by Helen Scott
Honestly, it felt like there wasn't much point in trying to hide anymore.
Clearly, he could find us wherever we went. I wasn't sure whether it was something in my scent or the shadow of the bond that was drawing him to me. But whatever it was, he and his wolves seemed to always find us, and as much as I didn't want to admit it to the guys, I was scared. I was meeting with the man who, for all intents and purposes, wanted to own me.
If I was honest, I didn't feel confident about the meeting. I wasn't sure how it would go or how everything would play out, but I felt sure that Jax would try to take me—an eventuality we had discussed and knew we had to plan for.
The one thing that was pulling at me, though, was the time that we had to wait between now and the meeting. The seconds seemed to tick by as slowly as molasses in winter. Each one felt more like an hour, with the hours feeling more like days. It was driving me batty.
In some ways, I wished it would have happened right away and that we didn't have to sit on our hands. I meant everything that I’d said to the guys about Jax and him possibly having a sliver of the little boy that I once knew inside him, but that didn't mean I was confident about meeting adult Jax and the wolf he harbored, who was a berserker.
I hadn't even known that such a thing existed within the pack until they had told me. And just the thought of what he could do was enough to send chills down my spine. If I triggered his wolf somehow, I knew I would lose. Even with my mates by my side, making the odds six to one against Jax—provided his guards didn't join in for some reason—it would be a battle that we couldn't win.
That didn't mean I had to go in unprepared, though.
I was a fighter; I always had been. Even as a kid, I’d constantly gotten into scrapes, fighting with Sam until one of us was bleeding and our parents were yelling. Once I left the pack, it had only gotten worse. At that point, I was actually training, though. I was learning. I was working on my stance, endurance, and abilities, doing everything I could to prepare myself in case I needed to fight a wolf. Only now, I probably did, and I felt woefully unprepared. At least it wasn't just because Jax was a regular wolf, though. I was terrified of this berserker rage lurking within him, which felt, to me, like the essence of Fenrir.
I knew the only thing that would make me feel comfortable was if I had recently trained and knew my skills were sharp and ready to go—that my muscle memory was still there. So, I needed to train. I needed to convince one of my mates to fight me, which was a lot harder than it sounded, and was also why I was currently standing in front of Micah, giving him puppy dog eyes. "Please come and fight with me. I'm just feeling a little antsy, and I want to do something constructive. I've got all this energy..." I trailed off.
Micah looked at me and waggled his eyebrows as he said, "I know something you can do with that energy."
"I just want to fight," I said as I shadowboxed at his shoulders, bouncing on the balls of my feet as I circled around him, my punches purposefully barely connecting. I didn't want to accidentally hurt him. Not that I was actually worried I would, because I knew he was tougher than he seemed. But still, he was my mate. I couldn't take that chance.
He grumbled something incomprehensible, but a grin tugged at the corners of his mouth, and I knew I had him. The two of us headed outside of the motel room and made our way around the edge of the building to the back. It wasn't like our other motel, where there had been a hill behind it—the one that Tate and I had lain on as we looked at the stars. This one was just a parking lot full of trash cans, dumpsters, and empty food wrappers that blew about in the wind, circling, rising, and falling. It was almost as though this area had its own little ecosystem of trash.
Falling onto the concrete back here would hurt. There was no two ways around that, but somehow, I thought it would hurt less than a fist from Jax. The memory of us fighting in that tent when he'd caught me before surfaced. There had been more than one moment where I’d thought I'd lost that fight.
We sparred for a few minutes, talking shit to each other as we threw punches and kicks, knees and elbows, until we were both panting and out of breath.
"So, are you ready to tell me what's wrong?" Micah asked.
I raised my eyebrows at him, even though I knew exactly what he was talking about. "Nothing's wrong. I just want to get this over and done with already. I want to know which way we're going—whether we're committed to killing Jax or are free to go and live our lives however we choose.
"That's not all of it, though, is it?" Micah asked, as he did some fancy footwork to evade my hit.
He wasn't as fancy as he thought, though, and I followed him step for step until he was cornered, ignoring his question. I hadn't expected him to slip his arm under my guard, pulling me in and twisting us. So, I was pinned against the side of the motel. The hard lines of the bricks dug into my back as the heat of him washed over my front. A sheen of sweat coated our skin, and we seemed to slip off one another as we reached for each other. I grabbed at him, trying to hold on for dear life, as though he'd disappear at any moment.
"Tell me what's wrong, Nina."
"There's. Nothing. Wrong," I said, punctuating each word with a hit to his shoulders.
"That's why you're tenser than a drum, huh? Because there's nothing wrong? You want to try that again?" he demanded as he dodged my fist.
"I'm just nervous. That's it. There's nothing else."
"I wish you'd quit lying to me," Micah said, sounding genuinely hurt.
It was enough that my punch went wide and didn't connect at all, not even glancing off his shoulder this time. I just stopped and stared at him. "I'm not lying to you."
"Well, you sure as shit aren't telling me the truth either."
