by Sam Hall
There was some extra in my voice, part throaty growl.
“Permission? Never. I know you, Jules. You’d make your own decisions no matter what. It’s half what I love about you. I just thought we were the same—straightforward and honest about what we want and need.”
“And I haven’t been straight with you?”
“You haven’t been anything with me, not lately. When’s the last time you talked to me about what’s been happening? When’s the last time you discussed the pack dynamic with me?” He waited for me to reply, and my mind raced. Apart from the night we were mated when we talked about including Aaron and Hawk, we hadn’t. He nodded when he saw the realisation spread across my face. “You’re caught up with whichever wheel’s the squeakiest. I get that, which is why I asked to talk to you before. But you had things to sort with Brandon and Aaron, issues I have no idea about. Sure, I understood, but here we are. You’ve sorted through a whole lot with them, if your appearance and the noises coming from the tent are anything to go by. If now’s not the time, when is?”
I felt like staggering, felled by his words and the truth he spoke, by the weight of it.
“Will you at least listen to me before making major life decisions?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Will you listen to me if I bring any of my concerns to you?”
“Sure, but—”
“Will you make time for me, sometimes just the two of us, if I need it?”
The memory of our bonding party came flooding back so vividly, it was as if I could smell the scent of beer, hear the nanas cackling away under the tree. When I looked up at him, I saw it. He was hurting. He kept it all behind a pretty tough façade, didn’t let it all hang out like some of the guys, which is what made it so easy to overlook.
“I’m so sorry—”
“I don’t want apologies, princess, I just want you. I want to be a part of your life, know what the fuck is going on and who’s getting added to our pack. I want to know what’s happening, for you to sit down and talk to me about things. This is my first and only pack. Don’t shove me to the outskirts.”
I moved as quickly as a woman swathed in a sheet could on rough terrain. The fabric pulled, caught again, but I didn’t let that stop me from going to him. His arms went around me, his heart racing when I placed my head on his chest.
“Fuck, princess, it feels so good to hold you.”
The suddenly conjured feelings of shame could easily have sucked me down into the abyss, but I just stayed as I was, breathing my mate’s scent in. He smelled of beer and cigarettes and wood smoke, and I clung to that.
“C’mon,” he said, and steered me by the shoulders to a tent.
“Who’s bed’s that?” I asked as we crawled in.
“Finn’s. You needn’t worry about him needing it. He doesn’t sleep here.”
That tugged at me, the troubles with Finn, but right now that was on hold. I’d made overtures, and he’d made it clear he wasn’t ready for that, and Slade was. He reached over and dragged the now dirty sheet from me, throwing it out the flap. I felt weird without it. I was naked before a guy I’d last fucked with two other guys in attendance, but somehow, there was that same old awkwardness couples have when they first get together.
“Here,” he said, tossing me a shirt and some track pants, noting my discomfort. I shrugged them on, the warm soft cotton helping me settle. “So, what’s going on?”
I picked at my toenails for a second. What did I say? I had left it too long if I couldn’t sum up what had been happening in a quick sentence. The vision of the two wolves and their human forms all beat down on me, especially the male’s resemblance to Sylvan, but Slade was right. We were travelling towards certain doom, and there was always going to be something critical going on. If I didn’t make time for my pack, there wouldn’t be one when we went home.
I took a deep breath, and it all came out.
He scooped me up and held me against his chest after I told him about what I’d been feeling about Sylvan’s manipulations and the dream he appeared in, his hands tightening around me as I described the weird mental states the attempted rape had provoked. He went still as I told him about Jack and Hawk, the bower in the forest, and how I’d found out about Brandon’s abilities. I closed my eyes and just felt the kisses he placed in my hair as I talked about Aaron and Brandon, and then lastly, my vision. Then silence fell over the tent.
I ran my fingers over one of his hands, tracing the deep lines, the small white scars that scored the skin, and waited.
“Mum always told me not to rush in with solutions or commentary when either her or Lisa were stressed about something,” Slade said.
