by KT Strange
His mouth was on me again, making me sigh. When Eli ducked his head to kiss me, I curled an arm around his neck, wanting to keep him close. I needed them so close to me.
Eli’s words found my ear again, low-murmured and rough, designed to have me in shivers.
“You look so good like this, our gorgeous girl, nobody in this world was made for us like you were. Worth the damn wait, I’d wait another fifty years if you asked me to,” the intensity of how he talked made me reach down to curl my fingers in Finn’s hair, caught between the slowly rising waves of intense pleasure he was giving me and Eli’s heart-shattering confessions.
“I can’t,” I said, right on the edge, I needed something more, something-
“Finn,” Eli’s voice was a demand in the darkness, and Finn sighed, two of his fingers, road-rough and thick, slid inside me.
It was exactly what I needed, and I moaned, rolling my hips, back off the sheets. Eli’s hand scooped under my spine, holding me as I shuddered through the white-out of it all. I was barely aware of Finn dropping a kiss on my belly before he moved over me, his cock hard against me.
He didn’t need to ask, I pressed down against him as he entered me, not giving me a chance to catch my breath, something I was coming to love, need even. In the pack’s embrace I was liquid power, hot all over and formless. The only thing missing-
Eli’s teeth grazed the side of my neck and I froze as Finn fucked me, his hands digging trenches in the mattress on either side of my shoulders.
I was so ready for it. I shifted my head to the side and gave Eli a pleading look. I wanted it so badly, to know him and have him like the rest of the pack.
His eyes were closed. He couldn’t see the expression on my face, or that he was all I needed, just him, just like that, as he was. He was enough, and he didn’t know it.
Finn groaned, his strokes coming faster, shuddering and he cursed under his breath as he came hard into me.
Eli pulled away and the tension ran out of my muscles as Finn kissed me, his breath hot on my cheek.
“Love you,” he promised, “forever.”
I reached for him, curling my arms around his back as I hung onto him tightly.
For now, it would have to be enough.
Nine
Darcy
The next morning was dreamy, waking up pressed between Finn’s heat and Eli’s bulk, the place that I knew I’d be for the rest of my life if I had any say in the matter. I let my eyes run trace over the box ceiling of our room, listening to the guys breathe slowly.
The rest of the pack should be arriving soon, and I was anxious to see them. I shifted, squirming, until Finn lifted his head.
“You gotta go?” He asked, shifting to his side so I could get out. My cheeks heated.
“Just missing the rest of the guys,” I admitted. Finn cracked a smirk.
“Didn’t we tire you out enough last night? Eli? Stop playing possum, wake up. You didn’t do your share last night, and now she’s all needing the rest of the pack.”
“Like that’s a bad thing,” I said, shoving Finn’s shoulder. He laughed and caught my wrist in his hand, tugging me down over him, tangling the sheets around us.
“Christ, would you two quit fucking around?” Eli lifted his head from the pillows, crease-marks on his face, a funny look on someone who had a blond sheen of beard scruff from where he hadn’t shaved yet. “Messing up the blankets, the both of you.”
“Grumpy needs his morning lay,” Finn play-whispered to me, his blue eyes sparkling in the morning light. A dull pulse in the pit of my stomach told me that at least part of my body was into the idea. The protestation of my thigh muscles when I moved though, told a different story.
“Hard pass,” I said, “I need breakfast, and to find to when the rest of the guys are getting here.”
“You just miss Max,” Eli said, flopping on his back with a sigh. “We know the truth. You and that traitorous heart of yours.” From the way his eyes fluttered, I knew he was teasing.
“You guys both suck,” I said, crawling over Finn and purposefully getting him in the stomach with my knee. He groaned as I did, cupping my thigh as I went and giving it a squeeze.
“Thought that was your job,” he called after me as I trailed into the bathroom, intent on a shower and to wash the rest of last night’s icky feelings from my body. I flipped him the bird and shut the bathroom door for some much-needed me-time.
