by Helen Scott
Micah jumped in and said, “You weren’t the only one who was terrified. I’d just mated with someone who already had a mate, and who was Roman’s mate at that, the man most likely to be the next alpha. I know people are scared or angry about the multiple mates thing, but I think you’re going to be the catalyst for change. There are more packs out there than we realize that treat women as second-class citizens, and let’s not even get into the LGBTQ side of things, but all of that has to change. Our people see the human world evolving, they see what it’s like to live with happiness and freedom, and there’s only so long the old-school alphas are going to keep that from them.”
“I don’t know that we’ll ever convince anyone else of that, but I agree,” Roman said quietly, his solemn tone bringing a hush down on us once more.
“Why me? Why one person? I think fate fucked up and we’re just some weird mutation of the mate bond. Not that I’m complaining.” I grinned to let them all know I was joking. The conversation was getting so heavy, it was like a weight had settled on my chest.
“I think you have three mates because no single male could satisfy you for long.” Micah waggled his eyebrows at me with insinuation.
“You do struggle to keep up, don’t you, Micah?” I teased.
“It’s not me you have to worry about, beautiful. It’s the old man sitting next to you.”
“Once this is taken care of, I’ll show you both how to properly worship our mate, how to coax the finest songs from her as she writhes under me, how to leave her boneless from pleasure.” Roman’s word sent bolts of yearning to my core as it throbbed for him. It didn’t help that he was looking at me like I was his next meal. I needed him. I needed all of them. And when this was over, we’d stay in bed for days as we pleasured one another.
“I don’t know, I think I’ve made our mate make some sounds even she didn’t know she could make,” Blake teased.
I blushed for a moment before I said, “I guess you’ll all just have to try to outdo each other, won’t you?”
Roman grinned down at me, and I got to bask in its gloriousness for just a moment before it all shattered as the doorbell rang. I froze, just like we all did, and watched as Roman took a long sniff.
“It’s Brecken, and I think he’s alone.”
Roman’s words surprised us all. Where were the wolves?
20
Nina
Roman rose from the couch and made his way over to the door. I could just about see it when he swung it open. Brecken stood in the doorway looking slightly disheveled, holding two big duffle bags that we’d left behind at the cabin.
Honestly? I was surprised. I’d expected a full out attack, the bags just being a pretense to get him over here. I’d figured once he knew where we were, he’d be sending Jax’s wolves over, not coming over himself and definitely not with the bags we’d left.
“Breck, come in, come in.” Roman stepped to the side and allowed the other man to come into the house before shutting and quietly locking the door behind him.
Brecken moved from the hall into the main room of the house, at least on the lower floor, but didn’t really look at anyone other than Roman. He set the bags down by one of the chairs and shoved his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels. “You guys doin’ okay?”
“Yeah, we’ll survive. Always do.” Roman shrugged.
“Why are we making nice?” I hissed, keeping my voice quiet enough that Brecken wouldn’t hear me.
Blake moved to sit next to me and put his hand on my knee, a movement that didn’t go unnoticed by Brecken. “Just be patient, I’m sure Roman knows what he’s doing,” he said, patting my knee slightly and keeping his voice low enough that the only thing Brecken would hear was a murmur, if that.
“We’ve been waiting so long for this. I just want to know what’s going on. I want to get the answers we need and move on, look for this oracle you were talking about,” I said quietly to Blake.
“Just be patient, darling. It will get figured out.” The smoothing circles Blake was rubbing on my knee weren’t helping. In fact, they were just illustrating how I felt.
Like we were going in circles.
Around and around until one of us caught the other or was able to break the cycle. I could hear Roman and Micah talking in the background still just exchanging pleasantries and nothing of note. My irritation was starting to outweigh my logical brain. Why were we wasting time talking to Brecken when he was just trying to play us anyway?
What if his job had been to keep us here while the wolves gathered, cornering me like they had in the garage? Maybe they were setting fire to the house right now? Would we even know?
My anxiety was skyrocketing the more I remembered how many times I’d been cornered by Jax’s wolves already, how many times I’d barely escaped with my life. I didn’t even notice that the leg Blake’s hand wasn’t resting on was bouncing uncontrollably until he switched the placement of his hand. The coppery tang of blood filled my mouth, and I realized that I’d been chewing on my nails and had taken what had probably started as a small hangnail to almost an inch down my finger. Blood welled in the wound, and I popped the finger into my mouth, willing it to stop bleeding.
I wasn’t sure whether it was the blood or the anxiety that had slowly been building, but suddenly, I found myself on my feet, striding over to where Roman and Brecken stood.
Blake and Micah both briefly tried to stop me, but their hands just seemed to slide right off, as though they knew their effort was wasted before they even tried. Roman turned to look at me, and I’d be willing to bet that whatever he saw on my face was enough to let him know that this wasn’t going to go the way he wanted.
“Brecken.” I came to a stop in front of the betrayer.
“Good to see you again, Nina,” he replied, sounding nervous. As he damn well should.
