by Katie May
“He was obviously good at covering his tracks,” Abel muses. He grabs my hand and absently plays with my fingers. Heat travels through me from that menial connection, blossoming in my core.
“He probably hid the Compound under the guise of one of his charities,” Cain adds. “Fuck, he probably even had fundraisers to raise money for his sick fetish.”
“But why did he have the Compound to begin with? Why did he participate? What was the purpose?” Kai fires off. When Cain swivels his gaze toward him, I see the dragon shifter pacing in agitation. He pulls at the strands of his dark hair making them appear even more disheveled.
“Because he’s a sick fuck,” Bronson rumbles, sniffing my neck. Goosebumps skitter across my body at the contact. “Who knows why sick people do sick things.”
“I doubt the other Council members know about this,” Damien theorizes. “It’s too fucked-up, even for them.”
“So we know that Raphael Turner wasn’t the saint everyone suspected him to be. We know that he actually ran an illegal Compound where he tortured and abused young supernaturals. We know that he was murdered after Nina escaped. But why? None of this makes sense. Why did they kidnap Nina and Kai in the first place? Why them?” Abel releases a heavy sigh, brushing my hand across his lips in a soft, tender kiss. In a quieter voice, meant for my ears alone, he whispers, “I’m sorry all of this happened to you.”
“I just don’t understand.” I feel the beginning of tears in my eyes. “Why me? Why does all of this stuff have to happen to me?”
It’s a question that haunted me when I sat in the dingy, seven-by-seven cell. It’s a question that reverberated through my mind when I was strapped to the table in the torture room. I questioned it again in the ring with Tessa, a friend turned enemy.
Why me?
“I don’t know, my queen,” Bronson replies in my ear. He nibbles on my earlobe once before he releases me. “But I swear to you, we’ll figure it out. Cross my heart and hope to die.”
And that’s exactly what I’m afraid of.
Chapter 47
Nina
My body has been bent and broken, twisted and reshaped, discarded and used, numerous times throughout my life. Yet, I have somehow managed to emerge relatively unscathed.
Sure, there are pieces of me that I can’t get back, pieces left behind in the Compound and then at the court hearing with the judge. I’m less whole than I once was, but I’m still breathing. My lungs are still capable of taking in air. My heart can still beat, though the rhythm is unsteady. My hands no longer shake when I contemplate all I have endured and all I will continue to endure.
The week since waking up after Tessa’s attack has proven to me how resilient I actually am. You can knock me down, stomp on me, but I’ll always get back up with a determined glint in my eyes.
My body has slowly and surely mended itself back together again. My bruises have all but completely diminished, and my ribs no longer ache. And though I should feel one hundred percent, a part of me died in that ring with Tessa. It’s a minuscule piece, one I doubt anyone will miss, but it’s still a part of me I’ll never get back.
During the course of my healing, none of the guys dared to discuss Raphael Turner or the Compound with me. They believe they need to tread lightly around those subjects, as if the mere mention of my tormentor will send me spiraling over the edge.
Don’t they realize I’m made of tougher stuff than that? Don’t they see the armor I have erected around myself? It’s made of steel and cement, a fortress not even my dragon can break.
Silently fuming, I curl my fingers around the ball Cain had gotten me. It’s supposed to help with my physical therapy—something about regaining function in my broken fingers. For a human, this method would probably work. For me, it’s just an annoyance. I didn’t even realize my fingers were broken until Cain mentioned it.
Bronson is sitting opposite me, gaze steady on me. That isn’t necessarily surprising. The man is always staring at me. Surveying me. Cataloging my injuries. This time, however, he seems agitated. His knee bounces up and down as his eyes flicker from my face to the bars of the cell. After the fourth rotation, I finally drop the ball and stumble to my feet. Immediately, he’s across the room in an attempt to steady me.
“What’s going on?” I ask softly, cupping his whiskered cheeks. The scruff bites into my palms, but the pain surprisingly sends heat to my core. I can still recall the feel of his light beard against the inside of my thighs...
