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Tenoch felt Traci wronged him because her words kept me from him for so long. This was why I didn’t want to name her. I wasn’t all that sure it wouldn’t be a good idea to kill her too, but my actions were my own. Traci didn’t force me to do anything, she simply watered the seeds of doubt already in my mind. I did this to us, not her. So I walked up toward my mate and wrapped my arms around him. His body was taut with tension and anger. After a few minutes, when his struggle only seem to diminish by a tiny fraction, I took his hand and led him out to our bedroom, to the middle of the room. I left him standing there and opened the door a crack before I walked halfway back to him.
His flashing blue and black eyes were still angry, but I saw curiosity and confusion there too.
“Shift,” I instructed.
“No.”
“Shift, mate,” I demanded.
“Evie, you don—”
“I wish to speak to Tenoch. Shift.”
After another moment’s hesitation, Cory gave in to the need to shift and I was soon standing in front of Tenoch’s beautiful black wolf. I walked over to my mate, who was still breathing heavily and looked ready to kill. I sat back on my heels a few feet from him and bared my neck for a moment, making Tenoch snarl at my actions.
‘Mate should only submit in bed,’ he growled into my head, making me smile, and I righted my neck to look at him.
“Will you come closer?” I asked him. Tenoch hesitated, looking at the door as if wanting to go exact his justice now that he was in control, but eventually walked toward me instead. I reached out and pulled his head toward mine until I was staring into his eyes.
“Traci said a lot of things. Now and before, but she didn’t keep me away at every moon’s peak,” I told him, and I could feel the heartbreak he was feeling slashing across the closed bond. “I did that to us. I may be a genius when it comes to computers, but I’m still me. My emotional maturity was still that of a hormonal thirteen-year-old girl who thought she wasn’t worthy of her friends. Having a high IQ doesn’t mean I’m emotionally stable or people smart.” Tenoch began to growl at my self-deprecating words, but his growl turned into a whimper. I buried my face in his fur. “I’m sorry, Tenoch,” I whispered as I tried to soothe his anguish.
I felt his body dropping forward, and for a moment, I felt like I was going to get crushed underneath him, but he adjusted and curled his body around mine until I was being spooned and loved by this massive alpha wolf. I sighed and silently cried as I felt and heard the whimpers leave him while he dealt with everything I told him.
I knew it was hard for a wolf to understand why I acted the way I did. Tenoch didn’t want to see it as something I did to both of us. It was easier to place blame on an outside force because an outside threat could be eliminated, but how could he defeat the actions of an emotionally immature mate with insecurities?
We cuddled for an hour, and I felt him slowly opening the bond to me until I felt peace settling in him. Then, he started licking my face clean long after the tears had dried, and I started giggling, wrestling his face away from mine, but it was a losing battle. He eventually stood back up, shaking his fur and I stood as well, giving him a smirk.
“Does my stud puppy want to play?” I asked before I let Tozi forward. She shifted quickly and ran out the open door. Tenoch’s growl shook the paintings in the hallway, but I just giggled in the back of our mind while Tozi continued onward instead of stopping and submitting to our mate. We ran down the stairs, scaring one or two pack members on the way, but when they noticed the chase happening, they hollered approvingly after us.
‘Rosie, open the back door, please,’ I reached out when we hit the first floor, and I saw her walking by.
Rosie looked startled at first, especially when a giant alpha wolf landed between us from the second floor, then giggled and opened the door as she understood what was happening. Tozi barely managed to avoid the playful snap of Tenoch’s teeth near our hind leg, and she flipped her tail so it dragged along his body enticingly.
We ran into the woods, under absolutely no misunderstanding that we were faster than Tenoch. This was a game he could end at any moment he wanted, but we could feel his mirth and happiness flowing through the bond every time we left tiny traps for him along the way.
It was a while later before Tenoch decided he was done playing. He tumbled into us until we were pinned underneath him, and he wrapped his teeth around our neck. Tozi gladly submitted to her mate, and I gave them their privacy so that they could spend this time together.
It was late by the time we made it back to the doors of the pack house. We shifted, walked up together and back into the shower. We cleaned each other up in silence, creating an inferno of need along the shared bond that bounced back and forth until he lifted my head to meet his eyes.
“Thank you,” he whispered before crashing his lips on mine. I moaned and jumped, knowing he would catch me. I wrapped my legs around his waist, needing him inside me with a desperation that scared me. Cory pressed me against the shower wall, the same desperation and hunger in his eyes as he pushed himself into me in one thrust. It didn’t take long before we were both teetering on the edge of an orgasm. Our emotions and bodies were raw and sensitive to each other. A need to possess and be possessed driving each thrust as he pushed up and I pressed down to complete the merging of our souls and bodies. His eyes never strayed from mine. The vulnerability and love in them made my heart soar, and I vowed never to hurt them again.
Traci’s words did what they should have done when I was thirteen. They went in one ear and right out the other because I knew that nothing mattered to me but Cory, and I was sure he felt the same. There were a lot of things I wish I would have done differently, but there was one kernel of knowledge that I had and cherished above all the heartache I caused. Cory and I chose each other. Before the mate bond snapped into place, Cory was in love with me, and I with him. If the mate bond didn’t exist, we would have still found our way to each other. There wasn’t a universe in which I would have chosen anyone else.
“I love you,” I gasped as I felt the orgasm threatening to sweep me under its waves. I needed him to know that. “I would have chosen you even if you weren’t my mate.” I grabbed his hair and sank my teeth into his mark again, making him buck and moan.
“Evie,” he groaned when I sealed his mark with my tongue. He buried his face in my neck, thrusting into me harder, and sending both of us over the edge; drowning us in a sea of pleasure and colors that I never encountered with another man. It confirmed and strengthened the bond I’d been so afraid to forge for so long. We broke back through the surface of reality with a shared, rough breath, and held each other as our bodies continued to be pelted by the warm spray of the shower.
After the shower, we fell asleep in a tangle of limbs, and I hoped I never slept any other way again.
We woke up early the next morning by necessity. In the middle of everything that happened last night, I forgot to grab a few things from my room that I needed for this trip. I left Cory cooking an early breakfast and rushed out of the pack house and toward Zi’s.
I walked in there using my key and called out for her, thinking she must be getting Molly ready to walk to the pack house for breakfast before we left. What I didn’t expect was the tiny shriek, thud and hushed cursing that came from her bedroom before she ran out and collided with me, blushing and looking panicked as fuck. She tried to close the door behind her, and it slammed into the back of her foot, swinging back open while she cursed and grabbed her foot.
I looked into her room to find James trying to put on his shirt, still in his boxers, blushing and with not an ounce of regret in his embarrassed shit-eating grin when he saw me. I looked at Zi, who was trying to hide her smile and couldn’t look me in the eye.
“You. Wake up, Molly. Cory already started cooking.” I pointed to James. “You. Come with me. I need details.” I grabbed Zi by the arm and dragged her to my room.
“Yes, Luna!” James yelled after me, making me roll my eyes, and making Zi giggle behind me. I closed the door behind us and sat her down on the bed while I started looking for the stuff I needed.
