by Leigh Kelsey
“Ignoring this idiot,” I said, looking from Cas to Jack, “do either of you have a problem with what I said before?”
“No.” Jack’s expression hadn’t changed—serious, unaffected—and it was starting to frustrate me.
Cas shook his head, smiling. “You know I don’t.”
“Right.” I wanted to bolt out of the room instead of continuing this conversation—my stomach was knotted to the point I could easily be sick—but Cas and Gray blocked the door to the hall. “Do you actually want this? To be my mate? To be bound to me?”
Gray snorted. I fixed my jaw, my temper flaring again. Apparently it did that a lot when I was scared.
“Yes,” Cas answered simply. Straight-forward as ever.
“You?” I lifted my head and met Jack’s gaze, my mouth dry. “You feel like being bound to me for the rest of your life, no way out?” My insides twisted and I knew my face was heating, going red, anticipating his rejection.
He took a step toward me, grave and elegant as ever. When had I ever thought of him as elegant before? He was, though. Hair so short it was almost shaved off, his long eyelashes framing soulful brown eyes, his wide mouth set in a solemn line. His muscles were pronounced, his arms ridiculous, but there was something so graceful about his face.
“Why do you think I’m going to say no?” he asked, and there was his emotion—in his voice. Confusion and shock wrapped around each word, something else deep down that took me a moment to sort out what it was. Despair.
I shook my head. I was too embarrassed and full of dread to reply.
He pulled me into a hug that stunned my thoughts into silence. My face heated even more as his hand slid around my waist to cradle my back, holding me against him as his other hand slid into my hair, and I wanted to cry. I couldn’t explain where it had come from, but now I was fighting back tears.
“Of course I want to be bound to you,” he said in a quiet, astonished voice.
Pulling myself together at the sound of his voice, I brought my arms up to squeeze him back. Cas gave the best hugs—bear hugs that swallowed me—but this tight, secure embrace came a damn close second.
“Okay, should I be offended that his hugs last longer than mine?” Gray complained somewhere behind me. The sound of him dropping into the chair I’d vacated emphasised his sulkiness.
“When was the last time you actually hugged me though?” I asked, still not pulling away from Jack. I wanted to be sure my face had returned to its normal colour, all the mistiness gone from my eyes.
“I…” Gray struggled for an answer. “That’s not the point!”
Cas’s low chuckle did wonders for my stress. I took a step back from Jack, gratified to see a blush staining his cheekbones, feeling more secure in myself—and in our pack.
I flopped down on the sofa beside Cas, crossing my ankles. “Ground rules,” I began.
Gray groaned. “Here we go.”
I gave him the finger. My middle finger wore a silver ring of a skeletal hand holding up its own middle finger, so I enjoyed the effect. Flipping someone off, squared. “No jealous bullshit,” I said. “And I get to decide what happens with my body.”
“None of us would suggest otherwise,” Jack vowed. Back to being deadly serious.
“I’m not drawing up a rota for whose room I spend my nights in, but I’ll try to be fair. I also don’t care if you visit each other’s rooms if you’re into that.”
“What?” Gray asked with a laugh. “Gym freaks pumped up on steroids? Pass.”
Cas bared his teeth in a good-natured snarl.
“Monogamy’s obviously not going to happen, but I have no interest in anyone not pack.”
The men nodded. I read gratitude, relief, and acceptance in their faces.
“And if someone else joins our pack?” Cas asked.
He was proposing more mates? Jesus Christ, Casimir. “Let’s just not right now.”
“Deal with that later,” Gray agreed, relief evident.
I looked between them. “So what now?”
“The full moon is Friday,” Cas replied. In three days’ time. My stomach swooped. “We can do the ritual then. If that’s okay, Lyra?”
I nodded. “Fine.”
Three days to get my head around accepting my three pack members as my mates. Three days to prepare myself for the mating ritual—the full moon, a wolf hunt, and hours of consummating the bond. With three men. Three werewolf men. It could go on for hours.
Gray must have seen my panic because he took pity on me. “Hungry? I was thinking salmon for tea.”
