Page 21 of Stormbinder King
“I just want to be your friend. I just want to find my place here.”
Aurelia picked up a leather glove and flipped it over.
Shit.
I stumbled backward, but not fast enough.
She whipped the glove out by the finger, the hard steel buckle catching me on the mouth and splitting my lip open.
I fell to my knees, my hand on my lip, blood spilling into my palm.
“You don’t have a place in this Pack.”
Ashamed of myself, I waited with my head buried in my hands until she left. Then I quickly washed away the blood with cold water so Jack wouldn’t know.
Why was this so hard?
But everything else was joy.
Jack and I berry picking in the cool of the night, licking his fingers dry of the sweet deep-purple juice as he fed me plump, delicious blackberries. . .
The heat of the day so airless and oppressive that he took me deep into the forest and we stripped bare and bathed in the cool of the stream, then fucked each other with raw primal need until my legs trembled so hard I couldn’t stand and he carried me back home for miles in his arms. . .
“Come howl at the moon with me,” Jack said one evening.
He had even more of a puckish gleam in his eyes than usual, and I eagerly took his hand.
Should I tell him what Aurelia had done?
Even though I had put some healing balm on my lip, it still stung.
But I didn’t want him to think I was into drama or was tattling on Aurelia.
Hopefully when Aurelia got over her sadness at his rejection, things would get better.
When we got down to the forest floor, I saw that music was already playing and the Pack had already started to drink and feast, begin to dance together in the moonlight.
Jack went to get us cups of the spicy blackberry wine, and I stood there uncertainly. Shifter women often wore light, loose pants and light woven tops, but everything was so big on me that I had taken to wearing Jack’s shifts cinched around the waist.
The music was hypnotic and I began to sway my hips, still rubbing my legs nervously together.
There were some new shifters here that I didn’t recognize, maybe some of the group of hunters that had been surveying the boundaries of Pack lands, and that made me feel even shyer than ever.
I wished Jack would come back. I always felt much braver when he was around.
Aurelia walked by, knocking her shoulder into me and sending me stumbling across the clearing.
Well, I guess,greatthat she was no longer so scared of my protective spell that she’d risk touching me for half a second.
As I straightened up, I felt eyes on me.
I turned and across the clearing there was a very tall, powerfully-built man, taller even than the typical shifter. He had thick raven’s wing hair pulled back into a short ponytail and a hawk-like face with a harsh profile.
Not only was he massively broad-shouldered and muscular, but he looked ruthless and unforgiving.
There was something about how he looked that made me anxious to avoid his notice without Jack around and I shifted, trying to go deeper into the shadows.
But as I moved, his dark eyes flicked over me, scanning down my body.