“You almost died.” His voice is rough, broken. It’s not something I’m used to hearing from my confident wolf.
I caress his cheeks softly, allowing him to collect his thoughts. I know my injuries and near death have pained all of them, Bronson especially. He’s always been over-protective and over-bearing, full of passion and emotion. My comatose state had sent him careening over that edge.
“You almost died,” he repeats in that same choked voice. He kisses first one palm and then the other before capturing my hands in his own. “It got me thinking...” He trails off, uncharacteristically bashful.
“It got you thinking about what?” I ask, heart racing. My stomach is suddenly in tight knots.
Does he regret meeting me? Caring about me?
I don’t know why my mind automatically runs to the worst-case scenario. Maybe it’s because of the Compound and everything it represented. Maybe it’s my own insecurities. Maybe it’s because I don’t know if I deserve love, especially the irrevocable love he gives me.
Bronson takes a steeling breath, dropping his gaze to where our hands connect. His thumb idly draws circles around one of my knuckles.
“I want you to be my mate,” he rushes to say. My body freezes, going as taut as a guitar string, before I force myself to relax. “Officially, I mean. I want to complete the bond.”
Mate.
He wants to be my mate.
My heart gains wings and soars around my rib cage like an enthusiastic butterfly. Blood rushes to my ears as the sheer intensity of my emotions cascade over me.
Mate.
Mate.
Mate.
Bronson, mistaking my silence for rejection, hurries to elaborate, his gruff, raspy voice eliciting full-body shivers through me. “I know you already mated with Rion, but shifters can have more than one mate.” Wait, I completed the mating bond with Rion? “I knew from the first moment I saw you that you were my fated mate, the only girl I’ll ever love. I understand if you want to—”
I cut him off by standing on my tiptoes and kissing him on the mouth. It’s a soft kiss, chaste by some standards, but delicious tingles run up and down my body, from the tips of my fingers to my bare feet.
“Bronson, I would love to be your mate,” I whisper with a shaky smile. “I don’t know what that will mean...”
“It means that I’ll always find you. That your pain will be my pain. Your hopes will be my hopes. Your love will be my love. Nothing can break a mating bond except for death.”
“Don’t say that,” I whisper as another wave of emotion swallows me whole. “Not even death will keep me from you.”
He pulls me toward him and ravishes my lips again. This time, there’s nothing soft about the kiss. It’s possessive and angry. A fight of teeth and tongues. A fight against the monsters who want to keep us apart.
He lays claim to me with this kiss, devouring not only my body, but my heart and soul as well. When he finally pulls away, I greedily arch my neck, giving him access to the skin there.
“Do it,” I whisper as his teeth graze my neck. I don’t know if it’s intentional, but his lips are directly above the spot where Rion had bit me a few weeks ago. “Make me yours.”
Because I already am.
His teeth clamp down, but it’s not painful. Like with Rion, liquid lust travels through my veins setting me aflame. I gasp, arching my back, as my soul merges with his. Everything I am belongs to him. Everything he is belongs to me. We’re one and the same, two halves of the same hea
rt. From this day forth, we’ll beat as one.
“Nina,” he breathes against my skin, voice heady with emotion. “My queen.”
“Bron.” I run my fingers through his blond hair, enjoying the way his breath hitches with each tug.
With his lips still against my skin, he whispers the words that change everything. The words I have only heard to my face once before, from Kai. Words that send delightful shivers through my body. “I love you.”
It might be wrong or unconventional to love more than one person. I might be looked down upon, but at that moment, I need him to know the extent of my feelings. He owns my heart, but so do five other men. I didn’t know it was possible. I didn’t know a heart was capable of having so much love. It’s to the point where I fear the organ will burst.
“I love you too.”
His lips are on mine once more, devouring me like I’m the air he breathes. Lust permeates the air like a perfume, dousing the both of us in its sweet scent.
My shirt and bra are soon discarded as Bronson squeezes my breasts. When he twists my nipples, evoking a sharp sting of pain, I moan louder. I never suspected I would like something like that, something rough.
