13. Orion
CHAPTER 13
Orion
I woke up before her the next morning, making my way downstairs with a headache like I’d been hit by a train the night before. I didn’t understand why. It wasn’t like I’d been drinking, but Isolde’s sleepwalking and how I kept being drawn to her despite the boundaries I’d tried to erect had me on high alert. Her skin was on fire, and she’d hardly eaten anything for days.
It’s the flu . Only the flu. She’s human, and she’s been through a lot this last week.
I put the coffee on and dropped bread into the toaster when something twisted in my gut.
Magic, the wolf growled. Magic and heat. Take. Take. Take.
I clenched my eyes shut and shook my head, trying to push it away. I poured myself a hot, steamy mug of caffeine just as the front door opened and Poe stomped his feet on the ground to shake off the snow.
“Morning,” he said, narrowing his gaze as he came closer. “How’d you sleep?”
“Fine,” I lied. “How was the barn?”
Poe laughed and shook his head. “We didn’t do much sleeping.”
“Is he still pissed?” I raised my eyebrows as I took a sip, ignoring the strange sensation of creepy-crawlies on my skin, like spiders enveloping me, like a million tiny shocks of electricity rattling over my body.
“I think you should talk.” Poe crossed his arms. “You’re both stubborn, pigheaded motherfuckers, and one girl shouldn’t tear you apart like this.”
“We’re two days out from the moon,” I said. “A warm breeze could tear two dominant shifters apart.”
Glancing to the ground, Poe snorted and sighed. “I agree with him, you know.”
I raised my eyebrows, refusing to acknowledge his opinion, even when my heart thumped, shouting at me to listen.
“She’s different.” Poe met my gaze with a submissive one of his own, trying to tread lightly despite what he knew he had to say. “She’s not a wolf, perhaps, but something else. Definitely latent, if not completely a shifter.”
I sighed and put my hat on my head, deciding to head out to the barn to get started on today’s work before anyone else suggested something ridiculous. I found Lycan on the porch dressed in the same clothes he had on last night, sitting on one of the swings with his booted foot on the railing.
“Do you feel that?” He raised his eyebrows as Poe came out with two cups of coffee and handed one to him.
“Feel what?” My voice came out in a growl, and I cleared my throat to keep my wolf from snarling as punctuation.
“That hum in the air.” Lycan blew out a breath and wrapped an arm over Poe’s shoulders when he sat next to him. “The magic just below the surface.”
I wanted to attribute it to the moon being so close, but it had never felt like this before. As much as it pissed me off, I had to admit, this morning hit different. It rattled in my veins, vibrating in my molecules, preparing me for something epic, something that would take every bit of adrenaline I had. I shifted my hips and cracked my neck as a tickle twisted its way down my spine.
“Yeah, you feel it.” Lycan gave me a knowing look before curling his lips into a grin. “If I went upstairs, I’d bet I’d find your pretty little princess in a sweaty heap under the blankets.”
“Why are you goading him?” Poe cut in. “This is hard enough?—”
He never got the rest of his sentence out. An invisible blast poured out of the house in a shockwave of hormones and shifter magic, nearly knocking me back with the force. Her scent billowed toward us next, strawberries and feral animal and wild, untamed female. My monster reared up in my mind, yipping with excitement, urging me forward, yearning to race up the stairs and take what was his.
“Orion, please,” came the whimpered call before another blast of the same transition energy blew my hair around my face and whipped my hat clear off my head. “Please, please.”
“Fucking hell, I love it when I’m right.” Lycan shoved to his feet and went for the door, but I beat him to it, bursting it open so hard I nearly knocked it off its hinges. The three of us ran to the stairs, taking them two at a time until we were on the second floor landing. The pheromones radiated stronger up here, pouring off Isolde in thick, heavy waves that assaulted my senses.
My feral side took hold, awakening every animal impulse I had. My cock throbbed behind my jeans, instantly hard and ready to serve her, and my veins thrummed with the anticipation of being torn open to pour my magic into her waiting mouth. She writhed on top of my sheets, her shirt bunched up around her hips, her skin shiny with sweat and tears. She’d balled the duvet in her tight fists, her knuckles white, and clenched her eyes shut in obvious pain.
