Page 25 of Tamed Wolf (Rejected Mates of the Shelter #4)

Beckett, Now

“What’s this?”

“One of your mating presents. We were going to give it to you as a courting gift, but we were too antsy to wait. We figured, why bother with courting if we can just mate you instead?”

My beautiful girl rubs the sleep out of her eyes and pulls herself to a sitting position in bed, yawning and stretching. “You got me a mating present?”

“You're going to like it, I promise.”

Me and my brothers take spots on the bed as she opens the box hesitantly, giving the ribbon to Rowan to play with when he starts reaching for it. It's cute as fuck when she ends up just pulling him into her lap, letting him help her open it.

“What do you think we got in here, bud? I think your daddies did something they shouldn't have,” she says as she aims a look towards us. Saucy, this one.

“Trust me we really should have,” Blake says.

I'm not going to tell her about the shopping trip we have planned for later to get her a new wardrobe, but I'll make sure she gets lots of shiny things then.

She pulls the manila envelope out of the box and opens the clasp, sliding out a stack of papers with confusion painted all over her face. She starts reading through the paper on top, eyes flicking to us when she gets to the bottom of it. She goes to the next page, scans it and covers her mouth agape with what I'm hoping is good feelings, not making a sound until she gets to the last page.

“Are you guys shitting me right now?” She puts the papers on her lap and stares us down.

“No, but he might be,” Brooks says as he grabs the baby and takes a whiff of his bottom.

“What am I supposed to do with a strip club?”

“Whatever you want to,” I tell her. “You could keep it as a business if you wanted to. Dad has awarded it to you fair and square after your exes held you to employment there for so long under a false contract.

“Or I could sell it,” she says thinking.

“O you could sell it,” Blake agrees.

“What about Camden? Shouldn’t he inherit it? It's a family business."

“Here’s the thing about that,” I start to explain as I pull another sheet from my back pocket. “The paperwork that entitled Ivan to the club in the first place had stipulations that he didn't meet.”

She looks so confused, which just proves her exes kept her so in the dark, power hungry to control everything they could when it came to her. “What do you mean he didn't meet them? He had custody of Camden. Wasn’t that what enabled them to inherit from their uncle or whoever?”

“Yes, but if they would have been slightly more careful with their legal documents, they would have realized that there were other things they had to do to maintain ownership of the club once it was formally given it to them.” I pass the paper over to her and she reaches for it, poring it over immediately.

“Wait, is this real? You guys didn't fabricate this?”

“Nope,” Brooks tells her as he comes back with a clean baby. “If they couldn't stay above the law, then the ownership of the club automatically passes to their goddess blessed mate. Since it doesn't stipulate that rejection would cancel any such claim, the pack lawyers, in light of everything that's happened between you and your exes, have deemed that you are the rightful owner. Forcing you into a contract that had so many holes in it, threatening you for custody, drugging you, abusing you…they 100% brought this on themselves.”

The glee shining through Lark’s eyes as she thinks of possibilities is exactly what I was hoping for when we got these papers back. “Would it be really fucking awful if I called up Trevor's biggest competitor and offered the club to him for pennies? He’s been sniffing around for years, offering Trevor money for the club so he can expand his own brand and eliminate competition, and Trevor fucking hates him.”

“Not awful,” I start, “but you can do better than pennies. Give him a deal if you’d like to spite Trevor, but their business is worth something and I’d hate to see you shortchange yourself just to make a point.”

She starts chewing on her lip, running through things in her head. “Do we need the money? We haven't talked about finances yet.”

I shake my head firmly. “Lark, any money that would come from selling that place is purely for you. For whatever you want to do with it. Our pack has everything it needs to care for you, Rowan, and anybody else we find ourselves in custody of. If you want to invest this money, or use it for an education,” she makes the face of this, “or not. The point is you can get a good amount of money if you’re serious about selling it. As much as I hate to admit it, it is a successful business and I’m sure somebody would scoop it up in a heartbeat if the price was right.”

“Could I give the money to the shelter?” she asks quietly. “They did everything for me. It would be kind of incredible, I think, to be able to give back. To maybe buy new beds and blankets for the women there, little pieces of comfort maybe.”

I knew she was too good for us. “If that's what you want to do, Lark, we will support you 100%. It would be pretty poetic justice to take the money and use it for that purpose.”

“I don't have use for the money,” she says. “I’d feel gross to spend it on myself knowing where it came from. No, I'm going to give it to the shelter. I could do a lot of good there, I think.”

