Chapter 18. Lochran
You’re perfect, just the way you are.
My mate’s words resonated in my mind as I pulled her closer to me, one hand on her stomach, the other under her head. I pressed a soft kiss to her temple and listened to her breathing slow into a soft rhythm as she fell asleep in my arms.
As my breathing slowly matched hers, all I could think was if heaven was a place on earth, it would surely be right here by my mate’s side.
***
“Hello? Anyone there?” an unfamiliar voice called from somewhere below. Before I could stop myself, I was on my feet, crashing through the bedroom door. The shadows had pooled around me, wings spreading to block the intruder from the room where my mate lay.
A petite woman with billowing silver hair stood in the hallway below, one hand on her hip, a challenge on her face. Power radiated off the wolf shifter in crashing waves. The moment her eyes glowed red, my talons punched into the walls as I readied myself to leap down the stairs and attack. She was an alpha. A young, inexperienced one, yes, but a powerful one nonetheless. My mind worked frantically. A powerful witch could be a match for a normal wolf shifter. But an alpha? It didn’t matter, though; my mate’s magic had been stripped from her. My mate couldn’t protect herself, but I would. I would lay my life down for Lex.
The wolf shifter would be vulnerable in this form, but she could shift in a split second, and then she’d be deadly. But the moment she shifted, her senses would be overwhelmed for the briefest second, and her body would be in its most vulnerable form mid-shift. That would be the only chance to kill. My shadows coiled, ready to strike the moment she moved.
The young wolf’s scrutinous glare looked me up and down, assessing the threat... until her scowl landed on my naked crotch. Her eyes widened in surprise. Her cheeks flushed slightly, and her lips twitched into the oddest pleased grin before she diverted her gaze from my cock. I breathed in. Her scent wasn’t desire or attraction. It was surprise, swelling with happiness for someone else, and an odd sense of hollowness for herself.
Strange.
“Billy! Is that you?” Lex called excitedly from behind me.
“Lex!” the wolf called back. “Wanna call off Mr. Tall, Dark, and Well-hung?”
Lex stumbled from the room. From the corner of my eye, I could see the look of confusion as she took in my heaving, shadowed form. “What are you doing?” she hissed.
“Protecting you,” I growled, my eyes never leaving the wolf.
Lex and the wolf scoffed at the same time, and only then did I take my eyes off the wolf to glare at my mate instead.
“Billy is my best friend, Lochran,” she said indignantly. Lex raised her eyebrow and in a slightly more sheepish tone, she added, “Did I not tell you she’d be visiting?”
“No,” I said flatly. Though I probably should have guessed who the wolf was. I had a vague recollection of Lex’s mom mentioning a wolf-shifter best friend.
Lex flushed. “Oh. Sorry. I must have been... distracted.”
All tension dissipated, and my shadows instantly fell from me. I could never be mad at my little witch. Especially not when her cheeks flushed that shade of dusty pink that I adored.
“I can see why,” Billy called from below. “Dude! Wanna put that distraction away before it grows any bigger?”
Ah, yes. I was naked and growing hard at the sight of my mate flushing. Probably not the most ideal introduction to her best friend.
***
I took myself off for a shower to allow my mate time to catch up with Billy the wolf. The sound of my mate’s laughter hit my ears as I made my descent to the kitchen. An odd pang of jealousy pooled in my gut that someone else was making my mate laugh so heartily. But the moment I caught sight of my mate, the way the tension had left her body for the first time since I’d been summoned, I felt immediately selfish for being jealous of the wolf. Tears of laughter streamed down Lex’s face, mirrored by her best friend, as the pair giggled and tittered, their words indistinguishable to me, but seemingly a language of their own as the conversation continued through wheezes and more peals of laughter.
I remained still, etching the image of my joyous mate into my mind forever. Laughter lines that I’d never noticed creased out from her tear-filled eyes. A trickle of tears trailed haphazardly down her cheeks, their course changing as she threw her head back and wheezed another laugh at something Billy had said. Her full lips were stretched thin into the most perfect smile I’d ever seen. This image right now, I decided, was the most beautiful image of my mate to date.
When the pair finally realized I’d joined them, Lex jumped up. The heat of the arm she looped into mine seemed to surge straight to my cock—which was immediately dampened by the possessive glare radiating from Billy.
Oblivious, Lex guided me to the table and pushed me toward her best friend, as if presenting me for inspection.
In a way, I guessed she was. Lex’s succubus side was not potent enough to sense desires. She couldn’t sense just how deeply possessive her best friend was of her. I wondered if Lex had guessed that Billy had chosen her as a pack mate. I wondered if even Billy realized that she’d started a new pack with my mate. I sensed the air again. No, for as possessive as she was, the young wolf was still na?ve to her growing powers.
