She did, crying out as her release continued, her pussy squeezing me so tight I thought I might lose it. But I wasn’t done with her yet. While I continued to fuck her, I could feel my knot start to grow. I wet my thumb and pressed it against her asshole, rubbing it against the tight little ring of muscle.
“Menace,” she gasped. “It’s too much, feels too good.”
“You’ll take what I give you, mate. I want you to feel everything tonight.”
My knot was making my thrusts more difficult, but I knew it was close to the spot inside her that took her beyond reasoning. I felt her ass tightening around my thumb, her pussy choking my cock as her release came on like a freight train. I leaned over her and sank my teeth into my claiming mark one last time. Her blood filled my mouth, and the bond surged stronger than ever. I felt every emotion of love, longing, fear, and anguish flood my soul. We were so connected I didn’t know where she began and I ended.
I collapsed on top of her, both of us breathing hard as we came down from the high. My knot had begun to release, and I was able to turn her to where her legs could wrap around me. Her arms came around my neck as she cuddled her head to my chest. Sitting on the bed, I gently took her hair down and stroked her back.
“I love you,” I whispered, my voice rough with emotion. “No matter what happens tomorrow, you’re mine. Always.”
We lay on the bed for several minutes in silence. I rolled her over, kissed her mouth, then licked the sweat off her neck and breasts. She was crying, but she was smiling, too.
“You’re all I ever wanted even though I didn’t know it at the time.”
She nodded, still catching her breath.
“And tomorrow, I’m going to kill Dominic. I’m going to tear his head off and throw it at your father’s feet. Then I’m going to come back here and fuck you until you can’t walk.”
She giggled, wiped her eyes, and buried her face in my chest. “You promise?”
“Scout’s honor.”
She started tracing circles on my chest, her fingers soft and warm. We lay together, listening to the tick of the mantel clock and the distant sound of nature outside. The bed was soaked, ruined, but neither of us cared. It smelled like us.
“I feel like our bond is stronger,” she whispered.
I kissed her hair, breathed her in. “I feel like that too. That will help me tomorrow. You make me stronger.”
She fell asleep before I did, hand still curled over my heart.
I listened to the rhythm of her breathing, let the exhaustion seep into my bones, let the blackness at the edge of my vision spread and take me.
Tomorrow, there would be war.
But tonight, we were alive.
Chapter 26
Savannah
When I woke, the world outside the window was a wash of nothing, a dry December sky faintly colored by the threat of sunrise. The bed beside me was cold—Menace’s absence a divot in the mattress, a mate-shaped outline pressed into the sheets. He was already gone, and I didn’t need to reach through the bond to feel the afterimage of him: a hot filament of energy echoing with pain, focus, anticipation. The clock read six a.m., but it felt like the final hour.
For a long time, I lay there and measured my own heart. It ran a jittery, broken rhythm, never quite settling into a pace that matched the dead silence of the house. I closed my eyes, hoping for more sleep, but the dark behind my lids was alive with dreams of fur and fangs and the blood on Menace’s hands. When I couldn’t take the crawl of my own mind anymore, I threw off the covers and swung my feet to the floor. The hardwood was glacial, and the air felt hollowed out, as if the house itself was holding its breath for what was to come.
I washed, brushed my teeth with hands that trembled too much, and then stood naked before the closet. My body was mottled with bruises, evidence of the night before—his teeth, my need, the fact that when we made love, it was more violence than tenderness. My mate mark looked inflamed in the mirror, a redglyph just below the hinge of my jaw. The flesh around it was mottled, like the petals of a dying peony. I traced it with one finger, felt the heat of it, and pretended that some of Menace’s courage could be drawn through the skin and bone, right into my blood.
I had never dressed for badassery before, but by God I did now. I chose black. A high-necked turtleneck tucked into velvet-soft leggings, boots that crested above my knees and zipped up the inside seam. Over the top, I wore a black leather vest, the kind the Iron Valor women wore when they wanted to look intimidating and untouchable. I raked my hair back into a high, tight ponytail. I was going for a look that said,‘my man is a killer, I can’t wait to see it.’
Just before I left, I noticed the long coat draped over the edge of the chair. It was black leather, heavier than any jacket I’d worn before, with an Iron Valor patch sewn over the heart. The red lining was shot through with satin, but gave me a feeling of armor. I shrugged it on, and for the first time since childhood, I almost didn’t recognize myself in the mirror. I looked like the villain of someone else’s story—pale, lips bitten red, eyes the green of pond algae and panic. There was nothing of the Calloway princess left. Just a wolf’s woman, ready for the last battle.
I hesitated at the threshold, hand on the knob, and sent all the encouragement I could muster through the bond.Menace, I thought,you’re not alone. You never will be.I pushed it hard, hoping he’d feel it, that the heat and light would hit him mid-stride and knock the doubt from his chest.
I didn’t see anyone in the hall, but I could hear the scrape of chairs and the hiss of a percolator from somewhere down the stairs. The dining room was already alive with the wreckage of men preparing for war. Arsenal and Doc sat closest to the door, hunched over mugs of black coffee like priests at a pre-dawn mass. Wrecker and Big Papa were at the buffet, loading their plates with enough food to choke a horse. At the far end of the table, Lucia Kozlov perched like a wraith, elegant in a long sleeve redvelvet dress, her black curls drawn up in a messy knot that only highlighted the porcelain of her face.
But it was Menace who nearly made me catch my breath. He was sitting with his back to the window, light cutting a white stripe across his bare shoulder and the thick silver scar at his jaw. He wore sweatpants and nothing else, his chest slick with post-workout sweat and the vapor that steamed off him in the chill of the house. He was laughing, a low growl of sound, and for a split second he looked younger—beautiful, the way some wolves are when the blood is up and the teeth are hidden.
Then he saw me. He stood up so fast the chair shrieked against the floor, and the room went silent.
