Now there were two deaths to account for.
Chapter 18
TRAVIS
The sound of Victor’s opinions floated to meet my ears as I followed Garrett down the stairs. He was carrying Charlie, refusing to let her walk, even though she was arguing that her wound had healed enough and that she wasn’t an invalid.
It would’ve been amusing was I not worried about corralling a pack full of crazy in the living room. I wished desperately for Charlie’s blessing to snap another neck—Victor’s. Eliminating him would wash most of the negativity right out of this lodge. He was an instigator. A pot stirrer. I was rapidly growing to despise him.
Nix that. I already despised him. What I really wanted to do was beat the shit out of him again and then pull his traitorous tongue through the hole I would carve in his throat. A fitting and painful death for a man determined to sell out his pack to the most heinous, evil man who ever walked the face of the earth.
“Silence!” I shouted, enjoying the slight reverb in my voice as it echoed through the large living area. Everyone’s mouth snapped shut, except for Victor.
“These men don’t belong. Look how easily they kill. Charlie should leave with them. They are outsiders just trying to take over a pack because they lost their own.” His voice carried on and on until the beast inside me snapped.
I stalked up to him, nearly pressed my face to his, and snarled. “You are alive because I spared you. Because Charlie, even after everything you’ve done to undermine her, begged me not to kill you. You deserve nothing from her or from this pack. It. Is. Not. Yours. End of story. If you or anyone else feels the need to continue to question Charlie’s, mine, or Garrett’s leadership qualities, you are free to leave immediately. No questions asked. Just get out and don’t come back.”
Victor sneered back at me, and I nearly smiled; instead, only the very corner of one side of my mouth turned up.
“I promised not to kill you during the challenge fight, but that promise ended as soon as we walked off the field that night. I’m just waiting for the next time you screw yourself over so I can yank that traitorous heart right out of your chest. As for the rest of you, make your choice.” I gestured to everyone standing around the outside of the great room. “We answered the call of our Fated mate. This pack meant nothing to us until we met Charlie. Charlie is your alpha, but so are we. This pack is our family now as much as it is hers. We care about each and every one just like she does.”
“You should go. All three of you,” another shouted from the back of the room.
A chorus of yes filled the room, pissing me off a little more. Here was a pack on the verge of collapsing, and they were so blinded by grief and fear that they would rather follow the man who would lead them to their deaths than an alpha Fated by the gods.
“You will stop this nonsense and whining!” My voice boomed, taking on a larger-than-life quality, and the room fell silent. “You bitch and moan like pack toddlers, complaining that life isn’t fair. Guess what? In case you hadn’t noticed, you aren’t the only one life has shitted on!”
Several people dropped to their knees and bowed their heads, showing their submission to my alpha status immediately, but quite a few shook their heads, refusing to answer the call of the magick I knew was tugging at their soul. I remembered the feeling of belonging to a pack. The force of the connection I’d had with my father. It was like nothing else on the planet.
Their wolves should want it. Desire it above everything else.
Victor stepped forward, a smug, confident smirk spreading across his face.
Chapter 19
CHARLIE
My soul basked in the love and commitment flowing from Travis. He’d given the group his best shot, but they just wouldn’t accept him. Victor kept stirring the pot, re-opening old wounds. It wasn’t fair. He wouldn’t let them move on.
I wished I knew why he wanted to join with Xerxes. What had the monster promised him when no one was listening? What was worth turning over your entire pack to be slaughtered?
Stepping closer to Travis, I slid my hand into his and squeezed, taking solace in the connection that flowed between us. Garrett took the place on my other side, and once again I was sandwiched between them. Didn’t bother me. Being between them had turned into my favorite place to be. He took my other hand and held it tightly.
My heart weighed heavy in my chest. I drew comfort from my connection with Travis and Garrett, but it couldn’t shut out the pain that burned in my breast for my two fallen pack members. They were casualties of a war I didn’t want to fight.