Cas’s nose wrinkled—not a fan of fish—but I leapt to my feet, my stomach growling. “I’ll help you.”
GRAY
I wordlessly opened a bottle of beer and passed it to Lyra, trying to suppress a grin at my mate-to-be. “Quite the change of heart,” I teased, earning a scowl. I would rather die than admit it but I lived for those scowls.
She pointed the bottle at me like it was a knife she’d stab me with. I would let her. “What are you complaining for? You got what you wanted, didn’t you?”
“Not yet,” I said with a grin. “But Friday’s not that far away.”
She rolled her eyes, full of attitude as normal, but I couldn’t miss the flash of nerves in her eyes.
“Lyra,” I sighed, leaning against the kitchen worktop. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want.”
She seemed to fold in on herself as I watched, gripping the bottle so hard it would have shattered if she’d had more lupine strength. “I don’t want this to fuck up, Gray. I can’t lose you. Any of you.”
“I know,” I said gently, and I did. We might have pissed each other off constantly and play-fought each other more than was normal—if I was in wolf form, there was a big chance her jaws would lock around my foreleg just for kicks; there was a chance I’d kick her in return—but I knew her in her weaker moments too. She knew some of my past and I knew some of hers, the things that haunted us the worst. I knew what that rival pack had done to her parents, what she’d been made to watch. She knew about the girl I’d killed when I first shifted.
I set down the bottle opener and wrangled her into a hug. Her chin jabbed into my collarbone, her elbow into my stomach. I was convinced we were shit at this but it seemed to help her; her shoulders drooped, her muscles relaxing. “We’re pack, Lyra. There’s no losing us. That’s not a thing.”
“It could be a thing. If the mating doesn’t work out,” she mumbled against my shirt.
I made a sound in the back of my throat. “No chance.”
She sighed, the sound itself argumentative.
I wished it was darker out so I could draw the moon’s power and make her feel the bonds we already had as pack—those unbreakable strings tying us together. Sure, some packs split up, some wolves left, but the way we were all twisted and entwined, there was no fucking way we were going to break. I held her tighter and hoped it told her enough.
“Thanks,” she said after a minute, her voice scratchy.
I didn’t let go, my mouth twitching with a smile.
“Get off, asshole.” She shoved at my chest, spilling beer on my shirt, but I held on a moment longer just to annoy her before I let go.
That—that right there was why I exaggerated the teasing, provoking, asshole parts of myself. The lopsided grin, a bit of tooth poking out, the light in her green eyes, the way she shook her head before she snorted, like I was too much to deal with. She punched me in the shoulder, nowhere near hard enough to hurt, and her mouth did that smirk-scowl thing I was convinced only she could execute.
“Prick,” she laughed.
“Ass,” I replied.
She gave me the finger; I gave it back.
“I’m serious,” I said. “Our pack’s strong. Stronger than the bigger ones.” Some could be as large as thirty wolves. “We won’t just survive this, we’ll—”
“Wait, let me guess.” Her wine-red lips mocked me with a sneer. “It’s going to bring us closer together.�
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I narrowed my eyes. “You’re just not a nice person, are you? Here I am, trying to put your mind at ease, and you’re being bitchy.”
That smirk-scowl again. My heart did a backflip. “If I woke up one morning a perfectly civil person, you’d shit your pants.”
“Straight up horror movie stuff,” I agreed. I busied myself opening the fridge and getting out salmon, potatoes, green beans, and broccoli. It was a step up from the junk food I’d eaten before Cas brought me into this pack. If I never saw a Wotsit again, I’d be ecstatic.
“Gray,” Lyra said, her tone utterly changed.
I swallowed hard before glancing at her.
“Thanks. For being the best friend I could ask for.”
My stomach joined my heart in its fluttering. “I won’t tell Hazel you said that.” The river mermaid could be pretty scary. It was something about her sunny disposition—completely unsettled me.
“I mean it. Jerk.” I almost dropped a whole bag of potatoes when her arms came around my waist from behind. I managed to set them on the chopping board by the time I became breathless and weak. “I know I give you shit, but you’re pack and I care about you. Don’t forget that, ‘kay?”
