20. Lycan
Lycan
“Pleasure doing business with you.” Thurjin shook the other guy’s hand and turned back toward his bike. I stood from my perch, leaning up against my bike, and uncrossed my arms. The last deal was done, and I could finally go back to Poe and Ava.
Something squeezed my gut, and a burning sizzle shot down my spine for no reason.
I glanced around, trying to locate any possible threat.
My wolf had been pacing in my mind for the last hour like he knew something the human didn’t.
But I didn’t smell anything. We were out in the middle of nowhere, and we hadn’t been followed. I was certain of that.
“Wait, what?” Bas said from behind me. “Slow down. What happened?”
He turned to look at me, and my heart dropped.
This.
Whatever my wolf had been trying to tell me, this was it—the other shoe dropping. The swan singing its death song. The worst-case scenario. Bas didn’t even have to say it. I already knew.
“The pack’s been attacked,” he said. “We need to go.”
The words settled in my veins like acid. I could have disintegrated on the spot. I reached into my pocket for my phone and turned off Do Not Disturb. Locust had called four times. Bow, too. My texts showed up first.
We got out. We’re headed to you.
He sent me a pin to a hotel on Fyn, about ninety minutes from my location. Thurjin shouted at me to wait, but I was already gone. They had to go back to the pack. I understood that. But I had other priorities.
I made the ride in forty minutes and parked my bike next to the only other three in the lot. I had just reared back to kick the door down when it suddenly opened.
Locust stood on the other side, freshly showered, rubbing the back of his head with a towel. He eyed me head to toe before moving back and nodding.
“She’s in the bedroom,” he said, pointing off to the left. “Through there.”
“We’ll just…” Bow walked up behind Locust and patted me on the shoulder before they both moved around me to leave.
The door closed, and the smell hit. Copper and decaying flesh, and under it something rich and territorial that raised my hackles for a different reason.
Bonding scent.
Not the whiff I’d caught off Poe through the window. Something settled. Damn near eye-watering. I steeled myself and walked to the bedroom, pausing just inside the door.
Ava lay on the bed under the covers, her skin clammy, her rosy complexion faded to a dull pallor. The bandage wrapped around her chest had a bloody spot just below her armpit, and after I assessed that damage, my focus caught on the bite mark on her neck.
Poe sat in the chair next to the bed with one hand in hers, the other under his chin to prop his head up. He was covered in blood—his hands, his chest, his chin. Most of it was vampire. Some of it was Ava. Then I caught the mark on his neck, and my lungs turned to concrete.
“How is she?” I asked.
Poe looked up and shifted his hips to straighten.
“She’ll live,” he said. “The healer did the best she could, being that we’re not part of their pack. Ava’s newly transitioned, and she’s got my…” He stopped and cleared his throat. “She’s healing quick. She should be fine in a few hours.”
I crossed my arms and leaned against the frame. “What happened?”
Ava furrowed her brows and stirred, murmuring something to herself before relaxing again with a sigh. Poe stood, leaned down to kiss her forehead, and let go of her hand.
I forced myself to watch it, swallowing the envy that licked up my throat and boiled in my gut. It hurt. Fuck, I wanted to kill him for touching her. I wanted to wrap my hands around her throat for daring to mark him.
He walked toward me and out into the living room. I followed him and closed the bedroom door behind me. Ava needed her rest, and what I had to say to Poe shouldn’t be the first thing she heard from me after getting shot.
“The vampires attacked the pack,” Poe said, walking over to the couch.
He sat down and perched his elbows on his knees, hanging his head between his shoulders as he told me the rest. I settled in the armchair across from him and crossed my legs, balancing my chin on my fingers.
I watched him as he spoke, the casual ease with which he talked about destroying our enemies with a steel root digger to protect her.
“The Copenhagen pack is okay. Their wards held. The bloodsuckers got us in between leaving their territory and getting to the bikes,” Poe said, picking at dried blood on his hands while he kept his gaze on the ground in front of him.
“Locust called Kodiak. He’s working on a plan to get us out of here. ”
I didn’t respond. Everything in me went very still as I stared holes through that fucking mark on his neck.
Questions burned through my mind quicker than I could rationalize them away.
How had that happened? Why? When? Did he bite her first?
Did she? Did he force her? No, he wouldn’t do that.
I knew him well enough to know he’d never take anyone without their consent. Then I really would kill him.
Time stretched between us while he squeezed his eyes shut and scrubbed his filthy hands over his face, back through his hair, pulling the ends, digging his nails into his scalp.
“Fucking say something,” he blurted, daring to look at me. His wild, panicked eyes almost broke me. Almost.
I took my time gathering my thoughts. I wanted to lash out at him.
I wanted to punch his beautiful fucking face and kiss every scrape.
I wanted to throw him around the room, force him to his knees, and remind him who he really belonged to.
I wanted to stand up, leave, and give them both to each other, my final act of grace in an otherwise earth-shattering tale of tragedy.
Instead, I swallowed down my fury and rubbed my index finger over my mouth, choosing my next words carefully.
