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It was the third month since he'd started the program with Moriah. Every month since the first had been a bit worse, a bit hotter, a bit more desperate. His sense of smell had sharpened, heightened to the point that he was constantly on edge as the moon neared, and he understood fully, for the first time in his life, the concept ofbreeding. It had nothing to do with the woman. Moriah was the one being put into estrus, of course, but all that meant was a realigning of her cycle to the moon, making her horny and receptive.
It washewho had undergone the change. Every month he was hungrier, more desperate to rut mindlessly. Every month he came a bit harder, a bit more. He had been conflicted, and he still was, but if someone would have placed one of his brothers between him and the opportunity to have Moriah massage his balls and call him hergood boyas he emptied into her, he'd slit their throats without a moment of compunction.
He didn't like to contemplate it, but he thought he understood how his parents had wound up with six children.
He smelled it the instant he stepped from the car three days before the full moon. Hot and swollen and dripping, the tumid,delicioussmell of a heat. His mouth flooded and the air in his lungs seemed to hitch, nearly rocking him off his feet. He reached out for the hood of the car to steady himself as the world tipped, every drop of blood in his body racing away from his brain, being diverted to a far more pressing priority.
Closing his eyes, he forced himself to breathe. A long, slow inhalation through his mouth, sparing his nose . . . 2, 3 . . . then a hard exhalation, shaking his head, attempting to dislodge the lust-woven cobwebs.It's fine, this is fine. She's probably on a suppressant; focus on smelling the drug.The smell of the heat suppressant was sharp and corrosive, like licking a battery, the opposite of alluring. Deciding his inner voice was right, Lowell sniffed the air, groaning as the smell assaulted him once more. A needy, desperate cunt, already dripping, begging to be filled, begging to be fucked, and he was equally desperate to oblige.
Moriah was doing more than triggering her own heat with the shots — she was provoking his instinct to want to protect and provide, the thought of anyone evenspeakingto her while she was in heat making him snappish and short-tempered. He wanted to do nothing other than seek out the singular, mind-erasing hit of burying his cock in a needy, receptive mate at the height of the monthly frenzy . . . and now his nose had caught one.
At that particular moment, nothing mattered at all — nothing except the lack of blood flowing to his brain, making him dizzy, and the overwhelming smell of a needy cunt, making him hard. Lowell wasn't sure his brain was even functioning, synapses misfiring in every direction as he stumbled. He couldn't remember a time when he'd gone hard that fast, his erection scraping the inside of his jeans. His cock was calling the shots now, straining to see over his waistband, to be better able to direct his movements. His balls pulsed, the dictator in his pants demanding immediate action, a slaking of his lust, and he was helpless to do whatever his smaller head commanded.
If he closed his eyes and focused, he could hear her panting — high and rapid, a slight whine on every cant of her hips. He was able to taste on the air how wet she was, her desperation a sweet-metallic tang on the back of his tongue, and he wanted to coat his mouth in her slick before he gave her what they both desperately needed.
He had taken two steps away from the car when another smell caught his nose. Another wolf, another male, already there. Cock dripping, balls full. Lowell felt his pupils blow wide like a shark, positive he could smell the wind, hear the whisper of the clouds, the entire world overstimulating his senses. A ripple of aggression moved up his back as he crouched, completely mindless, prepared to fight for the right to fuck whoevershewas, to calm the fire under her blood, first with his cock, then with his knot; to fuck her until he went cross-eyed and emptied himself, allowing a trickle of blood to finally return to his brain.
He was halfway up the driveway when he passed the car. It was one he recognized. Like dominos falling, once he placed the car, his nose was able to place the scent, the girl behind the instinct to breed. It was Vanessa, his brother's girlfriend, and Grayson was the other wolf. Grayson, who had been born without a moral compass and had at least sixty pounds on him, most of it muscle. He wasn't sure what sort of neurological impulse it was that prevented him from charging into the house, cock in hand, but whatever it was, he was grateful. The wind shifted, and the blades of grass in the lawn beside him scraped against each other in a way that made him whine. It was too much, too much sensation, too much sound, Moriah wasn't even here, and he was losing his mind.
