“Good, love?” he rasped, trying to keep his strokes slow and measured.
I laughed at the manifest inadequacy of that word, feeling tears splatter on the ground around us before wrapping my arms around him, forcing us to slither together, unable to stop the terrible momentum growing inside us. I fit my mouth to his ear, let him hear the sounds of my gasps as he slowly unravelled me, only to be remade again.
“You, them, this… It’s everything.”
And it was. Something broke within him then, his eyes glowing bright as the moon as he started to plough inside me, forcing his knot to rub deep on that point that ached the most, my hips snapping to meet his stroke for stroke. I sobbed out my pleasure, heard his in return, getting faster and faster, a great tide that had been out too long surging back in.
I saw Ulfric in my mind when I closed my eyes, unable to do anything other than focus on what our bodies did to each other. His face was terrible in its compassion, its brutality. He and my pack, we were the wolves that sang to the moon their eerie, harshly beautiful song, and as it rose in the air, so did we.
Part of me held that feeling close, of the time each one of my mates had wedged their knots into me, taking me, making me theirs. And yet it was a surprise every time, my eyes flicking around as I came around Mason’s knot. He groaned as I strangled his knot with the pulses of my cunt, wringing every damn stuttering pleasure I could from his body. But that euphoric rush was nothing compared to what came next.
I could feel him in the same way as I had all my mates, but this time, I felt them all. A circle of power, we sang now, connected so completely, it would never be sundered. The rush of pleasure, of happiness, of love, flooded into me, into him, into them, and it just kept on coming, almost terrifying in its scope and grandeur.
Which was perhaps why I spiralled up, able to see the two of us rutting together on the mat, to see the way my mates connected with us. But I didn’t stay.
This is it, what you need to see, Ulfric said, the dark voice on my shoulder.
And summoned by his words, I did. The city, the state, I saw more and more of it as I rose, until finally, I hung over the whole of it, a glowing presence in the night sky.
She sees, she knows what is done to her daughters, he said. She watches. Across the landscape, pinpricks lit up, each one an ulva. But some flickered, fluttered, struggling with all their might before they went out. Including this one. The landscape faded away to show a view of a familiar place, Stevie sitting at her bar, frowning as she looked across at Selma and Aidan playing robotically at love as my aunt and his dad watched on.
That seemed to trigger something, dragging me down, down, down at a pace that made me want to scream and vomit by turns. But it ended abruptly as I was slammed back into a body, but was it mine?
“Hey, baby,” Aidan said, crouching naked above me, his smile so sweet, his eyes blinking as if he couldn’t believe he was seeing me. “You’re here?”
I nodded on automatic, feeling his big hand caress the side of my face, my eyes falling closed at that, unable to think when he did so. I was drowned, in the feel of him, in his scent, at the sensation of him shifting between my naked thighs.
“Fuck…” he breathed. “How? I’ve been in hell, babe, needing you. I thought one taste was going to be enough. I dream of you every damn night, wake up hard and aching.” He frowned, his vision going vague and unfocussed, but his mouth came down on mine, kissing me fucking senseless.
“It’s working,” Nancy said, walking over to us and looking down at the two of us. “He thinks he’s in bed with that girl. Bring Selma in.”
Aidan sunk into me, burying his face in my neck, nipping and kissing the skin there, and over his shoulder, I saw Marshall Peters looming in the doorway, his hand on a dead eyed Selma.
“Shoulda done this differently, Nance,” Marshall rumbled, pushing my cousin into the room, her movements leaden and clumsy with reticence. “Should never have let the heir go. You primed her to want to mate with my son, spent all that time laying those impulses deep. From what he said, he damn near closed the deal. Maybe we should wait. She has to return at some point. A Spehr belongs in Lupindorf.”
“Selma is heir now,” Nancy snapped. “As she should have been all along. You know that.”
“Do I now?” he replied with a lazy smile. “Always the dog in the manger, jealous as hell.” She glared up at him, right up until the point he pressed her body against his, a hand cupping her jaw before he slammed his lips down on hers. “Made you a devil in the sheets when I’d come away from your sister’s.”
“You were mine, are mine,” she growled out. “And now Aidan will be Selma’s, the way it always should be.” She turned to her daughter and said in a voice fairly vibrating with dominance, “Get on the bed and under him.”
She sees, Ulfric insisted. She hears, feels the pain of her daughters. She watched us tear her first daughter to pieces in our incomprehension, and she learned. No more. His voice was a terrible growl, making Nance’s attempts at dominance sound like pitiful squeaking. Mothers, they have teeth, will eat the bodies of their young if they come out wrong. I looked over Nance’s shoulder, saw the spot of light from the bulb above them brighten and expand. She
