Chapter 22
Chapter twenty-two
Alex
I last until the building goes quiet.
The reduced hum of it, corridors settled, doors stopped. I lie in my Gold House bed and feel the bonds pulling warm in every direction and the full moon doing what the full moon does to everything in me that is wolf.
Ten more minutes.
Then I get up.
Gray's door first. He's already awake — sitting on the edge of his bed in the dark, elbows on his knees. He takes me in when I push the door open.
"Pack run," I whisper.
He's on his feet before I finish.
We move through Gold House and out into the main corridor. The Orange House exterior code takes me two tries. Leo's door — no exterior lock in Orange House, just Leo asleep on his back with one arm thrown over his face and the moonlight coming through his window.
I put my hand over his mouth before I shake him.
His eyes open. Wild for half a second. Then he clocks me and Gray behind me and his whole face changes.
I lift one finger.
He nods so hard his hair moves. Dressed in twenty seconds.
Red House is the problem. The exterior lock is a real one and I crouch in front of it in the corridor while Gray and Leo stand behind me.
"Do you need help," Leo whispers.
"No," I whisper.
"Because I could—"
"Leo."
"I'm just saying—"
"Shh," Gray says.
The lock gives. We move fast — Jake's door, Jim's, RJ's. Jake looks at me. At Leo. Back at me.
"Finally," he says. Full volume.
"Shh," everyone says at once.
RJ's door. I push it open and he's already standing, the wolf close to the surface, his eyes catching the corridor light. His gaze moves past me — takes in the pack filling the corridor behind him — and something in his face opens.
He steps out and closes his own door quiet as anything.
Six of us moving through the building toward Dalton's room. Leo whispers a theory about the new residents the entire way. Gray tells him to be quiet twice. Torres's door stays closed as we pass and I make a mental note to feel guilty about that later.
Dalton opens his door before we knock.
He takes us all in — Leo still mid-whisper, Jake suppressing a grin, RJ with his hand already finding the back of my neck, Gray composed, Jim trying not to laugh — and his expression does the thing where he's already run the calculation.
His keys are in his hand.
"Pack run," I say.
He looks at the moon through the corridor window. Then at me.
"Took you long enough," he says.
***
The night is cold and clear and the moon is enormous.
I shift first. The wolf takes me clean and fast and the night opens — scent and sound and information in every direction, six bonds warm and pulling in the dark. Dalton shifts beside me. Then Gray. Then Leo, who takes three strides and immediately surges ahead.
Jake goes after him. Jim goes after Jake.
RJ shifts last. Massive and dark, the biggest wolf here by a margin that matters. He rolls his shoulders once, looks at me, and I don't wait — I run.
He runs with me.
The forest opens up and the pack spreads through it. Leo is ahead pushing hard. Jake catches him and they race through a gap in the trees, shoulders colliding, neither conceding. Jim ghosts between them and pulls ahead of both and Leo's outrage carries fifty feet back without a sound.
Gray runs beside me steady and certain.
RJ peels wide — circles out, comes back in — and then deliberately cuts across Leo's line, shouldering him off course mid-stride. Leo stumbles. Recovers. Turns to look and RJ is already gone, back beside me, shoulder brushing mine like nothing happened.
I feel it pull warm between us. RJ doing something for no reason except that he wanted to.
Leo finds the frozen stream and slides across it because of course he does and Jake skids into him and they go down in a tangle of limbs. Jim sits on the bank and watches with satisfaction. RJ stops beside me and we watch Leo attempt to re-establish dignity on a frozen stream.
RJ bumps my shoulder and runs.
I chase after him.
***
The cabin is at the far edge of a clearing — dark windows, the cold of a space nobody has used in a long time. Dalton shifts back and gets the door open and we push in after him, shifting back one by one in the dark.
Someone finds a kerosene lamp.
Leo finds it, which means it's no longer a quiet discovery.
"Found a lamp," Leo says.
"We can see that," Gray says.
"Just letting you know, I found it."
Dalton gets the fire going fast. The cabin is one room — wide wooden floor, heat coming up quickly, lamplight catching everyone still bright-eyed from the run.
