by Sylvia Frost
Now I realize I should’ve been. I should’ve been terrified.
Before Lola can pull the trigger, something slams into the side of the vehicle.
The impact is colossal. Glass shatters, so much of it that I’m afraid to breathe because I’m sure if I do I’ll inhale so much that my lungs will be cut to ribbons. But there’s nothing I can do to stop myself from gasping as I’m thrust into the car door.
It doesn’t hurt at first when I hit, because all I can think is that I’m going to die. I hear my head crack against the door, then I collapse limply to the floor.
It’s oddly silent. I try to scream, but after my last cry all I can manage is a rasp. Neither Lola nor Stefania makes any sound at all.
At least we’ve stopped moving. Whoever hit us came from the right, sending us off onto the shoulder. Thankfully there’s no highway divider, or the entire car would’ve been pulverized. That’s about all I can be thankful for right now, because I can already feel hot blood trickling in my hair. My world feels fuzzy.
Then the pain comes. And the gunshots.
Two bangs louder than the impact ring out, followed instantly by the shattering of more glass. This time I’m not coated in it. I barely have enough energy to stay conscious, so rolling over to see who’s shooting who isn’t an option.
“Orion,” I whisper. Not because I think he’ll come and get me, but because the movement of my mouth around his name gives me something concrete to focus on, a familiar motion. If I just keep saying his name, I can survive.
The shooting stops, and on the side of the car nearest the road the door starts to open. Although… is that possible? I’m sure the door was locked. Instead it’s more like peeling, the metal screeching in protest as it’s bent away. Like it’s nothing more than aluminum foil.
“Orion,” I pray. As a wave of dizziness forces my eyes shut.
Footsteps crunch against broken glass, then I feel someone’s arms gather me up. I lean into the embrace, hoping for a muscled chest and strong arms. “Orion.”
“Try again, glass face,” says a sharp voice.
“Cal?” I ask.
And then I pass out.
5
More frightening than any mundane lion or wolf and twice as deadly, there is no question that werebeasts had the advantage in the days before fire. In fact, some historians argue that it was the battle between man and werebeast that led to man’s discovery of iron, steel, and, of course, silver.
But as history rushed onward, humans moved from swords to guns, and our half-demon kin could hardly keep up. There’s only one reason they staved off extinction as long as they did.
Secrets.
Because the hunters, and especially the Stromwells, never let a werebeast live long enough to discover them.
Beasts, Blood & Bonds: A History of Werebeasts and Their Mates
By Dr. Nina M. Strike
Being passed out isn’t like falling asleep. I don’t dream. I don’t catch fragments of conversation as I lie there unconscious. All I know is that one moment there’s nothing, and the next I’m staring up at the ceiling of Orion’s cabin with its warm wood and animal heads mounted on the walls.
The time in between is just gone.
My whole body hurts. Every muscle is sore enough that it feels torn, and the pain in my neck in particular has turned from a twinge into a throb. But I don’t feel critically wounded, and when I bring my fingers to the back of my head there’s no wetness from blood. Maybe I should worry about a concussion, but I don’t feel queasy or tired. The sheets of the bed are wisps against my hot, damp skin.
After a moment my body’s aches subside, which is strange. Some other force takes their place. It presses down on me like gravity, disorienting but not painful. There would be something reassuring about it if it didn’t feel so strange. So unreal.
Oh god. This must be another dream. My new nightmare. Before, every time I fell asleep I was forced to watch my parents die. Now I’ll have to watch Orion.
Because he is dead. Of that I have no doubt. He had disappeared in the dream, had been shot with a silver bullet. No one, not even a werewolf with a slight resistance, survives that. If he had, his powerful healing abilities would’ve allowed him to recover immediately. So it wouldn’t have been Cal who rescued me.
I close my eyes. There’s no fight left in me anymore. It feels as if my whole life was lived in my moments of unconsciousness, and everything I’ve ever cared about, everything I’ve ever loved has slipped through my fingers while I wasn’t even looking.
