Chapter 40 Aiden
AIDEN
“Wyatt,” Avery growled. “You’re not supposed to lift heavy things.”
Wyatt continued to wheel Avery’s trunk off the stoop in front of her cabin and into the grass. “Babe, I’m not lifting anything,” he said with a guileless smile. “I’m dragging your practically weightless trunk a very short distance.”
She tossed her ponytail over her shoulder, crossed her arms over her chest, and hit him with her sternest glare.
His grin only widened. Avery had to know by now that behavior accomplished nothing except giving Wyatt an erection.
He set her trunk down gently next to the duffle bags I’d already collected from her cabin and lined up at the edge of the path. Heath and Elijah would be arriving soon with Heath’s SUV so that we could cram her luggage in with ours.
It’d taken a lot of negotiating with Ian at breakfast, but he’d eventually agreed to “let” us drive Avery home before we would return to the Gale Estate.
We’d agreed to “let” her have a full forty-eight hours of family time before we’d be dropping back by for a visit, and even that amount of time apart from our mate had nearly given Heath an aneurysm.
I’d bet my entire trust fund that he’d already found us a short-term rental in her neighborhood for these last few weeks before school would begin.
Avery had watched our back and forth with an amused smile on her face, eating her waffle with one hand and clutching Wyatt’s thigh with the other as he demolished three plates of pancakes.
A night sleeping with our mate in his arms had done that bear good.
I itched for my turn.
My jaguar bristled. Soon.
“Oh, look who it is,” Wyatt said dryly as George slithered out of the bushes. “I heard you were being a menace in the infirmary while I slept.”
George hissed at Wyatt and then made himself at home on top of one of the duffles.
Avery cooed at him and tickled his chin. “Such a good boy. Thank you for keeping my brother in line.”
I walked over and tucked her into my side. “He’s going to try to stow away in your luggage,” I said.
“I know. He’s not as sneaky as he thinks he is.”
Wyatt retrieved the last of Avery’s items from the cabin, returning with her swords in their harness and her backpack. He set her backpack down on top of her trunk and then held up her blades. “Where do you want these, Wildcat?”
She gave him her back. “I’ll wear them for now.”
He shot me a sly grin and then slowly slipped the straps of her harness over her shoulders, which were bare beneath the flimsy little tank top she wore.
After she’d shrugged them on, he slid his hands down her arms, over her rib cage, and then settled them on her hips.
He dipped down and kissed her shoulder, and then he continued a path along her neck.
She bit her lip and arched for him, sighing happily as he worked.
I took a moment to bask in our new, incredible normal.
And then I struck while the iron was blazing hot.
I grabbed Avery’s face and kissed her hard.
She moaned into my mouth as Wyatt and I pressed her between us.
She writhed in our hold, her little moans siphoning every ounce of blood from my brain and sending it straight to my cock.
Coherent thoughts escaped me, other than that I couldn’t wait to do this exact thing for the next hundred years of our long shifter lives.
She gasped as I lovingly cupped her tits in my hands. “We can’t…. Anyone could walk by….”
A car horn blasted through the air.
I hugged Avery to my chest and turned to glare at the black SUV that’d just pulled up in front of the cabin.
Heath gave me a droll look from the driver’s seat. “Really? Just out here where we can all see and smell what you’re up to?”
Elijah leaned across the console and waggled his brows. “Dove, are you enjoying yourself?”
“I was, actually.” She kissed my cheek, squeezed Wyatt’s hand, then extricated herself from our clutches. Grinning, she slinked across the grass and over to Heath’s window.
She propped herself on the frame and said something to him. He lost the stern Alpha face and went moon-eyed at our girlfriend. A few more words were exchanged, and then he growled and yanked her head into the car so that he could make out with her. Elijah cackled in the passenger seat.
“This is the life,” Wyatt said, coming to stand next to me. “Imagine what it’ll be like when we’re actually bonded to her.”
“I’m almost afraid to. I’m terrified I’ll wake up and this will all have been a dream.”
A dream I’d thought was just that. I’d hurt my mate. I’d looked her in her gorgeous eyes while she stood in front of me, looking more beautiful than I’d ever comprehended a female could, and called her no one. I’d dismissed her in a forest full of wraiths and nearly gotten her killed.
I didn’t deserve this new life, but I’d cling to it until my fingers bled all the same.
