NIKOLAII couldn’t get her out of my mind. She was consuming my waking and dreaming thoughts. What she did. How she had climbed on top of me like that, took control, and rubbed herself all over my cock. She looked like a damn goddess with her flawless warrior body, her long dark, voluminous hair, her pert breasts with prominent, perfect nipples. I was helpless under her, in awe of her power. I’d never felt so out of control in my life.Even now, standing here, thinking of her, my body reacted like a desperate fool. I gritted my teeth. Pathetic. I was pathetic.I was so used to demure, submissive women. And there was nothing wrong with them. But, boginya moya! That. That was so unexpected and… I didn’t even have words for it. It was something beyond our mortal understanding. That was otherworldly. For those few moments that she was riding my shaft, I had forgotten everything—the war, the pack, my family that was now gone, this barren nothing that would be our future pack land—everythin
NIKOLAIA few days after we returned, I found myself in the office with Tyce. He pointed toward some packages sitting next to his desk. “Hey, bro, so we got all these sports bras for your pack.”“What?” I blinked a few times, not understanding why, out of every supply our pack could possibly need, he’d gotten bras for us.“Oh, Terri didn’t tell you?” He looked up at me from the paper he had in his hand. “She asked me to get your pack some sports bra. Said your female warriors needed more support. So Gigi measured all of them, and put in the order, since I obviously had no idea what I’m doing.” He smiled and shook his head.“Terri asked for these to be ordered?” I asked, making sure I heard right.“Yeah, she’s a good kid,” Tyce replied. “Always thinking of other people. I constantly tell her she needs to take care of herself too. Not sure where she got it from. Couldn’t be from our parents.” He chuckled.We unboxed the packages together, and double checked the order. Then we chitchatte
NIKOLAI“Morning,” Tyce greeted Sasha and me as we entered the warrior gym to get our workout in before our pack arrived for training. I glanced around, taking in all the empty equipment. The gym that was usually fully packed by now only had a handful of Tyce’s warriors in it.“Where is everyone?” I asked. “Outdoor training today?”“Nah,” Tyce replied. “They have the next week off. The first sunrise of the year is in 6 days, so we kicked off our sunrise festival today and gave everyone the time off. Feel free to use the gym as much as you want.” I nodded and he continued speaking with a glint in his eyes. “Be careful out there. You’ll be seeing a lot of plastered wolves on the prowl. Lotsa drunk, horny she-wolves too.” He gave me a friendly punch in the arm. “Used to be my favorite time of year. But I’m a changed man. They’re all yours now.” He lit up with a bright smile and then turned to load up a barbell on the ground.Sasha smirked and shook his head as we headed toward the dumbbe
NIKOLAITyce and Gigi made conversation with me, so I politely turned to give them my attention. Sasha and Liam both made sure I was never without a drink. I had to admit the apple drink was pretty damn good, and, before long, I was feeling a buzz.It must have made me more social than usual because Sasha exclaimed, “We should hang out and drink together more often. It’s good for you. You’re too wound up. It’s not healthy.”“What’s not healthy is what happened to our pack,” I bit back.“Goddess, you’ve changed,” Sasha snapped at me. “You used to be cool. But now, you’re just this miserable little fuck. I know what happened sucks and we’ve all been mourning everyone we lost. But we’re alive! What point was there in battling so hard for our pack’s survival when you have no plan to actually live?” I was thankful that our dispute was in Russian, so the others sitting near us didn’t know what we were saying. Except maybe Julia, but she seemed to be off somewhere else at that moment.“Sasha
THERESAEarly in the morning, I kicked all the layers of sheets and blankets off me. My body was drenched in sweat. For a second, I had to remind myself that it was, in fact, the middle of winter, and I hadn’t suddenly overslept several months and found myself waking on an uncharacteristically hot day in the middle of July.When I unlocked my phone, I was greeted by the unwelcome alert I dreaded from my period tracking app every month. “Ovulation.” I groaned into my pillow, and then whispered a prayer of thanks to Artemis that it was a day that most people would be out of the packhouse for the continuing sunrise festival and I was unlikely to be bothered. For once, something was going right. I just had to make it through today without incident and I’d be golden. By the time ovulation rolled around again, I’d be back at school, secure from detection.Fortunately, I was mostly safe within the confines of the packhouse. No one in my immediate family would notice, which was just about eve
THERESAWhen I awoke, it was with a gasp. Nothing looked familiar. Where I’d closed my eyes was not where I’d opened them. And staring down at me was a very shirtless Nikolai with just a towel wrapped around his torso with his blond hair dripping wet. “Why are you—” he started, tight features and a scowl on his face, his fists clenched, and his eyes shooting daggers at me.I looked around while adrenaline shot through my system, trying to make sense of how I’d ended up where I had. My chest tightened and a choking sensation took hold of me as more and more came back to me. I had fallen asleep and somehow ended up in Nikolai’s room. Yes, I’d been having issues with sleepwalking, but he didn’t know that. From where he was standing, this looked very very bad.“I slept walked,” I still tried to explain, blurting out whatever came to mind. “It’s been happening. I swear. This wasn’t… I wasn’t... I just fall asleep sometimes and wake up at your room. Well usually not in, but outside at your
