Chapter Seven

THE MATTRESS DIPPED, and Violet woke. She took a single breath through the moment of catch-up that happened every morning while her brain processed that she wasn’t in the mansion, then blinked over at Mikel in the bright light. He’d settled back in, readers on his nose, and phone held at arm’s length while he squinted at the screen.

Violet blinked and tried to focus on what he was doing before snagging it from his hand. With a few, quick taps, she turned up the brightness and made the font one size bigger than the default setting before handing it back. “You’re such an old man,” she groused while he scrolled up and down, looking impressed with the adjustments.

His lips quirked.

“This old man wore you out last night,” he reminded her. It was true. He’d carried her halfway back to the truck, and she’d stumbled out of the shower when they got home, into her pajamas, and been lost to sleep the minute her head hit the pillow. “Brought you coffee too.” He nodded at the nightstand, and Violet silently blessed him.

Half a cup later, she felt human enough to go to the bathroom. He watched her walk back to the bed with enough interest to make her blush.

“You’re in a better mood,” he commented.

She slid under the covers and leaned back against the headboard. It was strangely simple to be around him, her brain noted.

“Slept well,” she replied. He was smiling again, and it was so easy to almost be distracted from all the questions she had that demanded answers today.

“Good.”

In the long moment that followed while she chose her words, it struck her how content she was, how she hadn’t thought about Frankston or Lila in what felt like days. Guilt left her cold, and she got lost in pondering if it was wrong to make the best of things for now, given there was no alternative.

Mikel squeezed the tight muscles in her shoulder, bringing her back to the present. His glasses were in his other hand, phone set aside, concern clear on his face. “Somethin’ on your mind?”

Something was. Violet tried to swallow it down and replace it with the matter at hand, but it refused to budge. “If you could, would you take me back to Frankston?”

He hadn’t been expecting the question; she recognized the surprise of it in the raise of his eyebrows and the way he set his glasses down and sat up to match her position.

“I would.” He was stroking the crease where her neck joined her shoulder now, and the rhythm of it was soothing. “I don’t want to keep you prisoner, Violet. If I thought it was safe, I’d have taken you home that first night whether I wanted you or not. I’d take you tomorrow and hope maybe you’d still want me around once you’re back to bars and other young ladies—”

She cut him off with a kiss. He’d take her back if he could. Truly believing it settled something inside her. Mikel wasn’t responsible for the bad things that had happened to bring her to the Bluff; he was a fortunate upside of it.

“I like it here with you.” She ignored the guilt that came with the admission. “This place is fucked up, but home was fucked up too. Without Lila, my sister, in the equation, I don’t know that I’d care about going back.”

She’d ended up close, held in the circle of his arms and the scent of his cologne. He looked at her like he understood. “Tell me about home?”

That was easier to talk about, less vulnerable, and she dived right in. “You know my dad’s the mayor. He’s on his third term or something, been a career politician as long as I can remember. He’s also a first-class asshole.” She didn’t elaborate on that. “Lila’s seventeen. I’ve been taking care of her since she was five. I’m supposed to be taking a ‘paid internship’”—she added the air quotes—“with the city clerk. Then, I don’t know, some boring real admin job, I guess. No way I was leaving Frankston till the kid turned eighteen, so…” She shrugged. “From what I’ve heard around town, I’m not the only one with daddy issues. What’s up with that?” It wasn’t her most tactful remark, but it was the easiest way to get the spotlight off her quickly, to feel less vulnerable.

Mikel went from quiet and pensive to something darker. He released her and took a long drink of his coffee before he answered.

“Elias, my father, was the alpha for nineteen years.” It sounded like a confession. She waited. “He snapped and killed sixteen people in Frankston at a political meeting when they started to threaten our way of life here. He’s probably the reason your dad’s the mayor—the one before died in the massacre.”

Violet blinked at him with eyes hard, jaw tight, and shame clinging to him. Her brain did backflips trying to process what he’d said with the history she knew.