“You know me.” I said staring across the room, connecting with as many pack gazes as I could. “You know my heart cries with yours for each and every loss. Every one of you is my family. I have always been loyal to you. What would my parents think if they could see how you’re treating their daughter? The daughter they raised to care more about you than anything else in this world.”
I swallowed and took a deep breath. “If you truly do not feel the connection that I do, I will not stay with people who wish me dead and gone. I will not force my love on you. I will go without a word, and you can have Victor and all his promises. Two lives have already been lost, and my heart weeps for each of them. The wounds they inflicted aren’t healed yet. The blood they drew from my body still lies fresh on towels in this house. I feel their loss,” I said, doing my best to hold back the flood of tears.
They were breaking my heart. This pack meant everything to me, and I’d been the cause of not one but two executions in the last twenty-four hours.
It had to stop. If I had to leave the only home I’d ever known, I would.
“You heard her. Speak your wishes now,” Victor crowed, stepping forward from the back of the room.
Murmurs of disagreement rumbled through the room. No one stepped forward. Victor was silent for once. His last attempt to strip me of my family had been thwarted by the very people he thought he’d turned against me.
“We will mourn our pack members who thought their only choice was killing me. The dead will be buried and their memory preserved. They were loved. No matter the pain that made them choose ugliness, they are still loved.”
Crawley pushed through the crowd and knelt at my feet like a knight from the Middle Ages. He didn’t speak. Just waited.
“Crawley,” I said, laying my hand on his shoulder. I could feel Travis and Garrett’s breath behind me, but neither of them spoke. Crawley had made his fealty public by bowing at the alpha female’s feet. It was a custom not unlike the knights in the Middle Ages who pledged to protect and serve the queen of the land. “Please oversee the preparations for Dean and Kara’s funeral. I would like to hold that service tonight and send their bodies peacefully into the afterlife. I pray the gods will forgive them their sins as I have already done.”
I looked up into the crowd of female faces that were depending on me and my mates to keep them safe; only a handful of males remained. We could do this, right? I wasn’t asking too much of Travis and Garrett? As if they’d read my mind and my doubt, their hands settled on each of my shoulders.
“Crawley has shown his loyalty and will officially take the place in the pack as our beta. Follow his direction and prepare the pack for the funeral ceremony. Our mate needs to rest,” Travis announced.
Rest? I didn’t need to rest. My pack needed me. There were five males in this lodge who needed to pack their shit and get out. Instead they all stood together in the corner, pouting like puppies who’d lost their toy.
“Later, my love,” Travis said, keeping his voice low as he pressed his hand to my lower back and practically shoved me toward the stairs. “They can wait. Let your mates cleanse from you the carnage of today. Let us love your body, mind, and soul, Charlie.”
No. That was not what I needed. There was work to be done. They were trying to handle me. But hearing sentiments fall from Travis’ lips instead of Garrett’s caught me off guard. Travis was always sharper than Garrett. But
the softness from him shocked me to silence, probably the result he’d wanted.
“Don’t look so surprised, Charlotte,” Garrett chuckled. “This is what we’ve wanted since we met you that first day we came to Ada looking for a dragon.”
I remembered that day, too. The way they’d looked at me. The way my body had burned with desire. And the way I’d pushed them away. The pack had needed me more, and they would’ve been a distraction.
The pack continued to demand my attention, and my mates remained a distraction.
They would always be a distraction, but now it was one I craved more than life. The mating heat that consumed my body had been cooled after our first coupling, so my body had ceased to obsess over them; instead, my heart had taken over that role.
But if I let the bond settle and then lost them, it might destroy me for good.
I’d watched Xerxes’ army kill half my pack on the hillside next to Vicksburg Bridge. Watched him murder my parents in front of me. Listened to them choke on their blood as they fought for their last breath.
How much more could I take without breaking?
I kept walking, anyway. And I let my mates guide me up the stairs toward my room.
