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“Fuuuck!” he groaned as our tongue stroked him, the mix of saliva and venom creating a low simmering burn.

It didn’t seem to faze him, as his hips jerked in time with our movements.

“No!” he snarled finally, just as his cock began to flex in my mouth, twitching with what was gonna come.

He pulled my head away, smashing his mouth against mine.

“You are ready?” my Tirian asked through my lips. Her voice sounded weird and echoey, as if coming from far away. He nodded. “You know what this means?”

His head cocked slightly to the side, green eyes boring into mine. “It is now?”

She nodded, and I felt it then, the wild pulling sensation in our chest that had me reaching for him without even noticing.

Those alien eyes glanced down to where my fingers linked with his before receding to leave just Aaron.

I watched him for a moment, saw the hitch in his chest, then he turned his head away, leaving the great muscle of his neck there, open and vulnerable.

I was surprised to feel her shift us over him with care, climbing over him until we crouched, weight balanced on the balls of our feet and the hands we gripped his shoulders with.

One slipped down, between our legs, grasping his thickness and bringing it away from where it was pulled tight against his abdomen.

“Take me,” Aaron said. She paused in rubbing the head of his cock against our wetness, a low rumble building in our chest. His eyes slid around to us. “Take everything I am. I hold nothing back.”

When I felt the surge of her anger, I jerked my Tirian back as if on some kind of dog chain, and I was shocked I was able to.

The gall…!

It’s not. It’s a human thing. He’s saying he’ll give us everything, keep no boundaries, hold nothing back.

He should not anyway. Those others ? —

Are human. I’m human. We are cursed to be all too aware of the ways we can hurt each other, and we develop a bunch of complex rules to deal with them.

That’s what we are, what you’ve fused yourself to—something I’d like to know a whole lot more about, by the way.

He’s basically saying he’s going to put all the human protective shit to one side for you, us.

You’ve got no idea how hard that is. I glanced over to where Aaron waited, no doubt wondering what the hell was going on in our mind.

He’d just offered us everything, and we were digressing for side arguments. Let me do this , I said.

No, you will ? —

Yes, I will.

I would have liked to have been in a more sure place, to have spent a bunch of time hanging out and getting a sense of each other, but like everything in Sanctuary, it didn’t run on Jules time.

Instead, faced with no doubt the same worries, Aaron made this simple, but devastating offer.

He held out a hand and asked me to jump, no matter what lay below, to hold on to each other and find out, then deal with what came together.

When I moved forward, it was just me again, so I drew in close and rested my forehead against his cheek, listening to our breath for a moment.

“Of course, I will,” I whispered, accepting his offer, no matter how belatedly, and catching the choked back sob in his chest when the words registered.

I moved smoothly now, my cunt over his cock, my mouth over his neck, in the oddest, yet somehow most natural clinch. My fangs snapped down as I engulfed him, blood and venom running down his skin.

I pulled back, resplendent above him, chest adorned with the rivulets of our mating, hips rolling in slow sinuous movements.

When he stared back at me, his eyes had returned to hazel and it was just me and Aaron again.

Strong hands gripped my waist, then he shuffled under me until I was basically sitting on his lap, except for one crucial difference.

A difference that had me draping my arms around his neck and him clasping my hips.

I stared into his eyes and he into mine, and then we moved.

We didn’t look away once, not as he thrust up, stretching me to my limits, not when I bore down, drawing him in deep. We rocked, a long slow lope, and I watched the twitch of the muscles around his eyes. When his lips parted, I leant forward and claimed them.

Because there was a special gift to being mated that I had never experienced before in my life.

Perhaps I was an insensible dick before becoming Tirian, or just with the wrong guys, I don’t know.

All I did know was that the bond allowed for more, so much more.

His body, his hands, his dick, it didn’t matter.

We floated, becoming diaphanous and all-encompassing, until I could no longer just feel Aaron, but all of them.

Points of light in the cloud that was us, I could feel every single one of my pack and their reactions, from lustful, envious, or incandescent love, fusing together until all that remained was us.

When we came, that pleasure shot out and sent shock waves through all of them, going on and on and on, and the feedback loops of their surprise at the feelings provoked yet more responses in the rest of us.

Reality came back slowly. First, the sound of birds chirping, then the rustle of leaves, then I opened my eyes and saw Aaron’s smile.

He was radiant. He’d meant it, for this moment at least, he let everything be there on display.

Of course, being me, I was struck by a need to protect that, not wanting to see that face grow shuttered as Slade’s had.

This was all happening so fast and I—the anxious overthinker—was gonna roll with it.

I liked the way his hands shot up to stop me when I disengaged from him, only relaxing when I lay down on the leaves beside him, our bodies slotting together again as if made to do just that.

“Jules—” he started, but words failed him. Of course, they did. They were so manifestly hopeless when trying to describe something like this, all the best poems and songs lacking, even when they got the closest to it. We just lay there, staring into each other’s eyes until they came.

I wasn’t surprised to feel the others come and cluster around, taking a seat in the dirt with us. Slade clapped Aaron on the shoulder with a smile, and Brandon dropped a kiss on the top of my head. Even Finn looked pleased, albeit stiffly so.

“So, looks like we aren’t going to maintain that place in the spotlight for long,” Jack said, pulling Hawk to him and kissing his temple. “Our girl’s always gotta be the centre of attention.”

“Shut up, Jack,” Hawk said, but he hugged his mate to him.

“No one can outshine you, Jack,” I said.

“Said by a woman with cum running down her leg? High praise indeed.” But he softened his words by crawling over and kissing me. “You seem in an awful hurry to take mate bonds with your pack,” he said when he finally pulled back. “Anything I should know?”

