by Helen Scott
I'd never been much of one for solo play, not that there was anything wrong with it, I just preferred to wait for men like this, men who were punishing in their pleasure. Bane, Ambrose, and Christian were much the same. They were ferocious lovers. I devoured every second of the time we spent naked, or not naked.
As soon as the last tremor left my body, he rolled me onto my back and brought my legs up over my head folding me like a taco before plunging back inside me again. The man was well endowed, but this position made him feel enormous. So huge, in fact, that I had to brace myself against his thighs so he couldn't go too hard or too fast while my body adjusted.
When he started moving again, I couldn't contain my screams of pleasure anymore. With the new position, I was too overwhelmed to focus on anything but breathing and the sensation of Ambrose filling me over and over again.
Apparently, my inability to control myself and the sounds I was making drove him crazy because soon he was pounding into me with the most punishing, yet thrilling, pace he'd ever set. I wasn't sure how long he kept it up, but my brain felt like mush. I wanted more, I wanted to stay lost in the sensation of Ambrose fucking me.
When he reached forward and tweaked one of my nipples I lost it, an orgasm I hadn't even realized was building washed over me. Ambrose roared as he found his release as well. He was still pulsing inside me when I was able to think again. His cock jerked and twitched, and I reached up and brought his face to mine so I could kiss the daylights out of him.
We broke apart. As he withdrew from me, he said, "I've been wanting to do that since you first stumbled that pretty ass of yours out here. I knew you were mine even then, I just didn't want to admit it yet."
He collapsed onto the ground next to me and I rolled to face him, ignoring the slickness between my thighs in favor of cuddles. "You terrified me."
"That was my intention at the time. Now I would never hurt you, but you were a threat, an unknown, and I had to protect the shifter area. If you ever want to come outside by yourself, you can, so long as you come straight here. No one will bother you on my territory. One of the perks of being alpha. I would ask that you at least let someone know where you are going though. I don't think I can handle you being kidnapped again, or thinking you've been kidnapped."
"Fair enough. You should know that I don't think I'll want to come out here without you though. This is your spot, maybe even our spot. If I'm out here I want you by my side."
He pushed up onto an elbow and looked down at me, brushing some hair away from my face. "I will always be by your side whenever possible, and know that if I can't physically be there then I am mentally. I know witches don't have mates so you might not understand this, but you are mine. I love you, Nasima. You mean everything to me and I will burn this place to the fucking ground if I have to just so that I can stay with you."
"I--" Emotion welled in my throat and my voice cut off just before I could finish professing my love for him. Was it stupid to fall in love with an alpha shifter in prison? Maybe. We weren't going anywhere though, so why not? I cleared my throat and said, "I love you too."
My words were drowned out though. A howl sounded in the distance followed by a roar and the screech of a large bird of some kind. The sounds sent chills down my spine as they followed one after the other.
"What the fuck is that?" I asked.
Ambrose was already up and moving, pulling his pants back on and holding out his hand for me. I grasped it and pulled on my own clothes, worry coursing through me at the anxiety spelled out clearly on his face.
"That is my people calling me. They know not to ever come here, so they call when they need me. A howl is something concerning. A howl and a roar is something pressing. Add in the screech as well so you get all three? That's urgent, so we need to go. Now."
6
Ambrose
When Nasima and I reached the clearing, my people stood gathered around something. They melted aside, their heads dipping respectfully as I passed.
As the long path through their bodies opened in front of me, I saw what lay at the center.
A body.
I released Nasima’s hand as adrenaline sped through my limbs. I reached the center of the group and saw the body of a young male shifter.
As soon as I saw his face, I recognized him as Jonah. A good fighter, but the kid had a cocky streak that got him into trouble; I’d always expected he’d challenge me for alpha one day. Either him or Micah, his best buddy, who’d dared to challenge me and call me Brose...in front of Christian, no less.
But despite the foolishness of those boys, I wouldn’t want to see either of them die like this. They were my pack to protect.
“What happened?” I demanded, my voice gravelly. There was blood streaked across his neck. He didn’t look like he’d been killed in a fight as a wolf--we mauled each other when we killed--but humans are just as dangerous. He might have been killed in his human form.
I glanced around the pack, hoping whoever killed him would confess. Hoping they’d have a good reason. I didn’t want to kill another member of my pack today.
The only answer was a rustling in the crowd. They were restless.
Nasima hung back with a look of wide-eyed horror on her face. At least she hadn’t thrown up yet.
“Well?” I demanded. “Who brought his body here?”
“I did.” His friend Micah stepped up from the crowd. “We were supposed to meet to lift weights. When he didn’t show, I had a bad feeling. I went looking for him.”
“Go on, Micah.” I prompted when the silence had dragged on too long. I didn’t need his theatrical retelling.
“I found him outside the cafeteria. Like this.” His hands trembled despite his tough demeanor, so I let the attitude in his voice go for once. The boy was clearly shaken.
“May I?” Tisha asked respectfully.
I nodded. She came forward and began to wash the blood away from his face, his neck.