“Orion, help,” she cried again, and I took a deep breath, savoring the way her delicious taste coated my tongue and dripped down my throat.
“This can’t be happening,” I groaned, rubbing a hand over my face, disbelief rattling through my molecules. “The Vanderbilts?—”
“It is happening,” Poe said, shoving me forward. “Go to her.”
“She’s going through her transition,” Lycan said. “She needs you.”
I froze. I didn’t want this for her. She was sweet and tender. She didn’t need to know this side of life, this side of me. She would have been better off anywhere else than here with us, especially now that Lycan turned out to be right. “She deserves better than me.”
“You don’t want her then?” Lycan tried to shove his way past me, but I shot an arm out to the opposite wall and blocked his path.
“ Back off.” The sound that came out of my mouth wasn’t me; it wasn’t my voice. The wolf had taken control because the man wouldn’t move. Such was the survival instinct of a shifter. We existed in codependence with our animal side—when one couldn’t handle something, the other side took over until it could. My vision sharpened and my canines elongated, the first signs of a territorial beast making its claim.
I walked into the room and took a deep breath, letting the magic enthrall me, before turning to face my brothers.
“No one comes in here,” the beast said, and I slammed the door, twisting the lock into place just for good measure. They’d listen to me. Fuck, they knew better than to disobey me. I’d rip their throats out without a second thought.
And when I turned to my little submissive, my little princess, my heart sank into my gut. She looked so lonely, so tortured, suffering on the covers by herself.
She needs us, the wolf whispered. Get in there.
My hands shaking and my knees turning to mush, I yanked my shirt off and threw it to the side just as another surge of aching hormones blew off her. I grimaced against the tremble in my bones, rattling my teeth so hard, I thought they might break. My cock jerked again, the want tightening in my balls. When I was naked, I crawled on my knees toward her, letting the wolf take complete control.
He knew what was best. He knew how to do this. The only time I’d been involved in a transition had been my own, and I barely remembered it. The pain and the agony of the magic taking root in my soul had been too overwhelming for me to stay conscious through it all.
“O—ri—on,” Isolde called, thrashing against the duvet, arching her back as another wave took her. It plumed off her body, lifting me into the air where I hovered, suspended with the fury of it. The magic blew through my skin, reaching deep down inside until it wrapped around my soul, yanking me toward its inevitable oblivion.
I’d been such an idiot. Of course this was happening. Of course there could be no other outcome. I’d been a slave to my own blissful ignorance, denying the truth in hopes that I could will it into being.
“I’m here, baby girl,” I cooed, hardly recognizing the tenderness in my voice. I’d never spoken to anyone like this, not even Nemesis. “Here, sit up for me.” I tucked one hand under her body to help her upright, ignoring the twist in my heart when she whined like I was hurting her. But I had to get her shirt off, and when she failed to lift her arms high enough for me to tug it over her head, I grew impatient and ripped the damn thing down the center. She moaned when it was finally gone, and when I did the same thing to her tiny panties, she bucked her hips up toward me, practically begging me to touch her.
But I wouldn’t. Not yet. She needed something else from me first, something only a dominant shifter could give to her. Pushing my canines out farther, I held my wrist up to my mouth and bit into my skin until I tasted copper, my wolf’s blood pooling on my tongue. Then, I held it over her lips, letting it drip until she opened wider, seeking it out.
“Yes,” I murmured. “There you go. Good girl.” When she licked out for more, I watched her latch on to the wound while she sucked and lapped at it, pulling my shifter magic deep.
Fuck, I sensed it inside her, like I existed both in my own skin and hers. My cock pulsed against her hip, causing her to roll her pelvis against me harder. The fragrance of her wet cunt made me dizzy, overwhelming my senses and all of my restraint.
Get inside her, my wolf bellowed, desperation in his call. Take her. Claim her. Mark her.