Well, there’d be time enough to figure out the implications of the beginnings of a ragtag pack. But there were worse things than having an alpha wolf who had my mate’s best interests at heart.
I slung a possessive arm around Lex, which caused Billy’s nostrils to flare.
Probably not the smartest move to antagonize an alpha, but I was determined to stake an equal claim on Lex.
Finally, the moment Billy’s narrowed eyes softened, Lex said, “Good. Now you guys have stopped sizing up your dicks—tits, in your case, Billy—can we move on to the introductions?”
Lex went on to tell me how she and Billy had met, then briefly filled Billy in on the last few days. A buzzing filled my ears periodically when Billy talked about her pack, which could only mean one thing: she was part of the lethal Hell’s Gate pack.
I didn’t know much about the Hell’s Gate pack, except what little Devlin had been able to tell me. And Devlin only knew what he did by sheer accident. Almost two decades ago, he’d just so happened to be in the right place at the right time to save a young wolf pup’s life, though he couldn’t tell me the circumstances. The pup, most likely not old enough to have been imbued with the same secret-keeping magic Billy had, had let slip to Devlin that he was part of the Hell’s Gate pack, the most feared of all wolf shifters.
Some said the Hell’s Gate pack guarded a group of powerful necromancers, while others claimed they guarded the gates to Hades’s underworld. Regardless of what they actually guarded, there was one thing everyone agreed on: no one meets a Hell’s Gate wolf and lives to tell the tale...
... except Devlin.
And now Lex.
I studied the alpha as the buzzing in my ears grew louder. She was hands down the strongest wolf shifter I’d ever encountered, but she certainly didn’t scream “murderous rage.” Maybe I was wrong about her pack origins? I did know of packs that had formed allegiances with witches, forging a symbiotic relationship, much like my ancestors had with this coven. Maybe the young pup had lied to Devlin? Devlin had been pretty na?ve two decades ago. He probably would have believed the pup was Cerberus if the pup had claimed it. I remembered the witch from the hardware shop. She’d cast a spell on her notebook that made it impossible for me to read her notes.
Yeah, that was probably what it was. My mate hadn’t unconsciously become part of a pack with a Hell’s Gate wolf. That was just ridiculous. It was much more sensible that Billy was just a spelled wolf whose pack protected a different coven of witches.
I hoped.
“... that’s why I left the pack to find my own way. Which is why I ended up working at that shithole. But I did find my best friend there,” Billy said, her words finally back in focus. Suddenly, she turned to Lex and said, “Oh, did you hear the latest about Chad?”
The scent in the air changed around Billy. Her voice sounded casual, as if she didn’t want to worry my mate, but her scent was caution laced with the coppery tang of murderous rage that had me questioning if maybe she was a Hell’s Gate wolf after all.
Which made my own murderous rage home in on whoever this “Chad” was. I finally had a name for the person who had hurt my mate. Shadows swirled around me, begging for me to take to the skies and hunt Chad down.
“I might not have got around to telling Lochran the full story yet,” Lex said quietly, her embarrassment momentarily quelling my rage.
Billy’s brows knotted in confusion, and I tried my best not to let the shame that my mate didn’t yet trust me enough to tell me what had happened to her bubble to the surface.
“I thought you said there would be a crystal memory projector thingy at the trial? Would it not be better to, you know”—Billy’s eyes flicked to me, a strange look of concern on her face that had me praying she hadn’t started to think of me as part of her pack—“give him a heads up on what to expect?”
Hades damn it, the wolf was growing on me.
“It’s not that I didn’t want to,” Lex said to Billy before turning to me, her voice now whisper soft and with a hint of pleading as she repeated, “It’s not that I didn’t want to tell you, Lochran.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself, Lex,” I said, placing my hand on top of hers.
I managed to catch the slight nod of acceptance Billy issued at the gesture, before Lex continued, “I know I don’t. But I want to.” She settled back in her chair, careful not to move her hand from under mine. “So, a month ago, I needed to satiate my succubus side and met Chad in a bar. I never thought I’d see him again, but the next day when I started my new job, it turned out he was my boss. Billy had just started the week before me, and she quickly sniffed out why I was a bit uncomfortable with him being my boss. Anyway, Billy and I quickly realized that the company was definitely not for us. I thought I could handle Chad while we looked for a new job, but his advances became progressively worse. The day I quit, he pulled out his dick and told me to suck it—”
Shadows filled the room, swirling protectively around my mate as I fought to remain still, to keep my hand motionless over Lex’s. Billy’s ember eyes glowed through the shadows, but it was Lex’s soothing voice that brought me to my senses. “It’s okay, Lochran. Really, I’m okay.”