“Did she choose it?” And the Academy Award goes to me because, despite the scorching flame in my ribs, I asked the question like I was apathetic about the answer. Which, of course, I wasn’t. I’d never been apathetic about Poe, and certainly never about Ava.
He licked his lips and shifted his eyes to the floor again.
Typical. Can’t even look at me while he breaks my heart.
“Yes,” he said.
That poured a mountain of salt into my gaping, bleeding heart. I pressed on. “Did you?”
He cleared his throat. “Yes. Our wolves chose it, and I… We didn’t stop it.”
Even though it gutted me, I’d admit I saw this coming.
It was there the first time they met—his heated stare, his bonding scent, her flirty laugh, that breakfast food fight in the kitchen.
Sometimes, the mating bond didn’t make sense.
Sometimes, it happened spontaneously, even for shifters who’d known each other all their lives.
And sometimes, like Poe and Ava, the pieces fit so perfectly, any fucking idiot with half a brain could tell it was meant to be.
I guessed I was the fucking idiot in this situation.
To be so hurt by it, to be so fucking jealous.
I’d known it would happen, and instead of slamming on the brakes, I’d added gas to the inferno.
I’d stripped them both naked and commanded him to lick her cunt and fucked him while she watched.
Honestly, Mitchell, what the fuck did you expect?
The silence stretched on.
“Are you pissed?” he asked in a murmur.
“Beyond belief,” I said.
“Why?” He pushed upright, clenching his hands into fists at his side, his jaw squared for a fight. “You don’t want me. You only married her because you were drunk.”
He paused for a reply, and I sat there, staring at him, waiting for him to tip the scales.
“This is all some stupid game to you,” he went on. “Some scene. Something you can control until you can’t, and then you’ll fucking leave. And what about her and me, huh? At least, now we’ll have each other when you fuck off and ruin us the next time.”
Until that point, I’d maintained a tenuous hold on my restraint.
I couldn’t begrudge them wanting each other.
Hell, I wanted them both and couldn’t decide if I was furious at myself or ecstatic about having two people I cared so deeply for.
But that…that crossed a line, and my wolf snarled in response.
I shoved to my feet and stalked toward him, closing the space between us in two quick strides. He was only an inch shorter than me, but my place in the pack had me towering over him.
“A game?” I snarled.
He took a step back, but no. I wouldn’t allow that. I grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked him toward me, my fangs extending, my hackles raised.
“You’re the one who broke it off with me,” I growled.
“You’re the one who watched me fuck my wife through a window before disappearing for the whole day.
You want to get close enough to the flames to feel the warmth, but you won’t chance getting burned if it means you have to admit you’re worthy of the heat. ”
“Shut up,” Poe said, shoving my shoulders. “You don’t know what the fuck—”
“You think I don’t want you? You think I ran from you, from this, because I didn’t love every fucking thing about you?
That was never the problem.” The words spilled out before I could stop them, billowing from somewhere deep inside me, a pressure cooker that needed release.
“I almost lost both of you tonight. Ever think about what that would do to me?” I tugged him closer, shaking his body like he weighed nothing.
“Losing you, losing either of you, would finish me.”
All the fight drained out of Poe. He gasped and stared at me with big brown eyes, his features slack.
I would never have admitted any of that had my wolf not been prodding me so relentlessly.
Spurred on by the threat of vampires taking the two most important people in my life and the sight of those fucking marks on their necks, my inner animal promptly planted my ass in the bitch seat and took the steering wheel.
He reacted before I could stop him.
I grabbed Poe by the back of the neck and struck, sinking my fangs into his skin on the opposite side of where Ava had claimed him.
My teeth punctured his scent glands, forcing my magic deep inside him.
His blood spilled into my mouth, and I swallowed it, reveling in the way my magic settled deep in his soul.
He moaned and wrapped his arms around my chest, hugging me closer while I ravaged his flesh.
It wasn’t easy.
It wasn’t gentle.
It was a claiming, a predatory message from a provoked monster. They were both mine, and if I had to prove that point, I fucking would.
And when I reared back, I let him go with a tiny shove.
He grabbed the wound and stared at me with his mouth hanging open.
“You son of a bitch,” he whispered.
Now satisfied, my feral beast retreated with a grin, and the human faced the consequences.
Fuck.
I never wanted to be mated. I’d chosen that life purposely. And now…now, I’d forced him into it.
“Shit.” I touched my mouth, my fingers wet with Poe’s blood, and a small part of me wished he’d fucking deck me for doing it. I didn’t regret it. No, in fact, I wished I’d done it sooner. That little piece of my magic inside Poe twinkled and called out, begging to be completed. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” He forced out a mocking laugh. “I begged you for this months ago, and you spurned me. Now someone else beats you to it, you just fucking snap?”
“I’m not sorry I did it,” I snarled. “But not like this…I should have taken better care of you. I should have—”
“Poe?” Ava called from her room. “Is that Lycan?”
Poe blinked and looked away. I stepped back from him, the spell now broken.
We’d deal with that later. First, I needed to tend to my wife.