My parents mauled by werebeasts. Lawrence—god knows we’ve missed the rendezvous time for him. And Orion. I wish I could cry. I squeeze my eyes closed tighter, as if I could wring the grief out of myself, but there’s nothing left.
“Artemis.”
It’s him.
But of course it’s not. Not really.
Little details try their best to convince me I’m awake. Like Orion’s scent, that intoxicating aroma stolen from a winter’s day in the wilderness. Pine and snow so fresh it stings.
I don’t open my eyes. I won’t give in. I won’t be tricked and end up waking up yearning for something that never really was. I won’t let this memory of him be corrupted into a nightmare.
“Artemis,” Orion repeats, louder. Or no, not louder. Just closer. I can feel his presence getting nearer by the subtlest change of the air currents against my aching skin.
“Orion,” I say. His name is the magic word that finally lets me cry. Silent, hot tears that close my throat and stop my breath. “O-Orion.”
His hand trails over my cheek, catching the tears before they land on the corner of my mouth. “Oh, Artemis.” His cool breath eases the burning in my cheeks, but it only makes my chest tighter. Then our lips meet. Just the edges of his against the edges of mine. A brush more than a kiss. “I’m here now,” he whispers.
Oh.
Usually my body feels heavy, awkward to move, but now I’m weightless. No, more than that; it’s as if I’m being pulled toward him. “This isn’t real,” I murmur. “You’re dead.”
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, little mate.” The bed moans, and my body dips as he comes to lie beside me. Although he’s lying on top of the sheet instead of underneath it, so I can only feel the outline of him instead of the texture of his bare chest. “But I am alive.”
His hand touches the back of my neck gingerly, the place he once bit and kissed.
I flinch back from his touch. “No. In a second Lola is going to come in and shoot you and I’m going to wake up in a hospital.”
He flinches too. “Gods, my poor mate.” Then, before I can roll away again, he draws me up into his arms, pressing me close to his chest. Through the barrier of the sheet, I can feel the tautness of his muscles. He brands a kiss onto the top of my head, holding me so fiercely I can’t even squirm. “You don’t even realize what you’ve done.”
“What did I do?”
“Look at me,” he commands. The power of his werecall mingles with whatever force it is I felt at the beginning of the dream until I can’t help but shift onto my other side.
He’s closer than I realized and my eyes fly open as my nose touches his. I don’t think I’ve ever lain down in an actual bed with him. He’s always had to keep far away for fear of taking me. It feels heartbreakingly good. Almost as wonderful as just looking at him.
His face is drawn, brows stitched together in a permanent furrow, but as I move it relaxes. His eyes are duller than I remember them, too. Sweat dews his pallid skin, as if he’s just woken up from a fever dream. As my gaze skates downward, I notice that his middle is wrapped up in a clean white bandage.
He tilts my chin up to meet his eyes again. “You saved me.”
I reach out to his wound. The gauze feels like gauze should underneath the pads of my fingertips. He didn’t have a bandage before he was shot.
“Y-You’re alive. This is real.” He takes my face in his hands, but I don’t let him kiss
me. I have to be sure. “How?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“You saw me at my weakest. After my father left me in those woods, I almost died from the cold until I shifted for the first time. But with the gunshot wound, this time I wouldn’t have lasted that long.” His fingers trail down from my ear along the line of my neck, stopping at my pulse. “But you stayed. You gave me strength. Cal brought you here to me, after she rescued you and Stefania.”
I wonder how slow my heartbeat feels in comparison to his. How fragile my bones. “You were never weak.” I lean into his touch, not fighting him anymore. We have too many enemies now to fight each other. And I don’t want to. He’s real. He’s alive. And all I want to do is make him mine, finally, except…
“Lawrence,” I whisper.
Orion shakes his head. “We missed the rendezvous.”
“Did the FBSI find him?”
