by Eva Chase
Nate eased up my shirt, and the eagle shifter pulled back to let the other alpha peel it right off of me. Then Aaron made quick work of my bra. I yanked at his own shirt, eager to see the hardened chest I’d only gotten a glimpse of an hour ago. He stripped it off, and Nate did the same with a chuckle behind me. When they both slid closer again, the heat between us, bare skin to bare skin, was outright burning.
Aaron claimed my mouth, cupping my bare breasts at the same time. The peaks pebbled with a single touch. Nate started kissing his way down my spine. Every press of his lips sent an urgent pang of bliss through me. I moaned and squirmed, the desperation for release—any kind, whatever I could get—building inside me.
Nate paused at the small of my back, flicking his tongue over the sensitive skin there. I whimpered encouragingly. Aaron teased my nipples into even stiffer peaks with a swivel of his thumbs. Every sweep of them across those tips stoked the flame of need inside me. Then Nate’s hand slipped over my ass and between my legs.
I let out another moan, pressing into his touch. My panties felt soaked through. Could he feel how turned on I was even through my pants?
Aaron dipped his head to suck the tip of my breast into his mouth. Nate stroked my sex. A gasp slipped from my lips. The sensations of their combined attentions were overwhelming, but oh so good.
I rocked my hips, and my clit brushed Aaron’s erection. All at once, I couldn’t stand the longing anymore. I wrenched at his slacks, fumbling with the button. I yanked the pants partway down. Aaron groaned as I palmed his cock. The silky hard length of him pulsed against my hand.
“Serenity,” he murmured. It sounded almost like a question. One I knew the perfect answer to.
“Inside me,” I said around another whimper. “Now.”
The two guys tugged down my pants together. Aaron rolled me over so I was facing Nate. As the bear shifter leaned in to kiss me on the mouth, my eagle stroked me between the legs from behind as Nate had before. He hummed happily as his fingers tested the moisture there. He dipped them into the hot, slick center of me, and I gasped against Nate’s mouth. Then the head of Aaron’s cock rubbed over my opening. I shuddered with pleasure, on the verge of losing it already.
He eased inside me with a slow, steady thrust that sent a flare of pleasure through me. I’d never felt so complete as when he filled me. But Nate was still there with me too, kissing me through my moans, caressing my breasts and then reaching down to massage my clit.
Aaron plunged deeper into me from behind, holding my hips to steady them. The pleasure inside me swelled with each pump of his cock and each motion of Nate’s hands, until it was almost unbearable. I had to give more of it back.
I groped for Nate’s jeans. He undid the fly with one quick movement. His hips jerked toward me as I slipped my hand inside. My fingers closed around his cock, just as hard and even bigger than Aaron’s to match the bear shifter’s massive frame. I moaned just at the feel of it.
Gripping the silky skin tightly, I slid my hand up and down in time with Aaron’s rhythm inside me. Precum beaded on the tip. I slicked it down over his length. Nate groaned and crushed his mouth against mine.
Aaron adjusted our angle so he filled me even more deeply. His shaft brushed that special spot inside me, and I felt myself careening toward the edge of total bliss. I squeezed Nate even harder, pumping faster, and he bucked his hips toward me. His kisses turned ragged. So did my breath. He rubbed my clit one last time, and my orgasm burst inside me like a firework.
I came apart, clutching Nate’s cock, and he followed me. A hot liquid spurt hit my stomach. Then Aaron was coming too, with a few last jerks of his hips. He bit my shoulder as he spilled himself inside me. That mingling of pain and pleasure was enough to send me right back over the edge.
We collapsed against each other, gasping and boneless. Nate brushed the sweat-damp hair from my forehead and pressed a kiss there. “Our dragon shifter,” he said, so tenderly my heart started to ache.
Aaron grabbed his sleeping bag and pulled it over us like a blanket. I fell asleep like that, cuddled up between two of my mates, able to forget just for a little while that the hardest part of our journey might lie ahead of us.
