Escaping Monsters: A Reverse Harem Wolf Shifter Romance (Grayhaven Book 1)

by Rita Stradling

  “Lucas, I feel like you would be honest with me.” I swallowed. “Am I safe here?”

  His gray eyes came up to meet mine. “Teagan, yes. I can honestly say that you will be protected here, fiercely, and no one will hurt you. What can I do to help you feel safer here?”

  “You can explain what just happened with Jasper,” I said as I rubbed the back of my neck with my free hand.

  Lucas cleared his throat, and though his eyes were still fixed on mine, I got the impression that he was suddenly uncomfortable. “Well, how much do you know about omega-lore?”

  “I live it,” I said. “So, I’d guess expert-level on myself.”

  “Fair enough,” he said, “And how much do you know about omegas and their true-mates?”

  I shook my head. “True mates are rare. Werewolves only get one, and they’re usually drawn together. Fate draws them together but sometimes not before one or the other marries. If a spouse refuses to relinquish their claim, a true mate can challenge them.”

  “Yes, except one part of that mythology might not be true in all cases. Some werewolves…” Lucas leaned back against the sink, and the motion was just a little bit too casual, “Supposedly, have more than one true mate.”

  “I’ve never heard that. Are you saying that omegas are supposed to have more than one true mate?” It seemed like that was the path our conversation had to be heading, but Lucas appeared to be cautious to just say it.

  Even now, he worked his chin back and forth, seeming hesitant to answer the simple question.

  “I’m making you so uncomfortable, aren’t I, Lucas?”

  Lucas’ dimple peeked out. “Can you feel my emotions again?”

  “No. I can just tell, but I don’t understand why. Jasper was upset because he thought I had multiple mates and I didn’t? This still doesn’t make a bit of sense to me.”

  “Yes and no.” Lucas pulled open a large bandage and pressed it over my healing wound. “All right, Teagan, I’ll tell you what I know, but please know in advance that this isn’t what we expect from you. I hope divulging this to you is the right choice, especially after witnessing Chad’s…” Lucas chuckled, “I don’t know what to call it.”

  “Sex-fest?” I suggested. “Demon sex toy party?”

  Lucas shook his head. “That’s a whole different mess to unpack. All right. I’m sure you already know that omega females are very rare… usually, it’s males who are omegas.”

  I nodded, even though I didn’t know much about omegas other than myself. I had never met another omega female. All I knew was that Kane went to an astronomical amount of effort to find and change and imprison me.

  “The last omega was a member of Kane’s pack over two centuries ago.”

  “Her name was Agatha. Kane killed her and all of her children,” I nodded, because I knew the story very well. Kane hadn’t told me it as a threat. He’d told me with regret, but it had been engraved in my mind. I had always known that I would rather die than have Kane’s children, but that was the day I decided to put the dream of having children with anyone else away for good. The first time I escaped Kane, I went to a women’s clinic and got an IUD. I would have had my tubes tied, instead, but more than likely, my werewolf nature would heal an injury like that. “Kane told me that he discovered Agatha having an affair with his brother, and he killed them both out of rage and jealousy, then he went on a rampage.”

  “He went on a rampage when he killed Agatha…,” Lucas sighed and brushed a finger over his beard, “But, Agatha didn’t have an affair with Kane’s brother, Henry. Agatha left Kane when she discovered that she was Henry’s true mate, and Agatha wasn’t just Henry’s true mate, she was mated to every member of Henry’s pack. Agatha had left Kane decades ago, and everyone believed that he accepted Agatha’s choice until Kane and his pack killed every member of Henry and Agatha’s pack and all their children. There were seven mates and twenty-two children, and only one child escaped into the forest.”

  I held a hand out to Lucas. “I don’t want to pressure you into talking about something—”

  “Teagan, I’m not quite that old,” he said through a grin, but his mirth faded fast. “This is just hearsay, but it was the belief then that what Agatha had with her pack was the nature of omegas. When Kane bit you, Jasper sensed you as his mate…”

  Lucas said this part cautiously, and I nodded. “Jasper told me something like that.”

