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This is home. This is a safe place, my Tirian said. Tell the alpha what you want. She will give you plentiful mates. We will have strong, healthy pups.
I can’t.
Even inside my head, the words came out in a painful growl. I just stared at the two of them until Ophelia nodded.
“I don’t like to do this, but I think I must.” For a minute I saw Mrs Reece, my year twelve coordinator sitting there, looking at me with a mixture of concern and frustration. “You are experiencing a heat—a period of greater sexual sensitivity and desire. Your body will be running at a higher temperature, you’ll experience greater vaginal congestion and lubrication, and without constant sexual stimulation, you’ll experience considerable discomfort.”
“What the fuck?” I hissed, an instinctive fear turning my limbs to iron, ready to run the fuck out of here.
Ophelia leaned forward, seeming to sense I needed more, so she gave it to me. Those eyes stared into mine, captured completely by her gaze, so I caught every moment of her shift. Grey irises brightened and sharpened, shifting into an all too familiar glowing green. My eyes, my Tirian’s eyes, they did that when we shifted it. We’d seen them reflected in still pools of water before we took a drink, in the glass of darkened shop windows in the dead of night, when we dared pace the streets. I pulled away as I saw hers come through, my back now hard against the chair.
“We are Tirian,” she said, her voice sounding weird and echoey. “You are Tirian.” When she nodded at Shaun and when my eyes flicked to him, I saw his shone just as bright. Like mine did. I felt my beast stir within me, rising, rising, ready to face these strangers down. Ophelia’s hands were clasped neatly in her lap, like a nun waiting to hear my confession. “I want for you what I want for all the women in my town—for you to be safe, secure, and to have what you need through this experience. Only you know what that is.”
That was all very noble, but it didn’t reassure me at all. I was up and out of my seat in one second, running towards the door in the other, the sounds of their chairs being pushed back just making my feet move faster. My hands trembled as I unlocked the sliding door, then I escaped out into the grey of dawn, eyes darting.
“Bec!” someone called, but I shook off the command there, spying a long road that led down the hill and taking off for it.
We are safe. This is home, my Tirian insisted, but it was her strength that powered my limbs, had me running down the road, the asphalt stinging my soles. I heard them calling, but my stride only lengthened at that.
“Who’s this?” a group of guys asked as they came closer, obviously walking down to work, if the high vis gear was anything to go by, but I didn’t get a chance to answer. I ran and ran, my mind, my body in riot, instincts my nan and mum had worked so hard to instil coming to the fore.
I ran up to a large warehouse type building, where yet more men clustered around the entrance, but one whiff of me, and their attention instantly zeroed in. This, being the focus of twenty, thirty men, all entirely devoted to me, I’d had fantasies about it, wild, overheated dreams, but the reality was somehow scarier. Green eyes glowed like fireflies in each of the men’s faces, throwing yet more evidence in my face.
But I wasn’t here for that. I didn’t want or need to be convinced that there were others of my kind here, despite my beast’s remonstrations in my head. My eyes whipped around, scanning what appeared to be a complex of buildings, then finding one that would give me just what I needed. It looked like a mechanic’s workshop, cars parked in and around it. I took off at a run, hearing people shout things as I did so, but I paid them no mind. I sprinted over to the nearest car, my hands slapping down on the cool metal when I got there, then moving to try the door.
It was locked, and so was the next one, prompting me to move into the workshop itself, particularly when there were cars there with windows down, bonnets popped. It was because I was so focussed on that, on finding a car unlocked but functional, that I completely missed him, not sensing or feeling him until I spun on my heel, ready to lunge for a car that looked perfect and even had the keys in the ignition. When I did so, moving before I could think or see, I didn’t get to the car, open the door, and fire up the engine, I got him.
My eyes jerked up the minute my hands smacked down onto a warm, muscular, bare chest. His hands covered mine, his thumbs stroking down the sides of my wrists as a slow smile spread across his face, looking like all his Christmases had come at once. And maybe they had, for both of us. He was a big guy, but he had that kind of lean, well muscled look of Brad Pitt circa Fight Club, and my fingers itched to trace every damn one of them.
“Hello, love,” he said, slowly smiling, but that faltered when he took a deep breath in. Gentle humour was washed away in favour of something much hotter, darker. He shepherded me back until my body was pressed against the side of a car. “I’m Ethan, and you are?”
“Fucked…” was all I could force out.
Chapter 8
“Is there anything hotter than a pretty mouth saying dirty words?” he asked in a low rumble, his hand reaching up slowly, deliberately, giving me all the time in the world to pull away.
But I didn’t, did I? I stared up into greenish hazel eyes, caught on the spike of his gaze, unable to look away or do anything as those broad fingers stroked down the side of my face. I smelled sandalwood, musk, and motor oil, and together, it made this dark, luscious scent that had my lips falling open to breathe more in. He seemed to sense that, his smile spreading wider. That hand grew bolder, stroking my skin, tilting my jaw up and cupping it in his massive hand before dropping his head down.
“Ethan!”
It was that shout that jolted me out of a haze that had robbed me of any thought but him. I blinked wildly, my heart feeling like it started to race again from a standing start. My hands pressed against that impervious chest, shoving him up and away from me to see Ophelia and Shaun in the doorway.
“Bec, are you OK?” Shaun asked, taking a step forward, but Ophelia stopped him from coming any closer with an outstretched hand. Well, him and the guys clustered behind him. Green eyes, hungry eyes, I knew exactly what was going on in their heads, every one of them. I’d felt my bloodlust rise, the heat of the hunt upon me when chasing down bunnies in a forest, but this? Pretty sure rabbits didn’t get all hot and bothered between their legs right before I crunched them.
“She’s in heat. We weren’t notified,” one of the men ground out, looking like he was holding onto his control by a string.
“She’s only just got to fucking town,” Shaun snapped back. “Bec’s not from here. I found her at a truck stop on the way home. We… She went into heat, so I brought her here last night.” He turned to me, his eyes stark against his tanned skin. “Bec, it’s OK. No one here is going to touch you without your permission.”
And if I gave permission? A rumble from the crowd seemed to contradict what he’d said, but the look Shaun shot the men was a fiery one.
“The woman chooses,” he snapped at them. “Always. No matter what you want, how you migh
t feel…” It was right about now I started to wonder if the hot stranger I’d spent the night with had some unresolved issues. He was being way too intense for this to be just about me. “You don’t come near her until she gives you permission.”
I stopped still for a minute, the surreal nature of what was happening finally sinking in. As I’d said, I was aware of my appeal to men. Some liked me fine, some didn’t, but nothing prior to this had prepared me for what was playing out right now. These guys, all fucking gorgeous guys, stood there at the edge of the workshop, like there was an invisible fence erected and they were dying to take a step over it, dying to get to me. A part of me wanted just that, my limbs feeling heavy and molten, my cunt twitching and clasping at nothing, desperate to be filled.
By them, a sneaky little voice said, not quite my own. By all of them. The thought somehow of having the men jostling at the perimeter, trying to draw my attention, forcing me to choose was delicious.
