16 Avaline
The truck tires ground to a halt on the overgrown gravel of the Sanctuary Farm driveway, and my central nervous system went up in flames.
Heat. Blinding, molten, catastrophic Heat.
My spine arched off the passenger seat. My boots drummed once against the floorboards before a tremor locked my legs straight. My lungs pulled in air that tasted like scorching steam, and the sweat broke across my skin so fast it soaked my shirt through to the leather in three seconds flat.
Kill the quiet, my White Wolf snarled from the base of my skull, her claws scraping raw across the floor of my mind. Tear the doors off. Twenty years in a glass box while they bled us. We take the male. We take the fire. Then we rip the old monster’s throat out.
Hold, I told her, my teeth grinding as the world wavered in a haze of red. We have to reach the mountain first. If we burn out here, the Arbiter wins.
No holding, she hissed, her phantom fangs snapping against my collarbones. We starved. We froze. Take what is ours!
“Avaline!”
Reed’s door flew open. His heavy boots hit the gravel with a thud that vibrated straight through the floorboards into my aching pelvis.
He was around the hood before my hands could find the door latch.
The passenger door ripped open, the cold mountain wind rushing in, but the draft didn’t cool me.
It felt like someone had thrown gasoline on a brush pile.
“Don’t touch the ground,” Reed ordered, his voice raw with panic. He reached in, sliding one massive arm behind my shoulders and the other under my knees, scooping me out of the cab.
The instant his forearms touched my feverish skin, my White Wolf snarled in feral satisfaction.
Mate. Ours. Sink your teeth into his throat. Mark him before the blood boils.
He’s already ours, I gasped inwardly, fighting to keep my fingers from clawing his skin to shreds. Let him move.
My arms looped around his neck on pure instinct. My face buried into the corded muscle under his jaw, inhaling the dark scent of woodsmoke and hot stone pouring off his collarbones. The slick pooled between my thighs.
“Reed,” I sobbed against his neck, my teeth scraping the hot skin over his carotid artery. “Reed, it hurts. Everything’s on fire.”
“Hold on to me,” he ground out.
He didn’t turn toward the dark. He turned toward the roar of heavy diesel engines tearing up the gravel driveway behind us.
Headlights swept across the porch as four massive, armor-plated trucks skidded to a halt in the yard, boxing us in. Doors flew open. The heavy thud of boots hit the dirt.
My fever-clouded eyes caught the flash of ember-flame, crushing iron, and shadow. Men and women piling out of the rigs. Reed’s pack.
Bloodlines, the wolf murmured, her hackles rising inside my ribs. Five courts. Five fires. Good. An army for our vengeance. Tell them to tear the Arbiter’s fortress to the ground.
They’re here to hold the line, I told her, my vision tunneling as the heat spiked another notch. Let them guard the door.
Let them watch us take our male, she snapped back, ravenous and shameless. Let the whole mountain smell what we are.
“Perimeter!” Brann roared, his voice shaking the timber of the old farm. “Lock it down! Witches, seal the treeline! No one gets within a mile of this cabin!”
The pack didn’t hesitate. They formed a physical, interlocking wall of bodies and magic across the front yard, turning their backs to us and facing the dark mountain.
They were placing themselves between my lethal Heat and the rest of the world.
The power radiating from the mated women hit me like a wave—a fierce, ancient, and unbreakable sisterhood standing guard.
“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” Reed rasped, carrying me up the porch stairs two at a time. The heavy cedar door of the Sanctuary cabin gave way under his boot with a splintering crack. “Just hold on to my neck.”
He carried me across the dusty main room, heading straight down the narrow hallway toward the back of the cabin. The place smelled of dry pine needles, cold slate, and the lingering scent of old magic.
“Where are we going?” I gasped, my fingers digging into the scarred meat of his shoulders. My vision was tunneling, graying at the edges, red rings pulsing around every shadow. “The bed... put me on the bed.”
Yes, the bed! the wolf bayed, throwing her weight against my sternum until my lungs hitched. Drag him down. Take his seed into us. We can’t kill the monsters if this body burns to ash before dawn!
He knows what he’s doing, I pushed back, though the desperate ache between my thighs was screaming in agreement with her. Trust the Alpha.
The Alpha waited twenty years! she snarled. I will not wait another second!
“You’re feverish, Avaline,” he barked, kicking the bathroom door open. “Your brain is cooking. If I put you in a bed, your organs will shut down.”
The bathroom was small, tiled in cracked white porcelain and cold blue slate. In the center sat an antique cast-iron clawfoot tub, deep and wide, its porcelain stained with mineral rust around the drain.
Reed dropped me gently onto the wooden bench beside the basin. I curled into a ball, my muscles seizing.
“Hot,” I wept, hugging my knees to my chest. “Goddess, Reed, I’m so hot—”
“I know.” He reached into the tub, gripping the heavy brass handles. He wrenched the cold line wide open.
A torrent of mountain runoff roared out of the faucet, thundering against the cast iron. The water came straight from the high snowmelt cistern, so cold that condensation immediately beaded across the outside of the porcelain.
Reed turned back to me, dropping to his knees on the slate floor. His dark eyes were blown black, the obsidian swallowing the gold irises whole as his wolf fought against the scent filling the small room.
