Chapter Twenty-Two
Darius…
In my whole life, I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want to be balls deep in Effie right now.
Kissing her while I’ve got one hand lifting her perfect fucking ass and the other with my now-sheathed claw behind her back so her bare skin isn’t pressed against the cold stone cave wall is the best and the worst thing to ever happen to me.
I want to keep going, but if I don’t pull back enough to slide inside her right the fuck now, it feels like I might implode.
My little chaos witch, though, must sense my dilemma or have had enough of waiting herself.
She pulls away from the kiss what little she can considering our position and says, “The rest of it later. I need you inside me. Now.”
At least I’m not the only one riding the edge of losing it completely.
Sure, I could say something clever if I could put two thoughts together at the moment, but I can’t. Not when she’s this close, we’re both naked, and I know just how damn good it feels to slide my cock home. So I do the best I can and give a growl of agreement before doing exactly what Effie wants.
“Fuck me,” I gasp out as soon as I plunge my cock deep.
“That’s the general idea,” Effie says, somehow still coherent as she starts undulating her hips.
It’s almost more than I can take. I need…
I don’t know exactly, but I know it involves Effie.
So without losing our rhythm, I settle back so I’m sitting on the edge of the moonstone crate, taking her with me so she’s riding my cock like it’s her favorite thing in the world to do.
Thank fuck the chest is charmed to stand the weight of four of me, because if this thing were to break while Effie is doing that thing with her body that’s making me see stars, I’d continue going even if I had a million splinters in my ass.
Hands on her hips, I help piston her up and down on my dick.
She’s pressed tight against my front, as if she needs the friction of my chest against her nipples.
I get it. It doesn’t feel like I can touch enough of her either.
Everything seems to be building and intensifying as I fuck her, going as deep as I can and filling her completely before tugging her upward so I can shove her down on me again.
The sound of our bodies coming together and the sweet scent of her wet pussy fill the cave.
I’m either kissing her mouth or running my lips down her neck or nipping at the sensitive skin at her shoulder as she controls the pace and rhythm.
Up and down and hip twist and arching her back to take me in more, she is absolutely perfect.
Nothing has ever felt this good before. Our skin is slick with the effort of it all, and I’m breathing like I’m on mile one hundred of a marathon, but there’s no way I’m stopping.
Even as the first sensation of my orgasm starts at the base of my spine, I do my best to ignore it because I know what has to happen after all this is over, and I’m not ready for that.
Honestly, I don’t think I ever will be.
And I’m not the only one.
My wolf roars to the surface, seeking something in Effie that’s just beyond my vision, even if I can sense a raw kind of power that isn’t scented with honeysuckle in her.
No, this is an earthier smell mingled with fresh spring grass and newly budding blackberry bushes.
There’s sunshine and the feel of the first warm breeze after a season of icy winds.
And there’s wolf.
And witch.
And something extra, like the universe itself touched her.
All of it is mixed together like the smells in the woods after a summer storm.
Even if I want to, there’s no holding back my wolf at this realization.
“She is ours,” my wolf says.
“Mine,” I respond before biting down on the delicate spot at the side of her throat where it meets her shoulder.
The need to mark her, to claim her, to make public the acknowledgment that she is mine and I am hers isn’t something I can resist anymore.
She is my mate.
My fated mate.
As I thrust inside her, my balls tighten as I tease the spot with my teeth again.
“Darius, yes,” she says, her arms hooking underneath my armpits and across my upper back as her hands hold my shoulders tight. “Do it again.”
Denying her isn’t even something I could imagine doing right now.
Not when she’s making that sound and thrusting her hips to meet mine, all but demanding with her body that I give her everything, all at once—now.
It takes every bit of the threadbare control I have left to keep from coming right now.
My whole body is screaming for release, but Effie wants more.
I have to give it to her. I have to let her have all of me. I want her to have all of me.
It happens almost in the same breath; my wolf rushes forward and calls out to that part of her he’s recognized from the beginning. The part that is ours just as we are hers.
“Fuck, Darius,” Effie calls out, her nails biting into my shoulders as she tightens her hold. “What is going—”
Before she can finish her question, though, her orgasm hits and her wrist, the one I instinctually know has the Kardia freckles, presses against my shoulder blade with the Kardia tattoo, and it’s like lightning fills the entire cave.
Everything else is a dim half thought in comparison to the mating bond that weaves us together in an instant, a fiery flash of forever.
“Effie” is all I manage to get out between clenched teeth before I drive one last time into her, coming so hard I nearly black out.
It’s not until much later, when we’re both lying on the blanket I pulled from the moonstone trunk, and she’s sleeping in my arms, that I let her question roll around in my head. What is going on? Nothing I’ve ever hoped for.
Fated mates.
Even if I’d only considered the possibility or started to accept the reality of it maybe happening, there’s no way to deny it now. This changes everything.
Until Effie convinced me to let my wolf run, I’d forgotten what it felt like to be this free, and having her with me only makes the feeling more intense.
The one thing I’ve learned about being an alpha from watching my grandmother and father do such a shit job of it is that it’s not about controlling others. It’s about controlling yourself.
But now I know there’s more. A leader also has to be able to let go. I can’t keep my wolf locked up; I have to let him do his job when the time comes. I never would have realized the deep truth of that if not for Effie.
I owe her everything, and that’s why I have to make her leave. What’s about to happen is too dangerous for her. I have to keep her safe—and she won’t be safe if she comes back to Arcadia with me.
I’ll get Aunt Artemis to break the proximity hex or whatever it is that keeps her rubber-banding back to me.
No, I don’t know how Artemis managed to do it, but she did.
It’s the only explanation for it happening, and one I wasn’t open to accepting until she showed up in the cave the other night.
There’s more to Artemis than I ever realized.
I don’t know exactly what, but she’s more than just the pack oracle who’s been around for generations and my honorary aunt.
Whatever Artemis’s reasons, whatever she was hoping to accomplish with the proximity spell, it’s not going to happen.
Effie Sherwood has to go home—her home. She can’t stay with me in Arcadia because what has to happen next, well, it’s going to be bloody, and I highly doubt I’ll make it out alive—but neither will Nikos, and that’s the whole point. Whatever happens, it’ll be worth it if the pack is free of him.
I’m done pretending the Fates don’t have a hand in my life. The sisters measured the length of my life string on the day I was born.
That’s why I was sent to live with the centaurs—so I could see what life could be like when not living in fear of the leader.
That’s why Nikos became my number two, because the rot had to become so bad it couldn’t be ignored.
That’s why I got the inside information about where to find the witch’s big bad spell book, because that’s how I’d find Effie.
That’s why I’m the alpha, so I will be the person to make the big sacrifices, not Aunt Artemis, not the rest of my pack, not the curvy little chaos witch I love.
I hook a finger around the purple leather band Artemis tied around my wrist the day she gave me the Kardia tattoo.
She’d said it was now a part of me, a visual representation of my fate.
I hadn’t bought that, but touching it when I am working through a problem has become a habit.
And the Fates know I have a problem in figuring out how to keep Effie safe when she can’t leave my side.
And that’s when it hits me. Artemis placed the proximity charm, but not on Effie. She tied it around my wrist when she gave me the Kardia tattoo. I’ve had it the whole time. And once I finally found Effie, its dormant magic came to life.
All of it was fated. I admit it. I accept it. But I won’t give in to the last part of the Fates’ plan to keep Effie and me together.
This is my battle alone.
Effie goes free. She stays alive. She stays safe.
So that’s my plan. We go back toward Arcadia. I break the proximity spell. Effie goes home. I save the pack. None of the rest really matters.