Page 13 of Midnight Bond (Wolves of Midnight #5)

brIELLE

That tight feeling in my chest was back.

I was starting to call it the biological-clock feeling. After a full day of celebrating not only Kolton’s twenty-seventh birthday but his son’s first, I was extra emotional. Time was flying by so quickly. It felt like everything and everyone was changing around me while I stood still.

A tug on my hair drew my attention downward, and I smiled at the adorable redhead in my lap.

Although Lillian wasn’t mobile yet, it was only a matter of time before she joined her brother in zipping down the halls.

Good thing they had a built-in grandma, plus several aunts and uncles to keep them out of trouble.

Their poor mother could barely keep up the closer she got to her due date.

She had at least one more month to go, but she tended to deliver early.

“I’m exhausted,” Kolton’s sister moaned, and I looked up as Vi joined me on the couch with a theatrical flounce. Well, as much as a very pregnant female could flounce. “I feel like I’ve been pregnant forever.”

I snorted. “At least you’re not human.”

“True. I can’t believe human females have to carry babies for a whole nine months. Bet you’re glad you dodged that bullet.”

“Yeah,” I said, but my smile faltered. Before I could recover, Nora caught my expression as she joined us in the sitting room with a tray of refreshments.

At the sympathetic look she gave me, I fought back the sudden urge to cry.

“Whoa, what did I miss?” Vi asked, straightening from her slumped position to stare at us suspiciously.

“Nothing,” my best friend quickly replied before setting the tray on the coffee table and sitting on my other side. Her daughter immediately let go of my hair and squirmed toward her mother. Nora picked her up, and the little girl snuggled against her chest, a sure sign that she was hungry.

“It’s okay,” I said, watching Nora adjust her top to feed her child before looking away. “I’ve just been wanting a family of my own lately, and it’s making me super emotional.”

Vi’s mouth formed a large O. She flicked a glance at Nora, so fast that I almost missed it. Focusing on me again, she said, “Is that why you’ve been so restless lately?”

I glanced out the sitting room windows. The guys were still in the front yard with Luca and Melanie, attempting to bring them down from their birthday cake sugar highs.

I could hear the children’s delighted shrieks as they pelted the males with snowballs—even Jagger.

It had stormed a few days ago, blanketing the world in white, but that wasn’t the reason why I’d stopped running in the mornings.

Jagger suddenly charged Melanie and, in one fell swoop, tossed her over his shoulder.

As he spun her around, her peals of laughter echoing across the white clearing, my chest tightened to the point of pain.

Wrenching my gaze away, I answered Vi, “Mostly. But what happened at Thanksgiving and the fallout with my family has been weighing on me a lot too.”

Not to mention what had happened between me and Jagger a few days ago, but I wasn’t ready to face that debacle, let alone talk about it. I still didn’t even understand what had gone wrong.

“I’m so sorry, Brie,” Nora said. “I never should have encouraged you to go.”

Hearing the guilt in her voice, I turned to her with a stern look. “Girl, we’ve already been over this. Stop apologizing for what happened. It’s not your fault. Even if you’d told me not to go, I probably would have anyway.”

“True,” she muttered with an eye roll, and I flashed her my dimples impishly.

“Good thing Jagger was there,” Vi casually remarked.

Too casually. I narrowed my eyes at her, but her gaze was studiously glued out the windows as she gently rubbed her round belly.

“The close call with those human hunters was bad enough, but we were all terrified when Kolton told us your wolf was trying to emerge early.”

“And yet I haven’t gone into heat once in the fifteen months since becoming a werewolf,” I groaned and grabbed a pillow to cover my face. “I’m broken.”

“You’re not broken,” Nora said. “Just different.”

At that, I couldn’t help but feel a little better. If there was anyone who knew how it felt to be broken, it was my best friend. She hadn’t been able to shift her whole life until coming to the Rivers’ estate.

“And don’t forget that the first heat for a turned werewolf is unpredictable,” Vi added.