THERESA“Keep going,” I begged again, rocking my hips with desperation.He slipped a second digit inside me, and brought his thumb to my clit. I cried out again. He worked his fingers in and out of me, and simultaneously swirled his thumb around my sensitive bud. It felt so good, but… “It’s not enough,” I whined.He withdrew his hand and I backed away from him. I stared into his silver eyes as I grasped the elastics of my shorts and panties, and allowed them to fall down my legs. His eyes darkened. His breaths came out heavy as his eyes didn’t leave me. I took all of him in. He was completely bared to me, his well-toned body on full display. My gaze roamed over the broad expanse of his shoulders, the way they tapered into thick, sculpted arms, honed by battle and relentless training. His chest was just as impressive, leading down to the deep grooves of his abdominals, each ridge cut like stone, flexing subtly with every breath he took.Then my eyes drifted lower, and—my gosh—I had ne
THERESA“Keep going. Don’t stop,” I said, needing more.He obeyed, pushing himself inside to the hilt. I let out a satisfied cry. I savored each movement, each brush of his hips along the inside of my thighs, each hot breath that fanned across my face, each groan from his own pleasure. No detail was missed. At some point, it came to me that this was in the middle of the best sex of my life.“Harder,” I whispered.“I want this to last,” he replied, continuing his steady, paced movements. “You feel so good. If I go any harder, I won’t be able to hold back.”“Don’t hold back,” I said. I wanted it to last too. But my body and mind were not my body and mind in that moment. I’d been possessed by a need that outweighed all rational thought. I couldn’t rest until that need was fulfilled.The expression on his face was pained. And it occurred to me that perhaps he felt the same way that I did. What a pity that the best sex I’d ever had was about to end, and then it would never happen again. Bu
NIKOLAITyce’s hands trembled at his sides. His shoulders rose and fell unevenly, like he was barely keeping himself together. For a moment again, he looked young and lost, like a boy whose world was unraveling piece by piece. But he quickly shook his head and straightened his shoulders."I’ll do my best. I promise." Tyce’s voice was raw, quieter than before. His fingers flexed at his sides before he turned away, blinking hard. I recognized the move. The sheer, bone-deep exhaustion of trying to keep it together when everything inside you was falling apart. Finally, he turned back and said, “Give me something with her scent on it. Alpha Nikolai will help too.”Sophia’s father rushed back into the house, returning seconds later with a winter hat. He handed it to Tyce, who passed it straight to me.I took a deep breath, inhaling the Sophia’s scent, locking it into memory before handing it back.I was sure Tyce felt the same as I did. Someone had reached Sophia before we could. And now, s
NIKOLAIThe silence between us stretched thick and suffocating, broken only by the rhythmic tapping of Tyce’s fingers against the wooden desk and the occasional muffled sound of a voicemail message cutting in and out.Every few minutes, he tried again. Calling. Mindlinking. His expression flickered between frustration and outright fury every time the connection failed.Each passing minute felt like an hour.Tyce was relentless. Again and again, he dialed, pressing on the chosen contact of the moment, only to be met with the same voicemail box recording. Calling and mindlinking like a maniac.I couldn’t deny I wouldn’t have done the same. I just didn’t have the same means to attempt contact. So, I determined, my job, albeit impossible, was to attempt to keep him calm.Honestly, I wasn’t doing any better. My mind screamed for action, but all I could do was sit there, forcing myself to remain still. I kept blocking out the worst-case scenarios. If I let myself think about Terri in the ha
GINGERAs I woke, I fought against a dull, aching exhaustion pressing down on me like dead weight. My eyelids felt impossibly heavy. My mouth was dry, my head pounding. Every muscle in my body throbbed with soreness, as if I’d run a marathon the day before.This has to be the worst hangover of my life.Slowly, the fog in my mind began to clear. I inhaled the scent of crisp air and wet earth. Was I outdoors? I groaned, trying to roll over. A sharp clink echoed through the silence.My eyes snapped open.Coldness nipped at my skin—no, at my fur. My stomach dropped as my sluggish brain scrambled to make sense of it.The room—was it even a room?—was cloaked in darkness, the only illumination coming from the faint glow of my red night vision. The outlines of my surroundings took shape: cold, empty space, stone walls, and metal bars blocking the only exit. The scent of damp earth and frost hung heavy in the air.I tried to move, but the harsh clink of metal stopped me short. I looked down. M
