21. Ava #2
“Thanks, Prez,” Lycan said before he hung up. Then he looked at me and pursed his lips. “Do you think you can ride?”
“I’m not even sure I can sit upright by myself.” I was healing quicker than I normally would. I already felt better than I did when I first woke up, but London was thirteen hours away. I couldn’t sit on a bike that long.
“We’ll get a car,” Lycan said.
“Two. If anything screwy happens, Locust and Bow can peel off,” Poe agreed and walked into the living room with his phone in his hand, already shooting off directions for the rest of our security detail.
Lycan leaned down to help me up, scooping one arm under my knees and the other around my shoulders. Fresh cedar floated off him, and I tucked my head into the crook of his neck to breathe it in deep. He chuckled and tutted.
“Don’t start that now, Trouble,” he said. “You’re hurt, and my restraint is paper thin.”
“You still smell good,” I said.
He put my feet on the ground and kept one arm around my back to stabilize me, but I could stand. I could walk. That didn’t mean it felt great.
“Shit, are you alright?” he asked at my grimace.
“I’ll live,” I said, testing a step. When I didn’t pass out from the agony, I tried another. And another. It was slow going, but I wasn’t completely useless. Lycan paced around the room, grabbing what little we’d managed to take from the cabin in Copenhagen.
When everything was packed up, I’d just managed to put on a shoe, bending over to tie it. Lycan noticed and dropped to one knee in front of me, tightening the laces.
“I can do it,” I said.
“Of course,” he said. “Doesn’t mean you should have to.”
I stared at the back of his silver-blond head and touched the mark on my neck, allowing a small bit of guilt to creep into my chest.
He must have sensed that because he glanced up at me and sighed through his nose.
“For what it’s worth,” I murmured. “I’m sorry. About Poe.”
He smirked. “No, you’re not. And neither am I.”
In a rare moment of vulnerability, I swallowed and touched his cheek. “Do you think you’d ever mark me? Do you think you’d ever let me mark you?”
Lycan opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, Locust popped his head into the room.
“We’re ready when you are,” he said.
And just like all the stolen moments before, the words died on his tongue. I watched his response fade behind his eyes, hardening into resolution. I didn’t know if I’d ever get an answer, but maybe it didn’t matter. He’d made his choice, and I’d made mine, and on life went.
The road trip gave me a lot of time to think, mostly about how I’d found myself stuffed into the backseat of an old minivan that reeked of mildew and stale cigarettes while Lycan and Poe argued over music up front.
For someone who had so much control over their life for twenty-six years, living so recklessly should have given me whiplash. But all I felt was pity for the woman I once was.
I ruminated on the look in Lycan’s eyes when I asked him if he’d ever bite me or let me bite him.
He hadn’t said no, but it also didn’t look like he’d say yes.
For someone who’d said he never wanted to mate anyone, I couldn’t really blame him.
I thought about what Poe explained: two dominant shifters would tear each other apart over a potential mate.
But the way those two teased each other for most of the last five hours didn’t make me believe they were close to doing that.
If anything, I should feel like tearing out Lycan’s throat for daring to mark what I’d already claimed, but I didn’t.
It shouldn’t be right, but it was. It shouldn’t feel like my heart was so full it could burst, but it did.
“You doing okay back there?” Poe asked, glancing over his shoulder from the passenger seat.
“Just fine,” I said. “But I’m sorry to say I agree with Lycan. You should leave it on the classic rock station.”
Poe gasped as Lycan laughed.
“First of all, Green Day is not classic rock,” he huffed.
“They were the pinnacle of late nineties/early aughts punk. AC/DC is classic rock. Lynyrd Skynyrd is classic rock.” He went on, but I caught Lycan’s wink in the rearview mirror.
He’d been right, after all. Riling up Poe was entirely too much fun and so very easy.
We stopped for the night at a tiny bed-and-breakfast just outside Essen.
It was the best Locust and Bow could do on such short notice, keeping our low profile in mind.
Calling it a B&B was generous. It was barely more than a three-bedroom cottage on the outskirts of town, run by a retired couple and a dachshund that greeted us with a friendly tail wag and curious sniffs.
Poe helped me hobble up the stairs, but after a few hours, I was doing much better.
When I made it to the bathroom to shower, I checked the wound in the mirror.
It looked like it had happened weeks ago rather than earlier in the day.
My side no longer ached when I breathed, and the wound had scabbed over.
