Warner didn’t like the tone in Mari’s voice. It was so resigned.
Why couldn’t she understand that protecting her was his honor? His joy? His privilege?
He’d been about to tell her so when the sat phone rang.
“Turn around,” Blake said. “They want to handle it themselves.”
“Did you explain to them that they can’t handle it themselves?” Warner began.
The Dark Champion stirred, stretched inside him as it became aware that it was being told not to pursue its prey.
“I did what I could, Warner. The answer is no. Come home.”
Warner didn’t say anything for a long while.
“Do you need me to command you?”
“I might, Blake.”
“Warner Woolven, I command you to return home.” His voice echoed with all of the authority of an Alpha. It resonated deep into his bones.
It should’ve been impossible to ignore.
It should’ve caused him agony to consider it.
But it didn’t.
“Warner?” Blake asked. “It didn’t take, did it?”
“No, I’m afraid it didn’t.”
“I’ve been grieving the loss of you since your death, Uncle. Even when you came back, I felt you’d been lost to us.”
Warner’s heart broke. He didn’t know what to say.
Blake said it for him. “Come home anyway. Aphelion will always be your home. You will always be family. You will always be part of my pack. No matter what.”
Warner understood the words that Blake didn’t say. No matter what he did, no matter what he became, Blake wouldn’t turn him away. “I’ll try.”
“Good. This pup needs you. Just like the rest of Woolven. Uncle, I still need you.”
A litany of words were born and died on his tongue. He didn’t know which of them to say. “Nice of you to say, boy. But you don’t. You’re a fine Alpha. The best any pack could hope for.”
“Not just leading pack. You’re the only father I remember. I want my child to know you. Your wisdom, your stories, your ferocity. Your honor.”
Warner couldn’t breathe for a moment. “Even if I don’t come back, all of that lives in you. Your pup will know it well. But I swear to you, I want to come home. I want to be there.”
That seemed to be what Blake was looking for.
“Good. Check in when you can.”
“Just tell him you love him, jackass,” Randi called.
Warner chuckled. “He did. And so did I,” he said back, before he hung up.
Goddess, he did want that. To go home. To see the pup. To run with Noah. But they weren’t safe while this threat loomed. The one in the north or the one inside him.
He turned to Mari and he didn’t know what to say to her.
Warner wasn’t good with talking about his feelings. It wasn’t that he was embarrassed of having them, he simply wasn’t used to them being a consideration. He wasn’t used to expressing them.
He wanted to tell Mari everything, but luckily, it seemed she knew.
As she would, being his mate.
No, he wasn’t going to leave her. Not for anything.
She welcomed him into her arms, and again it seemed as if she were the one with all the strength. If he was being honest, and he always chose to be, even with himself, he didn’t know what he’d have done without her.
“I’m glad you tracked me down. I’m glad you didn’t let me tell you who to be.”
“That’s good, because it’s not changing any time soon.” She rubbed her cheek against his.
“I need you, Mari. Is it okay?”
He didn’t know if he was asking if it was okay to need her strength, okay to touch her, okay to find solace in her body yet again when he had nothing to offer her.
Nothing but pleasure.
“Always,” she said. “I need you too, Warner.”
He was used to hearing that he was needed. That his pack needed him. The boys needed him. It was nice to be needed. It was nice to know that what he did made a difference.
Except hearing it from Mari’s lips satisfied him in an altogether different way. It also made him need her even more.
Since he’d become this thing, he’d transformed into a raw nerve. He felt everything ten times as intensely from his hunger to his emotions, to his physical desire.
It was all so much.
Too much.
But still he wanted more.
Warner didn’t understand how that was possible.
The Dark Champion surged, almost as if using its own existence to answer his question, but he didn’t want that answer.
He knew the time was fast approaching that he’d lose himself inside the beast. So for now, for tonight, he couldn’t obey his Alpha, but he could have this last time with Mari as himself.
No, the darkness said. I am already you.
He wanted it to be silent and he growled, but Mari liked it when he growled. Her scent grew more powerful, and the way she writhed against him more intense.
“I want this as a man, Mari. You’ll get the beast soon enough if that’s what you want.”
“I want it any way you want to give it to me, Warner.”
Another growl was torn from him.
“Goddess, but you’re delicious,” he said. “I want to devour you.”
She sank to the ground and leaned back, spreading her thighs. “If you promise to be very careful, I’ll let you take these leathers off with your teeth.”
“I can do that.”
“Good. Because I didn’t know how else I was going to get them off.”
“They suit you.”
“I like them. You seem to.”
He didn’t answer with words, instead, he did just as she’d asked and peeled them down her body using his very human teeth.
But before he dipped his head between her legs, she tugged him up so that they were face to face.
“We’re mated. Here in this moment. Whatever happens, right now you belong to me. And I belong to you. I love you, Warner.”
He didn’t know what to say. He cared for Mari, he wanted her, he needed her.
“It’s okay. I don’t need you to say it back. I didn’t say it hoping to get something from you. I said it because my heart feels like it’s going to burst. So kiss me. Kiss me like you’ll never get to again.”
Her words had a ring of truth to them. They echoed with the finality of prophecy and he wanted to argue, but since their time was so short, he wouldn’t waste it arguing.
He’d do as she asked.
He kissed her.
It was a different kind of kiss, this one. It was full of summer sunshine and Elysian fields, but it was tainted with a lemon tang of regret, too.
