44. Kane
The moment I realized Kate was crying, I almost ditched work to go find them. I wanted to beat Elijah’s ass, still do, for making my mate so emotional she had to let it all out.
Crying isn’t a bad thing. It’s not weak. If you overfill a glass, it’s going to spill over the edge, but that doesn’t mean I was okay with her father being the cause of her tears.
I refrained when she told me to back off. It wasn’t easy, but I trust Kate knows what’s best for herself. I want her to have a good relationship with her parents. I may be at odds with mine and Elijah currently, but that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped loving them.
Of course, if anyone even thinks about telling Kate she doesn’t belong here I will lose my shit on them, no matter who it is. My suggestion, they better think long and hard before they go down that road. There is no going back. I’ll banish everyone from the whole fucking pack before I let Kate leave, and if that day ever comes, I’m going with her.
Noise coming past the door that leads from the shop and into the office area pulls my attention away from the car I’m standing in front of with the hood lifted. I’ve just finished prepping everything to yank the motor out. The owner dropped it off a few days ago. With everything she wants restored, it’s going to take almost a year to complete.
The weather is stifling today, so hot that I didn’t raise the bay door. Instead, I have the A/C running and my phone playing a playlist of musicians that were popular back in my teenage years.
The door coming into the shop opens, then slams. I arch an eyebrow at Kate, who looks downright murderous right now.
“You’re late,” I growl.
It’s been well past an hour since I left her at the cabin with Elijah waiting outside for her. I saw the way he cringed when I opened the front door and walked out as I pulled on a black T-shirt. I knew what he was smelling because I was still smelling us too and enjoying the pleasant scent.
Out of pity for him and not wanting to bite his fucking head off for the way he reacted yesterday, I left with barely a nod in his direction. I keep several ATVs in a shed beside the cabin, so I didn’t need to walk back to the lodge.
She marches in my direction on a mission, and I feel like the meat between my legs is going to be collateral damage with the vibes rolling off Kate.
“Why is her scent in every room up front and all over the place out here?” She demands, her arms crossing together under her chest.
By her I’m going to assume she means Laney. Ashleigh is here often enough that her scent permeates the shop too, but Kate’s never acted this way toward my cousin.
“She works here. Or did, I should say. Laney is gone, Kate. I found that out when I stopped by the lodge.”
“What do you mean she works here? Since when?”
“Not long after you and Trez went back to Rivermoon Mountain,” I say, annoyed, hating the reminder of each and every time I had to watch her leave. “Why? Because I needed the help, and she asked for a job. You know how I am when it comes to helping out a pack member.”
She grits her teeth and just stares at me, her breaths coming forcefully out of her cute little nose.
“Baby, if you want to leak all over my shop and mark your territory, by all means, go for it.” I span my arms out. “I can’t think of anything I’d enjoy more than smelling you all day, every day, while I work.” I smirk, amused at her jealousy, but I’m not trying to pacify her either. Her scent covering every surface would be the best improvement to this place I can think of, but also torture. I’d want to fuck her instead of fixing broken-down pieces of shit and turning them back into prized possessions. “My Luna-girl is hot when she’s worked up.”
“Could you give that one a rest?” She purses her lips, then drops her arms to her sides.
“What’s it going to take for you to believe you are, in fact, a Luna wolf shifter?”
“I don’t know what to tell you.” She steps away from me and then turns her head to look under the hood of the old 1971 automobile. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, but when something is shoved down your throat for years on end, it’s difficult not to believe it yourself in ways.” Her head tilts, her pretty eyes coming back to my stare. “I’ll give Dick this, he was a masterful puppet master. Damn near everything out of his mouth felt like a lie, but he’d weave it in such a way I couldn’t get past the self-doubt.”
“I want that motherfucker to die a slow death,” I seethe, my fists balling at my sides.
Kate goes silent, her eyes darting away from mine. A shiver runs down my spine like a bad omen.
“What?” My question seeps out through clenched teeth.
“There’s something you need to know. Something Salem told me before she let me go. What Dick’s truly after.”
“Are we going to war?”
“No,” she says so adamantly that I know she means it. But I also have a feeling that what she’s about to share is going to make me rage. “I don’t want that for our pack. I don’t want lives to be lost senselessly. For all I know, he’s already dead. He killed Salem’s sister. It’s why she helped me and why I’m here instead of who knows where. Salem went back to Rivermoon to kill Dick and anyone else that got in her way. I just don’t know if she was successful or not.”
