Outcast Box Set

by Emilia Hartley

  Jax lifted her from the floor, cradling her in his arms as he sat on the end of the bed. “Listen. Are you listening?”

  She tossed her head and licked his face. Was that answer enough?

  He laughed and pushed her wet tongue away. “You need to listen for a moment. I made a decision for the both of us. That decision helped save you, but it means we have to make a new decision now.”

  Her wolf didn’t care. It was perfectly happy with the way things were. It had people, had family. It had a job, to protect and love. Sydney, on the other hand, was confused. She looked to the other shifter in the room. The man sheepishly inched toward the door, unable to look at them.

  He was family, the wolf said. He was theirs to be protected.

  What was the problem?

  “The power of Pack helped pull you through the change. If I hadn’t bonded us, you would have rejected the magic and it would have killed you.”

  Bonded? Pack?

  “We don’t know this man, but he offered his freedom to help us.” Jax’s voice grew tight. She knew why he couldn’t bear to say it. He’d lost people, been unable to help them when they needed it most.

  She’d lost people, too. She’d lost her last partner. She’d lost Trisha. Could they protect this shifter? Would he survive them?

  Sydney desperately wanted a voice. She wanted to change back to her human form but didn’t have the first clue. If she had a voice, she would tell Jax this was a second chance. Something in the universe had forgiven them. They’d fought hard and recognized their mistakes and were granted a second chance.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It took Sydney a while to figure out how to change back. Since Jax had been born with the wolf inside him, he had no idea how to help her transition. The other shifter, Rhylan, helped Sydney find her way back to her human shape. He sat on the floor with her and walked her through finding the reason to change, to shift.

  Jax sat back, elbows on his knees.

  There were still hunters out there, still a threat they needed to find. He feared that if he didn’t find them and end their hunt, his new family would be next. Jax couldn’t figure out what he’d done to deserve them. Sydney cried with triumph after a long change. The sound was a bit strangled but showed her determination when she brought her head up and met his gaze.

  Hunger lit through him, chasing away the darkness and cold fear. The urge to wrap her in his arms and lay her upon the floor sparked through him. He wanted to bury himself in her, find peace in their touch.

  “I’m just going to excuse myself,” Rhylan said, awkwardly looking around at his room.

  Jax grunted, lifted from his seat and grabbed his mate. He carried her out the door, his own body shielding her naked skin from sight, and brought her back to his room. They fell together on the bed, her hands already traveling over his skin as if she couldn’t resist when they were that close together. They ran over his neck, along his spine, and through his growing hair.

  She nearly purred with the joy of it all. It made him hug her tighter, his cock growing between them. He watched her lick her lips as her hips met his.

  He kicked the door open, splinters flying from the frame. He should have held back, but his need was greater than his ability to think at that moment. His body ached for her. He wanted to bury himself deep inside her. He wanted to be brought home, to be reminded that she had not left. At least he had the sense of mind to kick the door shut behind him.

  Together, they fell onto the bed in a tangle. Her hands roved over him while he fumbled with the buckle at his waist. Frustrated and still filled with the power of her wolf, Sydney reached between them and snapped the thin leather. He looked down with feigned annoyance before a smile slid over his lips again.

  Sydney growled, her eyes glowing with the pale gold of the summer moon. He sank into those eyes and felt a mixture of pain and love. If he’d been faster, if he’d been stronger… if he’d been any number of things, he could have stopped this from happening. He could have saved her all this pain, saved her from looking into the abyss of death.

  She sensed his hesitation and yanked him down. Her mouth crashed into his. Her growl slipped between his lips and pulled a raging fire up through him. In response, he grabbed her wrists and shoved her back into the bed. She smiled and pushed back. Her strength rivaled his, and she loved it.

  There was no regret in her eyes. All he could see was the lust that burned for him. It pulled him in and drowned him in her. Sydney was all that mattered. A chance encounter when he stopped in a small town had turned his life upside down. Not only had he been given a chance to save lives, but he’d found his mate.

  His hands trailed down her waist. She arched into him, greedy for his touch. The way she writhed beneath him, burning with desire, a fire that existed only between them filled him with a need he couldn’t ignore. His hand slipped between them, parting her folds. She was already wet with need, but he slipped two fingers inside her, just to make sure. She let out a gasp and slammed her hips into his, grinding against the hand he used.

  She groaned beneath him. He pulled one of her wrists down to his dick. Her hand closed around it without question. After a few hard strokes, she pulled him toward her core. Her eyes opened and met his, the fire between them suddenly consuming them both.

  Jax slammed home inside her. She cried out, a sound that shook the walls.

  ***

  Sydney groaned. He filled her in ways she’d never experienced before. Now that there was a beast inside her, everything felt different. Her body lit up in ways she’d never thought possible. Just from the way he’d entered her, fireworks went off through her core. All she could do was writhe and groan as they blasted through her body.

  Jax slid his arm beneath her neck. His nose nuzzled the sensitive skin before his teeth nipped. His hips thrust, small and gentle at first. Then, their need multiplied. She couldn’t wait. Her nails bit into his butt as she pulled him deeper. His grunts filled her ear with each slam. The sound rumbled though her and down her spine, leaving her with chills that shook the walls of the growing orgasm.

