Page 86 of Wolf It Down, Knot Me Up

“I’m yours, Lucy. You’ll never be free of me.” And he goes feral on me again.

My world narrows to the night, the ties around my wrists, and Wolf stripping away every last piece of my control.

21

WOLF

“Stop fucking staring at me,” I bark at Roman and Grayson, who are both grinning like fools.

“You’re glowing,” Roman mutters, and I shove him in the shoulder as we head outside of the lodge in the crisp morning air. The rain has stopped, and it’s about damn time.

“Shut the fuck up, man,” I state.

“Nope, he’s right,” Grayson adds. “One night with Lucy, and you can’t stop smirking. She has a touch that damn ruins us once we’ve been with her. You can’t deny it.”

“Fuck, she’s incredible.” I let myself go there because who the hell am I kidding? I’ve been inside her most of the night, balls deep, and even leaving her this morning was torture. Her scent still clings to me, and if I close my eyes, I swear she’s right here. That soft, silky body, those moans… Days ago, I was delusional in my obsession. Now, she owns every possessive part of me.

“She’s worth the wait,” Roman says, staring back up at the lodge, and all three of us are utterly lost to our Omega.

Grayson drags a hand through his hair. “This is serious now, the real thing. The dreams we’d talk about back in prison. We found our Omega.”

“She’s our future,” Roman states as we stroll around to the side of the lodge. “I swear I never thought we’d find one for us.”

I nod, remembering the nights I’d lie in my bed, imagining what it’d be like to complete our family, but like Roman and Grayson, deep down, I never thought we’d get lucky enough. Not considering our backgrounds and the shit we’ve experienced.

“We’ll need to work out where we’re going to live once we complete our program. Get a home, give her time to settle in with us. We’ve all got savings, enough to start a new life,” Grayson rambles on, clearly excited.

These two have been giving this some deep thought, considering we’re already talking about houses and futures. What’s next—babies? I grin to myself, picturing Lucy with a full belly and breasts. Fuck, she’d be so beautiful.

We stroll down the side of the lodge, heading to the rear where our truck is parked. When we reach the far corner of the building, we all pause in our tracks.

“What the fuck!” Roman groans.

Around the back, a huge pine is down, at least forty feet in height, stretched across the rear of the property. It’s fallen on the path between the lodge and the parking area. And the electrical box has been ripped right off the wall, wires hanging loose where the tree landed square against it, tearing it off. Pine branches and needles are scattered everywhere, some of them caught in the window frames. These rooms back here are mostly storage from what I’ve seen, so no wonder none of us noticed a thing last night, especially not with the thundering storm.

“Well, this is why we had a blackout—from these dead mains,” Grayson says. “Fucking lucky it didn’t start a house fire.”

The thought ices over me. “That storm was a damn bastard.”

Grayson steps over the branches and checks out the damage, poking around, then lifts his head in our direction. “We need to clear this mess, as it’s blocking the exit from the parking area too.”

“I’m going to let Lucy know and get her to call the electric company to switch the power back on.” Roman’s already heading back toward the front entrance, and I nod, following Grayson.

“We’ll need to bring the saws and chains over from the cabin on foot and start chopping up this beast,” he groans, mostly to himself.

While he drags some of the branches off our work truck, which remains mostly unmarked, I stride alongside the fallen tree, wanting to see what happened. My gut instinct says it was lightning, as I’ve seen it happen frequently.

I keep moving along the fallen trunk until I reach its base. The stump left behind is a mess of jagged splinters. Strong winds can cause such damage, shoving the tree around enough that it finally snaps under the pressure. Especially seeing as there’s no blackening of the wood or scorch marks to suggest a lightning strike is responsible.

I step closer and crouch low, noticing that the upper section of the stump that faces the lodge isn’t jagged but smooth. I run a palm over the even surface. It’s a clean cut, more than halfway through the trunk with a saw. Then the storm did the rest.

I glance at the lodge in perfect line from this pine and back to the notches in the stump done to drop a pine precisely where you want it to end up.

“Shit,” I mumble under my breath, getting to my feet and dusting my hands on my pants. Someone deliberately chopped this tree, leaving it barely standing, wanting the storm to knock it over onto the house.

Ice folds over in my gut, and I’m exhaling loudly.

Luckily, it just hit the main electrical box, but who the fuck would do this and why?