Adam
My mouth went dry as I came up the drive, watching the vampires of House Gabriel emerging from the woodwork one by one. I’d caught a glimpse of Nikki on the porch with Raziel and Celeste—and I hadn’t missed the looks both of them were giving me, either—but she was quickly obscured by her packmates closing ranks around her.
I swung my leg over my bike and pulled my helmet off. My nerves were a tangled mess, but I kept my thoughts fixed firmly on my bond to Nikki. This was another battle I’d have to fight to win my way back to her, as surely as the alpha challenge against Jax had been.
Striding up the asphalt driveway, I stopped a few feet shy of the steps, looking up at the crowd above me. Giullem and Matthieu framed the front entrance of the house from their respective perches atop the porch banister. Celeste stood between me and Nikki, arms folded over her chest, expression impassive.
Raziel I could see just behind Celeste’s shoulder. The way the air around them shimmered, I knew I was already in hot water before I’d even begun.
The same predatory aura emanated from them as the first day I’d met them with Nikki at the street fair the year before. My knees wanted to lock up, to freeze me in place as if by staying very still and making myself very small, I could survive them.
The screen door opened and Sam emerged from the house, moving to take his place on the porch steps. Between me and the entrance.
If Sam were gatekeeping, then Gabriel was away.
Sam’s wife and sons, and Malakai were all noticeably absent.
The first time I’d come to House Gabriel, they’d welcomed me in. They’d allowed me in the nest near their most vulnerable members—their children—without batting an eye. Because I was Nikki’s soulmate.
The distinction between that meeting and this one stung enough to surprise me.
“Is Nikki here?”
Guillem’s lip curled. “You should go.”
That stupid French accent was still hot. Fucker.
“I need to speak with my mate.”
“But she isn’t your mate, is she, Adam? That’s rather the point,” Guillem shot back.
“I challenged Jackson. I need to speak with Nikki.”
“One year too late, no?”
This is going to get me nowhere.
“I challenged my alpha and my best friend to force him to rescind the command forbidding my relationship with Nikki. He relented.” I tried to keep the tremor of frustration from my voice. “I came here to discuss things with her.”
They had every right to be protective of her; and they were right that it might be too little, too late. I had no right to come here and whine about what I’d sacrificed when I’d let it come to this in the first place. I had no right to expect their sympathy.
“Do you know what your bullshit has done to her? Of course you do. You can feel it. You’re her soulmate. But it wasn’t enough motivation for you then, was it? What changed your mind?” Matthieu asked. “Why now?”
I couldn’t help the way I flinched. That question bored straight into the ugly truth of it.
“I don’t—there isn’t an excuse.” I cleared my throat. “I was avoiding my responsibility to her because of what it meant I might have to lose. That’s the reality. It took too long to get over myself. It was a risk, I was afraid to take it, and I waited too long.”
“So you know you’re a coward, then.” Raziel’s eyebrow went up, and Guillem stifled a laugh. “That’s good. Awareness is a good first step.”
My hands curled into white-knuckled fists and I jammed them into my pockets. It was clear that if I couldn’t handle their insults, I wasn’t going to get to talk to Nikki. Still, I wasn’t sure how long I could tolerate this before I lost my mind. It was fast becoming infuriating that I’d only caught the barest glimpse of her even with her standing only feet from me. When I could smell her, even among this horde of vampires.
“Yeah. Sure. And people change,” I said, discreetly trying to find Nikki over Celeste’s shoulders. “But the thing is that a soulmate is supposed to make you better. And she did. She’s done that for me.”
“Marvelous.” Guillem’s voice was dry. “You’ve both been growing as people. You broke her heart a hundred times until she could not stand a second more, forced her to find the strength to leave you behind. She made you grow some balls.”
“Listen.” I barely leashed the growl fighting its way out of my chest as I struggled to find the words to say with my soulmate’s entire pack—her adopted family—looking on. “I respect your concerns, but this isn’t about you. Nikki, I understand if this changes nothing for you. I know I’ve screwed this up. But right now, I’d appreciate just a moment of your time whether I deserve it or not.”
There was a beat of silence. Raziel’s eyes glittered dangerously as they lifted their chin and sniffed at the air.