“Then that's what we'll do, you crazy, incredible woman.” I lean forward and kiss her, running my thumb over her mate mark on her neck.

“Camden's gonna be pissed,” she says with a shrug as she crawls out of bed, kisses each of us on the cheek and heads out to the kitchen. She pauses in the doorway though to look back at us. “Thank you, all of you, for doing that for me. You have no idea how much that means to me.”

???

“Really? Bending me over while I’m doing laundry?”

“Rowan just went down for his nap,” I tell her as I gently shove her over the top of the washer and slip her pants down to her ankles.

“Good call.” Her voice is immediately breathy and thin, because in the few days we’ve been mated, we’ve gotten so damn good at sneaking in quickies when we can.

It’s not always the most romantic atmosphere for a newly bonded pack when there’s a baby shitting himself left and right and throwing up milk and flinging food…damnit, my dick is getting soft.

“I’ve got you, baby. You started thinking about daddy stuff again, didn’t you?”

Then comes one of the most glorious sights in thew world; Lark sinks onto her knees in front of me and opens her mouth, touching herself while she starts to suck me down.

“Gods damn Lark. Fuck. This isn’t how I wanted this to go.”

Instead of sassing me off, she swallows me down her throat, gagging but hanging on while I lose my ever-loving mind.

I can’t help but sink my fingers into her hair, so that I can try and control anything about this situation. The thing is, Lark has discovered how powerful she feels when she's in control of things, and she's way too damn good at sucking dick.

“Lark, you're not supposed to finish me.”

Her eye is on the prize though, and she stares me down from the floor with every intention of coming out on top. I suppose I'll just have to get a little creative so I can get her off, too.

Her perfect fucking tongue keeps twisting around my tip, fluttering right over my slit in a pattern that's too fast to even keep track of. My knees are already shaking, and then she starts playing with my balls. I have to give in to the pull and fuck her mouth the way she's silently daring me to.

She didn't ended up getting pregnant from her last heat, which is something I think she's slightly grateful for in the aftermath, but I know we would have been ecstatic if it had come out differently.

Now, we just get to enjoy her and do the nasty all over our house when Rowan’s otherwise occupied.

She hollows out her cheeks and starts sliding over me as fast as she can, sucking the cum right out of me. It shoots down her throat in pulses and waves, leaving me weak in the knees and lightheaded.

The washer behind her starts a spin cycle, so while I'm down on my knees recovering, I might as well put the position to use. “Spread them, Lark,” I demand once she’s sitting on the edge of the washer. I drape her knees over my shoulders and dive in.

I try to remain somewhat careful of the neatly stacked piles of laundry next to her on the dryer I walked in on her folding, while still trying to give it to her as good as I got it. Hard not to when she tastes as sweet as she does, and I have discovered how fucking fun it is to go down on her. Something about having your face buried between your woman's thighs, makes you feel really fucking manly. Especially when those glorious thighs start clamping down around you and she starts wriggling and screaming, pulling your hair and trying to fuck your face.

“Seriously Beckett? What the hell, dude? I've been trying to call you.” I flip off Blake over my shoulder but don't quit what I'm doing, because I think she's starting to get a little bit close. Her thighs are starting to do that shaky thing occasionally, so I give her a couple fingers to push her higher

“As hot as this is, we've got company coming.”

Company or not, I don’t want to waste this opportunity. I'm taking advantage of her while she's vulnerable.

When I don’t respond, Blake leans over me, pushing me even further into her if that's possible, so he can kiss her. The washer starts to really spin now, and that along with everything else I'm doing to her sends her over the edge. She stiffens and starts screaming, flooding my mouth as she does.

Blake kicks me out of the way, dropping his pants and sliding into her before I even realize what's going on, taking her hard and fast while she's still sensitive. Man, it's good to be mated.

I get some washcloths to clean up with while he desecrates our laundry room further, filling up a glass of water to choke down and bring to Lark. I know her throat will be dry from screaming, and I can't not take care of her.

Luckily my pants are back on when I hear someone knocking at the door, realizing that Blake was telling the truth about someone coming over.

“Can I help you?” I ask the older couple standing on my porch. There's something familiar about them, but I'm not sure I've ever seen them before.

“We're looking for our daughter,” the guy says in a slightly irritating tone of voice.

I study them and then realize they must be Lark's parents. The ones that abandoned her. I shut the door behind me as I step outside, the faint echoes of Lark still happening if you're listening carefully enough, giving my brother and mate a moment of privacy while I figure out what the hell these people are doing on my porch.