When Heath finally released Avery, we got to work loading her luggage into the car. Well, three of us did. Avery forbade Wyatt from lifting anything. He just smiled and told her to try and stop him, and she did—by inviting him to pin her to the side of the car and shove his tongue down her throat.
Heath and I were arguing over the best way to stash all the bags around the car and still leave room for five tall shifters and a snake when a large white Suburban rolled slowly up to the cabin and parked a few feet behind Heath’s car.
I squinted at it. “Who the hell—”
The doors opened. Kellan emerged from the driver’s seat and the rest of his quad from the back.
An older man I didn’t recognize climbed out of the passenger seat.
His hair was long—not as long as my dad’s or Kellan’s, but shoulder-length—and white, streaked with a touch of the blond it must’ve been years ago.
He was in good shape and looked to be in his sixties, but he was almost certainly shifter, which meant he was probably closer to eighty.
Like us, Kellan’s quad wore the T-shirts and jeans of the civilians we were finally free to be, but the older man wore slacks, a perfectly pressed dress shirt, and shiny black shoes.
Kellan and the others fell in behind him as he walked toward us, his amber eyes taking in Avery with covetous interest.
I went from confused to murderous in a blink.
That fucking bastard griffin.
The others clocked it, too, and we surrounded our mate. Avery watched the group approach with a placid look, but her tiger had been roused and was ready to kill at the slightest provocation.
Our beasts responded in kind. I didn’t know what Kellan was trying to pull, but he was walking his quad and this elderly shifter into an active minefield.
“Hello, there,” the older man said with a friendly smile.
He held up his hands in surrender. “Now, now, there’s no need for the violence I can feel brewing from the rather impressive beasts in this group.
I completely understand the concern, but I assure you I mean no harm to any of you, nor do my grandson and his quad. ”
Ah. This was Jeremiah Crimson.
Kellan’s grandfather. Ex-Council member. His tenure had ended a few years before my fathers’ began. Like Kellan, he was a griffin—an aging one who’d retired from public life decades ago.
“And what exactly is the purpose of this visit?” Heath asked. His wolf had not turned down the temperature, so neither would the rest of us.
“Ah, well.” Jeremiah set his sights on Avery again. “I am actually here to speak to Miss Baxter. I must say, I am a bit disappointed to find you in the company of Holden Blackwell’s sons and their quad, my dear.”
“I can assure you that Holden Blackwell’s sons are disappointed every day they wake up and are still related to him,” Avery replied, her voice dry as the desert.
No truer words. As it turned out, my father was a horror that Heath and I hadn’t yet even begun to comprehend.
Jeremiah arched a white brow. “Is that so? Well, perhaps they are more promising young men than I’d thought.”
“Get to the point,” Heath growled.
“Yes, quite right.” Jeremiah beamed a worshipful smile at Avery. “My name is Jeremiah Crimson. I’m Kellan’s grandfather, and you, my dear, are a true treasure of our kind, to put it mildly. The moment my grandson told me of your beast, I had to meet you.”
Avery glared at Kellan over his grandfather’s shoulder, and he at least had the modicum of decency to appear apologetic. It didn’t matter, though, since he’d been staring at Avery all summer in the same way his grandfather was now, and knowledge of her tiger had only made it worse.
“I’m sorry,” Kellan said to her. “I promise your secret is safe with my grandfather, Avery. He’s on your side.”
“No,” she said, her voice that calm quiet that spelled danger. “I suspect your grandfather is on your side, Kellan.”
He winced.
“We are all on the same side, I assure you,” Jeremiah said smoothly. “Now, Avery, I wonder—how much do you know about the legend of the White Tiger?”
“I know the same bullshit that everyone else is taught,” she replied.
Jeremiah grinned. “Do you? How do you know it’s bullshit, then?”
“Because she didn’t betray her people, she didn’t die, and she wasn’t barren,” Avery spat. “At least, that’s the story that’s been passed down through my family. She lived on with her bonded mates and had children that I am, in all likelihood, descended from.”
It took everything I had to not let the surprise show on my face. We’d spent all summer just trying to heal the rift between us and our mate, and now that we were finally together, we still had so much to learn about her.
Jeremiah gave her an indulgent smile. “Indeed. But there is so much more to it, my dear. And that’s why I’m here.
I am part of a group of… scholars, let’s say, who have strived to uncover and safeguard the truth about our ancestors and the events surrounding the First Guardians.
As you know, it is the stories of those events that have so strongly shaped our society today. ”