Chapter 7

 

“Wow, you’re glowing,” Courtney said when Maeve came down from her shower.

“Thank you,” Maeve said. She headed for the fridge. She’d been ravenous for the past hour, but before she could sit and eat she’d desperately needed a shower. She grabbed the tuna salad she had made the day before and a fork before taking a seat at the table next to Courtney. “Want a bite?” Maeve asked, holding up the first scoop.

“Uh, no. Thanks. So, spill. How was it?” Courtney asked, propping her chin on her hand.

Maeve smiled so big she saw the swell of her cheeks creep into the bottom of her vision. “It was glorious. The muscles, the power, the agility, and the stamina! I used to get winded on the treadmill warming up to lift weights, for God’s sake. But when I shifted, every last inch of me was ready—and I could have gone a whole lot farther than just the run home.”

Courtney gave her a wide-eyed stare. “Just the run home? It was twenty-five miles.”

Maeve nodded. “By car. I probably took off five miles just by running straight through the woods. There were a few areas where I needed to cross the road and didn’t know quite what to do. I mean, I would imagine I’m not supposed to be seen, right? It’s weird not having a parent here to teach me everything I need to know.” She closed her lips over a big bite of tuna, shutting her eyes and humming when the flavor of the chopped red onion burst on her tongue.

Courtney clasped Maeve’s elbow and leaned her head on her shoulder. “Aww, honey. I’m sorry. But you know what? I’m glad she left something behind for you. So, what are you going to do now?”

Maeve shrugged, and took a sip of water. “I have to find my mate.”

Courtney winked. “I think you already did.”

“Nah,” Maeve said, shaking her head. At least she didn’t think so.

Courtney’s hand dropped to the table with an audible thud. “Are you serious? Well, you didn’t see what happened when he touched you because you were out, but it’s almost like you caused him pain. And then it was like you guys fused somehow. I’m telling you, if you’re looking for your mate, I’d start there.” Courtney ran her fingers over the streak of silver hair shooting through Maeve’s red locks. “I’m digging this streak. I wonder what it’s from.”

“Maybe it’s my wolf color. At least, from what I could see of my coat, that might be the case,” Maeve said.

Courtney scrunched her nose. “I don’t know…right about the time Orion looked to be in pain, your hair morphed into this.”

“I’m not sure he liked me all that much,” Maeve said before taking her final bite. She stepped up to the sink and rinsed her dishes before placing them in the dishwasher.

“Oh, my God. Your radar is way off…you bewitched him. Bewitched the witch. Actually, that’s pretty funny. But seriously, the way he watched you.” Courtney shook her head. “And you didn’t see his face when we thought…” Courtney drifted off, her voice thick.

Maeve put a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, thought what?”

Courtney scrubbed her eyes. “I don’t know what we thought. You weren’t okay. You were suffering and no one could reach you. Your body was there, but it was like you had been pulled into another place, another time.”

Maeve wrapped her arms around Courtney and squeezed. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to scare you guys.”

“No apologies. I’m just glad you’re okay,” Courtney said, patting her hand.

“You have the urn?” Maeve asked.

Courtney scraped her chair back and stood. “I put it on the floor just inside your closet.”

“Thank you.” Maeve rubbed her temples and thought about everything she needed to do. Find three women when there was likely no paper trail. Just the thought made her want to curl up and take a nap. “I wonder what I can do to find my sisters.”

“Can’t you take the locks of hair to a certain warlock and search for them that way?” Courtney asked while she dug through her purse.

“Maybe,” Maeve murmured.

Energy stirred in the air around her, making her glance around, looking for the source. It was almost as if the window had been left open and the breeze danced into the room, but everything in the room was shut up tight. “Do you feel that?”

Courtney’s brow furrowed. “Feel what?”

“That electricity in the air.”

Courtney searched the room. “Uh, honey, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Her heart rocked in her chest and her stomach pitched, as if she had just crested the highest peak on a roller coaster and plunged down the other side.

Her chest warmed where Orion had placed his stone on her. She lay her hand over her heart and smiled. “It’s him. He’s calling me.”

“Are you sure?” Courtney said, tilting her head.

Maeve nodded and bit her lip. “Yes. Can you cover for me tomorrow?”

“Of course, but are you sure this is a good idea, you know, going to his house like this? I mean, it’s dark out, you’ve only known him for five minutes, oh yeah, and it’s dark out.”

Maeve laughed at Courtney’s smart-ass remark. “You’re worried about me. I’m going to be fine, though. It’s him. It’s time.”

“I’m never going to understand this world. It’s a damn good thing I excel at going with the flow, because at the eleventh hour you’ve turned in a barrel of surprises.”

