by Emilia Rose
Raj’s phone rang. “I need to take this to make sure she’s all right,” he said. “I will meet you there as soon as possible.” He slid out of the booth and placed his phone to his ear. “What’s wrong, Jane?”
Vanessa nodded to the door. “I’ll go with you.”
“Are you sure that Roman doesn’t need you back at the pack house?”
“No,” she said, scrunching her nose. “Derek and I were just going through potential new recruits for this upcoming graduate class, scoping them out and offering some training beforehand to make the pack stronger.” She let out a sigh. “But Derek is getting way too flirty. I need a break from him.”
After I tossed my muffin in the trash, we shifted into our wolves and ran toward Alpha Ming’s pack. My stomach tightened as I thought about the darkness that could be creeping into Derek, seeping into his mind and destroying him slowly.
If Derek were corrupted, it would kill me. Even if we no longer talked every day, even if we talked once a week, he was still my best friend, and I loved him and his family. And I couldn’t bear to see him or them hurt. But darkness didn’t care about who my best friend was. It sank its claws and slowly became part of someone.
Chapter 23
Roman
“Isabella,” I said through the mind link, tapping my finger against the oak desk.
Kylo sat across from me, scrolling through our old texts and pictures we had taken before Scarlett tore us apart. I didn’t think he’d still have those texts. Hell, I deleted all my conversations with him. But Kylo had always been more sentimental than I ever had—because even if he wanted to kill me at one point, we had been friends for so long.
Last night, Kylo and I had talked about Scarlett, Mom, and Isabella until the rain drowned the last of the embers in the bonfire. Though it was awkward as hell, it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought it’d be after learning about how he and Isabella had been mates in their past lives. Yet the whole time, I had tried to find something wrong or deceptive about him but come up empty-handed.
Everything he said about his feelings toward Isabella was all completely true.
Isabella hummed on the other side of the mind link. “Tell Derek to stop being a ho and flirting with Vanessa,” she said to me. “I’m at Alpha Ming’s pack now. I can’t talk. See you soon.”
I gazed at the clock on the wall, just above the window. “Don’t be late for lunch.”
She stayed quiet for a long time. “I will be,” she said, mischief in her voice.
My lips curled into a soft smile. I glanced out the window as the wind blew tree branches against it. Rain poured down from the gray sky, beating against the glass in a steady rhythm.
After pushing the list of names of people in my pack who could be corrupted to the middle of the desk, I looked toward Kylo.
“You remember when we used to train together?” Kylo asked, sliding his phone across the desk.
On the screen, there was a picture of us when I was fourteen with my arm slung around his shoulders and a huge grin on each of our faces. Two alphas who didn’t know that, one day, an evil girl would tear them apart and a strong luna would reunite them.
“Was this before Scarlett?” I asked.
“You were dating her at the time,” Kylo said, snatching the phone back. “I deleted all the pictures of me and her after I rejected her. I couldn’t deal with seeing her face in every photo my mother had propped up in her house.”
I nodded. “I burned all the pictures with her after finding out Isabella was my mate.”
Kylo paused for a long moment and finally sucked in a breath. “Are you still … into that?”
“Into what?” I asked, gaze drifting back to the window. “Having someone watch?”
He gave the slightest shrug and then glanced back down at his phone as if he regretted even asking. I watched as his face contorted into an array of emotions until, eventually, his expression landed on one of pain—written in the way he furrowed his brows and turned his lips down in a frown.
Rubbing my palm against my jeans, I glanced down at the desk. Isabella’s wolf was Kylo’s mate, too, and I had already fucked up his chances of a happy life with Scarlett. Even with Isabella being mine, how could I refuse him something so precious without feeling like complete shit for a second time?
“I let you watch me throat-fuck her in the hall, didn’t I?” I asked him.
Kylo looked up at me with wide eyes. “You knew about me being there?”
“Of course I fucking did. Your voyeuristic ass probably got off on it too,” I joked.
Instead of responding, Kylo rubbed the stubble on his cheek. “And Isabella?” he asked.
“You want to watch me fuck her?” I asked, curling my fingers as my jeans tightened at the mere thought of making Kylo watch as I touched Isabella’s dripping little cunt. “Lunch. We’ll see if she wants it during lunch.”
Chapter 24
Isabella
Rain drizzled from the gray-white sky above Alpha Ming’s training field. I crossed my arms over my chest and observed the raw and vicious way each warrior fought one another in their human forms, muscle against muscle, strength against strength, grit against grit.
And while everyone fought with such fervor, not one of them looked like just a human.
“Luna Isabella!” Alpha Ming jogged over to me, his chest covered in a layer of rainwater and sweat. He whistled, indicating everyone to take a break, and nodded in my direction. “So, what brings you here?”
“I’m looking for Naomi.”
He raised his eyebrows, brown eyes widening. “Why do you need her? Did she do something? She’s a nice girl. She—”
“She didn’t do anything wrong,” I said. “I might need to recruit her for the Lycans, so I need to watch her practice.” I stepped closer to him and lowered my voice. “There is a war coming for our kind.”
