Luna
My heart is full and my wolf satisfied after Callan’s fucking. Cuddling up together, we settle down for a sweet nap. When we wake up, we wrestle in his bed, pinning each other to the mattress with the loser having to deliver kisses to the victor before being released to try again. I can’t remember laughing and having so much fun in my life.
Our fun is cut short when a voice bellows outside the house.
“Fucking hell,” Callan mutters. “Wait here.” He rolls from the bed, yanks on his pants, and heads out of the room.
“No way,” I say, scrambling into my clothes. “This is my fault.”
I race after him, heading through this house that I love. I glance right and left and notice it’s gone backward in the cleanliness department-but not as bad as it was when I first arrived. There are hardly any beer bottles or cans on the floor and only one or two pieces of clothing.
“Luna!” the voice bellows again.
I halt in my tracks. When I heard the call the first time, I thought it was one of Callan’s brothers returning and somehow knowing that we’d mated.
I remember all the jealousy and conflict I stirred up before. But it’s not one of them-my wolf knows.
As happy as she was playing with Callan on the bed, she positively sings inside me as she demands we answer the call of her mate.
But Axel isn’t my mate, even if our wolves are still bound. “Luna, I know you’re here,” he calls. “I can smell you.”
The plaintive note in his voice twists a wicked knife of guilt into my heart. How can this be? I’m with the guys I want to be with. But the whispers in my heart tell a different story-they remind me that, in my soul of souls, Axel is my Alpha. My wolf still wants him to be our everything.
Shoving those feelings aside, I barrel outside, determined to put Axel in his place. It must have rained while I was out. The air smells damp and dank as if the gators have wrestled in the swamp, stirring up the swamp gasses.
I skid to a stop on the porch. Axel isn’t alone. Callan and Ethan have his arms pinned to his side, and Warrick is watching with his arms crossed over his bare chest and a scowl on his face. All sorts of flutters stir in my chest at the sight of the triplets. But these elated thoughts are crushed by the presence of Axel, writhing and struggling against their grip.
Though the brothers are bigger, Axel’s strong, too, and it looks like he might just get free of the hold Callan and Ethan have on him. I chew at my
lip, looking from one to another. All these men are fighting for me.
It’s a far cry from when Axel dragged me from the swamp, then tossed me back like fish guts, making me think no one would ever want me.
The triplets, though, they always treated me right.
“Of course I’m here,” I say, crossing my arms and staring back at him defiantly. “I told you I wanted to be with these men. You’d have to be dumber than an demonling not to figure out where I’d gone off to.”
Axel glares at me. “Come home, Luna.”
“I am home,” I say. “Where else would I be? The question is, why are you here?”
“To bring you home,” he says. “To our home. I’ll do whatever it takes, Luna. I’ll fight to the death to get you back if that’s what you want.”
“Where was your protection when she needed it?” Warrick demands.
“Can’t you see her neck? I found her at the brink of death.”
Axel stills, and the color drains from his face. “Luna… What happened?”
“A lone wolf tore out her throat,” Callan says. “I stitched her together.
My brothers and I saved her life.”
His chest puffs, and I give him a grateful smile, as proud of him as he seems to be of himself.
“I’m deeply indebted to you,” Axel grits out. “But if Luna hadn’t run away, she wouldn’t have put herself in danger. How could I protect her if I didn’t know where she was?”
He directs his gaze at me, his eyes the color of the sky on a winter’s afternoon and so full of hurt and accusation that my wolf cowers inside me, shrinking onto her belly to have displeased her Alpha. He’s right. If I hadn’t run away, I wouldn’t have been attacked. It was a stroke of luck that Warrick found me. If not for him, I’d be dead right now.
Warrick, standing tall like an imposing statue, looks as formidable as a bog beast. “She ran away because she doesn’t want to be with you,” he growls at Axel. “It ain’t that complicated.”
