Here was how wolf mating was supposed to work. Two wolves mated in wolf form. Got pregnant in wolf form. Then shifted back to human form and went about their lives. Wham! Bam! Thank you, Moon, for the free baby—no messy heat sessions required.
One of the reasons my pack had voted for compulsory wolf matings was it involved much less fuss than the heat alternative favored by most other packs. Also, if a she-wolf was wolf-mated before going into heat, she wouldn’t fall prey to mating with an inappropriate male while under the influence of an overwhelming biological urge.
I was wolf-mated. I could smell the baby growing inside me, clear as day. I should not be in heat. It was technically impossible for this to be happening.
Yet, it was definitely happening.
A powerful wave of lust caught fire between my legs and spread to every nerve ending in my body before I could even think of ways to put it out.
One moment, I was trying to tear a certain alpha king’s eyes out. And the next, I was trying to tear off his clothes.
Magnus’s heavy knit sweater came apart in my hands as if it were made of tissue paper, but he stopped me after I tore through the strap of the small leather purse he wore over the waist of his kilt.
“Calm yourself, banrigh,” he said. “All my clothes are handmade by the Faoiltiarn tailor and his mate. I cannae let you ravage their good work, no matter your state.” With a low chuckle, he pulled one of the pleats back to reveal a set of buckles.
I felt his arrogant gaze on me, watching as I fell on the fasteners and all but wrenched them apart.
My breath caught when his kilt finally fell away. However big Magnus had seemed that morning several days earlier, he was much, much bigger in the flesh. Hard and uncircumcised, his huge cock seemed to pulse with an invitation for me to touch it.
An invitation I accepted with the desperation of a starved animal who’d finally been offered food.
Unfortunately, needing and knowing were two very different things. I took him in hand only to fumble …
I honestly wasn’t sure what to do next, how to get him in me so he could sate the raw hunger.
“You’re alright, banrigh,” he assured me. “Turn ‘round for us and bend over the sofa.”
I usually hated being told what to do, but right then it felt like I couldn’t comply fast enough. I got into position with more speed than I’d ever followed an order in my life. I braced my hands against the back of the couch.
“Aye, just like that …” he said, his voice low with amused approval as he hiked up my nightgown and easily tore off my lace panties.
I’d bought those panties at a high-end lingerie store at thirty pounds a pair. But I didn’t complain. In fact, I whimpered when his hand found its way between my legs, exploring for a few efficient moments before pushing in deep. “Ohhh!” I moaned at the mind-blowing feel of his two large fingers inside me.
“So tight …so wet, banrigh …” he observed with a dark chuckle. “How about I put in more than my fingers?”
For once, his arrogant tone didn’t grate on my nerves. Just the opposite, it held a dark promise of things he could give me. Things I wanted.
“Yes, please,” I whimpered. “Your fingers aren’t nearly enough.”
“Let me see. You’re already pregnant, but you want my seed. Is that right, ye greedy female?”
My human hated that the answer was yes. A desperate, unequivocal YES in all caps. But my wolf, shivering at the thought of having him inside of me again, pushed the truth out of my mouth on a moan: “Yes, please!”
“You want my seed.” Not a question, but a command to respond.
“Yes, I want your seed!”
“How much do you want it, banrigh? Enough to formally accept my mate claim? Because as you pointed out to me before, I am a wolf who abides by tradition. I willnae knot inside a she-wolf who is not my willing mate.”
I squeezed my eyes tight, clenching my teeth before any more breathless words could escape my mouth. He wasn’t fighting fair. He wasn’t fighting fair at all. And I would not give in to him.
As if reading my thoughts, Magnus pulled his fingers out of me.
“No!” I gasped, desperate to have that erotic pressure back even if it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
Magnus didn’t answer. Just reached around my chest, his hands finding the neckline of my satin nightgown. Without a thought to its cost or beauty, he ripped the front in two, effectively freeing my heavy breasts. I cried out as his large hands, callused from years of rugby, caught both my breasts. Massaging them hard in a way that made the soft flesh swell even tighter.
Somehow this was even worse than having his teasing fingers inside of me. His intimate touch left my pussy with nothing to clench but air, making me even more desperate for him to take me. And then he viciously rolled my nipples.
“Aaaaghhh!” Right on cue, another wave of uncontrollable lust slammed into me. I was so turned on, I should have come then and there.
But that wasn’t how it worked. I remembered from the one and only conversation my mother had with me about the heat process. A she-wolf’s heat wasn’t like normal desire at all. It could not be masturbated away. It could not be gotten around. It could only be sated by a male wolf. Or, as my mother put it—your chosen mate.
I did not want to be mated. The very notion of it made me feel as if shackles were being placed around my wrists.
But Magnus refused to take me without my acquiescence. And I did not know how much longer I could hold out.
