by J. L. Wilder
“I know they would,” Marco said. “I would do the same thing. I know that, Sophie.”
“Then why?” she asked. “Why couldn’t you trust him?”
“I don’t know,” Marco admitted. “Maybe because he’s so young. Maybe because he’s so brash. But honestly, I think it comes down to the fact that I just can’t forget what it felt like to wake up and realize he was in the cave with us. There’s no logic to it, really. I’m not angry with him for trying to steal from us. I just remember what it felt like to know that someone was inside our home. It took me some time to get past that.”
“You seem like you’re more relaxed about it now,” she said.
“I am,” Marco said. “And Ryker will get there too. Don’t worry about it.”
“What changed?” she asked. “What finally let you feel comfortable?”
He glanced at her. “You want the truth?”
“Of course I do.”
“It was seeing the two of you together,” he admitted. “When I saw the way he looked at you by the river earlier today, I finally got it. I finally understood that the way he feels about you is the same as the way I feel about you, and because of that, I know that he could never do anything to hurt you.”
She smiled, came over to sit beside him, and leaned her head against his shoulder. “No,” she agreed. “He couldn’t.”
“You’ve known that all along, haven’t you?” Marco asked.
“Since the day we met him,” she said. “This imprinting business is strange. The way it impacts me, the way I can feel it—it’s strange. I never understood that it would go both ways when it happened. I thought an imprint would be something an alpha felt toward me, not a tie that existed between us.”
“But you do feel tied to us,” Marco said.
“Intensely so,” she said. “And to all three of you.”
“We’ve been hurting you, haven’t we? By keeping you and Burton apart?”
“Hurting isn’t exactly the right word,” Sophie said. “It hasn’t been painful. But I have been missing out on something that feels very important to me. When he found me by the river today, it felt like finding water in the desert.”
“You haven’t been without sex,” Marco said. “Between me and Ryker, your needs are being taken care of.”
“You’re right,” she said. “But it’s not just sex I need, Marco. It’s you. You and Ryker, and now, Burton. I need you as people.” She looked at him. “Would it be good enough for you to have sex with someone else other than me?”
“No,” he admitted.
“I don’t know how to account for the fact that I need three people instead of just one,” she said. “But I do need you. I need all of you.”
She rose up on her knees and kissed him deeply.
“I need all of you,” she repeated.
Marco took her in his arms and slowly laid her down on the floor of the cave. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry for making you wait.”
“You can make it up to me,” she said quietly. “Don’t make me wait right now.”
He nodded. “Never again. Whatever you need, you’ll have it.”
“You,” she whispered. “Now, please, while the others are gone. I can’t wait, Marco. I can’t.”
He stripped away her clothes, suddenly aching for her, and shed his own pants. He thrust into her, rock hard, his body hungry for her. Starving for her.
And even though she had already been with Burton, just a few hours ago, Marco quickly understood what she meant about needing all of them, because she responded to him as if she had been starving as well. She arched her back, lifting her hips to meet him, and he felt her clench around him.
“I’m coming,” she gasped. “Oh, God, Marco.”
“Already?” Just hearing her talk that way drove him wild. Shivers passed through his body.
“Needed you so bad,” she said, gasping, little aftershocks wracking her body. “As soon as they left us alone, I knew—I knew I’d get to have you.” Her eyes searched him, drinking in every inch of him. She wrapped her legs around his waist and used her heels to drive him more deeply into her, and he groaned with satisfaction.
They stayed like that for what felt like hours, rocking against each other, their breathing heavy, their muscles trembling, sweat pouring off their bodies, until finally, satisfied and exhausted, they rolled apart and allowed the cool air in the cave to dry their bodies.
Marco kept her hand linked tightly in his. “That was amazing,” he said. “I don’t know what I would do without you, Sophie.”
“Starve,” she said. “We’d starve without each other. I’d starve without any of the three of you.”
“I guess this is why shifters form packs,” he said.
“My pack was never like this,” Sophie said. “Not even for one day of the time we spent together was it like this.”
“Maybe not now,” Marco said. “But in the past. Historically. This is why the pack structure got started.” He stared at the ceiling, thinking about his own childhood. “I was always alone,” he said. “It was always me and my father—nobody else. When I heard about packs, I thought they sounded foolish. How could you ever waste time taking care of someone other than yourself? Where was the sense in that?
“But it doesn’t feel that way with you. Even with Ryker and Burton, it doesn’t feel like that. The three of you feel like extensions of myself. You feel necessary. Letting something happen to Ryker or Burton would be like cutting my own legs off. Letting something happen to you would be like carving out my heart.”
Sophie nodded, rolling in close to him. She was beginning to shiver, and he put his arms around her and drew her close, warming her.
“That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?” she asked. “Pack life...it’s not about having control, the way the southern alphas act like it is. It’s about learning to live as a unit. Learning to be a unit.”
Marco kissed her forehead. “This is my life now,” he said. “This pack.”