Orion, the man, knew I shouldn’t. But Orion, the monster, had long since forgotten the reasons why. It was always meant to be this way between me and her. The shifter knew that the first time he set eyes on her, and now that we were here, my teeth throbbed with the possibility of sinking into her neck and leaving a bonding mark. Would she even want that? What would she think if she were in her right mind?
It didn’t fucking matter because I was too gone to the primal side to care. She drank from my wrist until she purred with satisfaction, licking over the wound like a preening cat. Then the wolf and I took what we’d been dreaming about for eight days. I slid down her body, kissing and nuzzling her sweat, damn near rolling in the scent. I wanted it permanently in my skin. I wanted mine in hers, and when I smelled something darker and territorial wafting off me, I realized that would be exactly what happened. We’d leave this room reeking like each other, and the thought shouldn’t have turned me on as much as it did.
She didn’t even know she was a shifter, and when she came back to herself, she’d have a hell of a reality check. But thoughts like those were so far away from the present moment. I needed to do what the magic required, and right now, that involved my tongue on her pussy.
I situated myself between her thighs and wrapped her legs over my shoulders, staring up at her face like I was waiting for this to stop—for her to tell me she was just fucking around and this wasn’t what I thought it was.
Get on with it, the wolf snarled, but even with his insistence, I trembled with nerves. For all that I’d been cocky swagger with every other woman I’d had in my bed, I worried that she’d want someone else, that if she had a choice, she might want Lycan here instead.
“Orion,” she moaned, pressing her hips up toward my face. “Orion, please. It hurts.”
“Shh,” I said, running my fingers up the sides of her thighs, digging my claws into her skin to hold her in place. “I’ll make it better.”
I’d never known a greater pleasure than sliding my tongue through her silky, delicate skin. She tasted like heaven, better than she smelled. I gathered what I could and swallowed it down, feeling the magic shift inside my own body. The bond between us snapped taut like an invisible guitar string, connecting me so deeply to her emotions that they vibrated deep in my body.
Her cunt shimmered with her slick and my saliva, and I lapped it up like a man starved, like I’d never known what it meant to desire a woman before. Fuck, it was the best thing I’d tasted in my life. I sucked on her clit and stuffed my face as close to her as I could get, pleased when her moans ramped up and her panting grew more intense. She rolled against me harder, spreading her legs wider, the rush of her own pleasure echoing out of her and into me.
Unable to stand it any longer, I thrust my hips against the mattress, finally giving my aching cock some friction, but it wasn’t enough. I needed to be inside her.
Not yet, I reminded myself. She needs more.
The instructions came from a feral instinct inside my cells, the logical side of me having taken a back seat. The animal was in charge now, and he wanted her to drink more wolf’s blood, to swallow down more magical essence, before I filled her pussy with the same.
I reached up to press my wrist against her mouth again, and she greedily accepted, allowing me to shower her with the most intimate of exchanges. And while I went back to feasting on the decadent skin between her legs, she swallowed down the fury in my blood, her euphoria radiating outward.
Just when she reached the pinnacle, another shockwave of hormones surged out of her, blinding and intoxicating. The force of it pushed me off her body a few inches, lifting me over her with a translucent shield of her power before crashing me back onto the bed.
“Fuck,” I groaned, my cock now painfully erect and ready to serve.
“Please,” she said, finally opening her eyes to focus on me with that hazy, blissed-out stare. “More.”
“Okay, baby girl,” I said, climbing up her body so I could position my dick at her entrance. At the feel of it, she pushed her hips up and arched her back, wrapping her arms around my neck to pull me down on her. I obliged and dropped to my elbows as I shoved inside her, all the way to the hilt, connecting us skin to skin from the torso to our pelvises and down our legs. “Fuuuucckkk me.”
She fit like a glove, like we were made to be one, and I nearly lost my balance on my shaking arms. Her cunt was so warm and tight and wet that I almost came before I even got started. I’d embarrassed myself the other night by busting in my pants, but I knew even if it happened now, I’d be hard again in a few moments. The supernatural magnet of her transition had roped me in, and now that I was under its spell, there would be no escaping it, not until it ran its course.
