Epilogue

Jadrian

She hadn’t loved me, she hadn’t wanted me, she’d only been after a goal. The words played over and over in my mind, my stupid, addled mind.

“Jadrian! You ready?” I turned as I heard my brother’s voice, worried and concerned. Still.

“I am, Cade. Let’s go.” Cade was going with me to the chopper taking me back to the swampy home of Allana’s clan. I was their Alpha now.

I looked around the monastery one last time, my senses reaching out for her.

Allana.

I closed my eyes, taking in the smell of the place, hoping stupidly that I might catch her scent.

Nothing.

With a ragged sigh, I turned away, admitting defeat finally.

“You know she’s your mate, right? That’s why you’re taking this so hard.” Cade looked at me with pity in his eyes and I almost forgot what he’d said. My eyes narrowed as I stared my brother down.

“My mate?” That couldn’t be true, I would be dead after being separated from my mate for so long.

“Think back, brother. Did you feel an odd surge of heat go down your spine, something weird and freaky?” He paused, thinking. “This obsession you have with her, the way you can’t stop thinking about her?”

He came close to me, his fist digging into a spot in my abdomen. “It hurts here, right? Aches and burns and nothing makes it better, right?”

“How… do you know that?” I rubbed my hand over the spot, annoyed that he was right.

“Because that’s what happens when your soul decides on its mate, you dumb fuck!” Cade grinned at him, easing the sting of his words. “She isn’t too far away, just not close either.”

“Still, what killed Mom and Dad then? They were only separated by a few dozen feet!” Jadrian hated reminding his brother of their parents but it was his only example.

“I think it’s because you were made a shifter.” Cade looked certain as he stepped away and the helicopter’s blades began to whirl.

“Right. Too much to think about. I’ll have cell service out there in the swamp, right?” I looked at the chopper, uncertain. I just wanted to go back to Kansas, forget all this shit, and go back to my normal life.

“You’re going to make a great Alpha, Jadrian. Just remember, you’re the Alpha now. Don’t take anybody’s shit and put down dissent quickly, understand?” Cade’s dark eyes bored into mine. “And call me, I’ll be there in an instant if you need me. Jacob didn’t make a stupid decision, stop doubting yourself.” He looked sure enough to convince me for now so I hugged him and left him there wordlessly, my bag clutched in my hands.

The helicopter flew me to a deeper part of the bayou, the special pontoons allowing us to land in water 40 minutes later. I looked around as a pirogue came out to join us. A woman with blonde hair greeted me.

“Come on in, sha, I’ll take you over.” She was pointing at the thirty or so buildings on stilts behind her. How the fuck was I supposed to get out of this place?

The houses looked well-maintained. There were boats floating under the houses that looked like they were kept in proper running order, and smiling faces on each porch. That wasn’t the problem, the problem was a lack of roads and road signs. I didn’t even know where I was. Jacob had well and truly dropped me in the shit.

“I guess there isn’t much choice… sha.” I grinned at the twenty-something woman, a little on the thick side, and managed to get into the small boat without tipping us over. I dropped my bag in the bottom and she started to push the pole in her hands, guiding us to the largest building.

All of the houses and buildings were connected by a running pier-system, sidewalks in a world with ground beneath them. Out here, several feet of water could pass under the houses before it even touched them.

“This one’s yours, sha. Go on now, climb up that there ladder. You go on first.” Her words were kind of sing-songy and out of sequence but I found it charming.

She shouted something I couldn’t understand up to the people staring down at us and they all smiled and waved. Somebody caught my bag as I threw it up on the pier and climbed over.

“Hi,” I said simply, staring at the gathered faces. Young and old, blonde hair and black, even a bit of red, male and female, there must have been over a hundred people staring at me around the complex.

“Hi!” An older man came out of the assembled people and took my hand to shake it. “Welcome. Let’s get you settled in. I’m Alton, I’m the accountant around here. I guess I’ll play the guide for now.” He took me into the large building, the first floor just a large open room, a living room in front, kitchen in the back, and a couple of closets. A fireplace sat in a corner of the living room, untouched for now.

It sank in that I was now the Alpha for these people and I looked around. What could I say to them? Allana’s home, now my home, was overwhelming in its comforts and the expectant faces behind me left me speechless.

“Well, I… I guess I should introduce myself. I’m Jadrian Alexander, your new Alpha.” I paused as quiet murmurs of approval filled the air. “I’m new to this so I guess we’ll learn together, shall we?”

“You hungry, sha?” the blonde girl asked. “We made a gumbo and some rice for you. It being your first day here, well, we thought we’d let you rest.” She grinned at me.

