Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
CARTER
Emma stares at us, her brown eyes blown wide. She doesn’t smell as afraid as before, though there’s an underlying whiff of tension marring her delicious floral scent.
“Yeah,” I confirm, “werewolves.”
Her face is so damn expressive, but right now, I can’t tell what she’s thinking.
“Care to elaborate?” she asks, focusing on me.
I lean back against the couch, trying to stamp down on my worries.
We nearly blew it with her already, first with the near kidnapping at her car, then with Sebastian prancing around the house in his half form.
I knew we should have called ahead, but what were the chances of him getting firewood half-naked at the exact moment we drove up?
He must have been distracted thinking about his art or something, otherwise he would have heard the truck coming and moved inside just in case.
But to be fair, the likelihood of a stranger coming up to our house in this storm was so small, I can’t blame him.
“What would you like to know?” I ask, my voice gruff.
Troy throws me a frown, which I ignore. Yeah, I’m being an asshole, but the fact is, we haven’t done this—met our mate—before.
So I’m fucking rusty at talking to women.
And if I’m completely honest with myself, I’m terrified she’ll freak anyway, decide we’re more trouble than she wants in her life, and disappear as quickly as she appeared, leaving us alone again.
“Well,” she muses, “the how would be a good start.”
“The how?” Troy asks.
She turns to him. “Yeah. How did you become werewolves? Were you born or bitten or cursed?”
“Born,” he answers without hesitation. “You can’t become a werewolf if you aren’t born of the bloodline.”
“Oh.” Some of the tension melts from her shoulders, and she takes another sip of her coffee. “That’s good. So you didn’t bring me here to bite me and turn me. Got it.”
“We might bite,” Sebastian says before I can stop him. “There’s claiming bites and love bites, and they’re both very enjoyable.”
“Sebastian!”
Both Troy and I snap out at him, and the kid blushes to the roots of his auburn hair.
His eyes go round, and he slaps his hand over his mouth.
And I instantly know what’s happening. His fangs are popping, probably at the thought of putting a claiming bite on our mate, and he doesn’t want to scare Emma any more.
If she screams again, if she rejects him…
I might be a hundred percent sure she’s the one we’ve been searching for all these years, but if she hurts Sebastian—
Emma carefully sets the still-steaming mug on the coffee table next to Sebastian. Then she takes his wrist and gently tries to pry his hand away from his mouth. When he refuses, she halts her movements.
“Will you show me?” she asks.
With a panicked glance at me, Sebastian finally lets her move his hand.
His incisors have lengthened, his human teeth sharpening into fangs.
He drops his gaze to his lap—so he doesn’t see Emma’s expression, but I do.
She’s not screaming. Or running away. Instead, she’s watching Sebastian’s mouth closely, her body leaning toward him.
“Does it hurt?” she whispers.
Sebastian shakes his head.
“Can you show me more?”
Finally, he lifts his chin, and the fragile hope that flares in his eyes is a punch to my chest. We’d all been hoping to find a mate who would accept us—but we’d all thought she’d be a supernatural like us.
That’s why we chose to buy this land as ours, to establish our new, small pack in the area.
In recent years, more and more monsters have been settling in the woods surrounding Clearwater, drawn in by nature, the ley lines running under the earth, or gods know what else.
We never imagined we’d get a human woman as our mate. One who’s beautiful and soft and smells like peaches and summer meadows and isn’t afraid of us anymore.
Oh, she’d been scared out of her mind earlier.
The acrid scent of her panic was the worst thing I’ve ever smelled, because it made me want to shift and rip into whatever had caused her to feel that way.
Only the threat had been me. And Troy, to a lesser extent.
She’d taken one look at my face and backed away.
But now she’s encouraging Sebastian without so much as a whiff of apprehension, and I have to wonder if she’s in shock.
Or maybe she’s a few cards short of a full deck.
She should be more afraid of monsters than men, yet she’d been terrified of me when she’d thought I was a human on the side of the road.
Sebastian doesn’t wait for my permission before he partially shifts in front of her.
His face changes, his jaw thickening, his teeth growing even larger.
He stretches out the seams of his t-shirt until they rip, and his furry shoulders are on full display.
His hazel eyes turn golden, his curly hair more pelt-like, though it’s still reddish-brown in color.
His true wolf form is a gorgeous russet brown.
A surge of pride courses through me at the thought that he’s a part of my pack.
He joined Troy and me and trusted me enough to wait when I said we’d find our fourth mate eventually.
Through several years of moving around the country, even going abroad, he stuck with me as his alpha.
As did Troy, never once faltering in their faith that I’ll eventually bring our mate home to us.
When we were drawn to Clearwater, Maine, I’d thought it was because of the supernatural population in the area. We’d attended fucking picnics and fall festivals trying to find the one destined for us.
And now she’s here, completely unexpected and yet so damn wonderful.
I can’t help but lean in again for a sniff. Despite Sebastian’s half form, she’s not panicking. She’s got nerves of steel, it seems, which is good because she’ll need them.
Having three mates is unusual in the human world. Seeing us sprout fur won’t be the only adjustment she’ll have to make in the next couple of days. It’s why I’ve been trying to get Troy and Seb to slow down, but for once, they’re done listening to me.