“Sometimes it comes right away, and sometimes it takes a while. But if you’re looking to jumpstart it, there’s always the annual Mate Gala.

With all those eligible bachelors around, your hormones are sure to burst awake. ”

“Vi,” Nora said with a note of warning, but I was too fixated on Vi’s words to give it much thought.

Lowering the pillow, I glared at them both accusingly. “And why am I just now hearing about this?”

Nora shook her head with a quiet exhale. “Because the event can be dangerous. Everyone who attends is single, looking for a mate, and from different packs. Hormones are high, and that many unmated males in one location often results in multiple fights and even a few deaths.”

“But I hear the orgies are incredible,” Vi said with a wistful sigh. When we both raised our eyebrows at her, she added with a shrug, “If you’re into that sort of thing.”

Still digesting that shocking bit of information, I asked, “If it’s so dangerous, why do they keep holding the event?”

“To prevent pack inbreeding,” Vi explained with another shrug. “The Mate Gala helps keep the werewolf genepool strong.”

“That, and it keeps dominant unmated males in check,” Nora said. “Even if they don’t find their mate at the event, most spend the entire weekend having sex, which helps cool off their raging hormones. That way, they have a better chance of not getting kicked out of their pack for unruliness.”

Oh my.

As shocking as their explanations were, humans weren’t all that different in their mating rituals. I’d been to my fair share of nightclubs and had even dabbled in a few one-night stands.

Which was why I blurted without thinking twice about it, “When’s the next event?”

A calculating light entered Vi’s purple irises. “This coming weekend, actually. It’s at a remote campsite in northern Pennsylvania. Neutral territory, of course.”

“Brie,” Nora said, that warning tone now directed at me. “I know what you’re thinking, and I don’t think it’s a good idea. This isn’t like the nightclubs you attended in college. Plus, after what happened to you on Thanksgiving, I doubt Kolton will allow you to go.”

“Not to mention Jagger,” Vi said with a snicker, which quickly morphed into a cough when I gave her the stink eye.

“Jagger hasn’t spoken or even looked at me in three days, so I doubt he’ll care,” I firmly replied, not quite able to keep the bitterness from my voice. “And convincing Kolton to let me go will be easy.”

Vi leaned forward to grab a glass of ice water from the tray.

“Well, I know how my brother feels about the gala. He’s all for letting males in our pack attend, but females?

Not so much. They get fought over a lot and oftentimes become injured.

If you’re going to convince him, it’ll have to be good. ”

“Oh, it is,” I confidently said, smirking when both females lifted an eyebrow at me. “It’s simple. I’ll tell him my reason for going is to find my soulmate.”

Vi spewed the sip of water she just took all over the coffee table, and Nora went abnormally still.

“What? The notion isn’t that inconceivable,” I said, a bit annoyed by their reactions. “Nora bumped into her fated mate at a nightclub, so chances are, mine’s out there too. But I won’t find him if I stay in this house all the time.”

Both were way too quiet after that, but Vi eventually said, “Nora, I think we should—”

“No, Brielle is right,” Nora interrupted before she could finish. “She wants a family of her own, and I know Kolton will understand that.”

“True, but letting Brielle go by herself is a risk.”

“But I wouldn’t be alone,” I felt the need to point out. “I’ll be surrounded by werewolves all weekend.”

“Yes, but those supernatural hunters are still out there,” Vi reminded me.

“There’s only one now, and he’s not even a supernatural.”

“Don’t underestimate humans, especially ones who know about supernaturals and their weaknesses,” Vi said in all seriousness. “The Supernatural Containment Agency consists mostly of humans.”

I swallowed with difficulty. “Do you think the SCA sent those two men to my parents’ house because they thought I was a danger to my family?”

Seeing the worry on my face, Vi’s expression softened. “We already contacted the SCA to make sure it wasn’t them, Brielle. Besides, they would never treat humans the way those two men treated your family.”