“Is it? Is it good to see me? Why exactly is that? Because now that you know where I am, you can sell me out to Jax again? You can bring more wolves around that want to take me away from my true mates to a man that would have me be no more than a fuck toy? Is it good to see me because you know your payday is almost here? Because you’ll finally be able to stop betraying your friend?”
His mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for air as he tried to grasp at the lies he could tell to cover his ass, except they slipped through his fingers like sand. “I-I-I don’t understand.”
I glanced at Roman, who seemed more than happy to take a step back and let me be the bad guy. Fine. I could be a bad bitch. I could make Brecken squeal like the little piggy he was.
After a moment of just glaring at him, I continued, “Did you realize that if given the opportunity, those wolves would have gladly killed Roman and Micah? Your friend and a wolf you worked hard to save. Tell me, what was it that prompted the betrayal? Was it money? Prestige? Or were you just over having Roman as a friend and didn’t want to have that awkward conversation? Or is it that you hate women? Well, female shifters. I mean, we know you like women. After all, you had your cute little girlfriend bug this house before we got here, didn’t you? That pixie cut really is darling on her.” I smiled and showed too many teeth, enough that his eyes went wide. For a long time, I’d known I had a little crazy in me, but for the last few years, or rather, ever since I’d first felt the violent impulses stir within me, I’d blocked them out. Pushed them down. I did everything I could to be a normal, kind hearted woman, but sometimes…sometimes, you needed to flip the bitch switch and show them just how crazy you could be.
Brecken was human in a house full of wolf shifters, a mistake he was realizing too late. “I didn’t do anything,” he said, trying again.
“We can tell that you’re lying. Did you know that? Shifters can always tell, it’s the elevated heart rate that gives it away. The way the pupils dilate slightly and the breath comes a little short. Not enough for a human to notice, but to shifters? Well, you may as well stick a giant neon sign over your head that reads ‘Liar.’”
All the color drained from Brecken’s face. “Look, I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. Jaxon just wanted to know where you were. I gave him the coordinates but his wolves never came back, so he wanted me to escort another group up to the cabin. That was it, that’s all that happened. Please, don’t hurt me.” The last was said as a fearful whisper, one that would have cowed a lesser woman, a woman that hadn’t stared death in the face on numerous occasions.
That wasn’t me though.
He’d threatened my mates, my freedom. I might not kill him, but I was going to hurt him. I was going to make sure he knew what he’d done was wrong.
I flexed my hand at my side, forming a fist, ready to deck him as my anger built inside me. “Why should I not hurt you? You were prepared to have my mates killed. What if I did the same to your girlfriend? How would that make you feel? Would you want to hurt me?”
“Please don’t hurt Kate, she was just doing what I asked. Nothing more, nothing less. None of this is her fault or anything to do with her.” Brecken’s words ran like vomit from his mouth.
“Maybe we should. Maybe paying Kate a visit is exactly what we should do.” My guys knew I would never hurt an innocent, but Brecken didn’t, and from the way his eyes went wide, he was taking every word I said at face value.
“Please, I’ll tell you whatever you want, just leave Kate out of this.”
“What do you know about Jax’s pack?”
“They’re mostly meatheads, maybe a brain cell between most of them, but Jax is cunning, crafty. He wants you, and he won’t stop until he gets you and your mates are dead. The way he spoke about you…it’s an obsession not affection. He wants to break you and build you back up into the mate he wants.”
“How many of them know where we are now?” I demanded.
“I didn’t want to tell them, not after how they were acting at the cabin.”
“That’s not an answer, Brecken.” I took a half step forward until I was almost toe-to-toe with the man.
“Just one,” he replied eventually.
“One wolf knows where we are?” I repeated, needing to make sure I was understanding him correctly.
He nodded.
Before I could ask him anything else, a series of pops rang out a second before the front window shattered, exploding inward, coating everything with shards of glass. I felt some shards nick my cheek on one side and turned to check on my mates, only to find them just as covered in glass.
I didn’t look at much else before I turned back to figure out who was shooting at us.
What I saw shouldn’t have surprised me. After all, people underestimated me all the time, so why would I underestimate someone? Only I did, and now Little Miss Pixie Cut Kate was here pointing a gun at me.
21
Nina
The human police would have been called by the neighbors, I was sure, which meant that we had limited time for this to get resolved.
“These are silver bullets, bitch, so step away from Brecken,” Kate said, her voice ringing through the now broken window as she approached the edge of the house.
I did as she asked. The last thing we needed was another case of silver poisoning. Part of me thought she was going to climb in through the broken window for a moment, but she didn’t. She just stood in the flower bed that was below the window, aiming the gun at me, while everyone tried to figure out what the hell we were going to do.
Apparently, the guys all had the same idea though and shifted, exploding out of their clothes as they changed into their wolf forms. Micah and Roman lunged for Brecken, and Blake went for the girlfriend. I figured two on one had better odds of success, so I backed Blake up. She didn’t run like I expected though. Instead, she threw a jacket she’d been holding over the broken glass and hopped up, swinging herself inside and aiming her gun at Blake, who was rapidly approaching.
