by Celia Kyle
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
Mason grinned, loving that look on her face, and chuckled.
“Oh shit.” Her breath escaped in a long huff. “That was…” She lifted her head, one eye opening slightly. “Give me a minute and I’m all about returning the favor.”
He chuckled. “Not tonight, baby. This was all about you. Now it’s time to get some rest.”
“But…”
Aw, fuck. She pouted with her plump lower lip pushed out, and he damn near caved. His wolf wanted him to give in—to take the pleasure she offered and get closer to their mate. His dick… it was all on board with feeling her small hand wrapped around his shaft.
Except he hadn’t been lying. Now wasn’t the time. His sweet mate needed rest. And, as she continued to tempt him with that sweet pout, he crawled up beside her and snuggled her close.
Chapter Eighteen
Lucy woke with a jolt. Her dreams of running through the forest as a wolf, Mason at her side, lingering. Their presence left her confused, wondering where she was. She blinked hard and recognized her childhood bedroom. She was home. Relief set in, but it evaporated on her next breath.
Smoke.
Squinting toward the open bedroom door—hadn’t they closed it?—she spied clouds of smoke billowing up the stairwell and filling the landing. She coughed and reached for Mason. They needed to get out of there immediately.
But his side of the bed was empty. Warm, but empty.
“Mason?”
A hulking shadow shifted in the far corner of her room. She barely caught the movement, but she instantly knew it wasn’t a human.
“Mason?” she asked again, her voice shaking as hard as the rest of her body.
Something was wrong. Mason would have answered her by now. In fact, he would have woken her at the first whiff of smoke. He certainly wouldn’t have let her call out for him without somehow comforting her. Even in his wolf form. She knew that deep in her heart.
The landing glowed from the fire downstairs. The shadow moved closer, amber eyes catching the light. Her heart thudded. Those weren’t Mason’s eyes. She’d only seen him in his wolf form once, but his eyes had remained green.
Not amber.
A deep growl reverberated through the room, setting every hair on her body on end. Something raged and whimpered inside her. Her mysterious wolf, possibly? Was she finally getting ready to become a full-fledged werewolf? Just as some mad creature was about to have her for a juicy midnight snack? The shadow took another menacing step.
Lucy froze, petrified.
Then the room exploded in a frenzy of fur and snarls. Lucy curled up into a ball, waiting for the fangs to sink deep into her flesh and tear her apart, just as they had her parents. Mason had abandoned her to the depraved torture of this lunatic, rogue wolf—whoever he was.
Glass shattered. Then the sound of bodies hitting the ground reached her disbelieving ears. Bodies. Plural. Somehow her new wolfy-senses allowed her to know without a doubt that two bodies had just hit the ground a full story down.
Lucy scrambled across the bed and peered out the demolished window. Two wolves lay on the ground below, stunned from the fall. But both stirred. One was light brown, the other was as black as the night. Mason. She’d recognize him anywhere.
He was first on his feet, but not by much. Just as he was about to clamp impossibly long canines into the other wolf’s throat, it jerked sideways and clamped down on Mason’s shoulder. From her vantage point, Lucy didn’t hear Mason make a noise, but somewhere inside she felt his pain. It was intense and burning and primal.
Before she understood what was happening, her own canines grew a good two inches, protruding from her lips. She explored the sharp tips with her fingers, marveling at the change for a brief flash, before she was overcome by the need to rip out the throat of the asshole who had just hurt her mate.
Lucy sprinted from the room, naked as the day she was born, and took the stairs two at a time, never coming remotely close to losing her footing. As a full human, she could never have managed the feat, but more of her inner wolf was revealing itself, and she liked it. At the base of the stairs, she paused, trying to locate the source of the fire. She relaxed, letting the essence of her wolf take over and sniff it out.
Kitchen.
Good, that meant the back door would hopefully be safe. Sprinting for the back of the house, she discovered that whoever that asshole was, he’d set fires in multiple locations around the house. The back door was fully engulfed.
