11. Orion
CHAPTER 11
Orion
“T hat was brutal,” Lycan said when I emerged on the porch and pulled the front door closed behind me.
“It needed to happen,” I said, ignoring the howl of my wolf inside my head. He’d been riding my ass hard since last night, since I kept my hands mostly to myself and nutted in my pants like a fucking teenager. He wanted to take her, to claim her, to mark her in a million different ways so no other male, shifter or not, could have her without knowing I’d already staked my claim.
Not only was she a Vanderbilt, but I also hadn’t forgotten the fact she might be keeping something from us, perhaps running from something. Why had she been out drunk in a snowstorm in the first place? There was a reason I preferred the Fiver over everyone else. Most people weren’t trustworthy, and even if they were, what was the point of letting them get close? Death could snatch someone away in a blink of an eye, and I had no desire to turn into a rabid monster that had survived the loss of its mate.
Not that Isolde was my mate…not at all. Just the thought, in general, made me keep everyone at arm’s length.
“You should have shut her down last night,” Poe said, taking a long sip of coffee. He rocked back and forth on the swing, eyeing me with an incredulous gaze that said he saw far more than he let on. “Didn’t Kodiak say not to touch her?”
“I didn’t,” I said, adding a mumbled, “Not much anyway.”
“Not much?” Lycan blew out a disbelieving breath and glanced at Poe. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Did you disobey alpha’s orders?” Poe raised both eyebrows.
“No,” I growled, cracking my neck as rage swirled up my gut into my chest, twisting around my heart. My beast raked his claws down the inside of my brain, whining and pacing, yearning to chase her down and apologize for it all.
“So you didn’t touch her?” Lycan’s narrowed gaze put me even more on edge.
“No,” I said through gritted teeth. “And it’s none of your fucking business, anyway.”
“Hey,” Lycan said, holding up his hands and focusing on the ground so he avoided direct eye contact with me. This close to the full moon and the way my wolf rode inches from the surface, he knew better than to push his luck. “I’m not judging you. If she’s your mate, she’s?—”
“She’s not my mate,” I snarled, but even as I said it, the words tasted like ash. Shivers raced down my spine, and I clenched my hands into fists to keep from pounding them into the blond brother’s face. I needed to release some of the tension that had built up over the last two days…hell, since she’d gotten here. Her damned scent wouldn’t leave my nose, and watching her sleep last night had soothed both of my sides in ways I didn’t want to examine closer.
That had been the whiskey, and I swore off the stuff for the rest of the time she was here. I couldn’t trust that I wouldn’t take it further next time, that I wouldn’t force myself to keep my hands off. Despite the draw to her, despite how much I ached to sink my teeth into that soft skin by her pulse point, she had to leave. The sooner, the better.
“Okay, brother,” Poe said, taking a hesitant step closer to put a hand on my shoulder. The contact calmed me, reminding me we were pack. Brothers. Family. “Okay.”
“Let’s just get to work, all right?” It didn’t fucking help that I was hungover, and the ache had nearly split my head in two. I wanted to crawl back into bed with her, yank her close, and breathe her in deep. And the fact I couldn’t, I wouldn’t , let myself devour her made me want it more.
The three of us walked down to the barn to start the process of feeding the animals and checking in on the barn dogs. Nothing had happened overnight with no one on guard, thank God, but that didn’t soothe my agitation. When Isolde eventually appeared, twisting her fingers into knots in front of her and forcing a fake smile, I ignored the pit in my gut telling me to hold her, to tuck her in close and kiss that unsure wrinkle between her brows.
“My family won’t be able to come get me for several more days,” she said, shooting a nasty glare in my direction. “I’m sorry if that’s disappointing.”
Lycan raised his eyebrows from where he shoveled hay into his horse’s pen and turned to glance at me.
“Did they give you a date?” I asked, clearing my throat when my voice cracked.
“No,” she said with a slight clip to her tone. “But don’t worry. I’ll keep pulling my weight.”
