Midlife Omega (Midlife Shifters Book 3)

by J. L. Wilder

  She nodded against him, too overwhelmed to find words.

  He rested a hand on her thigh, and she realized it was shaking with exertion. She managed to huff out a laugh.

  He lifted her up a bit, separating their bodies, and she moaned with loss. But he turned her around, entered her slowly from behind, and rose up on his knees, pulling her upright with him so that her back was pressed against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, crossing them in front of her and squeezing her breasts in each hand.

  She closed her eyes, giving in to the wildly pleasurable feel of it all.

  Then his lips were on her neck—his teeth were on her neck—and he was biting gently. She would have a mark there, she knew. She’d been with a man once who had liked this, and she had put up with it for his sake. But when Chuck did it, it felt as if electric shocks were passing directly from his mouth to the core of her. She let out a cry, grabbed one of his hands in hers, drew it down between her legs, and began to grind into his palm.

  The orgasm that took her then was like nothing she had ever felt. She lost track of time. She lost track, even, of herself.

  And then, slowly, little by little, she returned to Earth.

  She was lying on her side, her face pressed against Chuck’s chest. His fingers trailed slowly up and down her back, and his chin rested on top of her head. She had the distinct feeling that he had been waiting for her.

  She looked up at him.

  He smiled. “How was that?” he asked.

  “Wonderful,” she said. “But...” A terrible thought, one that had completely fled her mind, had just returned to her.

  “But what?” Chuck asked.

  “You said it was a bad idea,” Natalie remembered.

  “Being attracted to you was a bad idea,” Chuck said. “But imprinting on you wasn’t an idea at all, any more than getting hungry is an idea.”

  Natalie nodded. That fit with things the others had told her.

  “This is what had to happen,” Chuck said. “This is what was meant to happen. We’ll just have to make it work now.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  CHUCK

  Chuck was awakened in the middle of the night by Natalie sitting bolt upright.

  He came awake instantly, and though in the back of his mind he marveled at how in tune his body seemed to be with hers, there was no time to focus on that now. “What is it?” he asked. “Did you hear something?”

  “No,” Natalie said. She was on her feet now, and Chuck thought she looked so much like someone on the verge of running off that he caught her by the hand before she could do so. “The Rocky Mountain Wolves.”

  “What about them?”

  “Don’t you remember what the one who found my cage empty was saying on the porch just before he came in?”

  “Something about Gage and Ozzy,” Chuck said. “Listening to him was how we knew they had the upper hand out there.”

  Natalie nodded. “And that’s all I noticed, at first,” she said. “I was so preoccupied with thinking about them that it didn’t even occur to me to focus on what else the man said.”

  “What did he say?” Chuck wasn’t making the connection.

  “He said that the Rocky Mountain Pack would get revenge on the Pacific Northwest Wolves no matter what,” she said. “He said they were going to attack us. That they’d held off on doing that before, but they wouldn’t hold off any longer.”

  Chuck’s mind snagged for a moment on the word us. She was referring to herself as part of the pack. He hadn’t heard her do that yet. It was a normal way for pack members to talk, blurring the lines between me and we, but Natalie hadn’t seemed to have internalized that yet.

  Then he processed the rest of what she was saying. “They’re going to invade our territory,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “And our pack will be completely unprepared.”

  Chuck thought of the people he had left behind. The pack was badly run, and there was a lot he wanted to change about it, but they were his family. He couldn’t allow them to be attacked without warning.

  He got to his feet. “Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to get back there. We might be able to beat them if we go quickly.”

  Natalie looked worried. “There’s something you need to know,” she said.

  “What?” He was busy kicking dirt over the embers of last night’s fire. The last thing they needed was to attract the attention of any of the Rocky Mountain Wolves now. If they were really out for revenge, they would be all too eager to attack Chuck and Natalie if they came across them on their way north.

  “I can’t shift,” she said.

  He turned and stared at her.

  He didn’t know exactly why it was so surprising to him. When would she have learned how to shift? She had told him herself, several times, that she hadn’t even known about the shifter world until very recently.

  But coming on top of all the other surprises—that she had been imprinted on by Gage and Ozzy, then that she believed herself to be incapable of carrying children, and finally that he had imprinted on her—this seemed one thing too many. “You can’t shift at all?”

  Her face was red with shame. “I’ve tried,” she said. “Ozzy and Gage both tried to teach me. But I couldn’t do it. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to do it,” he said. “We have to get back to the rest of the pack and warn them, or they’re going to be slaughtered.”

  “But I can’t!” she protested. “I want to, but I can’t do it, Chuck. I’ve tried.”

  “You’ll have to try harder,” he told her firmly. “People are going to die if you don’t.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “Go without me,” she said.

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “You have to. Go without me and save them. I’ll hang around here—I’ll keep myself out of sight, and hopefully Gage and Ozzy will be able to track me down. I’ll come back with them. But you have to go, Chuck. You have to let the pack know that they’re going to be attacked. I’m not going to let them die because I can’t manage to shift.”

