Chapter 3
Misti hated nothing more than to be interrupted during her time with Anders. Nothing. But if Tia was waiting on them, they had to be quick.
And their love-making was actually waking her up instead of increasing her fatigue.
That he was promising her a quick release from the almost brutal tension burning inside of her almost lessened her annoyance.
“What do you have in store for me?” she whispered.
“You’ll find out.” He pulled her off of him, twisted her around so that her back faced him and lowered her until her feet touched the floor. His hands pushed her upper back down too until her hands also touched the carpet. His feet kicked her feet apart, and he entered her, deep and hard and over and over again.
Her moans grew louder with each thrust, and it only took a total of ten for her to shriek out his name.
He laughed as he helped her up. “You like any position in which I have complete control over you.”
She did. She really did.
“Maybe we should get handcuffs,” she murmured. She linked her hands behind his head and kissed him with fierce passion.
The knocking sounded again.
“I’m going to break her fingers.”
“You will do no such thing,” Misti admonished. “Now, get dressed.”
It was exactly five minutes from when Anders said that they opened the door.
“What is it?” Misti asked. The high from her orgasm was already fading at her friend’s grim expression.
“It’s… It’s my alpha.” Tia’s eyes had never looked so sorrowful.
She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Kastner, the alpha of the Wild Shades, had sometimes seemed harsh and brutal, but it was only because he truly wanted what he thought was best for his pack. They had butted heads several times, but he respected her, and she did likewise. Kastner, after all, had been her father-in-law for the brief amount of time she had been married to his son Talon. “Is he…”
“Soon.”
“Tia, can you…” Misti’s mind went blank. What needed to be done? So much but she couldn’t think of anything.
The werewolf stiffened slightly. “I would prefer to go with you.”
“Oh, of course.” Misti had often wondered about Tia’s closeness to her alpha, but that was one subject the two never broached.
Anders grabbed her hand, and they raced out of their building and into their car. He drove, and Tia sat in the backseat.
“It might not be what you’re thinking,” Anders whispered.
“Of course it is,” she snapped. Anders didn’t have the same soft spot she had for the alpha.
Her mate reached over and squeezed her knee.
Her hand covered his and held it to the point that it had to pain him, but he didn’t react, just kept on driving. They had set up different central compounds—one for the Red Nightwalkers, one for the Shadowed Stars, and one for themselves. The Wild Shades were wholly separate from them.
“It’s not easy,” he warned.
“Please.”
“You know how hard it was on me when…”
Anders’s father had died two weeks after the final battle. Anders had blamed himself because the two of them had fought each other so fearlessly. None of the healers could be certain why exactly the alpha of the Shadowed Stars had passed onto the eternal howling of the endless night. Considering that his father had exiled him for almost a decade, to say their relationship had been strained and not exactly healthy would be accurate. Those two weeks, though, they had finally been making amends.
The Shadowed Stars, for the most part, accepted Anders as their alpha, but they were not the craziest about his wife, and honestly, she wasn’t the craziest about them. She knew she had to get over her own prejudices before she could expect them to do the same.
The escalation of the long-standing battle between the Red Nightwalkers and the Shadowed Stars had aged her father decades in the span of days. She had almost not recognized him at first. Then, if someone would have told her that the monster of a wolf who had been Anders’s father would die before her father, she would’ve thought them wrong a hundred times over.
Not even a month had passed before her father had joined in the eternal howling after all. She often wondered if the two alphas still fought or if they had finally come to terms in the afterlife.
Two days later, her mother followed. Considering her mother hadn’t always been there for her, and that she never stood up to her father when he sent werewolves to hunt down and kill Misti, the two had grown apart.
Anders, and Kastner to some extent, had become her only family, and now it seemed like she might lose Kastner too.
The rest of the ride was a silent, somber one. Before Anders put the car into park, she was already opening her door. She almost stumbled to the ground, but somehow Anders was there, helping her to reclaim her balance.
“Tia… did he ever pick someone to be his heir?”
“No.”
How typical… for him to think that he might live forever, that he didn’t need to worry about what came next.
Well, he had better live long enough to name one.
The trio rushed inside and upstairs to the top floor. The door to Kastner’s room was open, and Tia walked in first. The couple waited in the hallway until she returned. “He’s still sleeping yet.”
A groan came from the bed. “Send them in, Tia,” came a much softer voice than Misti would have expected.
She fumbled her way to the bed, Anders right behind her. Now, Tia was the one to hover outside, but Kastner, looking frail and pale and completely unlike himself, motioned her in as well.
“I’m dying,” he said abruptly. “Haven’t… haven’t long.”
“What—”
“Doesn’t matter what or how.” Kastner glared at Anders. “You two need to do something for me.”
“Anything.” Misti would’ve smiled at the grimace on Anders’s face at her promise, if things weren’t so grave.
“You need to not only get the Red Nightwalkers and Shadowed Stars to come to terms with each other. I want you to bring the Wild Shades in too.”