“It’s okay. You’re about to go through the first shift. We understand.” Owen placed a hand on the shoulder he had not bitten and rubbed my shoulder blade.
“Do the other one, too,” I said.
“Let’s get her out of here,” Dean said. The anxiety in his voice made me nervous.
Do I look as miserable as I feel? I wondered.
I must have because they shot those conferring glances among themselves.
The three of them help me stand, and the pain that shot up through my leg and into my hips nearly made me crumple to the ground. It was different from the pain I felt when they bit me. That had been sharp, immediate, and although it did leave an ache behind, each of the bites had stopped hurting, for the most part, when my wolves had withdrawn their teeth.
This pain was centered in my bones, radiating out and connecting to tendons and ligaments. As those tightened, they pulled on my joints, sending the pain right back into its source, so that it created a self-replicating loop.
The more I hurt, the more everything in me tightened, and more everything tightened, the more my joints were pulled out of alignment, and the more I hurt.
I moaned a little as I tried to take a step forward. I broke out into a sweat across my face and under my arms. “Did it suddenly get very hot?”
“No, sweetie,” Liam said. “That’s the shift, too.”
“You’ll run much hotter than before,” Dean said.
I realized that the usual gleam in his eye had changed to something more like worry.
I turned to Owen. “How many of these kinds of transformations have you seen?” I asked. My voice shook despite my attempt to keep it steady.
He shrugged a little helplessly. “Exactly like this? None. It’s very rare for a werewolf to take the bite this late in life.”
“And how many have you heard of?”
“Three or four successful ones.” He winced as he said it.
Part of me wanted to rage at him for not having given me this information sooner. “You mean I could die from this?”
“You would have died for certain without it,” Dean reminded me.
I nodded, but my answer was obliterated by the wracking shudder that swept through me, leaving pain and fever in its wake.
“We need to get her into the shifting room now.” Owen’s voice turned urgent.
“I brought the key,” Dean said, his usual party demeanor was entirely missing.
I kind of miss it, I thought, almost deliriously.
Liam wrapped his arm around my waist and lifted me into his arms as if I weighed nothing. “Let’s go.”
They moved through the waiting crowd swiftly, not stopping to answer anyone’s comments, most of which were well wishes, in any case. No one else seemed concerned that I might be dying. At least, no one was saying so out loud.
They took me down the trail that led to the parking lot from the wolves’ convocation grounds. Even though Liam’s running was as smooth as possibly could be expected, every jolt seemed to grind my bones together, and I whimpered and moaned.
All the way down the trail, Liam whispered encouraging endearments to me. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. We thought we had more time. We didn’t expect it to hit this fast—or this strong.”
All three of them said some version of that to me between the reception tent and the car. Inside the limousine that had driven me to the fairgrounds, one of them—by this time I couldn’t tell who was doing what—wet a cloth and held it to my head.
Wait. I know. That’s Owen, using his handkerchief again.
The rest of that night I remembered later only in fragments, pieces of memory out of order and disconnected from any real sense of a complete narrative.
I remembered the car pulling into the garage, but not how I got to the containment room. The next thing I knew, I was in a cage with silver bars, alone and burning with fever.
I screamed when my fingernails popped off and claws slid out to take their place.
At some point, the tendons holding my jaw together snapped, and during the time it took for the new ones to reconfigure enough to work for a wolf’s jaw, I couldn’t open my mouth at all. Or close it, for that matter.
I curled in on myself, wrapping my arms around my knees and sobbing.
I rolled into the bars of my cage and searing heat sizzled across my naked back.
My mates took mother’s altered wedding dress off me, leaving me naked and shivering in the cold room.
I tried to shake my cage apart with my shifted paws, screaming my outrage in a cell that burned when I touched it.
Fur sprouted from my arms and legs, coarse and dark. I felt every one of them popping out like a sharp needle.
I heard snatches of conversation, too.
“I didn’t expect it to be this bad.”
“Should we try to help her?”
“She has to survive this.”
They didn’t know I could hear them, but I took their words to heart. I had to survive this. They needed me. And if my mates needed me, I was not going to die.
My bones ripped apart and reformed, each one the excruciating agony of a sudden break.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of pain, there came a moment of clarity.
Then another.
Eventually, no part of me hurt any longer, and I glanced around. I stood in the center of the silver cage. Everything around me was sharper, clearer. I realized I was sensing my surroundings through smell—and that at some point, I had already noted and catalogued the scents of my mates.
I could smell them now, in a room not far away, their scents overlaid with anxiety.
I tried to reach out to shake the door of the cage and lost my balance.
Not until I fell over did I realize that I’d been standing on four legs instead of two.
16
I managed to scramble to my feet before my mates came rushing into the room, but only barely.
