28. Griffin
Circle of Oath:
Step inside with joined hands. Speak truth aloud.
The wipers are losing their battle. I presses my palms harder against my knees, pushing against the wards, and outside the windshield, the rain eases just enough that I can make out the road ahead.
Barely.
The houses blur past, dark shapes hunkered down against the storm. Every few seconds, lightning tears across the sky, illuminating the flooded streets in harsh, white flashes.
“Doing okay?” Damon asks.
I nod and then quickly change my mind. “Can I ask you something?”
He swallows. “Is it about Caroline?”
“Yes.”
His hands grip the steering wheel a little more tightly. “I care about her.”
“I saw how you looked at her. How you touched her face. That wasn’t just being a concerned sheriff.”
Damon doesn’t answer right away. When I glance over at him, his expression is distant, almost trance-like.
“I like her,” he says. Simple. Honest. “I’ve had a little crush on her for a while. But it’s gotten a lot more complicated since.”
“Since?”
“Since the Rift. Since whatever the hell is happening in this town started escalating.” He runs a hand through his wet hair. “She’s not just some Omega I think is pretty, Griffin. She’s… special to me.”
My jaw tightens. I keep my eyes on the road.
“She’s the love of my life.”
The words come out before I can stop them. They’ve been sitting in my chest for years, heavy and unspoken, and now they’re just out there.
Damon looks at me. “What?”
“You heard me.” We take another turn, scanning the alleys, the side streets, the gaps between buildings where a scared cat might hide. “I was young and stupid. I thought if I left Willowbrook, I could outrun it. Turns out you can’t outrun something that lives in your chest.”
“How long?”
“Since we were teenagers. Since before she started working at the apothecary. Since before the mark on her neck.” I shake my head.
“I don’t even know how to explain it. It’s not just that she’s beautiful.
It’s that when I’m with her, the noise in my head stops.
All of it. The firehouse, the calls, the shit I see every day. She makes it quiet.”
Damon is quiet for a long moment. Then: “The mark.”
“Yeah. The mark.”
“The one that says she’s bonded.”
“That’s the one.”
“Is she yours?”
“I don’t know.” My hands grip the wheel harder.
“It happened when we were younger. I thought I understood what it takes to be in a relationship, but things got complicated fast. When I left town, I had no idea how hard it was going to be for her. I just recently found out that this whole town thought she was bonded to me. It… it solidified things for me. She marked my soul. I marked her body.”
The wipers squeak against the glass. Damon exhales through his nose, and I can feel him weighing something in his mind.
“The Council guy,” he says carefully. “Silas. How do you think he fit into—”
A pitiful sound cuts through the rain. It’s coming from somewhere to our left.
Damon slams on the brakes. “Did you hear that?”
I’m already reaching for the door handle. “Thistle.”
We both step out into the storm. The rain hits me like a wall, but underneath it, underneath the wind and the thunder, I hear it again.
A cat’s cry. Weak. Scared.
“There.” Damon points toward a gap between two buildings—a narrow alley choked with dumpsters and debris. A flash of lightning reveals a small shape huddled beneath an overturned crate, pressed against the brick wall.
I’m already moving. The alley is a foot deep in water, the current tugging at my boots. I wade through it, dropping to my knees in front of the crate. Two eyes gleam back at me, wide and terrified.
“Hey, buddy,” I murmur. “It’s okay. We’re here to take you home.”
I reach under the crate, and Thistle hisses, his small body pressing further into the corner, but he’s too weak to fight. Too cold. I can feel the shivers racking his tiny frame as I scoop him up and pull him against my chest.
Damon appears beside me, his ward shimmering faintly around us, pushing back the worst of the rain. “Is he okay?”
“He’s alive.” I tuck the cat inside my jacket, feeling his wet fur against my shirt. “We need to get him back to Caroline.”
The walk back to the cruiser feels longer than it should.
By the time I slide into the driver’s seat, Thistle is trembling violently against my chest. I wrap him in the fleece blanket Caroline gave us.