His feet were frozen for several more heartbeats. He might win in a fight against Jackson, Lowell considered. His eldest brother was staid and professional. He spent his time in a lecture hall or chasing after his little boy, doing volunteer work around town, a perfect fucking Woodland Scout. He would almost certainly win in a fight against his twin. Owen hunched over a desk fifty hours a week. He and his girlfriend spent their weekends hiking and bicycling and otherwise being insufferably, grotesquely in love. Liam wasn't a consideration. Trapp and Grayson, however, were made of something different, something meaner and harder. He'd had his ass kicked by his two older brothers more times than cared to recount, and he knew that, in spite of what his drooling cockhead seemed to think, if he would ever challenge Grayson physically, he would likely have his ass handed back to him in a box, spare parts rolling around on the driveway.
His head was trying to turn him back in the direction of the pool house, his cock desperately trying to make him storm into the main house, but fortunately, wonder of wonders, the larger of the two heads prevailed. Not before he paused in front of Grayson's car, flicking on one of the interior lights before slamming the door shut, making his way around the back of the house.
He had no doubt Grayson would be well-occupied for the next day, and that he and his psycho girlfriend would not emerge from their bed until it was time to drive to the lake.
"You need to get laid," he'd regularly told Lowell in the beginning, making it sound like the easiest thing in the world, and Lowell supposed, for him, it was. Grayson was not helpless here, like a rat trapped in a rapidly shrinking cardboard box. This is where he'd chosen to stay, and he had a life here — a tawdry, gossip-spawning life filled with excess and probably too much cocaine, Lowell suspected, but a life nonetheless. Grayson had no conscience and was inured to the whispers around him, but Lowell wasn't his brother. Every time Gray had doled out the terrible opinion, Lowell had ensured he'd put the juice away with less than a swallow, had opened and left a can of tuna in his brother's closet, and had crept into the basement gym each morning to reset Grayon's weight on every machine, forcing him to maniacally increase his cardio.
He had gotten laid, and it had only made everything worse.
"I'm really sorry," she'd said mournfully, her voice through the phone thick with congestion and coming from a million miles away, or so it had seemed. "I didn't expect this cold to kick my ass. We'll have to wait until next month."
He'd wanted to bring her chicken soup and a small brick of compressed botanicals and bath salt, made by an Oni who'd hosted him earlier that year when he'd been on a shoot in Hokkaido. It was the surest way for her to gain a bit of upper respiratory relief, and the soup was from the only delicatessen he trusted, run by a shifter family who'd moved to Cambric Creek from Long Island. He would take care of her while she was sick, and once she'd recovered, he would fuck her into the following month to make up for lost time.
Visions of wrapping her in a quilt and feeding her soup were dashed when she'd refused.
"I don't want to get you sick! And I don't want you to see me like this. You're supposed to think I'm sexy. Not a snot-covered mouth breather."
"We don't get sick the same way humans do," he'd reminded her, shortly before she'd disconnected the call in the midst of a sneezing fit.
Biologically inferior in every way.He could hear the particular tone his father's voice took, the one that was specifically reserved for talking about humans, turning over and over in his mind, the thought making him slightly nauseous. What would he be contributing to this future child other than dark hair and height, if everything exceptional he brought to the table would be stripped away, diminished and erased in a flood of chemicals?
The full moon was in forty-eight hours. Two days in which to suffer through. He would leave for the lake early, he decided. He would let the ice-cold water of the Shadowbend do the hard work of cooling his blood, and failing that, he might drown.
More importantly, he thought, holding his breath as he ducked around the side of the house; he didn't intend on still being there when Grayson finally emerged, bag packed, to find his car battery dead.
It was the third month, he repeatedly thought on his drive. This was the month it was most likely to happen, or at least, the start of higher odds, most clinic patients found success between their third and fourth months, and as he seriously contemplated calling one of those back page heat helper ads, he understood why.
He wasn't sure how long he had been there when he heard the crunch of gravel, interrupting his icy cold swim. Her nose was red, her eyes were bloodshot and bleary, her hair a tangled mess, pulled up in a messy bun.
"I'm negative," she called from the side of her car once he had pulled himself from the water. "I got the call a little while after I hung up with you; I had to do one of those drive-through testing sites. But I'm negative. It really is just a cold."
"I already told you, I don't get sick, not like that! And we're not affected by the virus anyway."
She shrugged weakly, and his wolf growled, shivering up his spine. He wanted to pounce. He could smell the slightly antiseptic odor of the cold medicine she'd taken, could taste its artificial corrosiveness on his tongue, but beneath that he smelled her sweet heat, and he wanted to bury his face in it and drown.
"Can-can we go inside? I know you probably want to run and get ready for your change, but —"
"I need to have you. Ineedto have you."
