by T. S. Joyce
Emma blinked rapidly as she looked at the D-Team. The dragons moved in the woods, their backs high above the trees. It wasn’t just the D-Team here anymore. This was the Blackwing Crew, here to listen to her first song.
Dustin was holding his note, head back, calling her.
With a deep inhale, Emma made an unsteady yipping sound and let it taper into a deep howl her wolf just knew how to make. She held the note. Perfect tone. Emotion clogged her throat, so she cut it off. Dustin took a breath and sang again. Feeling like this moment was everything, Emma threw her head back and joined him, lifting a note of her own slowly to match his. All was quiet except for their duet. The others watched and waited and listened, and Emma was lost on the drifting notes she and Dustin sang together. It was the most beautiful song she’d ever heard, and she was a part of it.
With the wave of raw emotion that washed over her, something happened to her body. It buckled and Changed. It hurt, but it was fast. And within moments, she was on her knees in the grass, human, naked, sobbing. And then Dustin was there, holding her, cupping her head gently, rocking them back and forth. He was murmuring something, but her hearing wasn’t as good in this body. She could hear better than she used to, but it was comparable to having her hearing aids in.
This had been her nightmare growing up. All this time, this had been her biggest fear, that she would have to accept the impairment. But maybe it was time to do just that. It was time to stop looking toward some perfect future where she would be able to hear like everyone else. It was time to accept herself just as she was. At least she had the wolf. Emma rested her cheek against Dustin’s chest and cried, hugging him tightly. Her loss warred with her joy.
Hands touched her back, rested there, and the murmurs of her friends filled her heart with belonging. She looked up, and they were there, the crew. All of them.
Winter was crying. “You sounded beautiful.”
So Emma wasn’t perfect. Maybe that hadn’t been her destiny. Maybe this one broken thing made her fit in better with her monsters—Dark Kane, Rowan, Beast, Winter, Logan…Dustin. None of them were perfect either, but they were still worthy of love.
Her dreams weren’t crushed. They were just different now.
So she wouldn’t be some great singer in the bar or on the radio.
Instead, she would be the singer of the woods with the wolf she loved.
Chapter Nineteen
Emma stepped deeper into the landscaping and upended the watering can over the fall mums Dustin had planted for her on the one-month anniversary of her Turning.
So much had changed in four tiny weeks. No longer was the motel home, but she and Dustin had officially registered to the Blackwing Crew and were now living in a doublewide they’d bought together in the Blackwing Mobile Park. It was so different from the coven house where chaos reigned. This life was quiet, full of those moments that made her draw up and pay attention to the here and now instead of the what-could-bes of the future.
Winter and Logan lived in the trailer next door and were chattering happily on their front porch swing. Logan laughed a lot now. At the very end of the trailer park, Beast had set up his singlewide trailer with a big front porch where he spent a lot of nights staring at the stars and drinking. Alone. Always alone if he had his way.
He’d set the penis-shaped napkin trophy in his front window and built a fence around his trailer with a No Trespassing sign posted on it. He was sitting on his porch now, the king of his lonely domain. At least when she lifted her hand and waved to him, Beast nodded back from where he sat in a bag chair and lifted a beer in a silent cheers before he gave his attention to the sunset again.
Rowan was kind as ever, and little by little, Dark Kane was opening up to the crew, to Dustin especially. He’d even pulled her mate in for a mannish hug at the bar last night, and they’d spent half the night sitting next to each other shooting the shit. She’d thought there would always be tension there since Dustin had been placed in these mountains to betray him, but Kane had forgiven him as far as she could tell. Rowan probably had helped with that. She’d thanked Emma for saving Dustin, whatever that meant. Dustin was the one who had saved her in so many ways.
It was November now, and frigid, so as the breeze kicked up, Emma wrapped her sweater tighter around her shoulders.
“Cold?” Dustin asked from the porch stairs where he sat. He liked watching her in the garden. She wasn’t as skilled as his mom, and likely wouldn’t ever be, but the mums did feel a bit like her little babies. She’d started talking to them when no one was looking.
“Cold? Not really, but it’s habit. I’m still used to being chilly all the time.” Emma stood back and admired the burnt-orange and yellow flowers. While she was at it, she studied the doublewide trailer that she and Dustin had been sleeping in for a week now. “I still can’t believe we’re here.”
“What do you mean?” There was a smile in Dustin’s voice, and he came to stand behind her, wrapped his arms around her chest, and kissed her neck.
“I mean in this moment. Thinking about all we’ve been through and all that happened takes my breath away. This feels like a fairy tale, but we’re the ones who got the happy ending, you know?”
He chuckled and plucked her skin gently with his lips. “Trust me, Shortcake, you have me counting my blessings a dozen times a day.”
“I have to tell you something.”
Dustin went rigid behind her. “Okay,” he murmured.
She spun slowly in his arms to face him. The sunset behind him made his eyes look even more striking. She stroked a wayward strand of his soft hair from his face. “You once told me werewolves say home is where you rest your bones. Do you still feel like that?”
Dustin huffed a relieved sigh and kissed the inside of her palm. Tucking his chin to his chest, he shook his head, then jerked his chin at the trailer behind her. “Home is where I bone you.”
“Stop, I’m trying to be serious.”
“Me too, woman. Home is wherever you are. You and the Blackwings. This house. These mountains. Lately, I’ve been getting all fucking choked up just watching the smile on your face when you’re in the garden. When you look and smell happy, that’s home. You’re happy here, so…” He looked around the park and huffed a laugh. “A trailer park full of psychopaths is home, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Emma stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his. The kiss was a soft, slow one, where he loosened up over time and dragged his hand up her back and into her hair.