Axel begins to struggle again. “Luna, tell them that’s not true. How we’re mending the rifts between us. Tell them what a good time we had hunting and… The other things, too.”
“You mean when you fucked and fought like enemies,” Warrick says, spitting into the dust near his feet.
Axel’s face darkens with fury.
“How the fuck do you know that?” “I was watching you,” Warrick says coolly.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Axel snarls back. “She’s my mate.
Stop interfering.”
“If she’s your mate, why is it that even after you tried to pacify her with a few orgasms, she came right back here?” Warrick taunts. “I’ll tell you why. Luna needs a real man wrecking that pussy every night… Three of them, in fact.”
With a roar of rage, Axel rips his arm free and clocks Ethan in the jaw. Ethan instantly lays into Axel, landing a powerful blow against Axel’s cheek. Blood spurts from Axel’s mouth as he shoves Ethan to the ground. He falls on him and starts pounding him with his fists.
I let out a scream-I don’t want anything to happen to Axel or Ethan.
“Keep Luna safe!” Warrick bellows, heading for the two men jostling on the ground as Callan leaps to my side. He tries to tug me away, but I wrestle out of his grasp.
“Luna, stop!” He whips me around and pins both of my wrists behind my back.
“Quit trying to stop me,” I yell, kicking at his shins. “Let me go!”
“Cool your jets,” he growls. “This isn’t just about you-at least not entirely. It’s been a long time coming. This fight’s been brewing for years.”
Warrick is now straddling Axel and pummeling him with his fists. I can barely see Axel’s face through the blood.
Ethan is on his feet again, delivering vicious kicks to Axel with his steel-toed boots. “You mangy motherfucker,” he snaps, huffing his breaths
out between the barrage of blows. “That’s the last time you’ll deck me.”
Axel draws wolf strength from somewhere and manages to roll Warrick from his belly. Swiftly, he scrambles behind Warrick, lands on his back, positions his hands around Warrick’s head, and twists.
Warrick roars and clambers to his feet with Axel still clinging to his shoulders. He backs into a tree and slams Axel into the trunk. Axel lets out a bellow and falls from Warrick’s back, rolling across the dirt, barely conscious. Ethan grabs his enemy and hauls him to his feet.
“Have at him, Warrick,” he yells. “He’s your kill!”
Warrick grins wide enough to show a missing molar and punches the palm of his left hand with his right fist. “Oh, I’ve been waiting for this for a long time, Golden Boy. Ready to meet your maker?”
He hauls back his arm to send Axel to the wolf pack in the stars with one final blow. I know he can do it. I’ve seen Warrick in action.
“No!” I scream, twisting out of Callan’s grasp and racing toward Warrick.
Warrick’s head whips toward me, and he stares in confusion.
I lunge and grab Warrick’s beefy bicep. “Don’t kill him,” I cry. “I’ll never forgive you.”
Axel’s hanging on by spiderwebs at this point. His head lolls on his chest, and Ethan’s grip is the only thing keeping him upright.
“You’ll never forgive me?” Warrick asks in disbelief. “Why would you want to save a man who severed your mate bond?”
“I don’t know,” I wail. “Just… Don’t do it.”
Ethan lets Axel fall. His body slumps onto the ground like a bag of crabs.
I fall to my knees, the sand and dirt grinding into my skin. My hands flutter over Axel’s body, smoothing away the bloody hair from his face, patting his swollen jaw.
Warrick and Ethan stand over me as Callan joins them, surrounding me.
“What the fuck is going on here, pet?” Callan says. “You said you wanted to be with us.”
“I do,” I say. I shake my head, trying to clear the panic and horror at seeing my men’s barbaric side. “But I don’t want anyone to die because of me. Y’all make your point with fists, and that’s just how you are. I accept that. But you need to accept that I make mine with words. I can make Axel listen to me. He’s no good dead.”
The triplets exchange a look. “What use is he to us alive?” Ethan asks. “I don’t know,” I say. “Guess we’ll find out.”