CHAPTER SIX
As I ran, I remembered the plan we’d gone over. Turn left at Bolderman’s Creek. Head into the stand of pine trees, where the night blooming resina vines that wound around the trunks and branches would deaden my scent. Don’t look behind me. Don’t stop - not even to catch my breath.
Just run.
But what I hadn’t told the girls was that I was going to go through with my plan for the ritual.
I knew it was foolish. It could backfire spectacularly, and lead to my getting caught. It was untried, and I could get the words wrong. Maybe the Great Moon Mother wouldn’t even hear me - maybe my ancestors did their rituals symbolically, or maybe the higher magic that used to infuse the world was just gone.
I didn’t know.
But I did know that I wasn’t any match for Jessup. Not really. Sure, maybe I managed to evade him during the run. That would work… for a time. But only for a time. He wasn’t like a dog with a bone - he was like a raccoon who’d reached into a trap for something shiny and couldn’t get back out again. To get loose of the trap, all he had to do would be to let go of his prize. But raccoons don’t do that. They’re too stubborn to just let go; they’ll sit there and starve before they open their little paws and pull their hands back through.
I didn’t like the idea that I was Jessup’s shiny.
So instead of implementing the next part of our plan for my run, I turned right and cut back across the creek, down into the small gully and up into the burial grounds that had housed leaders of my mam’s pack for centuries.
I didn’t like doing the ritual in the burial grounds. It would have been better to do it under the open moon - but call me superstitious, if I was about to pray for something magical to happen, I could hope that the ancestors whose bones were buried there might also hear me and aid me in some way, buy me some time.
I was certain that I didn’t have much of it.
I staggered once I was there, falling to my knees as I shifted back, my body shaking with exertion. I couldn’t tarry, but I couldn’t speak yet, either. I took great, gasping breaths, willing my body to calm down, and used a low hanging alder tree branch to help me stand up again on two feet.
In the distance, I could hear some alpha knothead’s howl of triumph, and I shivered.
I steeled my nerves.
I wasn’t going to be taken. Even if Jessup won tonight, I’d murder him in his bed before I submitted to a life bound to him.
I faced the sky. Rituals like this were made to be shouted, to let out all of the fear and impatience and longing in a burst of sound. As I felt the energy welling up in me, ready to entreat the Moon Mother to hear my petition, I wanted to howl it loud, for all to hear.
My logical mind told me that would be stupid. It was tempting to curb my instincts, to whisper.
It took every ounce of strength I had left to shout out my petition to the skies, knowing that I’d be giving away my position.
“Great Moon Mother, hear me!
I call to you as a babe cries for his mam in the night.
I ask now for your favor and protection.
I ask now for you to send me a mate worthy of being called alpha.”
The Moon Mother wasn’t usually one for sacrifices. She preferred works of service. But in this instance, I knew a sacrifice would be appropriate. I had no hare to blood and cook, and I had no silver to bury in the ancient ways.
I had only myself.
“Hear me, Moon Mother!” I called out, and as the wind picked up speed around me, I didn’t feel the cold seeping into my human skin, or the pain my teeth left as I opened a jagged wound down my left arm. “Blood of my blood I offer, the only fitting sacrifice for the strength of your love!”
I heard the sound of paws approaching, the baying of an alpha on a mating run. I knew my time was short.
“Moon Mother, I beseech thee!”
To this day, I can’t describe the full magnitude of what happened next. I thought that I was done for, a goner - I thought I was about to join the fight of my life… a fight I was certain I would lose.
Instead I was filled with a warmth so strong it was nearly scalding, and yet it didn’t burn. The light of the moon is ever seen as a cold sort of light, her energies cooling. But the snow around me melted from the warmth of her love for me, her child. It was like being wrapped in my own mam’s arms again, when I was little.
There was a great and terrible light, a flash of white so intense that I had to close my eyes, and when I opened them again I saw the spectral forms of hundreds of wolves surrounding me, their hackles raised and ears pinned back as they stood in guard.
Through their bodies I could see Jessup, flanked by his lieutenant - but even presented with a sight like this, he wasn’t turning tail to run. He stood there, smug and defiant, like he expected this was all a parlor trick. Like any moment a projector would run out of film and these wolves - these beautiful, protective spirits - would disappear.
Until one of the specters darted forward and blooded his stooge.
The wolf let out an affronted snarl, biting back at the specter, perplexed when his jaws went right through the spirit rather than into anything substantial. Jessup prowled forward, too.
And then he arrived. Moon Mother’s chosen. My alpha.
He seemed to appear in a flash of lightning, attacking before his feet truly made contact with solid ground. He was on Jessup before I could truly understand what was happening, and I backed away, deeper into the burial lands, to stay out of the way.
