Chapter 1

1

“ S top!” I gasped the word out suddenly, my body tense and tight as pain arced through me.

Holy hell, that hurt. Was it supposed to hurt that much? Clearly we were doing this wrong.

Remy grimaced above me, his muscles shaking as he tried to hold back. “Stopping right now isn’t exactly an option, babe.”

I glared up at him, my jaw clenched. “Well, this hurts, so make it an option, Remy.”

His dark gaze narrowed. “I know . I told you it probably would the first few times.”

“You didn’t mention this much hurt,” I snapped, ready to call it quits now. My body shook with exhaustion, my chest heaving.

Remy sighed, his head dropping and nearly touching my shoulder. “Skye, you can’t just yell, ‘stop’ in the middle of a fight and think the person trying to kill you will decide to take a time out.”

Now I glared at him, resisting the urge to turn my head and bite his wrist where he had my arm pinned down.

But it would have been seriously childish... and there was no way Remy would’ve allowed it. He was too fast, too smart, and too good a fighter to let that happen.

My boyfriend was definitely a badass when it came to all things shifter and fighting related. I assumed it came with the alpha-to-be territory, but when I had asked him to start teaching me some self-defense moves, I didn’t realize I was signing up for Remington Holt Boot Camp: Extreme Shifter Edition.

I thought it would be a good way to take back a piece of my self esteem that Cassian had stolen when he kidnapped me or spent years torturing me. I had been powerless then, but I wasn’t anymore.

Except right now? I kinda was.

Remy took his role as teacher very seriously, as seriously as he took my safety, which had gone from high-alert to DEFCON-5 after my abduction. He was my alpha and my mate. One would have been enough to become obsessed with my safety, but both meant he wasn’t cutting me any slack on learning to protect myself.

I could see the moment he decided to call it a day, and I rejoiced even though my wolf was pissed off he had bested us at least ten times in a row.

But maybe we can both still win.

I wrapped my legs around his waist, using my lower body strength to pull him down on top of me, fitting our bodies together. Caught off guard, he fell into me, his nose brushing mine.

Remy arched a single brow slowly, glancing down at where my legs were locked around him. His heated gaze moved to my eyes, his already dark eyes getting even darker.

“While this may be a good distraction tactic,” he allowed in a rough voice, his eyes once more sweeping the length of my body, “I don’t think I’m a fan of you using this particular technique on anyone else.”

His hands still had mine captured by my head, rendering me helpless in a way I was starting to love.

“Only you,” I said softly, my gaze flickering to his mouth while my eyes pleaded for him to close the minuscule distance between our lips.

He didn’t disappoint.

His lips closed over mine, his tongue sweeping inside my waiting mouth as he deepened the kiss. I twisted under him, needing my hands free to pull him closer, but he held me down, pinning me to the floor. I felt his lips curve into a wicked smile against mine as he kept kissing me.

With a frustrated groan, I arched my neck. His lips trailed down my jaw and peppered wet kisses along the column of my throat.

My legs squeezed harder around his waist, my body igniting into a series of blinding sparks as his hips rocked into mine. His body might have been just as turned on as I was, but he was taking his time kissing me as thoroughly as possible, leaving me powerless to do anything except take what he was giving.

Which I was more than willing to do.

The front door opened behind us.

“This doesn’t look like teaching self-defense,” Rhodes said with a smirk as he strolled in and stopped beside us. “At least, this is never how we spar, Remy. Is this a new technique?”

Grumbling, Remy got to his feet immediately and pulled me up with him. My body pressed against his for a single delicious second that ended way too soon for either of us. With a low groan, he headed for the kitchen to grab our waters while I slapped Rhodes on the arm.

“Great timing,” I muttered, glaring at him.

He shrugged innocently enough, but there was a familiar, wicked glint in his eyes. “Maybe you two need to be properly chaperoned from now on. You know, to keep you from getting... distracted.”

Remy flipped him off while handing me my bottle. I twisted the cap off and took a long pull of the cold liquid.

I arched a brow at Rhodes. “And where are you coming from exactly?” His hair definitely hadn’t been that mussed when he left here a few hours earlier, and his shirt wasn’t nearly as wrinkled.