“You have your alpha’s blood on your teeth. And in your beard.”
“I put my teeth in his throat,” I replied flatly.
Guillem—crazy shit—grinned. “Is that who I smell on you?”
“I left my pack immediately after concluding the challenge to come here. I haven’t brushed my teeth or showered to get rid of the smell. So yes.”
Sam and Celeste glanced at each other. Raziel turned their face to look at Nikki, hidden from me by Celeste’s body. They tilted their head slightly to murmur something to her.
“I’ll talk to him.”
Her voice was soft, but the sound of it made my heart leap from my chest. It was dizzying.
The sudden, stunning possibility that she might still reject me hit me full in the chest, and for a moment I didn’t want to hear what her answer would be. I held myself through the wave. How often had she done that for me? Been vulnerable, opened herself up… and had to soothe herself through the fear of my response.
Celeste, who had remained silent through all of this, stepped out of the way—revealing Nikki to me—and placed a hand on my mate’s shoulder. She spoke, but I couldn’t hear a word.
All I could see was Nikki. My heart began to pound so hard I was sure she could hear it. From her side of the bond there was only nerves. Well, the feeling was mutual.
My memory of her was nothing to the real thing in front of me. Whatever they’d been doing before I got here, she was looking—well, honestly, she looked exhausted and wary of me—but she was the most beautiful damned thing I’d ever seen. Her eyes flashed an eerie gold with the animal lurking under her skin, the reminder of what made her different from any other wolf shifter.
My girl.
For all that their reservations were plain on their faces, her packmates let her come down the stairs to meet me. The look that Raziel was leveling me with, however, told me that we had unfinished business.
That was fine. As long as I got my chance to clear things up with Nikki.
Nikki
Adam looked terribly alone standing there at the bottom of the steps.
To say I was shocked was an understatement.
He’d challenged Jax?
My emotions were at war. Surprise, on the one hand. Anger on the other. And… hope. I wasn’t sure which one I disliked more. I let myself settle on anger for a moment. Anger that he’d taken such a risk, anger that he’d waited so long to take it.
He could have been killed. And why now? Why now, when I was ready to move on? When I’d made up my mind?
Seeing him tore me right open.
I was pleased, in a way, that I felt more… in control than I had ever been. My spirit was quiet, though my heart was full of anxiety. His scent still struck me hard, raw chemistry dragging rough fingers through my body and provoking me not only to want, but to take. But the fog of lust I’d always allowed to drive me before no longer owned me.
The absence of that anxious pull gave me a little confidence.
There was no way to have this conversation at the nest—too many nosy vampires about, and Guillem especially would be unable to resist the temptation to spy. But inspiration struck, and I knew where I wanted to go.
My feet carried me to him and I observed the expressions chasing each other across his face as I came down the porch steps, dodging around Guillem’s teasing swipe at my head as I passed. With some distance between us, I stopped.
“Did you bring a helmet for me?”
He released a shaky breath. “Yeah.”
“Take me back to your place.”
His eyebrows shot up, but he nodded and pulled my helmet from a saddlebag. With only some small trepidation, I mounted the bike, wrapped my arms around his waist, and let myself relax into the experience.
Adam kicked the bike to life and I felt my whole soul lift as we began to glide away from the house. He took us slowly through quiet neighborhood roads with families roaming in their costumes. I watched children dressed as monsters trick-or-treating and, not for the first time, the sight made me smile.
Once we were clear of the town and we came upon the highway that would carry us to the other side of the national park where Adam’s pack lived, he accelerated rapidly, and elation swept through me as we picked up speed.
I lost myself for a moment. His scent, the sound of air rushing by, the feeling of him close and the bike underneath me.
We flew. For a moment, that was all that existed.
I’d thought I was never going to get to experience it again.
Too soon, though, we turned off the highway and onto a smaller, quiet road through ancient trees, and the elation was poisoned with a moment of fear.
I could smell the powerful scents of wolves roving this land, both in their skin and their fur. I didn’t see any of them, but I knew there would be at least a handful in the brush, watching our approach. Sending a warning to the others.
So far, I’d resisted the urge to reach for our connection. To open that door would mean opening myself to him, undoing what little progress I’d made. I wasn’t taking the risk.
