I clutched him to my breast, choking his name. “Rig… Rig.”
“I’m here, babe. Just breathe.” But he never stopped kissing me, never stopped stroking, drawing, those tingling pleasures out of my skin.
And with every twitch and instinct, I held him—held him in my arms and in my mind.
My mate. Mine. Husband. Lover. Forever.
As desire grew urgent and my body began to ripple, he soothed me with kisses, touched anything I pressed closer, whispered reassurance until I was trembling with the drive for him.
He raised his head once from his
~ RIG ~It was the small hours of the morning, the darkest moments before dawn began to creep up around the mountains.We’d eaten, talked, I’d held her when she got scared, and laughed with her about the funny side of her naked, midnight jaunt. But she was exhausted.So now, as the fire died in the hearth, I lay there in bed on my back with Cara curled into my side, deeply asleep, but still clinging to my chest like a lifeline. Her breathing was deep and slow, her hair loose and flowing over my arm as I held her close, thoughtlessly trailing fingers up and down the curve of her spine.She was herself again—and relieved. She’d described exactly what I’d sensed, an animal within trying to come forward, fighting to take control. Instincts acting
~ MACK (two days earlier) ~“Do you guys want the River house, or the Tree house?” Rig asked, looking back and forth between me in the rearview mirror and Natalie in the passenger seat.“The River,” I said, because it was closest. Three hours in this car saturated in Natalie’s scent as well as the two lovebirds yearning for each other was a torment I could have done without. Plus, the thought of the next few days alone with Natalie… I swung between ecstatic and despairing.Where I would ultimately land was, in the end, entirely up to her—she who sat so stiffly in that front seat you would have thought there was a rod stuck up her ass.She wasn’t the only one. I needed to get out of this fucking car.
~ NATALIE ~I am such a bitch.The minute I slammed that door in his face I knew what I’d done. This close, I could feel the way it shocked and hurt him.I stopped just inside the room, barely breathing, and turned back to face the closed door. My heart was pounding.I hated myself. Every time he was gone I ached to have him close again. Every time he was close I wanted to run screaming. It was too hard. Too much. When I’d realized we were coming here and going to be alone together, a part of me had welled up, singing with joy. But the rest of me sank into cold, abject fear.Was he scared too? Or just mad?
~ MACK ~I wouldn’t make it easy for her. If she was going cold on me, if she rejected the bond outright, I was going to make her tell me. Face to face.Once I was resolved I went downstairs to the kitchen. I would cook. Natalie hated to cook, and she’d be famished—I was. We hadn’t eaten since breakfast and it had been a helluva day.An image of Rig’s face when Cara appeared from the house, the sheer joy—like he’d just found the sun—rocked through me. I wanted that moment. I wanted that day. And I wanted it with Natalie.Fuck.My hand trembled as I pulled out pans and started searching through the pantry and freezer to pull something together.
~ NATALIE ~“You… you ignorant fucking—”“Get it all out, Natalie,” he said dryly, completely unaffected by my rage.I wanted to slap his face. Instead I dropped my hand that reminded me of my mother when she’d been about to spank me as a child and I just held his eyes, glaring.“You really think that’s what this is about? You think I’ve been avoiding you because you’ll be Beta?”“If the fang fits—”I almost hit him. Almost shoved him backwards into that island I was so furious.“I am the
~ MACK ~Natalie gaped at me, stunned.The fact that she hadn’t immediately snapped me down gave me courage and I stepped closer to her, staring into her eyes, pleading with her to see me. To really see me.I took her hand from where it rested at her side and she turned her head to look down at where I touched her, following the trajectory of our clasped hands as I brought her sweet fingers up to my chest and pressed it there, right at the center. Her eyes got wider, then snapped up to meet mine again.“Feel that?” I murmured, embarrassed by how my heart pounded. How my hands were trembling. But that was the truth of the effect she had on me. “For three years it’s been beating for you, Natalie. My heart speeds up every time you walk in the ro
If you like music while you read, try “Never Let Her Go (Reinvented)” by Project Vela. It speaks Mack’s heart very clearly in this chapter!*****~ MACK ~I slept in the next morning because it had been the small hours of the morning before I’d been able to sleep. I’d spent the whole night wracked with guilt and self-loathing, anger and injustice and… just weary. The wrong kind of weary. Bone-weary and with nowhere left to fight.She was right. I hated it, but she was right. I’d been not-even-eighteen years old and somehow in my mind I’d decided that finding other females, getting them to smile, getting them to give their bodies to me would make me feel better.Three years later and I couldn
~ NATALIE ~It had been a relief at first to hear the door close behind him, to know I was finally alone and didn’t have to hold myself ready for his appearance. I’d spent the entire morning trying to act normal, but fleeing his presence whenever it appeared.Exhausted, after a night staring at the ceiling and hating life, I fell into bed and slept at last.But when I woke three or four hours later and the house was still empty, a tick of apprehension started in my chest.Where was he? What was he doing? Had he disturbed Rig and Cara?Fuck, was he telling them what I’d said?Cara wouldn’t like that.I
~ RIG ~ I let my upper lip curl up and bare my teeth. Let him see that he was dealing with a helluva lot more than a spoiled rich kid. His instincts were dulled by humanity and alcohol, but even his dimwitted senses caught the flash of my teeth. He stiffened. I smiled. “My wife wants to share her wedding with her Mom—we eloped, but we’ve just watched some friends getting married and it’s making her think about what we missed, so we’re going to do it properly. Make another memory. And Cara wants to share that with her mom. So, we’re going to renew our vows in front of everyone we care about. Which, sadly, includes you.” He smiled and I wanted to bite his face off. “You are invited,” I growled. “But you
SOUNDTRACK: “Your Daughter” by Chase McDaniel. ***** ~ RIG (Three weeks later) ~ Getting out of my jeep in the driveway of the house that was the site of Cara’s torture turned my stomach. My Alpha power—still difficult to contain at times, making me itchy and prone to aggression—surged as I took in the cracked cement with weeds and grass growing up, the overgrown flower beds now little jungles of three foot weeds, and the grass that was thin and patchy, and mostly dead. This was the place that her fucking father had made her believe no one could love her. This was the place she’d been hurt. This was the place I wanted to burn to the fucking ground. But for today, at least, that wasn’t the assig
SOUNDTRACK: “Unbearable” by Nathan Wagner. ***** ~ CHARLIE ~ Watching Mack salivate over Natalie as she walked up the aisle was a very specific kind of torment. Because even though I was supposed to be watching our friends publicly vow themselves, my eyes kept drifting back to Meg who, alongside Cara and Tessa, was standing with Natalie today. She looked… stunning. Natalie, always with the impeccable taste that I didn’t understand, but could fully appreciate, had draped all the girls in floor-length, light-green, figure-hugging-but-not-clinging dresses that revealed flesh without being suggestive. It was fucking torture.
