Troy opened his palm for his brothers to see the amethyst crystal that was cool as stone. “It turned white-hot,” he said, speaking at a low volume and turning his back to Reece.
“Indicating Dante was also out there?” asked Shane.
Troy had gotten them up to speed in terms of placing a name to the physical description they were working with.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Troy began, shaking his head at Shane. “I don’t think it got hot because of Dante. I think it got hot because of Angel herself.”
“Because Dante turned her,” Conor supplied, smartly guessing.
“Jack’s going to flip,” said Dean in a low voice.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Kaleb proposed, but it was wishful thinking.
They had one rule to go by, one law of the land and piece to the puzzle, and that was that Sasha’s amethyst grew hot in the presence of the devil of Devil’s Fist. Angel wasn’t one of them. She was one of his. One of the damned. And Troy didn’t have a clue as to how he would reverse it. Angel had been turned by Dante. She was his.
Maybe he shouldn’t have brought her here to be healed.
Maybe he should’ve finished what the bullet wound had started and killed her.
But it hadn’t even crossed his mind, and now that it was, he was glad he hadn’t ended her life. Jack was too good a friend, too loyal to the pack. He didn’t deserve to have his heart broken. And the fact of the matter was that Troy had made a promise to him. One he was determined to keep.
“Reece must be out of her mind,” said Dean after glancing over his shoulder at her.
Troy didn’t want to think about it. She was safe. She hadn’t been harmed, other than terrified. But he agreed.
“Do you think Angel would’ve attacked her if you hadn’t stopped her?” Kaleb asked.
“I don’t know what I think,” he barked quietly. “I have a bad feeling the sheriff shot her. Angel. A bad, bad feeling.”
The back door creaked open and Nikita emerged with blood in her hands. Jack nearly knocked her over, rushing into the room.
Nikita told them, “She’s resting. We were able to get the bullet out and Sasha healed the wound.”
They all spilled into the backroom where Angel, in her human form, was lying on a crystal slab with candles lit all around her.
Jack wasted no time jerking his jacket off to cover her naked body. He stroked her cheek and was muttering teary apologies for ever thinking he should allow her to go back to work.
Sasha, hunched and focused, was washing her hands in a brass basin in the corner of the room.
Troy neared her.
“Thank you,” he said, wrapping his arm around her and giving her a grateful squeeze.
She angled her aged eyes up at him and said, “You should’ve let her die.”
Well, at least she’d broken her vow of silence, he thought optimistically.
“I need more crystals,” he said instead. “More amethysts.”
She grunted and it sounded like disapproval, but moved to a cluttered shelf where herbs and geodes lived. There was a dusty box and she opened it without pulling it from its home between a leaning cactus and a stack of leather-bound journals that contained spells and chants, he guessed.
Sasha handed him four, having understood their use and who would need them.
“Thanks,” he breathed, pocketing the fistful of crystals.
When he turned for Reece who was staring wide-eyed at Angel from the open doorway, Sasha grabbed hold of his arm.
“You’re wasting time.”
He didn’t know how to respond.
“That girl,” she said, nodding her chin at Reece. “You need her.”
“I know.”
But he didn’t, not to Sasha’s satisfaction. Not yet.
“She doesn’t need you,” she warned. “Remember that.”
“Okay.”
“But you need her,” she pressed, and it sent a chill down his spine.
Leaning in, he asked, “Is she my one true mate?”
He needed to know, for sure and for certain. But Sasha refused to give him that. She stared at him for a long moment then said, “She’s up for grabs, and you’re wasting time.”
***
As dawn broke on the horizon, moments after Jack carefully closed Angel’s bedroom door, having returned from Sasha’s home and tucked the love of his life into bed, Dante emerged from the cave he’d claimed deep in the wilderness.
He hadn’t slept. Fury had kept him up. She had disobeyed him. It didn’t bode well.
Dante had felt his shoulder burn like fire, white-hot and searing. He’d known. In the blink of an eye he’d known the second Angel had been shot. He’d entered her mind, seen her racing through the streets in the heart of the Fist. He’d summoned her.
But she had disobeyed him.
Why?
It was unacceptable.
Instead of running towards him, sprinting west through the dark night, the woman he’d turned wolf had run in the opposite direction. Though he’d filled her mind and tried to steer her, she’d somehow managed to refuse. She’d headed all the way out east until she found Troy.
Dante had used every shred of power he had over Angel to compel her to tear Reece Gladstone to shreds in the bed of that truck.
But he’d failed.
Today, he was determined to succeed.
Mentally, with all his might and power, as he stood in the cool forest where birds chirped and deer rustled through the vegetation, he infiltrated Angel Mercer’s mind. He could sense the moment her eyes popped open in bed. And it was then that he began to draw her towards him.
It took a little over an hour of intense concentration before Angel, in her shimmering white wolf form padded through the forest and found him at the mouth of his cave.
“You’ve been a very bad girl,” he told her as she whimpered and paced, her obstinate way of refusing to come closer and properly greet him.
He didn’t like this behavior.
He knew where he’d gone wrong with her.