A goofy, completely smitten grin split his face. “Larkin was helping me study.”

Remy rolled his eyes, giving me a knowing look. “Studying, right.”

“Do I even want to know what you were studying?” I asked with a smirk, taking another drink.

His grin deepened shamelessly. “Chemistry, of course.” He winked. “I’m acing that class.”

“Of course,” I echoed with a snort and shook my head. “And now you’re done studying?”

Rhodes frowned. “Lark kicked me out. Something about needing to actually study.”

That sounded more like my best friend. I laughed, turning away from them both and heading for the stairs. “I’m taking a shower before dinner.”

“I’ll make sure Remy stays down here,” Rhodes told me, but then I heard the sound of Remy’s fist punching his arm a second before Rhodes grunted and whined, “That freaking hurt, dude.”

Smiling to myself, I hurried up the stairs and went into my room, closing the door as I stripped out of my work out clothes. I tossed them across the perfectly made bed.

It was hard to mess up a bed I hadn’t slept in.

I had taken Remy up on his offer to move into the alpha cabin when we returned to the school a day earlier, with the provision that I got the guest room next to his room as my own. I hated the idea of not being near him, but I also wasn’t quite ready to move in- move in with him yet.

But of course last night I slept in his bed our first night back on campus. We had only slept.

After he’d spent almost every night with me over winter break, mostly due to my frequent nightmares, I wasn’t ready to lose that feeling of waking up with him. Especially now that we were back at GPA. The last time I was here, I nearly died.

A shudder wracked my frame, and I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to shove away the memory of waking up on the side of a mountain after Cassian had drugged and kidnapped me. I tried to ignore the memories of fighting with him and going over the cliff, the sense of complete panic I felt when Remy was fighting him and Trace was closing in on us. Remy would have been outnumbered, so I leveled the playing field the only way I could think of at the time.

I took Cassian, and myself, out of the equation so Remy wouldn’t fight two alpha heirs at the same time.

Parts of my memory were still broken, but I had dreams about falling, my body breaking against the hard ground at the bottom of the cliff. Sometimes Cassian was in my dreams, still alive, and he succeeded in taking me back to Long Mesa.

In the worst nightmares, it was Remy who went over the edge with Cassian. Remy’s body smashed against the gray stones and dead leaves.

Those dreams killed me. I would wake up screaming and sobbing. The first time I had that particular nightmare was right after Christmas. Mom had come running into my room, finally calling Remy and making him come to the apartment at two in the morning when I couldn’t calm down.

I didn’t stop crying and shaking until I saw he was okay for myself.

I was able to handle when things happened to me, but the idea of Remy being hurt or worse was more than I could take.

After that, he used the tree outside my window to sneak into my room every night over break. When the nightmares were bad, it helped waking up to see him next to me. Sometimes he felt me slipping into them before I knew what it was, and he could talk me out of them. I would wake up, wrapped tightly in his arms, his lips whispering against my ear. After a few nights, the nightmares mostly stopped, but Remy kept coming into my room every night.

I definitely wasn’t going to complain. Sometimes I think he needed the reminder that I was okay, too. The reassurance that I would wake up in the morning after he spent three weeks watching me never wake up from my coma.

There was this constant need in me to be with him all the time. I wasn’t sure if it was my wolf, the bond, or just PTSD from everything we had been through.

I heard the shower in Remy’s bathroom kick on as I was turning my shower off and stepping out. It took me hardly any time to towel off my hair and body and get dressed. I quickly braided my dark hair, leaving it wet despite the Montana winter outside.

A few months ago I had learned I hated hair dryers.

The blast of hot air felt too much like the New Mexico desert, and the pack, I had left behind.

If leaving my hair wet meant I didn’t get that split second flashback, I would deal with it. Even if the Montana air was hovering at a crisp eleven degrees.

Rhodes was playing a video game when I came back downstairs. I glanced at the clock on the cable box, noting we only had fifteen minutes until dinner would be served in the cafeteria of the main building.

