Times of Change: Book 1

by B. L. Dawn

  Yes, that must be it. Destiny was setting him and his race back on track and had preplanned this reunion. Could he curse the fate maker for all the years he had spent in turmoil? Of course he could. But Destiny had a way of knowing things that he couldn’t begin to understand. Maybe he just needed to remember in what hands his fate rested. Old things could be made new. Was that his relationship, his current state as alpha, the despair of his pack, or all the above?

  For that matter, Destiny brought Tatum to him, and he wasn’t treating that gift correctly. Enoch told Jenny that Tatum was like his beta. If she had been a male, he would have made her beta without thinking twice. He was going to make her his beta if she believed him or not.

  Jenny laughed as his growling need continued. “How many pack members do you have?”

  “Twenty-five. But by the next full moon, six new members will be joining. That includes you and Nat.” Enoch sat down, pulling Jenny onto his lap. Her weight grounded him to the reality that she was with him and not a figment of his imagination. “Do you have enough space for all of us?” How soon could he get Jenny alone with him? That was the real question. He wanted to be united with her again and needed the connection they shared. Pain ripped through his chest at not being close enough.

  Jenny counted on her fingers, calculating the number of shifters per bed while biting her bottom lip.

  Staring at her lips was like looking upon a delicate peach. Enoch’s eyelids became hooded, wanting to taste those lips and feel their soft openings on his skin. Leaning in, he slid his tongue across her mouth. “I need you.” He repositioned himself in his seat, trying to ease the strain on his erection. He pulled her hips into him. “Damn, female. I really want you.”

  Jenny breathed heavily and nodded, then shook her head. “We need to figure this out. How about I show you the places your pack can stay, and you can tell me who you have in mind for each space?”

  Enoch smiled and nuzzled her face with his nose. “Sounds good.” Enoch helped Jenny to her feet and stood up.

  Jenny had aged beautifully. Even though her red hair had faded a bit, it still fell in long waves down her back. The smile lines around her green eyes were more prominent, but the green was electric, like clovers on a summer day. She was a vision.

  Her hips swayed as she crossed the kitchen to open a drawer. She pulled out a pen and paper before they walked into the living room. It was a large room that had soft seats of different sizes, textures, and shapes.

  Jenny pointed to the cream-colored sofa. “This couch makes a bed. It sleeps two, and the loveseat can sleep someone smaller.”

  “The Hill family has a young female. Ben and Susan can sleep on the sofa, and Sissy can fit on the love seat. They have a son, Lincoln, but I don’t see a space for him. We’ll keep looking.”

  Enoch remembered thirteen years ago when Sissy was born. That was the year the storm destroyed the garden. Shortly after that, roofs were leaking, ruining pieces of furniture and causing some floors to rot. It had taken two years before the pack members realized that the females weren’t getting pregnant anymore.

  Jenny wrote them down for the living room. She took Enoch’s hand, leading him to the back of the house and down the hallway. “The first door on your right, the one under the stairs, leads to the basement.” Jenny pointed to the next door. “That’s the bathroom. And Natalie’s room is on the left.” Jenny opened the door to a gray room with a queen-sized bed. “Perhaps Tatum can sleep in here with her?”

  “Would she do that?”

  “I’ll ask. Let me just go ahead and write it down. That’s two for this room, Natalie and Tatum.” She poked the paper with her pen, stabbing the period. She smiled up at Enoch, who crossed his arms and cocked his eyebrow.

  Jenny chuckled. “Don’t get your undies in a bunch. I’ll talk with her.”

  Moving on, Jenny showed Enoch another room. It had a desk, books that lined the walls, and a leather couch. “Someone can stay on the couch in this room. Is there anyone who has a hard time climbing stairs?”

  Enoch nodded, eyeing the round curve of her ass. His hand cupped one cheek and squeezed it, making his cock come to attention again. He answered Jenny with a strained voice, “Rick Roloff. He’s not doing good.” At least Tatum had told him that the first day he met her. How long did the old shifter have before passing on?

