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“Julie, daughter of Marian,” his smile grew wider as he chanted the words, his hand going to the open collar of his shirt, sliding along the golden flesh and stopping over his heart.

“I ask that you accept this token as a symbol of my regard for you. I wish to start the petitioning process to join your pack. My deepest wish is that I will prove worthy and that I will take a place by your side. As part of my offer, I give you all I have that’s worth a damn.

” He looked back again, Hawk standing there, eyes wide.

Jack nodded, gesturing to the man to come forward.

“What the hell do you think you’re playing at!” Kelly said. “You can’t offer another person as a token.”

Hawk strode over, face a seamless blank.

It wasn’t until Jack stood and placed a hand on his shoulder that I saw the tension there as it leached away.

Hawk’s eyes partially closed for a second, then opened again.

He stared back, an endless chocolate brown gaze that seemed to see everything and nothing all at once.

Jack took a step towards me, something that wrenched a snarl from Slade.

He just sneered in response, but when he turned to me, all of it—the cocky bullshit, the cynical front—seemed to drop away.

“Take him,” he rasped in a low voice. “He wants a woman more than anything, and I’ve got no other way to give it to him.

No one else will take us, with things the way they are. But you?—”

“You’ve got a lot of fucking nerve,” Slade said.

“You think I don’t know how you feel right now?

” Jack snapped back. “Like your heart jumped out of your chest and started walking around, vulnerable and open to being kicked at any time, and you’re just helpless to watch it go?

You’d do anything for her, wouldn’t you?

Walk through fire, slay a thousand enemies, bring her the world and lay it at her feet.

Don’t tell me I have some nerve, when you’d do the exact same thing in my place. ”

“You don’t have to do this,” Finn said to me. “This is so bloody unorthodox, I don’t know if you’ll get the matriarchs’ approval, even if you do.”

“What won’t get the matriarchs’ approval?”

It was right about now the drama in my life ratcheted up from reality TV to telenovela. Ophelia stood within the doorway, looking for all the world like a sorceress. She wore a rusty black dress that fell around her in voluminous folds, and she rose from within it, a steely tower.

“Well?”

“Jack has made a petition and is using Hawk as his token,” Finn said.

Those grey eyes inspected the lot of us and then, she smiled. “My Jack, always the cunning one.”

“Mother,” Kelly said. “This is not helping.”

Mother? I thought. Again. Seriously, we were five minutes away from someone announcing they were long lost siblings or had had a secret baby for ten years.

Ophelia merely shrugged, a cool presence in what was obviously an interesting family dynamic.

Nice to know being able to transform into a smoke wolf monster didn’t preclude you from family drama llamas.

“It’s not for us to say yea or nay to another woman’s offer.

If she feels the token is pleasing, she accepts.

It does not tie her to Jack in any way, it merely puts the offer on the table, allows him to pursue her.

If he fails to persuade her, she returns the token,” her eyes slid over Hawk’s still form, “and everything returns the way it was. How is it different to any other petition?”

They argued about it for a bit—even Slade got involved—but the sound dropped away for me. Instead, it was obscured by the regular thump of my heart, the rasp of my breath in my ears.

“Is this what you want?” I said to Hawk. I’d seen him in the field outside the honeymoon cottage, on his knees with his mouth full of Jack’s dick, but I’d never heard him say a word.

“Yes,” he replied, his voice a deep rumble. He moved towards me, his breath starting to come in faster, if the shift in his chest was anything to go by, and then he stopped himself. My eyes zipped down to where his hands began to tremble.

“It’s OK,” Jack said, placing a hand on his forearm. He turned back to me. “Don’t let their bullshit get in the way of this. You want him, I can smell it on you. Take him, please.”

For a moment, I just hung there, the guys so close that I could feel the warmth radiating off of their bodies.

I swallowed, feeling a hard lump in my throat.

I didn’t need any more guys in my life. I was already concerned about my ability to meet the needs of the five I had.

