The woman flashes me a smile full of white teeth. “Perhaps I can help you there, too.”She comes out from behind the register and walks to the front door, where she flips the Open sign to Closed and locks the deadbolt. Then she crooks a finger at me and leads me through a door in the back of the shop.A short circular table sits in a prominent place in the center of the room. I recognize many of the magical tools on its surface, not because I’m familiar with witchy shit, but because I recently stayed in a witch’s house after we killed him.I’d be sure to not mention that to this witch. As long as she doesn’t try to sell me into slavery to another witch—or try to kill me—I have no beef with her, unlike with Erik.“You are packless,” the witch observes, motioning for me to have a seat in a metal folding chair at the side of the room. Two chairs flank a small card table covered in a woven cloth. A velvet bag rests atop the table, about the right size to hold a pack of tarot cards.Sittin
FrostColorado is cold.So am I. Inside, as if the poison turned me to ice before it left my bloodstream.Three days have passed since we found the rift near the Devil’s Teeth. My paws beat against the ground in time with my brothers’ as we race toward another lead. They’re both positive this is the one—that this thin veil between realms is the one that will bring our real home to earth and ease our agony forever.The San Juan National Forest. One-point-eight million acres of mesas, mountains, and forested lands owned by the federal government. We’ve been here before. Many times. Good hunting. Fresh mountain water, the kind that feels like it can heal.But no viable rifts.I’m a realist. I doubt this will be any different from the last. Or the half dozen before that one. We search and we search, finding thin places where we can feel the shadow realm. Just there, on the other side of a veil we can’t touch. Even if we can’t breach the portal, we can feel that energy. It buoys us, bolste
The tightness in my chest ices over, and a memory shoves its way to the front of my mind. The sight of Amora on her knees, staring at me with a mixture of horror, anger, and despair.Being around her eased my pain just as much as being near a shadow realm rift. Now that she’s gone, everything seems much more acute. The pain. My senses. The loneliness.I swallow, then shove the rest of the rabbit away with my snout and shift back to human form.Leaving my brothers to their meals, I walk across the rocky shore and right into the water without looking back. I catch Kian’s irritated voice saying, Look what you did, dumbass, before I sink beneath the surface.The lake is frigid, but it chases away my overwhelming emotions. I keep walking. My toes sink into the loose lakebed as I descend further into the surprisingly clear water. My hair waves around my face, and the shadows on my arms move much too fast. Faster than I’ve ever seen them. I let my knees bend and sink gently into the water, h
AmoraA hot tongue trails slowly up my inner thigh.A moan escapes my lips, and a warm chuckle answers it.When I look down, Malix is settled between my legs. His dark skin is smooth and soft looking, and his violet eyes burn with heat and amusement as he holds my gaze. Without looking away, he drags his tongue even higher until he reaches the apex of my thighs.I’m already wet for him.I can feel my arousal seeping from me, soaking my skin.When he laps at my clit, I let out a soft moan, reaching down to try to grab his head and hold him right where I want him. But large hands grip my wrists, pulling them away from him and pinning them to the mattress on either side of my body.I blink and look up, realizing for the first time that Kian and Frost are with us too. They’re kneeling on either side of me, each man holding down one of my arms. Frost’s blue irises glow like ice lit from within, a startling contrast to the burning embers of Kian’s brown and gold eyes.“Uh uh, kitty,” Malix
Some part of me likes that—a lot.Likes having control over him, likes breaking him apart.As if determined not to give me too much control, Kian grasps my hips, his calloused fingers digging into my skin as he uses that grip to guide my motions. The head of his cock hits the perfect spot inside me, and I shudder, throwing my head back as my toes curl.His hands slide around to my ass, squeezing and massaging me before he grips both of my cheeks and spreads them apart.I yelp in surprise, but he keeps them spread open as Frost moves over the bed, settling behind me. Malix is still kneeling in front of me, his fist gripping his thick cock tightly as milky beads of precum leak from the tip.Kian watches me with his enigmatic eyes, taking in every detail of my expression as Frost’s cock slides between my ass cheeks.The blond man isn’t pressing against my back hole, just gliding through the channel created by my cheeks as my arousal and his precum slick the way. His breath ghosts over the
AmoraWhen I arrive,The Bruja’s Cauldron hasn’t opened yet. I stand in the too-bright sunshine and bang on the door until Rue appears from the back room. She catches sight of me through the glass door, and her thin, shapely eyebrows rise toward her hairline as she opens the door.“I thought the building was on fire,” she drawls, stepping back to let me inside.“How much longer will it take?” I demand, halting just inside the door, my fists clamped around the straps on my backpack.Rue stares at me, her brows arched toward her widow’s peak hairline.My body is tense, and my mind is screaming at me that time is running out. It’s probably not true—the three feral shifters have been searching for their rift for ages, so there’s no reason to believe they’re going to randomly find the right place now.But I can’t get past the sense of foreboding.Honestly though, that doesn’t excuse my being an asshole. So I try again, a little more politely this time. “Sorry. Good morning, Rue. How much lo
