Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Your mind is your greatest ally and your greatest enemy.
I was a fool. Not only was it built, it was in its place and full of his clothes, which had been living in strategic piles around my bedroom. While I was grateful I could once again walk on my floor without falling over a pile of ironed underwear, I was pissed because The Principal had clearly outmaneuvered me.
I folded my arms and glared at the gloriously naked male lying on my bed. He twisted onto his side, leaned his head into his hand, and grinned at me. After my return from my super secret meeting that had raised more questions than answers, I had done thirty minutes of admin before stalking up to my rooms, ready to poke fun at the shifter who couldn’t figure out which screw went where and refused to even glance at the instructions.
I jerked my head at the dresser. “Do you want to explain how you put that together in less than half an hour, after spending the entire afternoon making zero progress?”
He patted the bed next to him in invitation. My eyes narrowed, making him sigh. “I got a spark of inspiration, and suddenly, everything just fit together—like me and you.”
“Sweet talking me doesn’t excuse the fact you played me.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
“Lies aren’t me being dramatic.”
He raised a brow. “So you’ve told me absolutely everything going on in that pretty head of yours?”
My mouth snapped closed. How much did he know? Did he suspect something, or was he just guessing? How did Dangerous Dave do this? Keeping secrets from Hudson felt like a betrayal on the deepest level, and it wasn’t just because of the nakedness and orgasms. It was because of who he was. He exuded an aura of quiet command, which wrapped around you in a comforting caress.
Then there was the added layer of his kisses touching me so deep, so hot, that I felt him everywhere. I couldn’t get him or his touch out of my head. I acted like a silly teenager, wanting to know where he was and what he was doing at any given moment. When I planned my groceries, I made sure to include ingredients for his favorite meals and snacks. His preferred shampoo was in my bathroom. I bought sexy lingerie for the first time in my life. I hadn’t worn it yet, because I needed to find the confidence and perfect situation. One didn’t just turn up for breakfast in black silk panties and drape themselves over the table, demanding he swapped blueberry pancakes for me.
“Are you telling me everything?” I fired back, because I couldn’t tell him about the Serpents of the Dawn even if I wanted to.
“No. I have many, many more things I want to tell you, but I’m an open book. Ask me anything, and you will get an honest answer.”
“Did you pretend to be bad at DIY in order to orchestrate a bet, knowing I would take it and lose, resulting in me being naked?”
“Yes.” He looked smug about it, too. I sighed and started stripping off my clothes and dumping them on the floor as I strode closer to him. “Just to be clear, this isn’t the start of those twenty-four hours.”
I paused with my hands around my back and scowled. “What?”
“Tomorrow is the pack meal. Unless you want to serve roast chicken to the alphas wearing only your apron?” He rolled his eyes up to the ceiling and smiled like he was imagining it.
“Not happening.” I’d rather not serve anything. “If I get naked now, can we skip the dinner?”
His lips twitched. “Try it and find out.”
Guess that’s a no. I unhooked my bra, slipped out of my panties, and crawled under the covers. He yanked the blankets up and over us so we were nothing but shadowy outlines before tangling his legs with mine and holding me close.
His warm breath floated over my neck before his tongue swiped out and licked it, making a shiver course down my spine. Hudson Abbott was a cuddler, a spooner, a male who needed touch. For the sake of my sanity, he reserved those urges for the bedroom, unless it was a full moon. Then, all bets were off, and unwitting supernatural passersby got more than they bargained for.
The pack meal tomorrow was a weekly event, and we started staying at his house a few nights to appease the pack. I hated appeasing anyone. You either liked me or you didn’t. But I could admit when I was being unreasonable. Families were complex, multilayered, and dimensional. They had messy histories and subtle tendencies that you could only learn by being immersed in them. I knew the pack before meeting Hudson and was aware of the general inner workings, like how they operated and behaved. But only since dating their leader did I come to understand that I, in fact, knew nothing.
“What’s on the agenda for tomorrow?” I asked as he grazed his teeth over my pulse. My heart thrashed wildly at the sensual promise. His hand hooked around my knee and dragged it across his thigh.
“I couldn’t give a shit right now, Cora,” he growled. “I’ve had the scent of you on my hands all night, and I’m done waiting.”
“You didn’t wash before the meeting and snacks?” That was unsanitary.
He snorted. “I would bathe in your scent if I could. Every. Single. Day.”
“When will this calm down?” I wondered aloud, because I kept waiting for this need to subside. I wasn’t lying to myself; I was just as hot for him. It wasn’t one sided.
“When my animal feels satisfied you aren’t going anywhere.” That made sense—for him. I didn’t have an animal.
Indigo raised her head, giving me a mental look that would make lesser folk shrink in terror. “This does not look like New Orleans,” she said with the kind of wry amusement only the daughter of death could muster. “But as a consolation to tide me over, I will take him.”
