Chapter 10 - Alek

Even after we talked about it, it wasn't until the next day that it finally sunk in. We'd had sex. Amazing sex. What was more, Iris seemed to trust me again.

When we'd gotten home the day before, there had been none of that earlier fear, none of that hesitation or a trace of worry on her face. Instead, it was practically the opposite. She'd practically dragged me into the shower with her the instant we got back, apparently not sated by our excursion in the woods. But it wasn't until I'd woken up with her curled in the crook of my arm that it really hit home. I fell back asleep, wrapping myself around her, holding her close, letting her scent wash over me as my wolf growled in contentment.

When I woke, Iris was gone, her side of the bed still warm. Having her scent in my bed was somehow just as much a turn-on as seeing her naked.

The smell of breakfast pulled me fully out of sleep, and I headed downstairs. Iris was sitting at the kitchen table, phone in hand as she nibbled on a piece of bacon and devoured a cup of coffee.

"Hey." I leaned over and kissed her neck, my hands massaging her shoulders. Her scent surrounded me, making it a lot harder to focus on the topic I wanted to bring up.

"Mmm. Hey, yourself." She tilted her head as I continued to kiss her neck. "Careful, or you might be late to wherever you need to go."

"Trust me," I growled, "I'd be more than willing to be late for anything if it meant I got to fuck you senseless."

"Don't tempt me," she murmured.

My hand slipped beneath her shirt, squeezing her breast. Then I sighed. "As badly as I want to have sex right now, there's something I wanted to talk to you about."

She eyed me uneasily, her body tensing. "What is it?"

"I really want to introduce you to more of my friends," I said.

She froze, the sexual tension snuffed out as quickly as a match. "Your friends like Dan?" she asked. Her voice was tight, and I could sense her retreating into herself as unease filled her eyes. It stung a bit. Even if she trusted me now, there was still a long way to go before she felt the same way about other shifters.

"No, not like Dan," I emphasized. Just the thought of the way he'd been making her life difficult and how he'd tried to frighten her that first night was enough to make me bristle with rage again. "Most of my friends aren't like that. And I don't think I can really call him a friend anymore, anyway."

"And your friends are all wol—uh, shifters?"

My mouth quirked upward. "Yes, they're all wolf men," I said jokingly. "But none of them will eat you, I promise."

She gave a half-hearted smile.

I sighed, crouching down to take her hands. "You don't have to meet them if you don't want to. I'm not going to force you. But you have to believe by now that I would never deliberately put you in harm's way."

"Not deliberately, no," she agreed after a minute. "But you trusted Dan, too."

I winced. "Dan's different," I said. "The friends I want you to meet are the guys I've spent years of my life with. I've fought beside them. They've saved my life, and I've saved theirs. Besides you, they're the most important people in my life." If Iris registered what I'd just said, she didn't acknowledge it. "And I want to introduce you because I want you to get to know them, and to realize I'm not the only shifter who isn't going to eat you."

Iris bit her lip, looking outside, where the sun was still finishing cresting the trees. "These are the guys who are with the women I met?"

"Yeah, they're their mates. There are a couple of others, but that's the majority of them."

Iris hesitated again. "The women were really nice," she admitted.

I took her head in my hands, our faces inches apart. "I'm not going to make you do anything you don't want to," I said. "I promise that."

She raised an eyebrow. "You mean, besides kidnap me and bring me here?" she teased. "Twice?"

I hesitated. "Okay, starting now, I won't make you do anything you don't want to. Deal?"

She gave me an appreciative smile, then took a deep breath. "Okay," she said, her voice small and maybe a little uncertain. "All right."

I beamed. "Are you sure?"

She nodded. Before I could stop myself, I leaned forward and pressed her lips to mine. I loved the taste of her, couldn't get enough of it. And it was with more than a little difficulty that I pulled away.

"When?" she asked.

I shrugged. "No time like the present?"

***

"Holy shit."

I only barely bit my tongue to keep from laughing. I could understand her shock. Jameson's mansion was massive. When we'd first moved to Brixton, we'd all camped out here. But as the years went by, we moved out, finding our own places. But even I was still blown away by how huge it was.

"You should see the back patio," I said. "It's two-tiered and goes all the way to a dock on the lake."

"Lake?"

I nodded. "We can check it out later if you'd like."

"One thing at a time," she muttered as we approached the front of the house. "Let's focus on me meeting a bunch of ex-spec-ops shifters before we worry about showing me a lake."

She shifted back and forth nervously as I opened the door. "Shouldn't we, um, knock?" she asked.

I snorted. "Jameson knows we're coming. Also, he has an open-door policy for any of the Silver Wolves. Relax."

She nodded, but I could still tell by the look in her eyes that she was still imagining being eaten the minute she walked inside. She might have relaxed a bit, but that didn't mean she was entirely at ease yet. I could understand that.

"You're going to do great," I said. "And trust me. I'm not going to let anything happen to you."

I kissed her on the forehead, taking in her scent as I pulled her close to me, trying to give her some reassurance. Her shoulders sagged slightly as if she was beginning to relax.

Her mouth dropped open when we entered the vast mansion, its high ceilings looming over us. "This is huge," she muttered. "I didn't even realize they made houses this big."

"None in your village?" I asked.

"Nope. Dad had the biggest house, and you could fit ten of them in here."

"Your family has the biggest house?" I asked.