“That’s not the problem.” I ran a hand over my forehead, wiping away the sweat before it dripped into my eyes.
“I’ll keep my paws out of the whiskey stash.” That too stung more than I’d expected. She’d been the one to tell me not to worry about it, that last night was just fun. Was she full of shit?
I smelled the salt on her cheeks from the tears she must have shed before she came out here, and it made me feel like a downright prick that I’d probably been the cause of them. More than that, the beast paced inside my mind like a trapped monster, beating against my heart until I did something to cheer her up.
“Right, well.” Isolde took a deep breath and let it out slowly, glancing between the three of us. “The house is a mess. If y’all don’t need me out here, I’ll just—” She pointed to the Fiver and turned to head in that direction.
Poe faced me and pursed his lips, putting his hands on his hips in a silent display of accusation. Lycan glared, staring holes through my head until it became too unbearable and I cracked.
“What?” I growled, staring back at him.
“If she’s gonna be stuck here during the full moon, you’re gonna have to fix this with her,” Lycan said, shaking his head while he picked up more hay.
“There’s nothing to fix,” I said. “Even if we could, that doesn’t mean we should.”
“You want her going back to being the snippy Vanderbilt you found on the side of the road?” Poe let out a harsh whistle at my indignant stare. “You’re something else, brother.”
Lycan scratched his nose and took a step closer. “I’m telling you. I smell something on her.”
I cracked my neck as my own wolf piped up in agreement, letting out a howl that demanded I pay attention.
“It’s getting stronger the closer to the moon we get.” He put his forearms on the stall, expecting a response, but I ignored him and continued brushing down Nemesis. “You know, I remember someone that thought they were human their whole lives.”
“Stop,” I said, sensing where he was going with this.
“And then, one day, she met a Bastard alpha. He’d been born into it.” Lycan raised an eyebrow. “The more time she spent around the Bastards, the more she started to change. She grew feral during full moons. She started nesting in places she shouldn’t have been nesting.”
Lycan was talking about the previous alpha’s mate. She’d been born and raised human her whole life until she met Kerrick. After spending a few months with the pack, she realized she was latent and went through her transition, leaving her former life behind in favor of running with the wolves.
Latent shifters could be like that. If she hadn’t met our alpha, she would have gone on living her normal human life like nothing was ever different about her. But she did meet him, and she did mate with him, and then a few days before the first moon after they acknowledged their bond, she went through her transition. If Kerrick hadn’t been by her side through it, she would have died. But latency did happen, and that wasn’t even the first time I’d heard a story like that.
Finding one’s mate could change everything about the way a werewolf lived. All of their priorities altered to focus on the survival of their counterpart first, even before the alpha, even before the rest of the pack. It was a law of nature, guaranteeing the survival of the species.
“I’m not saying that’s what’s happening here,” Lycan said, finally close enough to force me to meet his gaze. “But brother, if she’s your mate, it’s okay. The pack will protect you. The pack will protect her.”
“Lycan,” I said when he’d finally shut his fucking mouth. “Get back to work.”
He snorted out a sad laugh and patted me on the shoulder. “Sure thing, boss.”
We had no reason to think any of the Vanderbilts could be shifters, least of all Isolde. They’d never presented as anything other than human, and in all our time hating one another, we would have picked up on it by now.
As the day dragged on, I got more antsy at the thought of her going to sleep all alone in her room while I dreamed of her taste in mine. By the time we finished our chores and went in for lunch, Isolde had cleaned and straightened the entire living room. She’d dug old trinkets out of forgotten hiding places, either proudly displaying them on the various countertops or piling them into the garbage can by the door. Now in the kitchen, she’d already prepared lunch for us, which sat on the table while she stood on a stool and leaned in to wipe a rag through the top shelf of a cupboard. All of the plates, bowls, and cups that used to reside in that cabinet now soaked in the sink.