  Jenny pushed her bottom in his needy hand, leaning into him. Then she seemed to shake him off. “Bless his heart. I’ll write him down for the study,” she said breathlessly.

  Enoch growled, feeling the throbbing in his erection become painful.

  “We still have more to go.” She pulled him through the hallway and up the stairs. “The door to your right is another bedroom.” The room was painted in a dark green. It had two bunk beds with dark blue blankets. “This room sleeps four. I used to love having sleepovers with my friends here.”

  Enoch stuck his head in the room. Did she have friends still, or had she needed to let them go as well? Enoch stuck his head in the room. “The Hale family. Rose and Owen can sleep on the bottom bunk. They have three daughters.”

  “It’s going to be tight, but I’ll write down five. What are their names?”

  The youngest of the shifters were essential to the pack. They had been ever since the decline in pregnancies and births. “The oldest is Sophia. The middle is Birdie, and the youngest is Chloe.”

  Jenny wrote the new names down while moving left across the hall. She opened another door. The room had a queen-sized bed with a yellow quilt. “This room sleeps two.”

  “Write down Oliver and Cora. They’re siblings who don’t have parents.” Oliver and Cora’s parents were some of the nicest shifters Enoch had ever known. Nigel and Rita had begged for weeks to leave the territory. They had wanted to visit Rita’s parents and show them their two young, who were around eight and nine at the time. Nigel was Enoch’s beta at the time and could take care of himself, but Enoch didn’t like the idea of sending the beta and his whole family out into the world. He had suggested that they leave the young at Green Lagoon so that the parents had time to make sure it was safe, then they could bring their parents to visit. They had never come back.

  Jenny gave him a sad look. “Poor things. How old are they?”

  “Oliver is twenty-three, and Cora is twenty-two. They’re still so young.”

  Jenny cocked her head to the side and caught herself in action, correcting it. “Yes, well. It’s always hard to lose one’s parents, no matter what age.”

  Moving down the hall, Jenny pointed inside the next door. “This is another bathroom.” She pulled Enoch to the next door, opening it wide. There was another queen-sized bed with a light-green quilt on it.

  Jenny pointed inside the room. “This room sleeps two as well.”

  “Luke and Cade. They help me protect the pack.” Enoch needed their help, but sometimes Cade had a hair-trigger temper, and nothing anyone said could penetrate the angry fog he drew around himself.

  “Well, good. I can’t wait to meet them.”

  “You’ll like Luke. Cade’s a hardass.”

  Jenny’s eyebrows rose. She looked away and bit her cheek. “That’s not good.”

  Enoch shrugged. “He’s the best fighter in the pack.”

  Jenny nodded in understanding. They moved across the hall where a huge bedroom was located. There was a large bed inside covered in a multi-colored quilt, and it had a bathroom.

  “This is our room.” Jenny’s face turned a reddish hue.

  Enoch bent down, grabbing her chin between his fingers, and in a gravelly voice, he said, “Sounds perfect. Write it down.” He kissed her hard. A grumbling purring sounded from him.

  Jenny wrapped her arms around his neck, and she nuzzled him.

  He nuzzled her right back and kissed her again. Drawing his mouth near her ear, he kept their cheeks pressed together. “This house is large, but I have so many more shifters. Are there more spaces elsewhere
?”

  Wrapped in Enoch’s embrace, Jenny said, “Yes. There’s a guest house on the property. The house used to be for farmhands, but I made them move out when Natalie started shifting. I hired help during the day when I needed it, but I had to keep Natalie away from them until she learned that it wasn’t okay to shift in front of others.”

  Enoch shook his head. “I’m sorry. I intend to make it up to you.”

  Jenny touched his face, pulling his cheek harder against hers. “Let’s live in the here and now. We’ve wasted enough time missing each other.”

  Enoch took her hand and kissed her palm. Hand in hand, they walked outside to a smaller white house with black shutters. Enoch looked around the enormous piece of land. How far did this land go in all directions? It was so large from every angle; he didn’t know where it started or ended.

