Chapter 104

Silas

I did so love the bright bite of pain that came from a knife blade sliding across my skin, but this? Watching my brother claim the one woman he was destined to be with hurt so much more. My heart was full to overflowing that they'd managed to find their way to each other. My eyes ached from seeing them rut, my own cock leaking treacherously as I remembered exactly how it felt. He had to be thinking his bollocks were about to boil over, feeling her silken heat. But most of all it hurt because I knew what this meant.

Arik's eyes found mine, making clear he was one step ahead of me. By claiming Jessalyn now, we made her a much bigger target. Magnus wanted her as a means to torment Arik, but my father… The whole of The Guild would develop an interest in my mate. Arik and I knew dangerous people who were always on the lookout for points of pressure to apply on those they wished to blackmail and we'd just given them the perfect target. Now that the lesson had been taught, he moved. We all did, unable to stay away for long, not as the two of them moved together.

That was the problem. The easiest thing to do would've been to surrender Jessalyn to the king. The smartest thing would've been to use the network of Guild chapters around the continent to get Jessalyn out of Khean and away from here. The safest would've been to return her to the packlands to wait for us to be done with all of the business, letting her stay with Creed's family until the king was dead and Arik had taken the throne. Instead we were here. Creed pledged everything he had to Jessalyn with each stroke and that was what had us clustering closer.

Kissing her shoulders, tracing our hands down her sides, we were like a pack of vampires feeding off their bliss, but we couldn't seem to help it. It'd taken control like iron to keep my hands off her in Stormare, but I'd used it all up. I couldn't fight this anymore and neither could Jess or Creed, so I pressed my lips to her shoulder and listened.

To her gasps of pleasure and his, the sounds growing louder and more frenzied. I felt like I was being tugged along with it, her moans a silken hand pulling at my cock. Perhaps that was why I unlaced my pants, freeing the part of me that ached the most, my own grip too rough, unsatisfactory after feeling her touch those nights before. When my fingers pressed into the almost healed scratch she'd left in my groin though, I was transported.

I was the one fucking her, one long stroke after the other. I was the one making her moans turn into whines. I was the one causing her whole body to stiffen. But I wasn't really, and when she felt the press of me into her side, she pulled her lips away from Creed and stared into my eyes.

Gods, she was beautiful.

More flushed face than when she was taking roseblood, her eyes shone with something else other than chemically induced lust. Love, that was what I wanted to call that searching look, then the gentleness there. It was like a long glass of ice water on a summer's day, quenching a fire of need inside me, while building another one altogether. Her hand pulled free to draw me closer; her forehead pressed against mine.

"Join us…" she hissed and she didn't need to explain what that meant, because I knew. This was a pleasure too big to be contained to just two people. We were pack and that was what I felt right now. My hand worked, but right now it did so in her service. My cock throbbed in response to her. Jessalyn, always Jessalyn, that was what filled my mind, body and soul, the pleasure that ripped through me was all hers. I rose and so did Roan, our hands moving like lightning to join the two of them as they reached their peak.

"Creed…!"

The elders had told me about this, but it still shocked me to see it, her head tipped to one side. She bared her neck to my brother and he just stared for a second before baring his fangs. Jessalyn missed the desperation in his eyes, the disbelief, some part of him not believing this would happen until it did, but when his jaws snapped down, I lost all control.

Pleasure, perfect pleasure transported me out of this tent, washed away all of the grime of the road, silenced the low rumbles coming from nearby tents and replaced them all with her. I dug my fingers into her arms, finding her shoulder with my mouth and biting down, though not with any real strength before I erupted all over her back.

"Oh…" Her sigh told me everything I needed to know. Jessalyn sounded eminently pleased, her whole body rippling like a sleepy cat's. "The elders told me this would change me, but…" She nuzzled into Creed, and he kissed her right back, looking completely shellshocked in this moment. "I'm not sure there are words to describe how that felt."

"Good?" There was something almost shy about my brother.

"So good." A kiss, then another, before she turned and bestowed the same gift on Roan. My lips were tingling with need until she took pity on me. Every practical thought ceased to exist at her touch, something that she seemed to sense. Jessalyn shot me a secret smile then turned back to Creed. "So, if we were on packland, what would happen now?"

"The mating isn't complete." He turned to Arik who crouched in the corner of the tent as if made of stone. "Not until all of us join with you. Normally we would spend days in bed doing just that, but…" I heard the regret in Creed's voice, because it was a twin of my own feelings.

"We have a war to plan." Arik tried to be gentle, coming close and inspecting Jessalyn with the cool fingers of a healer, not a lover. He examined the bite on Jessalyn's neck then the smaller less permanent ones I'd left and, it appeared, so had Roan. "Forming a mate bond was inevitable, but now we must make moves to defend it. Are you hurt?" His hands slid down. "Did he…?" His eyes met hers. "Did Creed knot you?"

"Not until her heat," came my brother's growl of an answer. "I'll only hurt her now. I might feel half gone to rut, but I'm not." He cradled our princess against his chest. "I'd never do anything to cause Jess pain."