“The big accident at the Conroe building that killed Mayor Kline and a bunch of other politicians?”

He nodded.

“That was a gas line explosion. Someone had maybe fucked with the lines. I was like ten, but it was huge news in town. They never figured out what happened.” Violet remembered it so saliently because even her ten-year-old self had wondered if her dad could have had something to do with it. That her mom died that day made it stick in her head.

“Cover story,” he offered, but her brain refused to accept it.

“The blast took out half of the middle school—thank god it was at night—the post office and two stores. How do you explain that if your dad shot the place up?”

He got out of bed and pulled sweats up his legs, and Violet was afraid he would leave until he turned to pace instead.

“He didn’t shoot it up. He changed and tore those people apart.”

Violet squinted while she tried to marry his version of events with the one in her head, wrestled with the cold that crept over her whenever she wondered what really happened to her mom.

Mikel paused at the window, looking haunted. “The council came for him. Vance, my brother, tried to stop them, and he changed too. Kane was voted in as alpha the next morning. I was too young at twenty, and almost half the council wanted me destroyed anyway in case I was like them.” He ran a hand over the scruff on his face. “I’m not,” he added, like that was something she might worry about.

“Mikel.” She frowned, studying the hardness in his bearing, the extent to which this haunted him. “There were survivors. They didn’t see any psycho wolves, just a huge explosion. And why would they blow up half a block to cover it up? The fire marshal thought the lines may have been tampered with, but they never figured it out for sure.”

“You’re being naive.” His voice was quiet, but the words ignited her temper. Violet fought to keep a cooler head. Grief, she understood, was a powerful thing.

“Don’t you think it’s strange that Magnus and Kane—” She couldn’t bring herself to call him “the alpha” without feeling stupid. “The two guys who succeeded the leader in both towns know each other and continued to meet for years after this happened?” Her brain was putting together pieces faster than her mouth could share them. “My dad was supposed to be at that meeting, but he had stomach flu. Isn’t that just fucking convenient?”

Conviction blazed to life inside her. Her long-time suspicion of her dad being involved in the accident that killed her mom was being confirmed, and it was something she just flat refused to touch. Years of compartmentalizing meant she could set it aside.

“First, I see Jared, who I know has been in and out of my house the past like ten years, then Kane shows up at the hardware store and he knows that I know him, and he tries to call my bluff.” She sucked in a breath. “What if Magnus was working with him, and they somehow used the gas accident as a way to get what both of them wanted?”

With the riddle finally solved in her mind, she looked to him for validation, relieved that he seemed to be chewing it over.

Finally, he sighed. “It’s too fantastical, Violet. I watched my dad change when they took him. He slaughtered those people. I’m sorry your town got hurt more in the cover-up.”

“How does the fact that he could change automatically make him guilty?” she demanded. “Maybe they set him up.”

“That would mean knowing he had the ability to start with. No one did, not me, not my mom. I don’t think Vance knew he could change until he did. Never got to ask him.” His grief was palpable in his voice. She sensed the end of the conversation looming.

“So why do you think Kane is interested in me?” she tried.

“Because he’s interested in everything I do. The whole town has watched me for years, wondering if this is the week I crack and turn.” He closed that line of questioning with ease.

“Why do you think he was meeting with my dad?”

Mikel huffed out a sigh. “I don’t know. There’s some alliance between the towns. The mayor and the alpha must have an understanding. Kane’s probably paying him off to look the other way, keep the Frankston police on their side of the woods and not squint too hard at our ‘gated community.’”

Violet couldn’t deny that the logic held. Maybe it was just reluctance to rewrite the history she knew and had learned to cope with, but she was sure that tragedy had been a gas explosion, if an intentional one.

“Something about all this just doesn’t sit right,” she finally told him. He ran a hand through his hair.

“It’s the past. I’m on edge because of the interest in you. That’s probably got you spooked,” he added.

