Filthy Fae: A Dirty Alphas Novel (Heartland Forest Book 2)

by Alexa B. James

  “A pixie overheard Scarlet Riley saying she’d been attacked by one of them before,” the Spring Prince said.

  “We’d like an explanation.” This was from the fourth fae who did nothing to lessen his menace. The white-haired fae held what looked like a mace with a soft blue glow. He glared down at us like he wanted to start chopping us with his weapon.

  My wolf pushed forward at the sight of him, but I wrestled her back.

  “We’d like to exchange information,” Autumn said.

  “Scarlet doesn’t owe any of you anything,” Mack said, dropping to his knees beside me. He stroked his hand along my cheeks, down my neck and shoulder. “All she’s tried to do is get to the bottom of this conflict, and my mother has rewarded her with humiliation, beatings, and attempted murder.”

  Autumn took a step to the side. “We might be protecting Titania, but we are clearly not here on the queen’s bidding.”

  I couldn’t fault them for protecting the queen’s life, not when her death would mean that they were all slowly drained of life force. Huffing out a breath, I pushed down my wolf and started my change. When I was fully human, Mack handed me his shirt, and I slipped it on. His familiar mint smell wrapped around me, finally calming my wolf a little, though she was ready to surge forward again at any moment.

  I scanned the four fae princes surrounding us. “You said exchange. That means you have some information to give me in return.”

  Autumn sidestepped, making it easier for me to look at all the fae at once. “That’s how an exchange works.” He tilted his head back and forth. “You tell us what you know, and then we will reciprocate in kind.”

  “I know that Oxonos arranged for the queen to meet up with Zane Reed at that party, and she was warned off.”

  “We already know that,” snapped the white-haired fae. When I turned to him, his jaw clenched, and ice-blue eyes blazed into mine.

  “That’s what I want to know,” I snapped, articulating the words. “I want to know how she was warned or who warned her. Who had foreknowledge of what was going to happen at that party?”

  The fae holding the mace only glowered.

  “We’ve been trying to figure that one out ourselves,” Mack’s curly hair brother said. “Summer got an anonymous note.” He nodded to the fae with long, midnight-black hair.

  The fae man named Summer stood slowly, and I noticed that he looked even more like Mack than Spring, which made sense, now that I thought about it. Mack was the son of two courts, meaning the queen had two of his brother’s hostage.

  When Summer grinned, I could see Mack in his kind smile as well. “The queen wanted me to protect her through dinner...” The three other fae snorted at this, as if at some private joke, but Summer continued without acknowledging them. “It was in my pocket when we left the restaurant.”

  I nodded. “Handwritten or typed?”

  Autumn clapped a hand on Summer’s shoulder and addressed me. “You tell us first.”

  I told the fae about the strange attack outside my building and the creature bursting into acid after Darrel broke his neck.

  “What time was this?”

  I thought back, remembering that I’d made my reservations with Darrel at eight thirty, knowing that he’d probably want a moment to relax and maybe shower after his long drive. “Maybe seven thirty. Why does the time matter?”

  “It doesn’t.” Autumn nodded, his expression giving away none of his thoughts.

  “Because of the party,” I realized. Zane and Zeezee had arrived at six. The massacre had already ended when Oxonos got there at seven. So, all those fae died in a very short window of time. My stomach flipped as something else occurred to me. Zeezee lived in my building. What if she’d fled home and that thing had chased her down? Her apartment had been trashed. Maybe she’d shown up, injured and desperate, and then fled, leaving the water on.

  What if the creature had arrived and mistaken me for Zeezee? The creature had no eyes, so it would have been following her scent. Since we were sisters, we probably had similar pheromones.

  “That creature didn’t have eyes, though,” I thought aloud. “It wasn’t exactly the same one, though it could have been the same species. But Darrel, my mate, killed it.”

  Summer nodded. “So, there must be at least two of them.”

  “Your turn.” I crossed my arms and turned to the handsome Prince Summer. “Tell me everything about this note.”