TYSONI finally understood what it meant to straddle the edge of sanity and madness.I hadn’t slept in days. The world around me felt surreal, like I was walking through a dream—or nightmare. Every time I bumped into a wall or grazed a piece of furniture, I’d catch myself wondering why I hadn’t just passed through it. I felt like a ghost, a shadow of myself. Losing Gigi was like losing my purpose. Without her, what was the point of any of this? I scrolled through our old messages, rereading the last text she sent me:Gigi: Love you, send you some snaps laterAs if the words might change. As if they could tell me where she was now.But the screen remained the same. No new messages. Just a string of my frantic ones.They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Well, here I was, proving it. I must have called and texted both Gigi and Terri a thousand times. At this point, my fingers were moving on autopilot. The result
NIKOLAIAs feared, by the next morning, Tyce still hadn’t heard from Gigi or Terri. The thick and suffocating dread was settling in. It was looking to be less and less a case of a couple of lost cell phones.While everyone else was at the morning temple service, Sasha and I met Tyce in his office, where he was seated in the same spot I’d left him the night prior.Tyce looked exactly how I felt, like hell. His eyes were bloodshot, shadowed by dark circles. His hair was even more disheveled than it had been the prior day. Overgrown stubble dusted his jawline. He appeared a ghost of his former self—an alpha taken down by his biggest weakness.He arrived in the same clothes he’d worn the prior day, now wrinkled from his clearly sleepless night. The muffled sound of a generic voicemail box rang through the air.He let out a heavy breath and rubbed his temples before running a hand through his hair. “Flight conditions are still a no-go,” Tyce muttered in a voice that was rough with exhausti
NIKOLAITyce leaned back in his chair, dragging his hands back and forth through his dark hair. The movement left pieces of it sticking up in all different directions.“I just wish…” He trailed off, exhaling sharply. “I just wish I’d marked her.” His voice cracked. “I wanted to. But she was adamant about waiting until marriage. She didn’t want to look bad in front of our parents.” He let out a bitter laugh, shaking his head. “That shit’s so outdated. It’s not like they don’t already know what we’re up to.”His shoulders sagged as he let out a heavy sigh. The weight of his regret was palpable. “If she were marked,” he rasped in a raw voice, “I’d at least know where she is. I could feel her. I’d know she was safe. But…” His voice faltered, splintering into something dark and helpless.Crack! With a strangled roar, he slammed his fists against the desk. The violent sound shot through the room.I flinched. Not at the outburst, but at the raw emotions and vulnerability it exposed. I knew e
NIKOLAI“I don’t understand! Where the fuck is she?” Tyce’s booming voice echoed down the hallway as I stepped through the front door on Sunday evening, sweat still cooling on my skin after hours spent pushing my body to exhaustion. I walked further into the packhouse and his voice became louder as I proceeded. “We need to get that plane out tonight. I need to go to Anchorage immediately.”I followed the sound of his shouting, rounding the corner, to find a red-faced Tyce with bulging eyes in the common area, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.Across from him, Beta Liam stood firm, arms crossed, with a calm but unreadable face.“Tyce, it’s not possible,” Liam said with a measured tone, a stark contrast to the storm raging inside the alpha.Tyce’s chest heaved. His nostrils flared. “I don’t care if we crash the fucking plane,” he snarled. “I have to get to her. Do you understand? She’s out there, and we’re just standing here, doing nothing!”Liam’s jaw tightened, but his voi
GINGERShe walked off, joining the line for the bathroom down the hall. I was about to take a seat when Grace appeared beside me.“Hey, can I get you something else to drink?” she asked.“Oh no, I’m good. This is probably my last one,” I replied.“How’s your friend?”“She’s fine. She just went to the bathroom.”“You’re not leaving, are you? We just got here!”“No, no, she wants to stay,” I assured her. “I can introduce you when she gets back.”A man approached us and stood next to Grace. I struggled to remember his name. Bill? Brian? Ben? Something with a B.“Hey, do you wanna?” he asked, tapping his right nostril meaningfully.“Gigi, have you tried it before?” Grace placed her hand on my arm in a friendly gesture.I shook my head.“Oh, you have to. It’s amazing—it makes you feel so good, like you don’t have a care in the world. You’ve gotta try it!”The idea was tempting. I’d missed out on trying coke at my bachelorette party, which I’d always hoped would have been much wilder than i
GINGERBy the time we made it to the party, Terri seemed to be in a much better mood. I felt pleased with the progress I’d made. She was opening up more and actually laughing, a huge contrast to earlier that afternoon.“Let’s go get some drinks!” I exclaimed and led her into the kitchen of the small house we’d come to. They had a huge bowl of jungle juice set out, so I filled our Solo cups with generous pours. We clinked our cups together and made it out to the living room where music was blasting and different students were gathered. I sniffed around, but only humans seemed to be in attendance so far.“How’d you hear about this party?” Terri asked.“It’s kind of funny,” I said. “I met another one of our kind earlier today at school. She gave me her number and said there’d be more of us here tonight.”“Oh,” Terri replied, but didn’t seem as enthusiastic about it as I thought she’d be. “Do you know what pack she was from?”“I couldn’t tell,” I replied. “And she didn’t say.”“It’s usual