“It’s a long story,” I mutter, digging around for a piece of egg. “Basically, there are three guys who betrayed me. Not romantically,” I add before she can ask. “We had a truce, and they screwed me over.”“So you want revenge,” Rue clarifies.“No. Not really.” I shove a fork full of beans into my mouth before I can say something dickish. “They’re… evil. They’re going to do something really bad that could affect the entire world. I need to find them and stop them.”“That’s noble of you.”I shrug. “It’s a purpose, I guess.”“I tracked a man down once,” Rue says softly. She sets the rolled feather ball on the towel, then glances at me. “And I used a spell to end his reign of terror too. Only his sin wasn’t against the world. Just against me.”Her expression looks haunted but hard, and something about it tells me she had no choice but to do whatever it was she did. Being in the position I am now, I can’t even blame her. Hell, I’d be more likely to cheer her on. I wonder if her cryptic “am
MalixI stand between my brothers,looking up at the village where we were born, and all I want to do is run the other way.Returning with bad news isn’t my favorite thing. Every time we come back without the key to opening the barrier between our realm and the shadow realm, I feel a little more like a failure. A little more like I’m letting our alpha down, ruining the only purpose I have to exist.Even more than that, I feel like I’m letting my brothers down. I know they struggle with the pain. I do too. All we need is that one fucking break, and everything will be fixed. No more pain. No more feeling isolated and different.Home, Kian says gruffly.Not home, I counter, pawing at the snowy ground with one giant black paw. Not really.Frost huffs his agreement. Just a place to lay our heads until we return to our true purpose.The village winds up a road on the side of a remote mountain in the Rockies. If it wasn’t ass cold and full of shifters who would rather we stay away forever, the
Fuck. Could Amora even survive what exists in the other realm? Unease prickles up my spine at how close we just came to losing her.We need to take those shadows out, I tell my brothers. As fast as we can.We’re yanked back into combat as several of Quinton’s wolves burst into our little circle, breaking up the party.I pounce on the nearest Blood Moon wolf, taking him down to the ground, while Malix and Frost tag team a shadow shifter. Picking up the wolf with my teeth, I fling him at two more advancing wolves, taking them down like pins in a bowling lane.When I glance back up, Malix and Frost are having trouble with their shadow shifter. The beast is big, and he must’ve been pumped full of more shadow magic than the rest, because he fights almost like a Berserker, wild and brutal. I leap over one of the fallen wolves and head toward them to help, only to stop cold as Amora screams my name.Kian!Whirling around, I find her darting over the uneven terrain in a mad zigzag pattern whi
KianJust like thenight when Quinton nearly executed our mate with a bullet to the head, I don’t hesitate.I’m in the air a split second after my old alpha’s paws have left the dirt. I intercept his leap and slam into him in mid-air, angling so that I hit his head with my chest. He’s so massive that it feels like a rock wall slamming into me, and I huff out a pained breath. If I were any smaller or weaker, I have no doubt his skull would have broken a few bones in my torso.Quinton flies away from me while I fall to the ground, winded. I barely manage to land on all fours as he skids away from me, kicking up dirt and stones and clumps of grass. All around me, chaos breaks loose as the Silver Crest wolves and Blood Moon pack launch into an all-out war.In the very short half second I have before Quinton stands, I glance around and consider our odds. We’re on Felicity’s turf now, and there are more of us physically than there are of them. Both will give us an advantage. Unfortunately, t
AmoraFuck. Not Quinton. Please, don’t let it be Quinton. We’re not fucking ready.I’m not sure who moves first, but within seconds of the piercing howl outside, the four of us are racing across the dark, silent cabin toward the front door.Kian reaches the door first and flings it open, launching himself out into the night with Malix and Frost right behind him. As I come even with the door and prepare to shift, I pause for a fraction of a second, mesmerized by the sight of them leaping from the small front stoop.They trail black smoke as they shift, morphing like shadows. It’s beautiful in a deadly sort of way, as if they’re more than limbs and torsos and heads, but something more metaphysical. More fluid. A macabre dance of shadows.Then they land on the dusty front lawn in full shadow wolf form and take off. I hurry to follow behind, letting my own shift take over my body in the split second after I leap off the porch stoop.Another howl lights up the night, and I put on a burst o
