16

AIDA

"Why is she sleeping so much?"

Someone clears their throat before answering my daughter's whispered question. "A few reasons, but mostly, her body is tired. She needs to recover, but she'll be fine."

"Are you sure?"

I hate the worry in Zora's voice and want to reassure her, but my mouth feels like it's stuffed with cotton. I manage to lift a hand, but it falls heavily back onto the cushy surface where I'm lying.

"She's awake! Mom?" The surface dips, and the smell of my daughter—that pure, new baby smell I sniffed from the top of her downy head when I first brought her home from the hospital—fills the air above me.

It's a smell I missed, and I delay trying to open my eyes to breathe it in.

"Mom, are you okay? Mom?"

I manage to nod before clearing my throat. "I—I'm okay. Are you—" The remainder sticks in my throat, making me groan from the soreness around my neck and jaw.

"Don't try to talk yet. A doctor's looked at you. You're going to be fine, a little sore for a while. Here, drink." A hand slides behind my head to lift my mouth to a glass.

Cool liquid meets my lips, and I open for the flow of water that immediately eases the cottony feel of my mouth and scratchy throat. Clearing it again, I press my eyes shut tight once before peeling them open.

Zora is there, her eyes worried and her face much too close, which makes a painful chuckle rattle through my chest.

"Back up a little, hun."

"Oh, sorry." She straightens but stays close, her thigh pressed into ribs that I'm sure are broken. They feel like they've been through a meat grinder.

"Give her a little space, Zo." My blurry gaze shifts to Byron, who stepped aside after giving me the water.

He called her Zo.

She's only let me and her father call her Zo. She definitely didn't let Lonny call her that.

I had to have a conversation with Lonny, one that didn't go so well, to insist that he respect her wishes and call her by her full name.

Still, he'd insisted on calling her Zo, and she'd pointedly ignored him. It had created a tension in our marriage that only quickened the crazy that showed up later.

I'd never blame Zora for that, though. That she was never comfortable with him the way I hoped should have been the red flag. Instead, I chalked it up to her missing her dad and invited all kinds of nonsense into her young life.

Byron isn't that. I'm sure of it.

As he stands just behind her, giving her time to be close to me, everything about his gaze says he was worried, too.

I take Zora's hand when she's eased up on my ribs and do my best to smile through the pain. "You're okay?"

"Yeah." She waves behind her, and I can see the looming figures of a few people standing back. "They came to get me and brought me right to you. Marissa was suspicious, though. You might want to call her."

I look in worry at Byron, but he shakes his head reassuringly. "It's fine for now. We had Zora call to say she'd made it safely. You can call her when we get there."

"Where's there?"

"Someplace safe. The safest place." He squeezes my ankle, and I accept it because if Byron says we'll be safe there, I believe it.

My eyes shift to Zora and back in a silent request. His head dips, and he slips away, leaving us alone.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

She nods, smiling and squeezing my hand. "I'm fine. I was scared when these guys came; they're a little intimidating, but when they said Byron sent them, I knew we'd be okay."

I must look surprised because she averts her eyes.

"I'm sorry I was so mean before. I know you always put me first and tried to do what's best. What happened with Lonny wasn't your fault." She shrugs a shoulder. "I mean, I didn't like him, but I never would have thought he was that crazy." The chuckle she releases is its own peace offering. "These guys are the good guys, and Byron is not Lonny. He reminds me of Dad."

There's so much I want to say, but I'm starting to feel drowsy again. Also, the spike in emotions feels heavy, weighing me back toward unconsciousness.

Byron appears again, his expression firm but kind. "Let your mother rest. We'll all talk later. There's going to be a lot to explain."

I don't remember anything about when we were rescued, but I have to assume that these men are like Byron. And that's going to take quite a bit of explanation.

I close my eyes, and I'm pulled back into sleep.

When I wake up again, I'm moving.

Arms hold me securely beneath my legs and back, and footsteps indicate several people moving in the same direction.

"We have stretchers, you know." The deep voice is even and maybe a little amused.