Violet could see him resolve himself, push it out of his mind.

“What do you say to breakfast”—he glanced at the clock—“lunch? Jack’s been out breaking down that lumber this morning, gotta help pick it up after. I’ll be back before the moon tonight.”

Violet considered it. She wasn’t eager to let it go, but she recognized the olive branch in the offer, and that for now, he was finished talking about it.

“Fine,” she conceded, only a hair of annoyance in her tone, and got out of bed to dig through the drawer she’d claimed for something to wear.

Mikel came up behind her, hands warm when they slid under the hem of her shirt to stroke the smooth skin of her stomach and hold her against him. For a long moment, they were just close, quiet, then he pressed his lips to that same spot at the base of her neck in a soft kiss.

“You have a neck fetish,” Violet joked. He hummed against her back. “That’s where you’d bite me to…you know?”

“Mate you.” He kissed that spot again, sucked it and nipped at it with his teeth. She shivered. “Yes.”

“What happens if you don’t?” She already had an idea, but she was becoming less opposed to being bitten and wanted to hear it again.

“Don’t have to worry about that yet,” he told her gruffly before he pressed a kiss to her cheek and stepped away. “I ordered a TV. Red helped, said it has the Net Flicks and you’d like that. Want to pick up breakfast on the way to get it?”

Violet turned to look at him, touched by his generosity, but not entirely comfortable with it.

“I don’t want to keep taking your money, Mikel. Is there some place in town I can get a job or—?”

“You help with the deliveries. I can give you the same pay I give Red, if you want. It’s just not necessary.”

She thought it over and nodded. “I don’t want to just take from you.”

His brow furrowed while he seemed to think this over and he nodded. “All right. Still getting the TV though. You can pay me back by showing me how to use it.”

She rolled her eyes at him. He was hopeless with technology, but he could make masterpieces out of tree trunks. It made no sense.

“Deal.”

 

“HEY! I SAW Jack at the diner, and he told me they’re moving lumber till late. Come to the bonfire with us!” Red pleaded when Violet opened the front door late that afternoon, hands covered in paint.

“Didn’t you call out to spend this entire weekend fucking?” she shot back, surprised by the offer.

“Yeah, but we’re going to the bonfire first, and you should meet Dani, and it’s so much fun, babe.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why do you smell like wood stain?”

“Trying to be helpful.” Violet’s gaze flicked to the sleek black sports car idling at the end of the driveway. “Do I have time to get changed, or…?”

“Totally, I’ll ask Dani to come back for us in like an hour?”

Red didn’t wait for a response before she trotted off to relay the message. Violet left the door cracked and went inside to put the lid on the paint she’d been using in the shop and make sure the coffee table she’d been working on looked like it would dry evenly.

When she stepped back into the house, Red emerged from the kitchen holding two of Mikel’s glass tumblers full of sparkling, golden liquid. “Champagne! Thank you, Dani,” she sang, and her good mood was already rubbing off on Violet.

She tipped her head, impressed, and took a glass.

“To the moon,” Red toasted, “and to you and Mikel finally doing the thing.” She made an obscene hand gesture followed by a crass impression of an explosion.

Violet almost choked on her mouthful of drink.

“Get your pervert nose away from me!” she hissed.

At the same time Red demanded, “So, was he good?”

 

VIOLET SLID OUT of the backseat of Dani’s car, surprised when Dani stepped into her path.

“Are you okay to be here?” It took her a long moment to understand she meant the square.

The space was already lit with the orange glow of fire and thrumming with laughter and chatter and a low drumbeat that stirred something in her blood, or maybe that was the champagne. This was the place they tried to kill her.

“Yeah, I’m fine, thanks.” Violet smiled up at her. Daniella was cool, and if Violet wasn’t tipsy, she’d probably be a little intimidated by her. She was the epitome of brunette glamazon, sleek and sophisticated, with dark-chocolate eyes and wicked, resting bitch face.