Turning her hadn’t been enough. He needed to make her his one true mate. But if he did, he’d lose his chance with Reece.
He no longer wished to destroy Reece and take her life as a way of punishing Troy.
It would be far more detrimental to lock his dark heart with hers and make Reece his for all of eternity.
And he would.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t know exactly what to do with this one right here.
“Shift!” he commanded her and she rose up into her human form, naked and trembling before him.
“I love Jack,” she shrieked, terror slicing through her cracking voice. “You can’t do this to me anymore. I won’t let you torture me.”
“Is that so?” he challenged.
Determined, she stated, “Yes!”
“I’ll consider it.”
Her eyes brightened with hope.
“But only if you do something for me,” he told her.
“Anything.”
He sneered a leering grin at her and warned, “If you screw it up—"
“I won’t!”
He studied her for a long moment, then began to explain what her role would be in his new, wicked plan.
***
“Why didn’t you tell me about Angel?” Reece demanded as they walked along one of the trails in Yellowstone.
Troy was gripping the amethyst crystal in his hand and glancing at it from time to time. His brothers, each on their own trail, were covering ground throughout the National Park as well, as the blazing afternoon sun shined down, high in the blue, cloudless sky.
“I didn’t want to worry you,” he said honestly.
But she seemed unsatisfied. If anything, Reece seemed as appalled as she’d been last night in Sasha’s house. He needed to turn this around, and fast. Hearing from his grandmother that Reece was “up for grabs” and not necessarily destined to be his had sent a shock of fear thro
ugh his heart unlike any he’d ever experienced. But jumping her bones in the middle of Yellowstone didn’t seem like the way to go…
“You didn’t want to worry me? She could’ve killed me!”
“But she didn’t,” he reminded her.
“Troy!” she shouted, grabbing his arm so he’d have to stop walking and face her.
“You want to save your skin?” he barked right back, confronting her without backing down. “Be mine!”
She quieted, growing very still, and narrowed her eyes at him.
“Do you know something I don’t?” she breathed.
“Yeah, it’s called, I want you and you’ve been a damn tease.”
He hadn’t meant it like that, and knew the second the insult had flown from his mouth that it had been the worst possible thing to say to her.
“A tease? Is that what you think?”
“No, it’s not what I think,” he backpedaled. “But Sasha said something to me last night, something that—”
“Oh, there it is again!”
“What?”
“You know something and you’ve been withholding it.”
“I’m about to tell you, literally right now.”
“But you learned it last night and waited?” she challenged.
She had him there, but what was he supposed to have told her? That his mother advised he rape Reece and that his grandmother just warned him with grave implications that if he didn’t mate with Reece, the devil of Devil’s Fist might beat him to the punch? How’s that for romance?
“Yeah, that’s right,” he told her shamelessly.
She snorted out an appalled laugh he didn’t much appreciate.
But Troy had already told her as much as she needed to know, as far as he was concerned. He repeated, “You can be mine or be at risk. The choice is yours.”
“Those are my options?” she balked.
“This damn thing is stone cold,” he complained, glancing down at the amethyst in his hand.
Softening with curiosity, the depth of which surprised him, she asked, “What would it mean to be yours? What would that entail?”
He stared at her for a long moment then asked, “You really want to know?”
“I’m asking you, aren’t I?”
“We’d have to mate.”
“Mate?” she asked as an intrigued smile tugged at the corner of her pretty mouth.
The grin was contagious as he clarified, “Have sex. Make love. Whatever.”
“Is that all?”
“No, that’s not all,” he told her as they began walking again.
“Well?”
“I’d have to bite you. Draw blood. Mix my blood with yours. You’d turn. You’d become a werewolf like me.”
She fell silent, unsurprisingly, and after a long, contemplative beat, admitted, “I’m not sure I want that.”
“If you stay on the outside,” he told her, “don’t complain that I’m not letting you in.”
He hadn’t meant to sound so harsh about it, but he needed her to wake up. He’d just had his own rude awakening thanks to Sasha. It was a bitter pill to swallow that the feelings he’d had for Reece all these years didn’t actually amount to anything real or fated. He would’ve sworn that the fondness he’d felt for her from afar had been an indication that they were meant to be, but according to his grandmother, Reece could be meant for anyone. She was “up for grabs.” He hated it, and he wasn’t about to sugarcoat the truth for Reece anymore. If she wanted the truth—about Angel, about them, about the shitstorm that was sweeping through the Fist—then he’d give it to her.
Reece jumped on him and he would’ve thought she was attacking him if she hadn’t crushed her warm lips against his mouth. Instinctively and like second nature, he’d wrapped his arms around her so that she wouldn’t fall, and it was now that he felt her long, slender legs clamp around his waist, her arms hooked around his neck.
Was she jumping his bones, literally?
She began murmuring hungry moans, kissing him as though she couldn’t get enough.
He had to wonder if fear was driving this crusade, but he let his curiosity go. He didn’t care why she was suddenly aggressive, wanting him, needing him. He was just glad that she was, so he carried her off the trail so that they wouldn’t be spied by any passing hikers and lowered her down to the grassy thicket floor beyond the thin tree line that shielded them from the trail.