“I have to get your clothes off, sweetheart,” he said. His scarred hands hovered over the laces of my boots, trembling with restraint. “The canvas is trapping the fever. May I?”
“Tear them off,” I begged, reaching out with shaking hands to grab the collar of his shirt. “Take everything off. Just stop the burning.”
Rip his shirt open, the wolf urged, her voice turning thick and feral. Look at the scars on his chest. He carried our debt in his flesh. Touch him. Claim the debt.
He didn’t hesitate. His fingers worked the laces, stripping my boots and tossing them against the wall.
Then his hands moved to the button of my canvas trousers.
The rough brush of his calloused knuckles across my lower belly sent a bolt of jagged electricity straight between my legs.
I let out a low moan and arched off the bench.
Reed’s jaw clenched so hard a tendon jumped in his cheek. He peeled the heavy trousers down my legs, tossing them aside, leaving me in only my thin cotton tank top and soaked underwear.
The tank top was plastered to my skin, transparent with sweat. My nipples strained against the damp fabric, aching for his mouth.
“Look at you,” he rasped, his voice dropping into a ruined, gravelly register. His eyes traced the curve of my waist down to the soaked cotton between my thighs where the slick had darkened the fabric. “Twenty years... and you’re the only thing on this earth that can make me lose my mind.”
He’s breaking, the wolf gloated, a triumphant snarl vibrating in my ears. Good. Break him. Make him beg to fill us.
“Then lose it,” I whispered, reaching for his face, my feverish palms framing his stubbled cheeks. “Why are you fighting it, Reed? We’re here. We’re alone. Take me.”
“Because I know that’s not what you really want.”
He lies! the wolf roared, lunging forward in my mind. We want his cock. We want his bite. We want the blood of the Arbiter on our muzzle!
He’s trying to save our lives, I gasped against the torrent of her desire. If we mate now without the Caldera’s deep rock, we trap the magic here! We lose our shot at breaking the Compact!
I don’t care about their laws! the wolf wept in rage. I care about the time they stole!
He slid his arms back around me, lifting my trembling body from the bench. With one swift, decisive motion, he lowered me into the tub of freezing mountain water.
A high, breathless scream tore out of my throat as the icy water slammed against my lower back, engulfing my hips and thighs.
The cold hit my fever-scorched nerves like a live power line.
My back snapped straight, my hands flying out to grip the iron rim of the tub, white knuckles digging into the rusted enamel.
NO! my wolf shrieked, thrashing against the cold like a wild animal caught in a snare. Not the ice! Not the stasis tube! Never put us back in the freeze!
It’s snowmelt, not alchemical poison! I cried out to her, panting violently as the water churned around my ribs. It’s clean mountain water! Feel it! I would never put you in a cage. I will never—
“Breathe!” Reed commanded, leaning over the rim, his broad palms pressing flat against my bare shoulders to keep me grounded in the water. “Avaline, look at my eyes. Breathe with me. In for four. Come on, Scribe.”
I dragged air into my lungs, my chest heaving, the water sloshing violently around my ribs.
The relief was instantaneous, but agonizing.
The snowmelt sucked the blistering heat from the surface of my skin, but deep in my core, the First Heat continued to churn like molten lead.
The sweet scent of my slick washed into the cold bathwater, rising into the steam and filling the small washroom with an intoxicating perfume of spice and desire.
I looked up through dripping lashes at the man kneeling over me.
His dark hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat. His turnout coat was gone, leaving him in a thin, soot-stained black undershirt that clung to the massive, corded muscles of his chest. His veins stood out like thick ropes along his forearms, pulsing with heat.
“Reed,” I panted, reaching through the water to grab his wrists. My fingers were slick with bathwater and my own arousal. I pulled his hands toward me, guiding his scarred palms down past my stomach toward the burning ache between my thighs. “Touch me. Please. Just put your hand between my legs.”
Reed froze. His breath hitched in his throat, a sound like tearing metal. His fingers hovered less than an inch from my center, the water rippling around his knuckles.
“Avaline…” he groaned, his head dropping back, fighting an invisible war behind his closed eyelids. “If I put my hand there, I won’t stop. I’ll take you in this tub.”
“I don’t care!” I cried out, the wolf in me clawing at my ribs, demanding completion. “I care about twenty years of being starved!”
The words struck him with brutal precision. His eyes snapped open, blazing with anguish and raw, bleeding guilt.
“I didn’t live,” he whispered, his voice cracking down the middle. “I didn’t live a single day of those twenty years, Avaline. I survived. I dug ditches in the ash and I choked on smoke because every time I closed my eyes—”
Take his hands, the wolf demanded, her rage fusing with mine into a single, unbreakable command. No more ditches. No more smoke. He belongs to us now.
“Then don’t let me slip tonight,” I sobbed, pulling his wrists harder, dragging his calloused knuckles against the wet cotton of my panties.
The contact was an explosion. A ragged gasp tore from my lips as the pressure of his hand met my swollen heat through the cold water. My hips bucked upward into his palm, desperate for friction, desperate for his cock. It belonged to me.
YES! the wolf roared, her triumph echoing through every bone in my body. Ours! Claim the mate—then we take our vengeance!
“Avaline,” he roared, his voice shaking the pipes beneath the floor.
His massive frame surged over the porcelain rim, his boots hitting the water as he climbed straight into the clawfoot tub with me.