“You can’t have him,” I snapped out loud, making Hudson shake with laughter. “You find it funny that she’s threatening to eat you?”
“Sex, Cora, not snacks. She won’t eat me.”
“Oh, I will, but in a way he’ll enjoy.”
Dear God. Wait. I needed to stop saying that in case I had some kind of express prayer line through familial connections. The last thing I needed was an awkward meeting with the Almighty where I presented him with a homemade scarf, and he gave me a list of transgressions, including sexual fantasies about Hudson and me under the light of the full moon. Wait, that was a memory, not a fantasy. Does that make it better?
“Stop thinking,” Hudson growled.
Easier said than?—
His teeth nipped at my breast.
Oh.
But I had so much?—
His fingers swiped through my heat.
Oh.
What about?—
He growled, and Indigo answered with a throaty moan that was half me, half her. I sounded more animal than human.
Heat flared through my veins, and my core clenched. Greedy. That was the best way to describe how I felt for Hudson. Greedy. Hot. A little feral.
He worked his fingers inside me, alternating with caressing the bundle of nerves that made my limbs tingle.
“Hudson,” I warned as he slowed down. I was not in the mood to be teased.
His mouth found mine, and he swallowed my protests as he played my body like a fiddle. I both loved and hated him at this moment. I clutched his arm, and claws protruded from my fingers, sinking against his flesh but not drawing blood. It seemed my angelic beastie wasn’t in the mood for torment either.
“You need to give me what I need before she takes control.” She had been known to lash out when provoked. It always involved blood and sex. Indigo stayed quiet in my mind, but fed me her power so I could take what I needed. My leg tightened against his hip, and I flipped him onto his back. He gasped at my strength as I grinned down at him. “Still underestimating me, Principal,” I taunted. “When will you learn?”
I aligned our bodies and sunk down onto him, reveling in the bite of pain that his size always ignited before it bled into pleasure. His hands trailed up my spine, and my eyes closed as I moved on top of him. His hand tangled in my hair, tugging the strands, causing me to hiss and open my eyes.
“You are stunning, Cora.” Then, with a smirk, he flipped us so I was pinned underneath him. My claws raked down his back as a growl rattled in my chest.
“I am not breakable,” I snarled. I didn’t want him soft and slow right now. I needed Hudson the predator to remind me I was his, and he was mine. I needed him to mark me. Wait, what? It’s not that he hadn’t bitten me on the odd occasion, but marking me? That wasn’t something elementals desired.
He grabbed my wrists in one hand and pinned them above my head. My ankles hooked together against his ass, and I met his every thrust, gaining the friction I needed to send me hurtling. He twisted his hips with a snarl, and my breath caught. My spine arched, and I came so hard my vision blinked out for a moment. Seconds later, he followed me before slumping against my neck. His heavy hot pants drifted over my shoulder as he rolled to his side, but kept us connected. My fingers combed through his hair.
“Did I hurt you?” he wondered. I hated that question on so many levels.
“No.”
“I was rough.”
I snorted as my hand drifted down his spine, finding the raised scratches from my claws. “You’re holding back,” I countered. “And it’s pissing me and Indigo off that our mate is not giving us all of himself. How can we fully bond if you continue to treat me like I’m on the brink of death when I have been healed for weeks?”
He grabbed my arms and pulled them off him to kiss my fingertips. “Okay, I get it,” he replied. “No more holding back. Hope you are ready, Cora.”
I fell asleep with a smile on my lips and a challenge in my soul. Bring it on, Hudson.
Fire slid down my throat and pooled in my belly. I cried out but couldn’t form words as my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I was going to die. My gut burned as if the flesh was singed, and I could smell my death in the air—a sickly sweet but decaying scent that made my eyes water.
“Just give me access to your power, and all this pain can stop,” a coaxing feminine voice said. “I don’t want to hurt you. We can work together to usher this world into a new age, one we shape according to our design.”
My eyes fluttered open, and I twisted my head. My body hung suspended inside of a dark room. Pain engulfed every nerve ending, but to give in meant death. Not mine, but everyone else’s. I peeled my tongue from the roof of my mouth, and hot blood slid out of my lips. “Fuck you,” I muttered, my voice hoarse and raspy.
Eloise emerged from the shadows, sheathed in an elegant white gown, looking like an angel. How deceiving. Her fingers trailed down my cheek in a feigned affectionate caress. “Oh, Cora, this is my fault. I taught you to be strong, to withstand pain beyond what a soul can take. But now is the time to take the easy road. Let her out and revel in your power. He only seeks to tame you, to control you, to dominate and use you.”
“You seek the same,” I choked out.
“Perhaps, but the difference is I want you to use your power, while he wants to leash it.”
Lies. All lies spoken by a woman I share blood with.
Eloise sighed and nodded. “Bring him in. We need to do this the hard way.”