I pumped my hips against her, sliding in and out with ecstatic ease due to the slick dripping off her, drenching both me and the sheets. Her mouthwatering aroma entranced me, making my head spin, and my wolf rolled around in it.
“Yes,” she moaned, leaning up to kiss me. “Please.”
I licked against her mouth, tasting both her and metal, and the combination made my canines pulse with need. I wanted to sink them into her throat.
No, my rational brain managed to break through. If I ever marked her, it would be with her full acknowledgment and willing participation. My wolf wanted her, but to claim her while she was in transition seemed like a shitty thing to do. So I kissed my way down to her neck and fucked deeper inside her while I licked the salt from her skin.
She scratched my spine, sinking her nails deep into my flesh hard enough to leave traces of her own. But I liked it, so I moaned my appreciation and she did it again.
“You’re such a good girl,” I mumbled. “Taking me so good. You’re going to make it, Princess. You’re going to make it through this. I promise.” I spewed countless affirmations, words that promised a future I wasn’t sure we could have.
But that didn’t matter, not then, not in the throes of this overwhelming experience. Her climax rose and she tightened her muscles around me, pulling me down on top of her with her arms around my neck and her legs clamped around my hips, but I kept going, recognizing the same anticipation in myself.
Her orgasm rushed out of her and into me, the metaphysical tie between us enabling shared sensations, so when her precious cunt clamped down, the base of my cock expanded, locking me into place deep inside her. My knot throbbed furiously, and I emptied myself with a roar, my teeth begging to sink into her shoulder.
By the grace of fucking God, I managed to restrain those impulses, allowing her to bite me instead. Her new pointy canines dug into my neck, my collarbone, my chest, anywhere they could clamp, and I felt, more than saw, red welts that I’d wear with fucking honor.
Now sated, her hormones ebbed, and she relaxed against the mattress. I held myself up on top of her, my limbs quaking with the force of our union as she ran her fingers down my spine in a lazy caress that soothed the anxious beast in my head.
Care for her, he howled. Mark her. Take her. Claim her. She’s ours. Ours alone. No one else sees her like this. No one else can have her. Not now. Not ever again.
Still, I ignored that because after this was over, she might walk away from me. She should. Nothing had changed. We were still enemies, and we always would be.
“Orion?” Her voice came out soft and pliant, like she expected me to reject her now that the hormones had momentarily subsided.
“I’m here, baby girl,” I said, drawing my tongue up the column of her throat in a primordial display of devouring the essence from her skin.
“What’s happening?” She sounded more lucid than she had since last night, but I knew we were far from finished. Transitions usually lasted at least a day, if not longer. This close to the full moon, we might be in this room until it was time for the shift.
“You’re in transition,” I murmured, meeting her gaze. But it was not Isolde that stared out at me. Her green irises had turned to a brilliant shade of amber, hinting at the feral thing hiding under her skin.
“Transition?” She creased her eyebrows together and clenched her eyes shut, a shock of anxiety and terror shooting out of her and into me. “What does that mean?”
“I’ll explain it to you, I promise.” Nuzzling my nose farther into her shoulder, I inhaled her exhilarating smell and let it soothe the beast inside my mind. “Just relax for now. I’ll take care of you.”
“Am I dying?” She sounded so scared, so confused. I wanted to do anything to put her at ease.
“No,” I cooed. “You’ve never been more alive.”
“Thank you.” She let out a half-hearted sob and nodded. “I’m happy you’re here.”
“Yes, baby girl. I’m here. I won’t leave you.” I littered her face with kisses, hoping to reiterate the fact that I wasn’t going anywhere, that I would stay until it was over. I’d give her everything I had to ensure she made it safely through. The bulge at the base of my dick started to soften, and I eased out of her, trying to be gentle because I knew how rough I’d been.
But that didn’t matter. She was still soaked between the legs, now reeking of both her and me, and that made my monster so fucking happy, he howled at me to do it again.
