Page 28 of The Alpha's Heart

I’m a shifter. I can handle pain. I can handle his lusts. His wild side. His possessive wolf.

What I can’t handle?

Bishop rocking back on the balls of his feet, that delicious-looking cock getting further away from me as I make the executive decision to reach down and tug my sweater up and over my head.

Nudity isn’t a big deal for shifters. If it wasn’t for the fact that I’m fond of this outfit, I’d just shift from skin to fur and back again to get naked as quickly as possible. Instead, I remove the sweater, reach behind me to unclasp my bra, and I’m standing up, working my jeans down my hips when Bishop turns his head away.

He’s not rejecting me, I tell myself. He can’t be. Not after everything we’ve been through… right?

“Bishop. Please. I told you, my love. I need you.”

His cheeks hollow. Reaching down, almost as though he doesn’t realize he’s doing it, he grabs his cock, stroking it roughly with his hand. My injuries are half-healed. As Alpha, his properties are far more advanced. There’s no sign he ripped a pair of silver chains off of me bare-handed, but at the memory of his brute strength, another wave of lust crashes into me.

There goes my jeans. My panties.

Any pretense that I’m not dying to have this male dominate me and show me that, no matter what, I’ll always be his.

I go down on all fours. Presenting my ass to Bishop, knowing instinctively that he’ll never be able to resist, I toss him a pleading look over my shoulder.

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. The same mouth that ended Declan Slate. The same hand that saved me… “I can’t, cher.” Walking on his knees toward me, cock leading the way, he heaves out a breath. “Ishouldn’t.”

Yes, he can.

Yes, he should.

Yes, hebetter.

We’re shifters. I just watched him kill my lifelong friend. Maybe it wouldn’t make sense to a human, but in the aftermath of Declan showing just how thin line there is between sane and feral, unmated and loved, lost and treasured… I need Bishop in every way that counts.

He protected me.

He came for me.

He’s my mate—and I’m not waiting until the Luna rises tonight to make my claim on him.

“Please,” I say again, and when he gets behind me, I know I have him.

He lodges his cock at my entrance. I’m slick and I’m hot, and it takes everything I have not to rear back, taking all of him inside of me at once.

Bowing his body over mine, hands braced on either side of me, he assumes the most natural position for our kind—and then he waits.

“What about the Luna Ceremony?” he grunts. “The gammas went through a lot of trouble for us.”

I keen, needing more of him to fill me. Even so, he has a point.

“Are you telling me you won’t want to do this again tonight? To mate me, to mark me, to claim me?”

His answer is in the way he slams his entire length inside of me and, holy Luna, do we fit.

EPILOGUE

EIGHT YEARS LATER

My mate needs me.

Sending an answering pulse down our bond to Bishop, I look at the three pups wrestling in the dirt patch in front of me. They’re in their fur, yipping at each other while snapping their adorable fangs. The brindled pup has a more dominant aura than the smaller two, but the grey she-wolf is holding her own.

I smile. It took a few seasons for me to accept that I wouldn’t be able to return to teaching the young pups in our pack—as the Alpha’s mate, my role is supporting Bishop and that is a full-time job—but whenever I’m free from my duties, I always seem to be surrounded by the youngest shifters. They’re drawn to my maternal wolf, and since Bishop and I have yet to be blessed with pups of our own, I enjoy this time I spend with them.

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