“How was it out there?” I asked, sitting on the other end of the couch.

“Like a ghost town,” he replied, turning off the game and giving me his full attention. “It’s weird as hell, Skyewalker.”

I nodded slowly. “Yeah. It’ll take some getting used to.”

After last semester, half the packs that attended Granite Peak Academy decided not to return, leaving the campus feeling really empty and a little creepy. Half the alpha cabins around the property sat empty and dark, just empty shells where people used to live.

Rhodes still lived in the alpha house with Remy, and now me, but hardly anyone else shared a room on campus now. There was enough space for everyone to have their own rooms in the dorms for the first time in years, and most people seemed to love that.

Rhodes offered to stay in the dorms (okay, his first choice was one of the leftover alpha cabins with Larkin), but I hated the idea of displacing him from the place he had lived since he started GPA as a freshman. Plus, his dad had just died, and he needed his best friend. Breaking up Remy and Rhodes was never an option.

Besides, it took some of the pressure off of my relationship with Remy. A relationship that was still firmly ranked as PG-13, to my growing frustration.

Remy knew my history with my first pack, and my complicated, often volatile, past with male shifters. He never wanted me to feel pressured in any way about our bond or the pace I moved at.

But my wolf and I were both a little tired of the lack of action. Not that there had been much time to do things over winter break. Remy and I had missed the last part of the fall semester and spent most of our break catching up so we could still graduate in the Spring. Plus, we applied to college, Remy helped his dad with the pack, and I even started working part time at the cafe with my mom.

And at night... Well, nothing said sexy-times like a girl who was terrified of turning the lights out and prone to shriek-inducing nightmares. Remy was usually more focused on making me relaxed at night; not on activities that would have the opposite effect.

Classes started tomorrow, so hopefully having that routine would help normalize things, even if the campus was eerily absent of half the students that had been there only a few weeks earlier.

I personally was all for the emptier campus if it meant Trace, the Norwood pack, and their allies were all far away.

After attacking Larkin at the dance, breaking Katy’s leg, and bringing Cassian to the school, I never needed to see Trace again. He had made it his mission to destroy my pack and my mate, and he had lost.

I knew Remy was still pissed there was unfinished business between them (mostly that Trace ran away while Remy was sitting vigil by my hospital bed before Remy could kick his ass), but I was looking forward to a much more relaxed final semester of high school before I started college.

I watched Rhodes kick ass on the TV for a few minutes until Remy came downstairs in a pair of jeans that hung low on his hips, tugging his shirt down over his abs.

“You’re drooling,” Rhodes murmured beside me.

I kicked at him with my foot. “Jerk.”

Remy walked behind the couch on his way to get his boots, smacking the back of Rhodes’ head as he went.

“Hey!” Rhodes yelped, grabbing the back of his head. “What did I do?”

“Whatever you did to make Skye kick you,” he retorted with a grin.

I gave him a smug look, standing up to go get my own shoes. Rhodes turned off the game and the TV, getting up as well.

I slipped my arms into my jacket as Remy pulled a knit beanie over my head, flicking the ends of my braid. “You’re going to freeze.”

With a shrug, I ducked past him and opened the front door to go outside.

The path that led to the main building was barely clear and snow was still falling. I quickly descended the stairs, tipping my face up to catch snowflakes on my face. I loved the fluffy white stuff.

Remy came up behind me silently, his footsteps muffled by the snow. But it didn’t matter. I could sense him behind me, near me. I could always sense where he was, even when he was out of sight.

If my heart was a compass, Remy Holt was my true North.

Probably another side effect of the mate bond we shared, but it gave me a certain level of comfort, especially when I couldn’t see him with my own eyes.

He slid his arms around my waist, pulling my back flush to his chest, lighting up nerve endings through layers of clothes and coats.

The tip of his warm nose brushed my jaw a second before his lips ghosted over the same spot. “Let’s go.”

His gloved hand closed over mine and he tugged me down the path. I watched the snow falling around us as he and Rhodes talked about some new game they both wanted when it came out in a few months. As we got closer to the building, I could see more students heading the same way.

My shoulders stiffened when I realized they kept glancing over at us.