I barely had time to think that through before another surge of pheromones rolled off her, hitting me right in the center of the chest, and my cock responded with a hard jerk, forcing me on top of her again.
* * *
It went on for hours…days…centuries. I lost track of how long I’d spent between her legs and how much blood she’d taken from my wrists. When the wound got to be too sensitive, I encouraged her to sink her teeth into my neck.
Fuck, the sensation of her tiny canines biting through the skin on my pulse point and sucking down my magic had me roaring through a heavy explosion between her legs. My knot chafed and my cock burned, but I couldn’t stop it. Her transition had me in a chokehold and wouldn’t let me go until it was satisfied.
The sun set and rose again, and still, we stayed in that bed. Eventually, the bouts between her surges lasted longer, and we slept in those lulls. But even unconsciousness was no match for the pull of her magic. It drained me dry, completely and irrevocably, to the point where I couldn’t even lift my head. My arms lay heavy by my side, my leg muscles cramped any time I moved, and my jaw burned from how long I’d spent licking her from head to toe. The skin on my dick protested any touch that wasn’t her cunt, but that did not stop it from expanding whenever her supernatural side called to mine.
Finally, on that last morning, the day of the full moon, the magic loosened its hold on us. I woke up to a weak burst of hormones and a tiny moan from the woman next to me. I creaked my groggy eyes open, and I tried to will my body into action, but the haze in my brain wouldn’t cooperate.
Take her, the wolf howled. Help her. One last time.
I curled up, desperate to get my torso off the mattress, but I didn’t have the strength and flopped back on the pillows, only to try again with pitiful results. My nerves were fried and my brain had shriveled to the size of a peanut. It didn’t matter because Isolde crawled on top of me and spread her legs to either side of my hips, easily positioning me at her entrance before sheathing me all the way down. I groaned and arched into her, coasting my hands up her thighs to her hips while she leaned down to lick at the wound on my neck before sinking her teeth into it again.
“You taste so good,” she murmured while she rode me and took what she needed. “Why is this happening? Why does it feel so right?”
The mental fog wouldn’t clear, no matter what I did, but I let her take what she needed, hardly able to form coherent sentences. All I managed to get out was a mumbled, “Yours.”
“Mine,” she repeated, rocking herself against my body, taking me deeper, lapping at the wound to close it again. With my blood dripping from her mouth and her cunt wrapped around my cock, she reached a final climax, launching me into my own. It sputtered out of me, yanked from me despite my exhaustion. My knot expanded inside her, locking us together like that, and I sighed as the transition finally broke its hold on both of us.
She collapsed on top of me, her chest on my stomach, her head tucked under my chin, but I couldn’t move. I lay there and panted, my canines tingling, my muscles trembling, my entire body so fucking sore and blissed-out that I had no idea how I would change in twelve hours.
But I’d seen other shifters do it, so I had to rely on the moon to see me through, the same way every pack member had before me. She would be thrumming with my essence for weeks to come, and when she shifted with us tonight, she’d have the time of her life running through the woods, just as I had.
We both fell asleep joined together like that, and when I woke a few hours later, I had regained enough of my strength to climb out of bed. I froze and stared at myself in the mirror above my dresser. I might have lost fifty pounds in two days. My cheeks were sunken in, my ribs showed on either side of my body, and my stomach curved the wrong way, like I could almost see my organs through my translucent skin. Deep bite wounds gaped bright red on either side of my neck in various degrees of healing, matched only by the ones on my wrists and legs. She’d made a mess of me, and I didn’t give a fuck. In fact, pride beamed through my chest and into my gut, and I wondered if the submissive that had seen me through mine had felt the same the day after.
Or was this different? Did I wear these wounds with such joy because there was something more at play?
After my transition, I didn’t remember feeling so intrinsically linked to the pack mate who had fed me and fucked me through it. Once the pheromones subsided, she had left and eventually mated someone else in the pack. I thought about her no more or less than I had before. It had been a transaction for both of us, something she’d done out of necessity and respect for our family.