Courtney turned toward the door, but Maeve reached for her arm to stop her. “You know this doesn’t change anything. And it changes everything. But with us?” Maeve gestured between them with a wave of her hand. “I’m still in this business with you. I’m still me. I just need to do this. Now that it’s started, there’s this pressure to complete the next step, and the next, until my sisters are all united again. They deserve to hold our mother’s letter and to know how much she sacrificed for all of us.”

“I get it…go on. Go get your man,” Courtney said before kissing her cheek and heading out the door with a wave.

Maeve watched her go, but Courtney’s sadness lingered. Oh, Courtney probably thought she hid it well, and maybe she did. Maybe Maeve just picked up on things easier than she had before everything changed.

She’d handle it. She’d find a way to convince Courtney that they were still tight, no matter what.

But first, she had to see a man about a mating session.

She made her way out to her side yard and glanced around, grateful for the darkness. Sliding her clothes off, she tucked them next to the air conditioning unit and closed her eyes.

She thought back to her run earlier, recalling the way her muscles flexed and bunched, and before she knew it her muscles tightened, then flexed. She dropped down to her front paws, the hair bursting from her skin. Shaking her head, she loped to the back yard and ducked into the woods behind it to follow the same route back to Silver Meadow.

Under the cover of darkness, she faced fewer obstacles. She had no problem figuring out if cars were coming with the glare of headlights in the distance, and no struggling to see in wolf form. She’d always had shitty vision at night, but no more.

Fifteen minutes of running and she stood at the base of Spear Hill. Unsure of how she should show up, in wolf form or human, she paced and panted, cooling off from her run.

She didn’t want to hide. In the process of finding out everything she had about herself, at some point she had decided she wanted to be who fate had meant her to be. If he was her mate, as all indications said he was, he needed to see her like this. She wouldn’t hide it. He either accepted all of her, or no deal.

She eased her way up the hill and cut through the trees surrounding the meadow. Spotting him at the base of the tree, the moonstone at his wrist glowing with radiant energy, she stepped out of the woods and slowly approached him.

He stood there, the light of the moon illuminating him. In just jeans, his chest bare, he waited for her with a small smile on his full lips.

“You’re stunning, Maeve!” he called out to her.

She ducked her head as she swelled with pride that he recognized her in wolf form. Suddenly eager touch him, kiss him, to explore him in human form, she focused her energy and shifted.

His eyes widened before narrowing with fierce desire as his gaze traveled over her naked body.

She kept her arms to her side, her shoulders back, and let him look his fill. A trail of desire lingered on her skin everywhere his eyes roamed, leaving a slow burn of arousal brewing inside her.

“You called me?” she said, her lips tilting in a flirty grin.

“I did. We have a few things to work out.”

“Like?”

He approached her with sure steps. Just a foot away he stopped, keeping his eyes on hers. “Like, once you’re mine, you’re my responsibility. You have to trust me to keep you safe,” he said. He reached out to the hair hanging over her shoulder that concealed her bare breast. He nudged the lock aside, pushing it over her shoulder.

He barely touched her, but his power play riled something inside that turned her on as much as it grated on her nerves. The sensual drag of her hair over her tight nipple tipped her one step closer to arousal, but that point of contention between them still needed to be addressed.

His gaze fell to her breast—and moonstone color bursts flared to life in his eyes, shooting from his pupils into the dark-blue irises.

She reached for his hand and lay it over her breast. The minute his palm covered her, he hissed.

She sighed, and closed her eyes. She had to feel this, the texture of his rough palm teasing her nipple, for just a second before she took him to task.

Meeting his gaze, she cupped his chin. “Your gender might whisper in your ear and tell you that you’re the alpha in this relationship, but don’t forget, balls or no, my lineage as the head of the Moonstone Guardians Pack guarantees that alpha status to me and me alone. I’ll fight till my last breath to keep it.”

His jaw flexed as he clenched his teeth. Holding his stare she waited him out, waited for him to concede. His shoulders went rigid, but he finally tipped his head in acceptance.

“You drive a hard bargain,” he said.

“I want no misunderstandings.”

“No misunderstandings,” he agreed.

“I want you beside me. Not in front of me or behind me. But right there with me. Can you do that?” she asked, dragging her thumb over his plump bottom lip.

He bit into her flesh and the sensation shot liquid heat straight to her center, making her fight the urge to squirm. “Right beside you the whole way,” he said, right before hooking an arm around her waist and lifting her clean off the ground.

She wrapped her legs around his hips and her arms around his shoulders as he took her mouth in a molten kiss.

At the first taste of his warm mouth she gave as much heat as he threw to her, and within seconds they were a clash of tongues and lips, their harsh breaths breaking the stillness of the clear night.

He growled into her mouth before breaking the contact and throwing his head back, teeth clenched.

She reveled in the flex of the muscles and cords in his neck as he groaned.