Chapter 8
Ren
“I think we’re getting closer,” I said, and then winced at how stupid that comment sounded. Of course we were getting closer, or all this walking was for nothing. What I really wanted to say was that we were close now. Over the course of the morning’s hike through the cave, the tug inside me had strengthened into a yank. But I wasn’t sure enough of what close meant to want to risk saying it, in case I was wrong. I could already imagine the look West would give me.
“For a place the fae apparently use as a summer home, it could really use better lighting,” Marco said dryly. We’d left the last of the crevices in the ceiling behind a couple hours ago. Now the only light glowing off the rough walls was the beam of the flashlight Aaron was carrying.
“Is that something the fae do a lot?” I asked. It seemed safe enough to ask general questions about them. “Move around between different homes?”
“Not unless they have specific business there,” Aaron said. “Each of them usually has an affinity for one particular tree or pond, and their magic is weakened if they’re away from it very long.”
“If this mountain is special to the dragon shifters, it could have some meaning for the fae too,” Nate pointed out.
I thought about that memory I’d had, talking about the fae with Mom. “Have you heard anything about the dragon shifters and the fae... working together, or associating with each other somehow?”
Aaron frowned. “I haven’t come across anything referring to a collaboration in the research I’ve done into our history. But that doesn’t mean it never happened. There’s plenty the dragons have kept to themselves. Why?”
“Oh, I just remembered my mom saying something about that. But she didn’t know any details either, from what she told me.” When I wasn’t even five yet. How much more might she have shared with me if I’d known the truth when I was older?
The pain of that loss returned with a dull ache. It’d been seven years since I last saw her, but following her trail had made me feel as if she’d only just slipped from my grasp.
“It doesn’t matter what dragon shifters might have done once upon a time,” West said darkly. “You should steer clear of them.”
“If they come to the mountain regularly, one of them might have seen my mom while she was here,” I pointed out. “Even talked to her.”
He shook his head without meeting my gaze. In the dim light, his deep green eyes looked even more shadowed. “It doesn’t matter. They won’t tell us anything unless they can use it to their advantage over us. Trust me. The only fae I like is one that’s at least a hundred miles away. Or dead.”
There was a rough note in his voice, beneath the more typical bitterness. I peered at him from the corner of my eye as we tramped on. He’d obviously had personal dealings with the fae in the past. Dealings that had caused him a lot of pain. I wanted to ask more, but I had the feeling he’d bite my head off for prying.
None of the other alphas had argued with him. Even if they didn’t have the same hate for the fae, they mustn’t have found his comments all that inaccurate either.
I shivered and rubbed my arms through the padded sleeves of my jacket. In that case, I hoped those shiny beings were now far, far away from here too.
“I guess I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me when we’re done all this running around,” I said.
Nate stepped closer and took my hand in his large one. The smile he gave me brought back the memories of what we’d gotten up to in the tent last night with a flush of warmth. “We’ll be right there beside you, figuring things out together.”
West made a wordless noise of dismissal. My temper flared. Why did he have to make it seem as if he was offended by even the slightest suggestion that I was worthy of the role I’d inherited? I’d bee
n hiking up this mountain right along side him. Couldn’t he cut me a little slack?
“So what exactly are you planning on doing if you throw away tradition and any hope of making this mate thing work, Mr. Wolf Man?” I demanded. “Annex the canine shifters from the rest of the shifter community? That doesn’t sound like it’s going to help anyone.”
West finally turned his penetrating gaze on me. “I don’t think you know enough about our community to have any idea what will help or not. When we’re finished this ridiculous questing, maybe I’ll get to see what you’re really made of as a dragon shifter.”
Maybe you should open your eyes, because I’ve shown you plenty already.
I bit back the snappy retort, swallowing hard. West wanted me to argue with him. Wanted me to give him excuses to keep antagonizing me. As if it were my fault that my mother hadn’t taught me anything about the shifters. Or that the rogues had slaughtered my fathers and sisters to force us into going on the run in the first place.
