Page 20

The buzz of the radio distorted my Beta’s voice, but the message was clear enough: come home.

“Loud and clear, Will,” I said. “With you in two days.”

“Roger that. Over and out.”

The radio clicked off, and that was that.

We were going home. My Pack needed me, like it would until the day I died.

So much had happened since I’d left, and yet it felt like no time had passed at all, or that everything had happened in some kind of alternate dimension.

Nothing had felt quite real since Julia moved that first shadow on the night of the Solstice, but now reality was catching up to us.

Telling Julia it was time to go home felt like shattering the glass that had surrounded us. We’d been so hemmed in, so pushed together, that the thought of our imminent separation felt wrong—not that I planned on telling her that.

Maybe I should tell her. She’d get a kick out of it, at least. Despite the excitement of her developing magic, Julia had been strange and distant since we arrived on Ensign.

At first, I’d put it down to exhaustion following her near-collapse on the bridge, but she’d been eating well and getting plenty of rest since then, and she only trained with Eve a few hours each day, seeming in good enough spirits then.

I had a nagging suspicion it was something I’d done, despite the fact that I’d been making a concerted effort not to piss her off.

I tried to tell myself that if she had a problem, then that was on her, but my wolf was having none of it.

He pawed and whined to be with her, to make sure she was alright, and I struggled more than ever to resist the urge.

At the very least, the news that we would be returning home gave me an excuse to check in on her.

While I doubted she would be happy to leave Eve and her training behind, she might be pleased to get back to Caleb, Alyssa, and the twins, eager to return home where she could roam freely without needing a chaperone.

One of the few places she didn’t need a chaperone on Ensign was Xander’s backyard, and that was where I found her, sitting in the dappled shade of a tree in the early evening light, playing with the shadows cast by its branches.

The yard was secluded, ringed by dense pine trees, and she looked small and delicate compared to the looming foliage.

“Ow!” I whirled around, trying to find the source of the sudden, sharp pain in my left buttock. Was it a wasp? A horsefly? It wasn’t burning or itching like an insect bite.

“Hey.” Julia waggled her fingers at me, and a sharp-looking shadow did the same. It was incredibly creepy, and yet I couldn’t help smiling.

“Very funny,” I said, rubbing my injured ass cheek as I approached her.

“I thought so,” she agreed. It looked like she wanted to continue, to make some joke at my expense, but then she bit her lip, holding herself back.

With no other route of conversation, I could only say,

“We need to go home.”

The shadow snapped back to its natural form.

“Already? You don’t think it’s too risky?”

“It is a little,” I admitted. “I doubt Arbor wants either of us to make it back to our own islands, but I’m needed on Ferris.” We couldn’t stay on Ensign forever, and whenever we crossed the bridges, we’d be at risk. I imagined Julia knew that, too.

“Can’t I just—” she started, but I cut her off.

“You can’t stay here, Julia. Xander doesn’t have time to—”

“To babysit me?” Her tone was bitter, as if she had known I would put my foot in my mouth before I even got there.

“Not the word I would have used, but sure,” I said. Whatever words I was going to use probably wouldn’t have been better, but I needed to retain a little bit of dignity.

Julia sighed.

“I guess this had to end sometime.”

“What, running for our lives?” I teased, but she didn’t rise to it. She looked thoughtful and a little sad.

“No. I don’t—I haven’t enjoyed being chased across half the islands,” she said, “but it has been kind of… freeing?”

“Freeing?” It had been intense and stressful, mostly.

I’d felt unmoored and out of place, which—which was its own kind of freedom, in a way.

I sat down next to her as I considered it.

“I suppose so. This is the longest I’ve ever been away from Ferris, the longest I’ve ever left the island in someone else’s care. ”

Julia nodded.

“It’s the longest I’ve ever been away from Lapine. I’m not the dead Alpha’s embarrassment of a daughter or the new Alpha’s curse of a sister here.” Hearing her talk about herself that way made me bristle, and she was wrong.