My skin was humming, it was almost like I knew the pack was near. The spray of water hit me and I sighed, closing my eyes. They were almost here, and then we could begin the final destruction of my old world, and my old home. But had it ever even really been my home at all?
“Darce!” Cash swept me up into a bear-hug before Ace squished me from behind, the two of them surrounding me. Cash kissed me once, before letting me down, and Charlie tugged me in for a long slow, sweeping kiss that had me bending back in his arms. I barely had time to breathe, but I didn’t want to, curling my hand around the back of his neck.
“Hey kid, you did good,” he said when he finally pulled back, his dark eyes sparkling.
“Never been told I’ve done good for killing someone before,” I replied, knowing exactly what he was talking about.
“The only good Creston is a dead Creston,” Ace said with solemnity before pulling me away from Charlie. He had just kissed me, nipping at my bottom lip, his hands possessive as they stroked up my back when Max made a noise behind us.
“Nah, nope, she’s mine. Paws off, boys, bitches before britches!”
I laughed at Max’s words and hugged her tight. Frank piled out behind her, and I gave him a big grin before turning back to Max.
“Britches?” I asked.
“Man-pants. Really annoying man-pants who complain the whole trip because their missing the love of their life,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “You should have heard them, Darce, every day was the end of the world because your sweet ass wasn’t in the vicinity.”
“We like your company too, Max, it’s just not the same,” Ace said with a shrug. She waved a hand at him.
“Whatever, I’m not judging. Okay, a little bit.”
“So I hear we picked up some new accomplices?” Daria asked as she stepped into the entry hall of Luka’s mansion. Her eyes widened when the younger witch entered the room. “Luka! You didn’t tell me it was Luka,” she hissed at Charlie who made an oops face at me.
“Who’s Luka?” Frank asked, giving her a funny look.
“What’s wrong with Luka?” Charlie asked softly.
“Nothing,” she said, and then shoved past me and Max to stop short in front of him. “Luka.”
“Star-speaker now,” he replied with a grin.
“I’m so happy for you but at the same time… wow, that’s heavy.”
“Not as heavy as the mantle you wear, there’s quite a few members of your family and your intended’s that are displeased with you right now. Shall we go to my study to discuss?” He offered her his arm, and she slipped her fingers around it delicately, leaving without another glance back.
“I think they were friends,” I said when the wolves watched the two witches go. “Stop glaring, he’s not going to eat her,” I said to Cash. He shot me a sheepish grin.
“Can’t help it. She’s little. She needs protecting.”
“We nearly left her behind at a gas station at least twice,” Frank added. “She has a death wish, I swear.” Finn ruffled his hair, making the younger wolf half-tackle him with a low grumble. They tussled, and I shook my head.
“You’re such a den mother,” Max teased Cash, with a poke in his ribs. He growled at her in response and snuggled up to me, pulling me in for a tight hug.
“God we missed you,” he breathed into my ear. I let myself rest against him, my eyes shutting. Soon, who knew how soon, things would be thrown into chaos as we tried to take on and destroy the witch’s council. This moment, and other moments like it, would be all that I’d have to cling to during
the fight. Even still, I had no idea what that kind of fight looked like.
Wolfe needed to begin talking and giving more details than his usual non-specific half-answers.
“You’re going to need to do without me for a few minutes,” I said, “I need to find Wolfe and talk to him.”
Cash raised an eyebrow.
“Secret witch stuff?” His words were teasing, but I knew he was concerned. I kissed him on the nose.
“I just have some questions for him he might not be comfortable answering in front of an audience.”
“You know he loves a crowd hanging on his every word,” he said, but let me go after a quick squeeze. “Just fill us in after. We’re going to get settled. This place looks massive.”
“You want to know about Dragonpack,” Wolfe said as I sat down next to him in Luka’s grand library, books on stacks that soared up twenty feet in the air. The only way to get up there was to use one of the many ladders that rolled along on a rail system. Wolfe was by a tall leaded window, the diamond-shaped glass panes wavy and warped with age.