“But…”
My heart lifted somewhat. I usually found it annoying, boys always trying to solve things, but I could do with a bit of that right now. When I closed my eyes, the doubts came rushing to the surface, about our ability to succeed at this suicide mission, about my designation as pack leader. I was just a horny girl floundering, I wasn’t fit to lead anyone anywhere.
“But don’t you think there’s something to all these visions we get when together? Sylvan keeps rabbiting on about how important our bond is, and I asked my dads about it. Bonding doesn’t usually result in what we have. People might see each other’s Tirians or feel like they’re in each other’s hearts, but that’s about it. That black sun, the Great Wolves, that’s not normal.”
“Of course, it isn’t,” I said, flopping against his chest.
He chuckled and stroked my hair back.
“That psychic space thing. Do you think we could try that?”
God, I couldn’t think of anything worse right now. All that was keeping me together was some kind of brave front. How did I maintain that when my mate was literally inside me?
“Nah, I guess not.”
Fuck, there was that careful, polite tone again. I shut my eyes, felt the clamour of anxiety and shame and frustration, and firmly pushed that to one side. That was for future Jules to worry about. I took a deep breath, and then tangled my fingers with his as I tried to remember how to do this.
It was a bit like diving, throwing yourself backwards off a perfectly good boat into the sea and just trusting it would be there for you to disappear into. And it was. When I opened my eyes, the landscape had changed completely. I was standing outside, and it was daytime, the sky a mass of dark clouds, thunder rumbling ominously. I looked down and saw I stood on the same powdery dry soil that had been there while Brandon and Aaron fought, and Slade was standing on it with me.
“Holy shit, is this it?” he asked, head whipping around as he tried to take it all in. “What’s with the storm?” He glanced down at me and said, “Oh.”
When I followed his gaze, I saw I was bound up tight in some kind of nightmare couture made from muddy sheets. I plucked at the fabric in annoyance, but it remained wrapped tight.
“Well, that’s gotta go,” he said, waving a hand, and I was relieved to see my favourite jeans and t-shirt were restored. “And what’s the story with this?” When he gestured at the clouds, lightning struck, stabbing the earth some distance away from us, but I feared it was getting closer. “Stroppy, huh?” He wove his arms at the sky, making for a funny sight, but nothing changed. He glanced back at me. “Shouldn’t this obey… Oh, this is you?”
I flinched at that. The clouds roiled faster under his gaze, lightning and thunder cracking across the sky as he did so.
“Fuck, Jules…” He strode over to me and put his hands on my cheeks. The wind started to whip up, tugging at my hair, the cold making me shiver. “Is this you feeling guilty?”
I wasn’t able to get out much more than a nod. I’d felt like a fucking god when I told everyone we were a pack. It’d seemed like the perfect solution to me, allowing people to pursue the relationships they felt comfortable with and giving room for others to be explored later if they wanted. But just a few days later, and I was realising I’d barely spent any time with one mat
e, let the others ostracise another, and then added more to the mix.
“Jules, this isn’t what I wanted.” I could barely hear the words as he tried to get them out, the wind really howling now, our eyes streaming from the rush of air, the lightning strikes growing closer and closer, until I could see clearly the puffs of dust they were sending up. The air stank of ozone, the electric buzz setting my teeth on edge. “Princess, come on. It’s OK, I just wanted to—”
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Lightning struck in a ragged circle around us, and our hair started to rise at the change in electrical field. I tried to pull back, to draw this volatile thing away from Slade, but his fingers dug in. “No, Jules!” he cried, the wind whipping his words, tossing them far, far away, as if they were never spoken. It tugged at our clothes, yanked at our hair, tried to drag each of us to separate ends of the earth. I let my arms go limp. I was ready to just surrender to it, let it take me, send me spiralling through the sky, take me away from all of this.
“Jules, NO!”
The silence that followed was deafening. The wind, the clouds, the lightning, all disappeared, leaving a pearl grey sky that was slightly leavened by a watery sun, its rays staining the seamless clouds yellow.