“You don’t think that has a little bit to do with the god-like powers you’ve come into recently?” I pointed out. “You’ll still have them when you get home. Think how excited Alyssa will be.”

“I guess,” she said, though she didn’t sound like she believed me. “I just—I don’t want to go back to being a burden.”

There was that word again, the one that had spilled, unthinking, from my mouth so many years ago, the one that had ruined everything between us.

“Julia—”

“That wasn’t a dig at you,” she said quickly. “You’re not the only person who’s made me feel that way.”

That didn’t make it better. In fact, it might have made it worse: to know that I was only one in the long line of people who had made Julia feel shitty about herself.

“No one should have—” I started, but she waved a hand at me.

“Don’t. I get it. You’re being nice to me now because you feel bad or whatever. But it doesn’t make any of it less true. I don’t want to go home and be reminded that I’m just the defective daughter who killed my own mom.”

It felt so wrong to hear her talk that way; Julia was confident, she didn’t care what people thought.

Or had that only been a front to protect herself from assholes like me?

I wanted to comfort her, to promise her that no one thought of her that way, that she was brave and strong and worthy, but I didn’t think she’d take that from me right now.

What would she say to someone else, I wondered? The answer came easily: make a joke.

“Hey,” I said. “Don’t talk about my wife like that.”

That won me a surprised, unguarded smile and a gentle shove.

“You’re so fucking stupid.”

“Yeah. I am.” As the words left my mouth, I realized how true they were.

If I’d just kept my mouth shut back on Lapine that evening four years and a lifetime ago, I might have had so much more Julia in my life.

Maybe I would even have allowed myself to admire the way the sun warmed her pale skin and the moonlight danced on her raven hair.

She still would have been forbidden. I didn’t want a mate, and even if I did, she was my best friend’s little sister. There was never any world in which I could have her, but in a kinder one, things between us might at least have been easy. We might have been friends.

“Did you mean what you said the other day?” Her voice, though soft, made me startle. When I looked over at her, confused, her plump lower lip was between her teeth, as if she was already regretting having spoken.

“Mean what?” I asked.

“That you thought I was beautiful?” A lock of black hair had fallen over her face. My fingers itched.

“Are you fucking with me right now?” She flinched because, of course, I’d chosen the wrong words.

I tried again: “No one in this entire archipelago holds a candle to you.” Shit.

That was too much. Dial it back. “You’re also stubborn, annoying, and often wrong, just for the record.

” I tried to sound nonchalant, as if the question and its answer were all one big joke, but that was Julia’s area of expertise, not mine.

I only sounded breathless and a little desperate.

“Just for the record,” she echoed, her voice barely more than a whisper. A tiny smile was beginning to curl at the corner of her mouth, and her blue eye sparkled. I couldn’t see the other, though—the magic one—so I reached up without thinking, brushing that loose strand of hair back behind her ear.

I felt her breath hitch, and a spark of want rushed through me.

After almost two weeks of close contact, I was growing used to the pull I felt when her skin touched mine.

It didn’t overwhelm me the way it once had, but I felt its presence nonetheless, and I wanted so badly to give in to it.

This was our last chance. Once we were back in our respective Packs, back to normal, there would be no excuse.

We’d declare the marriage null and void, and be done with it.

If I wanted to be weak one last time, it was now or never.

My nose brushed hers as I leaned closer, feeling the warm puff of her breath against my lips, and I stayed there, inhaling her chocolate-and-berries scent, content to linger until she moved away or met me in the middle.

For a long moment, she did neither, but her breath came heavier, a little unsteady, until she gave a low whimper and pressed her lips to mine.

She tasted of sunshine and summer and the lemonade she’d been drinking, and I couldn’t get enough.

It was too easy to pull her into my lap, to let her sit astride me, to push my tongue past her lips and drink in the taste of her moan.

Not to be outdone, she sucked my tongue lightly, and I felt my dick twitch in my shorts.

