Chapter 18

Briar May

Fuck giving Castor a proper introduction to her cabin. She marched in and stormed straight to the kitchen. She banged the cupboard open, got down a glass, and filled it with water. She needed to say something, but what on earth was there to say? Her sister had just given herself up so that she could have her happily ever after, and she wasn’t even sure that happy was in the cards, let alone the ever after bit. She hammered back the water, parched from sitting and doing what little talking they had before it all went to shit.

No, it had all gone straight to hell the second she set eyes on the man in her doorway, charging towards her in the woods.

She’d been ready to die to save the twins. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for her siblings or her parents, or for the greater good of her pack. She’d been an alpha’s daughter all her life and now she was an alpha’s sister and she’d been raised with the ethos that the pack always came first. Prairie Rose was older by a few years, and she felt absolutely the same way, probably even more so. As the eldest daughter, she took a lot on herself that the rest of them just never got handed. She was always helping out in the pack, helping their mom or both their parents. There had always been a strange maturity about Prairie Rose, even when she was young. She was an old soul. Prairie Rose was all sweet and had absolutely no thorns. How was she going to survive in a pack like Castor’s?

Castor chose that minute to step into the kitchen, like he could chase away her fears with just that single footstep.

Half of her wanted to fight him. That animal side of her was pissed off that she couldn’t shift and wouldn’t be able to for months. Her wolf was not happy, and her distress only fueled the animal parts of her. The other half wanted to run to him, to claim him and taste him. It was this half that knew with absolute certainty that he was her mate, even if her other half wasn’t entirely on board with the idea.

Her future mate tilted his chin and held his arms out wide. “Go ahead. You can strike me if that’s going to make it better.”

“Jesus Christ.” He probably hadn’t even flinched when he was whipped raw and carved up. She didn’t run at him to hit him. She ran at him to throw her arms around his neck and crash against him. The whole of the world only felt half right when he closed his arms like an angel of death folding his wings around her. “None of this is your fault,” she whimpered with her face pressed into his chest.

He’d put on the clothes that were left in the room for him. Kieran had slipped in and left them two days ago. He must have done it while she was showering. She should have seen to him. It was probably excruciating to get dressed. Why was her brain only processing that now? There was too much. When he was prone in that bed, it was easy to care for him because he so obviously needed it. Now that he was upright and mobile, he gave the impression that nothing was wrong. He was like a panther, hiding its wounds so perfectly well no one would guess anything was amiss under those clothes.

“It’s not,” she reiterated, eager to force him to find a bed and lie down. Or sit. How was he even upright? She was thoughtless grasping his shoulders and putting her full weight against him. God, what was she doing? She tried to back up, but he pressed her in close like he’d rather have pain with her close, than be perfectly fine without her. “Your brother, Rome and my brother, Pollux. They put a future in motion that we’re all living now.”

“If you don’t want the mating…”

The effort of those words cost him dearly. He hadn’t died after that savage beating, but it sounded like right now, if she pushed him away, he might. He was opening himself up, just a sliver, just enough for her to get inside him. If she kept pushing him back, he’d close up and he might never give her another chance.

He bent down like he had to get close enough to make sure he heard her response. Thank goodness, because she could hardly get out more than a whisper.

“I do. I do want it. I want you. Our mating will make everything alright, so it’s okay to want what I shouldn’t want. It’s okay to feel as though my heart is going to burst without you. It’s okay to feel like my life would have no meaning if you were gone. It’s okay that every single one of my senses cries out for you.” She grasped his hand and forced it to her chest so he could feel how hard her heart was thundering there. Maybe he’d feel the ache. She shifted it lower, until his entire palm was splayed protectively over her belly. “I can’t spend another second not touching you, not tasting you, not breathing in your scent. Own me. Claim me. I only said those terrible things because I thought it would save you. That’s why I didn’t tell you about the baby.”

“Are you really, truly?”

She could barely deal with the wonder she saw. This man who had locked the world away would make the best father. Their child would be raised in a pack where they didn’t have to fight for scraps of affection. They wouldn’t have to claw out a bleak survival. They’d learn what it was to be loved. Castor would stay. He’d learn too, because love was like the golden sun and the full silver moon. It soaked into a person and nourished every bit of them. It replenished and it healed.

“Yes. Truly.”

There was more she wanted to say, but Castor jerked her forward, tipped her face up, and crashed his mouth over hers. He demanded her, ate at her. He did more than just taste her. He nipped her and kissed harder. As hard as he thought she could stand it. His hands ended up in her hair, pulling and pulling and tilting her head back for him to feast on her.