  Her lips parted, and a cry built in her throat. Jax’s fingers rose to tangle in her hair, tightening and pulling her head back. It revealed her throat. The wolf growled, but let him do it. He was their mate, their forever. He would never hurt them. He would always love them.

  His teeth dragged along her throat. His thrusts slowed to a tempered rhythm. She wanted the slamming lunges. She wanted him as deep as he could manage. Yet, he pulled back. Her fingers rose to tighten on the back of his neck.

  He smiled and wriggled his eyebrows. When he leaned forward, he whispered into her ear. “I want this to blow your mind.”

  His thrusts slowed. The wall of her orgasm, the dam building inside her, wobbled. It was precariously thin, but he stroked it with deft skill. It built and built with each, luxurious stroke. She ran her hand along his jaw, feeling the tension of the control he’d wrought. He wanted to take her as wild and rough as they had moments ago, but he tried his damnedest to make this moment special, to draw it out into something neither of them had had before.

  And it worked.

  Her hands fell away. She gripped the sheets beneath her, fighting against the building pressure in her core. It wanted to explode. It wanted to rupture and cascade over her in blinding sensation, but it held. Jax lowered his head to run his tongue along her collarbone. It made her shudder beneath him.

  “You torture me,” she managed to whisper around the pressure in her throat.

  He laughed. She wasn’t about to let him laugh at her. She reached forward, closing her teeth around the muscle at the base of his neck. He cried out, the sound turning into a low and guttural growl. His hands snapped to her hips as he slammed into her once more.

  She cried into the bite as the wall broke. The orgasm flew through her, a tsunami, unlike anything she’d ever known before. Her legs shuddered, her body convulsing as the cold feeling fluttered in ever increasing after-
shocks. She couldn’t believe what they’d done.

  As she writhed in the sheets, Jax came. The pulsing throb of his cock brought her again. The sensation spiked and fell in a blinding crash. She closed her eyes and fell into the sensation. She would drown in it, never to return, if it weren’t for his hands on her. He held onto her, reminding Sydney where she was.

  She was in his arms, her mate’s arms.

  Sydney sighed with pleasure. Satisfaction settled into her bones. Outside the door, there was a mystery to solve, a killer to catch. But, inside? Inside she had her mate and her beast. That was all that mattered in the moment.

  The sigh escaped her, slowly shifting into one of guilt. The orgasm and it’s wonderful aftershocks faded, leaving behind only a harsh reality. The killers outside the door wouldn’t wait for her to bask in her lover’s glow. They would be on the move, searching for their next target.

  Knowing Jax was in town, a wolf with the strength to take down the hunters, they would be on the hunt for him. Her grip on him tightened, her legs locking around him as if that would protect him from hurt. She couldn’t afford to lose anyone else. She’d already lost one partner, she couldn’t lose this one.

  Not her mate.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “What do you think of this?” Jax asked Rhylan.

  The shifter leaned against the outer wall of the lodge, his eyes scanning the world outside the balcony. He shrugged as if this was all nothing.

  “This is a big decision. We have no Alpha so far. If we wanted to, we could disband the bond and go our own ways. It’s not too late.” Jax’s heart hammered with the idea that he was responsible for someone once again.

  Leaving the too large pack in Stonefall had sent him on a pointless journey, his only desire to outrun the ghosts until he could find a way to make things right. Part of him feared there was no making things right. He would forever be cursed to roam the world, restless and unable to connect with anyone. Now, a short time later, he not only had a mate, but a small pack. It was far more than he deserved. He waited for it to all crumble between his fingers.

  “I was changed,” Rhylan began. “One day I was hiking through the mountains, and the next thing I knew, I was dying. I asked the earth to save me and this is what happened. I know now that it wasn’t the spirits that saved me, but the creature’s bite. I think it’s all the same, really.”

  “You’re rambling.”

  Rhylan laughed. It was a bright sound that somehow lifted a weight from Jax’s chest. The man was strangely vibrant, as if an energy radiated from him that cleared the air around everyone. “I guess you’re right. What I’m saying is that I’m more than willing to give this a try.”

  Jax nodded, the nervous feeling shoved back. It was a distant feeling in the aura of Rhylan. He wondered what kind of monster would attack a man who radiated energy like that. His eyes followed the scars that ran down Rhylan’s neck and wondered how the man had even survived. His spirits must have helped, even if he thought it was the work of the shifter growing inside him.

  Those scars, the wounds they healed from, would have killed a man. Shifter or not.

  He clapped a hand on Rhylan’s shoulder. “Then we are family for now.”

  There was a sense of satisfaction that came with it. Knowing Rhylan was on their side gave him a comfort he hadn’t felt since the early days of the Bart Pack. What would they call themselves? They certainly couldn’t name themselves after him. He would not take the position of leader. It wasn’t in him. He would silently protect, risking his life in a way he’d hesitated to do before, but he would not lead.