  He stood before her and took her by the shoulders. “Listen to me,” he said. “This is our family.”

  She was staring at him, captivated. It was exactly the way she had looked at him last night before they’d begun ripping each other’s clothes off, but the energy was completely different now. She was mesmerized by his power, his authority, and he realized that he would be able to control what she did next.

  I’m her alpha.

  A little shiver ran down his spine. He had always felt himself capable of assuming alpha power. But this was the first time it had actually happened.

  “I want you to shift,” he said.

  “I don’t know how.” She looked afraid.

  “You don’t need to know,” he said. “Your body knows. It’s instinct. Close your eyes.”

  She did so, swaying slightly in the breeze.

  “Somewhere inside you,” he said, “there’s a wildness. A wolf. No, don’t say anything,” he added as her lips parted. “Just feel for it. If you don’t feel it yet, you will. I’m sure it’s buried deep down since you’ve been human for so long. But no shifter can ever get rid of it completely. It’s there.”

  She stood very still, almost as if she had fallen asleep. Chuck supposed she was exploring her innermost self. He thought back to the first time he had shifted deliberately, the first time he had found the wolf that dwelt within him. He’d been a very young child at the time, and though it had been hard, he had at least grown up knowing that he would do such a thing one day. He had been surrounded all his life by adult shifters, and he had seen them shift dozens of times.

  What must this be like for Natalie?

  “Keep trying,” he said, doing his best to make his voice a guide for her. “Have you found it?”

  She let out a light exhale and nodded slowly, a bit uncertainly.

  He wouldn’t ask her to spea
k now. Speech was a human thing and might break her out of her reverie. He didn’t want to disturb her, not when she was so close.

  “You need to go into that wild place inside you,” he told her. “You need to inhabit it. Or let it inhabit you. Whichever feels more natural. You need to become it, do you understand?”

  A tremor passed through her. She didn’t move.

  She’s close. He could see it in the tension in her muscles, in the way she had rocked forward onto the balls of her feet. She’s almost got it.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Be bold. The wolf is the strongest and most powerful part of you. I know it’s scary the first time, but you have to let it out. It’s the only way to become what you have the potential to be.”

  She shuddered so hard that for a moment, he thought she might fall over.

  And then, all at once, she began to change.

  Her body became long and lean, her coat a mottled gray. She arched her back and switched her tail back and forth.

  I wonder if she knows she’s doing that.

  He approached her cautiously. “Natalie.”

  Her ears perked. They were so expressive!

  “You did it,” he told her quietly. He wanted to fling his arms around her, to shout with triumph, but he didn’t want to alarm her. It was her first time in this body, and he knew she might be anxious.

  She walked slowly to his side. Chuck remembered what it had been like to be in a wolf body for the first time. Moving had come so naturally, as if he had been walking on four feet all his life, but at the same time, he had been deeply aware of the fact that he was moving in ways he never had before, that his muscles were working completely differently. He knew she was probably experiencing that same dissonance right now.

  She nudged his hand with her nose.

  Chuck laughed and rested his hand on top of her head, the way he might have done with a good dog. “You did it,” he said quietly. “I knew you could do it.”

  She was staring at him again, just as she had when she was human. As if he was her master.

  No.

  As if he was her alpha.

  He was about to guide her through shifting back into human form so that he could help her pack up her dress for the journey north, but the moment was interrupted by a crashing through the bushes.

  Chuck waved a hand at Natalie. “Get back,” he said, falling into a protective stance in front of her.

  She fell back, and he knew—without knowing exactly how he knew it—that she was following his orders.

  The brush before them began to move as whatever was causing the sound drew closer—

  Suddenly, Gage burst out, with Ozzy on his heels.

  The three men stood and stared at one another for a moment. “Chuck?” Ozzy said disbelievingly.

  “Where’s Natalie?” Gage demanded. “Do you have her? Have you seen her?”

  But Natalie was already pushing past Chuck, flinging herself forward into Gage’s arms. When she had shifted back, Chuck didn’t know—she must have done it when she had seen her mates come into view. She released Gage and moved on to Ozzy, who caught her, looking dumbfounded.

  “You shifted,” he said. “You were in your wolf form.”

  She nodded breathlessly. “Chuck taught me,” she said.

  “You’re the one who freed her from captivity back at the Rocky Mountain Pack’s longhouse,” Gage said.

  Chuck nodded. “I did,” he said. “I think the three of us have a lot to talk about.”

  Natalie fell back away from Gage and Ozzy and held out a hand to Chuck. He took it, and rather than pulling her close, allowed her to pull him in. The best thing he could do to help the situation go as smoothly as possible was to let Gage and Ozzy see that she wanted him, that he was not trying to stake a claim to their mate by force.

  “Oh,” Ozzy said, looking at their joined hands. “I guess we really do have a lot to talk about.”

  Gage let out a loud laugh. “I don’t know why I’m surprised,” he said. “I don’t know if anything can surprise me anymore.”