“Thank you. What’s your name?” I stared down at her, realizing then I was taller than all of them.

“Ruby, sha. Nice to meet ya.” She held her hand out and then everybody got in a line and did the same, telling me their names, who they belonged to, which children were theirs, and letting me know what they did.

My head was spinning by the time the end of the line came and a woman with red hair stood before me with a bowl of rice and gumbo in her hands.

I stared at her, realizing now that the ache had disappeared, that my depression had lifted the moment we landed, and that I’d been too distracted by it all to notice. I felt better because my mate was here and I’d missed it. Already failing at noticing what was going on around me, for fuck’s sake!

“Allana.” I hadn’t dared hope she’d be here. I hadn’t allowed myself to hope to find her, but there she was.

“Cade sent me here. He said Jacob was sending you.” She was thinner, her face a little wild, and her hair had lost some of its luster. She was suffering.

Allana turned as I absorbed her words, telling the people something and they all trailed out, happily talking with each other. Cade. He’d sent her here. That bastard knew and hadn’t told me. I felt anger surge through me but it quickly disappeared.

“What happened, Allana? Explain everything to me, please.” I went to the couch, a long wooden high-backed bench with dark brown cushions, handmade from local wood it looked like. I set the bowl she’d given me on a table that was definitely hand-carved, and looked at her.

She sat beside me, tucking a foot under her bottom. Pushing her hair out of her face she looked stressed, overwhelmed, and an urge to ease her burden filled me. I told it to fuck off until I had some answers.

“You know he was my father, and that I brought the Alexander women to him. I did it to draw you all together, to end this. I didn’t do it to betray any of you.” Her blue eyes caught mine, pleading with me for understanding. “It was stupid, desperate, but this needed to end and I knew only the Alexanders could stop my father. He was… ruthless. To everyone, including me.”

I felt myself thawing a bit. She must have explained everything to Cade, he must have believed her for her to still be alive. “Alright. Go on.”

“When I was still little more than a cub he threw me out, told me to sink or swim. If I learned to swim he told me to come back. He didn’t have a use for female cubs, you see.” Her eyes were defiant as she spoke, sparking with life and the beauty that had so captivated me.

“Did you go back?” She must have, I knew, she’d arranged to take our women.

“I called him to arrange the meeting. I didn’t see him, he’d have probably seen through me before I could pull it all off.” She looked guilty for a moment and I knew it was because of the danger she’d put the women in.

“I don’t think they were in much danger, Allana. Did you see what they did to him?” I could still remember the sound of the blasts and the light from the surging energy Sabrina had created and Jacqui had directed.

“I know, but if they hadn’t been who they were… fuck.” She stood up, pacing around her own home. I saw now the little touches she’d added, paintings of local wildlife and flowers, cushions and plants, even the furniture was something I could tell she’d picked herself.

In that moment the anger, the disbelief, all of it slid away. “And me? Where do I fit into all of this?”

“Jadrian, I…” Her words trailed off as she stopped pacing. “You were a complication I wasn’t expecting.”

Her words hit me like a wrecking ball. “So you weren’t just,” I twirled my hands, looking for the words, “using me? You weren’t just trying to get me to give you information, or to turn me to your father’s side?”

“Never, Jadrian!” She came to me on her knees, her hands taking mine as she stared up at me. “I really like your brother’s wife, and yeah, I’d have slept with them both, but the minute I laid eyes on you, Jadrian. You rocked me to the core!”

I looked down at her, remembering another time when she was between my legs, her lips doing very naughty things. I wouldn’t let my desire rule me.

“You didn’t turn me on purpose?” The memory of my first humiliating shift came back to me and I looked away from her.

“No, and I certainly didn’t turn you into a duck shifter.” Her smile could not be repressed and honestly, I can’t blame her. That shit had been funny and I’d have laughed if it had been anyone else. “Well, I didn’t mean to. And if I’m not mistaken, you can turn into more than that now, can’t you?”

I shifted around on the couch, for some reason all of my anger and distrust had fled, along with my pain. I watched her for a moment, seeing her hair gradually lift back into life, and the hollows under her eyes disappeared. She was the beautiful woman I’d been longing for, the one I thought I’d never see again.

“Yeah, I can change into a few things now. Allana.” I caught her chin in my fingers, staring into her eyes. “Where do we go from here? What happens now?”

She looked uncertain for a moment but I knew she felt the spark where I touched her chin. I saw it in her eyes. I also saw desire flaring into life.