“I want to know everything you’ve got in your head, because all I have are puzzle pieces and nothing seems to fit together,” I replied, crossing my legs. He wouldn’t meet my eyes, instead staring out at the lawn through the fractured window.
“This is a long story.”
“Give me the Twitter version. Short, please?”
Wolfe sighed and looked like he wanted to rub his face in his hands, but didn’t, slumping into the wingback chair he occupied.
“Dragonpack was corrupted long ago, I don’t know how long, The wolves I sent to them… I believe I unwittingly sent them to their deaths. There was no trace of them when we took the camp.” He swallowed hard. I blinked away moisture in the corners of my eyes. Christ, that was awful.
“We?”
“Sentinel, the demons you believe me to be cavorting with.”
“Cavorting’s not exactly the word I’d use.”
“They are… tools. Useful tools. Fearless fighters that have taken exception to the powers witches hold over the magical world. They had a werewolf lover once, and she was murdered by a group of hunters. They’ve never forgotten that, Levi still wears her token around his neck,” Wolfe’s voice went soft, worn down, and he sighed. “Demons are just like any creature, as capable of love as anyone… they just do it with more intensity, perhaps.”
I felt bad for them, a little, but then remembered how broken Max had been after staying with them. My heart hardened.
“So what did you guys do. To the pack?”
“Right… right. We cleansed it.” His eyes were dark as he finally looked at me fully.
“Cleansed…” I swallowed. His lips pressed together in a grim smile, confirming silently exactly what I thought he meant by that. Katy… a flicker of horror ignited in my stomach.
“The children, the puppies, we left untouched, and some of the adults that did not fight. The rest, they were too… they would have found another dragon, or perhaps a dragon would have been called to them, at some point, and that poison in them would have spread. They had plans, you see, to begin culling humans, mundanes, and to spread out from there.”
“The kids though, where are they?”
“Safe,” Wolfe said, “the pack is much reduced, in it’s former place, of course, but the poison has been rooted out. They will rebuild, and I think some of them are not even sad to see the diseased flesh carved out, if you will.” He spoke plainly of it, but from the pain in his expression, I knew that this would haunt him for a long time. I was barely even able to think about it without feeling sick.
“So that’s that,” I breathed.
“Hardly. Someone corrupted them, and I believe Creston Hailward had contact with them, at some point. They were the largest pack of wolves on the continent that I’m aware of, and no group of hunters could have taken them down… I believe the seeds of corruption were planted in them to wipe them out in a more insidious manner. It was finding them, and seeing what had been done to them, that made me realize that the evil in our society cannot be allowed to continue. The witches who demand dominance over wolves will never rest until each one is hunted down and killed, no matter the manner of their death.” Wolfe took a deep, unsteady breath and reached over to me. I let him take my hand in his, and he squeezed my fingers gently. “We are talking about the destruction, murder, of your father, Darcy.”
“I hate him,” I whispered.
“You do, but hating someone and killing someone in a calculated and cold manner requires two very different mindsets,” his tone softened, his eyes closing for a moment. When he looked at me again, the intensity in his gaze made me freeze in my spot, my limbs heavy. “Hating someone means you care. Killing them in cold blood is a very passionless, feelingless thing. I’m not sure that you have it in you.”
“I-” It was always meant to be me. That thought, that I would be the one to take down my own father, rose up inside me from some hidden place. My eyelashes grew wet. “He tried to kill me first.”
Wolfe’s face grew sorrowful, and he shifted, rising up to embrace me. I shivered, leaning into him, as he stroked the back of my head.
“You were greater than he could have ever imagined,” he whispered.
“He doesn’t think so.”
“He is a fool not to have seen what is right in front of him.” He pulled back and smeared away a few of my tears with his thumb. My chest was tight with some other emotion, so close to love, but nothing like what I felt for my wolves. He looked at me like he adored me. “He is a fool,” he repeated himself, “and his misjudgment will be his own end.”