"I have arms." Byron's response brooks no argument, and I turn my head into his chest, breathing in. "Almost there. Zora's right here."

That he knows my first thought will always be my daughter only relaxes me more, and then I'm asleep again.

"Hey, baby."

Byron stands a few feet away in our savannah sanctuary, beautiful, naked, and smiling.

"Hi." I take a tentative step forward, and Byron sucks his teeth, swallowing up the distance between us with a few long strides.

The moment he slams his lips to mine, it's like coming alive.

I don't know if everything is heightened in this dream place, but my middle bursts with light, sending tingling warmth through my limbs, soothing the places where I hurt and replacing them with a better ache.

Nothing has been slow with us. From that moment in the lab, we've always come together with an urgency that reflects our situation.

But we're safe now, so when I lean in, expecting him to drag me into the high grass and make me scream, I'm surprised when he eases away, shaking his head.

"No. My wolf wants to take his time."

"Your wolf?"

His eyes flash, the blue going bright and electric, and I see the beast peeking through in the feral, possessive glint.

"He doesn't feel like he's claimed you properly." Byron's lips press a firm line down my neck, stopping on my pulse to close over the vein, the suction hard enough to make me light-headed.

"No?"

"Uh uhn. Things were tense before. He didn't like not being near you all the time, so we needed to get our scent on you to keep him calm. He wants to take it slow this time."

He releases my pulse with a pop, leaving the spot hot and making blood rush to my head again, then kisses down to my shoulder, pausing here and there to lap at my skin, the feel of his tongue slightly rougher than I'd expect.

I hold my breath when he moves lower, circling my breast with his tongue before closing over the tip and sucking—hard.

I moan, my hands going to his back, clutching at the bulging muscle as he continues to lave attention on my breasts, popping off the tip of one and leaving it tingling with a delicious ache.

"So sweet. I couldn't put my finger on it before. I thought it was your perfume, but your scent is particularly appealing." He murmurs this across my chest before latching onto my other nipple.

My knees buckle as he wets me with his tongue, circling my fevered skin and leaving heated spots where he nips lightly. Suddenly, I'm being lowered to the grass, and my body goes tight with what's to come.

"Don't squirm." His deep voice reverberates against my belly.

I clench the grass and lift my hips, fidgeting despite his order. "I want you inside of me."

He tsks right before surging up to cover me, his hips coming between my legs as he fills me with a powerful thrust, the stretch sudden and satisfying in a way I'll never get used to.

"Xuh!" My back arches, and he presses deep, seating himself snugly in my core.

"You happy now?" His breath is warm and sweet above my face, and I nod.

"Mm hm." The sound is a purr in my throat as I wait for him to move and launch me into the oblivion of pleasure I've come to love.

"Good. Now, can I finish what I was doing?" He's gone a moment later, leaving me with a heavy drag.

I open my mouth to protest, but the only sound that comes from me is a sharp cry as he shoulders his way beneath my thighs and covers my pussy with his mouth.

His tongue twists between my folds, seeking out the places that make my toes curl and my belly tense, until I feel his tongue burrowing where he was just filling me.

"Oh, god." I gasp, lifting to see what he's doing because it feels unreal.

He's not just eating me. He's devouring me with the abandon of the animal that lives inside him.

My body coils tight with each surge of his tongue, and I'm on the edge before I realize it, my legs shaking, my breaths so fast they hurt.

All it takes is him circling my clit with a firm turn of his tongue, and the pressure sends me spiraling into an orgasm of bright light and warmth. I scream into this dream world, shouting my pleasure at the star-filled night above.

For a moment, the sky seems to rush at me, and I think I must have floated away, but then he's there, grounding me as he rises to fill me again, stroking hard and deep and keeping me riding the wave of my orgasm.

"You know you're mine, right?"

"Yes."

"Good because I'm yours, too. I'm inside of you, Aida."

He makes love to me for however long time works in this place, and when I fall away from the dream into subconscious exhaustion, he's still there, holding me close.

***

My eyes blink open on a white ceiling. The drag of the drugs is gone. I sit up, confused.