Even just seeing him face-to-face now… knowing he’d laid a challenge against his alpha for my sake…
Again, fear shot through me at the thought that he’d put his life—his place with his pack—at risk in that way. I’d never wanted that for him.
When we broke through the trees into a cleared space, he turned off to a large aluminum building on our left nestled against the treeline and tapped the button of a remote mounted on the handlebars of the bike. The doors began to rumble and lift as we slowed until we rolled gently into the garage.
I didn’t tell him I was impressed. Or excited. Or nervous.
There was a reason I’d never been here before.
We were both quiet as I followed him out of the garage and along a less-established footpath toward the cabins deeper in the clearing, pulling my helmet from my head as he did. I saw others moving from building to building, but I got the sense that much of his pack had vacated the property to celebrate Halloween. Those few we did encounter watched us from a respectful distance, taking longer sniffs at the air when they caught my scent. They were sometimes wary, sometimes curious. But in each of their faces, I could see clearly that they’d connected the dots.
He really had challenged Jackson, hadn’t he?
Before long we arrived at one of four cabins spaced apart from the others, farthest from the larger, sprawling farmhouse that I assumed to be the pack’s common space.
On the small porch of a well-kept, green-painted cabin—his home—he turned back to face me. I’d always loved the way that low light made his eyes appear bottomless. Even with the illumination of the porch light, his irises were coal black. His expression was hard to decipher.
“This is my place,” he said, fiddling with his keys.
He’d never invited me here before. I knew that, and yet I hadn’t expected the sudden awkwardness between us, even under the circumstances.
“Can I come in?”
“Of course.” He turned back and opened the door for me, peering inside quickly and flipping a switch to turn on a light before gesturing that I should enter first. “You can drop your helmet on the chair by the door.”
Inside… everything smelled like him. That was my first thought. It was a still space, uncluttered but full of things that were so very Adam that stepping inside was like being surrounded by him. I wondered for a moment if he felt the same when he entered my apartment.
Dropping my helmet onto the chair, I took a hesitant step toward the couch in front of a wood burning stove.
“Have a seat,” Adam said from behind me.
I heard him divesting himself of his heavy riding jacket and seated myself on the couch, eyeing the books on the coffee table. A couple of manuals, a magazine, one tattered sci-fi paperback.
“Nerd,” I muttered. I knew he’d hear. I still couldn’t resist.
I knew he’d smile.
“Proud of it,” he replied as he came to join me on the couch. “Do you need anything? Water, or…?”
“No, thank you.”
His energy was heavy, pulling me into his orbit, and I suddenly found I didn’t want to look at his face. So, naturally, I made myself do it. I fought the resistance to meeting his gaze and tried to ignore the fist squeezing my heart as I did. He was studying me intently, hands clasped on his knees to stop his nervous fidgeting as he took a steadying breath.
“Nikki, I—" Adam hesitated and bit his lip a moment as he seemed to search for words, though I knew he would have been trying to plan what to say to me the entire ride here from town. “There aren’t words… for what I owe you. Or for how sorry I am for what I’ve done. I took our relationship for granted. I think that’s the best word for it. There are no excuses.”
Stupid waterworks. You seriously can’t fucking cry already.
“I thought I was doing right by my pack, and the reality is that I was cheating them. Of an opportunity to learn. To be better than we were—than we are. And cheating you of the man, and the mate, that you deserved. You both deserved for me to stand up for you. And I didn’t. And that hurt you.”
Putting it mildly. “Yeah.”
“It took too long to realize that. To see how I was fucking things up. It wasn’t you walking away, exactly, that did it. It was… well. It wasn’t the mate bond dying, exactly, either. It was the… the relief of it. On your end. Realizing I’d screwed things up so badly that you were looking forward to never seeing me again. That having me gone was going to make things easier for you.” He swallowed, clearing his throat. His ears were reddening, and I suddenly understood he was trying not to cry himself. “I couldn’t stand that. Knowing that. Seeing… how badly I’d failed you. It made things clearer.”
“So you decided to challenge your alpha?”
“Yes.”
“Without discussing it with me first?”