I wanted to snarl at him and tell him he was a liar, that there was no way I would be the one lying to my mates, but that would be the biggest lie of all. "Fine. I'm worried that I'm wrong. That I'm putting us all in danger for a stupid idea. That there's nothing left of the boy I knew. That we're all going to wind up dead and buried, and this will all have been for nothing, and Jax will win. Is that what you wanted to hear?"
Micah paused and looked at me. "Well, it's better than nothing. You might think that your mates are delicate, fragile little flowers, but I promise you, we're not. We can handle the truth. All we ask is that you share how you're feeling with us. Not all of us want to invade your privacy via the mate bond. Your emotions should be your own. But if we have to, we'll check in and see how you're doing. We would just prefer to hear it from you first."
What could I say to that? He was right. So, I just stared up at him, feeling like an idiot for trying to keep this to myself. And yet, I knew if I wound back the clock, I'd probably do the same thing and just hoping that nobody noticed this time. It wasn't that I intentionally wanted to lie to them, but withholding was my survival mechanism; sharing was what made me vulnerable. And even though I trusted and loved my mates, it was going to take me a long time to get over that.
Micah brought his hand up and brushed his knuckles gently down the side of my face, before rubbing his thumb over my cheekbone as he stared down at me. Sometimes, I swore I could see the entire universe in his eyes—in all of their eyes, for that matter—because they were my entire universe. There was nobody else for me other than them. Not even Jax.
He might have a shadow of a bond, but Jax would never hold the power over me that they did; he’d never hold my heart the way they did. What we had was something special. It was something that legends were made of, as cheesy as that sounded in my head. I couldn't help it. They were everything to me. So, when Micah leaned down and pressed his lips to mine in a tender loving kiss, I couldn't help but respond in kind. Only mine involved some tongue, some teeth, and maybe a moan or two.
5
Micah
The noises Nina made as I kissed her had me harder than a rock in seconds. I swear all the blood just pumped to my cock and nowhere else, which was why I didn't think as I pushed her up against the wall of
the motel.
I didn't care that someone might see us, or that we were only a few steps over from a set of trash cans. I didn't care that we were exposed and vulnerable. All I cared about in that moment was making my mate scream my name as her legs shook around me and I thrust into that hot, tight pussy of hers.
Her legs spread, and she lifted them, wrapping them around my hips so my cock was pressed against the soft wet heat of her pussy, which I could feel even through the shorts and panties she was wearing. She was a siren calling me to my doom, only I knew what Nina represented was a life well lived—a life worth living, instead of the empty existence I'd had before.
I rocked my hips against hers, grinding my cock into where she wanted me the most, even though there was fabric separating us. I slipped one hand behind her head, grasping a handful of her hair and gently tugging so her head tipped back and I could stare down into those stormy eyes of hers. After claiming her mouth with my own once more, I slipped a hand under her t-shirt and up to her sports bra, grasping one of her breasts and kneading until the pebbled nipple stood out through the thick athletic fabric.
Her moans became more insistent the longer I played with her, and I knew that neither of us was going to last long. I grasped the back of her neck and pulled her in for a kiss. Her hot mouth felt like it was sucking on my cock instead of my tongue, and I pulled away from the wall, forcing her to release her legs from around my waist unless she wanted me to carry her.
Once she dropped down, I spun her around and hooked my fingers into the waistband of her shorts, pulling them down along with her panties, leaving her exposed. I swiped my fingers along the seam of her core and slicked them with her juices before thrusting them inside her and making her cry out.
I thrust in and out of her, feeling her clench and release around my hand, already so close to an orgasm. With my other hand I reached around and played with her clit, flicking my fingers over the swollen nub until she was shaking against my touch. The tighter she got, the closer I knew she was to her release, and when her whole body went taught, I pulled my fingers out of her pussy and focused on her clit.
Nina's orgasm rolled through her like a tidal wave, and just as it hit its peak, I thrust inside her, my cock getting squeezed by her inner walls as the next wave of her orgasm rolled through her. As I began to move inside her, she thrust back against me, her hips slapping into my own until the two of us set a brutal pace and anyone who came within ear shot would know exactly what was going on behind the motel.
As much as I wanted to feel the rush of pleasure that came from my orgasm, I didn't want to stop pleasuring Nina until she couldn't stand up on her own, so I withdrew from her pussy, my cock slick and glistening with her juices, and dropped to my knees. I swiped my tongue from her clit to her ass and back again, slurping up every last drop of her that I could. She was nectar from Heaven, and if I could survive just on eating her out every day, I would.
I reached up with one hand and found a breast through the material of the sports bra that I longed to rip off her so I could see her bouncing freely as I pounded into her. I knew she wouldn't appreciate that, though, so I contented myself with teasing her nipples through the fabric with one hand and her clit with the other while I fucked her with my tongue.
Before long, she was grinding back onto my face, and we were in a battle of wills to see who would back down first. It wouldn't be me, that much I knew. I could die being suffocated by her luscious folds and die a happy man. I lapped my tongue into her core, stroking every other part of her I could reach with my hands.
I pulled the hand that had been playing with her nipples back and began circling the puckered skin of her ass, wetting my finger with her juices every few rotations until she was slick all the way from her clit to that tight little hole. Once she was properly wet enough, I gently and slowly pushed a finger against the tight ring of muscle.
