Page 32 of Wolf Trial

I pressed my hands into the cold ground, meaning to stand, to run even if it was pointless. If life had taught me anything, it was that fairy stories were fake. Soulmates were a myth, or an excuse for questionable behaviour. I’d take my chance in the forest, find some way to get back home.

Rogue said there were vents between this world and my home. And sure, I needed a talisman to get through, but I couldn’t think about that right now. All I could think about was getting away, somewhere I could think, somewhere I didn’t feel three stares on my body. Somewhere with clothes.

But when I looked up, it wasn’t to find an escape route. It was to find three naked men trying valiantly not to look at me. But now I was looking at them. And heat crawled up my body, blazed across my face, and a force punched me in the solar plexus, knocking all the air from my lungs.

I didn’t look at them and see a threat, didn’t even look at them and see three dangerous men that were wolves a minute ago. I looked at them, and my reaction was visceral. My throat closed, my breathing quickened, and a rush of heat went from my neck, down my chest, all the way to my core.

I looked at them, and I needed them. Now.

Oh shit. So this is what mate meant.

CHAPTER 19

SADIE

Iwas on my feet before I could convince my brain to take the reins of my body, the dark hunger spreading through every cell of me matching the way their stares devoured me.

“I need—” I tried to explain, my mouth dry. But I didn’t have the nerve to say the words out loud. I just stared at them. Verne and Leander. Mostly, I tried to ignore Lainsz even if he stood with his hands crossed over his pale chest, his abs taunting me from the corner of my eye.

Leander and his wolf shared the same eyes—as green as a forest at night, almost black and full of life. Like his voice was the gentlest of all the three men, his features were the softest, a natural beauty to his smile as he came a few steps nearer, his tanned hand lifted. It sent a full-body shiver through me as I imagined that hand making contact with my body. He was the tallest, I noted with shock. I might have expected Verne or the asshole, but Leander was well over six feet, and Lainsz was the shortest. That explained his unnecessary muscles. Height complex.

“Starlight,” Leander breathed, his eyes never wavering from me as he took another step, making me shake so hard my teeth threatened to rattle. My first assessment of him as slender, not as physically strong as Lainsz, was severely wrong, I realised, when I shuddered and his hand clenched into a fist. His bicep bulged, muscles appearing from nowhere. I whimpered. Jesus. Now I was whimpering? Who was I? Why was I sweating and shaking and—staring at his dick. I was staring at his dick.

It was a very nice dick, long and with pronounced veins, but it was rude to stare. Still, I couldn’t take my eyes off it, especially when it jumped at my attention.

“Leander,” Verne warned when I stumbled three steps closer, barely any distance between us now. It was like they’d put that distance there on purpose, and that seemed cruelly unfair. “Slowly.”

Verne’s voice drew my attention his way, and I fell into his chocolate eyes the same way I fell into the deep, cashmere sound of his voice. I staggered forward another step, like rope tied around my waist tugged me closer to him. It was hypnotic, that stare. Or maybe it was the softness in his expression, or the memory of how his praise and encouragement lit up my soul.

It took me so long to drag my stare away from Verne’s soulful eyes that for long seconds I didn’t even see him. Not until he smiled, fine lines crinkling around his eyes into skin almost as dark as the sky above. The moonlight that managed to reach beyond the treeline silvered his cheekbones, his nose, and the cupid’s bow of his mouth.

So good looking, the sight of that face, a work of art, reached into my chest, fisted my heart, and squeezed. My attention didn’t drift beneath his chest—broad but soft, and so inviting that I could almost feel how it would be to lay my head against it—but I saw the shadow of his cock from the edge of my sight and another whimper slipped out.

I felt the source of it now—from the wolf I’d coaxed into a languid snooze; not fully asleep, not awake but a presence that bled into my body, my voice, into the way my hands lifted, reaching for Verne.

“Sadie,” he said with something like sympathy, a whisper-soft breath of my name that slapped me around the face.

“You’re rejecting me?” I asked in a small voice.

“No!” Leander said loudly at the same time Verne said, “I am not rejecting you,” in a voice harder than I’d heard it.

He strode across the forest and halted beside Leander, dark eyes never once leaving mine. I swayed closer, chills moving across my whole body at the thought of touching them. They touched me when we were all wolves and it was… bliss. I didn’t want to admit it, but it was.

“You’re newly changed,” Verne said in that calm, man-in-charge voice that made me pause to listen. “It’s not just the physical changes, Sadie, it’s mental, emotional, and chemical, too. And with the mating instinct…”

Yes. Mating. That was a great idea.

I flowed even closer, but gentle hands caught my shoulders. “It’s about consent, Starlight,” Leander said, that same sympathy in his voice as Verne’s. I might have whimpered again, but I was too busy shuddering, my eyes practically rolling back.

“I know what consent is,” I breathed, a part of me appreciating the sound of that word on Leander’s lips. I appreciated their consent too. Here I was, naked and throwing myself at them, and they were cautious. My wolf hated that—she wanted to be on all fours, presenting herself to them—but the woman in me warmed to them because of it. “I don’t need the dictionary definition of it. I do consent.”

This didn’t have to be anything more than sex. I wanted them. Judging by the cocks hardening before my eyes, they wanted me.1 A one night stand didn’t have to be with some guy you met in a club; it could be with two wolf shifters in a forest.

Jesus, that sounded insane. This mating instinct, though? It thought it was the best idea I’d ever had.

Leander’s hands felt so good on my shoulders. Warm, gentle but calloused, rasping over my skin as he ran his hands down my arms, then back up. I swayed again, and this time my chest met his. A groan came from my throat. Damn. Was this a wolf thing, or a mating instinct thing?

“Alianazara,” Verne said, drawing my attention as Leander stroked my arms, the touch pure except for the deeply sexual reaction I had to it.