“Storm hasn’t been able to reach anyone from her coven. She’s been trying for two weeks,” I inform her.
“That can’t be good.” Kate’s eyes widen.
“Probably not,” I agree. “What’s the rest? I can feel you have more to say.”
“Did you know Dick used to be in the Bloodmoon pack?”
“That’s news to me.” Especially when we have records going back four generations, and he’s not one of them.
“According to Salem, he was a long time ago. He had a fated mate from this pack, and she was an alpha female.”
“She was a Luna,” I reiterate, wanting my mate to be comfortable calling herself that.
“If you say so.” She eyes me hard. “But not the point.” She continues after blowing out a breath. “He resented her for being stronger than him. He wanted to be an alpha more than he wanted anything else, including her. Salem said he traded his fated mate to someone in the underworld in exchange for being given alpha power and a longer than normal shifter life.”
“From everything I know, demons aren’t powerful beings. On Earth, they have to steal a host to be in physical form. There is only one that powerful, and like you have a hard time believing in a Luna, I’ve never seen evidence that the one touted as the devil even exists.”
“Kane, you told me vampires exist. How is the darkest being imaginable a stretch for you?”
“I’ve met a vampire. Can’t really say I want to do it again. Of course, I can’t say I want to meet the devil either because I don’t, but maybe. We exist. A lot of things that go bump in the night exist, whether supernatural or human. I suppose it’s plausible.”
“There’s more,” she says on a heavy exhale.
“She told me that Dick knew I was the next alpha’s fated mate, your mate, and when he took us and had the dark witch spell us, she was also supposed to spell that when we conceived a child, he would be born an alpha.”
“Our son isn’t going to be an alpha, Kate.” I stare at her, my brows furrowed, my anger on the brink of making my wolf shift, but also… I’m confused.
“Do I even want to know how you know that?”
“One of the many lessons my dad taught me over the years. It’s a scent. One that isn’t easy to pick out before birth. It took me years to master it. I’ll teach you if you want.”
“Maybe. But that feels weird and… intrusive.”
She has a point. One I never considered before now.
“Why does he want our son to be an alpha?” I ask, hoping there are more details. I need to know everything so I can protect Kate, our son, and our pack.
“Salem laughed when she told me, but she said Dick thinks he can bargain for immortality this time around with an alpha’s mate and an alpha child. The way she said it, it sounded like there was no chance in hell that would happen, but he didn’t know that. But that bitch is also crazy—manic-like crazy. I took everything she told me with a grain of salt.”
“So, what do you want to do, mate?” I shove my hands in the pockets of my jeans, almost afraid of what her answer is going to be. I don’t want Kate to put herself in danger while pregnant. I don’t want my mate to ever be in danger, but I’m also not the man who’s going to stop her from doing something she feels is necessary. I do know the longer Richard’s heart continues to beat, my mate, my son, my pack will never be safe.
“Does it make me a coward to want to do nothing right now, hoping Salem handled him like she planned to do?” Her brows furrow as she gnaws on her bottom lip.
I shake my head. “You aren’t a coward because you’re choosing not to start a war. I’ll reach out to Caleb Drake to see what he knows. If Richard is dead, Caleb would have swooped in to claim his land and kill his pack. That’s a plausible reason for Storm not being able to reach anyone from her old coven.”
“Good idea.”
She’s nodding her head but looks like she’s thinking about something else. After a beat, she turns to walk away from me but only gets two steps before she pivots to face me once again.
“What did you mean when you mentioned Laney was gone?” Kate’s head tilts as her hands go to her hips.
“She ran off after Mom killed V. No one has seen her since. She isn’t on pack land. Jagger thinks she took off in her wolf form. He said he didn’t think anything was missing from her uncle’s house, where she and her mother lived. V’s car is still there, and so is Ronnie’s truck.”
“Do you think she’s going to be a problem?”
“I don’t know.” I scrub my palm down my face, wondering when we’ll be able to move on with our lives without shit in the background threatening to tear us and the pack apart. I don’t like leaving anything unfinished or waiting for the next ball to drop. “I hope not, but if she becomes an issue, I’ll handle it.”
“We’ll handle it,” she clarifies.
Lifting my arm, I snag Kate around her elbow and pull her into an embrace.
“We’ll handle it,” I agree. “Just not today.”