“Why are people looking at us?” I finally asked in a low voice when a group of guys stared and started talking quickly to each other as they ducked into the building.

Rhodes threw an arm across my shoulders. “You’re famous, babe.”

With a low growl, Remy pushed his arm off of me, hauling me to his side in a show of possessive male dominance that shouldn’t have turned my insides to jelly the way it did, and probably broke a few laws of feminism.

Katy would be so disappointed.

Rhodes never stopped smiling, not phased in the least by his best friend going all alpha-caveman.

“Famous?” I echoed, slowing my steps. “What do you mean?”

Brow furrowed, Rhodes slowed with me, looking first at me and then at Remy. “Not only did you end up in a coma after a showdown with a pack of alphas, but you and Remy are bonded. That never happens to shifters our age.”

The mate part I could deal with, but the other...

I stopped altogether. “Do they know... who I am?”

Remy looked down at me before jerking his head for Rhodes to keep going. I could tell he wanted to reach for me, it was in his eyes, but we both knew I wanted answers more than I wanted comfort.

At least, right this second.

He took a deep breath. “They know what pack you’re from. They know you’re the niece of an Alpha, the granddaughter of an Alpha. They know who your mother is.”

I winced at that. My mother basically started a war between the southern packs when she turned up pregnant a week before her marriage of alliance to another pack. Needless to say, the treaty was broken and it caused a massive wave of fallout that was fairly legendary in the shifter world.

“But they don’t know the details about what happened in Long Mesa,” he finished softly, his dark eyes concerned and fierce at the same time. “That’s your story to tell when, and if, you want to, babe.”

Logically I knew nothing that happened in Long Mesa was my fault. I never asked to grow up in a house where omegas were repeatedly abused on a daily basis. A house where I knew I would one day suffer the same fate.

I never asked Cassian, Preston, and Marc to bully and harass me, finding ways to grope, grab, and intimidate me for years before Mom and I escaped.

And I sure as hell didn’t ask Cassian to come to Granite Peak last year or to kidnap me.

But it didn’t mean I felt the shame any less. That gut-churning, black hole pit in my stomach that loomed wide, ready to devour me in humiliation when I remembered every minute of my past.

Remy leaned his forehead against mine, his skin shockingly warm despite the cold. “That life is over, babe. No one will ever touch you again.”

I wound my arms around his neck. “Except you.”

“Except me,” he agreed, his voice a deep rumble that I felt down to my toes a second before his soft lips descended on mine, coaxing my lips open to deepen the kiss.

I rolled to the balls of my feet, my arms tightening around him. I hated these puffy layers between us, the gloves on my hands that kept me from sliding my fingers through his hair and along his strong jaw.

His hands found my hips, his arms banding around me as he almost lifted me off the ground.

A series of giggles burst through the air behind us, snapping us out of our impromptu-makeout session.

Remy set me down, pulling away as our three younger female pack members looked at us with freaking stars in their eyes.

I couldn’t even be mad. Lea, Bethany, and Megan had turned into the little sisters I never knew I wanted. I had even hung out with them a few times during break when Ainsley—freaking Ainsley who a few months ago hated me—had all of us over to her house for a slumber party one night.

But the three younger girls had quizzed me in every way they could think of about my bond with Remy until Katy and Ainsley told them to shut up and leave me alone.

I waved a gloved hand to them, and they waved back.

Remy followed my look with a smile. “Your fan club, huh?”

I snorted as we started for the doors. “Please. More like your fan club.” I gave him a serious look. “Megan definitely has a thing for you.”

He exhaled loudly, opening the door for me. “Too bad for Megan. I’m taken.”

I whirled around with a shocked gasp. “Taken? Remington Holt has a girlfriend?”

He grinned, shaking his head at me. “I am definitely off the market.”

“So, it’s serious?” I teased, biting my lower lip.

His arm reached out, snagging me by the waist and pulling me into him. His dark eyes were liquid chocolate, warm and soft, as he looked down at me. “I love her completely.”

I smiled up at him, my heart soaring in my chest. “The feeling is entirely mutual.”