She pushed her fingers through his hair and turned her face to the side so he could nose at her neck.
It seemed she’d had enough of lemons.
And regret.
As had he.
He moved down between her thighs and drank her in. Warner decided that this might be his favorite activity. She arched beneath him, inviting him to take more, to give more. Always more.
Which was what he wanted, what he needed.
But he was unhurried.
There wasn’t nearly enough time to say everything that needed to be said, to do all the things that still needed to be done, but this—there was time for this. For her pleasure.
It took her longer to come with his human tongue and for a moment, he knew a stabbing, blinding irrational jealousy.
Which was stupid.
He was the thing with the long, powerful tongue. It was still him. And then again, it wasn’t.
Warner growled against her, and that’s what sent her over the edge.
His growl had her sweetness flowing over his tongue and her thighs squeezing his head.
Signs of a job well done.
He couldn’t help but ask, “So you like the Dark Champion better, huh? When it comes to this?”
She gasped a laugh. “He is good at what he does. And I love it, but a lot of it is because I don’t think I’m supposed to. I can’t do this with him after, either.”
Mari pulled him up to kiss her.
Warner had had lovers, but his numbers were nothing like his rakehell nephews. He preferred it to matter. He preferred more than fingers and mouths in the dark who would be gone once the morning came.
He liked discovering her, the things that turned her on, the things that pushed her over the edge. The things she thought were intimate. Like this.
Warner kissed her and she was languid in his arms, soft and pliant.
Then she surprised him.
“Now, it’s my turn.”
She pushed him on his back and the position was so foreign to him.
Warner was used to serving, not being served.
When Mari flashed her playful smile, something uncoiled in chest. A tight knot he hadn’t known was there and it unfurled like the petals of a rose, opening so wide.
And like a rose, it was all tenderness and gentle things.
Even when her mouth closed around his cock.
Oh by the Goddess, it had never been so good.
The dark thing inside of him was content to be quiet, to let him have this, at least for now. Warner was sure it was some kind of trick to lull him into complacency. To let his guard down to make it easier for the darkness to take the reins.
But he couldn’t think about that now.
All he could think about, all that mattered, were these moments with Mari.
Something told him that he’d never see her like this again.
Never touch her.
The worst part was, he’d never know what their life together could’ve been like. No, that was a lie. He knew what their life together could’ve been like.
It could’ve been… happy.
She took him deeper now, and her propped himself up on his elbows so he watch her, look into her eyes.
He could see the same desperation there.
It awakened the previously slumbering beast. Even as his body began to change, he fought it.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I’ll take you any way I can get you.”
“No, I don’t—” As he fought, agony blasted him in tidal wave after tidal wave. It hurt more when he fought it.
“Calm, Warner. He’s a weapon. He responds to fear, stress, and aggression. That is, if you don’t want to Change.”
Warner tried to breathe. Tried to calm the desperation he felt. The sadness.
Like Mari suggested, the beast settled.
Could it be that simple?
He doubted it, but he would take it for now.
“Surrender to me,” she whispered. “Don’t just lie back and let me do what I want, surrender your body to the sensation. If Change, you Change. I don’t care. He won’t hurt me. You won’t hurt me.”
This was a secret desire he’d hidden so deep that he didn’t even know it was something he’d wanted until she’d spoken it aloud.
“Yes, Warner. Give me all of you.”
She took his shaft in her mouth again and worked all the way down the length and he realized that his surrender was no longer a matter of choice. She’d tamed him, at least for the moment and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Pleasure spiraled through him and he rode the waves as they carried out to a blissful sea.
He was lost in Mari and the moment.
After she brought him to culmination, and they lay sated in each other’s arms, it didn’t occur to him to put all of his armor, his protections back in place.
He didn’t think he’d need them.
But he was wrong.
When he awoke with the first strange lights of pink dawn stretching over his skin, he realized something was horribly wrong.
Mari was still in his arms, but his muscles all ached and there was a smell. A scent of blood and death that permeated the air. He breathed deeply, trying to unravel the scents from the one another.
So much fear.
That would make sense with him in the forest if all the little woodland animals hadn’t fled from his presence. There were no other living creatures in this part of the forest. No mammals anyway.
He tugged at the thread and the strongest scent after the fear was the copper tang of blood.
With an undercurrent of silver.
At one time, silver had smelled like poison to him. Something rotten.
It didn’t bother him now. It simply was. It was another scent like any other.
He opened his eyes slowly, not actually wanting to see the scene that awaited him, but knowing he had no choice. Whether he looked or not wouldn’t change anything.
His hands were sticky, in fact, his whole body was covered in some kind of—blood.
His eyes flew open and he realized that when he’d said there were no other mammals in the forest, he’d meant it. He hadn’t sensed Mari’s life force, but she was right here in his arms.
Dear fucking Goddess, if something had happened to Mari, may she smite him.
Except, her chest rose and fell with breath. He didn’t understand what was happening.
Mari opened her pretty ice blue eyes. “What’s wrong, Warner?” She gave a languorous stretch. “Mm, what’s that smell? It smells divine.”
Warner froze. “Does that smell like food to you?”
She nodded. “Mmmhmm.” Mari licked her lips.
“We should go to the river. Close your eyes.”
“I’m not closing my…” Mari turned in his arms and she saw the carnage strewn about them.
He realized she had blood on her mouth.
What had he done?