“I need to hear you say it,” he growled. “Say that you’re willing. Say that you’ll own me as I’ve never been owned by anyone. Say that you’ll find my soul and hold it dear, even if it’s just broken little shards. Say that you’ll teach me with infinite patience and kindness how to love you properly. All I have to offer you are these bloodstained hands.” He lifted them, palms up. “And a battle-hardened soul. Two war axes which I will get back so that I can protect you and our family properly. I would do anything for you, Briar May. I know we hardly know one another, but I want our mating to be a happy, peaceful one with a deeply shared connection. I want to understand you. Very little in my life has had any meaning and I was taught to shut down emotions because they could be exploited. I know already that I have nothing without you.”

Her heart was going to rip in half. Pain could also be a beautiful thing because she felt it now. Her eyes were wet with tears and Castor’s face shimmered. “Bloodstained or not, I’ll have you. I’m more than willing. My life and your life, my body and your body, our flesh, our souls, our destiny. You’re the greatest warrior I know, and if you can’t fight it, what chance do I have?”

“I don’t want you to fight. I want you to surrender to it.”

“And to you?”

“Not to me. I won’t fight this surrender. This is honorable. This is right.” He kissed her hard again, driving her back a step, but his arms caught around her shoulders, fixing her in place before she even had a chance to stumble. “I surrender to you. Will you have me?”

“Yes. Yes, I’ll mate you. Yes, I’ll have you. Yes, I want you as my mate.” She shuddered. “Please, take me. Here and now.” She shouldn’t be asking this of him. She should be showing him around the cabin now that she’d calmed down. Getting him something to eat. Running back to Kieran’s cabin for the medicine she’d forgotten. She should definitely not be pushing Castor beyond what was humanly possible. He’d hit a wall and she’d inevitably hurt him.

“No. Don’t pull away. I don’t need that. I need you.”

“You’re still hurt. You just barely woke up and all this landed on top of you. You should rest.”

“I don’t need to rest. I need to kiss you. I need to tear this dress off you. I need to fucking be inside you.”

He bristled with that need. He was driven wild by it. It was like getting hit by a hurricane as his hands tore at her dress, ripping the front of it past her breasts. She’d felt nothing but hopelessness for days. A desperate fear that drove her to her own brink. She dragged his face to hers and fed him all of that sadness, all that crazed worry, all that frantic buildup of emotion that she had no way to expel. She couldn’t shift, but she could take it out on him in just the way he wanted her to.

She felt the cool air hit her bare skin when Castor tore her bra in half as well. He grasped her lace panties and with a single rip, they gave way. All of it pooled at her feet.

He caught her up, looping a hand around her waist, and walked her to the bedroom. This was the first night they’d spend together in a cabin that was no longer hers. It would be theirs. Everything she had was now to be shared with him. It might be difficult at first. He was used to living rough and more than independent, and she’d spent many years on her own in this place.

“Promise me,” she rasped as they cleared the bedroom door. There was something she needed. One vow before all the others. His hand slid to the back of her neck and his fingers caressed the muscles there in a pinch that felt like heaven.

“What is it?” His eyes burned bright and serious, silver stars in the dark.

“The past is what it is. What’s already been done can’t be changed, but I want you to promise me that you won’t kill anyone ever again.”

She didn’t want to believe it was an impossible ask, and for a second, the silence shifted, growing menacing. “I can’t promise that. You know I can’t. If anyone threatened you or the baby…”

“Kieran makes the decisions as to how things are handled. He would never send you out like your last pack did.”

He picked her up and sat her down on the bed and then he fell to his knees. She’d left enough lights on in the cabin that it wasn’t true dark around them, and she could see the honest way he struggled with his thoughts. He wasn’t used to expressing them. He’d had no one to communicate like this with. He was seeking clarity, ordering his words, and she gave him time.

“I’m not a man who can own to the sentiment of many emotions, let alone love. I don’t know the half of it or even where to start. What I do know is that I can claim, with my whole being, that I feel an utter certainty that I was made for you. I was made to walk beside you in this life, and if love can grow from that, and I hope it can because you’re a woman who was made to be treasured, then I will make no effort to stop it. It’s no weakness. It’s a necessary thing to feel alive and live. I promise you that I’m leaving the past behind. The old me died with those wounds. That part of me is over. I swear that I will never hurt another being again unless it’s in just and true defense of my family.”

She kissed the tips of her fingers and brushed them over his lips. “Alright. I understand.” His lips parted and he lapped at her fingers, drawing them into his velvet mouth. Her heart tripped and upended itself, then kicked into a brutal run.