But that greedy little girl—who came out to play when they were all naked—inspected that powerful body, the long fall of chestnut brown hair, and wondered how soft that beard would be between my thighs.

My eyes flicked to Jack. How did he fit in to all of this?

The implication was he wanted to pursue me, something he’d made obvious in previous meetings, but this offer?

“What do you want?” I asked. Fuck all this walking around with only parts of the whole picture. I needed to start asking a lot more questions, finding out what the hell was going on. “What do you get out of this?”

Jack’s pupils flared for a moment, his mood communicated only in the sharp tip of his chin.

“You asking if it’s gonna be a chore, squiring you around the town on dates to keep him by your side?

” His smile spread, displaying his sharp white teeth.

“I’ve got your scent, sweetheart, bloody near tasted it when you were fucking Shaunie on the tabletop.

Don’t get it twisted, love, I’ll be hard as a fucking rock the whole damn time you’re with me, wanting a taste of you, him, and if I had my wish, both. ”

“Yes,” I said. To what, I wasn’t totally sure, caught on the end of Jack’s gaze as I was. His smile changed at that, the corners twitching. “I accept your token, your offer.”

When I turned to face the others, they all fell silent. Ophelia looked like the cat that had the cream, and Kelly just short of having an aneurysm. Finn’s eyes were wide and empty, something that had the hair on the back of my neck standing up.

He needs caring for , my Tirian said.

They all do , I said, looking to where Hawk had taken a place by my side.

But that one puts everyone else’s needs first, leading through service. You are the leader of the pack, with that comes responsibility to those you want to include in it.

Got it , I said, moving away from the crowd.

“I’ve made my decision. Ophelia says the matriarchs will support it. Can I ask the rest of you to consult with them and check? I need a moment here.”

“Sure thing, princess,” Slade said with a nod and then turned to walk outside.

“The ceremony—” Kelly said.

“In a minute,” I replied, taking up position beside Finn. He looked down at me in surprise when I grabbed his hand.

“This is—” she began to splutter, but Ophelia swept over, taking her daughter by the arm and walking with her towards the back door.

“Come along, the children have things they must do. No one’s going to notice if things are delayed by a few minutes.”

That silence I’d longed for settled over the living room, but now it felt a little too big, too much, as if I had to somehow answer its weight.

“Hey,” I said, turning to look up at Finn and reaching up to pull his lips down on mine.

Something restless settled inside me when we connected.

It was just a dry, soft, almost shy kiss, but those weren’t the feelings that it inspired.

I let out a breath I hadn’t realised I was holding when we pulled apart.

“That bad?” he said, his grey eyes twinkling.

“You have no idea. I hashed it out with Brandon, which gave me a bit of respite, but then...” I gestured lamely to the room.

“Come here,” he said, drawing me over to the couch.

We both collapsed down onto it, my legs going over his, his arms going around me.

“Bonding, creating a pack, it’s a big emotional thing for the whole community.

It changes things. Relationships are made and broken.

Alliances shift. Families are tugged to and fro by the shifting status of the people involved.

It’s really, really intense, which is why we were all going to wait. ”

“But Slade.”

“Always but Slade. We call people like Slade tricksters. They smash through tradition, rules, customs, not always aware of the consequences of doing so.”

“That sounds bad,” I said, bristling. He was a bit of an arse at times, but the fact I could rely on him to tell me what was going on was reassuring, though that pregnancy thing...

“It’s not. It’s just chaotic. We need rule breakers as much as rule creators. If we have too many breakers, anarchy reigns, if we have too many creators, society ossifies.”

“You’re a creator, aren’t you,” I said with a smile.

His, when he returned it, was devastating. I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed that brilliant flash of white teeth against deep brown skin.

“As a rule, yes. You can’t work for the alpha and not be. But today, I’m going to take a leaf from Slade’s book.”

My eyes went to where his hand reached into his pocket. He pulled out a small bag, undid the drawstrings, and pulled out a silver ring, placing it on my palm. I just stared into his grey eyes, the intensity there startling. Finn always came across as unflappable, but this was a whole other beast.