  “Okay.” Lucas nodded. “Well, Jasper challenged Kane, and Kane pointed out that if Jasper won the challenge, it wouldn’t just be taking you from one of your mates, it would be taking you from your pack. Jasper was also concerned that it would be pressuring you into a mating situation with several werewolves you didn’t know.”

  “You mean you guys,” I said, twirling a finger in the air.

  Lucas held his hands up like I was holding him at gunpoint. “I’m not saying that we would ever think that was going to happen. No one is going to pressure you into anything. All I’m saying is that Jasper would never have left you with Kane under any circumstance, but he believed that you had ten mates. Each swore to fight him to the death rather than give you up, and he wouldn’t do that to you. So, he left. I’m guessing that the reason he was so enraged was in finding out that your ten lovers were just another one of Kane’s lies.”

  “Okay.” I leaned into the metal sink. “Now, that’s a lot to digest.”

  Declan stepped into the doorway and leaned into the sill. “Did you guys forget to invite me to your shower party?”

  I glanced back at the open shower and felt heat flushing up my cheeks.

  “Declan, great sense of timing as always.” Lucas cleared his throat. “Like I said, Teagan, no one here expects that from you.”

  I looked between Declan’s confused expression and Lucas’ nervous one. “You all know about this mate thing?”

  “Lucas,” Declan growled, “Are you daft? You told her?”

  Holy fuck. They all knew.

  “Look…” I shook my head because I had no response to this ludicrous development. So far, Declan, Lucas, and Jasper had been very careful not to give me a single nonconsensual order, even when I was in danger. I didn’t feel like these men were going to hurt me, but I hoped they didn’t expect me to be their collective true mate. The room spun, and my stomach flipped. “I think I need to sit down… preferably not on something that was recently used in an orgy. And, maybe some food if you have it?”

  Declan threw a thumb over his shoulder. “I’ve got steaks on the counter along with the cake.”

  “Thank you.” I took one step, and the floor slipped out from under me. The whole room spun, and I grabbed onto the sink with my injured hand and sucked in a breath as pain radiated up my arm.

  “Are you okay?” Lucas grabbed my shoulders. “Did you eat anything? You look like you’re about to collapse. Did you take anything?” He leaned in close, looking into my eyes, doing a quick assessment.

  “That demon touched her.” Declan’s arms went around my legs and back, and suddenly I was hoisted up into his arms like I weighed nothing at all.

  “Whoa, guys. I’m okay. I just haven’t been eating much in the past week—maybe three hundred calories a day, and even though I ate a lot yesterday, I don’t think my body was ready to change into a werewolf and back in a couple of hours.” I patted Declan’s shoulder and opened my mouth to tell him that he could set me down when my vision tunneled, and heat rose in my face.

  Fuck.

  I was about to pass out.

  “I need to lie down,” I muttered before the whole world faded away.

  Chapter Nine

  I opened my eyes, looking into the exposed ceiling beams of a high slanted roof. My stomach clenched as, for a moment, I had no fucking clue where I was. The bed I was in was elevated, like a tower, and the mattress I lay in was soft and large and smelled like woodsmoke and soap. It smelled like Declan.

  “Don’t be alarmed, I’m here too,” a scratchy voice said from a sho
rt distance away, and I craned my neck to see the nerdy-sexy bartender Ace sitting up in another bunk. “Morning, Sleeping Beauty,” he rasped before waving once and then crashing back down on his bed.

  “Am I in Declan’s bunk…?” I asked as everything came slamming into focus, and I realized that I had just passed out cold surrounded in an unfamiliar pack. Not only was I sleeping in Declan’s bunk, but I was also doing it with my boots on, along with my dirty jeans and sweatshirt.

  With a sudden surge of energy coursing through me, I sat up and blinked around the upper loft of the firehouse. Morning light filtered in from the tall windows in the brick, illuminating the massive room below the loft. In the second story, I lay on the first of four large bunks lined up against one wall. On the other side of the loft, there was a home gym with weight machines, a punching bag, and mats propped up against the wall.

  “What happened last night?” I asked Ace, who sprawled across the next bunk.