“I’m glad,” Dani said. The smile she received registered as genuine to Violet. “Does Mikel know you’re here?”

“Left him a note.”

Dani nodded, and they took off after Red, who was already talking to a couple by the buffet table. “Perhaps, we’ll make history tonight, and he’ll attend a public event.”

Violet breathed out a laugh. “Hope so.” And she did.

For the first time since arriving in the Bluff, she felt her old confidence in full force. There was some magic in a hot shower, good champagne, and loud music while she tried on outfits for Red. She’d settled on short shorts, inspired by Red’s miniskirt, and one of the backless, crisscross shirts Mikel would probably decide made her a hussy. Her eyes were lined in dark kohl, her lips painted a bloody red, and she couldn’t wait for him to see her.

They got closer to the huge fire, and as promised, it was warm enough there that she didn’t miss her coat.

“Guys, this is Violet,” Red introduced her when they joined the group.

“You’re a queen, and also I hate you,” one of the men she’d been talking to promptly declared. “Mikel Davis. Oh, girl.” He kissed his fingertips, and a smile broke on Violet’s face as she understood.

“An Adonis,” the other guy cut in, and Dani huffed beside her.

“The stench of your thirst is stifling, Etah.”

“Baby, are you jealous?” Red demanded, then there was a flash of movement too fast to follow and they were pressed close, kissing. It took Violet a long second to drag her eyes away.

“Oh, yeah. Get used to that,” one of the men offered with a grimace. “So nice to meet you, boo. I’m Etah and this is my honey, Ryan.” Violet noticed for the first time that like Red, Ryan’s eyes were permanently ringed gold.

“Thanks.” She looked around. “The drums are amazing.”

“Wait until you start the change, they just…sing in your blood; it’s ethereal.”

She nodded. Even now, the beat resonated deep inside her, and maybe it was the alcohol, but she felt looser, lighter. She wished Mikel was there.

“And drinks, madame.” Etah took her elbow and showed her to another long table.

“Champagne fountain?” She picked up a glass and held it under the impressive stream.

“Better,” he said. “Moon water.”

Water was markedly less exciting than alcohol, and it must have shown on her face.

“Well, it’s mixed half and half with vodka so it’s great either way, but after you start your change, this is the shit.”

She sniffed the liquid in her glass, sipped it, and only tasted liquor.

“What does it do?”

“It’s like tequila without the crazy,” Red supplied from behind her, reaching around her to grab a glass and fill it. “Like shrooms without the trip.”

Violet turned around to eye her friend at that revelation.

“Duh, I was in culinary school.” She shrugged. “Oh, and you might get your man a glass, if you want tonight to be the night he makes you an honest woman under this stunning moon.” The last word devolved into a howl, and Violet couldn’t help but be swept up in their enjoyment.

“So, it makes you guys horny?” she guessed when they all stopped laughing.

“It makes us primal,” Etah told her with a smirk. “But it’ll just get you drunk, for now.”

“Be back, losers, taking my lady a drink,” Red informed them with a wink. Ryan made a gagging noise, and Violet threw her head back and laughed.

 

“SO, IS TONIGHT the night?” Red’s lips brushed her ear while she pressed close to ask, their bodies still moving, two amongst dozens of others as they danced in a slow spinning circle, thrumming to the low drumbeat around the fire.

Violet had done drunk, she’d done dancing, but it had never been anything like this. The smooth cobblestones of the square where she’d run for her life were fire-warm under her bare feet, and the drums beat their rhythm inside her like they were part of her blood. “For what?”

“Mating,” Red supplied. Then, she stumbled back into Dani, who caught her by the hair and tugged her head around for a kiss. It didn’t matter. The drums beat on and Violet moved with them.

Mating.

Somewhere across the fire, Etah and Ryan danced together. All around her, bodies hummed, each plugged in to the same swelling energy, stepping and turning, reveling in the amber glow while the moon rose higher above. She was just one of them, one piece of a whole, lost to the hive mind, sweat shining on her as she danced and danced.