When I timed the thrust of my tongue with the swipe of my finger on her clit and the finger in her ass, she lost it. Her body shook and shivered around me. If I hadn’t known what was happening, I might have worried that she was being electrocuted or something.
She could barely support herself anymore, so I pushed to my feet and held her around the hips as I thrust into her from behind.
"Micah, please. I need you to fuck me," Nina breathed.
I didn't respond verbally. Instead, I started pounding into her as hard and fast as I could. It took everything I had to keep us both upright. The harder I went, the more I had to support her, until she finally said, "Would you just pin me against the wall already?"
I couldn't help but laugh before I did as she asked. I spun her around and picked her up, moving her so her legs were both over one shoulder before I pinned her against the wall with my hips, rolling into her before dragging my cock out once more. When I withdrew from her completely, she let out a little noise of frustration, and I slammed back in, all the way to the hilt, her noise of frustration transforming into a moan of pleasure.
Each and every time I sank into her wet heat, I thanked the gods that they'd given her to me as a mate. She was perfect, from her strong, courageous heart to her body that seemed to fit mine like a glove. My cock stretched her just enough for us both to feel on edge the whole time, as though at any moment we could lose control.
"I don't know how much longer I can last with you in this position, beautiful. You feel so fucking tight and hot around me. It's driving me crazy," I murmured into her ear.
"Just fuck me, Micah. You've already given me two incredible orgasms. Now I just want to be fucked so hard I'm sore enough to think of your cock inside me every time I move later," she said as she nipped at my lower lip.
Her eyes blazed with lust, and as much as I hated that we'd been fucking in the back alley of a motel, I also didn't care because satisfying her, distracting her, feeling her pulse around me…that was all so much more important. And if she wanted me to fuck her hard enough that she'd be sore, then that's what I'd do.
Instead of pinning her with my hips, I shifted my grip so I was holding her with my hands on her legs, basically folding her in half. We were both lucky she was so flexible. With her pinned there, I could move my hips more freely, which meant that I could fuck her as hard as possible. And I did. I listened to her noises, making sure that she was moaning in pleasure, not pain. The moment I heard anything other than encouragement, I'd back off.
I was moving so fast that anyone walking by wouldn't have any doubt I was supernatural. My balls slapped against her ass and then against my thighs—that was how fast and hard I was moving. Every moan and squeak that came from Nina's mouth was pure pleasure, though.
Sweat rolled down my back as I tried to resist for as long as possible. But suddenly, it was too much, and the pace I'd set to please her pushed me over the edge. My cock jerked and, before I could think of anything to prevent my orgasm from overwhelming me, I was spilling myself inside her.
We stayed like that for a while. My ability to track time had completely disappeared while we were together, and it was only when Nina wriggled against me slightly that I let her down. Her legs gave out when she tried to stand on her own, and I chuckled.
"Pull your shorts up, and I'll carry you inside," I said as I tucked myself back into my shorts. Once she was decent, I lifted her up into my arms and carried her around the motel and back to our room. Although we weren’t married like humans, in that moment, I could understand the concept of the ceremony because I wanted nothing more than to shout from the rooftops that Nina was my mate.
Only, if I were to do that right now, it would get us more trouble than it would satisfaction. One day though, when this was all over, I'd do something big to proclaim to the world that I had the best soul mate possible and everyone else had lost out.
6
Nina
It had been a few days since we’d gotten the note from Jax and his wolves. A few days since I had had a minor freak out. A couple of days since I had sparred with Micah. And
twenty-four hours since we'd first arrived at this meeting spot—the one where we were all going to put this behind us. At least that's what I was telling myself.
The place was a clearing in the woods that only the wolves would be able to find via scent markers. We had posted a small map on the note indicating where to go, and we all knew that Jax would find us once we got there. Either my scent or the shadow of the bond—I wasn't sure which—would lead him to me.
I had no doubt about that.
The six of us had been nestled among the trees for the last few hours, our nerves getting the better of us and keeping us silent even though we all knew we were meeting. This was a known event, and there could be no surprise attack or last-ditch effort to try and claim me, at least not yet. It would be stupid of Jax to try when we were expecting him.
My legs had started to go numb from sitting so long on the hard ground of the forest floor. The leaves and twigs crunched under me every time I shifted, the noise making me cringe even though there were plenty of other noises coming from the forest. My ears picked up the sounds of bird calls and small rodents running around looking for nuts, berries, and other foods they could stash away. I tried to focus on those sounds and the nature that surrounded me to keep my mind from wandering too much.
When I saw Jax walk into the middle of the clearing, my heart stuttered in my chest. I was honestly surprised that he'd been willing to leave pack lands. Now that he had, I knew this was it—it was now or never.
Jax knew we were here. He had to, just like we knew they were here—and I said “they” on purpose. It wasn't just Jax. I could sense at least four other wolves with him, which meant he probably had at least eight, accounting for the ones he had likely held back out of our range. I gave my mates one last look as I pushed to my feet. We knew better than to say anything. With how close he was, we all knew that Jax could hear us, and everything we said would be scrutinized and used as ammunition against me while I tried to broker this truce.