  He didn’t have much to tell. The note was handwritten, and the message on it simply said that the queen should not attend the party. The queen, ever vigilant of her safety, had decided to spend the evening bathing in the moonlight with Summer guarding her. This got the other fae guffawing again, and seeing the pattern, I realized that they were laughing because the queen was making excuses to go on dates with Summer—which was all kinds of icky. Eternal youth obviously came with its own set of problems.

  When he was finished, the other three fae simply slipped back into the forest. Mack’s brother Spring gave Mack a parting hug, but only Summer stayed.

  “Need help?” Summer nodded down to Aaron.

  “Thank you, but no.” I stepped between Mack’s brother and Aaron. “He just needs time to heal. His wolf pulled him completely under so he could heal him faster.”

  Summer clapped his hands down on Mack’s shoulders. “Queen Titania can’t exactly exile us for helping or associating with you, can she? I’d love it if she tried.”

  Mack’s lips pursed, and emotion filled his eyes. “Thanks.”

  “You’re never going to lose us, like it or not,” Summer said. “And father would always welcome you home. You know that, right?”

  Moisture hit my cheek, and I realized I was crying. It hadn’t really hit me in the mad dash for our lives. Mack was in exile. His mother ordered his death. She revoked his title and everything he had, all because he wouldn’t marry some much-older queen or kill his best friend.

  Mack wouldn’t lose two of his siblings, but he had dozens of them.

  Ever since we met, Mack and I had tried to protect each other from the werewolf and fae parts of our lives. Today, all of that exploded in our faces. His mother hadn’t given Mack a choice—not a real one. He couldn’t go against the person he was. I was just so desperately sad that it came to this.

  As his brother slipped away into the forest, I tucked my hand into his. Mack turned to me, his aquamarine eyes raw with emotion.

  “I’m so sorry, Mack,” I whispered. “I’m going to do everything in my power to fix this.”

  Mack gathered me into his arms, gripping me tightly to him. He pulled me against his bare chest as his breaths rasped in and out. I ran my hands over his back and his hair, comforting him the best I could. But how could you comfort someone who just lost everything? What could I even say?

  After a long silence in which we simply gripped one another, Mack whispered, “Maybe I can finally join your pack.”

  “Mack,” I whispered against his ear. “You are my pack. If you told me that you needed me to run away with you tomorrow, it would break my heart to leave my mates and everyone else behind, it would crush me, but I would do it for you. I love them all, but you’re my always and forever. My best friend. I would do anything for you.”

  Leaning back, he gazed down, and I could see the heartbreak in his expression. Up until this moment, I had never actually wanted to kill the Queen of Spring. Seeing what she did to my Mack, I wanted her dead.

  It was only a passing moment, though, before reality hit. As much as she deserved it, I couldn’t kill my best friend’s mother.

  “I love you, Scar,” he said, his voice gruff.

  “I love you, too.”

  He shook his head. “No, Scar. I’m in love with you. I have been since high school.”

  Shock slammed into me with his words, and I had to run over them again in my mind to make sure that I heard him right. Mack was in love with me? In love?

  I knew that our relationship had pushed past the bo
undaries of simple friendship, but I still hadn’t guessed it was anything more than a friends-with-benefits arrangement. It had only happened a few times, and except for the first time, Aaron was always there, too.

  Mack was studying my expression, as if looking for something, and fear shot through me as I realized that I was supposed to tell him that I was in love with him, too.

  Was I?

  The depth of love I felt for him was deeper than anything I’d ever felt for anyone else. But what kind of love was it? My thoughts were too hopelessly tangled.

  “Since high school? What took you so long to tell me?”

  “I guess I was just…waiting.”

  “Waiting for what?”

  “For you,” he said, looking uncomfortable as he scanned the woods. “For you to be ready.”

  Leaning forward, I nuzzled my face against Mack’s bare chest. After a second, I peeked up at him, “God, Mack. You sure know how to make a girl’s head spin.” I kissed his skin once, finding it cool under my lips. “Let’s go somewhere we can talk about this without getting murdered?”

  A small smile played on his lips, though his gaze still seemed troubled. “Fair enough. Aaron, you can stop pretending to still be passed out now.”

  A moment later, Aaron stood and shook the dirt off his pelt.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Scarlet

  It had just started to get light out when we dragged ourselves out of the woods.