She wished for Mikel, strong hands on her hips and his hot mouth on her skin. Mating.

The drums picked up, or maybe that was her heartbeat, but it was easy to go with it, to dance a little faster, accept the drink that Ryan pressed into her hand when he popped up beside her, then down it and toss the plastic cup away.

Mikel.

Her skin was fire warm, but she was hot underneath, hungry for him, for the hard swell of his cock against her thigh, the slow burn when he pushed inside and the sting of his bite when he made her his. The drums intensified.

She needed him.

“Hey, baby girl.” Firm hands grabbed her waist, then she was moving with someone, a heartbeat close to hers, and heat at her back. It lessened the ache of wanting him, just barely.

They danced almost a full revolution of the fire before Violet twisted in her arms and got a good look at her. Golden irises blazed back.

“Get the fuck off her, Natalia,” Red cut in, her face drawn and angry for reasons Violet's brain wouldn't understand, as it still felt light and floaty and hot and dark all in the same breath.

An exchange happened that she missed. Then, they were dancing again, Red was gone, and the moon was thrumming overhead and beating in her blood with the drums, until it consumed her. Maybe hands brushed her arms, brushed the bare skin of her back, but she was just a slave to the energy, the pull when it swelled and the ebb when it exhaled.

Mating. Her brain remembered, and she burned, hot and wet and eager. The grip on her hips tightened, and all she could do was dance, sweat beading on her temple and sliding down her hairline.

A hand closed around her upper arm, cool and welcome, and she knew before she turned around that it was him. The woman at her back stumbled away, and Violet looked up into blazing green-gold eyes. She tugged at him to dance with her, but he only held her steady, only stooped and growled at the woman who’d assigned herself as Violet’s dance partner. Mikel yanked Violet out of the circle, and her entire body went cold.

“You brought her to a ritual?” He was snarling at someone. She was surprised to look up and find it was Dani.

“Red said you’d bred her, and she smelled fine on the way over. Besides, she’s still a human, so she shouldn’t be affected.” She held up her hands. “Felt bad for her sitting up in that house by herself, so yes, we brought her and tried to show her what life here is like when you’re not the woodland recluse.”

He growled, and it moved something hot inside Violet.

“Hey.” She tugged on his belt to get his attention. “I wanted to come.” And now she wanted to go, to get home where she could pop the buckle under her hands, stroke him until he was thick and hard with the need to be inside her.

Dani spluttered and covered her nose. “Get her out of here before there’s a brawl,” she hissed at him.

“What are you guys—” She didn’t get to finish asking before he was towing her along. Her mind struggled to hold on to the importance of staying anyway—being alone with him sounded better because, god, she needed him.

When he tossed her up into the cab, something firm bumped her hip. As soon as he was in the driver’s seat, Violet seized on him, and sure enough, he was hard. He took her hand off and set it firmly back in her lap. Her cunt ached.

“I missed you all night,” she heard herself say, and she had.

His gold eyes were fixed on the road. “You’re drunk,” he told her, not unkindly.

He was right that she’d been drinking, but with him there she didn’t feel drunk. She felt grounded, unblocked, like she could see the path clearly without the taint of stress or fear.

“Bite me,” she requested softly, amazed by how right it felt, how her blood sang at the idea, how she understood she was meant to be his.

Tension radiated off him, the tendon in his neck strained, and a vein at his temple pounded. “Violet, you smell like you’re in heat. The moon water shouldn’t affect humans and unmated descendants don’t drink it, at least not in polite company.”

Her brain pondered that for a long moment before tossing it. She slid her hand up his thigh. “I want you.”

His expression was steely, gold eyes focused on the blacktop ahead, turned silver by the moon. When she reached his fly, she gave him a firm squeeze, and heat poured through her.