Ming wiped away some beads of sweat with a towel. “With Alpha Kylo? Did he turn the other alphas on you already? It’s only been a week since the alphas meeting.”
So much had changed since that meeting. At that time, Kylo and I were strangers. Now, we were millennia-old mates. It had been less than seven days, and my wolf felt thousands of years of love for that man.
“No,” I said to him. “It is against the God of Corruption, who is hurting the werewolf species. We need to stop him, and that requires us to gather as many humans—who might not be susceptible to his magic—and recruit them as Lycans.”
After a few moments, he nodded and then shouted Naomi’s name. A short and petite woman with long, soft brown hair jogged over to us, her cheeks flushed pink from training relentlessly. “Yes, Alpha Ming?”
My eyes widened slightly. How could someone her size compete against werewolves who were twice her size and had at least double her strength? She must be good—really damn good—to have even caught Raj’s attention.
Ming placed a hand on my shoulder. “This is Isabella, luna of the Silverclaw Pack and leader of the Lycans. She has come to assess you during training. She might need you and your abilities for a mission.”
Staring up at me with big brown eyes, she asked, “Me?”
I smiled. “Yes.”
“Okay, um,” she started, rubbing the back of her neck. “Yes! Sure. Wait, is everything okay though? I’m only a human. I’m not sure if I’ll be good enough to train with the Lycans for a mission.”
“There is a war coming,” I repeated to her. Raj jogged onto the property and shifted into his human, snatching someone’s shirt from the side of the field. “We don’t have much time. Show me what you’ve got.”
When they all jogged back onto the field, Raj rocked back and forth on his heels next to Vanessa. We watched Naomi stand back up every time after someone pushed her down, outsmart someone before they could outsmart her, drive them into the ground and hold them there before someone had the chance to even touch her.
Though small, she had extraordinary strength, wits, and smarts.
&nb
sp; To me, something about her screamed Lycan.
Alpha Ming crossed his arms over his chest. “What do you think?”
“She’s been training with your pack for a year?” Raj asked, hands on hips.
Ming nodded. “She is quickly becoming one of the strongest and smartest people I have ever trained,” he said proudly.
Naomi picked one of the men right off of the ground, held him on her shoulders in a fireman’s carry, and slammed him on the dirt, pinning him. He squirmed under her, trying to break free, but she held her position with such force.
“Where’d you find her?” Vanessa asked. “And how did she know about werewolves?”
“She used to go to school with my sister, and Naomi stumbled upon her shifting one day.”
“Does she have a mate?” I asked. Maybe she was a luna or was bound to someone who was strong. Though there weren’t many werewolves mated with humans nowadays, the Moon Goddess chose a select few strong-willed humans for werewolves.
Ming shook his head. “Not that I know of.”
After looking over at Raj, I nodded as the rain continued drizzling around us. “We need her,” I said, glancing at Ming. “And any other humans that you might know of who has her kind of strength.”
“I’ll ask some other packs to see if there is anyone else, but I’m not sure there is. Not many humans know about werewolves, and if they do, they probably aren’t too fond of us,” Ming said.
Once we finished talking with Ming, I walked over to Naomi, who was wiping the sweat off her forehead with a towel. “Naomi, if you’re willing, I want to ask you to become a Lycan.” Her eyes widened, and I continued, “But you need to start training as soon as you can. Tomorrow, if possible.”
She looked over to her supportive packmates. “I-I don’t know what to say.”
Raj rocked back on his heels. “Say yes,” he whispered.
“Of course! I would love to!” She grinned and turned in the opposite direction. “Oh gosh … I need to pack.”
“Pack whatever you need. Raj”—I gestured to Raj—“will assist you.”
After warning the rest of Ming’s warriors to prepare for the war, I frowned and walked through the woods toward home. Though all of Ming’s warriors were strong and resilient, some of them could’ve been infected. I gnawed on the inside of my lip.
We didn’t know anything about this corruption. How could we know who really had it? I could’ve already had it and not known about it. Vanessa could be corrupted. And Roman …
How much longer until it spread into our pack? In five days? Two weeks? Maybe three weeks ago? It wasn’t just a matter of who, but a matter of when, how the corruption spread, and how to even diagnose it.
Chapter 25
Isabella
If lunch with Roman and Kylo was as bad as I thought it was going to be, I would be screwed. After I’d left them last night and after everything that had happened between them, I couldn’t even imagine them being civil with each other.
“Roman?” I called as I walked up the stairs, looking for them. “Kylo?”
No answer.
I walked up to the bedroom—the only place in this entire house I hadn’t checked yet—and found a note in the center of the bed and a silky black dress underneath it. Scribbled in Roman’s messy handwriting, the note read: Meet us at The Cave for lunch. Don’t be later than 12:30 p.m., or there will be consequences.
Consequences.
Roman’s consequences were the worst. If they involved Kylo, too … Goddess, they’d be terrible. After fanning myself, I desperately tried not to get too excited because Roman would never do that—even with that voyeuristic kink. If he knew that Kylo had watched me suck him off at the Lycans’ pack house, he’d flip out just because it was Kylo.