“We do whatever we want to. Jacob’s putting out the word that I’m free to go. You’re the Alpha now so I guess it’s your choice. I’m just a subject.” She’d lost a lot in her bid to free us all from the plotting of the Mungons, more than I’d realized.

It all came crashing down on me and I pulled her into my arms at last, wanting to comfort her, wanting to open that crack of pain I’d seen in her and let it all out so I could replace it with nothing but happiness.

She sobbed as I pulled her head down to my shoulder, her arms wrapping around me. I felt it then, that feeling of truly being home, of being someone’s mate. Her mate.

I held her through it all, through the wailing, through the explanation of a lifetime of being an evil man’s daughter, of her fear of failing in her own plot against him. And then there was me. She’d truly felt something for me and she’d known I was her mate.

“I didn’t know until I left, not for sure, but when the pain started I knew. I came back here, it was tolerable here, and I could deal with it. But I don’t know how long I’d have lasted, Jadrian. If you’d left the moment you saw me I think I’d have died.” I wiped away her tears, fighting back my own, handing her a tissue from a box on the table.

“I’m an idiot, Allana. A total idiot. ‘I didn’t know’ isn’t much of an excuse but I had no idea our souls had mated until Cade told me earlier.” I took a deep breath, blinking the tears away. “I stopped thinking you were evil a while back, but I had no idea how to find you, or even if you wanted to be found.”

“I needed to think, to get my own head straight. Then Cade told me what was going on. I knew just showing up wasn’t going to work. This is what he and Jacob came up with.” She gave me a watery smile, and an awareness of how she was nestled into my lap hit us both.

Her eyes searched mine as she wound her arms around my neck, her mouth getting closer. “Jadrian?”

“Kiss me, Allana.” I wanted the feisty hell-cat I’d known back, this soft, broken woman was too much to bear, too unlike the real woman I knew. I prodded her into taking back some of her self-confidence by feeding her an order.

She did as she was told but she did it with a fierce growl of satisfaction. She moved, straddling me, locking our groins together as her lips pressed into mine.

Frantic need took control of us both and we tore clothes away until we were naked in each other’s arms. I held my arms up against her back, leaning her away from me as I kissed her. Long hair trailed over my arms, silky and sultry. Her nude skin was a temptation I couldn’t resist and I began to explore her, tasting her neck and shoulders before I trailed down to her breasts.

Peach colored nipples puckered under my tongue and her inhalation of breath was my reward. I felt her gasp all the way to my throbbing cock. She wanted me. I gave her what she needed.

Her fingers buried in my hair, pulling at it as she gripped my head, pressing me into her breast.

I felt her long, slim fingers trails down my bare back, her nails scratching my skin as she lost herself in my touch.

“Don’t stop, Jadrian. I’ve missed you so much. Touch me more, please, more.” I let my hands trace down her back, feeling her own muscles, down to her firm ass, grasping at her there as she began to move against me. I kneaded her bottom close to her center, my fingers grazing the most intimate parts of her.

“Come on, Allana, you know we don’t get what we want until we’ve spent the night exploring. Didn’t I tell you that?” She pulled back, confused, but then she gave me that sexy grin.

“Ah, yes, I remember.” She pulled away from me. “We have to be thorough, begging each other, on the verge of dying. Don’t we?”

Kneeling on the floor she took me in her mouth, my thick head passing her lips, and sliding easily down her throat. I stroked her neck absently, gasping as she swallowed me, focused on the intense pleasure of her mouth on my dick.

Her hands explored my thighs, wound up to my mouth, and a slim finger pushed between my lips. I sucked at it, mimicking her actions below, loving the taste of her. I pulled it away, winding my fingers with hers.

“Don’t you dare make me come, Allana. Not yet.” I pulled her head away when she began to suck harder, faster, her head bobbing in a blur on me.

“Jadrian! Please? I want to taste you.” Her eyes were alluring, and I wanted to fall into them, to let her suck me off, but I couldn’t do it. I wanted to know what it felt like to be held inside of her.

“Later, babe.” I turned her, walking away. I went to a fridge and pulled out a pitcher of tea. I stared at her on the couch, pouting so fucking prettily, as I guzzled down the tea I’d poured. “Savor it, Allana.”

I ran a hand down my side and over my stomach, watching as she watched me. She spread her long, muscular legs, the legs of a runner, and let me see her secrets. She was wet, so wet, and her fingers found her clit quickly as her eyes dared me to resist her. I grinned at her, leaning back against the counter, sucking down tea like I wasn’t about to spill all over the floor.