It was a sensory overload: the weight of her in my lap, the warmth of her body, the silk of her hair between my fingers, the taste of her mouth, her lips, her skin.

I kissed down the long length of her neck, nosing at the spot where it met her shoulder, where her scent was strongest. I salivated, my canines lengthening just enough to bite down, mark her, claim her.

I pulled away to kiss her again, needing the distraction of her mouth if I was going to get through this without doing something stupid and irreversible.

Her hands were cupping my face, keeping me there, and it was easy to lose myself in the slide of her lips on mine and the roll of her hips in my lap.

If she kept this up, I was going to be rock hard in a matter of seconds, unable to resist the sinful, sinuous roll of her body.

Dimly, I was aware that we were, once again, outside.

There was a stick jabbing me in the ass, but I cared about that almost as little as I cared about anyone coming across us.

They should see us here, see her give herself to me and me alone.

I gripped her hip hard, fisting the linen of her sundress as I pulled it up and over her head.

When she was all but bare in my lap, I could hold myself back no longer.

Rushing forward, I captured one perfect pink nipple in my mouth, and Julia whined, her hand flying to my head, tugging and stroking my hair as I suckled on her.

Her tits were so small and perfect, I could probably fit the whole thing in my mouth.

The idea made me harder, if that were even possible, and I opened my mouth wide, sucking the little mound of tender flesh inside.

Julia squirmed and gasped, and I reveled in the overwhelm of it, the way she filled my mouth so completely, spilling out as I brushed her skin with my tongue, trying to cover every inch of her that I could.

“Ethan,” Julia moaned, rocking her hips insistently against my groin. “I need, I need—”

Reluctantly, I let go of her breast, peppering little kisses over the flushed skin of her chest.

“What do you need, beautiful?”

“Please don’t make me beg again,” she gasped. Her eyes were screwed shut, her mouth open and wet and soft, and I couldn’t have denied her anything.

I wasn’t letting her get far enough away from me to remove her underwear properly, so I resorted to pulling aside the crotch, dipping my fingers into the scorching heat between her legs.

She was so wet, and we moaned together as I sank two fingers inside her to the knuckle.

She pulled my face back to hers, kissing me hard and long as I pulled my fingers out and pushed them in again, curling them just so, and she whimpered into my mouth.

This time, she didn’t ask for anything, only reached between us to pull down the waistband of my shorts and boxers, freeing my cock.

I was rock hard, my knot already formed, and Julia bit her lip as she looked down at it, stroking an exploratory hand up and down its length.

I shuddered beneath her touch, bucking up into her hand, and she smiled: she loved to have me dancing to her tune.

The novelty of it must have worn off pretty fast, because she only spent a moment teasing me before she rearranged herself in my lap, lining me up with her dripping, hungry pussy.

I gripped her hips hard enough to bruise as she took me inside, and she threw back her head in pleasure, her chest heaving and her black hair flowing like a river down her back.

She was so beautiful, so tight, so hot and slick and perfect inside.

This was where I belonged: inside her, surrounded by her. I needed her closer.

Fisting my hand in her hair, I caught her mouth in a fierce kiss as we began to move together.

With every roll of her hips, she opened up a little more, taking my knot sliver by sliver until we were locked together again.

I wanted it to last forever, to spend the rest of my life here in the dappled summer shade, with Julia’s mouth on mine and my cock buried deep inside her.

It wasn’t long, though, before I felt her begin to twitch and clench around me, her mouth opening against mine so that we were no longer kissing, simply gasping out breaths against each other’s lips.

Her nails dug into my shoulders as her peak approached, the grinding of her hips growing harder and more insistent until they lost all sense of rhythm, and I felt her clamp down around my cock, pulling me over the edge with her.

Even as we rode out the high, our bodies didn’t seem to know it was done, her pussy twitching and clenching around my dick like she wanted me to stay inside her just as much as I did.

We sat, wordless and spent, as the song of the cicadas started up and the sun dipped down beneath the trees.