  Mack whistled. “Toto, we are not in Arcata anymore.”

  I actually had no idea where we were, but from the beautiful lake glimmering the colors of the sunrise, I was guessing either Ruth Lake or Crescent Lake. Both towns were nestled deep in Heartland Forest and were mostly inhabited by humans.

  After another mile of walking, we spotted a sign beside the road advertising a vacation rental. Mack tapped the sign, pointing to a spot where there was a complicated leaf design. “Even out here. This is one of my mother’s companies catering to humans,” Mack said. “We can crash here for a few hours and get some rest.”

  “Won’t she have security?” The house was a beautiful A-frame lakeshore property with a wrap-around porch.

  “She does, but it’s the kind I can disarm. My mother probably doesn’t even know what a security camera is.” I was relieved to see a spark of mischief light Mack’s eye.

  We snuck along the winding gravel driveway to the house. A large padlock hung from the doorknob.

  “I’ll take care of that,” Mack said. Before I could protest, he punched his fist through the glass window beside the door.

  “Mack,” I protested. “You’ll cut yourself.”

  “To be honest, that felt pretty good,” he said with a grin. He knocked the rest of the glass out and gave us a shrug before swiping some glass from the sill and climbing through. While he went to get a broom, Aaron shifted.

  “I’m going to end up cutting my nuts off if I climb through there, buddy,” Aaron called.

  Climbing through a broken window while only wearing a silk shirt didn’t sound like the best idea, either, but all the doors were padlocked from the outside. In the end, Mack swept up the glass so we wouldn’t cut our feet, and a minute later, we were all inside.

  The house was cold and had obviously been closed up for a while. It smelled faintly of dust and cleaning products, but as we scouted the rooms to make sure they were empty, there was no scent of fae anywhere. All I wanted was to fall into an exhausted sleep. My wolf had been able to heal us from the bludgeoning attack, but it took a lot of energy, and instead of being allowed to rest, she’d had to run all night. Aaron was putting on a brave face, but I knew his injuries hadn’t fully healed, either. He was favoring one leg as he climbed the stairs.

  “Do you have phone service?” I asked Mack, the only one with a phone, though it hadn’t had service when he’d checked during the night. He slid it from his pocket and flicked on the screen.

  “It looks like it,” he said, tapping away for a second. He frowned down at the screen. “We’re actually only a couple hours from Eureka. Crescent Lake.”

  “Call Lance,” I said immediately. “We need to get out of here.”

  Mack saluted, and I bit my lip.

  “I mean, if you don’t mind. Please.”

  Mack handed over his phone with a grin, and Aaron recited the number while I punched it in. Lance answered before the first ring ended.

  “Scar, where are you? We’ve been hunting up and down the coast for eighteen hours.”

  “I’m okay,” I said. “I’m with Mack and Aaron, and we’re all fine. For now.”

  I quickly filled him in on our predicament, and by the time I got off the phone, he was already on his way to collect Darrel so they could come and get us in Lance’s van. After I hung up, we all collapsed onto the couch together and lay there for a while, resting after the long night of being hunted. After a time, I threaded my fingers through both of their hands and lay my head on Mack’s bare shoulder. Somehow, as exhausted as I was, I didn’t feel a bit sleepy. The warmth of Mack’s skin against mine started awakening an entirely different sensation. I snuggled closer, my hand sliding onto his thigh.

  “We made it,” I said, heat coiling through me. “Who would’ve thought?”

  Aaron leaned into my other side, his free hand wrapping around my waist. “There were definitely a few moments when I wasn’t sure.”

  Suddenly, all the tension and adrenaline melted from my limbs. With Darrel and Lance on the way, I realized that this was over. We were going to live. “Whoa, we survived all of those fae hunting us.”

  “We did,” Aaron said, a grin spreading over his face. He drew me closer, still smiling as he ran his nose back and forth across mine. I hooked my hand behind his neck, pulling him in until our lips touched. He let out a low growl, and the smell of his arousal greeted me, letting me know he was of the same mind. I slid my hand up his thigh, trailing my fingers along his length and relishing the shudder of pleasure that went through his body. After a few seconds, I pulled away and turned to find Mack sitting on the edge of the couch, watching me touch Aaron.