  “Wait…” Ace propped himself up on his elbows and peered at me through sleepy, bloodshot eyes. From what I could see, the guy was sleeping only in his boxers, and even though he was far leaner than the rest of the werewolves, the bartender firefighter had taut, cut muscles. He rubbed his forehead and lifted his brows. “How much do you remember?”

  “I was with Lucas and Declan in the bathroom when I passed out cold.”

  “Yeah… I missed all that. I came in after my shift at around three AM to find the whole pack panicking.”

  “Panicking?” I shook my head. “I don’t remember any of that.”

  “Well, Declan was clutching you in his arms and proclaiming that the demons had poisoned you, and Jasper was ready to kill Chad for having some sort of unholy orgy that brought the demons here and put you in danger. The three of them were about to go on a demon hunt. Lucas—the only werewolf among us with any medical knowledge—kept telling everyone your vitals were indicating you were in a recovery sleep, but the others were too worked up to listen.”

  “I went into a recovery sleep?”

  “Yeah. In the end, that’s what the official diagnosis was.”

  Fuck a duck. I knew I had been pushing myself too far for too long. Werewolves only went into recovery sleep when they were seriously injured or their last energy reserves failed them. For wolves, a recovery sleep was the equivalent of taking a high dose sleeping pill and chasing it with a shot of morphine. “Please tell me I was unconscious the whole time.”

  “Well, so, you were unconscious when I came in, but…” Ace gritted his teeth. “Jasper insisted that Lucas wake you up to prove that you weren’t under some sort of demon enchantment. As soon as you were awake, you told us you wanted steak. You tried to swallow it whole, so I cut it up for you and fed you at your request, and you thought it was hilarious before you passed out face down on the table.”

  It was coming back to me in patches now. I could bring those clumps of steak to mind, their taste and texture as Ace put them in my mouth. “Okay… that’s not that bad. Did I suck on your fingers… because I’m kind of remembering something like that?”

  He held up two fingers an inch apart. “It didn’t bother me.”

  “Still, I’m sorry for putting you all in that situation.”

  Waking during recovery sleep was no joke. Werewolves were usually silly and inebriated, but there had been cases where werewolves had attacked or even killed people while they were blacked out. If the recovery sleep was due to injury, that was one thing, but I’d done this to myself and put everyone here at risk.

  All in all, giggling and needing to be fed wasn’t that bad, even if there was some minor finger sucking involved. “So, after that, someone carried me up here?”

  “Not quite at that point, no.” Ace sat up and reached over to a shelf on the wall and pulled down a pair of glasses. He blinked owlishly through them. “The second time you passed out, you hit your head on the table, which set off a second, lesser panic. Declan woke you up that time.”

  “Oh shit…” Heat rose in my cheeks as the image of Declan hunching over me rose in my mind. He’d pressed his fingers around my forehead before cupping my cheeks, asking if I was in pain as the world spun around him. Then, I’d leaned in and tried to kiss him, which he’d pulled back from. Fuck. And… now I was positive I said something to him after that, something dirty.

  My face burned, and I chewed on the side of my thumbnail “Hey, Ace. What did I say to Declan, exactly? Did you hear?”

  “We all knew that you were fully in recovery sleep mode.” Ace winced. “He didn’t think anything of it.”

  Oh, fuck. This was going to be bad. I could just feel it.

  “Just rip it off like a bandage, Ace. Just rip it off. What did I say?”

  Ace gritted his teeth. “So… you said you wanted to trace your tongue over every line of his tattoos. I was right next to you, so I heard that part, though I’m not sure if Chad or Declan overheard.”

  “I didn’t lick Declan, right?”

  Ace shook his head. “No licking, you’re good.”

  I sighed. “Okay. Hopefully that and the attempted kiss can be fixed with a sincere apology. And that’s all I did or said?”

  Ace didn’t answer right away, and the relief that had been flowing through me vanished.