Lucy darted into her father’s den, which had sat dusty and unused for a decade but was now filled with acrid smoke that choked her. No flames…yet. Throwing open a window, she crawled through the space and tumbled to the ground, her feet getting tangled up in a hoe the gardener must have left behind. Where was her inner wolf when she needed it?
Mason and the arsonist were locked in battle in her backyard. Gnashing teeth, slashing claws, guttural snarls. They writhed around on the ground, their bodies twisting and changing position so quickly she could barely keep track of who was who.
Out of the corner of her eyes, she spotted two wolves who looked familiar. Mason’s guards. They stood at attention, the fur along their spines standing on end, but neither moved. Lucy looked between them, disbelieving.
“Do something!” she screamed at them.
They glanced in her direction and then a quiet voice reached out to her through the smoky air.
“When one alpha challenges another, it’s forbidden for anyone else to join the fray.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she screeched at them, but they kept their focus on the fight.
Mason yelped and limped away from the strange wolf, putting distance between them. The other wolf howled in triumph. Prematurely, as it turned out, when Mason tackled him. Hard.
Lucy snarled with approval. Her wolf side was growing stronger, more assertive, but something tickled the back of her human brain. Something familiar. The wolf. That howl. Then his eyes latched on to her and her world spun on its axis.
She was transported back to the forest, back to that terrible night ten years earlier. The moonlight shimmering through the trees, the unmistakable sound of claws digging at the earth, the grunts, the yelps, the growls. The blood, the pain, the anguish.
“He was there,” she whispered.
She knew it down to her very cells. That wolf had been there the night her parents died. He wasn’t the one to do the killing—that wolf had been a darker brown, with deep brown, very bloodshot eyes—but he hadn’t stopped it. He’d howled at some point. That’s all Lucy knew. And it was exactly the same. Not just any howl, but one of achievement, of pride.
That night, Lucy’s entire life had changed. She’d lost everything she cared about. And now the same dickwad was back, trying to ruin her life again!
“Not on my watch,” she growled, ignoring the heat against her back as her house burned.
The house didn’t matter anymore. She could live without her father’s old golf clubs or her mother’s hand-crocheted afghans. She could even live without the family photo albums. She couldn’t live without her mate.
Recalling how easily her wolfy senses had come forward when she’d relaxed a little, Lucy focused on calming her mind. As much as she wanted to, she still couldn’t shift into wolf form, but the beast was lurking just under the surface, giving her strength and courage she’d never before felt.
Snatching up the hoe, Lucy strode straight up to the fighting pair of wolves, despite the silent warnings from the guards. They could stand around like pussies if they wanted, but she wasn’t about to let some antiquated form of machoism keep her from protecting her mate. Mason would do the same for her, and if he didn’t like it, too freaking bad.
Hefting the hoe like a baseball bat, Lucy waited for a clear shot at the mad wolf’s head. Her hands twitched with a need to bash his head in. With each passing second and every brutal swipe of his claws, her rage grew. It grew until it burned hotte
r than her house. Hotter than the sun.
Almost like clouds opening up to reveal a ray of sunlight, the many moving body parts stilled for the briefest moment. Just long enough for her to have a perfect view of the wolf’s head. Lucy didn’t hesitate. Leading with her hips—just as her father had taught her so many years earlier—she poured every ounce of energy and pain and love and hate into that swing.
CRACK!
The blunt end of the hoe bounced off the wolf’s skull, sending the beast flying backward. Mason whipped his head around, seeking out the source of the mysterious attack on his foe. He tried to reach her mind, but she shut down the connection and advanced on the dazed stranger.
But not a stranger. Not really. He was there. He could have stopped it.
Lifting the hoe over her head, she brought the blunt end down on his head again with a satisfying THWAP.
“How dare you do nothing to save my parents!”
THWAP!