“Is this what you do? Every time something goes wrong or there’s something up with us?”
Was it? How did I answer that? I looked around the dreary landscape and just felt so, so tired.
“Yeah, probably.”
“Ah, love.”
He tugged me to him, my body as limp as a doll’s. It felt like it took everything I had to throw my arms around him.
“Jules, I don’t need you to do…whatever this was. I love you. I don’t want you beating yourself up.”
“But I fucked up. We bonded first, and then what? Nothing. Little sex, no talking, little spending time together. I’m a shit mate,” I croaked.
“And I rushed things, left you feeling so alienated, you jumped the fence to get away and run into the arms of the Doc. There’s no blueprint here, Jules. We’re making shit up as we go along and trying to do the best we can, aren’t we?”
I just stayed there inside the safe harbour of his arms, hearing the soothing words, but not sure if I wanted to take them on. If everyone kept being so bloody understanding, how was I ever going to learn to change?
“Do you love me?”
“Of course,” I replied.
“Then maybe we’ve all gotta work on the communication a bit. Be less reactive and more proactive. It’s like I was trying to tell you about Finn, though I’ll admit, I didn’t do it well. Stop letting everyone and everything yank your chain. What do you want to do?”
“Be better. Make sure you’re never hurt again.”
“Well, that’s not possible, but what did you want to do wrapped in a sheet?”
“Find Sylvan, see if I could bring him here and unpack some of the secrets he’s holding.”
His smile was bright against the now lightening sky. “Now that’s what I’m talking about. Let's get in front of this stuff, love. Together.”
13
“This is his tent, but it looks like he’s asleep,” Slade said in a whisper, crouching by the entrance of the seer’s tent.
I thought back to the way Sylvan had pushed me out of his psychic space beforehand, cutting off my view of his memories.
“That might make things easier.”
“To get under his skin, you mean?” he replied.
I nodded. “He had to consciously push me out, and how likely is he going to be able to do that if he’s asleep?”
“Better hope he’s dead to it,” Slade said, then carefully and quietly unzipped the tent.
We paused at the entrance for a moment, allowing our eyes to adjust to the darkness. It was a lot emptier than everyone else’s as he was the only occupant, now a shadowy bulk. This worked in our favour as we crawled inside, crouching in the empty space on the left, looking down at Sylvan’s sleeping form.
The similarity in the features of the Great Black Wolf and him was startling. I hadn’t exactly memorised his face, but the sharp cheekbones and the broad jaw were all very familiar. That was the first thing I needed to know—why. I reached out my hand, ready to touch the Volken seer and see if I could find out.
“Wait!” Slade hissed. My fingers froze where they were, and I shot him an incredulous look over my shoulder. “Will you be OK?”
I shrugged. I wanted to be sure of that too, and everything I’d experienced in the psychic space hadn’t hurt me yet, so I had to assume that would stay the case. I just looked at him, not willing to disturb the silence and potentially wake Sylvan. He nodded finally, not looking happy about it, but accepting this was what we had to do. I slid my hand over the tent floor, careful not to create a noise, and then the tips of my fingers touched Sylvan’s.
I was wrenched away from the tent in a chaotic swirl, reality reasserting itself quickly with a snap.
“Thank the gods you’re here.”
I looked up to see a shirtless Sylvan standing before me, and sure enough, he had the same well-defined muscular body that all men that were gifted with the peacock gene seemed to have. His eyes were wide, the crystalline blue all the more stark for it, and he looked at me like I was the most precious thing in the world. He took a step toward me, then stopped, as if he wasn’t sure he could or should.
“You are, aren’t you?”
“Of course,” I said, though it wasn’t me who was saying the words. I was in the body of the person speaking to him, but I wasn’t controlling it. That was enough for him though, as he broached the gap between us in two long strides, then jerked me to him and held me close. I heard the rasp of his breath in my ears, felt the shift of his hands restively on our skin as if it was my own.