“When was the last time anyone did a deep clean of this place?” she asked, popping her head up when we got close enough. “I’m pulling out things that would make even Lycan vomit.” She’d wrapped her hair into a messy bun on top of her head, revealing her long, elegant neck and the curves of her delicate clavicle.
“What are you doing, Princess?” Lycan asked, looking around at the mess she’d made.
“I told you,” she said, hopping off the stool and wiping the wisps of hair out of her face. “This place is disgusting.”
Poe snorted out a laugh. “Have you ever cleaned anything in your life?”
“Well…no.” She pursed her lips and pulled her brows into a furrow. “This is weird, isn’t it?”
“I’m not complaining,” Lycan said with a playful grin as he gave me a side-eye. An itchy knowing started to prickle up my spine and over my scalp, like spiders that had burrowed under my skin.
“I feel like I’m losing my mind,” Isolde said, running her hands back through her hair. “But I can’t stay here a minute longer with this place so filthy. It’s like…I can’t not clean it.”
Lycan raised his eyebrows as if to suggest he’d been right, and Poe pinched the bridge of his nose before letting out a deep sigh.
“Why don’t you come sit down and eat with us?” I asked, taking a hesitant step forward. But I already knew the answer before I’d asked it.
“I’m not hungry,” she said, rubbing at her temples in a shy little move that she probably hoped I didn’t see. But I did. Which meant her head was still hurting her and had been since the wreck, despite the whiskey and wolf attack.
“Did you eat breakfast?” I continued, biting into the sandwich.
“Just let me get this done, Orion. Then you can pester me.” It came out more like a growl. She waved me off and walked into the living room with a bag full of garbage, heading to the front door.
Lycan stared at me until I met his gaze and shook my head. “Don’t start.”
The transition rarely took a shifter by surprise. There were usually signs in the days leading up to it, and if Lycan was right (which he probably wasn’t), this would be one of them. The body aches came first, then the night sweats and a lack of appetite. For more dominant shifters, aggression and irritability presented after that. I’d wanted to put my fist into everyone and everything that crossed my path before mine. For more submissive and domicile shifters, they wanted to nest and clean, something about creating a more comfortable environment for the magic to take hold.
“What if she is?” Poe murmured. “You should tell Kodiak.”
“Don’t say a fucking word,” I said, running a hand over my forehead and into my hair. “I’ll talk to him.”
“You fucking better,” Lycan said. “We’re only four days out from the moon. If she transitions with the three of us in the house, you know what will happen.”
A snarl rumbled in my chest before I could stop it, and I cleared my throat to shake away his insinuation. For shifters that could get pregnant, their transition was like their first heat—their first fertile period. They expelled hormones that made every shifter with a knot in the immediate area want to fuck their brains out. I’d seen wolves tear each other apart to get to a submissive in such a vulnerable state. I’d seen three or four wolves share a shifter in heat until they were wrung out and exhausted.
I won’t share, my primal self roared. It’ll be me or I’ll kill them.
Lycan evidently picked up on that through the pack bonds because he narrowed his eyes and pulled his lips back over his teeth. “If she goes into transition and you don’t help her, I will.”
“Hey!” Poe cut in, clapping to get our attention off each other and back on him. “We don’t know any of that is going to happen. Knock it off.”
Suddenly, I didn’t want any more of the sandwich she’d made. The room had grown stifling with dominant wolf scent and territorial bullshit, not to mention the lingering smell of her— strawberries and woman and something else that had always been there but had grown stronger in the last day or two. Definitely since last night.
I stood and grabbed my jacket to stalk toward the living room. The door opened just as I got there, and Isolde looked up at me with those big, green eyes.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” She stuck out her lip in a pout, her cheeks adorably flushed with the cold and her natural glow. Her scent hit me harder, right between the eyes, and a burst of fire-blooded lust shot down to my groin.
Take her. Fuck her. Mark her. Now. Now. Now. Do it before the others can. Do it before the moon.
I groaned and reared back, wincing as I sidestepped her and rushed out into the cool winter air.
Fuck. No. No. No.