“How dare you set fire to my home!”
THWAP!
“How dare you attack my mate!”
The creature had stilled, but she could still feel it’s cold, black heart beating weakly. Not for long. Spinning the hoe in her hands, Lucy took a deep breath and mustered every ounce of strength her own wolf could give her.
“HOW MOTHER FUCKING DARE YOU!”
The blade of the hoe buried itself deeply into the temple of the wolf, and the thing finally lay perfectly still. She struggled to yank the hoe free, wanting to continue pummeling the beast, desperate to keep hurting him until she was free from the pain deep inside her. Then strong arms wrapped around her and pulled her back. She struggled against them, but Mason’s voice calmed her instantly.
“Shh, Lucy. It’s over now.”
Her entire body started shaking uncontrollably as she stared down at the mess she’d made. She wasn’t happy to have taken a life, but she didn’t regret it. Whoever this was, he’d deserved to die. It was still a shock to her system.
“He was there,” she whispered, turning to bury her face in Mason’s chest. “He was there! He watched as that wolf killed my parents and then tried to kill me!”
She was babbling and she knew it. She barely understood her own words, so most likely Mason couldn’t, but somehow he knew. The connection between them was strong, so he knew. Still, she had to speak the words.
“He knew.”
“Shh, he can’t hurt you anymore, Lucy.”
Pulling her face from the comfort of his bare chest, Lucy sought out his gaze. “I feel like I’m losing my mind, Mason. I feel… lost.”
His lips twitched upward into a gentle smile. “Never, my love. You’ll never be lost. I will always find you.”
Chapter Nineteen
Lucy refused to leave her family home until it was reduced to a pile of soggy, smoking rubble. One of Mason’s sentries had retrieved two sets of baggy sweatsuits to cover their human forms before the first fire engine arrived, and the sentries had dragged the dead wolf deep into the woods, where it would rot into the earth in a matter of months.
Justice.
As they’d watched red and white lights dance in the dark trees, Mason held Lucy in his arms, doing his best to give her the comfort she needed. He’d tried talking her into returning to the pack house, but she’d simply shaken her head and stared as the roof had caved in. So he stood with her and would continue until she finally said goodbye to her past.
By the time the sky began to lighten with shades of lavender and apricot, the firefighters were packing up their engines and Lucy leaned all of her weight against him. She was still standing, but just barely. Bending low, he scooped her into his arms and carried her to the Cherokee. This time she didn’t protest, just snuggled into his chest and passed out. She didn’t even twitch when he settled her into the passenger’s seat, or when he carried her into the pack house, or when he laid her in their bed and tucked her in.
Mason had pointedly ignored the National Circle, who’d all been waiting in the living room of the pack house when he’d returned, and he ignored their pointedly loud conversation just outside his door. He needed to rest as much as Lucy—much more than they needed an explanation of the night’s events. Hopefully by the time he woke, the wounds he’d suffered in the fight would have healed a little, and he’d have the energy to give them the answers they needed. Pulling her body into his, Mason drifted off, only to have Lucy wake him thirty seconds later.
“Good morning,” she murmured, resting her chin on his chest.
He yawned and stretched. “Hey, what time is it?”
“Ten.”
“Ten?” Mason jerked upright in surprise.
Three hours had slipped by. He didn’t care so much about the NC, but Lucy needed answers and he wanted to be there when she was ready.
“He was there,” she said quietly, her eyes pleading with Mason to help her make sense of it all.
“I know.” He pulled her down with him and held her tightly.
“How? How could you know?”
“I didn’t until last night, once you said so. Then it all made sense.”
He stared at the swirls in the ceiling, trying to figure out the best way to tell her the whole story. She waited patiently, her fingers splayed across his chest.
“His name is—was—Frank Riverson. He was the alpha of the Riverson pack. They were our neighbors on the other side of the mountain. We coexisted peacefully for many generations. In fact, my brother Gavin and Frank’s son, Brian, were best friends growing up.”
