11
SERENA
I returned to the kitchen to the most amazing smell of bacon and eggs. Damien and Broderick were sitting down, and had already started to eat as I slid into the seat between them.
“Alright, I’m in,” I said. “But on two conditions.”
Damien dropped his fork and grinned. Broderick stopped chewing.
“First, I want full discretion. You want to tell me you’re shifters? Fine, you’re shifters. I’m not arguing anymore. But if we’re going to do this, I’ll need to know everything you know. So hold nothing back.”
“Agreed,” said Broderick immediately. He went back to eating.
“And the other condition?” asked Damien.
I reached out and swiped a piece of bacon off the surfer’s plate. “Tell me exactly what you did to me.”
They looked at each other for half a second, then nodded together. Whatever exchange they’d just made happened wordlessly.
“Well?” I asked.
“Just let us wolf down these eggs,” grinned Damien, “and we’ll be right with you.”
I ate another three pieces of bacon to even things out; two from Broderick’s plate, one from Damien’s. The way I saw it, it was no less than they deserved. They should’ve asked if I was hungry.
“Alright,” Broderick said at last. He looked serious as he wiped his mouth with one folded triangle of a napkin. “What is it you want to know?”
“Well to begin with, why is my skin tingling?” I asked. “And how come it feels like I’ve got a hundred and three fever, but I don’t feel sick?”
“Physical side effects,” Broderick said. “Of mating with Damien.”
I didn’t like the sound of that at all.
“Is he sick?”
“No, not even a little,” said Broderick. “In fact, he’s healthier than most humans. We both are. We’re stronger, faster, have better reflexes… plus enhanced senses and a heightened sensitivity to danger.”
“That still doesn’t explain—”
“I’m just telling you what we are first,” Broderick went on. “It’ll be easier to understand what’s happening to you once you know how we work.”
Shutting up wasn’t exactly one of my strong suits, but in this case I stopped talking and listened. Besides, I loved the sound of Broderick’s voice. It was deep and authoritative, and if I were being honest, almost sensually hypnotic.
“We have accelerated healing too. Mostly due to our faster heart rate.”
He spoke perfect English but with a hard, Scandinavian accent. The more he talked, the more I wanted him to keep talking. It was almost like being in a trance.
“What you’re feeling,” he said, “is the byproduct of being claimed. Of being mated by a Lycanthrope in a closed pair.” He pointed between Damien and himself. “Between us.”
Claimed? He might as well have been speaking Latin. I had no clue what he was talking about.
Damien however, sensed my confusion. He jumped in, and thankfully he spoke in more layman’s terms.
“Broderick and I are bonded,” he said. “It’s like we’re brothers but not brothers.”
“Okay…”
“As members of our pack, we did everything together. We ran together. Hunted together. Our ties went beyond kinship, beyond blood. The deep sense of connection formed unbreakable bonds between us.”
I noticed Broderick leaned back in his chair a little. But Damien leaned forward. He placed his hands together before continuing.
“When we choose a mate,” he said carefully, “it’s as a pair also. Before we became outcasts, we were bonded to the pack’s alpha female.” His eyes shot to Broderick, and I sensed hesitation. After a pause, he went on anyway. “Her name was Karessa.”
Karessa.
The name seemed familiar somehow. It couldn’t have been though, because I’d never heard the name in my life. At least, not that I could remember.
“So… you were, how do you say, ‘mated’ to this woman?”
“Yes.”
“The two of you.”
Damien couldn’t hide a tiny smirk. “Yes.”
“Together. At the same time?”
Though I was half mocking them now, the idea was oddly attractive. It made me warm, somewhere deep down in my belly.
Broderick leaned suddenly forward, tilting his chair back down. He arms slid back onto the table with a loud ‘thump’. “YES, okay? That’s how it works with us. It’s not our choice exactly, it’s a decision made at a primal level. More of an irrepressible instinct.”
He was rattled. He looked cute when he was rattled.
“Didn’t seem so irrepressible about a few hours ago,” I smiled, crossing my arms.
Damien almost chuckled, but a scathing look from his brother-not-brother shut him up. Broderick leaned in again, and this time directed his attention toward me.
“Think it’s funny?” he asked. His voice was suddenly deadly serious. “Go on, Serena. Look at me.”
Slowly I raised my eyes to meet his. I was lost in them almost immediately. It was like dying of thirst, and falling into two pools of cool, crystal blue water. I could envision opening my mouth and drinking it in. Letting it flow down my throat…
He shifted closer. Internally, I welcomed it.
“Now tell me you don’t want me.”
The tingle I’d felt over my body was concentrated now, to the area between my legs. I was wet down there, and not just from Damien.
Holy shit. What’s happening to me?
Looking at Broderick gave me butterflies. The first date, first kiss, first time ever taking a man inside me kind of butterflies. The pleasant but scary kind. The kind of fresh, new, once-in-a-lifetime moments you always wanted more of, but as life wore on, seldom arrived.
And there was an underlying sexual attraction too. Okay, maybe not so underlying. I looked at Broderick and I wanted him. Wanted him in all the same ways I’d wanted Damien, and then some.
“Well?” Broderick said. “I’m waiting on an answer, Serena.”
The way he said my name only made me want him more. I couldn’t stop staring at his masculine, perfectly symmetrical face. His strong, beautiful body. And I could smell him too, in ways I’d never imagined. I could smell him in layers, and he smelled wonderful.
“I— I don’t understand it,” I said. “But yes. I feel it.”
He nodded, finally pleased. For some reason I was glad to have pleased him, and I didn’t even know why.
“Now think about this,” he went on. “As much as you feel it? I feel it too. Even more than you. The pull, the Call — it’s more powerful for me, because of my blood. Because I’ve already been through it.”
He was leaning in now, his face only inches from mine. I felt the irresistible urge to kiss him. To press my lips against his, and inhale him through my nostrils as his big arms slid around me. And I wanted to do it in front of Damien, too. That part didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Nothing at all except—
“Now you understand,” he said, pulling back. He stood up, and my stomach lurched with disappointment. I knew it was stupid, but I couldn’t help it. I felt almost… almost in heat.
“So how do we fix this?” I found myself saying. There was a part of me that regretted the question. The part that didn’t want it fixed.
The two men looked at each other. A moment passed between them, and their silence said everything.
“We’ll talk about that later,” Broderick said. “Right now? We need to come up with a plan.”