“It’s OK, my love.”
My voice was lower, more melodious than mine usually was. It held a soothing note that seemed to unwind something inside Sylvan. But not for long. The tension that leaked out was soon replaced by an emotion that burned much hotter.
The look on Sylvan’s face was an alien one—pure naked desire. He had pulled back, still holding me in his arms, and those bright blue eyes grew hooded and heated, dropping down to rest on my mouth before slowly drawing back up again. His tongue flicked out to swipe his plush bottom lip.
What the actual fuck? I had no idea what Sylvan’s deal was. Sometimes he was some half naked interloper who’d savaged me and seemed to relish being electrocuted in his cell, and sometimes he was a foreign presence in my dreams, a hijacker of my mind, an inciter of mass hysteria. To feel a thrill of arousal spike through me was an odd experience. Me? Or the body my consciousness rode within? I didn’t know. I just felt the fluid shift of this body as it moved towards him, slinging our arms around his shoulders, angling our head closer until I could feel his breath on our lips.
“And what has you so hungry for me, my love?”
We pulled back when he tried to close that gap, his mouth searching for ours, and it took him moments to register before his eyes darted up to meet ours. Something cooler settled there as he straightened.
“We’re getting closer,” he said, pulling free of us and tangling his hands in his hair. “We should be at Leifgart within days.”
“This is good, my love.”
“Is it? You helped me get out of that cesspool. I find myself questioning why the hell I would go back.”
“You go back because we need—” we said.
“I know, I know, but knowing doesn’t make me like this any better. They might fail, your little band. If Lian gets his hands on them, if Lonan rises.”
“If, if, if. I’ve seen a million ifs and so have you. You know as well as I that all we can do is—”
“Prepare for every eventuality.” He nodded, staring at the ground for a moment. “I should be training the girl, get her and her group of fuck buddies to develop some discipline. They’re just as likely to think they’ll be able to fuck their way out of an
y problems that occur.”
“Sylvan, it is worrying to hear you speak so scathingly of desire,” we said. “It is the glue that has drawn all of our players together. Desire is the currency that rules the world.”
His eyes flicked up to meet mine squarely. That flame of want still burned hot inside him, but as I watched, his hands clenched into fists.
“And the desire that draws us together?”
I felt my face split into a smile, something that seemed to strike Sylvan physically. He almost shrank away, but as we sidled up and put our arms around him, those fingers went to claws as they raked across our back.
“Well?”
His voice was threat and challenge and need, and we loved it. Our smile didn’t falter until our lips touched his. We took the surge of his tongue, the violence of his caress as tribute. He ground the hard length of his cock against our thigh, as if to underline this. He didn’t whimper when our hands wound in his hair, when we jerked it back, revealing the long line of his neck.
“Yes…” he hissed as we lipped at the skin there, his body tensing when our fangs grazed his flesh. “Yes, yes, yes…” he chanted, a mantra that just got louder as we caught his flesh between them.
“Not this time, my love,” we said, and tossed him down on a bed that had suddenly appeared, the look of disappointment on his face no less plain for the movement.
I needed out of here. I’d seen more of Sylvan’s cock than I ever wanted to, and I definitely didn’t want to see his O face when he threw babies out of his flesh tube. I reached, for Slade, for the tent, for any reality that didn’t have Sylvan looking like all his wishes had come at once while stroking his dick, but I remained resolutely seated.
Fuck! I yelped, but of course, no one could hear me. I’d been dumb enough to project my consciousness into a tricky bastard who’d caught me at every turn.
She straddled him, the woman whose body I rode, removing clothes with a wave of her hand, and then teased the Volken seer with her hands and mouth. This had to be his dream, since he did little to reciprocate as he just lay there, gasping as she got him closer and closer. But we did not fully follow the script. His stomach bunched as she used his dick as a sex toy, rocking her hips as she worked it against her clit. And then, when his cries grew too urgent, she relented, sliding him into her in one stroke.