“He wasn’t there.”
“No.” I shake my head. “No. We follow their trail, we—”
“There’s nothing we can do, Artemis. Except…”
I grab his shoulders roughly enough to dislodge a strand of his hair from behind his ear, although I soften my hold when I see him wince. It’s weird to think of him as physically vulnerable, but the bandage makes that clear enough. I let go.
“Except what?”
“Lola. She’s in questioning at the FBSI, but we won’t have the results of that until morning. There are suspicions she may be connected to Lawrence’s kidnapping.”
Lola. I want to ask if that’s her real name, but I also don’t want to know. I want to do nothing more than cocoon myself in the thin sheets and use Orion’s body for warmth. I’m sure he wants that too. “Until morning,” I say dully.
“Morning.” Time slows as the dryness of his fingers turns to the wetness of his lips. The kiss lasts only a second or two, and I know he means it to be just as chaste as my peck on his fingertips, but it’s not.
Warmth bubbles into heat underneath my skin. My arms and legs slacken even as my core clenches. I press my lips together to keep from moaning. He must be able to feel the tensing of my lips through the muscles in my neck, because his lips swiftly return to my skin.
This time the kiss has no pretenses of being anything other than a seduction. He alternates teasing my flesh with his tongue and suckling at it with his teeth. A cry builds in my throat until finally I can’t contain it any longer.
“Orion,” I moan in a guttural whisper.
He doesn’t respond, instead strokes my arms in a surprisingly tender and human gesture, and it takes everything in me not to swing my leg over his body and straddle him.
Fitting, I guess. He’s turned me wild, and I’ve turned him human. Two sides of the same coin, and now we’ve flipped.
But it still takes more effort than I expected to push the words out. “I don’t want to wait.”
Now it’s Orion’s turn to stiffen. “There’s nothing we can do about Lawrence now.”
“No.” I clench my fist to keep from dragging my fingernails down his skin. “I don’t want to wait for you,” I say, loud enough that I know I’m not afraid anymore. Not of him. Not of this. “I want all of you now.”
Compared to my calm statement, his voice is dangerously quiet. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I hiss.
Then there is silence. Not a silence where you can hear the whirr of an air conditioner, or your heartbeat, or highway traffic. Complete silence, like in outer space. I close my eyes, hoping that will ease the anticipation, but it just makes it worse. Now my every sense is attuned to him, waiting for him to strike.
For him to finally take what is his.
To take me.
I expect him to pounce, to tear into my body like a wolf savaging a carcass. Tense as the first violinist’s strings before the opening note of a symphony, I’m ready for anything.
But not what he does next.
6
There will always be a power imbalance between werebeast and weremate. Because, no matter how strong or how dangerous a werebeast, without their mate they die. But a weremate has to learn to love.
Beasts, Blood & Bonds: A History of Werebeasts and Their Mates
By Dr. Nina M. Strike
He starts at my calves. With the feather-light touch of a single finger he wends his way up my plush inner thighs. When he scooted to the foot of the bed I don’t know. But I don’t care. It feels too good to think about the particulars.
I part my legs to give him further access. The motion should hurt, given my myriad of bruises and cuts, but I feel no pain, although my stomach does tremble a little bit at the thought of what Orion might do next. Now that I’ve asked him to.
Finally his hands come to rest at the waistband of my jeans, and I notice that they’re shaking. I’d mistake it for nerves, but then my gaze meets his and I see it for what it truly is.
Restraint.
It’s taking everything he has in him not to simply shred my pants right now. And I have a feeling that the only reason he isn’t is because he’s worried about damaging me further.
His thumbs fumble at the waistband of my jeans, all of his dexterity gone. I know that I should be afraid. Should realize that sex with Orion will be more than dangerous for both my soul and my mind, and possibly hazardous to my body as well. But instead I feel a burst of smug joy.
He wants me that much.
I even smirk a little, glad to feel something other than sorrow and ecstasy.