This was all of me and I was risking it all for them.
Chapter 20
CHARLIE
The scent of male filled my lungs. My naked mates advanced toward me, making the corners of my mouth turn up. Their sleek bodies brought a fire to my belly like nothing else could. I stood silent and clothed as they circled me, prowling like the predators living within them.
Their eyes shone, gleaming with golden flecks as their wolves fought to come forward. Instead, the men won over the beasts, and they both touched me at the same time, sending a shock of electricity tingling across my skin. Our magick melted together like molten steel. We were stronger together as a bonded triad than we’d ever been separately.
I shivered, holding my breath. This was a distraction. Nothing more. I refused to let it be more. Magick be damned.
Travis ran his hands along my torso, taking hold of my shirt hem and tugging it up slowly, giving me time to raise my arms to accommodate being stripped. Garrett worked the lower half, pulling from my waist downward, until I could feel a cool draft of air across my slick mound. Then his face was there. His warm breath and hot tongue caressed my skin. He licked my slit until my knees buckled. I sucked in a long gasp of air.
Travis caught me in his arms before I collapsed and laid me on the bed behind us.
My eyes closed and I just felt. Everything.
Our magick pulsated through the room as our heart rates sped.
Garrett’s mouth licked and sucked and brought me right to the edge of an orgasmic precipice, but pulled back at the last second. I groaned, opening my eyes and reaching for his head. But he’d moved out of my grasp.
“I want to feel you come around me, my love,” Garrett said.
“And I want those lips on my cock,” Travis growled, his voice hitting a low rumble that made my insides melt. “Flip over, love. Up on your knees.” Garrett’s hands maneuvered my hips, and I rolled, crawling to my knees as Travis moved to sit in front of me, positioning his hard cock only inches from my mouth. It glistened with precum, and I could smell the salty tang of him in the air. I licked my lips then swiped my tongue across his tip.
“Hey there,” Travis said, taking my head in his hands and capturing my lips with his. He took a kiss and moaned into my mouth, his deep voice vibrating through me and awakening my body better than any battery operated device ever could.
Garrett’s hands closed around my hips, and he lifted me a few inches so that my knees were directly under my body and my ass was high. I shuddered as he licked my slit from behind, fucking my pussy with his tongue. In and out. Deeper and deeper.
“Gods, you taste so good, Charlotte. I won’t ever get tired of the taste of your sweet honey on my tongue.”
I moaned through Travis’ kiss.
He pulled away from my mouth and released my head. “Take me, sweetheart.”
Dipping my head, I swirled my tongue around his cock. It was softer than velvet, yet harder than steel. I bobbed lower, taking the tip into my mouth. He threaded his fingers through my hair, pressing me a little lower each time I went down.
My pussy throbbed, hovering on the edge of bliss. Tortured by Garrett’s skilled mouth, his fingers, but not his cock. Fuck. I wanted his fucking cock inside me. I wanted both of their cocks inside me, coming, filling me up—making me whole.
Wait. No. My body slammed that thought back into the recesses of my mind.
The damn bond was affecting my emotions, weakening my resolve. They did not get to make me whole. They couldn’t. Nobody could. I’d lost too much already. I couldn’t afford to give away another piece of my soul, only to have Xerxes slice it away as well.
Raising my head, I dropped Travis’ cock and turned to look over my shoulder. “Fuck me, now,” I growled, letting my magick flare. I could see the glow of my eyes reflected in Garrett’s irises.
“With pleasure,” he said, grabbing my hips and burying his hard length inside me.
I screamed as the orgasm I’d been chasing crashed around me, pulling my mind one way and sending every synapse of my body careening another. I pulsed around him, and then he began to thrust.
Slow at first.
“Harder,” I moaned through gritted teeth.
He complied, and I pushed backward with each movement, finding his rhythm and matching it. As I sunk into the orgasm-induced bliss of being impaled over and over, Travis threaded his fingers into my hair and guided my mouth back to the tip of his cock.