The silver graze still made me sluggish, but Poe assured me that would go away soon, too.
“It’s because you’re near me,” Poe said, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, watching me examine the angry bruise. “As mates, we share magic. I felt it when you got hurt. You’re pulling on my energy to heal.”
“Is it still hurting you?” I didn’t want to weaken him to get better.
“Relax, baby.” He stepped closer to brush my hair behind my ear. “It’s my honor to do it.”
I smiled and leaned my head into his hand.
“How are you with everything?” I asked, nodding at Lycan’s bite mark.
“It’s weird,” he admitted. “I spent years wishing he would, and now that he has, I’m pissed about the circumstances. I don’t know what I expected. Maybe a romantic proposal with wine and an extravagant gesture.”
I snorted.
“Not like this,” he said. “Not because he was jealous and pissed off. And now, what am I supposed to do? Bite him back? Stand aside while he bites you?”
I pinched my bottom lip between my teeth as I considered the conversation Locust had interrupted earlier.
Could the three of us have a mating bond?
Would it even work? I might spend centuries contemplating the right course of action and still have no answers.
But I knew what I felt in the woods on the full moon.
Our wolves inherently understood the dynamics, and I was tired of pretending it wasn’t there.
He sighed and dropped his hands to my waist. “Let me help you shower.”
“I’m okay,” I said. “Honestly, I feel much better.”
“I wasn’t asking.” He kissed the space between my eyebrows before turning me toward the tub and patting me on the butt. “Let’s go.”
He stripped down and climbed into the tiny shower behind me. Compared to the cabin in Copenhagen, this was practically palatial. But there wasn’t much room for both of us, and we bumped elbows while he scrubbed me down and rubbed shampoo into my hair.
“I didn’t get a chance to thank you,” I said. “For saving me.”
I remembered the feral look in his eyes when he’d seen me go down, how all traces of his humanity faded before he killed those vampires. He was terrifying, and he’d done it to protect me from it.
“Ava, you’re my mate,” he said. “You don’t have to thank me for that.”
“All the same.” I turned in his hold, pressing my body to his chest so I could nuzzle under his chin. He hugged me, and the warmth from his overheated skin seeped through my pores to my bones. “I wouldn’t have made it without you.”
“We survived,” he said. “I can’t bear the thought of losing you, so we’re not going down that road.”
I tilted my head up to look at him, really look at him, and I noticed the lines of stress between his brows, the tight set of his lips.
Perhaps to reassure him he hadn’t lost anything today, I pushed up on my toes and kissed him, wrapping my arms around his neck to pull him in.
He pressed his hard chest against mine, skin to skin from torso to hips to toes, and the thick scent of his arousal plumed between us—bonding and male and pheromones.
I smiled into the embrace, licking into his mouth, twisting my fingers into his hair to grip it tighter.
“How much longer are you two—” Lycan’s voice slammed the brakes on what was sure to escalate into full-blown shower sex. He paused on the other side of the glass door, glancing between us. His jaw clenched shut. His eyes glowed. “Finish up. Get out. Meet me in the bedroom.”
Lycan walked away, and I glanced up at Poe, whose own eyes radiated a mixture of wolf and shame. He looked like he’d been caught with his hand in the honey jar, his cheeks flushed, his lips thin, his mouth open.
“Uh-oh,” I teased. “I guess we’re in trouble.”
A glimmer of his internal dialogue snuck into my mind.
“You think this is funny?” Poe asked.
I pursed my lips and tried to hide a smile. “A little.”
He scoffed and turned off the water before opening the door to step out.
He grabbed a towel and held it out so he could wrap it around my shoulders when I followed him.
I tried to hide my girlish delight as he rubbed my arms and dropped to his knees so he could dry my legs.
Once he was satisfied, he did the same to his own body, wrapping his towel around his waist and cinching it in the middle.
I grabbed his hand, took a deep breath, and walked into the bedroom, preparing myself against what we might find there.
Would Lycan throw a tantrum? Would he punish us in his own dark, twisted way?
I couldn’t handle a spanking right now. Even if I felt better, I wasn’t fully healed, and I didn’t want to risk Lycan reopening my wound during the heat of a scene and feeling terrible about it afterward.
My husband had pulled an accent chair to the left corner at the end of the bed, currently sitting in it with his legs spread and one hand propped under his chin, his fingers brushing delicately over his lips. He dropped his gaze to our linked palms before shifting back up to my eyes.
“On the bed.” He nodded toward the mattress.