Ethan
I’ve been hunting in the swamp all evening when I catch the scent of something so potent, so mind-blowingly powerful, I practically trip over my own feet. I smell Luna, as sure as the day is long. Excitement thrums through my veins, and I take off at breakneck speed, my paws splashing through the mud and sand. We haven’t seen hide nor hair of our woman since the vampires attacked and made off with her.
I bolt through the underbrush, tearing over the land, not thinking about anything but Luna. Not thinking that she’s not our woman but Warrick’s woman. As far as I’m concerned, she belongs to all of us, even if she’s the first woman I’ve ever wanted that I won’t get to fuck. I don’t even think about what will happen if this is a trap. I’m ready to rip apart any vamps who stand in my way. I fucking dare them to try to stop me from getting Luna back.
At last, I come upon a collapsed structure on a tiny hillock of land in the bog. There’s no sign of our pup. It smells of mold and decay, but even that can’t erase the sweet scent of our Luna. Certain she must be around here somewhere, I race to the north, the east, the south, and the west but
find nothing. Crushed, I drag my ass back to sit before her destroyed dwelling.
Damned if I don’t miss her like a motherfucker. I’ve barely slept since she’s been gone. Instead, I lay in the dark, tossing and turning, remembering the short time that she was in our presence and thinking about shit I should’ve done different.
I’ve never felt this way about a woman before, and it fucks with my head. In my world, women are a means to an end. And the end usually lands eight inches deep inside them. But none of that was half as satisfying as the brief encounters with the little purple-haired she-wolf who came into our lives and turned us all upside down. And no other woman ever kept me up at night when I wasn’t fucking her.
I’m about to throw back my head and howl when I catch the scent of another wolf. The smell is as familiar as it is unwelcome.
Axel paddles through the water, pulls himself up onto the little island, and shakes himself, spraying water over me. I let out a sharp growl, but instead of fighting, he shifts into human.
“I’m not here to fight,” he says.
I narrow my eyes and growl low in my throat. When the bastard makes no move to shift back and fight, I grudgingly shift into human form to communicate.
We have a history with the Jacksonville pack, and that history starts and ends with Axel. After our brutal upbringing, Axel took us in and the pack became our family. It beat living with an angry, drug-addicted father and a mother who was too beaten down to protect us. Life with our parents was shit, and we split at age sixteen and never looked back. Axel and the Jacksonville crew embraced us, and it pisses me off that we owe the motherfucker, even if we’d never admit it.
“Aren’t you a little far from your territory?” I taunt. “Shouldn’t you be babysitting the vampires who now occupy half of Creebay?”
He frowns. “How do you know that?” I shrug. “Word gets around.”
In truth, the vamps caught us hunting on Creebay land, since we like to hunt on Jacksonville pack’s territory to piss off their Alpha. Turns out, that land doesn’t belong to them anymore.
“It was worth it,” Axel says, as smoothly as if we’re shooting the shit over a card game. “To get Luna back.”
A growl rises in my throat. He doesn’t deserve Luna-not after wrecking their True Mate bond and her lost little wolf pup heart.
“You’re the bastard who took Luna?”
“Yeah, that’s me,” he says. “The bastard who saved her from the silver cage the vampires had her in.”
“What?” I demand, rage throbbing in my temple at the thought of Luna being burned that way. A silver burn hurts like nothing else.
“That’s right,” Axel says. “I gave up half our pack land for her. What did you give up? Nothing, because you have nothing to give.”
My fingers clench into fists-in part because he’s right.
“I might have hurt her,” he admits. “But I realized my mistake, and I’m making amends. I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to her. She’s worth it. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her by my side.”
“What about what she wants?” I ask.
“She doesn’t know what she wants. She hasn’t experienced enough to make an informed choice. But we both have.” His head cocks to the side, and he fixes me with a squinty-eyed glare. “And we both know what’s best for her. I can give her everything a she-wolf needs, and you can’t. With me, she’ll have the protection of an entire pack, the social customs and companionship of similar wolves. All of her needs will be met-socially, emotionally, physically. What can you provide her?”
I want to rip his fucking head off as he speaks. My breath billows from my lungs at a rapid pace at the realization that he’s right. My brothers and I don’t need anyone else, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t. She’s not a rough and ready biker living outside of the law. Luna is sweet and gentle, the type
of woman who deserves friends and a good, full life, not the tawdry life we can give her.
I’m too pissed to even speak. Instead, I shift and race away through the swamp, my head hammering with fury. A wolf is a social animal. We need bonding, play, wolves all along the spectrum from submissive to the most dominant Alpha. In truth, we probably need that, too. But we don’t fucking have it. For a moment, it felt like we had it all with Luna. We can’t keep her from all that Axel’s offering, though. She deserves a pack.