  Jenny opened the door, leading the way inside. There was an open space with a kitchen, an eating table, and a place to sit with many people. “This sofa is another pullout. It sleeps two. There’s a bathroom over there to the right and two rooms in the back.”

  “You live like a queen.” Enoch couldn’t believe how wonderful this all was. If anything good could come out of Jenny living on her own in the human world without him, it was that she had become a queen in her own right, owning miles of land and being prosperous on her own terms.

  “I do alright for myself. This place grew over time. No one paid for it in one large sum. The property was handed down from parent to child for generations. Who do you want to stay here?”

  Enoch thought about that question while his hand traveled around her stomach and lowered between her legs. He rubbed the place he wanted to explore more than anything. “Hmm, let me think.”

  Jenny laughed while removing his hand and placing a kiss on his fingers. “I don’t know if you are thinking about names.”

  Enoch winked at her and sighed. “Let’s put Sam and Lilly in here. They’re older siblings.”

  She wrote the two names down and moved to the back of the house, where there were two more bedrooms.

  Enoch kissed the back of her head as his arms engulfed her waist. He pulled her small form into his body, rubbing his erection on the back of her ass.

  Jenny moaned, moving against him. “Come on, Enoch. I can’t think when you’re doing that. Let’s finish this first.” Her breathing was heavy. He had to mate with her soon. If not, it would kill him.

  He let her go with trembling fingers as he called out more names, “We can put Mason and Heather in the room to the left. They’re Sam and Lilly’s, parents.” Mason and Heather had been in the pack before Enoch was of age. Heather’s family was born at Green Lagoon, and it was rare for the male to travel back to the female’s pack to live, but Mason did it for Heather.

  “We can put Jim and Pat in the room to the right. They’re Dean and Leo’s parents.” Jim and Pat had excellent knowledge when it came to foraging for food. It wasn’t enough to keep them all fed in human form, but every once in a while, they would travel day and night to treat the pack to a tasty snack of wild berries and nuts, and one time they had carried red apples back to the village. It had taken them many days to return from that trip. Enoch had worried day and night over them. He had told them not to be gone for that long ever again.

  “I hope I can remember all of this,” Jenny said as she wrote the names on the paper. “Okay, that’s all for this house. There’s one more place located in the horse stables. The main office has a pullout couch and a murphy bed.”

  Enoch raised his eyebrows. “You have a lot of beds.” He imagined being inside her in every room, in every bed, and claiming her in every position possible.

  Jenny shook her head and laughed. “Most farms do. When my grandfather was still living, there were people everywhere—family, workers, and sometimes guests. The beds in the stables are there because we need to stay close to the horses when they give birth. The stables are down the road. We can take the golf cart.”

  They made their way between the two houses and over to a carport. Jenny jumped in a small golf cart. “Come on, get in.”

  “I have never seen anything like this.” Enoch slid in the small golf cart, tucking in his knees.

  Jenny laughed. “You are so big.”

  “You’ll see big soon enough.”

  A fast burst of laughter erupted from Jenny’s mouth.

  Jenny drove down the road, waving to the three young shifters who were walking around the pond. She pulled into the horse stables, parking near the main office. Opening the door, she stepped inside. “This room can sleep four. There’s a bathroom in the back.”

  “Let’s put James, Eli, Dean, and Leo in this room.” Enoch needed to find more beds. “I still have five shifters that don’t have a place to sleep.”

  “I have an idea. I can pump up some air mattresses. They’re like a bed made of air. It’s going to be tight, but there’s enough room if we all compromise. I can put Lincoln in the living room with his family, and maybe a few more in the kitchen areas.”

  Enoch smiled. Jenny’s qualities knew no end. She was beautiful, giving, smart, hardworking, a great mother, and a great cook.

  Enoch reached over, pulled Jenny up to her tiptoes, and kissed her long and hard. He rubbed his thumb across her cheek and pressed his erection into her stomach.

  Jenny reached her arms around the back of his neck, letting out a sound of delight. His erection was so swollen for her. She pulled him down and kissed him all over his face. He chuckled as their true mating connection tightened around them.

