Chapter 7

SEVEN

Max

Miles from the murder scene, the night is quiet and serene. Rather than hang around for the cleanup, I took our team to a motel for the night. After the discussion about the Enforcers’ apathy, I didn’t think it necessary to spend all night in their presence. Salt in the wound.

I get them situated in the motel, then come outside for a little fresh air and to clear my head. Part of me was itching to be on the scene with the Enforcers, to see if there was anything we missed, but a more powerful part of me knew my team needed to be here.

Asha’s struggling. I’m typically a man who likes to identify a problem and solve it, but I’m realizing that’s not how things have to be handled with Asha. Her trauma, her fears, her triggers, they all need to be approached with care. I’m just lucky Braxton has more experience with them.

Did I think it’d be hard to share her just a short time ago? It seems crazy. Three men feel like the perfect number to fulfill all Asha’s wants and needs, and I don’t resent that she needs more than me.

And when things settle, she can continue healing. With us. No matter how long it takes.

A red neon vacancy sign buzzes overhead, broadcasting the motel’s desperation in a town seldom visited. A gas station across the street is a bright disruption to the otherwise uniformly dark environment. Forest shadows blend with the black void of space outside of the bubbles of light. I stand in the middle of the scene, leaning against a rusted pillar upholding the walkway’s overhang, eyes trained on the dark. My mind casts its thoughts against it like a projector screen. Faces of my teammates—my pack mates—flicker against the silhouettes of trees.

I have a responsibility to them. Their safety is my charge. I could never let anything happen to them. It goes beyond duty.

I…love them.

The admission lifts a weight from my chest. Despite our tight bonds, I’d been holding something back. The leader in me holding himself at a distance. But it’s foolish. I can’t pretend any longer. They’re my family.

And you can’t abandon family.

That’s why Asha needs to see this through, and why I need to be there by her side. The Blood Pack contains the remnants of her family, and her brother’s ghost must be put to rest. She needs to handle this head on, but not alone.

It’s strange. This fucked up situation. I actually think it’s good for Braxton and Orson too. Braxton has struggled with things I never imagined, in ways I never imagined. Helping Asha deal with her own trauma is helping him deal with his own too, I can feel it.

And I doubt Orson ever told anyone what really happened with his mom and dad, but he told us. Displaying his soul for all to see had an effect on all of us, especially Braxton and I. It’s like he showed us his throat, and we didn’t feel the need to bite. If he could share that kind of darkness, that kind of pain, with the three of us, then he saw us as close.

Orson trusts us. He’s smart. He’s good to Asha. And I can’t detect a bad bone in his body. No wonder Asha was drawn to him. Mates have a way of finding each other, and she’d found her mates in an unlikely bunch.

Now, we just have to survive. My wolf growls within me, and I have to bite down to keep the growl from exploding from my lips as my hands curl into fists. A phone call echoes from the previous day, a chat between my boss Carl and myself.

“From what intel we have gathered, it doesn’t look good,” he reported.

“How ‘not good,’ Carl?”

I needed to know. If my team was going to this ‘party’ with the Blood Mages, I had to be sure about the odds of us walking back out. And Carl would give it to me straight.

He let out a breath. “Real not good, Max.”

Fuck.

“How are we going to fix this?” I asked.

There was a long pause before Carl responded. “You can step down as team lead for this one, Max.”

I wasn’t sure I heard him right. “What?” Why?

“You can walk away.

You can walk away ?

“I have the order, on my desk, that would explain it all away. There would be no questions asked. You can… walk away.”

You can walk away .

The offer rings between my ears now, a grating sound that irritates me. Carl would have spared my life, but forsaken three others. One of which is my brother, the other two now practically as close. Asha probably closer. My fists clench at my sides.

This is, in fact, a suicide mission.

Carl all but confirmed that with his thoughtless proposal. And while I might have charged into that danger regardless in a past life, I now see the promise of a future one. A life outside work. A life extrapolated from the nightly respite we’ve created for ourselves on the road. I never would’ve thought I’d have these desires, but then I met Asha, reunited with my twin brother, and had Orson thrown into the mix, somehow tying everything together with his unique blend of ebullience and thoughtfulness.

But dread descends on our little dream like shadows around a campfire. Our connection is strong, but our future is fragile. Just when I allow hope into my life, a great threat comes along to snuff it out.

I suppose that’s the gamble with hope, and probably why I never held any. How are we going to make it through this? The question bounds between the dark, spindly branch-ends like a taunting imp I might quash if only I held the answer.