The shadows slowly crept back to the corners of the room before Lex continued, “I hexed his dick off, which is why I had to come back to my coven for the trial. But Billy sent me a video the other day. One of the comments was from a previous employee that said he was a predator, alluding that he had done this to other women. I didn’t tell you because I needed to get it all written down. I was going to give the notebook to the mortal police in the hopes that they could use it to arrest him.”
Overwhelming relief surged through me at my mate’s admission. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust me, but rather she needed to focus her energy on writing it all down. She selflessly wanted a record to give to the mortal police for justice for the other women he’d attacked. Pride swelled in my chest for my brave mate, and my fingers tightened around hers.
Lex’s lashes fluttered as a blush raised up her neck. “And we’ve been a little distracted since I finished the journal.”
Billy snorted. “I bet you have—I’ll need details later, Lex. But I should probably tell you what I’ve been up to.” Billy thrust her hand unceremoniously into her bag and, after some animated rifling, produced a violent pink folder and set it on the table in front of her. The folder was scrawled with hand-drawn love hearts of varying sizes. The love hearts encased a variety of short messages ranging from a simple JN+CC and Mrs. Jasper Neukdae to a blush-worthy Cass wants Jasper’s knot .
I glanced at Billy, who glared at me in challenge. “Cool it, demon,” she hissed. “It’s my sister’s old school folder. It’s all we had. Anyway,” she slammed the folder open, hiding the profanities from view. “My sister, Cass, after some persuasion, did some digging into dear old Chad. It wasn’t hard as he’s becoming increasingly unhinged. This is the most recent one from just last night.” Billy pulled a piece of paper out of a plastic wallet before handing it to Lex, who tilted it so I could see.
It was an online newspaper article from the notorious paranormal journalism site Who Do the Voodoo? I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. There weren’t many news outlets that catered exclusively to supernatural beings, but this one had to be the worst to source facts from. It was barely better than a gossip column, and I’d be surprised if even half of what was reported was true.
Regardless, I scanned the two photos. The first was of a beautiful red-haired woman with striking green eyes, while the second was of a blonde-haired man and looked as if it had been pulled off a business website. I ground my teeth at the sight of the man who had sexually assaulted my mate. I decided then and there that when the trial was over, I would fall to my knees and beg my mate to allow me to exact vengeance on him.
But for now, I’d hold her hand and help her through her trial .
HUMAN MALE, CHAD brUNSWICK, AGGRESSIVELY ANNOUNCES TO BANSHEE, MALORY bróNACH, THAT HE HAS A TINY PENIS.
Chaos erupted on the streets of Seattle today as a mortal man, Chad Brunswick, attempted to attack local New Orleans resident and banshee, Malory Brónach.
Malory states: “I don’t know what the feck he was talking about. There I am, on holiday, minding my own business, when this drunk human man came out of nowhere screaming, ‘I’ll kill you, you fucking witch! Give it back!’ I told him that I didn’t know what the feck he was talking about, but he just kept screaming at me. He said something like, ‘I’m going to kill you if you don’t give it back!’ I told him I had no idea what he was talking about, but he just kept saying, ‘My dick! Make my dick grow back! I’ll fucking kill you, you redhead witch-bitch!’”
When asked how she responded, Malory shrugged and said: “I did nothing, of course. I calmly turned away and left the situation.”
An eyewitness, Drasco Raxhus, says, “The banshee showed him her true form. It was terrifying, even for me, and I’m a Reaper! The human pissed himself and cried. By the time his friend found him, he was a blubbering mess. It was hilarious. I’m just upset I never caught the banshee’s name. Do you have it? Could you pass on my number? Anyway, whoever this witch is who hexed his dick off, I can’t blame her. He deserved it.”
This isn’t the first time Chad Brunswick has attempted to find his missing appendage. He recently went viral on TikTok when he screamed at a pair of mortal women for laughing at his tiny penis.
Billy closed the folder and laid her hand gently on top of it. “You can’t use the Who Do the Voodoo? article, but since it surfaced, along with the video, my sister managed to cross-reference the women who commented that likely knew Chad personally. She hacked into the HR database and found dozens of HR reports, as well as some police reports and some suspicious NDAs that looked forced. There was also a hospital report of a woman who refused to cooperate and keep her allegations quiet. He literally used the company records to find out where she lived and put her in intensive care.” Billy pushed the folder toward Lex. “Don’t read it yet. Let’s get the trial over with, and then we can come up with a plan.”
Hell’s Gate or not, I had to take my hat off to the wolf. She was going to make a great alpha.