“Never do,” I replied seriously, aware my voice had dropped, a shade of wolf curling through it. “Don’t you forget I feel the same.”
She rested her head on my back, between my shoulder blades, and despite what I’d thought about us being awkward huggers before, this was pretty fucking awesome. Her breath fluttered my hair, fanning over the back of my neck. My wolf arched against my mind, wanting me to brush up against her like a goddamn house cat, but even frozen as I was, this hug felt amazing. Like diving into the rainforest pool in my wolf form. So relaxing I felt all my muscles ease. At least until her touch fully registered to my dick and awareness shot through me. God, what I wouldn’t give for her hand to dip lower.
“Now get out of my space,” I snarled, forcing my voice back to normal. “Give me room to work. Or do you not want feeding?”
She let go of me so fast it was like I’d burned her. Never threaten a wolf’s food supply. I took pity on her and said, “There’s some ham in the fridge.”
She didn’t need telling twice. I watched her pile her arms with food like it was a dwindling supply and tried to keep all the sappy emotions I was feeling off my face.
LYRA
I half expected another lone wolf to come for me but the days passed without incident. I worked at the Moonlight during the day, pretended I wasn’t in season, went with Cas to the gym after or with Gray to watch his band, Screaming Cerberus, practise, and even at night no one tried to get through the protections Rita had set up, the witchcraft smelling of freshly cut grass. I’d expected doom, gloom, and burning sage but apparently my view of witches was outdated.
The only major thing that happened was everyone lost their shit when I told them about the second rogue, and late that night we all went out under cover of darkness to bury a body. The first lone wolf was still alive in the Moonlight’s beer cellar, albeit beaten to a pulp. Jack and Cas weren’t afraid to get their hands bloody in search of information to protect their pack. To protect me.
But other than that, everything was normal. Friday came around quick, and now it was late and the sun was setting.
A gentle knock on my door made me look up. Jack peered into my room with a frown scrunching his dark eyes, his thick brows. He was dressed normally in a blue T-shirt and dark jeans; even with the importance of the mating ritual there was no point dressing up. Our clothes would rip the second we started to shift. I dressed similarly in cut-off jean shorts and a vest I wasn’t attached to.
I lifted the emergency Jack Daniels before he could speak. “Drink?”
A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth as he came and sat beside me on the end of my bed, so close I could feel the heat coming off him. I’d never been close to Jack but if this was Gray, I’d have rested my head on his shoulder, so that’s what I did. His shoulder wasn’t as wide as Cas’s but it was bulky, and had a hundred times more muscle than Gray’s twig arms. Up close he smelled of a woodsy, peppery aftershave but I could sift out the scent of his wolf, so close to the surface—warm fur and honey. Each of us had a different scent in wolf form; apparently I smelled like bergamot and petrichor, a hundred miles from the dark, floral perfume I chose to wear when human.
When Jack was silent I peered up at him from the corner of my eye, my attention landing on his hands, loosely holding the bottle of JD, then his feet. “I hope you don’t want to keep those socks,” I said, grabbing the bottle back.
“Shit.” He quickly removed them and I smirked; I’d never heard him swear before. I guess he really loved his Manchester City socks. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Football was his thing but I didn’t get it. Cas’s gym obsession I got—and his secret passion for cosy mystery books—and I loved Gray’s band almost as much as he did, but the football thing… Not my idea of a good time. But hey, Jack probably didn’t love music or knife throwing as much as me.
“Sure about this?” I asked after a big swallow of whisky.
He leaned back enough to look me in the eye. “A hundred percent.”
My stomach did a little flippy thing at his certainty. I really wanted this. Fears of losing my pack aside, I wanted the closeness and the deeper bond of having a mate. If I was being honest with myself, I’d wanted it for a very long time.
“Right then.” I got to my feet, screwed the top on the bottle and stashed it in its hidey hole. “Let’s get this ritual on the road.”
He looked at me strangely.
“Like show. Show on the road?” His mouth flattened, hiding a smile. “No? Fine.” I kicked his leg lightly. “Suit yourself, misery guts.”
