Page 22 of Taste of His Skin

Clinging to Aleks, I feed him, and when he gets hard again as my blood fills him, I guide his cock to my entrance so that he can fill me.

After that, we stay in the shower until the water runs cold, we’re both more than satiated, and Aleks’s has fucked my insecurities about Julia Zloty away from another night.

* * *

I’ve gotsix missed calls from Gem when I wake up the next morning, plus even more texts asking me about what happened last night.

I’m not surprised she knows. After we got back to the apartment, Aleks sent her a text that I had to postpone my visit to Accalia. Once I was finally asleep, he must’ve called Ryker to inform the Alpha that five shifters attacked me on the land between our two settlements.

He wouldn’t have a choice. Being leader meant taking responsibility for his people, and that goes the same for a pack Alpha. Those wolves weren’t from Mountainside, but they were shifters going after one of their own. The nearest pack needed to be informed, especially since an attack on me wasn’t just the small group trying to eliminate one Luna-touched female, it was an attempt on the life of the Cadre leader’s beloved.

Ryker, of course, would’ve informed Gem as soon as he had the chance; she admitted as much in a few of her texts. The latest one came through hours ago, but she was livid. I get the feeling that what Aleks, Dominic, and Everett did to those assholes was a kindness. If Gem had gotten her claws on them first, she would’ve played around with her prey for a while instead of giving them a quick death.

I’ve seen her fight, too. And while she can be a little more merciful, her go-to move is sticking her claws inside a chest and tickling a challenger’s heart. She’s tough, and I’m so glad to have her in my corner.

Of course, it wasn’t always like that. The first time she thought I might use my “gifts” against her, she had the points of her claws to my throat before I can blink. Only our mutual hatred for her birth father spared me then. Friendships have been built on less, and even if she wore Aleks’s fang around her throat before me, I still adore her.

I adore her even more when I call her back and am treated to a list of all the things she would’ve done if those shifters had stepped paw on Accalia territory before they ambushed me.

There’s only one problem. Aleks might have informed Ryker that he had no choice but treat the threat on his beloved as seriously as possible—executing the shifters immediately—but there are packs missing their males right now. Eventually it’ll come out that they were killed by vampires. Aleks had every right to fight them; even a shifter will admit that a male has the right to take down any foe threatening his mate, bloodsucker or not. But, she tells me, there are rumblings growing among other packs that wonder about Jack Walker’s death back in February.

He was hated by most of our kind, but he was strong. Powerful. That meant he was also respected. It’s a shifter thing. It’s how Walker managed to hold onto the Western Pack as long as he did. He killed anyone who threatened his rule, and only lost it because he was too cocky to take a female alpha seriously.

Aleks killed Walker for the same reason as those five shifters: because he was targeting me. The shifter community would understand that—if they knew that the head vamp in Muncie had a she-wolf for a beloved. But, Gem admits, they don’t. Somehow, that never came up.

I’m glad. The less people who know about me, the better. After I get off the phone, promising that I’ll come to see her soon, I sink down on Aleks’s settee and pray to the quiet Luna that those five dead shifters are the only ones who did.

As if Fate is determined to prove me wrong, though, I have about twenty minutes to hope that maybe everything will be okay again before my world comes to a screeching halt.

* * *

I’m alonewhen there’s a knock at the door.

Aleks left the apartment shortly after midnight. Once we finished our… extended shower, he waited until I had eaten and was lying in our bed before he told me that he was calling a meeting at the Cadre building for every vamp that worked under him. The only exception were the increased patrollers he had Dominic set up to make sure that the five shifters didn’t have any other buddies sniffing around, but he needed to warn his people what happened just outside of the Fang City.

He swears to me that I don’t have to worry about another Claws and Fangs war, but it seems to me like he’s preferring for one anyway. I don’t mention it, though, because I finally got his eyes to revert back to their pale green. To keep them from turning red again, I’ll go along with it.

He told me he’d be back soon, that I should get some rest. I tried to. The adrenaline from tonight has long worn off, and the endorphins from mating Aleks in the shower had made me dozy. Too bad they disappeared as soon as his icy aura was out of my reach.

For most of the night, I couldn’t sleep. And, like always, when I couldn’t sleep, I obsessed over my vampire. It got worse when I woke up and saw that he still wasn’t back by morning, and I kept Gem on the phone longer than I normally would have to distract myself from how much I miss him.

So when I hear a knock at the door and, reaching out with my wolf, catch the scent of a vampire just on the other side of it, I wonder if it’s Aleks. The aura is vaguely familiar, though it lacks the punch of attraction I feel when he’s near, but I don’t care. I want it to be him so bad, I look past that.

I shouldn’t have. When I open the door, I find a freckle-faced vampire with pale skin, a shock of red hair, and soft grey eyes. He’s holding a stack of mail in his hand.

“For you, Miss Elizabeth,” he says, holding them out to me.

I try to hide my disappointment. Morgan is a freshly turned vamp. A former donor who was given a promotion when the female vamp who favored him offered to make him immortal, he works for the Muncie post office. He also lives on the first floor of Aleks’s apartment building, and he takes it upon himself to hand-deliver mail and packages to every tenant in it.

One of the perks of being a lone wolf is the lack of a paper trail. I don’t get mail. I have no credit so I never get offers for a loan, a card, or even a bill. No family sending me Christmas cards. I’m as off the grid as it is possible to be, and I have been since I was eighteen.

So why is the handwritten letter on the top addressed to me?

Worse, when I thank Morgan before closing the door again, then lift the letter up to my nose and take a sniff, I notice that it stinks of shifters.

That can’t be good.

My stomach sinks. One part of me wants to throw it in the trash. Like, if I don’t open it and read it, I don’t have to worry about what it says.

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