But when I put my boxers on and glanced back at the sleeping female in my bed, I sensed her buried in my soul. The connection we’d formed during our time together had not eased when the magic had. Her satisfaction burned in my blood, the warm, gooey sensation of euphoric happiness that I’d been there for her, that she slept in my bed, that she had my scent marking her body. In fact, when I leaned down to smell my own skin, it had changed to accommodate her flowery notes.
Fuck . I opened the door to head downstairs. She’d wake up soon and we both needed food. It had been far too long without sustenance.
Both Poe and Lycan looked up at me from the kitchen table when I appeared. Poe widened his eyes and dropped his jaw, but Lycan only shook his head and laughed.
“Good to see you,” Lycan said. “I’m surprised you can walk.”
I grumbled something that sounded like fuck off before going to the refrigerator and gathering some of the leftovers. The chicken from a few nights ago still smelled good, as did the vegetables she’d cooked for us. I put those on the counter before going for the lunchmeat and sliced cheese.
“How did it go?” Poe asked, purposely keeping his tone light and innocent, as if to suggest he didn’t mean any harm by asking. Through the bond, I understood that he wanted to make sure she was all right, that the worst hadn’t happened. Even with help, sometimes shifters didn’t make it. The magic could be detrimental to the body, and the human could reject it. That hadn’t happened to Isolde.
I took a deep breath and turned to face him, running a hand over the back of my neck. “It was—” I didn’t have words. How could I describe the sheer magnificence that had flowed between us to someone who had never experienced the giving end of it? How could I put into words the depth of the emotions we now shared? “It was mind-blowing. Life altering.”
“You look like hell,” Lycan added. “How are you going to shift tonight?”
I swallowed against a dry throat, grabbing two glasses out of the cabinet before filling them from the tap and gulping one down. “The moon doesn’t give a shit about how I feel.”
“Fair enough,” Poe added. “How is our Princess?”
I bristled at him calling her our, but if I opened myself up enough, I sensed her there, hovering as an extension of me. She wasn’t fully in the pack yet, and she wouldn’t be until she shifted, met the rest of our family, and received an invitation from the alpha. But it was enough that likely Poe and Lycan sensed her, too.
As would Kodiak.
I probably should have called him to tell him what had happened, but with the moon coming tonight and everything else going on, neither of us would have time to deal with it. I decided to save that news until after her first shift.
One problem at a time.
“She’s great,” I said, returning to the plate of food I’d been preparing for us. “She’ll be ready for tonight.”
“Yeah, I bet she will,” Lycan said with a laugh, making me glare at him. “With all that VP blood flowing in her veins, I bet she could run to Pluto and back.”
Poe barked out a chuckle, and I shook my head, combing through the chicken for the best bits to put on her plate, opting to eat the other bits myself. When I had a sufficient amount, I grabbed a few bananas and oranges from the bowl before grabbing a knife to peel and slice them into pieces for her.
Lycan and Poe teased each other about how much they’d fucked over the last forty-eight hours, a result of her hormones spreading through the Fiver like a shockwave, but I tuned them out in favor of getting the food ready. I sensed her starting to wake with a soft stirring in my chest and hurried my movements. I wanted to be there when she came to, so she’d know she wasn’t alone, that I had kept her safe and would continue to do so.
“So are you two mated now?” Lycan asked, bringing my attention back to them.
“It sure smells like it.” Poe leaned in and took a long, slow inhale. “I’m picking up a bonding scent and everything.”
Again, I mumbled something unintelligible before grabbing the plate with one hand and her water with the other, walking back up the stairs to my room, quietly shutting the door behind me.
Bonding scent?
Sure, I smelled myself and her and…something else…something darker and more territorial and distinctly primeval. But the bonding scent would only take hold if both parties had accepted it, and she’d been out of it for the last two days. There was no way she’d know what the hell had happened to her, much less agree to having mated a Bastard.
Reality started to close in fast, and the private heaven we’d created here in this room began to slip away.