Dean wore thick gloves and pulled open the cage door after unlocking it.
I walked out carefully, determined not to fall over again in front of them. The more steps I took, the more confident I became.
“Oh,” breathed Liam. “You’re beautiful.”
I flashed a wolfy smile at him. Come run with me, I wanted to say to them.
“Okay,” Owen said.
“Just let us shift and we will show you what it’s like to run as a wolf,” Dean said. “It’s better than riding my motorcycle, even.”
Wait. You can hear me?
Liam laughed aloud. “Yes, we can. It’s not a skill all wolves have, but apparently, our bites are going to link us in that way. It’ll be useful for you—it’s not a skill many alphas have.”
I sat down on my hindquarters and watched as the three of them prepared to run with me. As ever, their personalities influenced their actions.
Owen made a call to someone in the pack to drive us back out to the convocation grounds. “It’s possible to run in the city at night,” he explained to me. “But generally, it’s not a great idea. Too easy to be seen by humans or caught or worse.”
Dean hadn’t waited to start shifting. As soon as I had finished my request, he was already stripping down.
And before Liam shifted, he came over and ran his hand along the fur on my back. “Do you feel okay?” he asked me.
I feel amazing. Strong, powerful. I paused. And really hungry.
Liam laughed aloud. “Let’s get you out someplace where you can run and hunt, then.”
The image of a rabbit flashed through my mind, and I went from hungry to ravenous.
Hurry up, guys. I’m ready to go now.
The woods surrounding the clearing where our ceremony had been held the afternoon before would’ve been quiet to me in my human form, but to my lupine senses, they were alive with sounds and smells, and everything around me was limned in moonlight.
A scrabbling off to our left alerted us to another creature in the woods, and as if they were one,
my mates’ three voices echoed in my mind. Rabbit!
I took off bounding into the woods after them, my heart leaping with joy at the freedom my new form had given me. I stopped on the crest of a slight hill, watching them race down it.
It was hard to believe that two weeks ago I hadn’t known werewolves existed. Three days ago, I had been certain I was being coerced into the most terrifying choice of my life.
Now, though? Everything was different.
I still had plenty of issues to deal with. I hadn’t even given my notice at my job back in my hometown.
But suddenly, I was looking forward to my new life.
Yesterday, I thought I could fall in love with any of the three wolves I’m running with now. Today, I’m pretty sure I’ve started to fall in love with all of them.
I was excited about exploring that connection—all three of those connections—in the days and weeks to come. We still had plenty to do. There were fairies to question, a plot against werewolves to untangle, apparently hunters to deal with, and who knew what else.
But as I raced down the hill to join my three mates in the hunt, I knew one thing for certain: I had three of the most amazing shifters at my side, backing me up, and doing everything they could to support and protect me from now on.
I had a feeling I was going to absolutely adore my new life.
The End
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USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times bestselling author Margo Bond Collins is a former college English professor who, tired of explaining the difference between “hanged” and “hung,” turned to writing romance novels instead. (Sometimes her heroines kill monsters, too.)
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Fifth Soul
Laura Greenwood & Arizona Tape
Fifth Soul
One to three and three to one. How it's always been, how it's always done.
Lola's always known she has three fated mates, but as an outcast, her best friend doesn't. So when yet another mating ceremony comes around, Lola would rather skip it in favour of a gaming tournament. Little does she know what she's going to discover ...
A paranormal reverse harem set in the Twin Souls universe.
1
“You sure you want to do this?” the gritty man asked, his tattoo needle hovering above my collarbone.
“Fire away,” I replied, closing my eyes before I lost my nerve. Covering up my birth tattoo and my mating mark was probably not the smartest thing to do, but I hated the constant reminder every time I looked in the mirror. I didn’t want to meet my harem, I wasn’t planning on looking for it, I had every intention of staying single.
So why wouldn’t I cover it up? Turn it into something pretty instead of one fourth of a completed mark.
“This dragon, right?” he asked, showing me a dingy drawing. He didn’t even have draw-on templates, but that was to be expected of an unlicensed tattoo guy in a dragon bar. It was a pleasant surprise he had clean needles.
“That dragon is perfect.” I balled my hands into fists and bit away the sting of the needle. The machine buzzed as it jabbed red ink deep into my skin, drawing the symbol of a fiery dragon into my flesh.
Was this really a good idea? Covering up my mating mark so I’d never know for sure if I found my three? What if they were looking for me? What if they wanted to love me? What if…
No. I drew images of my best friend to the surface of my consciousness and bit through the pain. The moment our community realised she was a white dragon with no clear heritage, she was shunned from all ceremonies and rituals. Without the blessing of fire burning inside of her, she was cursed to a life without mates. And I swore I’d stick by her side, unmated as a protest towards the three-mate system the fire community swore by.