  The glass door slid open, and Sydney appeared, wearing nothing more than an oversized t-shirt as she shoved herself between the two men. She smiled and leaned against the balcony railing, breathing deep with her new senses. Jax studied the long line of her legs leading down from the shirt.

  Need flared, hot and heady through him. He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her into his body. Mate. She was his. They were meant to be.

  It still surprised him that he could say it. He reached and tucked a wavy, blond tress behind her ear. She tilted her head and looked at him, a small smile on her lips as if she knew the secrets of the universe. She might know that, but she knew his secrets.

  Especially how to turn him on.

  “There’s still a threat out there,” she said over the cup that hung between her fingers.

  A heavy feeling fell over them all. Their shoulders drooped. Rhylan stirred uncomfortably. Jax glanced at his new packmate. The urge to drive him out of town was overwhelming. The ghosts tried to tell him he would get the young shifter killed, too. They tried to show him with his soul ripped away, feral and dangerous as Becca.

  Just as Jax closed his eyes, Sydney leaned into him. She rubbed her arm against his and looked up at him with a knowing look in her eyes. Her presence pushed the ghosts back, slamming them with the light of her being. There was a fiercely protective beast inside her now, a wolf that wouldn’t allow anyone to get hurt on her watch. Together, they would keep those they loved safe.

  “So, what do we do?” Rhylan asked.

  Sydney had a contemplative look on her face as she looked out over the mountains. This was her home. And everyone in it was her people until you hurt someone. “We find them, and we convince them to stop.”

  “Convince them?” Rhylan wasn’t convinced. He shifted uneasily, his body lithe in a way that made Jax question what was hidden beneath the surface. He hadn’t bothered to ask what his animal was, a border he hadn’t felt comfortable enough to bring up yet.

  “We use force if we have to,” Jax growled.

  “But, first we try asking nicely,” Sydney amended before a predatorial smile overtook her face. “If they don’t listen, then we use force.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Sydney sat on the edge of the bed. The weight of her job pressed down on her shoulders. As grateful as she was for what had happened, the change and the Pack bond Jax had wrought, she knew there were things left unfinished.

  The hunters were still out there. They knew where she lived, knew how to break into her home, how to make them sleep with their magic. If the hunters wanted to, they could creep in and steal them both away while they slept. Her wolf had been hypervigilant once she realized that. If the hunters stole them away, they would slowly siphon their souls away for their magic until they were husks like Becca.

  Becca had been nothing more than a rabid animal. Sometimes, when Sydney lay beside Jax, and their words didn’t fill the air, she couldn’t help but wonder if Becca hadn’t recognized Jax, if it hadn’t been some kind of assisted suicide. The thought sent cold spikes of fear down her spine, each piercing with enough force to nearly make her cry out.

  If they were caught, would she, too, want to die?

  Sydney promised herself it would not come to that. She would not allow anyone else to die on her watch. As she lay beside Jax, their naked bodies pressed together as if they were one, she let thoughts flow through her. They tumbled and fell into the right places, everything that’d happened aligning just right.

  “You said you could only find old scents in my house, right?”

  Jax nuzzled her neck before pausing when he realized what she was referencing. They’d tried to track the scent of the intruders but failed. Sydney had a theory that made her stomach churn.

  “What if that’s because the scents mingled with the people that’d already been in my house?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Her lungs chilled, the very words frightening her. “I’m saying, what if the intruders are people I’ve invited into my house before? What if I know them?”

  His grip on her tightened as a growl rumbled through his body. She licked her lips, uncertain. As much as she didn’t want to place the blame on anyone she knew, it was a fact she couldn’t ignore.

  “Then there’s no way to tell which person it was. The scents were faded and mingled with the party. Even if you co
uld tell the scents apart, there’s no way of telling who was a party goer and who was an invader.”

  She chewed her lip. “I’ve heard their voices. So far, there’s two women and two men. If I can find the voices, then I find the intruders.”

  If anything, she thought of the woman who’d visited her in the night. Her voice had been filled with remorse, even if she’d used the wrong means. The visitor who’d warned her of Trisha’s death had seemed to want to help them and end the hunters’ violence. If Sydney could find her, they might have an ally on their side.

  She told Jax this. As much as he hated the idea, untrusting of anyone who worked with the hunters and their soul magic, he agreed to her plan. Sydney just had to peel herself out of the bed first. It was difficult when Jax laid beside her, a magnet that drew her down and into his body.

  Before she could roll away, he caught her and brought his lips to hers. The taste of him distracted her. The feel of him pressed against her breasts, her nipples hardening with the rub of his skin on hers, pulled her down. They made love again before she could fight her way free of his seduction, the deep tenor of his laughter threatening to pull her back in.

  She pulled on her work uniform and tried her best to straighten her hair. This would be the first time she’d set foot in the station since meeting Jax. More importantly, it would be the first time she’d returned since Trisha’s death. The woman’s blood still coated her hands and weighed in her heart, but she knew Trisha would want her to stop this.

  They drove back to the station in silence. Her wolf watched the world with new eyes, taking in everything it could about its surroundings. She had to turn down the radio, her ears aching at the sound of it. There was also a scent that coated the inside of the SUV that she’d never smelled before.