was the one who would always find a way to make everything okay. “Nothing. She didn’t hurt me. I’m fine. She was holding me until she could get in touch with you. That’s all.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, uncertain that I fully believed him. I really wasn’t sure that was the only thing she had done.
But that didn’t matter right now.
What mattered was how we were going to deal with what was coming next.
“I need all of you to start working to gather all the information you can about the fae’s Winter Court.”
I looked each of them in the eye.
“The Winter Queen wants us to help take down the Winter King. She wants us to help her when she moves against his part of the court so she can take it over. And she wants that badly enough that she was willing to make some serious promises to get it.
Three pairs of lupine eyes stared back at me, their expressions serious.
“I have absolutely no intention of allowing her to gain that kind of power if doing so would be bad for us. For our pack.”
They all nodded, still waiting for me to continue.
“We are about to go to war, I fear, with the Winter Court fae. We are outmatched, both in magical weapons and in numbers, from what little I understand so far. So I need you
three to help me figure out how to get us out of the deal I just made without risking any of our lives.”
“We can do that,” Owen said.
“Our people will support you.” Liam reached over and wrapped my fingers in his.
“We will support you,” Dean said.
It was an impossible task. I knew it even as I handed it to them.
And yet, my three wolves, the three men that I was bound to now with the kind of ties that didn’t even have a human equivalent, were all on board with the attempt.
They were mine and I was theirs.
But even more than that, we were pack.
And we were going to win.
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About the Author
USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times bestselling author Margo Bond Collins is a former college English professor who, tired of explaining the difference between “hanged” and “hung,” turned to writing romance novels instead. Sometimes her heroines kill monsters, sometimes they kiss aliens. But they always aim for the heart.
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