Page 35 of Wolf Trial

CHAPTER 21

SADIE

My world was obliterated in a burning ball of fire and stars that crowded into my visions, and it turned out there was no sound at the end of that world. That explained why I didn’t hear Verne’s low voice, or Leander’s soft growl of satisfaction. I felt the accompanying emotions though, as utterly insane as that was.

I felt the pride and affection radiating from the alpha. I felt Leander’s bite of jealousy, soothed by how catastrophically hard I came for him. And worse—I felt a deeper well of jealousy. Seething, festering, like a pit of bubbling sludge. The sort of feeling that caused an infection, that spread until it affected every part of a person.

That ripped the last, fiery sparks of my pleasure away, and my spine smacked back into the sofa just as Lainsz ripped open the door and stalked into the cool night.

Prick. If he hated me, wanted me dead, wished they had let me die, why was he so jealous?

“Don’t worry about grumpy over there,” Leander said, licking his lips in a lewd manner that made me at once embarrassed and turned on. “He woke up on the wrong side of the bed, then fell onto a stick that went all the way up his ass.”

I snorted, the sound louder than I expected, a weight lifted off my chest. A different weight still pressed there, Lainsz’s absence like an anvil, but this—being close to Leander, feeling Verne’s kisses scatter across the crown of my head—soothed a burden I don’t remember when I began carrying.

I was used to being unwanted, unloved, an encumbrance that people couldn’t wait to be rid of. Someone whose presence was only tolerated because they got something out of it. I had a string of shitty ex-boyfriends to prove it. But there was no mistaking the look in Leander’s green eyes, or the softness I literally felt from Verne. They wanted me here. Wanted me to stay right here, in fact, which was a whole other issue I’d worry about later.

“Are you going after him?” Leander asked Verne, gathering me against him while I was still supine, both heavy and weightless at the same time. I’d had orgasms before, had given myself amazing orgasms before, but this? It was like my best, with the intensity dialled up a hundred degrees. It had turned me from a solid person into fluid, and I pooled over Leander’s body as he sat back against the sofa carding his fingers through my hair. My heart stuttered at the way he gently untangled the knots he encountered, never once pulling at my scalp.

“Not yet,” Verne replied, though I felt the conflict within him. He wanted to take care of Lainsz, to make sure he was okay, and yet… he couldn’t tear himself away from me.

“How am I so…” I struggled to articulate it. “Attuned to you?”

“That’s the bond,” Verne explained, his voice softer than silk, lips pressing shivers into my shoulder.

Maybe I should just stay here forever, naked. It wasn’t like I had anything to return to anyway.

And yet… a voice whispered in my head, they only wanted me around as a convenience fuck. When they lost interest in me, when their eye was caught by the new shiny thing, they’d leave me. I was always left behind, and this would be no different. Everyone had an agenda, an angle. Theirs was obvious, at least, not maliciously hidden. Unlike my fucking Gran’s.1

“Oh no,” Leander said, stricken. “If you’re thinking again, I didn’t do a good enough job.”

Verne laughed, a soft breath huffed through his nose, so like his wolf that for this moment, I could easily reconcile the ashen wolf and the beautiful man. “Performance issues?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Leander muttered, scowling so deeply he looked like Lainsz. His hands left my hair, cupping my face. “Do you want more, my star? We can stop now. We’ll only do anything if you’re comfortable.”

Confusion dug a furrow into my brow. “So if I asked to stop now…”

“We stop,” Leander confirmed, holding my gaze, deadly serious.

But… wasn’t the whole point of keeping me around for sex to actually have sex? Wasn’t that the purpose of the mating instinct? To mate?

It’s just a one-night stand, Sadie, my voice of reason piped up. It doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t need to know everything about these men; you’ll be gone by the morning.

Not that I’d actually know when morning was in this blackened world. But the metaphor stood.

I was overthinking this. Leander was right; my brain needed to be switched off.

“I don’t want to stop,” I said, reaching behind me for where the hard length of him pressed against my ass, ignored as he touched me, as if I was his priority. I knew some men loved giving pleasure as much as receiving it. Unicorns, mythical and rare. It appeared I’d found one. “But—do you have protection? That fucking academy took everything from me, so I have no purse, no phone, and definitely no condom.”

I wondered if there was a bowl of them somewhere in the House of Sun common rooms.

Leander blinked, but Verne’s eyes didn’t cloud with confusion.

“There’s no need,” he replied, and for a moment that deep, cashmere voice wrapped around me like a blanket, like a hug, distracting me. I shook it free.

“There absolutely is a need,” I bit out, narrowing my eyes on the alpha. “Don’t give me the it doesn’t feel as good, I promise I’ll pull out, babe bullshit. If you try that shit, I’m leaving.”

I made to rise from my position straddling Leander, but Verne grasped a fistful of my hair at the nape of my neck and cool shivers rushed over my body at the silent command to stay.