In a series of jerky movements that had them both laughing into the night, he reached past her thigh and yanked at his jeans. With a couple flicks she heard the denim hit the ground at his feet.

She cupped his face and kissed the corner of his mouth. “You, Orion, are suave,” she joked.

He stepped out of his pants and his cock slid against her wet pussy, hard and ready.

“Funny girl. I hope you’re ready for a rough ride, because my need to claim you is overriding manners and gentleness.” He ground out the words, his fingers going to her nipple. He rolled the hard tip, and her clit throbbed.

“When the hell did I ask you to be gentle?” she gasped out as she ran her nails down the muscles of his bare chest.

His nostrils flared and with his hands cupping her ass, he lifted her onto his throbbing cock. With one hard thrust he buried himself inside her.

She ground her teeth together as he stretched her, pulled almost all the way out, and slammed back into her.

The pressure, the heat, the claiming, built inside her at the base of her spine, traveling up her vertebrae, and into the base of her skull. She gasped, then growled before sinking her teeth into his shoulder so hard he shouted with it.

“Gahhhh!” he groaned. He sank his hand into her hair and tore her mouth from his shoulder. They both glanced to the bite mark she left in his skin and the blood that trickled from the wound.

She licked his blood from her lips and smiled. Just yesterday the sight of blood had made her squeamish.

He raised a brow and gave her a smirk before lifting her off him and plopping her bare ass onto the cold, mossy ground.

“Hey!” she shouted.

He dropped to his knees, curled a hand around her hip, and flipped her over with a hard yank. “Problem?” he asked before pulling her hips into the air.

She struggled to hold on to the irritation, because something about the way he manhandled her drove her half out of her mind. “Yeah, you could be a gentleman,” she said.

His hands squeezed her ass and her back arched. God, but he had hot hands.

“A gentleman? Coming from the bitch that just bit me.” His hand came down on her ass, hard.

“Ouch!” she yelped. “Did you just call me a bitch? Seriously?”

“Well, technically…” he said.

“Oh, you fu—”

His cock slammed into her hard and deep, and she screamed with the pleasure of it. Her lungs lurched, struggling for air.

Buried to the hilt, he bent to the sensitive shell of her ear. “If you’re going to bite me like a snarling, junkyard dog, I’m going to fuck you like one,” he growled.

His dirty declaration fueled her blood. She swelled, and her skin became sensitive to everything. Each movement of the fine hairs along her arms and neck, the way his breath puffed out from his mouth as he took hold of her shoulders and pounded into her, over and over.

A part of her was sure that his aggressiveness had been dealt as a punishment for her exertion of power, but she welcomed it.

And it changed absolutely nothing.

She was his.

He was hers.

And she was still the leader.

Sharp pleasure built deep inside her. He let go of her shoulders and pulled her hips back, changing the angle, giving her even more pleasure, different sensations, and burning tingles shooting through her bones.

She whimpered, and dropped her head, the sound of his skin smacking against hers as he hammered into her driving her mad.

She pressed her face to the cool, damp ground, kept her ass high in the air, and he rewarded her by reaching between her damp thighs, finding her wet, throbbing clit, and rubbing over it once, twice, three times.

She screamed as her pussy spasmed around him and ran slick. Her orgasm crested and held as he kept the pressure on her.

Tears leaked from her eyes as the pleasure flowed through her on a shuddering breath.

He grunted, thrusted, and with one more jerk spilled himself into her, a painful shout tearing from his lungs.

The sound, completely devoid of pleasure and full of agony, made her blood run cold.

Worried for him, she glanced over her shoulder and spotted smoke rising from his back. “Are you all right?” She scrambled to pull away from him, so she could see his back.

He clamped his hand down on her hip. “Don’t move. It’s not done yet.”

That’s when she realized he still pulsed inside her. He groaned, pleasure finding him, if only just a part, the other part pain, and a sizzle split the silence as he pulled out of her.

She crawled around him and stared at his back. The symbol from around her neck had burned into his flesh, as if he had been held down and seared with an iron brand.

She gently touched the skin just under the wound. “This is from our mating?”

“Yes,” he answered, sitting back on his haunches as he struggled to catch his breath.

“And it’s done now? It won’t hurt like that every time?”

“Fuck, I sincerely hope not.” He took her hand and pulled her around, sitting her on his thighs. He slid his hand through her hair. “You have a mark of your own. Your silver streak is the color of my moonstone.”

She smiled, and pressed her forehead to his. “You aren’t mad at me, you know, for before?”

“No,” he said with a laugh.

“Good. I haven’t even gotten to know you yet, and the thought of losing you…”

He held her cheeks in his hands and tipped her face up to his. “My loyalty to you is seared into who I am as surely as the brand that marked my skin when I made you mine. For as long as I’m on this earth, I’m yours. Only yours.”