Chapter Thirteen
SOPHIE
By the end of the next week, it was easy to forget that Burton had ever been an outsider in the pack.
The four of them had taken to ranging around together. Their stores of water and berries were reliable now, and the fish were easy to catch, so they could go looking for bigger game a little farther afield. Nobody was comfortable leaving Sophie behind alone at the cave, which suited her just fine. She wanted to come along. It was the kind of thing her old pack never would have allowed her to take part in.
She was picking her way through fallen leaves, doing her best to detect the scent in the air, when something familiar and yet strange brought her up short.
She bared her teeth and fell into a defensive posture.
Wolves.
Burton, who was nearest to her, glanced over. His pure black coat caught a gust of wind, and Sophie saw that his hackles were raised. He must have caught the same scent she had.
He jerked his head to one side, indicating the direction in which Marco and Ryker had gone. Sophie knew what he was saying. Go get the others.
She inclined her head to let him know that the message was received and hurried off.
They had discovered, in their time together, that each of them had their own skills and talents. One of Sophie’s was the ability to move quickly and quietly over the terrain. She was much better at sneaking off to alert the rest of the pack than Burton would have been, certainly. He walked with a heavy step and was never hard to hear coming.
She found Ryker and Marco sniffing the ground beneath an oak tree, clearly onto a scent. Prey, most likely. But that would have to wait. She hurried over to them, nudged Ryker’s shoulder, and indicated that he should follow her.
Ryker huffed out a low bark to attract Marco’s attention, and the two alphas turned and padded after Sophie. She led them back to where Burton was waiting.
He was hunkered low on the ground, staring into a clearing, and immediately, So
phie’s first question was answered. The smell she had picked up on didn’t belong to pure wolves. It was the smell of shifters.
She knew because they were in human form right now, standing in front of her.
They were fully dressed, indicating that they probably hadn’t been in their animal forms in some time, and each of the four of them had a backpack slung over his or her shoulder. Unlike Sophie, when she had first taken to the woods, these shifters looked prepared. They wore long pants that appeared to be made out of some sort of strong fabric. The two women had their hair tied back, and their skin was dark from exposure to the sun.
As the pack watched, one of the women carefully lit a fire. One of the men, sitting next to her, slowly began to feed it.
The others sat a few feet away cleaning a kill of some kind. Sophie couldn’t make out what they had, but whatever it was, it would be enough to provide dinner for all four of them. They were thriving out here in the wild. They were doing better than Sophie had. That was for sure.
But that could all change if the bears found them,
She looked from one of her alphas to the next. She expected a fight. After all, it had always meant a fight before when she had hoped to add someone to the pack.
But now, it seemed as if everyone was thinking along the same lines as Sophie was.
Marco, ever the cautious one, seemed to be examining them. His eyes flicked from one to the next. Sophie got the feeling he was trying to suss out what their connections to one another were. Was this a pack itself? Was one of the men in front of them an alpha? Was one of the women an omega? That could pose a problem if they tried to combine the packs.
Ryker was taking stock of them as well, but his approach seemed different to Sophie’s. Less appraising, more confrontational. She got the feeling he was trying to decide which group was more likely to win in a fight.
Of course—of course—it was Burton who made the first move.
Before anyone could stop him, before anyone could even say anything, he resumed his human form and strode into the clearing.
Ryker snarled.
Sophie felt like snarling herself. What was he thinking, walking into a group of strangers like that? Fully naked, alone—he had no way of knowing what would happen. It wasn’t remotely safe. She wanted to run after him, sink her teeth into his hand, and pull him back.
Marco’s paw landed on top of hers. He looked at her warningly and shook his head.
“Hey there,” Burton said. “Who are all of you?”
They looked up at him, their expressions betraying not shock or fear, but disdain. “Could you put something on, please?” one of the women said. “We’re trying to eat here.”
“Here.” One of the men threw a shirt at Burton. “I’m Robby.”
“Obliged.” Burton tugged the shirt over his head. Robby, when he was standing, would probably have been either a little bit taller or a little bit bulkier around the middle than Burton was, because the hem of the shirt hung to midway down Burton’s thighs.
“You joining us for dinner?” Robby asked.
“He damn well is not,” one of the women said.
“Chill, Chrissy,” Robby said.
“Don’t tell me to chill. We have enough food for the four of us, and that’s it. He can go find his own dinner.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Burton said. “I’m not here to eat anyway. I just wanted to introduce myself, on behalf of my pack.”
There was a moment of silence.
“Bullshit,” Chrissy said. “This isn’t pack territory. We’re too far north. He’s making it up. He doesn’t have a pack. He’s just trying to intimidate us.”
“Please,” Burton said. “Give me some credit. I don’t have any reason to intimidate you, do I? I’m not after your food. And if I was afraid of you, I could have just stayed away.”
“He makes a point,” the second woman said.
“I do indeed,” Burton said. “What’s your name, ma’am?”
She scowled. “Yeah, I’m not on your side if you’re going to be weird, though.”
