Page 140 of Ensnared by the Pack: The Complete Series (Destined Realms #3)

CYRUS

I rolled my eyes at Deacon, praying he wouldn’t notice the real reason I took five times longer to wash the pot and bowls than usual, and started marching toward the pool assuming everyone else would follow. I’d tried to shift out the evidence, but Deacon had a sensitive nose that he liked to stick in other people’s business and he wasn’t as distracted by Bishop’s condition as Knox was.

Jeez. This was what I’d become. It was like I was a pup again, hiding in the mountains to jerk off so no one knew.

But early this morning, while I was sitting on watch, Audrey’s scent had started to change. Her sweet fresh scent had deepened with desire even while she was unconscious and my wolf had lost it.

He wasn’t going to let Audrey suffer through another heat fever and he was determined to stop it before it even started… despite the fact that her changing scent might not indicate another heat and could just be her incomplete mating bond compelling her to seal it.

As it was, I’d escaped camp with the morning dishes, praying no one had noticed my cock tenting my pants, washed the dishes as fast as I could, and then shucked my clothes — since I couldn’t afford to have them smell like my arousal.

With a groan, I’d fallen to my knees and grabbed myself. My cock was already painfully hard and leaking precum thanks to my wolf’s eagerness to claim Audrey and the realization that maybe, one day, I could.

That crack in my determination to never mate with her had been enough for him to take a little more control of our body. Thankfully, that crack wasn’t enough for him to come on to Audrey — we both knew that wouldn’t go over well given the current situation — but it was enough to make me need a release.

I huffed a bitter laugh.

I was just kidding myself. I didn’t need my wolf to make me hard for Audrey. I hadn’t even needed to see her glorious and radiating alpha power to defy me. I’d wanted her from the moment I’d seen her, a small, broken warrior defying death himself.

But I’d just been so determined to do right by my pack.

Except my pack would eventually come around and I’d expel any from the pack who wanted to hurt her. I just needed to be patient, needed to find the right moment where my pack would accept her and she’d accept me as her mate.

I squeezed my cock, knowing the only way to get it to calm down was to come, and my thoughts had jumped to our one time together. It had been terrifying and heartbreaking, and I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it, about how tight she was, how warm, how fragile. I’d needed to protect her, care for her, love her, and that feeling had only grown stronger the more I tried to avoid her.

I’d roughly jerked my hand along my length until hot jets of cum had poured into the stream where I’d washed the pots. Then I shifted into my wolf and back to human, destroying the scent of my cum as much as possible.

Now I was hiking downwind of her — because that was the direction we had to go — her scent pure torture and pure ecstasy as each tiny gust dragged it over me.

“We need to pick up our pace,” Deacon said, his voice low, as he stepped up beside me.

His attention flickered back to the others behind us and his expression turned serious. “You can smell that, can’t you? Audrey’s need? It’s subtle, but it’s there.”

“You think it’s subtle?” I choked out. I was damn near drowning in it.

He glanced down at my crotch where I’d secured my hard-as-hell cock under the waistband of my pants so my condition wasn’t so obvious — and something I’d needed to do less than ten minutes after jerking off.

“Ah,” he said, that one word filled with knowing. “Nova would say you’re hyper-attuned to her scent after watching her suffer through a heat fever for so long.”

“What would you say?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but he was a good friend and my beta. He knew the whole situation and wouldn’t let his friendship with Audrey get in the way of telling me the truth. I trusted him, even if I looked like an idiot.

“That it’s too soon for Audrey’s incomplete bond to start affecting her and we need to save Bishop and get them to bond before it’s more than just a little desire. Oh, and—” He flashed me a crooked smile, his eyes bright with laughter even as he managed to keep it in and not laugh out loud. “Nova’s right.”

“Not always,” I huffed.

He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Nova is always right.”

Yeah, Nova was wrong so few times it didn’t count.

“I think your instincts are telling you something about Audrey, but you’ve made a royal mess of it before it could even get started.”

“The pack needs to accept her first,” I insisted. “I won’t put her through that scrutiny and hate.”

“She’s stronger than you think she is,” Deacon replied.

“No,” I corrected. “She’s stronger than she thinks she is, and I won’t put her in front of the pack as my mate until she realizes that. I won’t be cruel to her.”

“Again,” Deacon said, the laughter melting from his eyes, his expression turning serious. “You won’t be cruel to her again. ”

“Yeah.” I ran my hands over my head, fearing the damage was already done. Putting her in front of my pack as my mate was pure fantasy. It meant she’d have to accept me first, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to convince her that her heart, not just her body, was safe with me.