"I've never seen anything like this. And she isn't one of us?" A deep, familiar voice sounds from the hall through the open door to my right.

I'm in a bedroom in what could be someone's home or a five-star hotel. Small touches here and there let me know it's a personal space, but everything looks like it was picked out of a catalog or designed to look just so.

"I'm almost one hundred percent. You've scented her. She's not like my chief's mate. She's human, as far as I can tell. What did the blood work say?" Byron sounds just as confused as the other man.

"Same. Human. We'll wait to test the girl when your mate wakes up to give her consent, but this is strange, B. There's something there, and it's not what you've put there."

Byron's voice is lower when he responds, so I shift, trying to focus my hearing, which makes the bed creak. Even though it looks expensive like it shouldn't creak.

The door pushes fully open, and Byron walks in with a smile. "You're awake. Zora's fine."

I sit up fully, feeling my body for soreness that isn't there. If I'm healed, I must have been unconscious for a long time.

"How long was I out?"

Byron smiles, and it's reassuring in a way that lets me know I won't like the answer.

My mind starts to fill with years having gone by while I languished in a coma. I examine Byron's face, but he doesn't look that different.

Not that he's a good gauge. He didn't look in his thirties before.

"Baby, we just got here. It's only been one day."

"One day? But—" I frown down at myself, again looking for the marks that should be there.

I'm in a tank and panties, and my torso is healed. My glowing, tight skin looks better than it has in a long time.

Byron eases onto the bed. "I don't have answers for you right now, but from what we can tell, I've passed on some properties of my wolf to you, namely the ability to heal rapidly."

"You're turning me into a wolf?"

He chuckles, "Not how that works. We aren't contagious. But something about you seems to agree with our shifter constitution."

I think over this information, but I'm not in a place to attempt any hypotheses. My mind goes back to my daughter and the need to see her.

"Where's Zora?" I start to ease off the bed, but he places a hand on my thigh, stopping me.

"I want you to know that you and your daughter are safe. You're my mate, and no one here would hurt you, but we have rules, and you being here breaks them."

"What does that mean?" The flutter of anxiety beats its wings in my chest, and I imagine being tossed out for Genesis to find and do God knows what.

"It just means these are unique circumstances, and some conversations must be had, but don't worry. I'm prepared to have them."

"And if we have to leave?"

His head tilts, and he frowns like I've said something silly. "Do you imagine I would let you walk out of here without me?"

I shake my head, and he smiles, comforting me with the flash of dimples that hide a ferocity I realize now is always lurking beneath the surface to protect me.

"Good. Come on. I've made my people sound scary, and they're not. Let's get you up. You can check on Zora and get something to eat. You must be starving."

I slide from the bed, taking a moment to engage my body once standing, only to feel completely steady.

Byron takes my arm and leads me out into a long black hall. The floors are beautiful cocoa teak, and matching bronze brushed pendant lights hang at intervals along the ceiling.

"Is this your house?" My gaze passes over the details of the art hanging on the walls. It's all beautiful and original work.

"It's a clan house," he says, and when I look at him, he's smiling.

Suddenly, his mouth goes flat, and he shifts his gaze slowly forward. I follow where he's focused to see a tall, muscular man, probably in his early to mid-twenties, striding purposefully toward us.

His face is hard, his thick brows turned down as he glares at Byron. He stops when he's only a foot away, forcing us to pause.

Byron moves slightly in front of me and cocks his head at the other man. "Preston."

The man's gaze shifts quickly to me before focusing back on Byron. "I've just come to tell you myself that I've informed Kofi that I'll be issuing a challenge to you."

Byron's mouth tilts into a ghost of a smile. "Is this the challenge?"

Again, the man's eyes shift briefly to me. "It is."

"Then I accept." Byron holds out his hand, and the man hesitates before giving it a firm shake.

He pivots and returns down the hall the way he came.

"Come on. They're probably serving dinner now." Byron pulls me along like nothing happened, but curiosity gets the best of me before we've cleared the hall.

"Who was that?"

Byron looks at me from the corner of his eye, "My son."