  “So…,” he squinted an eye at me, “You might have also told Declan you wanted to… uh, hump him in the forest, and that Chad was who you pictured the first time you had sex, too bad he was such an asshole in real life, and you wanted to screw Lucas in his veterinary clinic, and that you wanted to jump Jasper all the time, and that I’m too young for you, but you thought I was sexy as hell. Anyhow, you told us that if you slept with one of us, Kane would kill us. Then you told Jasper that he was a dick… however, you didn’t call him a limp dick asshole, so things are looking up from the night at the bar.” Ace rubbed his nose under his glasses. “We were all just worried about you.”

  My face fell into my hands. “Is there an escape route from this loft?”

  “Not one that won’t break both your legs from the fall.” Ace held up a hand. “Teagan, all of us have talked out of our ass during a recovery sleep at least once. When everyone is sure that you’re okay, they might tease you a bit, but no one is going to hold it against you.”

  I clasped my hands in front of me. “Tell me that was the end of the night, please.”

  “Yeah. Declan set you down on his bunk, gently but firmly refused to climb up in there with you and set off to check his traps. The other guys took the couches downstairs, and I’m the one they elected to sleep up here—something about me being almost the same size as you and not very intimidating.”

  Maybe Ace was close to my size compared to the other wolves, but Ace had a good twenty to thirty pounds of muscle on me. He was lanky for a werewolf with a nerdy look to his handsome face, but I’d felt his dominance for only a second in the bar, and it was something to be reckoned with.

  “We didn’t want you to feel outnumbered. Also, I’m supposed to be wearing a shirt…” He felt around his bunk, “Clearly I strip in my sleep, and I’m sorry for that.”

  I was not complaining in the least, but I said, “No worries.”

  Ace finally found his shirt, and as he pulled it on, he asked, “So, how are you feeling? You still hungry?”

  “Yes. Somewhere between nauseous with humiliation and starving.”

  “Can’t do anything about the first one except assure you we’ve all been there. The second one, there’s a solution to.” Ace climbed to the edge of his bunk, but he looked as if he was fighting heavy lids. “There’s a fridge full of food waiting for you downstairs. I can make you something.”

  “If you came home from work at 3 AM and then stayed up late helping me, you have to be exhausted. I can figure out my way around your kitchen if you’re okay with that.”

  “Are you sure?” A yawn interrupted his question halfway. “Because I’m happy to do it.”

  “I am positive.” I peeked over the edg
e of the bed, only to realize the bunks had no ladders up or railings, and they were at least seven feet up each. “Except, how do I get down from here?”

  “Jump,” Ace said as he curled up and hugged his pillow.

  “Yeah, maybe for you guys. My legs are a lot shorter.” Sliding off the edge, I shimmied down the side and took the impact with bent knees.

  “Or, you could do that,” Ace said as he watched me with one eye. “You sure you don’t want… make you…”

  “Yes,” I whispered the word because I was pretty sure the guy was already asleep.

  Underneath the bunk was a large mahogany desk with a pair of notes sitting on top. On the first note was the word: Cherry.

  With nerves coursing through me, I read the words of the first letter.

  Declan didn’t say anything about the ass I made of myself last night, he had only written that he had to head out hunting, but he’d be back before nightfall. He added that he would have loved to spend the rest of the night curled up with me in his bed, but last night was not the right time for that. Jasper had made up a room for me, but I was welcome to stay in his bunk for as long as I wanted.

  I bit my lip and laughed, actually feeling a hell of a lot better after reading the sweet flirtatious words.

  The second note was from Lucas. He said that he didn’t regret being honest with me last night, but he sincerely regretted his delivery and timing. He wanted to emphasize that no one here expected anything of me. He was needed in the clinic, but he’d drop by for an extended lunch to make sure I was okay.

  “Want me to bring you up something to eat, Ace?” I whispered as I folded the notes and stuffed them in my back pocket.

  Ace hummed and muttered something unintelligible.

  As I descended the stairway into the open living space, a wolf raised their head from the couch. Blue eyes met mine. Halfway down the steps, I froze, thinking it was Jasper. The wolf was a dead ringer for the alpha in lupine form. Like the alpha, he was large with thick shoulders and a gray coat, but there was something distinctly different in the eyes. This wolf’s gaze was softer somehow.