Page 60 of Hexy Beast

Even as the first sensation of my orgasm starts at the base of my spine, I do my best to ignore it because I know what has to happen after all this is over, and I’m not ready for that.

Honestly, I don’t think I ever will be.

And I’m not the only one.

My wolf roars to the surface, seeking something in Effie that’s just beyond my vision, even if I can sense a raw kind of power that isn’t scented with honeysuckle in her. No, this is an earthier smell mingled with fresh spring grass and newly budding blackberry bushes. There’s sunshine and the feel of the first warm breeze after a season of icy winds.

And there’s wolf.

And witch.

And something extra, like the universe itself touched her.

All of it is mixed together like the smells in the woods after a summer storm.

Even if I want to, there’s no holding back my wolf at this realization.

“She is ours,” my wolf says.

“Mine,” I respond before biting down on the delicate spot at the side of her throat where it meets her shoulder.

The need to mark her, to claim her, to make public the acknowledgment that she is mine and I am hers isn’t something I can resist anymore.

She is my mate.

My fated mate.

As I thrust inside her, my balls tighten as I tease the spot with my teeth again.

“Darius, yes,” she says, her arms hooking underneath my armpits and across my upper back as her hands hold my shoulders tight. “Do it again.”

Denying her isn’t even something I could imagine doing right now. Not when she’s making that sound and thrusting her hips to meet mine, all but demanding with her body that I give her everything, all at once—now. It takes every bit of the threadbare control I have left to keep from coming right now. My whole body is screaming for release, but Effie wants more. I have to give it to her. I have to let her have all of me. I want her to have all of me.

It happens almost in the same breath; my wolf rushes forward and calls out to that part of her he’s recognized from the beginning. The part that is ours just as we are hers.

“Fuck, Darius,” Effie calls out, her nails biting into my shoulders as she tightens her hold. “What is going—”

Before she can finish her question, though, her orgasm hits and her wrist, the one I instinctually know has the Kardia freckles, presses against my shoulder blade with the Kardia tattoo, and it’s like lightning fills the entire cave. Everything else is a dim half thought in comparison to the mating bond that weaves us together in an instant, a fiery flash of forever.

“Effie” is all I manage to get out between clenched teeth before I drive one last time into her, coming so hard I nearly black out.

It’s not until much later, when we’re both lying on the blanket I pulled from the moonstone trunk, and she’s sleeping in my arms, that I let her question roll around in my head. What is going on? Nothing I’ve ever hoped for.

Fated mates.

Even if I’d only considered the possibility or started to accept the reality of it maybe happening, there’s no way to deny it now. This changes everything.

Until Effie convinced me to let my wolf run, I’d forgotten what it felt like to be this free, and having her with me only makes the feeling more intense. The one thing I’ve learned about being an alpha from watching my grandmother and father do such a shit job of it is that it’s not about controlling others. It’s about controlling yourself.

But now I know there’s more. A leader also has to be able to let go. I can’t keep my wolf locked up; I have to let him do his job when the time comes. I never would have realized the deep truth of that if not for Effie.

I owe her everything, and that’s why I have to make her leave. What’s about to happen is too dangerous for her. I have to keep her safe—and she won’t be safe if she comes back to Arcadia with me.

I’ll get Aunt Artemis to break the proximity hex or whatever it is that keeps her rubber-banding back to me. No, I don’t know how Artemis managed to do it, but she did. It’s the only explanation for it happening, and one I wasn’t open to accepting until she showed up in the cave the other night. There’s more to Artemis than I ever realized. I don’t know exactly what, but she’s more than just the pack oracle who’s been around for generations and my honorary aunt. Whatever Artemis’s reasons, whatever she was hoping to accomplish with the proximity spell, it’s not going to happen.

Effie Sherwood has to go home—her home. She can’t stay with me in Arcadia because what has to happen next, well, it’s going to be bloody, and I highly doubt I’ll make it out alive—but neither will Nikos, and that’s the whole point. Whatever happens, it’ll be worth it if the pack is free of him.

I’m done pretending the Fates don’t have a hand in my life. The sisters measured the length of my life string on the day I was born.