Nasima edged toward me. “Should we be… washing away the evidence?”
Her innocence made me frown, even though normally I enjoyed it. “No one is coming to get justice for him, Nas. It’s up to me.”
“But there are guards,” she said with a frown.
“Not because they give a damn what happens to any of us,” I assured her. “They aren’t here for justice.”
I could feel she had more questions, but I didn’t have time to answer them now. Promising myself I’d talk to her later, I turned to the crowd. “We’ll get answers. And if it’s needed, we’ll get blood.”
The crowd, still rumbling and talking amongst themselves, began to move away.
“Ambrose,” Tisha said urgently.
I leaned down beside her to see her hand cupping the skin over his neck.
A pair of bite wounds were gouged into his throat, surrounded by dark bruises. The blood had made it hard to see the exact wounds.
“Vampire,” I said quietly.
Tisha looked up at me, worry written across her face. With Nana dead, a turf war would normally have been imminent. Christian and I had formed an unlikely alliance these past few weeks, with Nasima at our center.
But maybe Christian loved power more than he loved the idea of sharing a woman with me. The thought of rejecting Nasima made the wolf inside me furious, so I couldn’t imagine doing that myself.
Christian might have become my friend, but he was a vampire.
“Prepare him for burial. I’ll be right back.” I told her. I dragged Nasima off into the woods. “Are you sure you didn’t see anything in your visions that might have been related to his murder?”
She shook her head. “Maybe one of Christian’s vamps went rogue.”
I scoffed. “Or maybe he did.”
She leveled me a look. “Why do you jump right to assuming he knew? Neither of us blamed you for what happened with Natasha.”
“Natasha had obviously gone off the deep end,” I reminded her, crossing my arms. “All right. This doesn’t leave t
he pack for now. Until I’m able to find out what just happened.”
She chewed her lower lip. “How do I help?”
I hesitated. The thought of her going with me, and going into danger, made me wild, but I couldn’t stand to have her out of my sight. Another murder had just ratcheted up my protectiveness to a whole nother level.
Besides, I couldn’t leave her with Christian now--I couldn’t trust him. And Bane seemed determined to get himself killed; I wanted Nas far away from him.
“Stay close,” I told her finally. “Is there any kind of magic you can do on the body? Even if you can’t bring on a vision?”
She went a little pale at the thought of having a vision on purpose. But she said, “Let me think. Those aren’t the kinds of potions I usually use, but maybe I can cobble something together.”
I nodded. I was glad that at least this time she didn’t say she was a bad witch--I hated to hear her run herself down.
I returned to the body, which Tisha and Alexandra were attending. Together, we cataloged the wounds on his body. There were faded bruises on his skin; he’d been fighting recently. But that was typical for every young shifter; they fought for fun and they fought for any excuse. Especially in here, where there was no room to run; fighting and fucking were all they had to release all that wolfish energy.
“Here, too,” Tisha said, finding a soft spot on the side of his head.
Nasima came up beside me and crouched down. “Could that be what killed him?”
I pressed my fingers into the wound that Tisha had found. It was soft, as if the skull had cracked underneath. “Maybe,” I said. “The vampire teeth marks seem like a pretty dead giveaway on cause of death though, Nas.”
Tisha turned her head down, and I was pretty sure she was hiding a smile.
“I think I feel magic on the body,” Nasima said. She didn’t sound certain, and especially when she was so critical of her own abilities as a witch, it was hard to take that too seriously. “The residue of a spell.”
“Okay,” I said. “Do you have a spell you can use to tell for sure? To identify what it was or who placed the spell, if anyone did?”
She stared at the body without answering. Helpful. So that would be a no.
“How are we going to find the vamp who did this?” Alexandra stared at me. The two of them had been close.
“We aren’t going to do anything,” I growled, letting some of my alpha power bleed into my voice. I felt for the girl, but I didn’t want her to put herself in danger. “I’ll find whoever did this.”
“What if the head wound killed him,” Nas asked. “It looks bad enough that it could have.”
“Maybe a vamp bashed in his head because he fought so hard,” Alexandra said fiercely.
Nas met her gaze. “Or maybe it wasn’t a vamp at all.”
A nasty smile twisted Alexandra’s lips. But she choked back what she wanted to say, because I was there, watching over Nasima.
I could just imagine the words though: just because you have a vampire lover doesn’t mean we all have to love the vamps.
I ignored them both and rose to my feet. “I’m going to see Christian.”
“We’ll get him ready,” Tisha said. It was hard to practice typical shifter burial practices here. We usually buried our dead right away in Nightstone.
“We’ll sit the vigil for him,” I said. It might give the murderer a chance to expose himself or hell, maybe Nas would be able to do some kind of spell or have a vision after all. Once he was buried, we lost access to his body and the chance to uncover any more of his secrets. “Prepare for that.”
Tisha frowned in thought, since we normally didn’t practice that here, but nodded.
“You may come,” I told Nas, since I’d just been thinking about how I didn’t want her around Christian, and her brows arched. She gave me a look that suggested that was the wrong phrasing, but I wasn’t going to argue with her in front of Tisha and Alexandra, especially on such a somber occasion.