My long frame wasn’t easy to perch nonchalantly on the counter but I managed as Allana opened her sex, stroking herself into a moan as she watched me for any sign of cracking.

“You’re going to make yourself come, Allana. And what are you going to do when I’m not there to clench around? You know how that’s going to feel, right? My cock buried balls deep inside of you, all of me, as you clench into a screaming orgasm?” I stared at her smugly, a grin of my own capturing her attention.

“Then you’d best come over here, Jadrian and stop fucking with me.” Her eyes went wide for a moment as I shifted, but I was only repositioning myself. I set the glass of tea down now that it was empty and took myself in hand instead.

“Is this what you want? This hard cock, all for you. You want it in that slick pussy of yours, filling you up.” I moved closer, standing just in front of the table at the couch.

I could smell her scent, luring me to her. I had to taste her.

I dropped to my knees between her legs, pressing her thighs open when she tried to clamp them shut. I swiped at her with my tongue, from bottom to top, going back somewhere around center to lap up her juices. My head exploded, and a buzzing started in my ears.

I lapped at her, trying to lick her dry but I only made her wetter, her hips moving to follow my tongue, to catch me when I reached her clit and hold me still. Her fingers dragged through my hair, holding me in place as she rode my tongue.

I pulled away as she started to pant my name, wanting to be inside of her so desperately it fucking hurt. “Not yet, Allana, not yet baby.”

I moved, sitting up to take my cock and guide it to her opening. I watched, gasping myself, as I felt the tip meet her wet flesh. Then it disappeared, slid in, and I stopped. I wanted to plunge into her but I wanted to savor this more.

Her hips tilted and another inch of me disappeared, an inch of thick flesh that made me grit my teeth in pleasure. I pressed a little further and she was taking five inches of me. I thought I’d lose it then but I held back.

I looked into her eyes, her feet flat on the floor, and waited, holding my breath until that point when her eyes flared. Then I let her take the last five inches, sinking down into her. She wrapped her legs around my waist, sealing us together, taking every centimeter of me she could get.

I groaned, unable to form words as we began to move together. I couldn’t get enough traction so I pulled her up and took her to the nearest wall, keeping her wrapped around me.

I braced her there, holding her ass as I began a brutal, pounding pace that had us both panting against each other’s mouths, our lips tangling just to let go a moment later as she began to explode. That first pulse triggered me and we exploded together, our bodies pressing together, sweat causing us to slide easily with each other.

Her head fell back as she came and I watched her face, I watched her pleasure, and followed, staring down at her in adoration, in total awe. I felt the world rock as I came, her body pulsing around me, taking me deeper, stealing my words again as I emptied into her greedy body.

“Mine.” I gasped against her forehead as she slid down my body, too relaxed to hang on any longer.

“Mine.” Her eyes met mine and I knew I’d found my mate.

“Together we’re going to run this clan, Allana, you by my side. My eternal mate. Together we’ll keep the shifter world safe, we’ll keep our clan safe.”

“Yes, Jadrian. Together.” Her arms wound around mine. “But for now, I want round two. I’m a bit concerned.”

I kissed the tip of her nose and grinned down at her. “And why is that?”

“Well,” she said, kissing my chin as she did her own grinning. “I thought fucking you would get you out of my system. It seems to have had the opposite effect.”

Her hands slid down my sides and around to my ass, pulling me into her stomach. “That’s a bad thing?”

“Not being able to get enough of you? Yeah, that could be a problem! We have a clan to cater to.” Her lips were running over my chest and I knew I wouldn’t be seeing anyone else today.

“Later, so much later. Where’s the bedroom in this place?” I laughed with her as I carried her up the stairs and into a bedroom decorated with a deep red and black. Lovely, but all I was interested in was the large bed.

I dropped her there and followed her down, my golden skin covering her pale white.

“I’m going to write songs for you, I’m going to write books about you,” I told her as I traced my lips down her throat, my fingers exploring her hips.

“I’m going to paint you naked on our bed, in a pirogue, on a swamp bank tempting in naïve young maidens, or maybe in that bathtub.” That piqued my interest, what was so special about it, but her fingers started to trail down my face, and over my lips.

“I think we’re going to be very busy.” I gasped when she kissed me, letting her take my thoughts away.

The war was over, she hadn’t been betraying us, and for now, there was peace. I settled between her thighs, missing the text message from Cade saying that Jacqui was in labor. Later I’d see it and we’d go to see our new niece. Anastasia Stella Alexander was born on the day my life became unimaginably wonderful. That had to be a good thing, right?