My head jerked to the opposite side, and The Hound shoved Sebastian to his knees. His hands were bound at his back, and he had blood splattered across his white shirt. He was wearing his lucky tie. Sebastian lifted his head, and his Nordic blue eyes caught mine. No. Not him. You can’t have him.
I jerked against my invisible bonds, desperation and helplessness warring inside me.
“Stay strong, Cora, keep your heart beating,” he whispered.
“You keep your heart beating,” I snapped back.
The Hound winked at me as he tipped Sebastian’s head back with one hand and brought a pink ivory bowl to his lips with the other. Sebastian clamped his mouth closed and struggled against The Hound’s hold as he poured liquid from the poisonous bowl. Sebastian’s flesh blistered and peeled back as an unworldly scream tore from his bloody mouth.
“Bring in the cat,” my grandmother instructed.
“I hate you,” I snarled.
She patted my cheek. “Hate is simply the flip side of love, Cora. You cannot feel one without the other. You have the power to stop this.”
Chains slid over concrete as elementals dragged Keverin into the room. Clumps were missing out of his matted fur, stripped away to show his injured body. His soulful eyes caught mine just as Sebastian convulsed and flopped to the floor. His eyes fell closed as his chest lifted once, twice, and then collapsed. No. I stared at him and willed him to keep breathing. His chest rattled with an inhalation of air. There we go.
Keverin snarled at The Hound.
“Are you willing to sacrifice your mate?” Eloise asked. “He’s going to take time to wear down, unlike the vampire, who was most disappointing.”
“Disappointing?” I snarled. “You are beyond disappointing, Grandmother. You play with lives like you are God. Newsflash, you are not the Almighty. Good news though, He’s taken more than a passing interest in this little situation you’ve engineered. Are you ready for His wrath? I will never be your tool, but I was born to be His. There will be no mercy, no pleas, no trial. You have been found guilty, and I am your executioner. Now release my mate and my friend.”
Eloise threw her head back and laughed. “You think I don’t have the backing of a powerful being? You haven’t been paying attention. Bring on your God. I am ready, are you?”
The Hound moved to my side and twisted a wicked serrated knife in front of my face before slicing it into my chest. I gritted my teeth and tried to trap the terror clawing its way up my throat. I won’t give him my screams.
Keverin roared, and my head snapped back to him. The barbed chains wrapped around his body sunk into his flesh as he fought to get to me, cutting into skin and muscle the more he struggled.
My heart stuttered, and another wave of pain sliced through me. I shook my head as a tear slid free. “Be still,” I whimpered. “Please, Keverin, be still.” He whined low in his throat, and Indigo rattled my chest in response.
“That’s it,” my grandmother coaxed with glee. “Let her out.”
I just had to keep breathing, one beat at a time. Two. Three… The knife nicked my lung, and I choked as foamy blood filled my mouth.
“Cora,” a familiar voice rumbled.
Masculine. Safe. Home. Mine. My body shook as my heartbeat synced with his. Strong. Steady.
“Wake up.”
“I’m trying,” I cried as the knife continued south. Oh my God, when was he going to stop?
“Did you want children?” The Hound asked with a tilt of his head. “Let’s start with your right ovary.”
“Cora!” Hudson shouted.
I squeezed my eyes closed. It wasn’t real. They had sent an illusion of Hudson to taunt me. When faced with freedom, you often let your barriers down, and that was when they could sneak past your defenses and win. They couldn’t win. I shoved Hudson from my mind.
“No, not happening.”
My mate, even a fake one sent to torment me, was demanding. How ridiculous. My body rocked violently.
“Cora, snap the fuck out of it,” Hudson roared.
“I’ve got her,” Indigo snapped.
She pushed forward and took over my body. No, that’s what Eloise wanted. We couldn’t give in. My mind faded from the room as Indigo forced me down.
My eyes fluttered open, and my bedroom, dimly lit by the rising sun, came into view. Along with a furious-looking Hudson above me and a huge heavy weight on my legs. I glanced down to find Keverin draped across us both. His soulful eyes looked worried as they met mine.
“Just a dream,” I muttered as my head tipped back, and the hot tears slid free down my temples. “It’s not real.”
“We need to find you some help,” Hudson said. “These aren’t letting up.”
No, they weren’t. I had at least three a week. I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes and tried to force the mental breakdown hovering on the edge of my consciousness down. There wasn’t time for me to fall apart.
“Hey,” Hudson said in a soothing tone. He grabbed my hands and pulled them away. “Let it out. Maybe that will help.”
A sob caught in my throat. “If I do, I might never stop.”
“You will. But bottling this up is causing you psychic pain.”
Psychic pain. Oh, of course. I knew who I had to see. “Okay, I will see someone.”
He tilted his head. “A therapist?”
“Of sorts.”
He sighed and Keverin inched up the bed, pushing Hudson off me so he could lay his head between us.
“He needs reassurance,” Hudson advised. “We could feel your pain. Those aren’t ordinary nightmares, Cora.”
He was correct—they weren’t. They were hauntings.