I didn’t want my mate to get shot, but I also didn’t want him to maul her, so I body-checked him out of the line of fire. Kate was just scared and probably hella confused, like I was most of the time. It always felt like there was something going on that was bigger than I could understand.
The gun fired, and my heart jumped in my chest. I desperately wanted to check and see if anyone was hit, but I also couldn’t afford to take my eyes off Kate. I knew it hadn’t hit Blake since it hadn’t been aimed in his direction. I couldn’t check on anyone else without giving Kate an opening to shoot me, not that I thought she would since I was the one they were after, so I took a step toward her.
“Kate, please, you don’t have to do this,” I said, hoping to reason with her.
“You were going to hurt Brecken, why shouldn’t I hurt you?” she demanded. Her eyes had gone too wide and her movements were jerky, which let me know exactly how freaked out she was.
“You would regret it,” I said quietly.
“Threatening the person with the gun isn’t the smartest move,” she replied with a sneer, waving the gun around and showing terrible trigger discipline. With the way her finger hovered over the trigger instead of sitting at the side of the gun, she could accidentally fire it at any second.
“It wasn’t a threat. I just know how much I’ve regretted hurting people to protect myself in the past, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.” I kept my voice low and smooth so I didn’t startle her, and the whole time, I was listening to what was going on behind me. From what I could gather, Roman and Micah had Brecken cornered, but he must have had a weapon of his own to keep them at bay, judging from the growling and snarling I heard.
“And how many people have you hurt? How many have been hurt because of you? Did you think to stop and ask Brecken why he was doing this? What would happen to him if he didn’t deliver?”
“You shot at us before I had the chance.” I was not going to allow this woman to make me feel guilty for my actions when Brecken was the one who had betrayed us.
“I shot at you because you were going to hurt him,” she screamed at me, exasperation ringing in her voice.
The tension in the room seemed to ignite with the sounds that came from her mouth. I was willing to bet that Brecken had been distracted by Kate’s scream of frustration, and it had given Roman and Micah the opening they needed. Now it was Brecken that was screaming and not in a good way.
Part of me hoped they didn’t hurt him too badly, since I wasn’t sure he deserved it completely anymore, but the more vicious side of me, the side that hid in the dark with my wolf, wanted to tear him to shreds for what he did to us.
“We were scared. Can’t you understand that? A man wants to take me away and lock me in a room to breed me like some kind of show dog. Is it not okay for me to want more for my life than that?” I ranted.
“Call your mates off,” she said, turning to me and pointing the gun directly at me. Her expression had changed from one of fear and anxiety to one of acceptance and determination. This was the dangerous version of Kate, I knew that down to the marrow of my bones, and yet I took a step toward her. “Stay back.”
“Kate, please. I don’t want anyone to get hurt, just—”
“Then maybe you should have thought about that before luring Brecken here, hm? Before threatening him? Because now he is hurt and I’m pissed off.”
“Can’t you and I just talk? I want to understand what you mean when you said something would happen to Brecken if he didn’t deliver us. Please,” I said as I took a half step closer. I knew it was a risky choice. Getting closer to the woman with the gun and silver bullets wasn’t normally the type of thing on my to-do list.
It felt like the only choice I had though.
The guys were in wolf form, which meant that talking was out, and even I, their mate, could only just pick up on their emotions. I wasn’t sure whether I was having too many of my own or if something else was blocking our connection, but they seemed further away than usual.
Maybe there was just too much noise in my head, what with the threats around us seeming to multiply every time I tu
rned around, not to mention my wolf getting more agitated with every passing moment. A tiny part of me wondered if this was the event that would force her out of her cage, but the more time that passed, the less likely I thought that was.
The whole time, I knew Blake was watching me, I could feel his concern and his confusion. He still didn’t know that I couldn’t shift, so he was probably wondering why I was still in human form when I would be faster, stronger, and more agile in my wolf form. All the better to dodge bullets with, my dear. He had to be concerned about why I was trying to reason with Kate.
The truth of it was I was tired of people hurting, of hurting people. I just wanted some answers, and maybe, just maybe, if I could get through to Kate, she might give me some, or at least the ones she had. I’d been hoping the same of Brecken, though I still wasn’t convinced that he’d been about to tell me the truth when Kate started firing.
“You keep moving closer, and I distinctly remember telling you not to move, so why are you? Do you want me to shoot you? Is that it? You’d rather die of silver poisoning than go and be with Jax?”
I didn’t know what to say to that because it was the truth. There wasn’t a single atom of my being that wanted to go and be with Jax. In fact, the more I learned about him, the more I knew I would do whatever it took to stay away from him, even if that meant shuffling off the mortal coil. Of course, I would never say that out loud where my mates could hear. Even though we loved each other, I wasn’t sure they understood just how far I’d go to avoid becoming Jax’s prisoner.
If I answered, then my mates might pick up on the fact that I was lying, so instead, I did the only thing I could think of and dove at Kate. She tried to dodge but wasn’t quick enough, and I landed on her in a thud, knocking us both to the ground. I felt the air rush out of her lungs, and normally, that would stop someone, but she was scrappy.