~ MACK ~ When Natalie and Cara finally reached us on the stage, I knew that there was an exchange with the officiant. Cara and Rig said something, but I didn’t hear it. I just took Natalie’s hands and pulled her up to stand in front of me. I was aware of people speaking after that. The officiant—a wolf who’d been among the rebels, whose aunt was human, and had become ordained—spoke for a few minutes about marriage and what it meant, but all I could think about was the deep pools of her eyes, that hollow in her throat that she’d offered me the night before last, and how my entire blood hummed with love and desire and— There was a ripple of laughter. “Oh, what?” I asked. Someone had asked me something. Oh, right. “I do!”
SOUNDTRACK: “Don’t Give Up on Me” by Andy Grammar ***** ~ MACK ~ I had been shitting myself. Absolutely, one hundred percent, about-to-claw-my-own-hair-off, crapping my pants. When Cara told me about the human traditions around a wedding, and what she was planning to do with Rig for their vow renewal—which included not seeing or sleeping with each other the day before the ceremony, which sounded crazy—I’d joked with Natalie that we should do that too. I’d thought it would be cute and maybe increase anticipation for when we did come back together after the ceremony. I hadn’t banked on my mate getting cold feet about doing this in front of the packs, and how her nerves would kick my insecurities into gear—and that the whole damn thing would b
SOUNDTRACK: “Break Your Fall” by UNSECRET and Marc Scibilia. ***** ~ NATALIE ~ “This is stupid and… and indulgent and it doesn’t matter! I should never have agreed to this. It’s nothing but a dumb, human tradition and… it means nothing. I’m not doing it.” I stood in the bedroom that we’d made into a bridal suite—complete with three-way mirror—and folded my arms. I’d been staring at myself and all I could see were the imperfections. Tessa had done a beautiful job on my make up, but everything else just felt… sticky. My dress was a touch too tight around my breasts. There were too many people here and they were all going to be staring. I could feel Mack out there panting with nerves, but what if he didn’t like the dress? I should have shown it to him! Why had I let Cara talk me into all this traditional nonsense? “Natalie, you get your gorgeous ass out there and marry that man before he sweats through his Armani suit,” Cara growled. “Seriously, don’t make me turn it into an orde
~ RIG ~I started towards her, but was halted almost immediately as I watched in awe while my mate carved through lines of wolves as if they were butter.Claws, teeth, whirling body—despite her bulk, she moved like liquid, tail lashing and claws like wicked hooks designed to tear through fur and flesh.I shook and trembled because my father’s power was shifting to me and my veins were boiling with it—while the rest of me simmered in the rising rage and terror of the wolves around us.The transfer of Alpha should have been peaceful. There was an established hierarchy waiting, swelling with the newfound power. But my father was a liar and cheat, and he’d encouraged his wolves towards the same.The hierarchy, the elders, his advisors, every pack and family of power rolled towards us, howling in rage and fear.And my wolves, newly risen and brimming with the triumph of victory and the added confidence of success, tore right back to meet them.Mack, Charlie, Jack, and Natalie tore for me,
SOUNDTRACK: “Legendz” by AG and Devvon Terrell ***** ~ RIG ~ Everything slowed to a crawl, time seemed almost not to move at all as I watched my father go for my mate and I turned, twisting, pushing my body in ways I never had, panic screaming in my head, frantic to reach him before he got her. I couldn’t move fast enough. He was going to land at her feet before I did and his power would carry him right to her throat. She wasn’t equipped for this… It all washed through me in that second—the rage for what he’d done, the fury about his injustices, the anger that he would still cheat, even before the witnesses, and the shocking weight of grief because that was my mate. But then the second wave arrived that left me desperate, panicked, humiliated and hating myself. If she died right now it was my fault. My side screamed in pain as I launched myself after him, but my father seemed to hang in mid-air. I had time to see Cara bare her teeth and crouch. Everything moved so slowly I could
~ RIG ~My father saw the opening he’d been waiting for, gathered himself on his haunches and launched at me, the light of victory in his eyes.Instinctively, I didn’t even try to meet the attack, just leaped straight into the air in an attempt to deflect, dropping my chin, trying to hide my throat as my father snaked in—and to my horror, he would have taken me, except that was the moment Stephen howled in the link, then sent images to us both:Himself. Head bowed. Shoulders rolled forward. His human form submitted.To me.It was a boom of thunder right over my head. In any context, the submission of an Alpha brought al