I reach down his body and rub his cock through his pants. Through feel alone, I know he’ll be bigger than Kai and Rion. Bronson himself is massive—a real giant of a man with muscle upon muscle. It’s only fitting that his cock would be just as big.
“Take your shirt off,” I whisper, fingering the edge of the fabric. In the next moment, he yanks it over his head, the soft material brushing against my face with the motion. I run my hands over his defined, sculpted muscles before raising them to his face. I would never describe his features as beautiful—they’re too masculine for that—but he’s ruggedly sexy. He looks like he’d be at home in a cabin located deep within the forest.
I move my hands to his head as he takes one of my nipples into his mouth, sucking gently before biting down sharply.
I moan again, tangling my fingers in his tousled blond hair.
“Is this alright?” he whispers, nuzzling my breasts. “Am I being too rough?”
“This is perfect. You’re perfect.”
“God, I could look at your body all day, my queen. It’s perfect.” I shoot him a soft look that I hope relays the extent of my love for him, for this massive man with a heart of gold. I pull his mouth back to mine, attacking it with my own. It’s rougher than anything I have ever experienced before, but it doesn’t negate the pleasure pooling low in my belly.
The first time we were intimate, during our date, he had been painstakingly gentle. This time, there’s a primal edge to his actions that hadn’t been there prior. He wants it rough, and apparently, so do I. It’s as if the last few months were leading to this moment, this lust-filled explosion. We were always fated to collide. It’s no wonder we both combust when we finally join.
“We don’t need a condom,” he murmurs against my lips. “I’m clean, for one, and shifters can only impregnate their mates when the female is in heat. We can sense it.”
“I don’t think that will be a problem,” I admit, twin flames in both my cheeks. “I think... I think the Compound did something to me. I’ve never even had a period before.”
Bronson pulls away, studying me intently. I flush under his scrutiny, feeling vaguely like an ant under a microscope.
Finally, he pulls me toward him and plants kisses down my neck.
“We’ll figure it out. I promise.”
We pull at the remainder of each other’s clothes, his thumbs hooking into the waistband of my panties as he pulls them down. I gracefully step out of them, my hands on his broad shoulders.
“Tell me you love me again,” he pleads.
I smile up at him. “I love you, Bronson. More than words can say.”
He gently guides me to the bed, pushing my legs apart to reveal my sopping entrance.
“You’re already so wet for me, my goddess. My love. My world.” He kisses my left thigh and then my right. I want his lips there, I always do, but right now, I want something else inside of me. I want the fullness I experienced with both Kai and Rion. I want him to complete me in a way only he can.
My protector.
My lover.
My wolf.
I guide his lips back to mine as he lines the head of his cock up with my entrance.
He sheathes himself inside me slowly, inch by excruciating inch, and waits, giving me a moment to adjust. Pressing his forehead to my own, he whispers, “I love the way you feel around me.”
“I love the way you feel inside of me,” I reply, blushing.
He chuckles, holding himself steady over top of me. Not for the first time, I wish I could see his face. The lust and love in his eyes. The curve to his lips. The flush to his cheeks. Is he in as much bliss as I am?
“Your dirty talk still needs some work, my goddess.” He presses a gentle kiss to my sweaty neck.
“Are you really talking about my dirty talk—or lack thereof—when you’re inside of me?” I hiss. He chuckles again, body shaking, and I groan as his cock jumps in my tight channel.
“You can practice on me anytime,” he says, and I know he’ll be smirking devilishly. He sounds more like Abel and Rion than himself at that moment, but maybe this is a side of him I haven’t seen before. A playful one.
I really, really like it.
“Okay...hymen remover,” I stumble, and he roars with laughter.
“Hymen remover?”
“What?! Is that not sexy? It’s the first sexual term I could think of,” I insist as he laughs even harder.
And then, the laughter subsides as we finally—finally—begin to move together.