  She pulled his hand to her mouth, kissed his palm, and kissed across his wrist, nibbling little bits of his skin. Tugging his shirt and lifting it over his head, she kissed across his chest, licking his nipple, pulling it with her teeth.

  Enoch moaned with his neck bent back and his mouth wide open, enjoying every touch. Small tremors shook his legs as she worshiped his body with her mouth. Electric shocks of pleasure bolted from her lips to the tip of his cock. Warm precum ran over his member and absorbed in his pants. Erotic pain spiked up his stomach and sent tingling sensations all over his body as she bit him again.

  A loud grunt came from tightened lips when her hands ran down Enoch’s inner thigh. His thoughts were pleading, but he remained quiet. Please touch me, stroke me; don’t make me plead with you, my mate.

  She kept teasing him, and he let her, though he throbbed painfully.

  Jenny moved her mouth up his body. When she reached his neck, she sucked hard and long, marking his skin.

  A low growl reverberated around the room. Enoch slid his fingers through her hair, holding the back of her head as she sucked on him.

  Sounds outside the office made Jenny pull away. “The kids!”

  Enoch chuckled at her innocence. She was wild for only him. If he remembered correctly, Jenny was open to anything he wanted to try. And she enjoyed their time together. But she needed to learn not to be ashamed of their need for each other. There was no shame when it came to mating. She was about to become a part of the shifter world. Besides, she was his true mate. They belonged together.

  Enoch sniffed the air. “You want me as badly as I want you. And I’m going to have you.”

  Enoch walked to the door and stuck his head out, looking in the direction of the voices. “We’re going to be busy for a while. We’ll talk to you guys later.” He shut the door, locking it behind him.

  Turning around to face Jenny, Enoch’s eyes became hooded. They glowed a bright amber. Sauntering across the room, he unbuttoned his pants, letting them hang open on his hips.

  He grabbed Jenny’s hands and put them in the air, pulling her black shirt over her head. Her pink bra was next, and her white panties and blue jeans came off together.

  Enoch looked over her body and traced his finger over her collarbone and down her arm. “You’re more beautiful than I remember.”

  Jenny smashed into Enoch’s mouth, climbing up his body
as best she could. He picked her up, ravaging her lips as her legs wrapped around him.

  Lowering her to the couch, he thrust his pants to the ground. His hands traveled over her breasts.

  Her arousal drifted to his nose like a cure for everything wrong in his life. “I love the smell of you.” He cupped his hand between her legs, pressing between her folds. She was more than ready for him.

  Spreading her legs open, he kissed a path from her knee to her inner thigh, wrapping his arms under and around her legs. He spread her inner thighs as wide as she could handle and latched on to the muscle that ran from leg to pelvis. Did he enjoy sucking on her skin? More than anything. She tasted amazing.

  Her body jerked. She tried to pull away, but Enoch held her legs tighter.

  Releasing his suction on her, he saw a large mauve mark on her creamy white skin. Satisfied, he kissed across her wet middle. His tongue tasted her arousal, and he enjoyed her rotating hips.

  Throbbing between his legs forced Enoch to release one arm from around Jenny’s leg, and he began to stroke himself.

  Jenny reached the top of his head, grabbed his hair, and pulled him closer. Her need for him was evident, and it thrilled him. His cock twitched with excitement.

  Enoch eased up on his stroking and hovered his finger over her opening as his tongue gave her clit his undivided attention. Sliding his finger in her, he explored her, pressing up in different spots until she inhaled sharply. He pushed and released her sensual place while licking swirls of pleasure around her clit.

  She screamed for him. Moving back and forth, she rocked on his mouth and finger.

  He tried to slow her by tightening his grip on her upper leg, but it wasn’t working. She was pushing through his restraint. Feeling her tighten around his finger as she let out a satisfying moan had him near exploding. Her legs squeezed together, trying to stop the onslaught of his tongue.

  Laughing to himself, he let go of her leg, pulled away, and wiped his face with a pleased smile. He rubbed her legs with his hands as she trembled, waiting for her body to calm.