Mason recalled the two pups wrestling like maniacs every time the Blackwoods met up with the Riversons. Jacob, the Blackwood alpha and Mason’s father, would sit with Frank and watch the boys play while they discussed the politics of leading a wolf pack. But Frank’s mate, Kathy… she’d always seemed a little off to Mason. As it turned out, for good reason.
“We didn’t discover this until it was too late, but apparently it was an open secret within the Riverson pack that Kathy had been skirting the edge of becoming feral for some time. Everyone knew it, but because she was the alpha mate, they said nothing. Some claimed it wasn’t their place—Frank should have been the one to eliminate the threat. But he didn’t. Instead, he kept a close eye on her, so she didn’t do anything crazy. Then one day she disappeared.”
Lucy’s skin pebbled under his hands. She knew what was coming, but she remained silent. Listening. Waiting.
“The pack searched for her, but Frank found her. By then, it was too late for your parents and Frank doesn’t deserve any credit for your survival. Once my father discovered what had happened, he did his duty and dispatched the feral wolf so she couldn’t hurt anyone else. Of course, not without a fight from Frank, Brian, and a handful of other Riverson wolves.”
“What happened to them?”
“Those who protected Kathy were sent away by the National Circle and the pack was disbanded. Many joined our ranks, but some didn’t. I got word last week that Frank had been rehabilitated and released. Some nonsense about how their fated mate bond had muddled his brain with her crazy, but he admitted the error of his ways and took full responsibility. I knew it was all bullshit, but you can’t argue with the NC.”
“So why did he attack now? Didn’t your father pass away a few years ago?”
A jolt of grief surprised Mason. Losing his father had nearly broken him. He’d only survived through the support of the pack, and though it was difficult, he’d buried himself in his role as the new alpha, if only to honor his father.
“My best guess is that since my father is dead, he put the blame for his mate’s death on me. He must have sniffed out that you were my mate and decided to go after you as payback.”
Lucy rubbed a scar on her shoulder thoughtfully. “Or to finish what his mate started.”
“One more thing you should know. My father arranged to pay your medical bills and set you up with a scholarship, funded by what remained in the Riverson coffers once the pack was disbanded, not the Fo
rest Service. That was just his cover.”
“That was kind of him,” Lucy said quietly.
Mason pulled her tightly, closing his eyes and breathing in her scent. She smelled of bitter smoke and sadness, but he could also smell the wild musk of her wolf developing. Quickly. He hoped her transformation would be complete by nightfall. Then they could seal their bond in a more traditional—and immensely more pleasurable—way.
A soft knock rattled the door and pulled Mason out of the moment. The intruder was Kade, who poked his head into the room after Mason gave the all clear.
“Everyone wants to know how their alpha mate is doing,” he said, smiling at Lucy. “And the NC are growing impatient. Roman said something about having better things to do than hang out in our living room for days on end.”
“Fuck ‘em,” Mason growled, burying his face in Lucy’s hair.
She stroked the back of his head. “No, we should go. I think we all need a little closure.”
He might have been the Blackwood alpha, but he knew better than to argue with his mate when her mind was made up. She would be a strong alpha mate, one who could stand up to the most fearsome wolf in the pack and still expect him to rock her world afterword. What a woman!
The living room erupted with cheers and applause the moment Mason and Lucy rounded the corner. The place was packed to the rafters with Blackwood wolves, and they all wanted to welcome their new alpha mate. Lucy took it all in stride, returning hugs and kissing babies. She was in her element—a true alpha mate.
Three very large wolves hung back, watching the scene, biding their time. After the initial rush of handshakes, back slaps and congratulations, the men approached.
“Mason, we need to talk.”
He couldn’t put them off any longer. “Okay, Roman. Talk.”
Roman’s lips turned into a thin, hard line at how close Mason had come to insubordination, but he let it slide. It’d been a tough couple of days.