Jessup might have been caught off-guard, but he was a keen fighter. The wolves were well matched; my champion was perhaps slightly larger, but at first it didn’t seem to make a difference. But as I watched them fight, the ghostly spirits guarding them from the interference of the wolf Jessup had brought with him, I realized that my champion was taunting him.
For every solid blow or bite that Jessup managed to land, my champion gave him two - and harder. Jessup began to falter. I could tell that one leg was broken. Blood matted his coat. The bent of his tail was grotesque. And finally, with a quick look over his shoulder at me, my champion seemed to decide it was time to end it.
He ripped into Jessup. Truthfully, I thought he might kill him. My champion locked his jaws around Jessup’s throat and didn’t let go until Jessup was limp as a discarded doll.
Later on, I would wish that my wolf had killed the man, but whether it was because of the Moon Mother’s will or some other decision on his part, my champion stood aside.
A hush fell over us all.
Between one breath and the next, my champion shifted. As a human, he stood tall and proud - taller than me by a foot or more. His hair, dark and wicked, fell to his shoulder. His chest was broad and muscled. He looked every inch like some ancient warrior.
“Take him and leave,” he growled out, and the authority in his voice sent shivers down my spine.
I’m not sure what I was expecting. I doubted the remaining wolf - Brett - would want to challenge him. But Brett just shifted back, meek and flushed as he bent to carry his leader back the way they’d come, through the snow.
My warrior waited until they were out of earshot before he turned to me.
I doubt I presented a very attractive picture. I’m pretty sure that I was gaping at him like a fish, very much in awe of what had just happened.
“Well, then,” he said, and despite myself, I felt my cock between to swell and twitch at the full intensity of his focus on me. “I am pleased to meet you, Jay, son of Nash.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
I’ve never been the sort of man to fall in and out of love affairs. I’d fooled around a little with a few alphas, but I was pretty much a virgin before I met him.
I wasn’t going to be leaving that night virginal, in any sense of the word. I knew it just looking at him. I didn’t feel bad about it though. There’s this moment, when you meet your true mate. It’s like the world stands still. I could scent him underneath the blood that str
eaked his skin - something spicy, like sassafras.
I stood there as he approached me, each step slow and steady, giving me time to turn tail and run, if that’s what I felt was best. And when he reached out a hand to smudge his thumb across the line of my jaw, I shivered, jolting at the sparks left in the wake of his skin.
I knew it in every fiber of my being that he was mine, and that I was his. It wasn’t like a compulsion; I wasn’t being compelled to think that way. It was a knowing - an absolute certainty within my being, like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.
“Hi,” I said, and flushed with embarrassment. Hi? That’s the best I could come up with?
But he grinned at me, and his expression was so boyish and open, a dimple glinting in the corner of his mouth, that I couldn’t feel out of sorts about it any longer.
“My name is Gavin,” he murmured.
“Gavin,” I repeated, testing the weight of it on my tongue.
He stepped closer, and I could feel the heat pouring off of his body, warming my skin. “The Moon Mother sent me to you,” he said, and I let out a small laugh.
“I figured,” I said, breathless.
“Will you have me?” he rumbled.
There was no chance of my saying no. He knew it, and I knew it. The tension between us was almost alive, the energy flowing back and forth between our bodies, bringing us together like magnet finding their other half.
But there was something more that needed to be done. It wasn’t enough to just give in. I was an omega, not a pushover. I reached out for his shoulder, running my fingertips down his arm. “If you can catch me,” I said, cheeky, and then I shifted.
I didn’t intend to push myself hard. This was pure joy, taking my moon-blessed form in the moonlight, and I bayed out my pleasure as I took him on a merry chase, the spectres loping behind as an after guard.
We didn’t go far. While I bounded the stream, waiting on it’s edge, Gavin took a moment to wash off grime in the burbling, icy waters. Then we were off again, through a copse of aspen trees, up a hill, and across into a cave I’d found when I was just a boy, running wild through the backwoods.
It wasn’t very comfortable, but it was safe and dry, and it would do for a marriage bed.
I slowed down then, tail high in the air; it wasn’t but a moment before I was rewarded. His pounce took me sprawling, and we tussled for a moment before he shifted back. I laid across his lap like a great fur blanket, surveying him with all the senses I had at my disposal, until at length I shifted to my human form as well.
The snow was cold on my limbs again, and I hurried us into the cave. We could do this as wolves. I’m certain it was the intention when they organized this run, base instincts ruling out over common decency. But this would be our first mating, and I wanted to know what his lips tasted like, and what his eyes would reflect back when he was sheathed inside me.
Outside, the spirits began to fade, allowing us our privacy.
Inside, I delighted in realizing that there were long forgotten supplies left in the back of the small cave - kindling and firewood, and a box of matches.
I might have even left them myself.
The fire crackled and popped at the mouth of the cave as he drew me down to the earthen floor. I noted dimly that our wounds were all healing, the skin knitting back together, as I felt his fingers brush over my chest, trail to my hips.
