Page 34 of Beyond the Grasslands

I pulled the button on his jeans loose and unzipped him before I used my legs and feet to push the fabric down over his ass. At the same time, Thorin removed my bra and realized that he would need to put me down to get the rest of my clothes off. Never in my life had I wished that I’d worn a dress to have a ceremony in the snow before. The choice of pants to stay warmed seemed frivolous and counter productive.

Still, Thorin managed to strip me of all my clothing within seconds and then he laid me down on the somewhat dusty full-sized bed. I sneezed and then we both laughed.

“Shit, this probably isn’t much better than the snow.”

I shrugged as we laughed at our circumstances. “Turn that heater on and I’ll strip the bed down.”

Thorin did as I asked with the heater but then immediately turned around and picked me up. He had me pinned against the wall in a move that my brain couldn’t even comprehend. It should have been impossible for him to move that fast, especially as he had to lift me to do it.

“What are you doing?”

“Making sure nothing gets in our way ever again.”

Well, there was no way I would argue with that sentiment. Thorin shocked me again as he leaned me against the wall and draped his arms underneath my thighs to leverage my weight. It had the added bonus of opening me up even more to his thick, hard cock. I’d never imagined having sex against a wall before and as Thorin slid his cock through my slippery folds, I wondered why the hell my imagination wasn’t a better place.

I moaned loudly as he not only bumped my clit but immediately retreated and lined himself up with my entrance. “Feels like I’ve been waiting for this my whole life,” he murmured before his entire cock plunged into my depths and made me see stars. Pleasure and pain melded together in a dancethat made me ache as my mate licked across the newest mark he left on my neck.

“Thorin, please!” I begged him but couldn’t for the life of me articulate what I needed until my mate began to pump in and out of me in a rhythm that had me hypnotized. “Yes, like that,” I cried into the crook of his neck as I clung to him for all I was worth. And I wasn’t worth much more than a boneless husk of a shifter who had been liquified by ecstasy of coming together with my moon-blessed mate for the first time.

Chapter 16

Epilogue

THORIN

One year later

“The council wantsto know the secret of the Grasslands Pack. When so many other packs have started to fail, that we don’t have enough Alphas to replace the ones who can’t live up to the job, your pack has not only thrived, but it has grown.”

I smirked at Adrian, the youngest member of the council and one who had come to visit my pack regularly since we realized just how close the goddess who had attempted to sabotage us resided. No one was prepared for how that played out, but thankfully it was over and this was the last step in closing that chapter of our lives out.

“You want to know why so many packs have fallen on hard times and mine hasn’t?” I asked. The entire council offered a collective nod in agreement. “I’ll tell you. It started with my father’s stance on rejected mates and what to do with them.”

“And what exactly was his stance?”

“My father didn’t believe your moon-blessed mate should be something you threw away frivolously, or simply becausethe mate the gods chose for you didn’t meet your expectations immediately. He believed there were some circumstances that made forming a bond with someone who had wronged you were plausible, so his rule was that the mates in question, along with any other interested parties, had to come to him for a final judgment on their mating situation.

“In some circumstances, my father told them to suck it up and accept the bond because they were being petty or stubborn about some silly little thing. He required that they tried the touch bond out for a specific time period before they gave up on one another. Normally, that worked itself out and those shifters ended up forming a full bond within a month’s time.”

Whispers broke out around the room and I knew that people agreed with my father’s findings. “And what of those who had been betrayed by a mate, perhaps had a child with someone who was not their moon-blessed?” Albert asked.

“My father agreed, as do I, that there are times when you can’t just get over the damage done to a bond. In those cases, the mates in question were given a choice to move on to another pack, or stay and swear not to interfere with their mate as they moved on with another. Most often, one or the other of the original moon-blessed pairings would leave the pack because it was too uncomfortable of the one who was rejected to watch as their mate moved on without them.”

“And at any time were rejected mates from your pack sent to Mirage Island?”

“Never.”

“Why not?” Albert’s tone was more than just curiosity. He truly didn’t understand why our pack refused to send rejected females there.

“Let’s be honest with one another for a minute,” I explained before looking every council member in the eye. “The only rejected mates who are ever sent to Mirage Island are females.The packs who send their females to that island do so because some selfish bastard decided they wanted something that wasn’t on offer for them. For example, if Ms. Lucy - who was a council member - found her mate in Albert, but Albert decided he wanted to be with Ms. Temperance instead, then by the laws of these other packs, Ms. Lucy - who had done nothing wrong - would be sent to Mirage Island. Make no mistake, Mirage Island is a hostile prison environment where choice does not exist.”

There were a few shocked gasps and murmurs after my description, so I waited for the noise to calm before I continued to make my point.

“Now, Ms. Lucy has to go to the prison island where her only hope to leave is if rogues come to claim her, or on the off chance that another pack decided to send people to look for second chance mates. Ms. Temperance would suffer no consequences for breaking up a moon-blessed union, beyond being shackled to her chosen mate. Albert, the chosen mate, would also suffer no consequences. Then there is Ms. Temperance’s moon-blessed mate. Somewhere out there, he would be waiting for his other half to find him. It might even be possible that he knows who it is because they touched or she told him. In which case, that male shifter would not be sent away like Ms. Lucy was. He would be free to stay among the pack.”

“It is the least fair to the person who should be protected from the outcome,” Ms. Lucy stated for me in summary. I nodded my head.

“Exactly. We’ve been punishing the wrong shifters. The ones who spit in the face of Selene’s choice, of our perfect match, get off Scot free. Then they are left within the pack to taint the views of everyone else. Suddenly, you have an epidemic of shifters who reject their mates simply because they’ve been taught that they can. You have some packs who encourage their young to dateone another and form romantic bonds that can be the ruin of their potential moon-blessed union down the road.”

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