Iris paused, eyes wide and doe-like, as if I'd just caught her saying something she shouldn't have. "Yeah," she finally said. "Dad's, um…he's the head of the village. So, biggest house. You know, that type of thing."

I blinked. I hadn't known that about her family; she had never mentioned that about her father. Granted, she rarely talked about her family or her past at all, so I guess it wasn't too surprising that I hadn't known this. Still, the idea that her father led her village, a man who clearly hated shifters and had instilled so much fear in his daughter, was disconcerting to say the least.

I didn't want to tell Iris any of this, not right now. She was already so nervous as it was. I didn't want to amplify it by bringing her family into the situation.

Loud laughter muffled by glass filtered through the house toward us.

"They're outside. Guess we're going to the patio after all," I said.

She tensed for a moment, then nodded.

I put my hand on the small of her back. "You're going to do great," I promised. "And the moment you want to leave, just give me a signal and we'll go."

Her shoulders relaxed at the promise. "What kind of signal?"

I paused. "I don't know. Tug on your earlobe?"

She stared at me, then started laughing. "Tug on my earlobe?" she said through giggles. "Yeah, because that's not conspicuous at all."

"You come up with something, then, if you're so clever."

She smirked, more of her tension ebbing away. "I'll suck my thumb," she said sarcastically, then her grin turned wicked. "How about this?"

She made an up-and-down motion with her hand while miming grasping something.

I started laughing along with her. "Since when do you make jokes about jacking off?"

She shrugged. "I don't know," she admitted. "I guess it doesn't feel as weird to act more like myself."

"Well, for the record, I like it." I bent down and kissed her. "Girls with a dirty sense of humor are a huge turn-on."

The kiss lingered. "Come on," she said when we finally separated. "Before I lose my nerve."

Tannen, Rand, Mark, Malcolm, and Klyte were all sitting on the top patio, most with beers in hand or some other drink. Jameson was behind the bar, shaking a cocktail shaker. They all paused when the French doors slid open, looking toward us.

"Hey, guys," I said. "This is Iris.

Iris gave a small smile and an awkward wave as her eyes scanned the shifters in front of her. The instant she saw the view, she froze, eyes wide. At first, I thought it was awe, and I couldn't blame her. The lush green trees reflected in the crystal blue of the lake looked like something out of a painting, too beautiful to be real. But the more I studied her, the more I wondered if it was something else. There was awe, but also something that looked strangely like recognition? As if she'd been here before.

But then she blinked, seeming to remember that she was surrounded by a bunch of unfamiliar shifters. She took an unconscious step toward me.

"Iris!" Malcolm smiled and pushed himself up from his chair. "Good to see you again."

"You too," she said, and she sounded like it. I could imagine seeing another familiar face was comforting in this type of situation. I gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze.

"Hey, Jameson," I said. "Get us a couple of beers?"

Jameson obliged, flicking the caps off with his thumb and coming over to hand them to us. "Nice to meet you, Iris," Jameson said. "Welcome to the mansion."

"It's beautiful," she muttered, that confused, distant expression back on her face. She looked like she might say more, but then shook it off. "Thanks for having me," she said with a small smile.

"Any friend of Alek's is welcome," Jameson said.

"I'm surprised you're not tired of him yet," Klyte said to her, grinning.

"It's been a near thing once or twice," she responded, earning an appreciative chuckle from the entire group.

I pointed to each of them in turn, rattling off their names. Her head bobbed in tandem each time I pointed to someone.

"Nice to meet you all," she said, moving to sit in the chair next to mine.

"You settling in okay?" Rand asked.

"Yeah, actually. And I love the house," Iris said. Now that she had a beer in hand, she seemed a lot more relaxed. "It was weird, actually. The first time I saw it, I could have sworn I'd been there before. Like, I'm pretty sure I dreamed about it."

Malcolm tilted his head, eyebrows raising. "Really?" he asked.

Iris's face turned a brilliant red. "Um, yeah," she muttered. "Sorry. Weird thing to say, I know."

"No, no." Malcolm rubbed his chin, studying her. "Out of curiosity, have you had any other experiences like that? Almost déjà vu, or like you'd seen it in a dream?"

She hesitated for a minute, chewing the inside of her lip as she glanced at me, at Malcolm, the ground. She picked at the label on her beer.

"Actually, yes," she finally said. "When I first came out on the patio. I had a dream about that lake, too. And there was one about running through the woods that…" She trailed off, glancing over at me, and I realized that she was thinking about the time she'd ridden on my back through the forest not too long ago. She'd dreamt that, too?

"How often do you dream?" Malcolm asked.

"Um…" She glanced over at me. "A lot? But doesn't everyone?"

"And how many of your dreams do you remember vividly?"

"A lot," she said again. She fidgeted in her chair, looking behind her at the door to the mansion as if debating whether to escape.

"Malcolm, what's this about?" I asked. "You're being weird."

"I'm getting to the bottom of something that's been bothering me since I met Iris," he responded. He said it matter-of-factly, without accusation or malice. But Iris still paled.

"I didn't do anything." She shrank back into her chair. "It's just me being weird. I've always been a bit weird like that."

"I'm not saying you're weird, Iris," he said reassuringly. "You're not weird or off or anything like that. But I think you're special."

Iris's brow furrowed as she remained curled back in her chair. I had to admit I was curious, too. By now, everyone was paying rapt attention to the exchange, hanging onto every word, all of us equally confused.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked.

"You're psychic," Malcolm said.