Page 31

The second my first knot has fully emptied inside her, I grab Seraphina and pull her to the end of the bed, turning her and bending her over the side of it.

Since that first night—and for years, really—I’ve been fantasizing about getting her like this. The wolf inside me wants this, craves this, and for good reason.

I line my hips up with hers, growling at the way she lifts her ass up, pushing against me, asking for my cock. When I lean down over her, I press my cock between her folds, making sure it rubs against her swollen clit so I hear her moan.

Gathering her hair in my hand, I pull it to the side as the scent of her overtakes me, making my head thick with lust, a driving, animalistic force that threatens to take over if I don’t keep it at bay.

“Seraphina,” I whisper as I slide my cock against her, but not inside her.

“Yes,” she breathes, turning her head, and I can’t resist the urge to take her lips with mine. So I do, kissing her deeply, delving into her mouth with my tongue as I thrust against her pussy, feeling her get more and more wet around me.

There’s something about this woman that makes me wild. That makes me feel like I can let go.

“I’m going to mark you now,” I whisper, and the gasp she lets out is almost enough to make me come right then and there, which would be a massive waste. I don’t want to come on the bed. I want to come inside her, feel myself release in her pussy.

Normally, I would slide into her slowly, but I know that she’s already warm and pliant from taking my cock the first time. So I gather her hair in my hand, pull her head back, and slide into her all at once, her body rocking forward and her ass slapping against my hips with the movement.

It’s incredibly fucking hot, and I take a moment to gather myself, to keep from losing myself to the wolf and driving her into the bed with abandon.

When I take too long, Seraphina moves against me, rocking her hips, pulling my cock out of herself, and sliding back onto it.

Watching her fuck herself on me takes my breath away, and I keep her hair loose in my hand, watching her ass and hips move, taking me again and again until I can’t stand it anymore.

“Alright,” I growl, placing a hand on her lower back and pinning her to the bed. “That’s enough.”

When I drive into her, she lets out a mewl so loud, I reach forward and slide my hand over her mouth. She bites gently into my hand as I fuck her, her knees widening against the bed, opening up for me and tipping her hips for better access.

With my other hand, I reach around her, finding her clit and applying pressure, watching her body shake with pleasure.

I could do this every day for the rest of my life.

Maybe that’s what the mating bond is—chemistry so good, and so real, that you would never yearn for another person.

Everything about Seraphina is made for me, from the way her hair slides through my fingers, to how her pussy stretches and tightens around me, driving me fucking crazy.

And this time, when I get close to coming, I fold myself over her, my stomach against her back, our hips lined up, my cock as deep inside her as it will go, and I bury my teeth in the side of her neck, my hand falling away from her mouth as she cries out into a pillow.

Mating marks should be painful, but they’re not. Instead, they only deliver pleasure, and I feel that in the way her body trembles around me, in the way she clenches around my cock, coming so fast and so hard that she has to hold on to my arm for support.

It sends me over the edge, too, my knot forming larger than I’ve ever felt before—maybe the result of the marking hormones inside me, the knowledge that I have just claimed my mate.

When it’s over and my knot is still slowly draining into her, I pull our bodies up onto the bed, covering her with a blanket and nuzzling into her, loving the way I can already sense her scent changing, accommodating me, showing how she belongs to me, and only me.

“Xeran?” she murmurs sleepily. I trace a path over her shoulder, loving the curve of it.

“Yes?”

“I want to do you.”

“Do me?”

“The mark,” she says, and I see in the droop of her shoulders that she’s drifting off to sleep. It’s not always required for the omega to bite the alpha back, but I want her to.

“Next time,” I murmur, running my lips over her neck, watching as she shivers in response.

“Promise?” she asks, barely getting the word out.

I kiss her on the temple, brushing the hair away from her face. “Promise.”

***

The next morning, I find the bed empty when I wake up.

Phina is in the kitchen cooking eggs when I come up behind her, pulling her hair to the side and kissing the mark on her neck.

She whispers, “Careful.”

“Careful?” I ask, laughing when she leans back into me, pressing her ass into my hips. “Of what?”

“I need to eat something,” she says, shaking her head. “And I should probably take something to Nora, too.”

Nora is still passed out, sleeping off the major use of magic she displayed at the ridge. I’m already wondering how much longer she’s going to sleep like this, and at what point we should start worrying about her.

“I’ve never drawn that much out of myself,” Phina says as though she’s thinking the same thing as me. She slides the eggs onto two plates, handing one to me. Glancing up, she says, “I’ll make one fresh to take to Nora after we eat.”

We sit at the table together, and I clear my throat, knowing I’ll have to talk to her about it eventually.

“Seraphina,” I say, and she goes still, looking at me with trepidation. “I think we need to talk about magic.”

Taking a bite, she nods, reaching for her napkin. “Yeah, I think so, too.”

“I want you to know that I’m working through the… ideas my grandpa and dad had about it.”

“Okay,” she says, nodding, her gaze falling to her plate. “I’m sensing a but .”

“But I’m not sure the pack is ready for me to just… allow it. I want to work toward that at some point in the future, but I think we have to make a plan. Figure out a way to be strategic about it.”

For a second, I’m worried that I’ve upset her with this proposal, but after a moment, she nods and sighs. “Honestly, I was kind of thinking the same thing. But with what happened at that ridge…?”

“The guys are sworn to secrecy about it. Obviously, they know what happened. But until we figure out what approach we take with all this, we say nothing.”

“It makes sense,” Phina says. “Even if I don’t like it. I think the people in this pack are going to have enough to get used to with me being the luna.”

I reach out, taking her hand. “You’ll make a wonderful luna. You know that, right?”

“Right,” she says, though she doesn’t sound completely convinced. “I know.”

For the next hour, we sit together, talking about magic and what it would look like to get rid of the rules around it. To make the pack a place where magic-wielders could feel included, honored.

After Phina and Nora’s show of power at the ridge, I’m starting to think it was a major strategic mistake for my father to discount magic the way he did. Having wielders on our side might just make the difference between winning or losing if a pack war ever started.

“You guys are having breakfast without me?”

Phina’s face lights up as she looks over my shoulder, and I twist around to see Nora standing in the doorway, eyes trained on the empty plates between us.

She looks pale and frail, but she’s standing on her own and is strong enough to come into the kitchen.

She’s not still sleeping, stuck in that constant exhaustion.

Phina jumps up from her spot and moves to the stove. “I was just about to bring you some. Here, sit. You want scrambled?”

“Yeah, that sounds good,” Nora says, yawning and settling into the spot across from me, picking up a half-eaten piece of toast from her mother’s plate and eating from it absently.

“So,” Nora says, raising her eyes to mine. “I’ve been thinking. If we’re going to move in here, I’d like to request that we add some books to the library.”

Phina laughs from the stove, and I feel a chuckle move through my chest. “Oh, is that so?”

“It is so,” Nora says, grinning.

“Alright,” I say, leaning back in the chair, feeling the sunshine through the windows on my face. It’s a beautiful day, and though we have a lot of work to do—to rebuild the pack, rebuild the town, and recover from the fires—I’m hit with a sudden, and unfamiliar, feeling of contentment.

Because right here, right now, I have every single thing that I need in this kitchen with me.

And one of them is pulling out a written list of ISBNs.