AmoraI surfacefrom a dreamless sleep to the deep, dark of night, cocooned by the warmth of the three men sleeping around me.I’m on my back, completely pinned in by them—something that, once upon a time, would have sent alarm bells clanging through my head. Instead, it’s peaceful and comforting, if a little too warm.The ceiling is barely visible in the blackness, small cracks in the paint standing out like spider webs made of ink. I take a couple of deep breaths, staring up at them as I try to figure out where I stand. How I feel.The past few weeks still weigh on my shoulders, although I imagine that’s not something that’s just going to go away. Things still aren’t good here. We lost against Quinton, and I’m not naïve enough to think he won’t retaliate. Felicity is dead, and that’s a pretty permanent problem that’s going to throw her whole pack into a state of flux for a while.On the other hand, for the first time in a while, I’m okay. Even if the external world is chaos, my inter
In this moment, it’s just me and my men.Finally, Malix lifts his head and drops a kiss to the tip of my nose. “God, I love fucking you,” he murmurs.“Good.” I chuckle. “Because I’ve got lots of plans for more of this.”He waggles his eyebrows. “Dirty girl. You really are my fated mate.”I breathe out another laugh at the idea that my dirty mind is the true proof that we’re a fated match, shaking my head and grinning at him as he draws back, his cock sliding out of me.Frost, Malix, and I all look toward Kian next.The final piece of the puzzle. My third mate.He’s kneeling on the bed beside me, and when I reach for him, he comes willingly. He settles between my legs, his cock hard and thick. But he doesn’t slide into me right away. Instead, he trails one hand down my stomach, and all four of us watch the path of his fingers as they move lower and lower. When he reaches my pussy, he dips two fingers inside. I moan at the feeling, and heat flashes in his eyes.“You look so stunning lik
His gold-rimmed eyes gleam darkly, as if he knows exactly what I’m doing—trying to get a rise out of him. But the heated possessiveness never wavers in his expression as he gives me an answer.“Because I want to look at you. I want my brothers to see what’s theirs. What’s ours.”Oh.Oh fuck.I didn’t expect his answer to turn me on so much, but after everything that just happened between us in the bathroom, every word he just spoke is loaded with meaning.So I don’t push back against his order, staying still just like he told me to and allowing the three men to stare down at me. Frost reaches down to grip his cock, and I wonder if he’s squeezing himself to get a little relief or to try to get his arousal under control. Maybe a bit of both.That thought makes me whimper softly, and although I make no move to reach for the feral shifters, I can’t resist reaching down to slide one hand between my legs.“Shit, kitty,” Malix chokes out as I use my fingertips to spread my pussy lips, giving
“Fuck prophecies,” I repeat as I swipe at the tears threatening to crest over my eyelashes. “I make my own fate. We’ll make our own fate. Together. And it won’t end in murder. Got it?” I jam my finger into Kian’s chest and cut a glare toward Frost. “We aren’t going to go down like that. Not like them. I couldn’t stand it. I can’t even stand the thought of… of hurting you or killing you. Jesus. I can’t believe I ever tried—”Suddenly, Frost’s arm snakes out and hooks around my waist. He yanks me to him, my arms crushed between us as my fingers still cling to my towel, and his lips cover mine, cutting off my rant.There’s a salty, spicy taste to his skin, and when his lips part in that tentative way of his, I’m surrounded by the familiar scent of his body. Warmth unfurls in my belly, heating my skin, and I tilt my face up to his, opening to his kiss.It’s soft at first, but then he catches my face in his hands and deepens the kiss, his tongue sliding against mine with deliberate possess
AmoraHeat risesin my eyes as I flip the water on in the shower and climb inside. I don’t even wait for the water to warm, and the shock of cold zings through me, giving me a rush of adrenaline to chase away the sheer exhaustion that’s settled over my bones. The cold quickly fades, replaced by lukewarm water. Another twist of the pipes gives me the scalding temperature I need to ease the emotional turmoil I feel.Weeks of grime slosh off my body beneath the shower head while my tears disappear into the water on my face. I dump shampoo on my hair and scrub vigorously with my fingernails, scratching harder than necessary. If I focus on the little pinpricks of pain, maybe I can get the sight of Quinton standing over Felicity’s body out of my head.If only for a moment.His mate.His mate.How could he do that?I turn, ducking my head under the water to rinse out the suds. I grab the bar of soap off the ledge beside me and lather my hands, then use my nails again to scrub at my face.How
So we travel quickly, digging deep into our energy reserves to race headlong across state lines. Micro-naps and brief pauses to eat or drink are the only breaks we allow, and surprisingly, nobody falls behind. I assume the weaker shifters are still running on pure adrenaline.Most of the adrenaline has faded by the time we cross the state line into Wyoming, but it doesn’t matter. We keep pushing anyway.When we finally reach the Silver Crest pack’s boundaries two days later, a heavy feeling falls over the group. Felicity’s shifters slow, as if dreading to bring the news of her death to those left back home.Many of the wolves limp or nurse wounds that have yet to fully heal, and it doesn’t take more than a glance to understand every one of them is completely demoralized by what happened. It’s late in the day, and although the last rays of the sun paint the buildings with a warm, glowing light, despair hangs around us like a weight in the air.When pack members begin to emerge from the