Chapter 9
EMME
Rumbling voices roused me, and disorientation lasted a brief second, before I scented my mates and remembered exactly what had happened. We formed a complete quintet.
The perfect circle of shifter power was sealed, and I’d been so overwhelmed by that and all the damn orgasms that I’d passed out cold. My eyes fluttered open as I heard a growl in my mind followed by, Little mate, are you okay?
My brain froze, and as I fought panic, I tried to figure out why there was a voice in my head.
Little mate?
Wait. Not just any voice, but one I knew well. Hunter Reeves was in my freaking head.
Ah… I tried to direct a thought toward him through my panic. I think so. Are we really communicating like this?
There was a brief pause, and I swore I could feel relief wafting from the entitled alpha, though he was clear across town. Yes. I think this is part of our bond now. The power surge almost knocked us out, and Slade said you were unconscious.
Focusing on my surroundings, I found Slade and Talon standing over me on the side of the bed, staring down with confused and worried expressions. “Snow,” Slade breathed, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen any form of panic on his face until today. “Thank the fucking goddess. Are you okay?”
Talon reached out for me, running his hands through my hair, soothing my aching brain. “We’ve got you, sweetness. We won’t let you go.”
Emmeline, Hunter said, his voice filtering in once more. Can you hear me?
I shook my head, trying to deal with the internal and external conversations happening at the same time. I’m okay. But we need to figure out this mind-speak. It’s making me dizzy.
His essence retreated a fraction, and as I focused internally, I realized that I could see all of our beasts. In my fucking mind.
They were gathered together, my wolf center of the pack. Hunter’s beast started to retreat step by step, revealing more of Finley’s bear and Kellan’s wolf.
With that, they poured themselves into the bond.
Pretty mate, you had us worried.
Do you need us there, darlin’? Just say the word.
My stomach swirled, and I lurched to the side of the bed and vomited through the pounding in my head. From the corner of my eye, Slade disappeared from view, only to return with his phone in hand.
“Get out of her head,” he snarled down the line to someone. “You’re hurting her, and until we figure out how this mind-speak words, try to keep your essences to yourself.”
The other beasts all backed away until my wolf stood alone, and it was then I noticed a shimmering boundary around us. Leaving me in the center. Me as the heart.
As the alphas distanced themselves, I was left with relief and distress at losing their energy.
But my stomach did stop swirling, and the pounding in my head eased as I sucked in deep breaths.
My wolf moved restlessly, and I urged her to step over the shimmering boundary toward Slade, deciding to test a theory.
Can you hear me? I asked him, and in our quintet, his dragon lowered its head to caress my wolf. There were thick strands of energy that connected him to Talon, but at the same time, they were their own entities. Two sides of the same coin.
Yes, I can hear and feel you.
When I backed away, the flow of his energy eased, and I knew it’d take some practice, but I already got the sense of how this connection and mind-speak would work.
“I can feel you all,” I said out loud. “And I think as long as your beasts don’t rush my wolf at once, I won’t be vomiting all over the place. ”
“It was too much,” Slade agreed. “And while it appears you are the one who can control the connection, I could push through your barrier if I wanted to. Not that any of us would force that on you.”
With a wave of his hand, the vomit disappeared, and I collapsed back on the bed, filled with mixed emotions.
I brushed my fingers over the new mark on my shoulder, which already felt completely healed.
The fastest one yet. I attribute that to the bristling strength of my beast as she stood with her pack.
Any weaknesses I’d fostered growing up outside the cities and unable to shift regularly, were gone in the face of a complete quintet.
“Are you okay?” Talon asked as he helped me into a sitting position, supporting me against his firm side.
“I think so,” I murmured, still feeling like my rattled brain hadn’t quite settled.
Slade stepped in between my legs, and it was impossible not to notice that he remained naked and semi-hard. Or was that how his dick always looked?
Wouldn’t put it past him… A shower and a grower.
“Come back to us, Emmeline,” he said gruffly. “We’re not pushing in your head, but we are worried.”
“I’m fine,” I repeated. “I feel stronger and more whole with the quintet sealed. It was just overwhelming to have all the power and voices in my head at once.”
Slade lifted his hand and brushed down my cheek.
“Your essence is definitely stronger, your beast too.” He leaned closer.
“That bonding was beyond my wildest expectations.” His lips brushed over my cheek, and the casual touches had me wanting to curl up and sigh.
“My dragon is urging me to capture you in our den and never let you leave. Fair warning.”
As he pulled away, my eyes locked on the bite I’d left on his shoulder. The only scar on his bronze skin. My bite.
Possessiveness rolled through me like a shiver down my spine. As if he’d felt that sensation, Slade’s eyes darkened, and he brushed over his bite—the largest of the five I wore.
“You’re staring with a Talon-like intensity,” I whispered.
Talon laughed, completely at ease with my assessment, and Slade bestowed his famous lip twitch on me.
“You have no idea,” he murmured. “No fucking idea how closely I’ve watched you.
Pretty much from the second you were dragged into our world.
And now… now I can feel you in my essence.
I can track you with my beast. There’s nowhere on Earth you could run that I wouldn’t find you.
You don’t even need that jewelry, as there’s a much larger, more vicious dragon around your throat.
” He grasped the necklace that I hadn’t taken off since that track day.