Ever since that phone call, I’ve been driving toward our destination, unsure about whether I could actually take us there. Thinking about if there’s anything I can say to my team to convince them that we don’t need to do this, that someone else, some yet to be seen person, can handle Simon and the rest of the Blood Mages.

If I thought they would walk away with me, I might just do it. But I don’t. And if I suggest it, I might just undermine their confidence, something they can’t afford for me to do right now.

But can I do this? I can’t lead us into certain death just so the Enforcers can swoop in to clean up the bodies. Carl’s probably thanking his lucky stars he didn’t do what his gut told him to with Asha and kept her in the field, because now he’s got a dedicated warrior who’s going to see the mission through no matter what. Two birds one stone, as far as he’s concerned. Collapse the whole clusterfuck in on itself and wipe his hands clean of it.

So, I can’t lead us to our death, but I can’t just walk away either.

The door behind me creeps open and a slight figure emerges. Moonlight glows on Asha’s pale flesh, turning her silvery hair practically incandescent. She’s dressed in her pajamas, a pair of thin, cheeky cotton shorts and a spaghetti strap top that stops above her navel. “What are you doing?” I ask. “It’s cold out and you’re half naked.”

“I have you to hold me,” she says, pressing against me with a little smile.

I close my arms around her and feel the warmth radiating off her soft body. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“Kept thinking of you out here brooding,” she says with a smirk. “You looked cute in my head, but I wanted to come out and see if I was right.”

I scoff. “Were you?”

“Underestimated, actually.” She lifts herself onto her tiptoes and tilts her face towards mine. I lay my lips against hers and we breathe each other in as we kiss. She sighs contentedly. “Now, pack your dark clouds away and come with me back to bed, Max Blackwell.”

At any other time, I’d love to do that, but I can’t tuck my thoughts away right now. “I was thinking about what Carl said to me.”

She looks disappointed that I would mention his name, but asks anyway, “What did he say to you?”

I debate about whether or not I should keep this to myself. I’m good at keeping things to myself. That’s one of the many reasons I’ve always done well working alone. I didn’t need to bounce my ideas off of someone else or clear my conscience, but Asha has changed all that. Now, my dark thoughts are weighing me down, urging me to share them with someone else.

Saying to hell with my internal debate, I speak. “He told me I could exit the mission if I so chose.”

Her eyebrows lift. “Like, ditch your team?”

I grimace and nod. “That was the implicit message.”

She looks both disgusted and unsurprised. “The other implicit message being that we’re not going to make it through this alive.”

I don’t counter her assessment.

Asha hangs her head. But when she lifts it again, it’s not despair I find, but determination. “Well, the Enforcers are just underestimating us then, aren’t they?” she says.

“Are they?”

She touches my cheek. “We can do anything together. Even this.”

“But your dark magic…?”

Her jaw tightens. “I won’t use it unless I have to. But if I do, Simon won’t stand a chance. Those fucking Enforcers can just sit back and be cowards, either way, because we’re going to be the winners of this fight.”

Before my doubts have a chance to color the silence of my response with dread, she takes me by the hand back into our room. Her hand is so much smaller than mine. Her delicate scent washes over me.

Braxton and Orson sleep on the bed nearest the door, Trouble providing the buffer between them. Both men rest soundly, evidenced by their slack-jawed repose. “I told them we needed a bed tonight,” says Asha, crawling beneath the covers. She disappears into a blanket mound, then reaches out an arm and curls her index invitingly.

I grin and pursue her, but before I slip under the sheets, she stops me with a hand thrust against my crotch, again only her arm jutting from the sheets. She gives my waistband a tug, then my shirt, then wags her finger. As though in further instruction, her arm disappears again only to reemerge a moment later with her clothes clutched in her fist. It opens and she deposits her articles on the floor. Mine join the pile. Now with the requisite amount of nude to enter, I lift the blankets and slide my body in alongside hers.

In the dark of her lovenest, I sense Asha only by touch and sound and scent. The delicate satin texture of her bare thigh crossing my legs. The noise she makes when her wet folds glide along the length of my shaft. The smell of her arousal as she puts me inside her, like the sudden release of aroma when a flower is crushed in the palm of one’s hand.

I place my hands on her ass while she rides me. The heat of our sex creates a balmy climate under the blankets, a jungle all our own. Her skin becomes slick and I taste her sweat when I take her left breast into my mouth.

Climaxes seize both of us at the same time and I don’t let go until exhaustion takes its place. I barely manage to lower the blankets over our heads before falling asleep, Asha laid atop me, the balm of her touch dissolving my fear. My cock is firmly inside her, claiming her for my own.

This, this is what I need, always. Asha with me. I can face anything with her by my side.