That seemed to be the key for Blake. When he stared up at me, his eyes bled silver, his beast staring up at me and he had no such qualms, knew exactly how our bodies would fit together. His arms locked around me, holding me tight as he bucked up inside me, going harder, deeper with every thrust, and there was a kind of primal allure to that. He was so entirely male, plundering, diving into me, and I had to let him in or lose him.
My mouth crashed down on his as I hit his knot, his mouth gorging on mine as I bumped up against it, but his hands on my hips and the steady spread of my thighs meant that this would not be an obstacle. He thought he was going to hurt me, but what he didn’t seem to realise was staying apart from him hurt so much worse.
It took work, cooperation, a lot of panted communication, but then finally, Blake locked down inside me.
He roared in response, and we were lucky we were out on acreage because it echoed through the house and beyond. Finally, finally, we were complete. My fingers shook as I pushed his hair to one side, finding his neck, needing to be as deep in him as he was me, and then, I bit.
Something happened then, something that made us a pack. It was pure and white and shining, glowing inside me, inside him, inside everyone. They all scrambled closer, their bite marks on me feeling like they pulsed now in time with my heart, with ours. But in all the radiance, there was one note missing, and then Blake returned the favour, bestowing on me the thing I needed most in the world.
We fell to the bed now, bound together as tightly physically as we were emotionally. Every burst of cum, every twitch of my cunt, it seemed to just pull us farther and farther along this shining river, until finally, it was just me, just Blake, and just the rest of the pack.
A hand slid around my waist, ready to move things along, but Blake snapped in response.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” he rumbled. “She’s mine.”
“She’s ours.”
For a long time,we just lay there in that timeless part of the afternoon where the shadows of the leaves played across the curtains, but when they darkened and the world did too, we rose. Not as humans now, because that part of the ritual was done. We had satisfied our beasts, given them the one thing they knew they needed to have, and now they had to rise. When Blake pulled away from me, I turned to fur. I snuffled at the bedsheets for a moment, getting a much richer banquet of all of our scents, and that seemed to satisfy me. We turned then, saw our pack in skin and the hungry looks in their eyes, right before they took fur as well. We panted, just for a second, and then we were off.
The run from the city to here, the fight, the claiming, none of that seemed to keep me down now. I bolted out of the house, out into the cool night air, running, running, out across the grass, and they followed behind me, hot on my heels. We shot them a quick look over our shoulder and saw them gaining on us, so our body stretched further, our muscles pumping, our heart pounding with the sheer pleasure of the chase. I couldn’t even say where we were going, what we were doing, just that I needed this.
When they did catch up, that was when it all slotted into place. We were a pack and we ran like one, together, pace for pace. We’d be doing this our whole lives, and now nothing would get in the way of that.
Chapter 48
I don’t remember coming home. I don’t remember the sheets being stripped off and replaced by new ones. I don’t remember the six of us collapsing into bed, yet when I woke up, there we were. Hands grabbed for me, bodies pressed against me, everyone snuggled in close. For a moment, I just existed in a warm cocoon of sweetness, then the phone started ringing.
“Fen…” someone groaned.
“Unh?”
“Fen. Phone!”
I blinked then, waking up myself, my head jerking up under the covers at the sound of Fen’s voice.
“Yeah, she’s here. What? No. No. I get that, but…”
Everything had been so good, so sweet, and so nice, but that seemed to all go away now. I fought my way free of the blankets, finding my way to Fen’s side at the edge of the bed, and he handed me his phone.
“Hello?”
“Hey, sorry for interrupting wolf-bang-ageddon, but we have a situation here.”
“Candy?”
“Who else it gonna be, bitch?” she asked, trying for levity and failing, which made me tense. “Look, I dunno if you can pole vault off their dicks for like, half an hour maybe, but if you can, get down here. I’m doing damage control, but…”
“But what, Candy? What the fuck has happened?”
“Suck Up Evan is now investigative reporter Evan. He filmed you shifting yesterday.” Oh fuck, it all came back, the memory of him doing just that. “He’s photographed your desktop” —I saw those long rents I’d left in the laminate— “and he’s demanding access to the data. A full meeting of the department heads has been called, but…”
Part of me stored the details of the meeting in my head, but the rest? It was in a free falling spiral. A part of me that still felt like a little girl complained that this wasn’t fair, I’d only just found my pack, had just spent my first full night with all of them, and… I jumped off the bed and stalked over to the bathroom, and they came with me.
“What’s happening?” Colt asked sharply, stepping under the shower spray when I didn’t answer immediately. “Riley?”
“You feel scared, angry…” Blake said, his face mobile as he seemed to use his spidey sense to detect my moods.
“Whatever is going down, we face it as a pack,” Fen said.