Page 16 of Hidden Nature

“I belong to the alphas and betas of the Knoxville pack along with my elven mate and no one else,” I gasped as he sped up to a pace no human could ever achieve.

Pushing us both down on the bed so his body was draped over mine, he railed me until I didn’t think I could hold on any longer, shooting me into another climax, but this time, he followed me over the cliff. His knot fully swelled, locking us together as he began his short thrusts making it so I couldn’t tell where he ended and I began.

The world was technicolor as my brain was overloaded with sensations while Colt sucked on his mate mark, throwing me directly into another orgasm, making me whimper in a pleasure-filled stupor. Then, finally, he relented and rolled us to our sides, where we both panted, trying to catch our breath and let our bodies come back down to earth.

“Finley, I know we haven’t been together long at all, but I’m falling in love with you,” Colt whispered, his lips brushing along the back of my neck.

Unsure of how I felt or how I should respond, I wrapped his arms tighter around myself, getting him as close to me as I could. These men were becoming to mean more to me than anyone else in my entire life, but I didn’t know what it felt like to be in love. That was one emotion I didn’t know I had ever felt for real. I didn’t remember my parents, and there was certainly no love in the Organization. Plus, I’d never had a relationship before. All these circumstances left me woefully unprepared for a moment like this.

“What does love feel like?” I asked as I threaded my fingers through one of his hands. “I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced that before.”

He pressed another kiss to the skin between my shoulder blades, resting his head in the crook of my shoulder. “Open yourself up to me. I know doing that overwhelms you with my emotions, but there isn’t a better way to explain how I feel right now with words.”

Trusting him, I slowly started to let down my walls allowing me to access that empathic part of me. Colt had been right. There were no words to describe what I was feeling, and every time I tried, it just seemed like it wasn’t enough. Nothing matched the intensity of this emotion that he called love. It was overwhelming, but not in a way it made me want to pull back from it. Instead, all I wanted was to wrap it around myself and never feel anything else. It was so pure, warm, and inviting that it made me sigh and relax into Colt’s arms, molding myself to him.

How could he possibly feel something like this for me in such a short time?

“If that is what love feels like, then I know I’ve never experienced it before,” I shared. Now that I was fully exposed to his emotions, I could sense hurt at my rejection and sadness for never having been loved before. Shifting as much as I could while still connected to him, I cupped his cheek. “That isn’t to say that I won’t someday, Colt. I think if there is ever a chance for me to learn what it means to be loved and feel love, it will be because of you and the others. No one has ever taken the time to show me love or make me understand how amazing love can be. I want to learn, so someday I can love you back,” I explained the best I could.

This seemed to settle Colt. “It would be my honor to show you just how amazing love can be between two or seven people, as it were in our case.”

“I look forward to it, but until then, know that I care deeply about you and the others. It killed me to leave you, but doing so showed me just how much you all matter to me, and I won’t let it happen again.”

He let out a growl. “You better not, or I’ll really punish you for it, and it won’t end up with me knotting you either.”

“Understood, alpha,” I answered, kissing him deeply.

We curled up to enjoy the time together, just the two of us, as we waited for his knot to subside.

ten

Colt and I joined the others back out in the main cabin area for the last hour of the flight. None of them commented that Colt just railed me in the back bedroom—loudly. They all seemed to simply be happy I was back.

Seeing the others relaxed, sipping on drinks, I decided that Colt had enough alone time, and I curled up with Elias, feeling the need to be close to him after marking him. He happily wrapped me up in his arms and nuzzled into my hair, pressing a kiss to my head.

“You feel up to telling us what happened, my heart?” Elias asked as he tucked my head under his chin.

This was what I’d expected would happen when I came back out here. It was time to stop holding back secrets. What was happening in my life now affected them just as much as it did myself. “It all started with a note I found in my pocket when we got back from going into town. It told me that the Dark Ring was coming after me and I needed to get away from the pack. They told me I would know the signal alerting me to the best time to leave without being noticed, so when the attack happened, I knew that’s what it had to be.”

“Wait, you’re telling me that all that went down just to give you cover?” Lane asked, his brows knitted together at the idea. “I assumed there had to be a bigger reason. They even had a vampire come looking for you.”

“A vampire?” I questioned, thinking back to what happened back in Miami. “That doesn’t make any sense if the Organization doesn’t mix human and supernatural operatives if they pair people up at all. They had to have been there for another reason. Maybe the attack was the Dark Ring, but when they figured out I was gone, they moved on.”

“If the Dark Ring attacked, they would have taken whoever they could to sell them off,” Zander pointed out. “It means we have a third player in this game.”

My brain was working a mile a minute, trying to look at this from all angles with all that I knew and learned over the last forty-eight hours. They hinted that there was a mole in the Senate. What if that mole wasn’t just someone listening and gathering information but another active member? What if a full member of the Dark Ring was in the Senate making matters work for them, avoiding all the trouble, knowing it was coming. From what we heard from the underground, the Senate didn’t work well together. The two shifter leaders hated each other, the witches didn’t respect anyone, and the vampires were power-hungry, and when the wizards involved themselves with anything, it was never good. The human who held a Senate seat was more of a joke. No one cared what they thought, believing it should have only been supers. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if the humans created the Dark Ring to level the playing field among the races.

“Nin mel, I can feel your mind working a million miles an hour. What is it you’re dwelling on?” Rath asked, drawing me out of my thoughts.

“Let me explain the rest of this before I share my thoughts. It will help to explain my logic,” I countered, shifting so I could sit up straighter on Elias’s lap. “After I got out of the tunnels and arrived at the meeting point, a member of the Organization that I knew well was waiting for me with two others I’d never met. I was informed that I was being brought back into the fold and needed to finish the job I started for the Senate, the job where I met Cory and got bit,” I explained to the others, unsure if my alphas had filled them in or not.

“The job went south, and I failed to kill my target. My contact told me if I didn’t complete this job, I would be killed, no questions asked, which I didn’t doubt. You don’t fail the Organization, let alone the Senate when they give you an order. So I went with them, and we ended up at a safe house in Florida, where we worked out the plan. My target was another known member of the Dark Ring. I was to kill him before he could sell off more supers for auction. The second part was to find out where he was keeping them and get them the hell out of there.”

The guys all turned to Rath, finally seeing where he came into all of this.

“As you might have ascertained, I was a prisoner of the Dark Ring for the past twenty-five years,” Rath shared. “The last thing I ever expected was to have my mate walk into the bunker Rupert Sutton was keeping us in. She was attacked by the man they had guarding us, but it was at that moment she also came into her power, allowing her to free herself and all of us. Finley is a powerful Light Elf, the likes our people haven’t seen in a long time. I can’t remember the last time a female called a Guide to her, let alone six others, before her powers matured. This is going to make everything far more treacherous for us because the other supers she freed know the truth and there is no way for us to keep it quiet for long.”

“I’m still not understanding where the connection to the Senate is coming into play,” Zander pressed, his full lips turned down.