Chapter 21 Heath
HEATH
“Whatever she told you, she’s fucking lying!” Harrison Blankenship sputtered as I slammed him up against the side of his SUV. “She stole our fucking car!”
I jammed my knee into his exposed groin, and he keened like a wounded lamb and not the fucking Alpha he was supposed to be.
“You’re calling my baby sister a liar?” I growled in his face.
“My sister, who was so put off by the things you said to her—by your touching her without her permission—that she ran away from you and drove your car thirty minutes under a New fucking Moon just to get to me?”
“I don’t know why crazy-ass females do the things they d—”
I slammed my fist into his face. Bone crunched under my knuckles, and blood seeped from his nose.
Behind me, Aiden had his foot on Paul’s furry throat. “Shift back,” he commanded, the force of his dominance making even Harrison wince.
The lion’s body trembled, and with lightning-fast rearranging of bone and muscle, the beast retreated, leaving only a blond shaggy-haired teenage boy in its place.
Aiden hauled him off the ground and threw him against the side of the car. He bounced off and landed in a pathetic heap by my feet. I released Harrison long enough to kick Paul in the ribs, the satisfying crack of bone and groan of pain fanning the bloodlust I was keeping carefully contained.
“Get up,” Aiden barked at Paul.
“He was still healing!” Harrison whined. “Just let us go. We get it. We won’t see your sister again. We don’t want to bond with her anyway! Our dads made us take her out.”
I buried my fist in his stomach, and he doubled over.
“You’re only walking away from this alive because I don’t feel like exerting the effort to clean up your deaths,” I told him.
“Because you didn’t just misbehave on your date, did you?
You chased my sister to this school, and then you attacked an innocent female. ”
“I didn’t—”
Aiden picked Paul up from the ground like he was a rag doll and shoved him against the car next to his brother. “Yes, your brother got his ass kicked by a snake, but you, Paul, attacked an innocent female at the front gates of this college. Do you have anything to say about that?”
“She’s not an innocent fucking female!” Paul rasped. “She’s clearly got a beast. She should be put down.”
It was Paul’s turn to get a fist in the face. Aiden probably shattered his cheekbone with that shot.
It was woefully typical that the Blankenships’ views on females with a beast were as backwards as my fucking dads’ were. They’d selected them as potential mates for Clara, after all.
“Listen up, both of you,” I said quietly, the violence of my beast threaded through every word.
“You will get into your fucking car and drive home. You will explain to your parents and mine that you said some things that were too forward and aggressive for a first date, and that Clara got nervous and ran away. You tracked her here, where Aiden and I were waiting for you. We tuned you up, taught you a lesson in dating etiquette, and sent you on your way. You did not get your ass kicked by a female and a snake. Got it?”
Harrison couldn’t meet my eyes, but he nodded at his feet.
“Fine,” Paul choked out, coughing up some blood as he did. “We’re going.”
A monstrous roar sounded in the woods. An alarmed shout followed.
“You better hurry,” Aiden said. “The Guardians like to herd wraiths up against our wards sometimes.”
True, though it was supposedly a last resort. The college had some of the strongest anti-wraith wards in existence.
I released Harrison, and he ran around to the driver’s side door. Paul limped his bloody body over to the passenger door, flung it open, and crawled inside like the rodent he was.
My beast shuddered within me, almost in pain from the cage I was keeping him in. I could sense Aiden’s jaguar experiencing the same struggle.
As Harrison jerked the SUV around and gunned the engine, racing away like the coward he was, Aiden and I turned our attention back to the girl who’d saved our sister from the Moon only knew what at the hands of two out-of-control teenage shifters.
Avery’s gaze was glued to my brother and me as we stalked slowly back toward the gate. She was sitting on the ground, her swords sheathed in their harness lying next to her. She looked tired, but she also wore a satisfied smirk that pleased me more than it should have.
I hadn’t been lying when I’d told her that I was making her stay with us so that I could make sure she got treatment for her injuries.