Another memory, a fragment from long, long ago, rose up, so vivid the rest of the cave fell away. I was sitting on my mother’s lap while she brushed my hair, which was knotted from a scramble through the woods with my sisters. She tsked her tongue as she worked through a tangle.
“You’re lucky I believe in letting children run a bit wild. Otherwise we’d have rules about rolling down hillsides and dangling from trees.”
My four-year-old self looked up at her with wide eyes. “You could do that, couldn’t you? You get to make the rules for all the shifters.”
Mom laughed gently. “Not exactly. Not all by myself. Your fathers and I decide what’s best for the community together.”
“Indeed we do,” my tiger shifter father had said, sauntering into the room. My other dads followed him. They stood around my mother and me, enveloping both of us both in an aura of familial love.
In the present, I blinked hard at the tears that had started to well in my eyes. My throat had tightened. So much the rogues had stolen from me. I’d barely gotten to know my fathers at all. How much would they have taught me?
But I knew how much they’d loved my mother. That was what the mate-bond between the alphas and their dragon shifter was meant to look like.
I raised my chin, pushing down the pang of loss. If West really believed I’d be a total disaster, he wouldn’t still be here. He’d have forsaken me as his mate and taken off to find one he liked better. I just had to keep reminding myself of that.
Aaron’s flashlight beam caught on a claw-shaped scar on the wall up ahead. A deeper scrape than Mom had left before. For a second I wasn’t sure if this one had been made by her or something else, but as soon as I came up beside it, her energy tickled over my skin. The sense of her presence—and a thicker emotion. I let go of Nate’s hand to touch the marks, and a jab of distress jolted through my body.
I paused, my fingers twitching toward my palm as if echoing the sweep of her talons. She’d been upset when she’d scratched this mark. In pain or afraid. What had happened to her here? How had anyone even known she’d come up this way? She’d been so good at covering her tracks...
Nate hovered behind me. “What’s the matter, Ren?”
“My mother,” I said. “When she came through this part of the cave, something was wrong. She was upset. But I can’t feel why.”
“I don’t see how we can get much more careful than we already are,” Marco said. “Whatever comes, we’ll handle it, princess. She shouldn’t have had to come up here alone.”
No, she shouldn’t have. I bit my lip, but I forced myself to keep walking. The sooner we got to the end of this journey, the sooner I’d know what had happened to her. At least, I sure hoped so. If all it led to was another clue to follow, my dragon fire might come out in frustration.
That end might be coming up even sooner than I’d guessed. The light caught on a bend in the passage. As we came around it, the tug inside me yanked even harder than before. I stumbled, losing my breath. The second I caught my balance, my feet darted forward across the uneven ground, as if pulled from my control. I knew I could rein them in if I’d wanted to—but I didn’t really.
“We’re almost there. It has to be close now,” I said.
The guys picked up their pace too. Light twinkled above us. I glanced up, thinking we must have come under another crevice to the outside world. Instead I saw crystalline stalactites glinting overhead, reflecting the artificial glow. A faint vibration emanated off them, quivering into my skin. Making me even more energized.
Almost there. Almost there.
I adjusted my pack’s straps on my shoulders and pushed myself into a lope. That pull was reeling me in as if I were a fish on a line, but I was totally okay with that. I was ready for this trek to be done.
So it was my fault, really, that I was at the head of our procession at that moment. My fault that it was my feet the ground trembled under. I slowed as an eerie creaking sound resounded through the cave. The rock beneath my feet felt suddenly insubstantial, as if I’d stepped out onto a thinly frozen lake.
And then it cracked, exactly like the ice I’d just been picturing.
The ground fractured and started to fall away. My shifter reflexes kicked in not a second too soon. I threw myself forward.
