Love, that was the overwhelming thing. He’d kept it all locked up in a place inside him, a warm glow to keep him moving forward, but now it flared hard. Burning me up and bathing me in its heat, as my own carefully tended flames joined his. For a moment, the fact that humans spent so much energy hiding these kinds of feelings seemed ridiculous. I was burning, and I would not have changed that for anything.
Tirian form was almost always partially incorporeal, half smoke, half wolf. But as the fiery sensation swelled, paws, fur, tail all dropped away. We rose, twin streams of smoke, grey and white, twining around each other as we soared. Finn was the pulse in my veins, the air that I breathed, all that pushed and pulled through me, keeping me alive, and I was his.
Jules.
My name was little more than a murmur, a slight sound against the rush of us spiralling upwards, but I replied. As if summoned by the label, I found myself in human form within Finn’s arms, hanging in the twilight of this alien world, and he laughed when he realised what had happened. His eyes, grey again, sparkled with a light I’d only ever seen hints of, as if the venom had burned away all boundaries, all reservations.
“We’ll be coming soon.”
“What?”
He nodded off to one side, and when I turned, I saw that we looked down into the photocopier room as if from a massive height, the struggling, striving bodies almost incomprehensible in their attempts to feel even a tiny sliver of the completion we felt right now. But as I watched, the prickles of physical pleasure tugged me back.
“We have to go back?” I asked, and he nodded. “I love you,” I said, not wanting to lose this without sharing that. The words held worlds of meaning within them, the symbols so puny in the face of it, but they were all I had. The grasping human psyche was infecting me already, replacing communion with desire.
“I love you with everything I have, and more besides.” He glanced over at the black sun sinking down to the horizon in the distance. “Everything I have, all that I am is yours.” He pulled me close and kissed the top of my head. At the connection, I could feel the pull as we descended, dropping faster and faster until I slammed back into my body.
Heavy, redolent pleasure smashed into me, I was screaming as my body spasmed around Finn’s, the swelling in his cock prolonging the waves of ecstasy swamping me. I struggled to find myself within it; it was all so intense, so overwhelming. It was no great shock when my vision started to go dark at the edges, the blackness creeping in as I jerked on top of the photocopier.
Very good, little queen, I heard the black wolf say, just before the shadow swallowed me whole.
17
I'd just taken my second mate, endured some kind of psychic attack and survived, and then passed out from having a super O, so the last place I expected to wake up was strapped to a chair, my wrists cuffed, and surrounded by women.
"She wakes."
I blinked, bleary-eyed, the room slowly coming into focus. It was circular with platform-like rings spreading out from the centre, each one slightly higher than the others. Women on chairs looked down at me, some with expressions of concern, irritation, boredom, and even disgust. I frowned, my eyes jerking down as I noticed the cuffs and the corresponding ache in my shoulders caused by them.
"What... what's going on?"
"It's OK, Julie," Kelly said, coming closer. "We've had to restrain you for the moment, just until we get to the bottom of what's been happening."
Her voice was soothing, all 'stop Julie from jumping off the ledge', but I didn't want to be soothed. "And that required handcuffs? What are you worried I'm going to do? Where's Slade and Finn?"
"We don't think you should see—"
"Making a bloody nuisance of themselves outside. You're going to have to do something soon, alpha. You've got a newly bonded male out there with considerable power over the other men. Unless you want him rallying the troops and storming the castle to save the fair maiden, you’ll need him in here."
Ophelia strode in, the doors slamming shut behind her. Her eyes raked over the seated women as gasps went around the room.
"We do not let men into the Women's Council."
I turned to see that the speaker was Asher, one of the matriarchs from Slade’s and my party. We all looked back when there was a huge thud on the door, then another.
"Then we will need to send his mate out to him. Finn is incredibly powerful. Kelly has kept him on a short leash for some time, but that may now change." Her eyes landed on me, and she smiled, something I wasn't sure was at or with me.
"I always said that one should go through the gate to the other side," another matriarch I didn't recognise muttered.
"A pure white?" Nancy, Slade's grandmother said. "No, he has to be kept as breeding stock at the very least, though the nature of his children now he's taken a mate..." She exhaled a long plume of grey smoke, looking for all the world like a dragon, not wolf shifter. "It looks strong, their bond."
Kelly nodded. "He loves the girl, quite desperately."
"Well, then, we better find out what is happening with her then hadn't we?" Ophelia said.
Kelly turned to the assembled women and projected her voice louder so those in the back could hear. "Today, an incident took place outside the Stores building. As the men were unloading the truck, Julie arrived, wanting to speak to Brandon." She paused for a moment as the murmuring started. She held out a placating hand, waiting for everyone to settle. "Reports from the men vary. Some say that Julie smelled much the same as any of us do when in heat: extremely sexually receptive. Others assert that there was something else afoot, that both Julie and others found themselves responding in what felt like an artificially induced state, as if some form of psychic attack had taken place."
"You better believe it!" one woman said, shooting to her feet. "My James was there, and he would never respond to some other woman like that."