She’d been fucking reckless yet again, taking on two Prime shifters with only her swords and no equivalent beast at her disposal.
If it hadn’t been for George taking an inexplicable liking to her and following her all over campus while Elijah was away, she’d be a lot more fucking hurt right now, and who knew what that would’ve meant for Clara.
But I’d also dragged her here because she’d done something I couldn’t—she’d been there to save my sister, and the wolf within me had needed to show this female that we could take care of our own business.
And now the wolf within me wanted something else, and I’d lost the will to maintain control of that beastly urge.
Aiden boosted me over the gate, and he followed right behind me, scrambling up and over with ease. He’d always been a better climber than me.
Avery stood up and dusted herself off. Even in a blood-stained sweatshirt, more blood caked in her blonde hair and dried on her face, and exhaustion weighing down her ethereal blue eyes, she’d never looked more beautiful to me.
“Well, now that that’s done, I’ll just be going—”
With a snarl, I pushed her into Aiden’s waiting arms. She gasped as her back hit his chest. He held her tight and pulled her away from the gate, bracing against the brick wall that separated the college from the rest of the world.
Avery didn’t breathe as I pressed into her, crowding her front while Aiden held her in place, one arm banded across her stomach and the other over the top of her chest. No question that Aiden and I were on the same wavelength. My brother had cut the cord and wanted this as badly as I did.
“I am so fucking frustrated, Avery,” I growled softly, wrapping my hands around her hips. They fit perfectly in my grip, and it pissed me off even more. “I’m furious at you for traipsing around this campus alone during a New Moon. Our wards are excellent, but nothing is infallible.”
She writhed in my grasp, but she sure wasn’t trying very hard to escape. “Fuck you, Blackwell. I had my swords and George, and for the last moondamned time, I don’t take orders from you.”
She gasped again as Aiden chuckled, his mouth up against her neck. “Such a brat.”
“But you know why I’m so frustrated, Killer?
” I went on, running my nose up the side of her pale neck that Aiden wasn’t occupying.
She smelled of sweat and blood and fucking flowers.
“Because I’m also thankful you were wandering around tonight because you found Clara and put yourself in harm’s way for her, a girl you’d never even met before. ”
“We don’t know what to do with you,” Aiden said. “You saved Clara, just like you try to save everyone in your neighborhood each lunar cycle, but you’re also on a path that’s going to get you killed.”
“Mmm,” I grunted in agreement, caving to the urge to taste her skin. I licked a stripe from her collarbone to her ear, and the tiny moan it elicited destroyed every brake I had left. “Can’t have that. We could threaten you, but you don’t appear to fear anything.”
“Would love to fuck some sense into you,” Aiden mused, and she shuddered in my hands, “but I don’t think that would work, either.”
“We really are at a loss,” I whispered in her ear. “So, for now, I’m just going to… thank you.”
Her hooded eyes fluttered. “What—”
I dropped to my knees and ripped her leggings down to her ankles.
She gasped and clawed at Aiden’s arm, but he only chuckled and nipped her ear.
I yanked one of her boots off and pulled her foot free from her pants.
I tossed that smooth, shapely fucking leg over my shoulder, and then I buried my face in her hot, wet cunt.
“Oh shit,” she moaned as I took a luxurious lick of the tastiest pussy I’d ever encountered. I was going to be so fucked after this, but my rational brain had left the building. “Don’t stop, Heath.”
A Giant could’ve barreled through the wall, and I wouldn’t have stopped. I was in this until she came all over my face. Her little moans and mewls spurred me on at a breakneck pace, and I devoured her.
Aiden did his part, crooning dirty shit in her ear. “You’re shaking, sweetheart. Does that feel good, having Heath’s tongue between your gorgeous thighs? I’m so damn jealous of my brother right now. I’d love to be the one making you moan.”
“Aiden,” she said, sounding breathless. “Are you even supposed to be touching me like this?”