That’s my first mistake.
“What are you thinking, Artemis?”
I shiver at the way he draws out my name. A command disguised as a question.
“Nothing,” I lie.
“Well, stop.”
All trembling gone, he peels my jeans off, replacing denim with his hands. His fingers confine me just as tightly and insistently as the fabric did. My panties don’t stand a chance. He flicks them off like they’re cheap wrapping paper. I think I hear a seam split.
“Hey, watch it!” I chide.
My second mistake.
His powerful hands fall on either side of my thighs, digging into the mattress. He tears it up as easily as if it’s cotton candy.
“Jesus,” I cry.
His grip relaxes immediately, but he doesn’t say he’s sorry. He shows his remorse instead by sliding gracefully downward and tracing the area around my mons with gentle, teasing kisses. His hot breath teases my curly blonde pubic hairs.
“This is me,” he whispers. “All of me.”
Each of his words sends another brush of air against my skin and hair. I try to stay as still as I can to relish the sensation before it fades away into the low but insistent buzzing of pleasure taking up my brain. But that isn’t answer enough for Orion.
“This is what I want.” He brings his tongue out to taste me. Warm and wet, it pushes up against my thigh. It thrusts right toward my center, parts my lower lips and sends a cascade of need rippling outward through my nerves.
I try to squirm away, but his hands hold me tight. And when he speaks next, I can feel his lips vibrate against my clit. “Stay still.”
It’s not his werecall that makes me unable to move, but it does make me not want to. I never want to move again, just recline into the firm support of his hands. To let go.
So when the heat of his rough tongue finds my center again, I spread my legs to give him greater access, but each second seems to make him move slower and slower.
Finally he stops and says, “I want you to look at me.”
I bite my lip and dig my hand into the side of my now naked thigh. The feeling of him is already too much. Any more and I’ll explode.
Having sufficiently ravaged his poor mattress, his hands ascend to my waist. He gathers up a double handful of my flesh and kneads it.
He squeezes harder and edges the pleasure into pain. The twinge of pressure makes me tense up. I tilt my head back, exposing the full column of my neck, baring my throat and
chest to him. In the language of the werewolves, this is the ultimate form of submission. But it’s still not enough for him.
“I want you to see how you make me feel,” he repeats. “I want you to watch as I see how good you taste.”
I inhale sharply and my eyes open at the same moment. Orion’s crouched between my thighs, one hand on each of my legs. With his narrow, hungry gaze, there’s no denying how he looks: like a predator looming over his prize. The hunt complete, ready to devour. It’s terrifying.
But god, does it make me wet.
And there’s something more there, too. Something soft. If an animal could love… I might call it that.
With his thumb he brushes the outside of my folds, just once. I feel my eyelashes flutter against my cheeks, but I don’t dare look away, let alone close my eyes. I am his now. It’s as much a fact as that there’s blood in my veins and hot, needy wetness pooling between my legs. Wetness whose flavors I’m sure he could name, and knows better than I do.
I shiver as Orion draws his finger up and down, smearing my arousal, drawing meaningless patterns on my thigh with the wetness of my arousal. Marking me. Then he lowers his mouth one last time and presses a ghost of a kiss on my mons. I think he whispers, “Mine.”
My heart swells, my brain riding a wave of something more than pleasure. Something beyond need.
Orion rises again, straight-backed and solemn. A smile ripples on the edges of his lips for a moment when he sees how thoroughly I’m undone. Then it’s gone.
“Keep staring,” he says. And then he begins to slide off his jeans.
I’ve seen him naked many times before, but this time is different. My cheeks are red and tingling, but not from embarrassment. Without the shield of shadows or rain or fear, he looks real. His cock is long and large enough that I know I’ll be able to feel every ridge when it enters me. But it’s not beautiful, not in the same way his face is. It’s too pale. It comforts me that there’s something about him that isn’t perfect. It makes me feel as if we have a secret.