“You’re a gutsy gal,” the tattooer grinned, exposing two rows of golden teeth.
“Thanks…” I muttered, hoping he wouldn’t try anything funny on me. He’d certainly regret that.
“There, all done. Just a little bandaid on it and off you go.” He smacked a cotton patch on the freshly bruised skin and held out his grubby hand. I pressed surprisingly few bills in his hand. There was a reason why he was this cheap and the lack of hygiene and after care was definitely one of them. But I was a big girl, I’d be fine.
Besides, I didn’t need my collarbone to game. And that was why I was in Dragon Soul after all. To compete in the Realms&Rebels tournament, to slay everyone I came across, and to win the whole damn thing. Why they invited everyone personally for the final round wasn’t entirely clear, but I had no trouble traveling for this contest. They promised a lot of money as the first prize and since I wouldn’t be relying on three dragons to take care of me, I needed it.
“I’ll have another energy drink,” I told the female bartender, making sure not to let my racist upbringing get the best of me. She was definitely a water dragon and while I had nothing against the other elements, it was still bizarre to be so close to one. Apart from my gamer friends, I had no real contact with any of the other dragon races. But now that I was in the city, maybe I could finally meet up with Tate, my closest gaming partner.
Maybe Dragon Soul was the perfect place to arrange such a meeting. Water, Earth, Fire, everyone played nicely with each other here so we wouldn’t get stared at for associating with one another.
But wow, it was weird being in a mixed community. Fire dragons didn’t usually socialise with their distant cousins, but if I wasn’t going to play by the rules, I needed to get used to the other world that was out there. A more modern form of cohabitation where dragons lived together in peace and harmony, instead of constant rivalry and detest.
I snorted to myself. What planet was I on? Dragons cohabiting was nothing more than a pipe dream of the crazy. We didn’t get on at all. Mostly because it would mess with our many ceremonies. From what I’d heard, the water dragons were just as bad as fire ones. And the earth dragons were far far worse. Apparently, they had arranged marriages, which was most definitely a step too far for me.
Not that I could really talk. As a fire dragon, I was supposed to go through the most stupid mating ceremony of them all. One that would result in three mates for me, which was three too many if anyone asked me.
Though of course they didn’t.
I shook my head and cleared it of my errant thoughts. I was in the elusive Dragon Soul bar. A place so secret, you only found out about it if you were a rogue dragon. I hadn’t even technically got the invite myself.
My phone pinged and I pulled it out of the pocket. A smile jumped to my face when I saw my best friend’s name on the screen.
Rachel: How you getting on?
Me: One tattoo down!
Rachel: You didn’t?!
Me: Yep!
I waited for her reply, already dreading the talking to I was going to get. Sure enough, my phone began to ring.
“Hello?” I said despite knowing who it was on the other end.
“Lola! Please tell me you’re joking?” she half-shouted, though the impact was lost by the fact she was also trying to muffle her voice. Apparently, that was what she had to do when she was at work.
“Why would I be joking?” I asked earnestly, cocking my head to the side and drawing a funny look from the spaced out dragon at the end of the bar. I couldn’t get a vibe on the woman, she just felt…blank. Huh. Odd.
“Because you covered your mating mark?!” Rachel hissed. “What if you changed your mind about finding them?”
“I’m not going to change my mind.” I was a lot calmer than Rachel, but I could understand where she was coming from. In her eyes, I was throwing away something she could never have. Which might have been a little cruel of me but the alternative was me with too many mates to ever pay any attention to my best friend.
And that was even less fair.
“I know you think that now, but in a couple of years…”
“Rachel, I’m not going to change my mind. I have you, I don’t need anyone else.” My words trailed off as I spotted someone across the bar.
Damn, that was one sexy man. Annoyingly, he also looked like he was well aware of his appearance. I hated being attracted to him. His picture-perfect looks and pressed shirt just screamed well behaved dragon. Which did raise the question of why he was in a place like this.
“Hello? Fire to Lola?” Rachel’s exasperated voice came down the line.
“Huh, sorry. What did you say?”
“I asked what time your tournament started tonight.”
“Oh, seven I think.” That was a lie. I was well aware of what time the tournament started. I’d studied everything about it from start to finish in the hope it’d give me an advantage. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn’t. Only time would tell on that front.
“Okay, I’ll be there just after half past.”
“You don’t have to come,” I assured her. I knew she wasn’t a fan of gaming. She’d tried once and sworn never again. If we hadn’t been friends since we were small, I’d really question why, considering how different we were.
“I know, but I want to.”
We stayed silent for a couple of moments, each lost in our own thoughts. “Okay, I’ll see you then. Have fun at work.”
Realms and Rebels: A Paranormal and Fantasy Reverse Harem Collection Page 24