And there I saw it. Vain, snarky bastard that he was, Jack had just gotten some kind of certainty last night with Hawk.

He had to be worried about my Tirian’s shitty schedule, because I was.

But I was tired and sore and full—of love or Aaron’s cum or both, it didn’t seem to much matter—so I spoke to him and hopefully my Tirian as well.

“I’m tired of fighting this…whatever this is.

I wanted to do this properly, spend enough time with each of you and really get to know you all, but it seems whatever paranormal forces are at play won’t allow that.

So instead, I put this to you, as the remaining members of my pack.

I won’t bite either of you, not in play or to form a mate bond, not until you ask me for it.

I know it's traditional for the woman to make the move, but in this case, I think the rules can be bent. I care a lot for all of you. Like, startlingly so. It feels so rushed and intense, but I can’t bring myself to regret it.

Do I want to chomp on the both of you, bring you into the fold, have all of you included in this bond that pretty much sings in my chest?

Of course, I do. I…” Pick the right word , I told myself.

Be careful. “I care about the two of you so much. Obviously, I want to expand what I have to include you, but I’m not going to, not until you want it.

If you want to spend some time just being mated and enjoying each other’s company, I’m not going to care about you less.

That doesn’t take the offer off the table.

Same goes with sex. You’re all insanely hot, and I love being with all of you, but if you want some time to just be together, that’s cool too. ”

I looked up at Brandon, and those cool grey eyes met mine before he nodded.

“A great man told me that loving someone doesn’t mean owning them.

Sometimes, it’s holding the person you love in a secret space just for the two of you, and that’s OK.

For others, you hold them lightly, let them be who they are, prioritise their happiness, safety, and protection over all else and let everything else sort itself out.

I’m holding you lightly, up until the point you don’t want that anymore. ”

I could have punched Jack in the face and he would have looked less stunned than he did now. He rocked back on his heels and just stared blankly, and my heart hurt for him that he would be so shocked to hear those words.

“You shut Jack up, that’s one for the books,” Slade said, shuffling over to kiss my cheek. “Congrats, mate,” he said to Aaron, offering him a bloody fist bump. “Glad to have you with us.” Aaron chuckled, reached up, and matched Slade’s emotionally repressed gesture.

“Great man, huh?” Brandon said as he swooped in and thrust his head between Aaron and I, draping his arms around both of us and swooping in to kiss me first, slow and heartfelt.

He started to move in to do the same to Aaron, but stopped himself.

His eyes glanced from me to the other man. “Is this OK?”

“Is it?” I asked in answer.

Aaron reached over and pulled Brandon to him, and I had a very nice view of the two of them kissing.

But I didn’t get to watch for long as Hawk drew close and kissed me before pressing his forehead to mine.

“Thanks,” he said, a world contained within that one word, but I knew what he meant.

Everything was under the surface with Hawk, something we’d all have to learn to manage.

“We’re gonna have a group hug, aren’t we?” Jack said over Aaron’s shoulder. “God’s hairy balls.” But for all his curses, he moved in quick enough, never able to stay on the outskirts without an effort. Slade cursed too, but his arms went around us all the same.

I agreed with Jack’s sentiment, really. If you’d said I’d be hugging a bunch of guys, naked, under a tree, in another world, and just short of breaking out into the chorus of “Kumbaya,” I’d have said you were on crack.

Yet, here I was. The steady hum of one guy’s feelings that I got when touching one of them became something else altogether when we were all interlinked like this.

In some ways, it was a dizzying array of different feelings, but I forced myself to relax into it, taking one deep breath and then another.

It’s just feelings , I told myself. They can’t hurt me, not unless I let them.

I admit, the next few breaths were shuddering ones.

There was so much going on, but as I kept breathing, feeling the fear inside me rise and breathing through it, the anxiety spiral finally crested before tapering off, and then all that remained was me and the current of emotions from them.

Largely, it was love. There was some irritation and fear, confusion and doubt, all hovering on the surface like there was in every moment, but underneath that superficial turmoil, there it was. I felt the warmth pulse through me, through all of us.

I knew when Finn touched my shoulder, it was a light thing, there and gone again.

When I looked up, he was walking away, back to the cars.

People are going to come and go within the pack , I told myself, feeling the ache as I watched him go.

I laid my head on whoever’s body was the closest and just felt the hum of my pack’s energy around me.

“This is well done, but you may need to break things up.” Our heads jerked up to see Sylvan standing over us, some of Aaron’s men hovering in the background. “Another step towards unity is a good thing, but that will be all for naught if the rock crusher’s call for males is answered.”

The idea of more of those bastards stampeding had me on my feet, the guys falling away.

Sylvan’s eyes dropped down to my breasts and widened for a moment before forcing a polite smile on his face.

Aaron’s men were not so decorous and I quirked an eyebrow as they quite openly checked me out.

It took Aaron standing in front of me like a modesty screen of muscle to nip that in a bud.

“Boss, we think in honour of your new relationship, you should get a change in call sign,” I heard one of the men say to Aaron.

“Whaddya mean? I’ve been Tiny since I joined up.”

I dropped down and hastily pulled Aaron’s shirt on.

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s gonna fit now.”

I paused, looking at the other guys with a quizzical eyebrow.

“Yeah, we’re thinking Moon,” another said.

“What the fuck?” Aaron replied.

“You know, bluuuue mooooon…” The guys crooned the line to the song as their hands went to waistbands before turning around and shaking their arses at us.

“You fucking… Everyone better be at the cars, ready to go in five.”