The creaking rose into a full-bodied groan that reverberated through the cave. The pack dragged at my shoulders. Each time my feet hit the ground, the rock kept crumbling. I scrambled on. There was nothing I could do but run and hope I found a solid spot before I fell too.
My foot slipped, and I nearly crashed onto my knees. With a yelp, I heaved my body through the air as far as I could manage. I stumbled, caught my balance—and realized the ground had steadied.
“Ren!” someone shouted behind me, and someone else said, “She’s okay, let her get her bearings.” I turned cautiously, not quite trusting the stone beneath me yet. My jaw went slack.
Between me and my alphas, some ten feet of the cave floor had dropped away into a jagged chasm. I was standing just a couple feet from its edge.
I crept closer to peer into its depths. Nothing but darkness showed below. It was so deep I hadn’t even heard the clatter of the crumbling rock hitting the bottom.
I’d almost hit that bottom. My stomach knotted. If I’d reacted any slower...
“Are you all right, Ren?” Nate called to me.
I nodded, still lost for words.
Marco gave an exasperated chuckle. “Because we really needed more excitement on this trip. All right, I’m not jumping that with luggage. Good thing we didn’t pack anything breakable.”
He shrugged off his pack and tossed it over the chasm. It landed with a thump. The other guys followed suit. I thought they might strip down to take the leap in their animals forms—possibly I was looking forward to that view—but I guessed shifter strength made the jump not too much of a challenge even in human bodies. Two at a time, they took a running start and sprang across the chasm.
Nate’s brawny body hit the ground near me with a thud, and one last creak carried through the cave. The hairs on the back of my neck rose. I studied the edges of the chasm in the dim light as the guys dusted themselves off.
“How did that even happen?” I said. “It doesn’t make sense. A big gap like this wouldn’t just appear with a tiny bit of rock over top. It’s almost like it was...”
“A trap?” West filled in. “How long did it take you to figure that out, Sparks?”
I glared at him, but Aaron spoke up before my tongue got away from me. “It was definitely purposefully constructed. You said you could feel we’re almost at the place your mother wanted you to reach, Serenity. A place that holds some kind of important power. It’s possible there’s magic protecting that place and the ‘trap’ was meant as a test of worthiness or determination.”
“Or it’s possible we’ve got some magical ‘friends’ unhappy we didn’t die of poison,” Marco said. “I’m starting to come around to wolf boy’s point of view, as much
as it pains me to admit that.”
“Is there any way to tell what kind of magic was used?” I asked. Fae or otherwise.
Aaron shook his head. “It would have been beneath the layer of rock, holding it in place. So it fell away at the same time.” He glanced at me. “But we made it past. You kept your head and got yourself out of there. Whatever power your mother wanted you to have, no one’s going to stop you from getting to it, are they?”
“No,” I said with a fresh burst of resolve. “So let’s get a move on before we have to deal with anything worse.”
Chapter 9
Nate
As I hefted my heavy pack from where I’d tossed it across the chasm, a splinter of pain shot through my chest down to my gut. I set my jaw, trying not to let the discomfort show on my face.
Even with all the rest I’d gotten yesterday and the slow pace we’d set after, the poison was still in my system. Still making me weaker than I should have been. I hated it. We might have gotten all the way to the end of this cave yesterday if we could have kept up our usual pace. Hell, if I’d noticed the off smell in the biscuits when I’d first grabbed one, I could have stopped Marco from eating them too.
I’d been complacent, and my mate was suffering because of it.
Ren was taking it all in stride. She adjusted her own pack against her back and smiled at me when she caught me looking at her. That quick gesture warmed me even with the twist of pain and guilt in my gut. Remembering her hands on me last night, her soft sighs of pleasure, the sweet taste of her skin...
Okay, that line of thinking wasn’t going to help her either. Someone was out to sabotage our journey here—to kill us if they could. They’d literally torn the ground out from under us. I had to stay focused on the present, on defending Ren from our enemies. How could I be worthy of our mate-bond if I didn’t?