It only intensified when Castor’s hand traced down to her throat. His fingers curled around, tightening, but not like before. He leaned down, lowering her to the bed with him. He caged her in with just his hand alone. She inhaled and felt her throat rise against his fingertips. It was all him she smelled. A little like sweat and blood and fresh herbs, but like himself as well. Lemon and licorice. Fresh air and homegrown mint. Like the man and like the wolf.

As her nostrils flared, he took his hand away, but replaced it with his mouth. He trailed his tongue down her neck, over to her shoulder. He didn’t stop until he reached her nipple, and of course he wasn’t gentle. He bit her like he wanted to leave his mark on her for days. She was wild, her hips trying to arch up to him. If he was bursting with need, then so was she.

He tore his shirt over his head and stripped away the jeans. Clothes that weren’t his. She watched every move. He didn’t even act like it hurt. A layer of bandages was still wrapped around his chest and back. He carefully removed those as well. They were more to protect the salved, healing wounds. They’d ceased bleeding and weeping. She was still afraid to touch him.

“Castor. You’re—”

“I need to be with you. My wounds will be fine.”

She’d tried to get him to rest, to get him to heal, to talk reason into him, but the only thing he wanted was her and he wanted it with a barely restrained sort of violence. A wolf already unleashed on her.

He covered her with his body, doing nothing but surrounding her. She was so ready that she was making a mess of the bed. There wasn’t going to be a lot of begging or commands like the first time. She’d already given her permission and he was going to take her and own her. He was going to brand her skin, mark her with his body, claim her as his.

She didn’t expect him to kiss her right then. She wanted him to slam into her, to fill her up until she couldn’t take more of him. He took her mouth instead, claiming her there. His kisses weren’t gentle. Neither were hers. It was a battle, and she drew first blood, biting down on his bottom lip until she tasted the salt of his blood.

“Is it safe to take you from behind?” he growled. She could feel his cock throbbing against her belly. Wetness was pooling there. It made her want him inside her until the want of it was so brutal that she felt like she’d come with zero stimulation at all. “Safe for the baby?”

“Right now it is.” She searched his beautiful, scarred face. “Will you be gentle?”

His gaze caressed her back, frozen over blue pulsing with life just below the icy surface. How had she ever thought those eyes were dead? They might be cold, but they were far from devoid of life. “I’ll be as gentle as you want me to be. You can guide me the entire way.”

He knew. He knew that after a certain point, she wouldn’t want him to be gentle. She’d seen how careful he was with her after the first time. How tender. He acted like nothing more than a warrior going to battle all the time, but he was so much more than that too.

Castor arranged her on the bed, flipping her until she was face down in the blankets. His hand traced under her hips, lifting them in the air. He spread her legs, and she felt his rough hands stroking her thighs and up to her ass. Suddenly his hand came down on her ass cheek giving a sharp slap.

She gasped and bit down against the sting, and then against the warmth that made her even wetter and hotter between the legs. The ache got even worse when Castor wrapped his hand around her hair, twisting it until he could hold it, easing her head back and up.

She’d never wanted anything so badly in her life.

He didn’t get her ready with his fingers or tongue. He brought his cock to her entrance.

“Guide me in.”

It was hard to reach down between her legs and take him in her hand when her head was cranked so far back. Hard and awkward and she was sure Castor enjoyed every second of it. Maybe there was something wrong with her, the thrill she got when he commanded her in bed sent an electric shock to her clit seemed almost sinful in its intensity, but she honestly didn’t care. Everyone had their kinks, and she knew that the way Castor dominated her in the bedroom, didn’t extend outside of it. Outside, he offered her respect and his protection. He said he didn’t know how to care and how to emote, but she could tell it was there inside him. She’d just have to pull it out of him, and with time, she knew it could happen. It was there, just waiting for her, like a shining star too far out in the night sky to be seen with the naked eye, just waiting for discovery.

She brought his cockhead to her entrance. This time, she didn’t tense. She knew it would hurt, but she craved that stretch. There was no fast and hard thrust. Just a slow press forward, and she was more than prepared for. She panted through it, keeping her thighs so wide apart, eager to take all of him.

He let go of her hair and smoothed his hand down her ass. She gasped in surprise when he parted her ass cheeks with both hands. She was so open to him now, stretched wide. She couldn’t imagine what he was seeing, her hips in the air, her tiny hole stretched around his massive cock.

“I approve of your headboard, little wolf. It’s perfect. Grasp the slats and hold on.”

