Hannah moved away from him and started looking frantically around the room. “Where are my clothes? I want out of this house.” Hannah stepped in Bastian’s direction, and the growl she sent him when he didn’t move immediately out of her way was adorable. It also had Ryker’s dick thickening behind the zipper of his jeans. “Get. Out. Of my. Way.”
Bastian couldn’t hide his grin, but he held up his hands in surrender and did as she’d asked. Or rather demanded. Their mate then stomped over to the corner where they had stowed the bags they had collected from her damaged truck. As she rifled through it looking for clothes, she mumbled to herself in the cutest way. She spun, glaring at them both, before marching into the adjoining bathroom.
“Damn, that woman has spirit,” Bastian murmured as he stared at the door to the bathroom that had been more than firmly closed. “Can you imagine how passionate she’s going to be when we finally get her naked on that bed with us?”
Bastian had unwittingly used the word Tomas had to describe his own mate. A kaleidoscope of intense images flowed through Ryker’s imagination at the thought of just how passionate Hannah might be.
“Fuck, thanks for those visuals,” Ryker growled as he adjusted the erection behind the zipper of his jeans. “But what I need to know now is, what the hell Ash is up to?”
Bastian nodded as he turned to look back at him. “Hannah said he was the one responsible for her being here. Do you think he knew she was our mate?”
“There’s no way he could have,” Ryker answered. “There is no way that I know of for a shifter to know who they are destined to. He has to have some other plan up his sleeve.”
If there was a way for shifters to know who their mate was and where to find them in order to orchestrate a meeting, then they would have found Hannah years ago. He and his brother wanted a family, and although they had the clan and each other, nothing compared to the connection they would have with Hannah. Their need for the final piece of their heart had grown significantly over these last few years, and Ryker had started to fear that it would never happen.
“And we will find out what that is,” Ryker said, his voice filled with dark promise. “Ash has declared war on our clan. We need to call everyone together and advise them of this and start to plan how we are going to protect ourselves. Ash will not just come at us directly, and it sure as shit won’t just be a single faceted approach. He wants this town, he wants this land, and he wants us dead. Add to that, somehow the mongrel knows our mate, and that is not pure coincidence, of that I am sure. That means one of us needs to be with her at all times.”
Bastian laughed. “Dude, I don’t know if you remember the last ten minutes or not, but our mate does not exactly appear open to a courting right now. She’s hurt, tired, in a new town, and has just listened to you threaten the one person in Blackwater Falls that she knows and trusts. How do you propose we get her to willingly accept our presence in her life?”
Ryker shrugged. “You’re the one who could always talk his way out of any shit we got ourselves into, so you convince her to take a chance on us.” Ryker ignored Bastian’s sputtering protests. “And you always find just the right way to approach Mom when she is pissed off at us. Because of that, we have lived to see the ripe old age of thirty. Work your magic and make this happen.”
Bastian scowled at him. “And what the hell are you going to do?”
“I’m going to start preparing the clan for the fight that is coming. We are going to need help.”
Bastian’s expression became solemn, and he nodded. As Beta, he understood the pressures of leadership in a clan like theirs.
“I know that we would normally take our time with Hannah, but I don’t think we have that luxury,” Ryker said as he turned to stare at the bathroom door their mate was currently secured behind. “She knows what we are, but she needs to know that we are her mates, and exactly what that means.”
Bastian exhaled loudly. “Well, that’s the plan then. All we need to do is admit to Hannah that she’s our mate, tell her what that means to a shifter, that she is destined for both of us, and convince her to take a chance on a relationship with us that is unconventional at best. And at the same time, we need to prepare our clan to protect itself against a rabid and bloodthirsty wolf pack, adhere to the laws of the shifter council in order to avoid being classified as rogues, discover the dastardly plans of that asshole wolf, and find out what he has to do with Hannah, and protect her. Did I miss anything?”
Ryker grinned. “Other than the part where we have to find a connection to Ash and the prick in the council who put a stop to that treaty, and I am going to have to convince the council that Ash is the one that is rogue and get the right to put that prick down, nope, that sounds just about right.”
“Well, let’s just add that to our ever-increasing list of tasks then, shall we?” Bastian said, with an answering grin of his own. “Sounds like we have a plan, how hard can it be?”