“We don't have any daughters here, Sir.” I cross my arms and lean against my door, rage filling me on Lark's behalf.

“You are the alpha's son, yes? I know she's in there.” He clearly isn’t catching how I’m insinuating that they’re no longer her parents.

“We're sorry to just spring this visit on you like this,” his mate says, trying to soften up his clearly gruff demeanor. “We've been trying to find her you see, and we heard she was here and we just had to drop everything and come visit. Couldn't wait another minute!” She titters, but it’s clearly forced.

“I see.” I don't buy it for a second, I'm not as dumb as they think I am. “Are you aware she was rejected?”

“That's none of our business,” the guy says, face turning slightly red.

“It's simply awful what those men put her through,” Lark’s mother says, trying to affect some fake sobs. “I just didn't know how to get ahold of her.”

One of the windows must be opened, because a sudden burst of Lark’s laughter floats to us as she runs through the house, two pairs of feet slapping on the hardwood floors as she's apparently chased through the rooms. Fucking love how happy that laugh sounds.

“Wait here,” I tell them with all of the respect they deserve, which means none. “I'll ask my mate if she'll see you.”

“You let a woman tell you how to run your household, son?”

I had planned on opening the door after I put my hand on the knob, but I rethink that pretty quick. “You hit children, Sir? All I know of you is that you caused my mate more pain when she was already starting to go through it. I know that you couldn't keep your hands to yourself and that you didn't take care of her when she really needed you to. I know,” I continue, crowding them so they have to take a step off of my porch, “that you didn't visit her once when she was in the shelter, pregnant with your grandchild. I know you've never reached out to your grandchild, so you know nothing about him either. Don't you dare come on my property, in my pack, and try to push your fucking chauvinistic ideologies on me. You’re damned right we let her run the household. She’s smarter and more capable than the three of us combined. As far as I’m concerned, she doesn’t have parents anymore. They were dead to her a long time ago.”

The door opens behind me, revealing a pink-cheeked Lark carrying a sleepy Rowan. He must have woken up early from all the excess noise around him. That's fine, that just means that bedtime will be easier later. “Who are you—" she starts to ask and then stops mid-sentence, face paling and then reddening again in anger. “What do you guys want?”

“Lark, honey,” her mom says, reaching out with eyes wide and on my son, but Lark twists her body so that she can't reach him.

“No. You don’t get access to him. What do you want? Why are you here?”

“We've just bought a new place in town, and we heard that you had moved in here. We thought we'd surprise you for a visit! We've missed you, honey.”

I take a step back so I can wrap an arm around Lark's waist, lending her some extra strength if she needs it.

“You didn't come here for a visit. You came because you must have realized who I was mated to now, and you thought you'd try and curry some favor with the next alphas.”

Snap. Her father's face flushes deep red again. “How dare you. You will speak to us with respect, Lark.”

She shakes her head. “You don't get to ambush me at my home and demand my respect. You don’t deserve it. I don't forgive you for abandoning me and pushing me into an abusive mating, I don't want to talk to you, and I have nothing further to say. Please leave.” She keeps her voice somewhat soft for Rowan’s sake, and then kisses him on the forehead and goes back inside, and I give her parents a salute as I follow her.

I lock the door for good measure, sinking down onto the couch next to her as she plays with the baby.

“Sorry about that,” she murmurs. “It's embarrassing that they’d show up like that.”

“Wasn't your doing, baby. You think that's really why they came?”

She sighs heavily. “Who knows, who cares. I don't need them.”

“Oh, I missed it didn't I?” Blake asks as he takes a seat on her other side. “I got word that they’d stopped by the pack house to ask for directions here, and I was looking forward to scaring the shit out of your dad before I ran them off.”

Lark rolls her eyes. Unnecessary, but yes. That would have been amusing.

We hear a car starting and tires crunching on the dirt as it pulls away, and then she relaxes a bit more. “I appreciate the amount of effort it probably took them to throw their pride down and break our no contact after all these years, but their attitudes still suck and I've got too much trauma in my life to want to pander to them.”

“That's my girl,” Blake praises her. “Have you thought anymore about the pack run tonight? Do you feel like going? Might as well keep this sexy-ass ‘I won’t take your shit’ streak while we’re at it.”

Lark thinks about this, because any interaction with others is always a coin toss, but her smile tells me that she’s feeling brave. “You know what? Yeah. Hell yeah. Let's do it. And you’re right; I’m not taking anyone’s shit, am I?”