“I… we really have to…” I couldn’t get the words out. Wolfe sighed and wrapped me in another hug.
“They will fight as to survive, and that means they will try to take this house out, and all that reside in it. They will burn us like a nest of vipers, because we have arrived at their doorstep and they know what our being here means. It is an end to their era of dominance, and the beginning of a world in which they will need to live alongside, cooperatively, all creatures that they disdain as lesser. That is the sort of evil prejudice that can never be put by, because they believe their very survival means that we must die to ensure it.”
I rested against his chest and nodded slowly, a heavy, cold feeling in my stomach.
My father needed to die, probably by my hand. No, definitely by my hand. He had brought me into this world, and I was going to be the one to take him out of it. Wolfe was right, my father would never stop until the enemy was gone, and now I was part of that enemy.
A knock at the library’s grand doors had us pulling a part and me wiping furiously at my cheeks.
“Yes?” Wolfe asked as a maid stuck her head in, her neatly braided hair crowning a sweet face with wide eyes.
“I’m sorry, sir, but an invitation has arrived from Llewellyn house,” she said, stepping in, a thin envelope on a silvered tray in her hand.
“Invitation?” Wolfe asked, scoffing for a moment before clearing his throat. He took it from her, and she shifted her weight from one foot to the other as he opened the paper within before raising an eyebrow at me. “It seems that we have been invited to dinner,” he said. “Yourself, myself, and one of your wolves.”
Ten
Darcy
“I fucking hate suits,” Charlie said, tugging at his collar with irritation on his face. I laughed and leaned up to kiss his cheek, although my heart was heavy and my gut was tense. We were stood out on the front stoop to my childhood home, although stoop was a bit of a misnomer. The thick-cut marble portico met a glossy door that was twice my height and doubly intimidating.
The pack had refused to let me go with just one of them, and I hoped my mother was prepared to set a table for four more. If I was being honest, I was glad the whole pack was going with me. I didn’t want to face my father without them at my back. And I knew they had my back.
“Stop pawing at yourself,” Wo
lfe chided. “You are about to be in the presence of the witch equivalent of royalty.” I could barely detect the hint of sarcasm in his voice.
“I didn’t vote for them,” Cash muttered and winked at me when I glanced at him. My guys looked good, in suits that Luka’s staff (it was hard to think of a sixteen year old as having staff, but he did carry the weight of the entire universe on his shoulders, so I guess he was responsible enough to manage a household of servants) had procured for them. I was in a pretty, Wolfe-approved dress that didn’t have too low of a neckline. Max had managed to tame my curls into a braid, just in case everything goes tits-up, if you’re throwing lightning around you don’t need to worry about getting hair in your eyes, Darcy, she’d said.
“How long are we going to wait out here?” Ace asked, sounding uncharacteristically annoyed. When I looked at him, I could see how tense he was.
It wasn’t every day you met your girl’s parents, I guess, especially not when your girl’s parents wanted you dead.
“Still not sold on this being a good idea,” Finn commented.
“Diplomacy is one of the basic tenants of the highest families of the witching world,” Wolfe replied. “They won’t murder us until after the flan has been served and tea poured.”
“Great,” Eli snorted.
“Shhh,” I hissed as the sound of the locks turning on the door. One of the serving girls was there, her eyes wide as she surveyed us.
“Oh,” she said, before blinking hard and seeming to remember her manners. “Please, Miss Darcy, um, please come in with your… your guests.”
“Mates,” I said, although I didn’t want to be rude to her. For her, it was just a job. I glanced at Wolfe. “And my mentor.”
She went as still as the door itself and stood there woodenly as we filed in.
Ace whistled as he looked skyward at the vaulted ceiling of the grand entry before giving me a sheepish look.
“I know you said it was nice, but I didn’t figure on it being this nice,” he kept his voice hushed, like he was in a library or maybe more aptly, a morgue.