Chapter Forty-Two
Aubrey
Espie pulls back from Sera and pain cramps through my stomach so hard I have to brace a fist against it. I breathe through the wave. Three counts in. Three counts out.
The pain eases by degrees. Not gone. Just survivable. The nausea’s been building for hours but I ignored it.
I cross to Sera, so close I feel her body heat through the kevlar. “Why did you go? Why did you leave us?”
Her throat moves. “I thought it was the right call.”
“You should have known better.” I pull in a breath that doesn't fully stabilize.
“I needed you here, but you went anyway, and I'm—” My hand presses back against my stomach.
The cramp is still there, and underneath it something else tightens that has nothing to do with heat. “I'm so angry at you, Sera.”
“I'm sorry,” she says.
“I know you are.” I look at her. The bandage. The jaw. Two days of her down here alone, and she texted Levi and then turned her phone off. I know why. It doesn't make her jaw easier to look at.
“You left me.” The words come out quiet. “You left all of us, but you left me. And I had to lie in the nest while your scent got quieter and I couldn't—” I stop. “I wasn't going to stay behind while you were lost.”
“I know,” she says again, a crack down the middle of it. “I know, Aubrey.”
“Don't do it again.” My voice has gone flat. “Not ever. Do you understand me?”
I get both hands in her hair and pull her mouth to mine. She's right here, eye level, nothing between my mouth and hers except the half second before I close it.
Her good hand catches my shoulder. I walk her back until the wall is at her shoulders and press the full length of myself against her.
I kiss her like I’ve been holding it back since the day she left. Open-mouthed. Reckless. Nothing restrained. She freezes for half a second. Then she exhales sharply through her nose and kisses me back, her hand sliding up into my hair, gripping tight enough to drag me closer.
Slick gathers between my thighs as I grind against her. Slick gathers between my thighs and there is nothing reluctant about it. I pull my mouth from hers to kiss her jaw, her throat, the hinge below her ear. She tips her head back and groans as her fingers weave through my hair.
Her hips roll forward against mine, slow and deliberate, and her scent turns sharp and warm between us. Blood orange and cedar flood the tunnel. My cedar answers immediately.
I pull back.
Her pupils have blown wide. Her mouth is wet and still parted and she is breathing through it, a little ragged, looking at me like I just knocked the ground out from under her.
“I'm glad we had this conversation,” I say.
Ezra steps up beside me and looks at Sera.
“Now it's my turn,” he says.
I push Sera into his arms.
Ezra
The tremor hits me the moment she comes against me, running through her whole frame, and my hands go to her back and I pull her in and she lets me.
She is tall and solidly built. All muscle and bone, the kind of body that has been in real danger, and the cold has gone all the way into her. She breathes out, long and slow, and the breath shakes on the way out.
“Two days,” I say. “Two days, and Kev called you constantly and Lex stood in the study where it still smelled like you and we all tried to—” I stop. My grip on her loosens a fraction. I breathe out. “We were so scared.”
Her voice comes out rough. “I'm sorry, Ez.”
“You're our mate and I'm going to make sure you never forget it.”
I gather her mouth with mine. She goes still for one full second, her whole body locked.
Then she gives. She makes a rough sound against me and I answer with a low groan.
I slide one hand up her spine, until my palm cups the back of her skull.
I angle her head exactly where I want it and push my tongue deep into her mouth.
She tastes like blood orange and something colder from the tunnel, but I go past that and lick against her tongue until she opens wider for me.
I kiss her harder after that. No care left.
I move with her, matching the way her body shifts against mine, and every time I angle deeper her fingers clutch tighter.
She makes another sound, lower this time, and I swallow it while I press my cock hard against her hip in one firm roll.
The contact pulls a sudden gasp out of her.
I pull back just enough to catch the full sound of it.
Her eyes are dark and her mouth is swollen from kissing. She regards me the way she looked at Aubrey the morning he asked to be held, like she finally sees that this is real and there is no trick waiting underneath it.
“You're our mate.” I run my thumb along her jaw. “Family. Ours.” I pause. “Mine.”
She stares at me, lips wet, still searching my face, still waiting for the catch. Lex takes her from my arms.
She looks right in Lex's arms, like she belongs exactly there.
Lex
Ezra's kiss is still warm on her lips when she turns her face up to mine.