I turned and headed for the doorway.
“No one’s going to entertain any idea but the obvious, are they?” she demanded. “Even if it could have been some kind of...frame job.”
“The most obvious explanation is usually the right one,” I said. “Maybe you should consider your own bias.”
I couldn’t keep the growl out of my voice, and she grabbed my arm, trying to jerk me to a stop. I carried her along with me for a step before I realized what she was trying to do and finally turned.
“I’d have the same bias for you,” she reminded me.
“I’m not blaming Christian,” I said, then added, “Yet.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
I answered her question with one of my own.
“Why didn’t you see this coming?” I asked Nasima.
She stared up at me, wide-eyed. “I don’t see every bad thing that ever happens. If I did, I’d never stop having visions, would I?”
“Well, is there any way to have a vision to prove what happened?” I demanded.
Her lips twisted. “Is anyone going to believe me anyway, Ambrose?”
“I will!”
“You will,” she repeated. “Then why don’t you believe me now? When I point out that there might be other interpretations?”
“You are amazing,” I told her, “but you’re not infallible.”
Her chin rose, and her gaze met mine, blazing with sudden defiance.
“Neither am I,” I reminded her. “I just want to be sure. If the vamps attacked us, this won’t be the last of it.”
She frowned at me, none of the heat leaving her eyes. “You think I’m misinterpreting things because I love Christian.”
I thought I didn’t feel jealousy toward the vamp, but I still felt a pang hearing those three words on her lips.
“I think you’re too sweet for Nightstone, Nas,” I told her, “and that means you’re going to have to stay out of my way while I do what alphas do.”
She stared at me with fury sparking in her eyes. I wished I could say something sweet to take her anger away, but that’s never been my strong suit. I could protect her and provide for her, but I was probably always going to piss her off.
“You have no idea what I can do, Ambrose,” she warned me. “I’m not just the alpha’s bitch now.”
“I never said you were.”
I had a whole lot more I wanted to say to her, but I caught one of my shifters lingering nearby, no doubt listening. I flashed him my teeth and went after Nas, who was storming toward the exit back into the prison.
Time to visit Christian. I was in an even finer mood about it now, too.
7
Christian
I want to say I was surprised when Nas and Ambrose stormed into my cell clearly pissed off with one another, reeking of sex, and accused me of letting a vampire kill a shifter. Well, Nas didn't accuse me, but Ambrose certainly did. Nas looked even more pissed with Ambrose after that.
"Sweetheart, why are you so angry with our wolf?" I asked once Ambrose was done talking, which only served to anger him further, not that I cared.
"He and the other shifters are making assumptions. Just because there was a bite mark from a vampire on the body doesn't mean that's the cause of death. There was also a head injury, one that is being strangely overlooked," she huffed and crossed her arms over her chest.
"So the cause of death is unclear, yet you stand here accusing me of letting the vampires go rogue?" I asked, piercing Ambrose with my iciest gaze.
The wolf shifter wasn't one to back down though, he wouldn't be alpha otherwise, so it was no surprise that he just returned my glare as he said, "A head injury is irrelevant compared with a vampire bite. Maybe the vamp bashed him around before he sunk his teeth in."
"And it doesn't seem odd to you that this supposed vampire attack has happened after Nana's death? After years of peace between us?"
"All I know is what I saw, which was a dead shifter with fang marks."
/> "Maybe they had a vampire lover, did that occur to you?"
"A shifter would never share a bed with a vampire," Ambrose snarled, evidently not realizing what he was saying to me even as he said it.
We had to share a bed, if we were going to share Nasima.
"Get out," I said quietly, trying not to let the anger that his words sparked get the better of me. When he didn't even twitch, I added, "I'll ask Doc to take a look at the body, she should be able to tell you the official cause of death and we can go from there. Until she does so, you are not welcome in the vampire quarter."
"Christian..." Nasima didn't know how to handle me like this, she'd never seen me this angry before at someone we both cared for.
Ambrose still hadn't moved and was just staring at me.
"Get out!" I roared.
My belongings rattled on the shelves. A vase toppled off and shattered on the concrete floor. Nas flinched and seemed to collapse in on herself, which I was sorry for, but Ambrose just sneered at me. He stared me down for a long moment before he broke the stare to turn and walk away.
Nas stayed behind, foolish, brave woman. I was no good to anyone like this. Ambrose and I had never discussed the influence we had on each other after Nas united us. And we definitely hadn't discussed our emotions.
"Are you okay?" Nasima's quiet voice came after a few moments of eerie silence. The other vampires had heard my outburst and were treading lightly.
How was I supposed to answer that question? Someone I'd come to trust and consider my friend accused me of either murder or incompetence as a leader. I didn't feel okay. I didn't open myself up. I didn't care, hadn't in a long time, not until this waif of a woman came into my life. Then I started caring about all kinds of things, a decision I regretted at the moment.
"Let's go see Doc." I stood and strode from my cell with Nasima trailing after me.