The cat burrows into it, his small face pressing into the fabric, and some of the tension leaves his body.
The sheriff pulls away from the curb.
“Shh!” I coo.
Damon reaches over, his fingers gently stroking the blanket-covered bundle in my lap.
“He’s warming up,” he says. “That’s good. Caroline will be so happy we found him.”
“I shouldn’t have let her go out in this weather,” I say. The words come out rough. “I knew something was wrong. I could feel it. But she was so set on finding him, and I couldn’t just—”
“You did the right thing. We found him. He’s alive.”
“That’s not what I mean.” I take a breath. “I mean with us. Me and her. I’ve been so focused on getting her back, on making her see that I never stopped loving her, that I didn’t stop to think about what she actually needs. What she wants.”
“What does she want?”
“I don’t know.” The admission tastes bitter. “I thought I did. I thought she wanted me… but then there’s you, and there’s a Council envoy sniffing around who apparently knows her from somewhere, and she looked at him tonight like—”
“Like what?”
“Like she recognized something.”
Damon doesn’t respond. His hand is still resting on the blanket, on the cat, and his gaze is fixed out the windshield. The rain is starting to let up, the wards finally getting a proper grip on the storm.
“I’m not going to fight you for her,” Damon says quietly.
“What?”
“I’m not going to fight you. If she chooses you, I’ll step back. But I’m not going to pretend I don’t feel what I feel. That wouldn’t be fair to anyone.”
I stare at him. In the dim glow of the dashboard, his face is unreadable. It’s more like he’s made peace with something. Accepted it.
“You’d really do that?”
“I’m the sheriff of this town, Griffin. My job is to protect people. Sometimes that means protecting them from myself.” He leans his head back against the seat. “Besides, I get the feeling Caroline isn’t a woman who wants to be fought over. She wants to be listened to.”
He’s right. That’s exactly what she wants. And I’ve been so busy trying to win her back that I haven’t done any listening at all.
Thistle stirs in my lap, a weak meow escaping the blanket. I look down at him, at his tiny face, and something in my chest cracks open.
“I just want her to be happy,” I say. “Even if that’s not with me.”
Damon nods. “Yeah. Me too.”
The rest of the drive passes in silence. The streets are empty, the town shut down against the storm. When I pull up in front of Caroline’s house, the porch light is on.
Damon kills the engine. I reach for the door handle, but Damon’s hand lands on my arm.
“Wait.”
I frown at him. “What?”
“Just… wait a second.”
Then I smell it.
Honey and cinnamon, thick and cloying, rolling through the cracked windows of the cruiser like a wave. Underneath it, something darker. Musk.
Sex.
My cock goes hard instantly.
“What the fuck,” I breathe.
Damon’s grip on my arm tightens. His pupils are blown wide, his jaw clenched so tight I can see the muscle jumping. He’s smelling it too. Every Alpha within a mile is smelling it right now.
“Silas,” Damon says. The name comes out like a curse.
I’m already out of the car, Thistle bundled in my arms. The rain has slowed to a drizzle, but I barely feel it. The scent is pulling me toward that door like a hook in my chest. I take the porch steps two at a time, and Damon is right behind me.
The door is unlocked.
I push it open and stop dead.
Caroline is on the couch. Silas is beneath her, his back against the cushions, his hands gripping her hips.
She’s naked from the waist down, her shirt rucked up around her ribs, and she’s riding him.
Her head is thrown back, her spine arched, her skin flushed and glistening with sweat.
The wet fabric of her shirt clings to her breasts, her nipples visible through the damp cotton.
It’s the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen.
My brain short-circuits. Every thought, every plan, every carefully constructed argument I’ve been building for days—gone.
There’s only Caroline. Only the sight of her lost in pleasure, her body moving with a rhythm that’s primal.
Only the scent of her filling the room, mixing with the clean, dark spice of Silas’s cologne.
Then she opens her eyes and sees us.