  He licked his lips, his eyes rising to mine. A pulse of heat rippled through me when his hungry gaze raked over my body. My nipples hardened, and I slid an arm around his neck, pulling him closer. His lips found mine, and a hand slid under my shirt to cup my breast. A moment later, Aaron’s hand slipped up to caress the other one.

  “This is silly,” I breathed as I gathered up Mack’s shirt and pulled it off me. Mack’s mouth found mine immediately, his tongue sweeping over mine, a low moan starting in his throat.

  “Good.” Aaron whispered as he rolled my nipple between his thumb and forefinger, sending heat spiraling down my body and settling between my thighs.

  I pulled away from Mack, turning to Aaron. His mouth took mine hungrily, his tongue tasting Mack’s kiss in my mouth. Wetness pooled between my thighs as Mack’s fingers trailed down my side and over my hip. I shifted on the couch, opening my knees. The scent of my arousal filled the air, and Aaron growled low in his throat, his hand leaving my breast and landing on my thigh.

  “Spread them for us, baby,” he said, his voice husky. His hand dipped between my thighs at the same moment as Mack’s, their fingers tangling as they found my sex.

  “You’re so wet,” Mack breathed, spreading my folds.

  Aaron’s fingertip circled my entrance, teasing me until I was gasping for more. More of him, more of them. I ached to be filled with both of them at once. Mack’s finger caught Aaron’s, twining around it before they sank into me. I spread my knees wider, watching their fingers sink into me together.

  My arms still around each of their necks, I pulled them closer, turning my head to find Aaron’s mouth, then Mack’s. Aaron’s lips traced my jawline while Mack’s tongue plunged into my mouth, keeping rhythm with his fingers. I pulled away, breathless, and tugged their faces closer. They hesitated a second, and then Aaron’s mouth angled toward Mack’s.

&nbs
p; As soon as their lips met, Mack’s tongue filled Aaron’s mouth. A shock of erotic desire rocked through me. The sight of their tongues warring for dominance made my core clench around their fingers, and they moved faster, thrusting into me as their tongues thrust into each other. My head dropped back on the couch, and suddenly they broke apart. Their mouths dropped to my nipples, each of them sucking hard enough to send jolt after jolt straight to my swollen clit.

  When I couldn’t hold back any longer, a cry of pleasure escaped my lips, and I lifted for them to push deeper into me as my walls squeezed around their fingers. Mack moaned over my nipple, slowly rocking the heel of his hand against my sensitive pearl. Pleasure rippled through me, and it took a few minutes for me to catch my breath. When I did, I looked down to see Aaron’s cock swollen and rigid, standing ready for my touch.

  “My turn,” I said, sliding down the length of his muscled body and gripping his cock. He arched an eyebrow in surprise. I’d never done this to him before, but I remembered how much I’d enjoyed it, and my mouth grew wet with anticipation. “Can I?”

  “Hell, yes,” Aaron said. I leaned down, circling the head of his cock with my lips. His cock swelled, and I moaned in pleasure at the taste of his soft skin under my tongue. Fisting his shaft, I sank my mouth over him, wetting him and sucking gently at the tip.

  He murmured encouragement, and I positioned myself better, moving my ass toward Mack. When he didn’t touch me, I lifted my head from Aaron’s cock. Mack’s gaze slid from Aaron’s slippery cock to my eyes. “Fuck me, Mack.”

  Mack and I had so much to work out, but right now, all I wanted was to feel both of these men inside me.

  “I need you,” I panted. “Both of you.”

  Mack positioned himself on the couch behind me, rotating my thighs and gripping them with both hands to spread my sex open. Unbuttoning his dress pants, he slid them down over his hips, exposing his thick, hard cock. I lowered my mouth over Aaron’s cock as Mack pushed into me slowly from behind. I slid lower, letting my mouth take Aaron all the way to my throat. He stroked my hair back, watching me suck him while Mack filled me with slow thrusts. I released Aaron and rose up onto hands and knees, looking back over my shoulder at Mack. His eyes glazed with lust as I arched my back and met his eyes.