Page 33

When Jaxon lets out his Broody growl, all the boys by the front door stop playing and lower their heads to show him their necks. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how everyone acts around my friend. It’s one thing to know he’s an Alpha and another to see that he’s an Alpha.
“Watch where you’re going, pups. You almost hurt your Luna.” Their eyes got big with fear when they saw that Jaxon was holding me tightly. His arms are still around me to protect me, and his eyes are black like they get when he’s mad.
“Hey, it’s okay, Jaxon.” I let go of his strong grip and walked over to the group of boys. I can see that it’s a group of five now that they have stopped moving. The person in front, who looks the oldest, still has his eyes down. His hair is short and black, like obsidian. He won’t look me in the eye, but I clear my throat once to get him to look at me.
“What’s your name? I’m Calla.”
The oldest boy looks down at me and smiles nervously. He looks over at Jaxon, who gives him a gruff nod that it’s okay for him to talk to me. “I’m Dylan, and I’m so sorry, Luna. I didn’t see you come in! Please know that I would never try to hurt you.” For a 16-year-old, he’s very mature, and I make a note in my head to tell Jaxon how great his pack members are at following rules.
“Don’t worry about it. My little sister runs me over all the time, anyway.” I look at the four other boys standing behind Dylan, and they tell me their names: Enzo, Aaron, Leonardo, and Gael. They look a little less scared now that Jaxon scared them. Their smiles start to come back now that they know their Alpha won’t hurt them.
Jaxon comes up behind me and gives Dylan my bag. “Take this to the Alpha suite. Everyone get ready for dinner.” Jaxon made it clear that there was no room for argument. I guess the boys went right to work. I think they went to the kitchen while Dylan hurried to get my bag from Jaxon and take it upstairs. I yell “Thank you, Dylan!” just before he runs around the corner of the stairs.
Dylan sticks his head out and smiles at me. “You’re welcome, Luna!” Dylan goes upstairs, leaving me and Jaxon alone by the front door of the big house. I look at Jaxon, who has a small smile on his face.
I ask, “What?” and tilt my head to the side. Why is he staring at me like that? He gently puts his hands on my cheeks and kisses me, as if he knows what I’m thinking.
“You’re already an amazing Luna. I was going to yell at those kids for being careless, but you took charge and got to know them all. You’re a natural.” Jaxon leaned down to kiss me again, but this time it lasted longer. His lips are so soft against mine that I have to stand on my tiptoes to get even closer. As I pull him closer, my arms naturally wrap around his neck. Aimed at him. As Jaxon deepens the kiss, his hands go to my waist and his tongue presses against my lips. I open up for him and touch my tongue to his, but I’m not sure if I should.
The more he kisses me, the more I start to tingle. The kiss makes my head feel light, and the tips of my toes curl up from the feeling. I grab Jaxon’s hair with my fingers, and he lets out a low groan. I tend to zone out when I’m with Jaxon. That’s probably why I didn’t even hear Skyler open the front door until he whistled loudly.
I suddenly jump away from Jaxon, partly because I’m shocked and partly because I’m embarrassed. Skyler starts to laugh while Jaxon starts to yell at him for interrupting.
Skyler laughs puts his hands up, pretending to be innocent, and says, “Hey, it’s not my fault you guys chose to make babies right by the front door.” I cover my face with my hands and pretend I’m digging into the ground.
I hear a slap and then Skyler whines, “Ow!” while my hands are covering my face. I look up and see Jaxon smiling while Skyler holds his cheek. His face is scrunched up, which makes him look like he’s constipated.
Skyler yells, “What the f**k was that for?” and a pout forms on her face.
Jaxon smirks and says, “You know exactly what that was for,” then takes my hand and leads me to the kitchen. Skyler follows like a good dog. We get to the dining room, where thirty people are already sitting down. There are a lot of different kinds of chicken, vegetables, pasta, potatoes, and bread on the table, and none of them have been touched. It looks like they’re waiting for someone.
Everyone is standing and staring at Jaxon, then me. That’s when I finally understand that they are waiting for him. Jaxon walks over to the end of the table and pulls out a chair for me. Then he sits down. Skyler is sitting next to Ezra at the table. Everyone else will sit down after we do. Everyone grabs different bowls and plates and starts serving themselves as if they were told to. I can’t believe how many different kinds of food there are, so I just sit still and stay in shock. I’ve never seen this much food all at once.
The food smells amazing. The bread smells like garlic, the potatoes smell like butter, and the chicken smells savory. I don’t know what to pick!
Jaxon’s soft laugh pulls me out of my staring contest with the food. He smiles and serves me pasta, then chicken, and finally vegetables across the table. I tell him to stop bringing me more food, but he doesn’t listen and keeps filling up my plate until there’s no more room on it. He gave me a little bit of everything, and there’s no way I’m going to eat all of it.
“Jaxon, this is too much food! I can’t eat this much.” He only seems a little interested in what I have to say.
“It’s okay. I’ll eat what you don’t finish.”