We both laughed at that. “That’s the thing about being a Prime in an unbonded quad,” he whispered, like he was telling her a secret.
“I could rut you like an animal up against the Magical Ed building, and the dean would give me a hearty slap on the back for trying to find our bond. Well, he would, if you weren’t lying about being latent. ”
She groaned. “If I’m not a special blue-blooded latent, then why does Heath have my clit in his mouth?”
It was my turn to groan, her dirty words turning me on even more, which I hadn’t thought was possible. I sucked hard on her clit in retaliation, threading a finger into her hot center as I lashed her with my tongue. She was tight and wet and fucking perfect.
“Heath doesn’t go down on those girls, sweetheart,” Aiden murmured. “He takes them on boring dates, where they talk about school and family and what kind of boat their parents just bought for the lake house.”
I rumbled a noise of agreement, then added a second finger. I hammered them into her because she was the strongest female I’d ever met and could take everything I wanted to give her.
She screamed, her muscles contracting around my fingers as she climaxed, gushing hard just for me.
“Fuck yes,” I groaned against her slick skin.
“Good girl,” Aiden said. “I could listen to that beautiful sound all night.”
She moaned, sagging in his arms, still spasming around my fingers. My dick had never been harder in my life, and my beast lounged with a level of primal satisfaction he’d never cared to feel when I hooked up with a girl.
I gave her a few more languid licks, and then I helped her back into her pants.
Aiden pulled them up her legs while I slid her boot back onto her foot.
Satisfied she was dressed and comfortable, I stood up and wrapped my arms around her.
She buried her face in my T-shirt while Aiden ran a gentle hand up and down her back.
My brother and I exchanged a look over her shoulder.
We’d just done something neither of us could take back, but he didn’t look like he regretted his part in it even a little bit, and neither did I.
Sex wasn’t a declaration of intent to date or bond, and Avery wasn’t the type to make this something it wasn’t.
But she deserved to feel something tonight other than the pain inflicted on her by more powerful shifters, and I’d wanted to give it to her.
Soon, I would have to scrub this fascination with her from my soul—as would the rest of my quad—but tonight, I’d let myself have what I wanted, and it’d been fucking glorious.
“Let’s get you to your room,” I said into her hair. “Call your medic friend and have her meet you there.”
“Okay,” she replied easily.
Aiden chuckled. “Maybe fucking the sass out of you actually does work.”
“Maybe,” she replied, releasing me and stepping out of my arms. It took everything I had not to grab her again. “Or you might get your dick sliced off the next time you try. Still want to chance it?”
“Yep,” I said.
“Sure do,” Aiden added.
She rolled her eyes, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips.
She swiped her swords from the ground and shrugged them on, then pulled her phone from her pocket.
“Hey, Mal, you still up? Oh…. No, I didn’t need to know that…
. Uh-huh…. Well, can you put some clothes on and meet me at my room with your first aid kit?
… No, just some minor scrapes and bruises… . Yep, okay, thanks.”
We walked her back to the upperclassmen dorm in comfortable silence.
It was nearing one in the morning, and since it was a curfew night, no one was out and about.
That relative privacy was all I needed to chance holding Avery’s hand on the walk.
I was shocked she allowed it—or the hand Aiden kept on the small of her back as we went.
Aiden made her hand over her blood-soaked sweatshirt and sent her inside wearing his fleece jacket instead. We watched her disappear through the doors of the dorm, and once we were satisfied she wasn’t going to sneak back out, we began the hike to Aiden’s house.
After a few minutes of walking in silence, Aiden said softly, “I don’t know what to do about her.”
I knew what he meant. “Me neither,” I replied with a sigh. “But right now, unfortunately, it’s time to deal with Dad.”
His face hardened. Getting lost in Avery had been a nice little interlude before what we really needed to accomplish, but I hadn’t forgotten, and neither had he. “Yeah,” he said. “We have to end this soon.”
He was right—on several counts.