Page 37 of Accidentally Summoned an Incubus

All tension dissipated, and my shadows instantly fell from me. I could never be mad at my little witch. Especially not when her cheeks flushed that shade of dusty pink that I adored.

“I can see why,” Billy called from below. “Dude! Wanna put thatdistractionaway before it grows any bigger?”

Ah, yes. I was naked and growing hard at the sight of my mate flushing. Probably not the most ideal introduction to her best friend.

***

I took myself off for a shower to allow my mate time to catch up with Billy the wolf. The sound of my mate’s laughter hit my ears as I made my descent to the kitchen. An odd pang of jealousy pooled in my gut that someone else was making my mate laugh so heartily. But themoment I caught sight of my mate, the way the tension had left her body for the first time since I’d been summoned, I felt immediately selfish for being jealous of the wolf. Tears of laughter streamed down Lex’s face, mirrored by her best friend, as the pair giggled and tittered, their words indistinguishable to me, but seemingly a language of their own as the conversation continued through wheezes and more peals of laughter.

I remained still, etching the image of my joyous mate into my mind forever. Laughter lines that I’d never noticed creased out from her tear-filled eyes. A trickle of tears trailed haphazardly down her cheeks, their course changing as she threw her head back and wheezed another laugh at something Billy had said. Her full lips were stretched thin into the most perfect smile I’d ever seen. This image right now, I decided, was the most beautiful image of my mate to date.

When the pair finally realized I’d joined them, Lex jumped up. The heat of the arm she looped into mine seemed to surge straight to my cock—which was immediately dampened by the possessive glare radiating from Billy.

Oblivious, Lex guided me to the table and pushed me toward her best friend, as if presenting me for inspection.

In a way, I guessed she was. Lex’s succubus side was not potent enough to sense desires. She couldn’t sense just how deeply possessive her best friend was of her. I wondered if Lex had guessed that Billy had chosen her as a pack mate. I wondered if even Billy realized that she’d started a new pack with my mate. I sensed the air again. No, for as possessive as she was, the young wolf was still naïve to her growing powers.

Well, there’d be time enough to figure out the implicationsof the beginnings of a ragtag pack. But there were worse things than having an alpha wolf who had my mate’s best interests at heart.

I slung a possessive arm around Lex, which caused Billy’s nostrils to flare.

Probably not the smartest move to antagonize an alpha, but I was determined to stake an equal claim on Lex.

Finally, the moment Billy’s narrowed eyes softened, Lex said, “Good. Now you guys have stopped sizing up your dicks—tits, in your case, Billy—can we move on to the introductions?”

Lex went on to tell me how she and Billy had met, then briefly filled Billy in on the last few days. A buzzing filled my ears periodically when Billy talked about her pack, which could only mean one thing: she was part of the lethal Hell’s Gate pack.

I didn’t know much about the Hell’s Gate pack, except what little Devlin had been able to tell me. And Devlin only knew what he did by sheer accident. Almost two decades ago, he’d just so happened to be in the right place at the right time to save a young wolf pup’s life, though he couldn’t tell me the circumstances. The pup, most likely not old enough to have been imbued with the same secret-keeping magic Billy had, had let slip to Devlin that he was part of the Hell’s Gate pack, the most feared of all wolf shifters.

Some said the Hell’s Gate pack guarded a group of powerful necromancers, while others claimed they guarded the gates to Hades’s underworld. Regardless of what theyactuallyguarded, there was one thing everyone agreed on: no one meets a Hell’s Gate wolf andlives to tell the tale...

... except Devlin.

And now Lex.

I studied the alpha as the buzzing in my ears grew louder. She was hands down the strongest wolf shifter I’d ever encountered, but she certainly didn’t scream “murderous rage.” Maybe I was wrong about her pack origins? I did know of packs that had formed allegiances with witches, forging a symbiotic relationship, much like my ancestors had with this coven. Maybe the young pup had lied to Devlin? Devlin had been pretty naïve two decades ago. He probably would have believed the pup was Cerberus if the pup had claimed it. I remembered the witch from the hardware shop. She’d cast a spell on her notebook that made it impossible for me to read her notes.

Yeah, that was probably what it was. My mate hadn’t unconsciously become part of a pack with a Hell’s Gate wolf. That was just ridiculous. It was much more sensible that Billy was just a spelled wolf whose pack protected a different coven of witches.

I hoped.

“... that’s why I left the pack to find my own way. Which is why I ended up working at that shithole. But I did find my best friend there,” Billy said, her words finally back in focus. Suddenly, she turned to Lex and said, “Oh, did you hear the latest about Chad?”

The scent in the air changed around Billy. Her voice sounded casual, as if she didn’t want to worry my mate, but her scent was caution laced with the coppery tang of murderous rage that had me questioning if maybe she was a Hell’s Gate wolf after all.

Which made my own murderous rage home in on whoeverthis “Chad” was. I finally had a name for the person who had hurt my mate. Shadows swirled around me, begging for me to take to the skies and hunt Chad down.

“I might not have got around to telling Lochran the full story yet,” Lex said quietly, her embarrassment momentarily quelling my rage.

Billy’s brows knotted in confusion, and I tried my best not to let the shame that my mate didn’t yet trust me enough to tell me what had happened to her bubble to the surface.

“I thought you said there would be a crystal memory projector thingy at the trial? Would it not be better to, you know”—Billy’s eyes flicked to me, a strange look of concern on her face that had me praying she hadn’t started to think of me as part of her pack—“give him a heads up on what to expect?”

Hades damn it, the wolf was growing on me.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to,” Lex said to Billy before turning to me, her voice now whisper soft and with a hint of pleading as she repeated, “It’s not that I didn’t want to tell you, Lochran.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself, Lex,” I said, placing my hand on top of hers.

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