  “We can talk about it,” Natalie spoke up. “But later, okay? We need to go. I don’t know what you two did to the Rocky Mountain Wolves—”

  “Gage put their alpha in a chokehold,” Ozzy said, chuckling slightly.

  Chuck blinked. “You did what?”

  “You should have seen it,” Ozzy said. “The whole lot of them turned into jello as soon as Gage had his hands on their leader. I guess they’ve just lost too many alphas and they were afraid to lose another. At least we know where their weak spot is!”

  “Well, they’re not going to forget about it any time soon,” Natalie said. “I heard them talking. They’re planning to attack our pack. We need to get back as quickly as possible and warn the others so they can defend themselves.”

  Ozzy stared at her. “Wow,” he said.

  “Wow what?”

  “You’ve come a long way from that scared woman I found in a hotel room,” he said.

  Natalie blushed with pleasure. “I can shift now,” she said. “That’s what really matters. Because we have to run, and we have a long way to go.”

  Chuck nodded. “I’ll take the lead,” he said. “Ozzy, you and Natalie follow, and Gage, you bring up the rear. If we move quickly, we can cover a lot of ground before the sun is up.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  NATALIE

  The run was like nothing Natalie had ever experienced before.

  It was more than the fact that she was in a new body, a body that seemed to know instinctively how it was meant to be used. She realized now that she had feared what it would be like to be in this form, that she would have been like a newborn, learning to walk for the first time. It wasn’t like that at all. She felt strong and capable, her hind legs propelling her forward, her forelegs gripping the earth and pushing it back.

  But that was only a small fraction of what she was experiencing. Her body knew how to move, and did so without any thought on her part.

  What really fascinated her was how much more her senses were able to take in.

  She saw so much more around her than she ever had before. Even though she was running through the forest as quickly as she could, the trees and shrubs around her didn’t blur, as she would have expected them to. She was acutely aware of everything she passed.

  If I were in danger, I would know immediately. I would see it. I wouldn’t overlook anything.

  She could hear everything. The snap of twigs under her mates’ feet as they ran. Ozzy’s footfalls next to her, beating out a rhythm that intermingled with her own. His panting breath. The sounds of squirrels skittering up the sides of tree trunks and leaves fluttering to earth.

  And the smells!

  Running behind Chuck meant always running into his scent. But there was more than that. There was the smell of rotting foliage underfoot and the smell of small animals that she couldn’t see all around her. The wind carried a smoky scent from somewhere far away.

  It was difficult to imagine being taken by surprise in this form. She was so completely aware of all her surroundings.

  And all this time, she had kept Ozzy and Gage from this awareness.

  Only now did she realize what they had sacrificed to allow her to keep pace with them. Of course, it was what they’d wanted—they would never have wanted her to fall behind, or to leave her. But it must have been so uncomfortable for them to travel through enemy territory, knowing that these senses were available but being unable to use them.

  She would thank them, as soon as the opportunity arose, for the sacrifice they’d made for her.

  For all their sacrifices.

  She appreciated them now more than ever.

  She glanced over at Ozzy as they ran. It was a surprise to her to find that she was able to understand his body language. The way he held his head erect as he ran, the way his ears pointed—he was anxious to keep moving, but at the same time, he was relieved to find himself back in his animal
form. He was happy in a particular way that she had never seen before.

  Ahead of her, Chuck’s body language told of his sheer determination. He ran with his head low and his shoulders hunched, and it was clear that he wouldn’t stop for a long time.

  She was relieved to find herself able to keep up with the men. She wasn’t sure whether they were altering their usual pace to allow for the fact that she was new to this, but whatever the cause, she wasn’t lagging behind at all.

  I feel as if I could go on for hours.

  And they did go on for hours. By the time they came to a halt, the sun was already high overhead in the sky.

  Natalie thought it must have been Chuck who had stopped them—he was in the lead, after all—but he turned around, shifting as he did so, and faced them all. “What?” he demanded as if someone had said something to him.

  Natalie didn’t intend to shift back. But it happened just as it had before—she felt a desire to do something only a human could do, and that desire lifted her out of her animal self and back into her human body. Perhaps, with practice, she would be able to control that a little more effectively.

  “What do you mean?” she asked Chuck. “Nobody said anything.”

  “Gage stopped,” he said, pointing.

  Natalie turned. Gage had also resumed his human form and was standing several yards behind them, his head cocked as if he was listening.

  Chuck must have heard him stop, she realized. He’s even more tuned in to his surroundings than I am. It was impressive. She would have to set aside some time, in the future, to ask her mates to teach her more about how she could make the most of the time she spent in wolf form. She wanted to be as perceptive as they were.

  “They’re following us,” Gage said.

  “How can you tell?” Ozzy asked.

  “I heard a call,” Gage said. “A howl. It was a good distance away, but it was behind us.”

  “Why would they make any noise?” Natalie asked. “Why would they want to let us know where they are?”

  “They probably think we’ll get spooked if we realize they’re behind us,” Chuck said. “Remember, they still don’t know we’re all together. They might think they’re just following Gage and Ozzy, or even just you by yourself, Natalie.”