She had to arch forward to do it, the metal was slightly cold to her touch. She braced herself as he filled her until her walls clenched around him, until she thought he couldn’t go any deeper.

His thrusts were even and gentle slow, but he was so massive inside her that he didn’t need to pound into her.

“You’re so wet, Briar May. You love being impaled on my cock.” He slicked his fingertips between her ass cheeks, until one finger pressed at her opening there. He circled the rim and when she grasped the headboard and pushed back on his cock, wild to take more, for that extra fullness and sensation, he spat on his hand and brought it to her.

It was animalistic and it made her so wet. He’d found a rhythm, and he fucked her a little faster. He kept circling her asshole, and then he pushed the tip of his finger inside.

It was like fire, being breached that way, but she could feel herself clenching even tighter now that she was fuller. The sensation was like a starburst, like getting thrust straight into the sun from miles away. She started to beg, making sounds that she didn’t even know she could make. Little pleas as Castor pumped harder, each stroke taking her closer and closer to the sun inside herself.

It shattered so hard that she thought she would implode from the inside out. A supernova.

“Please, please, please,” she cried as their bonding scent flooded the room. This time it wasn’t a fear response, it wasn’t terror. It was her wolf claiming its mate, as his claimed its own. Her orgasm ripped her open and reformed her, their past forgotten and all that remained was their future.

“That’s it, little wolf. Come on my cock. Harder.” His finger pushed a little more into her asshole, intensifying the climax when she already thought that she’d die from the pleasure. “Come on this dick because you own it. It’s now yours for life. It’s the first cock you ever took and it’ll be the last. I put life inside you. I’m the only one who will ever fill you like this. Your beautiful little cunt, your tight asshole, your gorgeous mouth. All of it is mine. Mine for life.”

“Yes.”

Mine, her body echoed. You are mine.

He kept filling her, filling her until he pushed forward and burst inside her. He roared at the release, their bodies rocking together through the end of the pleasure.

When he pulled out of her, some of that wetness trickled out with him. He cupped her between her legs with his hand so it wouldn’t spill out again.

It was beyond a possessive, claiming gesture. “It’s not enough,” he grunted near her ear, his breath hot against her neck. “One day, I’ll own all of you. Heart. Soul. Dreams. Your thoughts. I’ll own them because you’ll want to give them to me. You’ll want to share them. I’ll do whatever it takes, work as hard as it takes, go through whatever pains are required to be that man that you open all of yourself to. You’ll give it all to me one day, but I’ll work every minute of every day to deserve the whole of you.”

He turned her over gently. He bent over her and kissed her breasts, suckled her nipples, and trailed down to her belly. He kissed her stomach with tenderness and reverence. “How many young do you want, Briar May?”

“Brooke won’t know until I’m further along how many I’m having.”

“I asked how many you would like.”

“As many as you want to give me,” she replied with a smirk.

He coked a brow at her sass, a dark, evil grin splitting his face in half. “Careful, little wolf. You know far too well how happy I am to fill you up with my cum.”

“My parents had twelve,” she said breathlessly. “We were a big family, but it never seemed like too much.”

“We’ll see what your wolf says. Keeping her inside for so many months, she might not agree.”

“Will you wait for her? Wait to shift unless it’s absolutely necessary, so that we can run together for that first time when we’re mated?”

He couldn’t hide the question burning in his eyes, so she explained further, “It’s our tradition after a mating ceremony to run as wolves together. We give our vows as humans, and we go through the woods as wolves. It will probably take Kieran and my father a few months at least to negotiate with your alpha. So by the time of our mating ceremony, I’ll have had our baby… or babies.”

Castor nodded in understanding.

“They’ll want to make sure that blood vows of peace are also undertaken. No one will just give my sister to your pack unless they can prove they are worthy of her,” Briar May added.

“Agnar is a good man.”

“He had you tortured.”

“I told you, that was all my father’s doing.” He looked so troubled that she touched the frown lines on his brow to smooth them. “There are those in the pack who gather like storm clouds and vultures.”

He was still troubled, but he wasn’t going to talk about that all night. There was too much between them, the sharp, brutal need still thrumming with tension, drawing them together.

“Let me own you again, little wolf. I need to be inside you.”

The real owning was there in the way he didn’t bother to hide a single ounce of his need for her. It was clear that she owned him in return. They’d belonged to each other before they ever met in the forest. Darkness gathered and took from them both. Terrible things had happened, but out of that darkness, a crack of light, a faraway blinking, until they finally came together, their own new star.