“Lex,” she says. Her voice has gone careful.
How do I love thee. Let me count the ways.
Barrett Browning. Gods, not even my usual.
Her pupils are wide and dark and she is watching me, not sure what comes next. I only want to see acceptance in her eyes. Belonging. Love.
“You are our scent-match. Espie and Aubrey gave you to us and I don't think you've understood yet what that means.” I pause. “Do you feel it?” I hold her gaze.
She holds very still. Then she nods.
“You knew,” I say.
“Wallace told me.” The words come out flat.
“That's why he took me.” She looks down, then back up at me.
“He told me I'd been scent-matched to all of you. Through the bond. Through Espie and Aubrey. I walked right into his trap. I thought I was protecting you. I thought if I—” She stops.
Presses her mouth shut. “I'm sorry. I put all of you in danger and I'm sorry.”
“Yes,” I say. “You did.”
She blinks. She finds her footing. She was braced for something softer.
“The moment you went missing, there was nothing that was going to keep us away. There is no world where we leave you there.” I put my hand to her cheek. She closes her eyes for half a second. “That is what pack means. That is what you are to us.”
She is quiet. Her throat moves. She swallows once, hard, and she keeps her eyes on mine instead of blinking.
“I do know that,” she says. A breath. “I should have trusted it before I went.”
“Yes,” I say. “You should have.”
She lets out a breath, short, caught at the end of it, like she'd been holding it longer than she knew.
I get my hand into her hair and tip her head back and put my mouth on hers.
She makes a sound against my lips, and I swallow it and press in closer and she grabs the front of my jacket and holds on. Not pushing me away. Anchoring herself.
I deepen the kiss and she opens for me. I make a sound low in my chest. She tilts into me, and I get my arm around her waist and pull her flush against me and she exhales hard through her nose, and now both her hands are in my clothing and she is not letting go and I am not going to survive this woman.
I kiss her slowly, learning her. The way she angles her head when I press deeper. The catch of her breath when I drag my teeth across her lower lip. The way her grip on my collar tightens when I do it again.
Her blood orange deepens, turning warm and lush, the basil beneath it mellowing into something softer. And under all of that is something new. Fresh. Something her body is making right now, here in this tunnel, for me.
The scent floods my lungs before I can stop it, and I drag her closer.
I pull back enough to look at her. Her mouth is swollen and her eyes are open and dark and she is right here, present, both hands still in my clothing.
“This is what we are,” I say against her mouth. “All of it. Do you understand now?”
Kev comes up beside me and puts his hand at her shoulder, and the shift in her is immediate. She turns toward him, and I let her go.
Kev
“We will always come for you. You are ours, Sera. Our mate. Our alpha. Do you understand what that means.”
Both of her eyes are on mine, nothing else moving.
“I do now,” she says.
I walk her back. One step, two, until her shoulders hit the wall and she has nowhere to go.
I press the full length of myself against her, hip to chest, and she pulls in a sharp breath through her nose and I do it again, harder, a slow deliberate roll of my hips into hers, grinding my hard cock into her soft belly.
I lick into her mouth, slow, before she kisses me back with her tongue sliding against mine and a low sound that vibrates through both of us.
I pull her closer and go deeper and she lets me, her mouth open, her body pressed against mine.
Through the layers of clothing I feel her nipples harden against me.
She makes a soft, bitten-off sound and I cup her ribs and hold her there.
Her hips push forward against mine, deliberate this time, and I groan against her skin and pull her in tighter.
I press my forehead to hers, both of us trying to catch air, her scent thick and warm and blood orange going deeper by the second, and her skin under my hands is no longer cold.
“You will be wanted every single day. There is no version of this pack without you in it.” I step back enough to see her face. “You are loved, Seraphine Vidal. Every stubborn, stupid inch of you.”
Her eyes gleam. She blinks, but a tear falls from the corner of her eye. She tries to hide it, but I stop her and catch her tear with my thumb.
“Never be ashamed of who you are because you are everything.” I hold her gaze until knowing firms in her eyes. Acceptance. Full acceptance. At last.
Wallace groans. I pull back from Sera and the whole pack turns to see him coming round on the tunnel floor, head lifting, eyes going in and out of focus.
Then they sharpen. He takes in the scene — the pack, Sera on her feet, all of us breathing and present — and something ugly moves through his face.