“Thistle?” Her voice is wrecked, barely recognizable. Her gaze drops to the blanket in my arms, and her whole face transforms. The pleasure, the haze—it all gives way to something pure and bright. “Oh my god. You found him. You found my baby.”
She starts to move—to rise off Silas—but the motion makes her gasp, her body jerking as the shift pulls at something inside her. Silas lets out a strangled groan, his hands tightening on her hips.
“Sweetheart, slow down,” Silas says, his words tight. “You can’t just—fuck—”
I watch, transfixed, as she stills. The angle lets me see where they’re joined, the swollen base of Silas’s cock stretching her entrance. She can’t move. They’re locked together.
My own cock throbs in response, painfully hard, straining against my zipper.
I turn my head slightly and catch Damon out of the corner of my eye.
He’s standing in the doorway, his hand pressed down against the front of his pants, his face a mask of barely contained need.
His eyes are locked on Caroline, dark and hungry, and there’s a flush creeping up his neck that I’ve never seen on him before.
He clears his throat. “I’ll excuse myself.”
“It just happened,” Silas says.
Caroline looks between the three of us—me holding Thistle, Damon in the doorway, Silas still inside her—and something crosses her face. It’s not shame or panic. Something that looks almost like determination.
“Don’t leave,” she says.
I blink. “What?”
“Any of you.” Her eyes meet mine, then move to Damon. “I don’t want any of you to leave.”
The room goes so quiet I can hear the rain on the roof. Thistle shifts in my arms, letting out a small purr.
“Caroline,” I start. “You’re in heat. You’re not thinking clearly.”
“I’m thinking clearer than I have in months.” Her chin lifts, defiant even now, even bare and flushed and knotted to another man. “I’ve spent years pretending. Pretending I was bonded. Pretending I didn’t want things I wasn’t supposed to want. I’m done pretending.”
I look at her—really look at her. The fever-bright eyes. The swollen lips. The determination underneath all of it. I know this woman. I’ve loved this woman since I was a teenager. And I know when she’s made up her mind.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
She nods once. Firm.
I walk over to the couch. Thistle is still purring in the blanket, and I set him down on the armchair, making sure he’s settled before turning back to her. I lean down and press my lips to her forehead, breathing her in. Honey and cinnamon and sex and home.
My hand slides down, my fingers tracing the curve of her breast through the damp fabric. I find her nipple and drag my thumb over it, and she whimpers, the sound shooting straight to my groin.
“Fuck,” I mutter. I’m already hard again—or still, I don’t even know anymore. My body doesn’t seem to recognize the difference.
I turn to Damon. He hasn’t moved from the doorway. His hand is still pressed against himself, his chest rising and falling with labored breaths.
“You staying or leaving?”
For a long, agonizing moment, he doesn’t answer. His eyes move from Caroline to me to Silas, and I can see the war playing out behind them. The sheriff. The Alpha. The man who said he’d step back.
Then he reaches behind him and locks the door.
“Let me feed Thistle,” he says, his voice hoarse. “And then I’ll join you.”
I turn back to Caroline. My hand moves from her breast to her neck, tracing the line of her throat, feeling her quick pulse beneath my fingers. She tilts her head into my touch, her eyes closing, and I’m hit with a wave of something so intense it nearly brings me to my knees.
I’ve had dreams about this. About sharing her. About watching her fall apart for someone else while I waited for my turn. The dreams were good and dirty, illicit things I told myself were never going to happen, that I buried deep and tried to forget.
This is so much better than any dream.
I look down at Silas. His hands are still on Caroline’s hips, but one has moved, his palm sliding between her thighs, rubbing over her slick-covered pussy. The wet sounds fill the quiet room. It’s all so obscene and perfect.
“How does she feel?” I ask.
Silas meets my eyes. His are dark, almost black with need, but there’s something else there too. Something that looks a lot like wonder.
“Fucking incredible.”
Caroline opens her eyes. They find mine, and she gives me a small, satisfied smile, still a little dazed. She reaches up and cups my face in her hand, her thumb brushing across my cheekbone.
“Kiss me, please,” she whispers.
I do.