“Wow,” she whispers. “This is…wild.”
Sebastian runs a clawed hand over the longer fur on his head. “You’re not afraid.”
His voice comes out a low, guttural growl, but the words are still clear.
Emma blinks. “You can speak!”
Troy’s quiet laugh tells me he’s enjoying this. Of course he is. If Emma is this calm about Sebastian’s monster, she might not freak out over Troy’s either, though that’s more of a stretch.
“We can speak in this form, yeah,” I explain. “Not so in our full wolf form.”
She turns her curious gaze on me, and something in my chest pings with awareness. I want to bask in the glow of her attention. I’ll answer every question she has if that means she’ll keep looking at me like that.
Fuck. I’m completely gone already. And that’s not great with the full moon coming up on Christmas Day. If we haven’t claimed her before then, we’ll be in huge trouble.
“Can you show me your wolf form?” she asks.
Satisfaction courses through me at the realization that she’s asking me.
Not them. Which…I’m not proud of. I’m the alpha of our pack, and I’d be the first to remind the other two that everything in the pack is shared equally, so her attention must be, too.
But I can’t deny that I want her to see my wolf first.
I stand and unbutton my flannel shirt. I fumble with the small buttons, give up after two, and just drag the thing off my back with one fast tug. Something rips, and Troy lets out another laugh. I pin him with a glare, but the fucker just grins at me, his smile lazy.
“Take it all off,” he murmurs, and damn him, my cock gets half hard in my jeans.
We’ve fucked each other—and Sebastian—often enough over the years.
We were destined for each other, even though we’ve been waiting for our fourth mate to show up.
The insatiable sex drive leading up to the full moon had us in its grip every month, so we took care of each other.
Troy knows exactly what’s happening to me right now, probably because he’s also hard.
Sebastian sniffs the air, gives a small whine in the back of his throat, and pulls a pillow off the couch to his lap to disguise the erection tenting his sweatpants.
That’s a good idea. If Emma sees what he’s packing between his legs in this form, she might run out the door, snowstorm be damned.
I grit my teeth and think of shoveling cow shit in Troy’s mother’s barn, of ice-cold baths in Clearwater Lake, and manage to stop myself from getting a raging boner. Then I shove down my jeans and shift before Emma has a chance to see anything below my belt at all.
The magic of my transformation takes hold, and I let out a huff of breath.
Slipping into my other skin is easy. I shake myself, then sit on my rump to scratch my back paw below my ear where I’m itchy.
It takes my wolfish mind a moment to gather its thoughts, such as they are, and focus on the woman staring at me with wide eyes.
She’s pretty. And her scent…
Without hesitation, I rise to my feet and step forward. In this form, there is no doubt left in my mind that she’s mine—ours.
“Oh my God,” she whispers.
Her scent spikes with worry, but I don’t want her to be afraid. I let out a low sound, then nudge at her knee. When she raises a tentative hand and puts it closer to my snout, as if for me to sniff, I lick her palm instead, my first taste of her.
She’s so fucking sweet.
Wiggling closer, I put my big head in her lap. In this form, I’m a lot larger than a dog or any wolf, even, so I understand why she’s hesitant, but I need her to relax.
“This is so unreal,” Emma murmurs as she slowly runs her fingers through the fur on my neck.
It feels amazing, so I angle my head a little to get her to scratch me.
She glances up at Troy. “Is that really him?”
He leans in from her side and wraps his thick arms around her. I never thought the big guy would be the one with the best self-control out of the three of us, but since he’s the only one not sprouting fur at the moment, it makes sense Emma is turning to him for advice.
“Yeah, honey.” He nuzzles her hair with his cheek, rubbing his scent all over her. “Carter’s wolf is black.” He motions toward Sebastian. “His is this reddish brown, like the fur you see on him now.”
Her fingers move absentmindedly over my head, and she scratches me behind the ears. I’d bet she has a dog—or had one growing up—because it’s an instinctual reaction from her.
“And you?” she asks Troy. “What color are you?”
He smiles down at her. “I guess you’ll have to wait and see.”
His expression is mild, but I know he’s stalling.
He doesn’t like to let his wolf out—or his half form—and I get that, I do.
Now that our mate is here, though, he’ll have to get over it, or they’ll both get hurt.
I don’t say anything right now, not that I could in this form, but I’ll have to talk to him about it.
If he leaves his revelation for too long, he’ll be in trouble when moon magic is riding him hard in a couple of days.
Emma turns back to me. “Thank you for showing me.” Then she looks down at Troy’s arms, which are banded around her body, and frowns. “You guys like to touch, huh?”
Troy’s contented rumble is a sound I haven’t heard in months.
I glance up at him, noting for the first time the fine crow’s feet around his eyes, the frown lines between his eyebrows.
He’s relaxed now, though, as if Emma’s proximity is enough to loosen the tension that’s been gripping him all this time.
I curse myself for not noticing how my pack mate was suffering. It only makes me more determined to make this thing work.
Sebastian explains to Emma that, yes, wolves are very fond of hugs, kisses, and fucking, and I make a promise to myself. As I scent her pussy getting wet at my friend’s words, I know that fate has made the right choice for us. I will do anything to make Emma stay.
Anything.