“I already wanted you,” she insisted.

And she had, distantly she recognized that she’d been coming to terms with the fact he’d eventually bite her, first because they had no other option and then because she wanted to be that for him, wanted to belong and be his in the way that mattered most here.

“I was scared.” She rubbed him, voice soft and persuasive but hungry. “And now I just feel so clear.” He huffed out a breath, and she leaned across the console to kiss his cheek, then his jaw. “And so ready for you.”

The truck swerved to the side of the road and screeched to a stop. Mikel killed the engine, and for a long moment, Violet watched him breathe hard into the silence, watched the bob of his Adam’s apple when he swallowed, the white of his knuckles where he gripped the wheel.

She jumped when he threw open the door. A breath later, he was around the front, and hers was open too. He released her seatbelt, and the fire inside her roared. He caught her hands when she reached for him.

“Are you certain”—his voice was rough, strained—“that you want this and you wanted it before tonight?”

Her skin prickled with desire, with the feeling of the cool forest air and the brilliant moon above. “Yes,” she promised, licked her lips, then gave him the one thing he’d been asking for since the first time he’d touched her. “Please, Mikel.”

Violet felt the moment his restraint snapped, saw it, tasted it in the air and the heat of his mouth on hers. He tugged her out of the cab, and she went easily, wrapping around him, thighs hooked over his hips so her heart beat against his, and her cunt was spread against his cock. He nipped the skin under her jaw, and she keened her need to have him inside her into the night.

It was a rough ride into the woods. She kissed his neck, his shoulder, and scraped her teeth against his skin, desperate now. Her blood swore she’d come apart if he couldn’t be rid of his clothes soon and in her.

Mikel staggered through the pines and into a clearing barely twenty feet from the road. Then, she was back against a tree, and he was tugging at his shirt, then hers, and still it wasn’t enough. She whined her frustration with the button on her shorts. Fabric tore. Violet hissed out a breath at the bite of rough bark on her ass. He grunted his approval as he shoved in, her cunt slick enough to take him with ease.

It was desperate frenzied fucking, hot and wet and loud in the quiet. Violet dragged her nails rough down his back. He drilled her mercilessly into the tree, the drums beating in the distance, and the moon humming overhead. She was already close when he pulled his hips on a thrust and slipped out, eyes blazing into hers, hips jumping uselessly against her while her cunt begged for him again.

Violet knew what he’d say, felt his call in her blood. The answer spilled up and out of her, easy, sacred.

“Mate me, Mikel,” she breathed.

The world tipped. There was no time to fear it. Her knees hit the cold dirt of the forest floor followed by her hands. His knee knocked hers apart, then he was back in her, one hand on her clit and the other on her jaw, tilting her head to the side.

“Violet.” The growl reverberated in her bones, her blood, her cunt, and she came at the love in it, the possession and fate and rightness when his teeth sunk into the base of her neck and his hips rutted and stuttered while he unspooled inside her. Eyes closed, all she saw was silver, all she felt was pleasure and pain and him, hers now, forever.

She was trembling when he pulled her up to sit on his thighs, cock still buried deep inside of her. A shuddering breath left her when his bite released. He held her head still and huffed out a breath; then, he was pressing something hot and wet over the wound. The rivulet of blood, making a warm track on its way to her collarbone, made her head spin.

“It’s done, baby.” The world flipped again, and she was on her back on the forest floor, looking up at the moon and Mikel, golden-eyed and intense, was showing her a bleeding bite mark on his wrist. “My blood, your blood. I’m yours, Violet Page.”

Where she’d expected him to say she was his, he offered her the opposite. That struck Violet, settled in her bones. She could only pull him down, cling to him, breathe in his scent, the charge in the air, and the profoundness of the moment. She shifted her hips under him, and he understood. His cock slid wetly back home, and Mikel made love to her, long and sweet and slow, for what felt like hours. Finally, both spent, he carried her out of the woods and drove them home.