“Good.” A smile inches slowly up her pretty face. “Because I seem to recall you promising to fuck me on the hood of this car”—Kate rolls her head, eyeing the raised hood with the cherry picker already in place in front of the car with the engine leveler and chains in place to remove the motor—“but it looks like that’s going to be an issue.”
“I also promised you food. Annalise cooked breakfast,” I say, my dick already getting hard again. “I grabbed you a plate and stuck it in the fridge if you’d rather eat before I come inside your pretty little pussy.”
Please don’t be starving.
My crotch still fucking hurts from leaving with a massive hard-on this morning after having my mouth and tongue on her.
“I want to be stuffed, but”—she shakes her head—“my preference isn’t food.” She pulls back and drops her eyes to the front of my jeans, then she bites her bottom lip and flicks her sexy stare up to my eyes.
Sliding my hands down her bare arms, I lace her fingers with mine in one hand, then step around her, pulling her behind me.
“Where are we going?” she pouts when she realizes I’m dragging her away. “You could at least do me inside the car if you can’t do me on the car.”
Grabbing the doorknob, I twist and yank it open and step inside the office space. The door closes on its own as I swing Kate in front of me and then hoist her into my arms.
“You wanted to rid all the scents of other women, so we’re starting with the office, mate.”
“Just how many women frequent here?” she huffs out, her jaw dropping.
Probably more than she wants to know about.
But I only have eyes for Kate.
My mate.
My always.
“None of them are relevant.” I round the corner, stepping into the receptionist’s area, where a counter runs the length of the space with the front door directly across from us. I sit Kate on the desk and step between her open thighs. “I only want to fuck you. In every room. On every surface. I wasn’t kidding when I said you could drip all over the place, but that’ll have to wait until I have time to play with you. Right now, I want you too damn much not to be selfish.”
I go for the belt locked around my pants, snatching it loose, and then unbutton my jeans.
“What if a customer walks in? The open sign is turned on, Kane, and I know the door is unlocked since I walked through it.”
I shrug, not fazed in the least as I pull my zipper down.
“Guess they’ll get an eyeful of my dick coming inside the most perfect pussy ever created. Pull your leggings down before I tear a hole in the crotch.”
“Someone is impatient,” she comments but complies without fuss as she leans from one hip to the other, dragging her pants down. Her flip-flops hit the floor first as she kicks her pants off.
“No, I need to come… so fucking bad right now, but we both know I’m not going to do that until you get off first.” I grab her by the hips and pull her to the edge. “So, let’s get you off, baby.”
I align myself with her entrance, then push forward while pulling her onto my cock. My eyes close, allowing the feeling of her heat to wrap around me, coating me.
“Always so fucking wet for me.”
Fuck.
I just want to spend the rest of my life making this woman happy, giving her everything she wants and needs. Spoiling her. Cherishing her. Because dammit, she gives me more than I deserve and everything I never knew I was missing, never knew I needed.
“Tell me you’re mine,” I demand, but she can feel the begging within my words, my desperate need to hear her say it despite feeling the truth between us.
“I’m yours. I’m your always, and you’re mine, Kane Orion.”
“Damn right, I am,” I grit, straining to hold on as she tightens around me, forcing my eyes to roll to the back of my head, the feel of her surrounding me pleasurable in the best and most torturous ways.
Forcing my eyes to open, I tip my head down to look my mate in her eyes. “And I’m going to keep you dripping for me… for the rest of our lives, baby.”
I lean forward, capturing her lips, but it’s my Luna that sears me with her kiss.
Thank you for coming back to me, Kate, I utter inside my head so as not to lose the connection of our lips. For staying.
Her arms wrap around my neck as my hips flex forward, her claws sinking deep into my muscles.
Fuuck, that’s so good.
Kate’s eyes change from blue to blood orange, my claws elongating at her alpha command, pushing through her soft skin. My dick pulses and thickens inside her, her walls squeezing me.
I forgive you, you know, right?Her words in my head a detonator.
I felt her forgiveness before now, but I needed to hear it.
I’ll worship her for all of our days, making sure she knows how much I wholly regret how I treated her that night.
My submission is hers, only hers.
My alpha.
My Luna.
My always.
I gasp for breath, sucking the air from her lungs into mine. Kate comes around, and I explode inside her. Her screams and mine rocking the building like an earthquake.
After all these years, I finally have my fated mate.
Only, I didn’t find her. She found me.