“I didn’t do it to try to—well, I did, I guess—but I did it because it was the right thing to do. Not just to try to convince you to give this a shot again. I knew it was likely you would say no. It still had to be done.” He glanced away from me a moment, but when his eyes returned to mine, they were clear and steady. “So I did it. And… yes. I was hoping it would mean you’d be willing to at least have this conversation with me.”
I licked my lips, and his eyes tracked the movement of my tongue. The attention zapped me straight to my core. If I’d tried to stand, my legs would have been weaker than a newborn deer’s. Just like that.
“So you could say what?”
“That I’m so fucking sorry, Nikki. And that I love you. I always will. And if you give me another chance to do this the right way, I swear to God I’ll spend the rest of my life being the man you deserve.”
My heart jumped into my throat, and I choked on a startled, disbelieving laugh.
How many times had I prayed, silently begged, to hear those exact words?
How could it be happening now?
Adam reached for my hand, and I didn’t resist as he took it in his own. The touch felt strange. I’d been cuddled within an inch of my life the past week between Raziel, the boys, and even Celeste, but that was not the same. This man, I’d never been able to get enough of. He had a lifeline straight to the most vulnerable parts of me—physically and otherwise. Adam had my libido on speed dial. The texture of his palm sent ghost sensations creeping across my skin in memory of those hands loving me.
“Words weren’t going to be enough. I knew I couldn’t come back to you without showing you I was serious, and I hoped that you knew me well enough to understand. I had to change things. I had to make it right.”
“I do understand. I know how much that would have cost you,” I whispered.
His pack was everything to him.
“No.”
“No, what?” My eyebrows rose. I hadn’t said anything aloud.
“I haven’t shut down the bond on my side since I made the choice, and this close, I know what’s going on in your head. I’m wide open over here for you. Because my pack is not everything. They’re family, that’s true. But they stopped being everything to me the moment I met you.”
Adam carefully eased his way closer, removing the space between us until our thighs were touching, and he lifted his free hand to brush hair from my face.
“I know why you aren’t open to this right now,” he whispered back, leaning in cautiously and pressing his forehead against mine. “But if you were, you could feel how completely and utterly taken I am by you. How you amaze me. How much you mean to me. Even if you walk away now, it changes nothing for me. I made up my mind.”
“You could find someone else.”
“Sure. I could. I won’t.”
“Soulmates doesn’t mean forever.”
“It could if we decide it does.”
I froze, and closed my eyes. There was so much fear, demanding that I acknowledge it. Screaming over the top of the gentle energy nudging at my consciousness.
I knew a lot about walking away. I knew nothing at all about happy ever after.
“You’re afraid to open that door because you think you need to be able to close it again, and that’s fair. I’m not perfect. I’m kind of a dick, honestly. But I love you. And if you open up to me now, you’ll know you’ll be safe with me for the rest of your life. I have faith in us.”
His lips were so close. His fingers were gently working knots from my hair as we shared air, resting our foreheads together. The fingers of his other hand had laced through mine, and he brought my palm up to his chest to press it against his heart.
The bond had been tempting me all night with its strange energy, and the longer I sat there with him, the more I understood what had changed… it was him. The connection felt different because it was him exclusively feeding it now, giving it life. The aura of his soul attempting to nourish mine.
He’d made up his mind, and every cell of him was working in harmony with his new goal.
Adam felt me relent before I did, but he didn’t push. He waited for me to reach for that vibrant tie binding our souls together, and allow myself to feel.
What did I have to lose?
With shaking hands and a trembling soul, I opened the door stretched out my mind to his. In Adam’s face and in his mind, I saw wonder. Awe. His love came flooding down the bond to wash over me, surrounding me in a kind of warmth that I hadn’t felt with him—with anyone—ever.
Acceptance and acknowledgement met energy and intent. Just like the night our bond was formed. This time, however, it wasn’t solely me pouring into the soulmate bond and fueling it. There was him, there was me, and then there was us.
It was almost too much. I almost couldn’t breathe around it, as if my body were too full to take in air.
He’d always withheld part of himself from me; and despite appearances, I’d never been truly open to him, either. Just waiting to be let down—waiting to run away.
No longer. The walls between us crumbled.