Dustin angled his face and brushed his tongue against hers, then eased back to rest his forehead on hers. “Tell me you’re happy.”
“You know I am.”
“But I like it when you say it. When you tell me I make you happy.”
Tears burned her eyes, and she nuzzled her face against his cheek. Softly, she murmured, “You make me happier than anything. Do you know what my prized possession is?”
“My dick?”
Emma giggled. “Close. It’s a packet of Morning Glory seeds, sitting in the bowl on the table near the door, just waiting to be planted in the spring. I’ll get to see them bloom every day, Dustin. You gave me sunlight without knowing it. You gave me a happier life than I could’ve imagined. You changed the course of everything. I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for being you, for being strong, for protecting me, and for going against your pack to keep me safe.” Her voice broke, so she swallowed hard so she could say this next part, the important part, clearly. “And thank you for the wolf.”
“You aren’t angry?”
“I know that’s what you expect of me. I know that’s what you’re thinking when you watch me late at night. You’re waiting for me to break down, but no. I love my wolf. I get to hear everything when I’m running the woods with you. You gave me the ability to sing, just in a different way than I’d expected. Maybe it’s not how I planned things, but this is exactly where I’m supposed to be. In your arms, in this moment. You’re my best fri
end, Dustin. You gave me everything and asked for nothing in return.”
“Well, I asked you for blow jobs in return.”
Emma snorted and conceded, “You asked me for nothing but blow jobs in return.”
Kane’s Bronco bounced and bumped under the mobile park sign. Rowan waved out the passenger side window like she hadn’t seen them in days. Laughing, Emma dashed her hand under her eyes and waved back.
Today was Saturday, or as Kane had deemed it, D-Team Sucks Saturday.
Dustin, Logan, Beast, and Kane had built a sprawling barbecue pit and covered gazebo on the empty side of the trailer park. Every Saturday they cooked out as a crew because Dark Kane was beginning to realize the importance of them bonding.
Beast tossed his empty can onto his chair and jogged down his porch stairs. Logan gave Winter a piggy-back ride toward where Kane was parking near the covered area. Dustin pulled the watering can from Emma’s hand and jerked his chin. “You ready to go hang out with the monsters?”
She slipped her hand into his and corrected him. “Our monsters.”
Oh, it would be like every other Saturday. They would cook out, laugh, but then someone would fuck it all up in true D-Team fashion, and everyone would fight and bleed each other. Rowan or Winter or Emma would laugh first. They would all settle down, Change together, and then roam the woods with the dragons flying above.
The Blackwings were a beautiful disaster.
Dustin looked over his shoulder and smiled at her—the real one she coveted so much.
And with one hand, in simple alphabet, he signed something that made all their struggles to get to this moment worth it.
You make me happy, too.
Up Next in this Series
Beast will get his story in
Blackwing Beast (Kane’s Mountains, Book 3)
Coming October 2016
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Want More of these Characters?
Kane’s story can be found in the Harper’s Mountains series
Bloodrunner Dragon (Book 1)
Bloodrunner Bear (Book 2)
Air Ryder (Book 3)
Novak Raven (Book 4)
Blackwing Dragon (Book 5)
More Series by T. S. Joyce
Bears Fur Hire
Husband Fur Hire (Book 1)
Bear Fur Hire (Book 2)
Mate Fur Hire (Book 3)
Wolf Fur Hire (Book 4)
Dawson Fur Hire (Book 5)
Chance Fur Hire (Book 6)
Fire Bears
Bear My Soul (Book 1)
Bear the Burn (Book 2)
Bear the Heat (Book 3)
Wolf Brides
Wolf Bride (Book 1)
Red Snow Bride (Book 2)
Dawson Bride (Book 3)
Saw Bears
Lumberjack Werebear (Book 1)
Woodcutter Werebear (Book 2)
Timberman Werebear (Book 3)
Sawman Werebear (Book 4)
Axman Werebear (Book 5)
Woodsman Werebear (Book 6)
Lumberman Werebear (Book 7)
Gray Back Bears
Gray Back Bad Bear (Book 1)
Gray Back Alpha Bear (Book 2)
Gray Back Ghost Bear (Book 3)
Gray Back Broken Bear (Book 4)
Lowlander Silverback (Book 5)
Last Immortal Dragon (Book 6)
Boarlander Bears
Boarlander Boss Bear (Book 1)
Boarlander Bash Bear (Book 2)
Boarlander Silverback (Book 3)
Boarlander Beast Boar (Book 4)
Boarlander Cursed Bear (Book 5)
For more books by this author
Visit www.tsjoyce.com for a full reading list.
About the Author
T.S. Joyce is devoted to bringing hot shifter romances to readers. Hungry alpha males are her calling card, and the wilder the men, the more she'll make them pour their hearts out. Experienced at handling an alpha male of her own, she lives in a tiny town, outside of a tiny city, and devotes her life to writing big stories. Foodie, bear whisperer, ninja, thief of tiny bottles of awesome smelling hotel shampoo, nap connoisseur, movie fanatic, and zombie slayer, and most of this bio is true.
Bear Shifters? Check
Smoldering Alpha Hotness? Double Check
Sexy Scenes? Fasten up your girdles, ladies and gents, it’s gonna to be a wild ride.
For more information about T. S. Joyce and her work, visit her website here.