Urgently, Reece tore at his belt buckle and it opened. With fast hands, she worked the fly of his jeans open, as he angled over her, pressing his mouth to hers in a series of hot, groaning kisses.
If she wanted him, all of him, in the shady thicket of Yellowstone, that’s what he was prepared to give her. He would bite her next, tear out a shallow chunk of his own skin, mix their blood together, and then guide her through what would quickly become the greatest transformation of her life.
This was happening.
And Troy couldn’t have been happier about it.
As he kissed her, pulling away only to free her of the thin sweater she wore, her tight black jeans coming off next, he realized he’d never felt more alive in his life. The greatest thrill he ever felt hadn’t come over him in the first war he’d fought in or the second, none of them, it hadn’t come over him when he’d inherited the werewolf throne or during any of the other milestones he’d accomplished over the course of his one hundred years on this earth. It was happening now, right here, with her. Reece Gladstone was his greatest thrill.
She’d yanked his tee-shirt off and pushed his jeans down his thighs, as though she was tumbling through the kind of aroused desperation that ordinarily overcame teenagers under the bleachers at prom. But when she’d gotten his boxer-briefs down his legs too, and took hold of his hard dimensions, she slowed, switching gears as if she wanted to savor every second from this moment onward.
He could give that to her. He would. Whatever she wanted. However she wanted it, he would give it to her that way.
The feel of her warm, small hand wrapped around his erection was enough to melt his heart. He’d never felt a woman so gentle, yet intense, handle his body. He began delivering slow, sensual kisses up and down her tender neck, across her cheek and over her loose mouth, as she began stroking him, her legs spread for him.
God, he felt like he might lose it right here and now before they even reached the main event, but he controlled himself and concentrated on the beautiful, fluttering rhythm of her aroused breathing.
As he brought his mouth to her breast, pulling her bra cup down and tasting her dewy perspiration, suckling, he kept alert for their surroundings. One eye open. And never lost awareness of where the amethyst crystal was, deep inside his jeans pocket that was now pushing against his calf. It would be their only warning of danger.
Her moans were becoming his favorite sound, the feel of her soft skin, his favorite sensation.
Hooking his hand under her, he pinched her bra clasp between her shoulder blades, and the elastic material popped and came loose, falling away from her perfect chest. Her panties came next, but he didn’t pull them down. With expert control, as he gazed deeply into her bright green eyes, though the glass lenses of those red-frames, he willed his hand to turn into a paw, claws growing sharp without her ever knowing, and he tore the thin material open with one sharp motion.
Her eyes widened in the same second and his hand returned in time for him to discard what was left of her panties off to the side.
She was fully spread underneath him, now. Nothing stood in-between them or in his way. But he didn’t penetrate her, not yet.
Instead, he pressed the hard length of his erection along her wet shape, and began moving, feeling the slippery folds of her core brushing against the underside of his dimensions.
Stimulating her, he watched her expression melt into a lazy smile. Her eyelids grew heavy and soon her eyes closed as her head tilted. It was like she was inviting him to kiss her cheek as he continued stimulating her so that’s what he
did, and soon her every breathy moan was breezing into his ear.
“Are you ready?” he groaned into her ear, as he brought his finger between her legs, feeling the heat roll off of her core.
Testing how relaxed she’d become, he gently penetrated her with his finger and she let out a sensual yelp as her tight body clamped around his finger.
“Are you?”
“I think so,” she managed to respond.
“I’m much larger,” he warned as he pulled his finger from her and began stimulating her sensitive mound so that she would relax fully for him. “I don’t want it to hurt.”
She took hold of his face in both hands and agreed, “Don’t hurt me.”
“I won’t,” he promised in a raspy voice, but he wasn’t sure how easy it would be to keep his desires under control. He’d been waiting for this day for a long, long moment.
As he lifted up from her just enough to angle his erection towards her quivering, slippery core, he caught sight of a subtle flicker of doubt behind those green eyes of hers.
Part of him wanted to ignore it, to move fast and thrust into her before she could change her mind. That same part of him knew he would have to, right here and now, if he wanted to make her his. But he couldn’t.
And even if he thought he could, Reece wouldn’t let him.
She pushed him off, pressing her palms against the firm wall of his chest and scrambling out from under him. “I’m sorry,” she breathed without looking at him as she gathered her clothe hastily and began covering herself up as quickly as possible.
“Reece,” he said when she sprang to her feet, having only pulled on her jeans.
She was walking away topless, trying to make sense of whether her sweater was inside out or not.
“Reece!” he called out again, as he quickly jerked on his own clothes.
By the time she reached the trail, she’d pulled her thin sweater back on, and Troy barreled out onto the trail behind her.
“Reece! What happened?” he asked, catching up to her, but she wouldn’t stop walking.
He dove in front of her so that she’d have to stop and look at him, but she only stopped. She couldn’t lift her eyes to him. He stooped, fighting to make eye contact.
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