RonanThe inside the cabin smells like home. It smells like us.The rut still clings to our skin, ground into sweat and bruises, thick in the seams of our clothes. It smelled strong enough in the open air. Shut inside four log walls, it blooms heavy, suffocating, thick as smoke. My wolf stretches in it, pleased, possessive. Mine, mine, mine. But the man in me knows the timing is a disaster. Any Blackthorn wolf with a nose will catch one whiff and know exactly what I’ve been doing instead of leading them.Nobody would begrudge an Alpha his rut, but the timing was fucking awful.Eli, naturally, makes it worse. He peels off his jacket, tosses it on the hook like he’s strolling in after a hunt, then wrinkles his nose. “Gods, we reek.” He eyes the washroom door, “Think I’ve got time for a quick shower before battle?”“No,” I say.He turns back, brows up. “Not even two minutes? I’ll be fast. Cold stream water didn’t exactly do the same as warm water and soap.”I know he’s not going to lik
JaceRonan’s rut should have burned out after three days. Five, at the ugly edge. We are past the edge and walking on the underside now.Maps cover the table in the command room like skins. Border marks, choke points, old poacher trails, new Redmaw tracks burned in with charcoal. I’ve redrawn the same black spruce notch three times, and the paper still insists Redmaw is gathering there like flies on meat.Mara leans against the doorframe, arms folded, gaze knife-sharp. “You keep staring at the same line like it’s going to move for you.”“If it were polite,” I say, “It would.”“How long has it been now?”“Since the bond went quiet and we pulled Eli out?” I don’t need to check. It’s welded into the back of my eyes. “Eight days.”Mara doesn’t flinch, but her jaw ticks. Rut is supposed to be a storm. Violent, brief, gone. Ronan seems to have turned it into a season.“We need him on the field,” she says, and it’s not a complaint, it’s arithmetic. He’s ridiculously strong and the warriors w
RonanIt takes three tries to sit up.Not because I’m injured, though everything from my hips to my ribs feels like it’s been through a war, but because my legs refuse to believe it’s over.The rut broke sometime during the night. Not with a roar, but with a sigh. One last knot buried deep, one last growl against Eli’s throat as he shivered and clenched around me like he never wanted it to end.And maybe I didn’t either.Eli is curled beside me, bare and bruised and smug as sin. He smells like sex and sleep and satisfaction. Like me. Like mine.I study the curve of his back, the bite marks along his shoulder, the way his fingers twitch in dreams. He should look wrecked. He does. But not broken. Not even close. He’s humming with some secret victory that makes something primal in me bare its throat and grin.He took everything I gave him. Every rough thrust, every growled command, every knot, and gave back more.He survived me. No, he did much more than that. He handled me and kept begg
EliRonan is inventive in the way storms are. Whatever the room offers, he turns into a weapon, a stage, a lesson.Against the wall first. My spine thuds against the logs hard enough that dust shakes loose, his mouth crushing mine. His hand locks around my throat, cutting me down to the sound of my own pulse under his grip. “Breathe,” he growls, and I do, shoving air past his palm, the burn of it as sharp as the ache in my chest. Tasting obedience and oxygen at the same time.He lifts me like I’m nothing. My legs clamp over his hips, the wide muscle of them grinding between my thighs. His cock drives up into me, brutal, blunt, unstoppable. I’m slick already, my body won’t stop producing while my Alpha needs me, and it gushes more with every thrust, spilling down my ass, painting his skin, splattering the wall. He uses it, pistoning harder, each push a wet, obscene slap. He forces me wide open, the stretch biting, the ache sweet, his knot swelling at the base and grinding against me as
EliThe cabin learns our names in a hundred new ways until the walls carry them like scars. The fire burns down. Ronan burns hotter. He doesn’t speak sentences anymore. Only the words a storm uses.“Mine.”“Down.”“More.”“Come.”He is in his human shape, but the wolf has swallowed the man whole. Hunger wears a body and that body fits me like a glove.The first cycle is violence turned worship. No pause, no courtesy, only weight and heat and the steady, unarguable insistence of a claim that never ends. I stop thinking about whether I can take it and start thinking about how long I can stand it, and then I stop thinking about that too because he has found a rhythm inside me that erases questions.I don’t need to do anything. That’s the revelation. He moves me where he wants me. Wall, table, bed, floor, wall again. Hands sure, impatient, demanding. When I sag, he growls, and my spine finds steel. When I fight, he pins me with one palm at my throat and the world goes very quiet, and I
EliRonan doesn’t walk. He hunts.Every step closer rattles something deep in me, that bond screaming between us like a live wire about to snap. My thighs are already trembling, my cock hard and dripping.His hand slams against my chest, pinning me flat to the wall. His palm finds my throat next, hot and rough, squeezing just enough that my lungs stutter. My mouth falls open on instinct, a sound torn out of me that isn’t protest.His cock drags against my thigh, heavy, leaking, hot enough to scald. He snarls my name into my jaw, teeth scraping hard enough that I know I’ll wear the bruise later.“Mine.”It’s not a word. It’s law.The next second he’s grinding me into the wall, rut-dumb and reckless. His hand doesn’t leave my throat. He licks me like he’s trying to taste the marrow through my skin. When he pulls back, his eyes are blown wide, all wolf, all need.“Knees.”My legs fold before my brain catches up. The stone floor bites my skin. I don’t care. I want this. Gods, I want it. H