Our bodies find a rhythm as he pounds into me, first slow and languid and then fast and punishing. I hold onto him, digging my nails into his back, as he continues to use my body like he owns it.
Maybe a part of him does.
“I’m close,” I warn. So, so close.
And then, I explode.
Colors pass in front of my eyes, a kaleidoscope, and for a second, I can’t breathe. I lose sense of who I am, where I am, and what I’m doing here. All that exists is Bronson and his warm, sweaty body above me.
He holds onto me as he jerks his hips once then twice, releasing his seed inside of me. He calls out my name as he comes.
Aftershocks of pleasure course through me, leaving me shaking. But it’s not just the pleasure causing such a reaction from me. It’s him. It’s me. It’s us.
He’s a protector, a fixer, someone who will go to the ends of the earth for the person he loves.
If I let him, I know Bronson will fix everything that is broken inside of me.
“You didn’t tell me we completed the mating bond. After sex, when you bit me, you didn’t tell me that made us officially mates.”
I find Rion in the rafters above Kai’s cell. Technically, Bronson found him. I just provided moral support.
With a kiss to my forehead, Bronson leaves me with the eccentric cat shifter.
When Rion doesn’t answer, I cross my arms over my chest, fighting off the intense chill that passes through me. “Is that why you’ve been ignoring me?” I question softly.
Finally, I get a reaction out of him. There’s a “thump” as he drops to the ground, and then his arms are around me.
“Fuck, no. It’s just... I just...” He stumbles over his words. “I feel guilty!” he explodes at last, and his dogmatic declaration has me blinking at him stupidly. “I feel so fucking guilty. First, for mating with you without your permission, and then because of the whole thing with Tessa. I’m supposed to protect you, and what do I do? Get you beat up. I’m a cat, Nina. When I feel guilty, I hide in corners to lick my fur in relative peace. Though I really wish I could lick you... Gah! See? I’m a pervert. And technically, I did tell you. A few times. Don’t you remember my post-sex claiming? Probably not, actually. You were a little out of it. I don’t know why you haven’t punched me in the f
ace yet. You know what? Do it. Punch me in the face. It’ll make me feel better.”
I cut off his incessant ramblings by placing my hand over his mouth.
“It’ll make you feel better...to have me punch you in the face?” I repeat slowly, carefully, wishing I could gauge his reaction. Why are men so difficult to understand? I swear there are one hundred underlying meanings behind what he just said to me. Surely, he doesn’t mean for me to punch him literally.
Rion removes my hand from his mouth, intertwining our fingers together.
“I hate myself for what Tessa did to you. What my dick inadvertently did to you because I fucked that crazy bitch. Fuck, I shouldn’t be talking about other women with my mate. My mate—who’s you, by the way, if I still haven’t made that clear—who I'm crazy in love with. But I just can’t stop talking, you know? My mom always told me I’ll talk myself straight into a volcano. Or maybe she said she’ll push me into one. I don’t remember. Either way, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I should’ve asked you if you wanted to cement the mating bond instead of losing myself in the moment. And then the fight... Nina, I felt your pain. I felt each punch like I was experiencing it myself. Did you know I started crying? I never cry. Except for when I’m watching the Titanic. But besides that, I never cry! Ever! And then there was you, looking so beautiful even covered in blood and bruises. You held yourself regally, like a fucking queen, and I knew that you were it for me. I loved you then, and I love you now, but I don’t know if I love myself anymore. I know, I know, it’s hard to believe because I have a pretty kickass body and my personality is amazing. I really, really want you to punch me in the face. I don’t think I can forgive myself otherwise. I deserve that and more. God, I fucking hate myself for what I did to you.” Through his entire spiel, I’m not sure he has even taken a breath.
I don’t want him to hate himself.
So...
I punch him in the face.
Damien has taught me how to throw a punch, how to accurately hit my target without sight, how to rely on sound and air currents. I believe I have pretty good form. There’s a crack as my fist connects with Rion’s cheek, and a startled yelp escapes the shifter.
