Chapter 37 Heath
HEATH
The carefully built composure I’d been wearing like kevlar since the moment I’d had to leave my quad and my mate in the middle of a war zone crumpled like fucking tissue paper.
I could only stare silently at Avery—the beautiful, savage queen who was the love of my fucking life—as she told me every word of bile Cash had decided to spew before he and his quad tried to kill her.
Before they’d attempted to rip my soul and my wolf’s from my body.
That’s what would’ve happened if Avery died. I’d be a husk, and so would my brother. Wyatt would probably be dead, and no one would ever see Elijah in his human body again.
“I just…,” Avery whispered. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence the wards failed only a few weeks after your father ambushed me in the arena hallway. He may not know about my tiger, but he knows I’m a female Prime whose power rivals his own.”
I managed a stunned nod. “And he’s on the Council.
He has the ability to fuck with the school’s wards.
And he knows Cash’s fathers, who sit on the Northeastern Council, which means he also knows Cash.
He had an in—someone within the Guardians who had access to you and was sympathetic to their… cause.”
“Right,” she said softly.
This was so fucking devastating.
The thing I’d been worried about since the day she’d told us that he’d accosted her in the arena had already happened.
My wolf howled his fury, creating a crushing pressure in my chest. I wrapped my arms around Avery’s legs and buried my face in her lap. “I am so sorry, baby. Fuck. I knew my dad had regressive views about female shifters, but I didn’t think he was a murderer. What the fuck is wrong with him?”
She played with my hair, soothing me when I didn’t fucking deserve to be soothed. “Maybe this is another clue, Heath. Another piece of the puzzle we’re trying to solve.”
I lifted my head to stare into her gorgeous eyes. “You think my dad’s involved in the belladonna murder ring?”
She lifted a brow. “Do you?”
The dread that overcame me as I wrestled with that question made me sick to my fucking stomach.
I wouldn’t lie to Avery. Never again.
Holden was absolutely capable of something that sinister, and there was no way Stephen wasn’t complicit.
“Fuck,” I bellowed, the sound echoing off the walls of the shower. I let go of Avery’s legs and fell onto my ass.
I didn’t deserve to touch her or hold her or be comforted by her.
Phantom claws had wrapped around my lungs, every breath scraping against my rib cage.
I scooted backwards until I hit the wall of the shower.
I sat there like a fucking miserable asshole, elbows on my knees and my head in my hands while the spray of the water hit a few feet away from me, the mist dampening my clothes.
“My dads are fucking scum,” I rasped. “And I let them hurt you. I’ve failed you, just like I’ve failed my sister.”
“Hey,” Avery said gently. She crawled into my lap, straddling me.
Even through the physical pain I was experiencing due to my failures as a mate and quad leader, I was hyperaware that Avery had no panties on under her T-shirt. Blood rushed straight from my brain to my cock as she pressed her bare pussy right up against it through my thin pants.
“Avery,” I groaned.
She cupped my face in her hands, and I could only gaze up at her in awe. “None of this is your fault, Heath. You haven’t failed me or Clara, and you saved my brother’s life last night. I owe you everything.”
“I would do anything for you,” I whispered. “But fuck, baby. Cash. My own father—”
“Your father has probably been at this evil villain thing for longer than you’ve been alive. We’re onto him now, and I’m here with you. He doesn’t stand a chance against us together.”
Those were words I’d scarcely dared to dream of hearing from the girl I was so fucking madly in love with that it was a miracle I was able to function outside her presence.
My eyes felt hot and wet, and I couldn’t blame the shower. I sucked in a deep breath and tucked my face into her chest, desperate to just breathe in her scent and feel her body wrapped around mine.
A quiet rustle of the curtain sounded.
“Aiden,” Avery whispered. “He’s okay. I just told him some things—”
“I heard,” Aiden said, his voice pained. “I was standing guard out there to make sure you two had some privacy, and I heard everything.”
“Oh,” she said quietly, stroking my hair.
I could feel my brother’s despair, his helplessness, the way his jaguar paced the cage of our circumstances. I’d felt it before, and I hated it for him.
“I would take all of this from him if I could,” Aiden said to Avery. “It’s hard, you know? I’m the older brother. I should be protecting him. Handling our fucking parents. But that wasn’t the way it worked out.”
Aiden was an extremely powerful shifter and the largest jaguar in a generation. He could’ve easily led his own quad, but we’d always been inseparable, a united front against our fathers since childhood. We’d never considered anything other than sharing a quad together.
It just happened that my beast was even higher on the power and dominance scale than his. Being the quad leader suited me and my wolf just fine.
My brother had never wished for it, until I’d decided to challenge my dad. Aiden would’ve taken that from me in a heartbeat.
