Page 131 of Blood and Trouble

I glanced back at Lycan with a question in my stare. Would he let me? Was I forgiven? Could I be released?

“Well, better get over here and do what she wants before we have a deprived, neglected female writhing on our sheets.”

I sprang up and ripped my shirt over my head, kicking my jeans down to my ankles. Then I indulged myself on them. I sucked my way down Lycan’s body and dined on Ava’s cunt and squeezed my cock into every inch of their souls. I didn’t know how other mates ever left their cabins. Between the two of them, I had everything I needed right there in that bed.

After we brought ourselves to euphoria and back again, we lay in bed together, breathing down heaven, inhaling ecstasy, touching and kissing and laughing. Which turned into more fucking, more consuming. Sometime around midnight, Ava’s stomach grumbled, and mine echoed the sentiment. We showered and made dinner together before changing the sheets and falling into bed again, this time to sleep.

Ava tucked in on my right, her head on my chest, and Lycan wrapped an arm around both of us, holding us close, and something in that idyllic domesticity broke me wide open.

Fuck, I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve being mated to both of them, but whatever it was, I thanked fate for pushing me through it. I’d once thought I was the easy one to cast aside, the one nobody needed, the one nobody wanted. Now, I understood the truth.

These two amazing shifters needed me in ways I never could have imagined. I gave Lycan an outlet for his playful aggression. I matched Ava’s jagged edges. I fit between them in the spaces they couldn’t name. And they completed me. They gave me a home, a reason to live, a reason to thrive. They had their claws in me, and mine in them, and no one was coming to take them away.

CHAPTER 32

Ava

In the weeks since London, I settled into my new life and accompanied Guin and Sol to meetings with the board of Vanderbilt Holdings. I detailed my successful global expansion to our shareholders for approval and finalized the remaining paperwork needed to settle the deals. I’d officially saved the business.

In the evenings, I came home to my mates and sank into blissful peace. But old grudges didn’t simply go away because a few Bastards had decided to bond with the Vanderbilt women. Eyes tracked me down corridors. Other packmates stopped talking when my sisters or I entered the room, their voices dulling to whispers. I sensed their apprehension. Sol and Maeve had warned me about it.

“Not only are you a Vanderbilt, but you’re also a half-breed,” Maeve explained one night over dinner.

“A half-breed?” I furrowed my brow. “What’s that?”

“One parent is a human, one’s a shifter,” Sol said. “It’s an outdated mindset. It’s taboo to think that way these days.”

I didn’t understand why it would matter. Magic ran in my veins, the same as any other shifter, but there were a lot of things about this world that would take time to understand.

The full moon came. I changed with the pack and ran with my mates, giving our wolves a chance to connect. Poe and I played while Lycan kept a steady eye on our shenanigans. I could almost pretend the events in London never happened. The dreams didn’t come back. The vampires seemed to tuck tail and run. And Evelyn was lost in the wind, gone back under whatever rock she’d been hiding in before this mess happened.

Life seemed perfect. And when my official mating night came, I went to Maeve’s cabin to get ready the way countless other shifters had done before me. I’d be welcomed into the pack, blood sworn to Kodiak and bound to Lycan and Poe in the traditions of my new family.

“You’re lucky I like you,” Channing said from her spot next to me, painting spirals on my arm with white paint. “Marking before the official mating ceremony is kind of a faux pas.”

I snorted and turned to Maeve, who sat on the other side and dragged a brush over my other arm, matching Channing’s designs.

“Not that I consider myself a traditionalist,” she continued. “But Kodiak doesn’t usually like when marking happens before he has a chance to approve it.”

“And he’s the expert in magical relationships?” Guin scoffed and rolled her eyes. “The guy who’s been single for over a decade.”

“Approve it?” I narrowed my eyes at Lycan’s sister, ignoring Guin’s dismissal. “Would he ever deny it?”

She shrugged, dipping her brush in more ink before moving on to my fingers. “Maybe. If one of the partners was already mated or if it seemed coerced in some way.”

“And what would happen then?” I thought back to what she’d found about my mother and Zion, and I wondered why their mating had never taken place. “I thought the shifter chooses the mate. I thought the bonds were fated.”

“Most are,” she said. “But it wasn’t always so progressive for submissives. In the old days, a dominant could force a submissive into a bond, and unless another dominant stood up for them, they didn’t have much of a choice.”

“That’s horrible,” Sol said, crossing her arms. “Was it like that under the alpha before Kodiak?”

Channing pursed her lips and put down her brush. “I was young when Kerrick died. I don’t remember much about him, but from the stories I’ve heard, he enforced the old rules until he got mated himself. And after that, he tried to change them… but many of the dominants resisted. You can imagine they didn’t want their power taken away.”

“Kodiak’s not like that, though,” Sol said. “He’s fair. Maybe pushy sometimes, but he always seems to have the pack’s best interest at heart.”

“It must be a hard spot to be in,” I added. “Shouldering the weight of so many shifters. Trying to keep everyone safe.”

Guin sniffed and sipped a glass of whiskey. “Enough of the pity party for His Majesty. We’re here tonight for you. How do you feel?”