“Lyra! Jack!” Cas’s voice boomed down the hall. “Time to go!”
“We’re already coming, asshole,” I yelled back.
Footsteps thundered down the hall and had I been in wolf form, my tail would have tucked itself between my legs. Cas appeared, shirtless and in old jeans, barefoot. Gods, he looked massive, but that could have been the aura coming off him of a man not to be fucked with. Any other day I could test boundaries and push his commands but not this close to the full moon rising.
“What was that?” he asked in a dangerous voice, all growl and disapproval. And holy hell if it didn’t turn me on.
“I said we’re already coming, alpha.” I blinked innocently. Well, as innocently as I could be when my eyes were sliding down his chest, over well-defined muscles, coils of tattoos, and that patch of hair leading from his belly button into his pants. My heart pounded. Mine. He was mine—and not just because he wanted to keep me safe. Because he wanted me as his mate and wanted to be my mate. I grinned, couldn’t hold it back, and watched some of the hardness of his mood soften.
“What’s the hold up?” Gray asked, peering down the hall. “We’re running out of time.”
“No hold up,” Cas replied, ushering Jack and me down the hall. My stomach swooped. This was happening. This was real.
Gray bumped his shoulder into mine. “Last chance to change your mind.”
“No way.” I snorted. Now I’d had time to get my head around the idea—and understand that they wanted this as much as I did—there was no way I was backing out. And the talking down Gray had given me three days ago helped. We were all pack, and he was right—that was a deep bond and it would take exceptional circumstances to break it.
Even if I was still scared as hell to lose them. Even if that fear would never leave.
Outside, the sky was dark, a few scattered stars lighting the sky and the moon bright but not yet full. Through the witchcraft we’d paid a king’s ransom for, the moon’s phase over Whitby was mirrored perfectly inside our pocket world. I sucked in a breath, everything tasting different at night—darker, more secretive, and cleaner somehow—and followed Cas and Jack across the grass towards the cliff edge. Gray bounded ahead, whooping as he ran at f
ull speed for the notch in the cliff wall that we’d anchored the portal to. Without slowing, he vaulted over the thin wire fence and dove straight off the end.
“Idiot,” I muttered.
“One day,” Cas said, “he will miss and hit rocks below.”
My stomach dropped. I raced to the edge to check Gray was okay, barely processing the fence I climbed over, my heart heavy with dread. My parents flashed behind my eyes, pleading and furious, and then cold and silent, blood-soaked. I shook hard.
Why the hell would Cas say something like that?
“He’ll be fine, Lyra,” Jack promised, attempting comfort while Cas caught up to me, brushing my arm with his knuckles to say sorry. I gave him a thin smile but it was still a smile, and I hope he took that as forgiveness. It wasn’t his fault. He knew I had demons, knew I had pain in my past, but the full extent of it … I hadn’t told anyone but Gray.
I dared to glance at the sand and rocks below, exhaling in relief when I didn’t find my best friend splattered down there. The wind blew hard from the sea, throwing my long black hair into my face, but I could still see the glow of the portal—silver and gauzy like moonlight through fog, visible to only us.
“See you on the other side,” I said, and leapt.
LYRA
Wind tore at me as I plummeted, the beach and rocks and death-fall visible through the mist of the portal. I managed to lean into the fall, to not windmill my arms and scream like a madwoman, but it was close. The sky hung dark and giant around me, the cliffs uncomfortably near, bushing my bare legs with shallow scratches, but the swirl of mist and witchcraft rose so quickly I was inside it before I could blink.
The portal spat me out so fast I could never see if I fell through an in-between space—if there was anything lurking in that not-quite-there world between worlds.
I landed hard on my hands and knees, my stomach jolting enough to make me sick, but I shoved my hand against my mouth to keep it in, ignoring the dirt smearing across my cheeks. I drew a long breath, holding it for three seconds, before exhaling and hauling myself out of the way. I didn’t have time to settle my stomach or get my gut reaction—freak the hell out—under control because Jack and Cas would be coming through next. I rolled to the side, collapsing onto the damp earth under the shadow of a broad, waxy leaf.