But Arik would, that went unspoken. I hoped my brother did not truly, because if the prince harmed my princess, I wasn't sure I could hold myself back.

"Let's see then." Arik pulled her from Creed's arms and laid her down on the bedroll like a groom might a bride. Her knees snapped closed, but he rubbed his hands up and down her thighs. "Show me what he did to you, Jessalyn, so I know whether or not to find you some salve. Riding your mates can make it hard for a woman to sit in the saddle later."

She eyed him, suspicion apparent in her gaze, but that softened as she watched his response. Whatever calm Arik tried to cling to, it shattered the moment she spread her legs.

"Oh…" His eyes burned bright blue as he reached for her without thinking. He slid h hand up her thigh, the knuckle of one finger parting her folds. "Look at you, all red and swollen." He opened her up wider, exposing all of her secrets to the tent, but she didn't seem to mind. Her eyes became heavily lidded as her lips parted to let out a silent sigh. "Are you hurting?" A little hiss from Jessalyn had us all moving forward, but we quickly determined it wasn't from real pain. "Poor little thing. You've had a brutal apprenticeship into the way of men and women, that's a fact."

No, it wasn't pain that had her arching up into his hand, her hips making tiny little pulses that had the commander smiling. Not the practised one he used with lords and ladies, nor the deferential one he kept for the army, but one with far too many teeth showing. The smile of a wolf. Creed and Roan moved closer, just as I did, drawn by her sigh of pleasure, just in time to see Arik's thumb press down on her pearl. Her squirm had my muscles tightening, my hand straying to my knife. I'd drive it right into Arik's shoulder, incapacitating his whole arm, if he was hurting her. But instead of a wince of pain, her mouth formed a perfect O.

"And it's only going to get worse," Arik promised. "Before we leave this tent, you need to be marked by all of us. Creed's wolf won't give him any peace until I do the same, but how…?"

Jess did wince when he eased two fingers inside her, my eyes unable to look away from the way her pink flesh flexed around the intrusion, then let him in.

"This is hurting," Arik stated in a low voice.

"Yes. No…" She shook her head sharply, her weight now on her elbows, unsure if she wanted to push him away or draw him closer. "Arik…"

"Give her what she needs," Creed growled, his wolf staring out at him from behind his eyes.

"The salve that's in your bag," Arik replied, looking him over coolly. "The one you've been carrying around all of these years, in preparation for the moment you found your mate. The one that will make it easier for a woman." He glanced back at Creed. "Get it."

That seemed to break whatever spell the rest of us were under, the three of us searching for Creed's healer's bag right as he pulled it free of his belongings.

"You need to—"

"I know what to do," Arik answered Creed with a sidelong look, but his focus, like ours, returned to Jessalyn. "I know what you want."

"Arik…!"

Jessalyn's little whine had my teeth grinding together, one hand stuffing my cock back into my pants as I drew closer. I swore she would never want for anything again. I was ready to kick Arik's arse, forcing him forward and into our mate, if that's what she wanted.

"But I can't give it to you," he told her. His thumb moved faster, rubbing the hood of her pearl, causing her hips to jerk in time with each swipe. "It'll hurt." The salve was plucked from Creed's grip as Arik sat back on his heels, scooping out a healthy glob of it from the tin. Then, with gentle fingers, he traced her swollen entrance. "I'll hurt you."

Was that a promise or a threat, neither I nor Jessalyn could decide. Her eyes searched his face just as mine did, but not for long. Delving his fingers inside her, rubbing his thumb at her pearl, it didn't take long to stir our mate, the previous pleasure somehow infectious. I heard her moans, watched her meet him stroke for stroke, the sounds coming faster and faster until he jerked his fingers free. Her wail drew a snarl from me and the rest of my brothers, but Arik took his responsibilities seriously. He moved his fingers to swiftly undo his pant laces and then let out a long sigh as he eased his cock free.

"I won't be able to help myself," he said, but before she could answer, his cock slapped down on her pearl, forcing her whole body to stiffen. I readied myself to intervene, but he smiled that wolfish smile as she tugged him closer. "That's the problem with what I am. It happens over and over, despite my best efforts. Every woman that's got within ten feet of me dies, Jessalyn."

That wasn't true. I knew many professionals who'd dallied with us for a night for coin and they'd all walked free and with a pocket full of gold. Some were living quite a nice life now with their husbands in the country. But those women didn't touch Arik, couldn't crack his hard shell, not like Jessalyn.

Not like every princess before her, starting with Ariel.

"You don't want me." He said that over and over, rutting against her now in earnest, the combined friction driving the two of them mad. "You don't want my taint. I've got feet of clay, blood on my hands and…"

His litany of sins was cut off as her nails dug into his arse cheeks, her whole body stiffening, as she ground this out between clenched teeth.

"Don't tell me what I want…"

A little scream alerted us and all the tents around us that Arik had made her come again, but that was choked off as her teeth snapped down on the point where his neck met his shoulders, her blue eyes unfocused and half mad. Creed nodded slowly, a satisfied smile on his face as I just stared.

"It is done," my brother announced. "Now we can plan for war."