Burton held up his hands in mock surrender. “Zero weirdness,” he pledged.
She nodded. “I’m Petra,” she said. “You know Chrissy and Robby already. This is Cam.”
The fourth member of the group, a skinny guy about Burton’s age but nowhere near his height, lifted a hand in greeting.
“You’re the alpha?” Burton asked Robby.
“No one’s the alpha,” Chrissy said.
“We’re not a pack,” Robby explained. “We’re betas. All four of us. We’ve been grouped up for about a week, hunting together, watching each other’s backs. I don’t know that it’s a permanent thing, though.”
“It’s not,” Chrissy said.
“Some of us might end up going our own way sooner than others,” Petra murmured.
“Right,” Burton said. “Well, look, you should come and stay with me and my pack in our cave tonight. We can share stories.”
“What kind of stories?” Robby asked.
“Have you come across the bears?” Burton asked.
All four of the beta wolves stiffened. In the bushes, Ryker stiffened too. Sophie could feel his muscles tense.
“You know about those bears?” Robby asked. “You’re not working with them, are you?”
“Working with them?” Burton asked. “Are you fucking joking? You can’t work with feral bears. They’re savage.”
“You’ve seen them, though?” Petra asked.
“A few of us have seen them,” Burton said. “How about yourselves?”
The betas looked at each other.
It was Chrissy who spoke. “Fine,” she said. “We’ll come back to your cave with you and swap stories.”
The betas gathered up their things. Burton turned toward the bushes and motioned the others forward.
Ryker let out a low snarl, clearly not pleased at having his hand forced, but there was nothing that could be done about it now. He stepped out of the bushes, and Marco and Sophie followed.
“Four of you?” Petra asked, sizing them up.
“Three of us are alphas,” Burton said. “This is Ryker and Marco. And this is our omega, Sophie.”
“Whose omega?” Robby asked.
“Our omega,” Burton said.
“Like...you share?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Burton said. “We’ve all imprinted on her. She belongs to all of us, and we all belong to her.”
“Wow,” Chrissy said. “That’s...old fashioned.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not a fan of modern pack life either, or you wouldn’t be this far north,” Burton pointed out.
Petra chuckled. “Fair enough,” she said. “You’re right about that. All four of us are runaways.”
“Come on,” Burton said. “We’ll take you back to the cave, and you can tell us all about it.”
“CAM AND I ARE FROM the same pack,” Chrissy explained as the food was handed around. “He’s actually my younger half-brother—at least, we think he is. You know how things can get in those packs. We have different mothers, but we always assumed we had the same father.”
“The alpha of your pack,” Sophie said. She had resumed her human form and dressed quickly, and now she was handing around baskets of water for everyone.
“That’s right,” Chrissy said. “Our pack didn’t have an omega, though, and the new alpha, the successor, was starting to look at me. I didn’t want anything to do with him. That’s when I decided to leave. And I took Cam with me, because...well, because look at him. He’s not built like most shifters. He’s small. He’s strong, and he can hold his own in a fair fight, but if they found out I was gone, they would probably gang up on him, and I don’t know what would happen.”
“What about you?” Ryker asked Petra.
She shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “Nothing so dramatic. My pack treated me well enough. But that life just wasn’t for me, so when I came of age, I took off. People were e
xpecting it, I think. No one cares what you do if you’re a beta.”
Robby nodded. “I can vouch for that,” he said. “I left my pack in more or less the same way. I even told them I was leaving. No one was surprised. They hadn’t expected me to stick around. As a beta guy, if you’re not close with your alpha, there’s not much point to you.”
“Our pack doesn’t work that way,” Sophie said.
“What do you mean?” Robby asked.
“Well, for one thing, we have three alphas,” she said. “Not one. So you don’t have to be especially close to one guy in order to fit in. If you don’t bond with one of the alphas, you can bond with another.”
“How does that work, anyway?” Petra asked. “Having three alphas, I mean. Aren’t you butting heads all the time? Constantly fighting?”
“We never fight,” Marco said.
“Oh, sure we do,” Burton laughed. “We fought just last night over who would get the bigger piece of fish!”
“But we never have serious fights,” Ryker countered. “And it’s because we’re united by a common goal.”
“Your omega,” Petra said, glancing at Sophie. “She’s what holds this pack together, isn’t she?”
“She is,” Marco said. “But we build layers around her. She’s the heart of our pack, but everything we do benefits the pack as a whole.”
Sophie’s heart hammered. She knew, she could sense, what Marco was building up to.
She knew Burton would agree. He had been open to this idea since he had walked out into the clearing and greeted the betas.
But what was Ryker going to say?
This had been Ryker’s cave. He had had it all to himself once. And then she had shown up, and he had imprinted, and since then, she had changed every facet of his life.
He was a part of a pack now. A pack in which he wasn’t even the sole alpha. He had to share leadership with two other men.
And now there were betas. Four of them.
And Marco was about to change everything again.