To my credit, I tried. I clamped my lips together and refused to say anything. As cool as Magnus was playing it, I knew males were as affected by the heat smell as she-wolves. Which was one of the reasons my old pack considered unheated shifter teens to be so dangerous. If I could just stay quiet and wait Magnus out, he would have to eventually give in to the heavy scent that was rumored to drive unmated male wolves so crazy, they often had to be caged or chained up to stop them from going after a she-wolf in heat.
As it turned out, I’d been correct about Magnus eventually having to give in. But the outcome did not seem promising. “I’ll give you ten more seconds to decide, banrigh. Then I’ll be forced to take what’s under my kilt and bury it in the first willing human female I find.”
“What happened to being an honorable wolf who would never take another?” I bit out.
“The same thing that happened to your vow to never have me, I suspect,” he answered, his voice a blend of arrogance and ultimatum.
He was bluffing. I was sure he was bluffing.
But then I remembered what my boss had said about Magnus and women … and how my Glaswegian cubicle neighbor, Daphne, had reacted to his office visit. “You’re crazy to hide from that one. All he’d have to do is look in my direction and my legs would fall open with a ‘welcome’ sign hanging around my fanny.”
Yes, in the end, Magnus could make good on his threat. But I doubted the wolf screaming, Mate! Mate! Mate! inside me would let me do the same.
“Okay, fine!” I cried out. My core clenched so hard, it felt like it was shouting its consent right along with me.
“‛Okay, fine’ might work in Canada,” Magnus answered, his voice as unyielding as a winter wind. “But here in Scotland, we have a set of formal words a she-wolf must give before a Faoiltiarn male knots inside her. Now banrigh, I’ll admit the sight of ye is giving me cause to forget all about such notions. But seeing as how the future of my clan is at stake, I’m afraid I’ll have to insist on having your vow in the auld language.”
Oh, God … this could not be happening.
I wanted to argue with Magnus. Wanted to scream at him for being such a tool, the type of wolf who would take advantage of a she-wolf in heat.
But my wolf did not care. Mate, mate, mate! It chanted inside me without any thought or regard to how my human might feel about the matter.
“Okay …okay …” I croaked, responding to my wolf as much as I was responding to him. “Just give me the damn words.”
He answered with a short string of Gaelic. And I echoed the words back to him as best I could, given the complexity of the language. I didn’t know what they meant but they definitely had the rhythm of ritual, making it easy to guess just how binding they were. Especially in Scotland where laws only ever seemed to get created. Never updated, modified, or—God forbid—removed from the books completely.
Magnus had been playing it cool ever since the start of my surprise heat. Teasing me. Manipulating me. Both literally and figuratively, before finally offering me a deal my wolf would not allow me to refuse.
But if I thought he was unaffected by my heat, I soon found out how very wrong I was.
“Christ, Tara. That took everything I had in me,” he confessed on a harsh exhale as he fell on my back.
Then he pushed inside me with one hard stroke.
Without delay, Magnus began to move into me from behind, his breath hot on the back of my neck.
“Magnus,” I whimpered, too far gone to chastise or hate him the way I definitely had before all this began—how long ago had that been? Minutes? Eons?
It honestly didn’t matter because the way he rode me, with his chest pressed hard into my back and his arms braced on either side of me, caused every single defense I’d built to come crumbling down.
“Magnus! Magnus! Oh, God, take me. Claim me! Please! Ich bin dei Wölfin! Ich bin dei Aldi! Bidde! Bidde! Oh, Gott …”
After that, I didn’t know what I was saying, only that I’d defaulted to my first language—the one my mother spoke. And I couldn’t stop. Not until the first shudder of a fierce orgasm abruptly cut me off.
I knew we were building up to this. I had read about it in books. And seen it on TV shows. But nothing—nothing—could have prepared me for it. I shuddered around his cock, expelling so much heat, I was afraid he would slip out.
Perhaps he was afraid of that happening, too. Magnus gave a rough growl and I felt him sink his teeth into my shoulder, holding my shuddering body in place as he continued to drive into me.
His bite cleared my head. Kept me from collapsing as I focused on surviving the onslaught of pleasure.
But just as the orgasm started to die down, Magnus knotted inside me. His huge cock spreading me so wide, it felt like he would tear me apart.
A second orgasm blasted through me with the intensity of a tsunami. I was paralyzed in place as it electrified me with an almost painful pleasure for moments on end.
Now I understood why my wolf had caved so easily. If our wolves mating had been anything like this, I could no longer blame my beast for wanting to be with Magnus’s wolf again. And again. And again.
“I agree with you completely, banrigh,” a dark and husky voice said inside my head. So loud it felt as if it was speaking directly into both ears—like expensive headphones. “Our wolves had the right of it, and now we’ve sealed our claim,”
So, that was that. I could hear Magnus speaking in my head. Meaning we’d 100% unlocked our mate bond in a way my wolf-mated parents couldn’t until they’d been taken over by the heat mating that produced me, their second child.
Oh, God, what had I done?
A sleep just as sudden as my unexpected heat claimed me before I could answer that question.