I’d never let him.
“It wasn’t,” Avery agreed. “But only the Moon knows why we’re made the way we are. And you do take care of him, Aiden. I’ve seen it. You’re a good brother. A good man.”
I finally lifted my head from Avery’s chest and peered over her shoulder at my brother. “Listen to our mate. She knows what she’s talking about.”
He gave me a half-hearted smile. That smile turned hungry as his gaze traced the lines of Avery’s leg where it wrapped around my waist. He watched as I slid my hands from her hips down to her bare ass, giving those perfect globes a squeeze.
Avery’s lips brushed my ear. “Are you feeling better?”
“Your naked pussy pressed against my cock could cure me of anything, Killer.”
Aiden floated further into the shower stall, and then he knelt behind Avery, the water soaking into the knees of his gray sweatpants. He pushed her wet shirt up to her neck and then began kissing a path down her spine.
I took advantage of her shirt being around her neck to fill my hands with her perky tits.
She dropped her head to my shoulder and let out a tiny little moan.
“What do you say to Aiden and me helping you shower off, Killer?” I rasped against her cheek. “Let us take care of you.”
“That depends,” she said, arching into Aiden’s touch as he pressed his lips to the crook of her neck. “I don’t just shower with any males. Will you both agree to be my… boyfriends?”
Aiden swatted her ass lightly, and she made a growly little kitten noise.
“I don’t know if I like that,” he said between the moments when he didn’t have his mouth on her skin. “Boyfriend doesn’t feel like enough, sweetheart. You’re my mate.”
I grasped her chin and brought us nose to nose. “He’s right, baby. We’re your Fated, and we hope that one day soon we’ll be your bonded mates. But, I’m a benevolent leader. We’re going to be whatever the fuck you want us to be, for now, as long as it involves us being yours.”
She nodded, pressing her forehead to mine.
“I don’t know if I’d have been able to do what I did to survive against Cash’s quad if my beast and I hadn’t needed so badly to get to you, Heath.
If I hadn’t needed to survive for Wyatt, and Aiden, and Elijah.
We belong together. I’m sorry I fought it for so long. ”
“No,” I growled. “We deserved that. We hurt you, baby. I hurt you. Even if you forgive me, I don’t know if I’ll ever truly forgive myself.”
She took my lips in a ferocious kiss, which I returned with equal fervor. I’ll devour you first, Killer.
After our tongues had battled for several long, glorious seconds, she pulled away to growl in my face. “Shut up. I told you to stop saying that shit about yourself.”
My dick was so hard, I was in physical pain. My wolf loved playing dominance games with this girl.
“You heard our girlfriend,” Aiden said. He pulled her shirt off over her head, leaving her gloriously naked in my lap. He swatted her ass again. “Up, sweetheart. Let’s get you showered.”
She let him pull her to her feet, and she stepped gracefully over me and moved under the showerhead.
“Fuck,” I muttered, my gaze glued to the rivulets of water sluicing down her tight body as she wet her hair.
“Fuck,” Aiden agreed.
She arched a brow at us. “If you’re both going to wash me, I want your clothes off.”
You’d never see two males strip so fast. I managed to peel myself off the floor as I kicked off the last leg of my sweatpants. I snagged Avery’s shampoo from her caddy and squirted some in my hand before taking my place behind her.
“Oh,” she moaned as I massaged the shampoo into her hair.
The steel pipe that was my dick was cradled against her back and the crevice of her ass. We were past the point of no return. I knew it. She knew it. Aiden also knew it.
We would not be leaving this shower before I bent her over and showed her what it meant to be mine.
Aiden had managed to get her little shower puff soapy, and he was now running it all over her body, paying special attention to her tits. After she was covered in suds, we rinsed her body and her hair, exchanging smug looks at her little mewls and happy sighs as we worked.
I grabbed her conditioner and began to work it through her long hair while Aiden gave up all pretense and shoved his tongue into her mouth. She moaned, and the heady scent of shifter lust saturated the steamy air.
When Aiden finally deigned to let her breathe and began making his way down her body, I grasped her chin and turned her head to face me over her shoulder. Hooded blue eyes gazed into mine, a soft smile on her face. She was perfect, and I rumbled my approval.
“I love you, Avery Baxter,” I growled, my lips a mere inch from hers.
“I’ve loved you since the first day I watched you swing your swords in the arena.
I loved you even when I acted like I didn’t, and I loved you even when you hated me.
I’m going to take care of you for the rest of our lives, and I will never hurt you again, do you understand me? ”
Her eyes misted, and she blinked the tears away. “I love you too,” she whispered. “So much.”
Euphoria. I took her lips in a rough, possessive kiss. “Good girl. Now get ready, because we have plans for you.”