RJ is near the door, taking the room in.
Not doing the circuit. Not checking exits.
Just standing in a room full of his pack, adjusting to what that feels like.
He catches me watching.
I don't look away.
He crosses the room and puts his hand on my jaw and tilts my face up and looks at me — checking I'm still real, still here. His thumb moves once along my cheekbone. His grip steadies. He doesn't check the room again.
Then he steps back and lets Leo in.
***
Leo's hands find my face and his mouth finds mine — hungry, reckless, no patience for buildup, just the full force of him right now.
He backs me up and I go, his hands already working at my clothes.
Gray comes in behind me, mouth at the back of my neck, unhurried the way Gray is always unhurried, and the contrast between them is immediate and deliberate and doing things to me I won't recover from quickly.
I turn my head and Gray tips my face toward him and kisses me slow, eye contact the whole way through.
Jim settles beside me and waits until I look at him.
"Hi," he says.
"Hi," I say.
"Good run," he says.
"Jim."
"Just making conversation," he says, and his fingers find me wet and his expression shifts from composed to focused and he strokes slow and watches my face like I'm information he's collecting.
Leo pulls back just enough to watch. Gray's mouth drags down my spine. I shiver. Jim's fingers curl.
"Please," I say.
"Please what," Jim says.
I growl.
His fingers curl again. "There it is," he says.
Jim works me until I'm almost there — then Leo hoists me up and my legs go around his hips.
Leo's cock pushes into me and my head drops back against Gray's shoulder — Leo thrusts deep and reckless, his hands on my hips, his mouth at my throat, setting a pace that leaves no room for thinking.
I feel Gray nudge my opening and Leo stills.
Gray pushes in alongside Leo and I'm gasping, so full, so good.
They take turns pressing into me, never fully pulling out.
When they both feel me tightening they press in together and grind me down.
I'm coming and screaming and we release together. Warm pulses fill me.
Before I come down Jim is there, pulling me to him, setting me down on his cock.
I slide down and shiver through the aftershocks.
Jim is exacting — his hands lifting me and slamming me back down, the pace relentless.
Jake's fingers find my clit and I fall again.
My orgasm triggers Jim's and he holds me through it, jaw at my shoulder, his grip bruising and certain.
Jake waits until I reach for him. Until I pull his face to mine and kiss him first. Then I push him down and take him deep in my throat — his taste, the sounds he makes, his hand fisting my hair without pushing.
Dalton enters me from behind, slow and deliberate, filling me completely as I work Jake.
Jake taps my head when he's close and I take him over the edge and swallow and feel him shudder underneath me.
I lean back against Dalton's chest as he keeps moving, slow now, his hands warm on my hips.
RJ is watching from across the fire.
The bond pulls — warm and certain and waiting.
"Come here," I say.
He crosses the room and crouches in front of me and takes my face in his hands. His eyes move over me — checking the way he checks, making sure I'm here and real and his. The bond blazes between us. He kisses me once, deep and unhurried, his thumb at my jaw.
Then his mouth moves down and his tongue finds my clit — firm and focused — and my hand goes to his hair and holds while Dalton keeps his slow rhythm behind me.
The two of them together build something that hits all at once and I come hard, Dalton following with his hands tight on my hips, his breath at my ear.
RJ stands. His hands find my waist and he walks me to the wall and pins me there — his cock thick and certain as he pushes inside me and the bond slams with it, new and complete and roaring. He moves hard. His face in my throat. His hands gripping.
"Still here," I say.
He makes a sound against my skin that means everything.
When I come it moves through every bond at once — all six lighting up in the dark, my voice in the room, RJ following with his face in my throat making a sound that has no word for it and doesn't need one.
***
The fire burns low. The pack settles.
Leo is asleep. Jake and Jim are tangled together, neither noticing. Gray is beside me, hand warm on my ribs, breathing slowed.
Dalton is awake. His chest under my cheek, his hand moving slow through my hair.
RJ is on my other side. Arm locked around me. Face in my hair. His bond running warm and steady — not the bruise it was, not the circuit, not the blazing heat of the clearing.
Just steady.
Here.
I stay where I am.