He drew symbols over my skin, his caress delicate, like he wasn’t truly sure that he had the right to touch me. It was a long moment before either of us spoke.
“We don’t have to do this now, if you’re not ready.”
But I shook my head, leaning forward to capture Gavin’s mouth. “I’m ready,” I panted, starting when Gavin’s hand palmed my cock. I shivered when he drew his thumb over the tip, gasped as he rubbed the sensitive underside of my cockhead. I reached out blindly for him, lingering in the broken sound that he made when I closed my hand around his prick. I got the feeling that he hadn’t had anyone to touch him in a very long time.
I felt heady - this whole situation seemed surreal. I wasn’t much given to self doubt, but that I could draw such responses from this strong, virile alpha? - it was a gift.
Gavin nipped at my shoulder, drawing me away from my thoughts. His strong hands positioned me the way he wanted me, taking the impact of the earthen floor himself as I sat astride his hips. Our cocks brushed together and I groaned out.
Gavin closed his hand around us both; the other lingered over my ass, kneading and massaging. I flexed my toes against the ground for leverage and we started to rut against one another.
My slick started to pool in the crevice of my ass, dripping down onto Gavin’s balls, and I shivered as Gavin brushed his fingertips against my hole. I was torn - pushing forward would give me more friction against my cock. Backward, those wonderful fingers. I was desperate for Gavin to enter me. “Please.”
I let out a high cry as Gavin sank one finger inside me, and any balance I had remaining was evaporated. I fell all the way forward against him, trapping our cocks between us, my mouth hungry as it sought his.
Gavin kissed like it was the only occupation on this earth. I couldn’t have opened my eyes if I’d tried - the languorous, decadent sensation wrought by his mouth was matched only by the constant, tantalizing sensation of his fingers dipping in and out of my honey. When Gavin pulled his mouth away, it was only to kiss across my cheek, my neck, my shoulder, nipping lightly at the sensitive skin above my bonding gland.
I moaned, pushing my neck forward into his mouth. “Yes, oh yes, please.”
By the time he flipped us over, I was more than ready, more than willing, spreading my legs eagerly for him in invitation. But he didn’t line himself up with my entrance, didn’t hover over me to press me firmly against the rough floor of our hidden grotto and claim me. He knelt down instead, his head nuzzling at the vee of my hips, and sank his mouth down onto my cock.
One long pull, then another, before he did something with his tongue that had me banging my head back with more force than I’d intended. Fuck. I reached out blindly, tugging at his hair, and all the while Gavin’s fingers pressed deeper inside me, curling and twisting to loosen me for him.
I don’t know what I started to say. I could have been reciting the alphabet or speaking Greek - it would have come out in unintelligible moans and whimpers and babbles. By the time Gavin pulled off my cock with an audible pop, I was lost to coherence, drifting in a state of touch and scent.
If this was what it felt like to be one with your mate, I never wanted it to end.
The moment he hovered over me seemed to take an eternity, but then he was there, his cock hot and insistent at my aching hole. He moved slow. Too slow. Perhaps it was a good thing; I’d taken a toy before, in the privacy of my own room, but the toy was small in comparison to my own cock, and Gavin was larger still.
And there was no doubt that Gavin was all alpha as he moved forward, slow and steady, slipping inside me as I reached out to wipe away the sweat that had beaded at his forehead.
My legs wrapped around him awkwardly as he began to thrust. I tried to rise up to meet him, my hips jerking in quest to find our rhythm, but Gavin kept us rocking slow and steady. Until I’d gotten used to the cadence of our lovemaking, the pulsing thrust and parry. Then he sped up. That bastard. We went from slow and steady to contained fury, deep and fast and sonorous as his moans that echoed off the walls of our hidden cave.
It was bliss. There was no one else alive in the world. Anything that had once seemed important fell away until there was only us, there, joined. Harsh panting. The hitch of my breath as he strummed one of my nipples. The guttural, welcome sound he made when I sank my teeth into his shoulder to mark him as I hit my precipice and tumbled over.
“Yes!”
I couldn’t hear what Gavin said apart from that rumbled affirmation - the pleasure between us was too intense. My vision went white; my ears rang with the sound of my own heartbeat.
Gavin was over me, in me, around me and I came apart so easily, shivering in his arms as I came back to myself, his knot just beginning to bloom.
“Jay!” he shouted out, shuddering, and the first hot rushes of his come pumped into me.
Gavin caught my eyes in a silent question. Do you want this? Do you want me?
“Do it,” I breathed, and Gavin sank his teeth into the join between my shoulder and neck, breaking the skin and tying us together as something more than bedpartners - as bonded mates.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A red bird sat on Gavin’s shoulder.
It was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes that morning, and I watched, unhurried, as the bird seemed to nestle against the warmth of Gavin’s body before he hopped off and onto the ground.
In the Desperation (Find You Book 1) Page 4