I nodded, some of my worry fading. After a beat of silence, I quietly said, “The last thing I want to do is put myself in danger, but this gala could change everything for me. Please. I really, really want to go.”

Nora and Vi exchanged looks, then, with a weighty sigh, Nora said, “I’ll talk to Kolton about it tonight before bed. I’m sure I can convince him.”

A small grin twitched my lips. “With sex, you mean. You’ll convince him with sex.”

I watched as color slowly painted her cheeks red. It didn’t matter that I heard the two of them humping like jackrabbits almost every night. She still blushed when I teased her about it.

“Aaand on that note, I’m out of here,” Vi said, grumbling under her breath about knowing too much about her brother’s sex life. “I swear this baby is murdering my bladder. I can barely go two hours without needing to pee.”

As she stood from the couch, a random thought popped into my head and out of my mouth before I could stop it. “Does Jagger struggle to control his wolf?”

She paused with a hand on her belly and blinked down at me owlishly. “Uh, not that I’m aware of. Why?”

I waved the question away, and yet found myself saying, “He just seems so pent-up all the time, like he has a stick permanently wedged up his butt. The guy seriously needs to get laid or something.”

She blinked down at me for another moment, then burst out laughing. “Oh, man,” she wheezed out, clutching her belly. “I think I just peed a little.”

When she waddled from the room in a rush, still snorting on laughter, I turned to Nora with an exasperated look. “What did I say?”

Nora unlatched Lillian from her nipple and switched her over to the other breast before replying, “We all know that Jagger is a very private male. Even Kolton doesn’t know everything about him.

He once told me the story of how his parents and pack rejected him at the age of five, but I don’t know much more than that about his past. If you want to know more, maybe you should ask him. ”

“Well, that’s never happening,” I muttered, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice yet again.

Nora looked up from her daughter to search my face intently. “Did something happen between you two? I know those morning training sessions were helping you deal with everything that happened on Thanksgiving, but you haven’t left the house for a few days now.”

I shrugged and began to fidget with the chunky gold bangles on my wrists. “We decided to take a break. No biggie.”

Her stare turned pointed. “I know you, Brielle. You’re an open book, and the past few days, you haven’t been yourself. Usually when you’re stressed, you eat your weight in junk food, but I noticed you didn’t even touch the birthday cake and ice cream earlier. What’s going on?”

I tried to play off her concern, but my emotions betrayed me and I burst out, “He stopped training me, and I don’t know why.

One minute, everything was fine, and the next, he was .

. . I seriously thought he was going to kiss me, Nora.

Which is delusional, I know. He’s been ignoring me ever since, and it’s just .

. . it’s really bugging me. I thought he’d finally started warming up to me. ”

Nora’s expression fell. “Oh, Brie, I’m so sorry.”

I gave her a sad smile. “It’s okay. Apparently, my charm doesn’t work on broody males or family members who think I’ve gone crazy.”

“I could talk to them, and I could ask Kolton to talk to Jagger.”

“I love you, bestie,” I quickly replied, “but don’t you dare.

These are my problems, and I need to figure them out.

But first, I want to go to that Mate Gala this weekend.

You’re right that I haven’t been myself, and maybe this is just what I need to snap me out of my funk. Do me one huge favor, though.”

A worry line bisected her brows, but after a moment, she nodded for me to go on.

Taking a deep breath, I said, “Jagger can’t know that I’m planning to go. Please ask Kolton not to tell him.”

“Brie . . .”

“Please, Nora. He’ll ruin everything, I just know it. And I need this. I really need this.”

At the pleading look I gave her, she shook her head with a groan. “I’m seriously going to regret this, but . . . Fine. I will.”

I jumped up from the couch with a little squeal, excited for the future for the first time in days. “Thank you, bestie! You won’t regret it!”

“I already am,” she called as I hurried from the room to begin packing.

The event was two days away, but I needed that much time to plan out my wardrobe. Not that I would be wearing the clothes for long, if the weekend went the way I hoped.