Once I showered, I slipped into the dress and sprinted to the car. When I made it to the restaurant, I hopped out of the car and smoothed out my dress. My stomach tightened at the thought of enduring the next hour or so as Roman and Kylo scowled at each other.
The Cave was a suit-and-tie restaurant located right outside the pier. Boats swayed near the docks as people walked on and off them, staring out on the lake. I walked into the building, glancing around at the gloss-finished wooden tables surrounded by men and women dressed in their finest casual attire.
A chandelier hung in the center of the room, hundreds of glass pieces decorating it and propelling bright white light in all directions. I strolled down the aisles and found Roman and Kylo sitting at a table near the back of the restaurant with a half-full bottle of wine between them.
Smiling. Laughing. Talking like they’d never stopped being best friends. I stared at them with wide eyes and wondered just what had happened last night after I left for Vanessa’s. This was not how I’d left them.
Roman lifted his nose to the air, inhaled softly, and turned in my direction. When he saw me, his smile turned into a tight-jawed frown. He tapped the watch on his wrist and mouthed the word, Consequences, to me.
I gathered all the courage that I had and walked right toward them.
It was going to go great today. Nothing was going to happen. It was not going to be a complete and utter disaster to have lunch with both of these possessive, dominant alphas.
Roman pulled out the chair next to him, gaze raking down my body, and let out a low, sensual growl. I sat next to him, kissed him on the cheek, and placed my hand on his thigh to calm him down. Or maybe it was to calm myself down.
Grabbing my jaw softly, he said, “I told you to be here at twelve thirty. You’re late.”
That overwhelming sense of dominance and of old Roman was back, and it was stronger than ever.
I tore my gaze from him, feeling that innate defiance bubbling inside of me, and gazed down at my menu. “Well, I’m here now.”
All I could think about was defying him until he forced me to submit to him.
“You kept me and Kylo waiting,” Roman continued.
For the first time today, I locked eyes with Kylo. Dark, sinful mystery lay so strongly in those golden eyes of his that I had to look away.
Without sparing either of them a second glance, I arched a brow and looked back down. “You guys had to wait a whole five minutes for me. I’m not going to apologize for it.”
This would rile Roman up, and I loved to rile him up.
Roman placed his hand on my inner thigh and growled low, the carnal sound making me wet. I grabbed my water to calm myself down, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to get out of this. He wouldn’t let me get away with saying something like that to him in front of Kylo.
“Touch yourself,” he said through the mind link.
I choked on my water, placed a hand on my chest, and coughed. After pressing my thighs closer together so he couldn’t touch me himself, I gazed back down at the menu. I had expected something—maybe a harsh punishment when we got home—but not that.
“Now, Isabella.” He squeezed my knee harder. “Or I will.”
I scooted my chair closer to the table, hoping that nobody could see him touch. “So, um, what did you guys talk about last night?”
Kylo arched a brow at Roman and cracked a smirk. “Nothing you need to know about, princess.” He leaned back in his seat, biceps flexing through his thin gray dress shirt. “What’d you end up doing? Spend the night with another lover?”
Roman trailed his fingers up my thigh and brushed them against my panties. The scent of mint and pine drifted through my nostrils as he drew his fingers around in small, tortuous circles. I grasped the table, my fingernails digging into the dark, glossy wood.
“If you want to—” I started.
Roman curled his fingers inside my thin, lacy panties and ripped them right off of me.
“Hmm?” Kylo hummed, sipping on his wine.
My wolf purred at the sight of his muscles strained against his top, at the way his full and plump pink lips curled into a cruel smirk.
“If you want to call Vanessa my—”
Rom
an rested one forearm on the table and thrust his fingers into me, shoving them as deep as they would go. I clenched around him and gulped, heart racing inside my chest.
Goddess, this wasn’t really happening, was it?
“Your what?” Kylo asked again.
Had their plan been all along to take me to a restaurant and let Roman touch me while Kylo watched?
My nipples hardened against my push-up bra.
Roman leaned closer to me, his lips against my ear. “Take it off.”
“Take what off?” I whisper-yelled, finally directing my attention toward him. Heat crawled up my neck, making my cheeks burn with both embarrassment and pleasure. “You already ripped my underwear.”
“Take off your bra.”
I shook my head. “No.”
“You know that if you don’t do it, I will,” Roman threatened.
Kylo chuckled to himself over his glass of wine, eyes a dangerous golden color. I clenched my jaw and fumbled with the clip on the damn bra. Why the hell was I doing this again? This lunch was supposed to be about talking out our differences, not getting undressed in the middle of a fancy restaurant.
Once I took the bra off, Roman draped it across the huge bulge in his pants. “Relaxed now?”
“No!” I whisper-yelled at him. “I’m not relaxed! My underwear is ripped. I don’t have my bra on anymore. You’re giving me that I’m going to fuck you look. And I’m—”
“Wet,” Kylo interrupted, glancing at Roman. “She’s wet, isn’t she?”
My cheeks flushed, and I growled, “No, I’m not.”
Roman grasped my jaw, his fingers still pumping in and out of me. “You are,” he said.
My breasts brushed against the edge of the table, and I whimpered quietly to myself. A wave of heat rushed through my body and warmed my core.