“I’m going to fuck your pretty mouth, Charlie.”
I nodded, parting my lips and taking his whole head. Slowly he worked my mouth up and down. Using my tongue to slick his flesh, I slid farther and farther until the tip of his shaft nudged at my throat.
“More, Charlie,” he coaxed, pressing my head down.
My body shuddered, hyper-aware of Garrett’s cock pumping in and out of my pussy. Slow then fast. Soft then hard. Always changing the pattern. Another orgasm was unfurling within me, warming every nerve ending. I wanted to disappear into it. I wanted them to fuck me until I couldn’t feel the pain of what I’d lost. Of what I might lose in the future.
Garrett shouted, slamming deep one more time.
I arched my neck and screamed around Travis’ cock as the second orgasm tore through me, shredding what little control I thought I had left. He groaned and tightened his fingers through my hair, pulling me down harder over his cock. His cum shot down my throat, and I took every salty drop.
Garrett’s fingers dug into my hips as he jerked and stiffened behind me. His warm seed filled my body.
It didn’t work.
I still felt everything
The connection between us tugged at my heart. Those walls needed to be higher. They might be my Fated mates, but I needed to not need them. Even though Victor hadn’t succeeded during the challenge, it was only a matter of time before he tried again. Or Xerxes found a way to destroy me completely.
My lips smacked as I dropped Travis’ cock after licking it clean. Looking up, I caught his gaze and smiled. “Round one was fun. What’s the plan for round two?”
The prodding had the desired effect. Travis’ gaze narrowed. “As you wish, sweetheart.” The snark in his voice promised another solid fucking, but I caught a glimpse of a question.
A question I didn’t want to answer. Not right now. Right now I only wanted to fuck.
Turning away from him quickly, I sought Garrett. He stood at the foot of the bed, his cock standing gloriously erect from a nest of dark curls as if he’d hadn’t just come. The look on his face said he doubted my request for another go-round, but his cock begged to differ.
And if I had anything to say about it, his cock would win the argument.
“Please.”
He nodded and then glanced past me to his brother.
Before I could turn around, Travis had slid forward on the bed, grabbed me by the waist, lifted me onto his chest, and slammed me straight down on his hard cock, impaling me all the way to my core. Impressive recovery time, even for a Lycan.
I let my head drop backward as a scream caught in my throat. His arms wrapped around my waist, constricting and tightening like a snake until my breasts were crushed against his chest.
“You will not use sex to escape what is bothering you again, Charlie,” he whispered into my ear.
I stiffened. Shit. “Just fuck me.” He could be pissed at me later. Couldn’t a woman just get a good fuck? Or was that something the world only offered to men?
The drawer beside my bed scraped open and shut. I turned toward the noise. Garrett held a bottle of arousal lube in his hand. He squirted an overly generous dollop into his palm and then spread it up and down his sheathed cock. Where the hell did he get a condom? The latex would protect him from the stimulant in the cream.
I would not be so lucky. That stuff made me more sensitive than gunpowder exposed to a flame thrower. And he had every intention of burying himself in my ass. Oh, gods! Punished with my own apparently not-so-secret stash of self-stimulating products.
I wriggled in Travis’ hold, anticipating and wanting to escape the torture I knew was coming at the same time. A shiver ran across my skin. I trembled when Garrett slid one of his palms along my hip and down around the curve of one of my ass cheeks.
The tip of his cock grazed the tight rosebud of muscles, and I tensed again. “You’re going to let us in, Charlotte. All the way.” His voice deepened on the second statement, letting me know he was talking about more than just the sex.
He pushed a little harder, breeching with just the head of his cock.
I gasped, the warmth of his cock contrasted with the cooling cream he’d spread over it. But the icy sensation only lasted a few seconds before it turned to fire. He drove a little deeper and then stilled, giving me time to adjust to the fullness.
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