I point to his plate, which is full of food. If possible, his plate has even more food than mine. He can’t eat all of his food and most of mine.
“There’s no way you can eat all of this!”
Ezra, Skyler, and a few nearby werewolves laugh at me. It’s not mean, but they seem to find something I said funny. I ask Jaxon for more information, and he kisses me lightly on the cheek.
“Sometimes I forget that you’re new to all of this. I eat three times what I have on my plate right now. I’m an Alpha werewolf, so I need at least 4,000 calories a day.”
My jaw drops so low that I’m sure everyone at the table can see my uvula. The werewolves think I’m funny again and make fun of me. Ezra shakes his head and wraps his arm around Skyler while he eats. Skyler gets closer to Ezra and tries to take food off of his plate, but Ezra stops him with his fork and gives him a playful glare.
I don’t even notice that my mouth is still catching flies while I watch them be cute until Jaxon shoves a piece of chicken into my mouth. I quickly close my mouth and chew slowly, savoring the chicken’s flavors. It tastes like there’s honey sauce on it, and it’s the best chicken I’ve ever had.
Everyone likes the food, and as I promised, I could only eat about a third of what was on my plate. Jaxon was happy to eat my leftovers, and when dessert came, I could almost feel my stomach bursting just thinking about more food. Of course, I still had room in my dessert stomach for more, but after the chocolate lava cake and the tiramisu, I was full. I was so tired that I was almost falling asleep at the table.
I have my arm on the table and my fist on my cheek as I listen to Skyler tell me about his best pranks. It looks like he has a book of pranks with pictures of all the people he tricked. He thinks back to the time he covered Jaxon’s car with sticky notes, which he says took him four hours to do. He took a picture of Jaxon as he went to his car and freaked out about how dirty it was.
Skyler tells another story about a prank he pulled where he switched all the sugar in the house with salt. When Jaxon, Ezra, and the other pack members went to drink their morning coffee, it tasted very salty instead of sweet. Skyler said the black eyes were worth it.
Someone is telling another prank story, and I don’t even realize I’m falling asleep until Jaxon shakes me awake.
I mumble, “Hmm?” as I wipe the sleep from my eyes. Skyler keeps telling Ezra, Williams, and a few other wolves I know about his best pranks in a lively way. Jaxon, on the other hand, looks at me with worry as he lightly strokes my arm.
“Are you okay? Maybe we should get you to sleep, Baby. You look tired.” I nod, and Jaxon gets up from the table and helps me stand up. As we go upstairs, I say goodbye to everyone and they all say goodnight to the two of us.
I thought we would go into the same room we slept in last week, but we turned a different way at the end of the hallway and ended up in a bedroom we’d never been in before. The room is very big, and the walls are beige. There isn’t much Blackthorne furniture in the room. The bed is a dark mahogany color and has a navy blue comforter on it. The pillows on the bed look like they would be very comfortable. There are only a few picture frames scattered around the room. Other than that, the walls are pretty bare. The only things on them are some model cars and a few pictures in one corner of the room. This room seems more like Jaxon’s style because I knew he liked cars and motorcycles.
“Where are we?” I ask, my voice sounding rough and tired. Jaxon opens a dresser drawer and takes out a pair of sweatpants and a plain T-shirt. He puts them on the bed.
He says, “We’re in my room,” and then he takes off his shirt. I quickly look away and walk over to the overnight bag that Dylan must have brought in here. Jaxon laughs, and when I feel his warm hands over mine, I turn to see him grinning at me with no shirt on.
“You can look at me, you know,” he says. He licks his bottom lip, and my eyes follow the movement without me even thinking about it. I might be embarrassed to be caught staring at someone else, but a man who is completely shirtless and looks like a model is standing in front of me, almost begging me to look. So I will look.
I keep looking at his ripped arms, muscled stomach, and defined pecs and thinking that I don’t deserve him. He’s too good-looking, too nice, and too funny to like someone like me. I don’t get how someone like him could fall for someone like me, but I’m done trying to figure it out. He wants to be with me, and I really want to be with him.
I take a deep breath and want to say something sexy, but a horrible yawn comes out of my mouth instead. Jaxon laughs and kisses me on the forehead before handing me the shirt he just took out of the drawer. I look at him, a little confused, but then he tells me what he means.
“I know you packed your own stuff, but I really want my scent on you… It’s a werewolf thing…” Jaxon shifts uncomfortably on his feet as he rubs the back of his neck. He seems a bit shy when he asks me this, and I think it’s really cute that he’s so sure of himself most of the time but not so sure of himself around me.
I take the shirt from him and smile at him a little before going through my bag and getting my toiletries and a pair of pajama shorts with cute pandas on them. I change quickly in the bathroom and then open the door again so that Jaxon can come in and brush his teeth. He walks in with no shirt on and the Jaxon sweatpants hanging low on his hips, showing off the deep V of his hipbones. It’s like an arrow pointing down, and I have to fight my blush as I try not to look at his lower body.