Page 44 of Hexy Beast

“You know where,” my wolf says. “She’s ours, even if you won’t admit it.”

Aunt Artemis stops pacing and turns so she’s facing me, but she’s not looking at me. Instead, she’s focused on something in the distance that I can’t see.

“You have to get back as fast as the woods will allow,” she says. “The moon is starting to lose its blue hue, but it’s not just that. There’s something in the air.” She takes a deep breath and immediately flinches back and grimaces, her nose wrinkling like a crumpled-up piece of paper. “I’m not sure what, but it’s acrid and oily at the same time.”

“Sounds like the Council,” Effie says, making a sour face of her own.

Great. All I need is to have a bunch of witch fanatics worming their way into pack politics. Those reactionary assholes can take a long walk off a short pier as far as I’m concerned. But if they’re influencing things with Nikos back in Arcadia, that does explain the very un-werewolf tattoo the head henchman had back in the clearing.

“The Council is my guess too,” Aunt Artemis says with a curt nod before her gaze clears and she looks at me like she can stare straight into my soul. “You’ve got to get back before the moon changes or Nikos’s plans fall into place.”

I love how she says it as if I have a choice in all this.

“The woods sent us on a stroll all day today,” I grumble, annoyed that I’m the pack alpha and the woods are still mocking me. “They kept shifting even as we walked.”

“The woods do what the moon wants them to do.” Aunt Artemis shrugs one shoulder and looks at me like I have a box of rocks in my head instead of a brain. “You know what you have to do.”

“She’s right,” my wolf says inside my head as his wildness shakes the bars of the cage I’ve locked it up in.

Fucking A. Is there anyone out there who doesn’t feel like telling me I should ignore my family history and embrace the part of myself that has seriously harmed the pack?

“If I do that,” I say, barely hearing my voice over the frustrated growl of my wolf, “then I’ll be no better than they are.”

Aunt Artemis drops her head and mumbles something that sounds like “moon preserve me” before lifting her face and nailing me with a stop-being-a-dramatic-dumbass glare. “Your father and grandmother would have been shit alphas even if they hadn’t given in to the extremes of their wolves.”

“Considering how the pack is barely surviving, it doesn’t look like I’m much better,” I shoot back, my frustration leaking out in my harsh tone.

“Suck it up, buttercup, that’s a bunch of whiny nonsense, and you know it,” Aunt Artemis says, totally unintimidated by my attitude. “If it wasn’t for you, the Aetos pack would have disbanded or died out years ago. You’ve held us together. Don’t let it all fall apart now. You have to be back in Arcadia by sunset tomorrow or the next day; the moon is acting fickle. Either way, do whatever it takes to make that happen, or Nikos will win.”

There’s a gust of wind that sends a splash of water from the waterfall into the cave, and then Aunt Artemis is gone.

Effie turns to me, a wide smile on her face and her eyes round with surprised understanding, and says, “Your aunt Artemis is a witch.”

“No, she’s not.” No matter what some pack members have whispered after a few too many whiskey sours. “You’ve seen her in wolf form. You witches might be able to make yourself look like a wolf, but you can’t fully transform. Your smell would give you away.”

Effie spins around so she’s standing in front of me. Her arms are crossed, but there’s no missing the hint of honeysuckle in the air that always seems to hit moments before she hexes someone. “Are you saying witches stink?”

“No,” I get out before she can blast me with some kind of smells-like-twelve-day-old-tuna-left-in-the-sun spell. “What I’m saying is that witches don’t have the woodsy scent that comes with being a werewolf. It’s a dead giveaway. Aunt Artemis has that smell. She can just do extra things because she’s an oracle.”

“You mean witch,” Effie says, the honeysuckle only a memory in the cave’s oxygen supply.

“No.” I shake my head because I refuse to believe I’m wrong on this. I can’t be, because if I am, what else am I wrong about? The pack can’t survive if I don’t get everything right every time. “I mean oracle.”

Effie makes a few noncommittal (but still somehow judgmental) mm-hmm noises. Then a triumphant smile curls her full lips. “Oracle or witch, with what she just said, that’s two votes for you letting your wolf side come out to play.”

The woman is not going to give up. She doesn’t realize what is at risk, but I do. “Too bad; the only vote that matters is mine.”

And then, knowing it’s the only way to get Effie to stop arguing with me, I kiss her.

That seems like a brilliant move until I make contact, and then I forget the whys for doing it, and all that matters is her.

I can’t get enough of her. She tastes like honeysuckle and the peak of the first full moon in spring.

Effie lets out a sexy low moan as she tilts her head, letting me deepen the kiss. It’s all I can do to keep my wolf at bay as she kisses me back with a desperate need, her fingers twining through my hair and holding me in place, as if I’d ever stop. She teases me with her tongue, her moves unexpected and thrilling, just like her, keeping me on edge wondering what will happen next. I cannot wait to find out.

So I push, deepening the kiss and meeting her challenge. It’s not so much a clash of wills as it is two equal forces crashing together to form something new. I can’t explain it, and it sounds way too fucking woo-woo for an alpha to say, but it’s the closest I can get to explaining why everything with Effie feels so different, so much better, so addicting—as if it’s not that I can’t get enough, but that there’s no such thing.

My desperation to feel more of her is like a fire growing out of my control. I circle my hands around to her ass, cupping as much of it as I can and lifting her up, holding her tight against my hard, aching cock. She wraps her compact legs around me, shifts one hand to hold on to my shoulder, and then arches back, breaking the kiss—a move only made bearable because she starts rubbing herself against the hard length of my dick.