His confessions might have been concerning if I wasn’t as equally obsessed with my alphas. “I can find you too, Scary Shifter,” I reminded him. “You’re all mine.”
I tilted my head back to meet an amused gaze staring down at me, and I found myself brushing my fingers over the scar on Talon’s cheek. I hated the reasons for the scar, but I loved every part of this dragon. “You and I have some unfinished business, Tal.”
His mirth faded under an inferno of heat, and the ravenous stare he bestowed on me had my thighs clenching.
“You should probably rest,” he ground out, and I could feel the strength it took for him to say that.
Our new bond was allowing some of the alpha’s thoughts and emotions to reach me, no doubt due to my lack of experience in knowing how to keep our beasts locked down.
Twisting in his hold, I hugged him closer. Or he let me, since there was no way I could move a mountain of dragon shifter against his will. “I feel better than I have in years,” I said, scratching my nails over his short hair, which got a very purr-like rumble from him.
Turned out dragons could definitely purr. My big scary kitty beasts.
“I’m stronger and more capable than I was twenty minutes ago,” I reminded him, “and I don’t want to wait another second for us to seal the final strands of our bond.”
Slade backed up a few steps from us, as if he was giving Talon and me our chance to really bond. I put my full focus into the newest, but no less important, member of my quintet.
“Hey,” I whispered, running my finger over his scar again. His throat worked with each touch, and our gazes were locked. “I want you to know how happy I am that we made it here. We’re stronger than ever, and this feels right.”
“I love you,” he choked out, and the depths of his feelings existed right there in his beautiful, broken expression.
“I love you,” I said with force, and I shifted my wolf toward his beast, so he could really feel me as well.
Slade’s scent blossomed at the exchanged words of love, and I wondered if he was thinking about the fact that we hadn’t said those words to each other.
I didn’t even have to ask to know Slade had never said them to anyone, and even though I loved the stubborn bastard, I didn’t want to force the declaration before he was ready.
He showed me with his actions every day anyway.
“I love your strength and bravery,” I continued, pressing my hand into Talon’s face. “I love that you chose me. Without asking for anything in return.”
“I’m still not a good shifter,” he said, expression open and calm. “I’m an assassin at heart, built of the cold mentality of my race, but not for you. You’re the best part of my life. My reason for existence. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do, and no one I wouldn’t kill to keep you safe.”
I kissed Talon so hard I almost knocked him back onto the bed. My joy at finally bonding surged through me, until I was exploding with happiness and desire.
Slade’s heat moved farther from us, but I was too consumed to look his way. Talon sprawled back and lifted me on top of him. I spread my thighs to straddle him, but even on top he didn’t let me take the lead or control the pace.
Gripping my hips, he slowly thrust, parting me with each slide of his hard length. I hadn’t really had enough recovery time after Slade, but as Talon pushed deeper, my core pulsed and ached with intense pleasure.
Talon’s pupils were slitted and dragon-like as he growled, “I understand why males go to war over their female.” He lifted himself to capture my lips in an unhurried, intoxicating kiss, and all the while he slowly drove inside me. “They kill and die for just a taste of the heaven you offer to us.”
His smoky scent blasted through the bedroom, mingling with mine and Slade’s. The only way this could get better was if my other mates’ scents were here as well.
Moans slipped from my lips as I trembled above him, the sparks of pleasure taking me over. I wasn’t fully seated yet, having only managed to take about seventy-five percent of his length.
Talon’s grip on my hips was firm; he held me in place as he controlled the pace.
Like Slade, he took his time to learn what I liked and didn’t, watching me closely and adjusting with each of my moans.
When my eyes fluttered, and my walls pulsed around him, his expression turned satisfied. Both of my dragons were fast learners.
The duality of intense pleasure teamed with the slight burn of being stretched too wide had me panting and seeing stars.
Talon slid a hand down my front over my breasts, before he reached my clit.
When his thumb moved over me gently, he thrust, and it was enough for me to finally slide down that last quarter to seat myself fully.
Goddess above. It was too much. It was everything. It was going to be my undoing.
My alphas would be the beginning and end of me, just as I’d always expected.
Talon took his time, but unlike Slade he didn’t edge me. If his expression was any indication, he was barely holding on himself, and when my body tightened around him and I cried out, he drove himself deeper. Impossibly deep. This shifter was rearranging my internal organs, and I was here for it.
My first orgasm spilled into another and another until I shook and collapsed on his chest. Talon held me when I couldn’t hold myself, thrusting up into me with the force of…
well, a dragon. As the green in his eyes flashed brighter through the darkness, his dick swelled until I was about to burst. I cried out as he partially shifted and bit me again, reconfirming our bond.
My wolf pushed through my daze to shift our jaw, and with Talon attached to my shoulder, I latched on to him. We’d come a full circle, and the hate that surrounded us in that first bonding was now filled with love.
Slade rumbled from somewhere in the room, and when my wolf and Talon’s dragon burst into my mind’s essence, Slade’s beast followed. For a split second in time, the three of us were as one. We were perfect.
Until everything changed.
That circle around my wolf exploded with a new power, one that had been hidden beneath us the entire time. As the icy slap of energy hit me and my beast, I managed to keep my eyes open long enough to see that I wasn’t the only one to lose consciousness this time.