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“Don’t you leave again.”
His words sing over my mind. It never occurred to me that my absence would affect the Alphas this much.
His lips brush my ear. “I couldn’t resist when I saw you lying on the bed.”
“I craved that release,” I admit. After the pent-up desire in the woods, I needed this more than I even realized.
He holds me and I close my eyes, letting myself pretend we’re safe in his compound. A gentle heat spreads over my chest in his presence, and I sense my wolf stirring there, like she’s trapped inside and doesn’t know how to come out. Well, that makes two of us.
“Can you feel your wolf?” he asks me, placing a palm flat against my chest. “I sensed her trying to come out when we were as one.”
“Yeah, for the first time, I really do. Like she’s humming just below the surface, but she feels lost.”
“I remember her trying to reach out to my wolf. That’s progress, Meira. I never felt her like this the first time we were together.”
I smile and grasp onto his strong arm around me, believing that there may be hope enough for me to somehow come out of all this surviving. It’s odd after how all this time I’ve longed to not be found, for others to leave me alone, for the world to take me if it wished. Loneliness does strange things to one’s mind. But now, all I wish for is to not lose my life. And it has everything to do with what my three Alphas are offering me.
They are mine. I claimed them as much as they did me, and the universe can go fuck itself if it thinks it will get in our way. Though the trepidation doesn’t leave me entirely. It’s there at the back of my mind, constantly reminding me of my terminal sickness and the fear that if I do finally shift, my wolf will go mad and kill me and those I love.
Lucien
Night has begun to steal the day by the time I head down the hill to the dilapidated cottage near the water. I found it earlier, the hut having doors and windows intact, so I’m hopeful that no one will come crashing in here while we sleep. After the attack from that dickhead Evan, I contemplated the idea of us traveling through the night to get home already. But it’s better we rest for the night and leave first thing in the morning. My stomach clenches at the memory of the fight. I wanted to be the one to rip Evan’s head off, but Dušan finishing him off felt just as damn good.
Now, I head back to cottage with two rabbits and one pheasant that took longer than I anticipated to catch, as animals aren’t so readily available these days. But they’ll feed us, and I’d bet one of my legs that Bardhyl has already gorged on whatever he tracked in the woods to exhaust his wolf’s adrenaline. More rabbit for me. I pick at my teeth, trying to remove the bit of fur still wedged in them from when I chased these critters in wolf form. One or two might have accidentally been eaten raw.
I stroll over to the single-story house. The weathered wooden walls have shards of wood peeling away from the surface, the roof is rusty, and wild grass and weeds suffocate the landscape. Smoke curls out of the chimney, so that means Dušan and Meira are already here and ready for a meal.
The reality that we finally found Meira and she’s ours still has my stomach bursting with excitement. I don’t know what I would have done if we’d lost her in the woods.
I glance over my shoulder and find no undead following. Good. There’s an old bench by the side of the house, where I dump the kills. Then I grab a wooden bucket and Ifill it with water from the river. When I return and take a seat, I skin the rabbits and prepare them for roasting.
The front door creaks open, and Meira peers around the corner, staring at me in surprise. Her hair is wet and her cheeks rosy, like she’s gone for a dip in the river. “Thought I heard the sound of the gruesome act of skinning.” She smirks at her own sarcasm, and I adore that she can still make jokes after everything we’ve gone through today.
“Make yourself useful.” I reach over and hand her the pheasant.
She sits on the opposite end of the bench, barely an arm’s length away. She takes the animal into her lap and without hesitation begins plucking it. I notice the slight droop in one of her shoulders from where she was bitten by that asswipe Evan. It’s creeps like that who have ruined our world.
“Dušan’s preparing a spit, and there’s a cauldron in the fireplace. He’s making a soup with wild onions and mushrooms he found, and he’s just waiting for the meat.” She pauses for a moment, focusing on cleaning the bird. “You think witches once lived here?” There’s mirth in her voice. “I mean, who uses a cauldron for cooking, right?” She snickers to herself, and there’s a new energy around her, like she’s slept and woken up rejuvenated.
And just as I have the thought, the answer comes to me. She’s high on adrenaline, and when the breeze brushes past me, I inhale her scent, her heat…and also Dušan’s. Whatever happened between them has taken the edge off her.
That’s the thing… an Alpha’s influence over an Omega is more than just satisfaction of a sexual craving for breeding. It helps stabilize emotions, which many Omegas don’t realize.
“The last thing we want in this world are powerful witches who can turn us all into frogs.” I laugh at the image in my mind.
“Maybe having witches in charge wouldn’t be so bad. The undead would be dealt with, for one thing.” She plucks at the feathers and throws them on the grass, making the place look like a chicken slaughterhouse.
“So you think the biggest problem in this world is the undead?” I ask.
Her head tilts to look over at me. “Well, yeah, you don’t agree? The virus destroyed the world, and now it’s unsafe to go anywhere.”
“There are worse things out there than the undead, gorgeous. Alphas who slay anyone in sight, who imprison women for breeding… those kinds of wolves are multiplying, andtheyare the real plague making this world worse. Eradicate the warlords and we stand a chance to start bringing back some sense of community and humanity to our world.”
“Wow, that’s kind of deep.” She twists toward me, drawing a bent knee up on the bench between us. “You, Dušan, and Bardhyl aren’t like other men I’ve encountered. Why?”
I rip the last bit of fur off the rabbit’s leg with a tug. “Dušan’s belief that we can change the world for the better has rubbed off on us.”
“You trust him with your life, don’t you?”
