Page 14 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

Nerves came alive, embers that had been simmering away deep in my pelvis flared to life. Just as I did when I was training, where I felt my way through a fight sequence and followed it through, my body knowing what to do, I felt a sure sense of what was needed. Deeper, that was my first thought.

“Yes, love,” Gael gasped, somehow able to hear my thoughts. “Take as much of me as you can.”

Harder. I knew what to do now, my hips moving with a rolling motion, grinding against that bulbous knot. More.

“Always more,” Gael growled. “It feels like I can never get enough!”

His hands clamped down on my hips and he met me stroke for stroke. Something flared deep inside me with each pulse. Our thrusts were short now, as if we couldn’t bear to pull away for long, and so they came faster and faster. I felt her inside me as I moved, my wolf stretching her paws and running with all she had and as I stared down at Gael, as I got closer and closer (but to what?), I bared my fangs. This wasn’t sex. It couldn’t be. No Granian would want something as savage as this. Because as we strove together, we were joined.

The bed shifted, and they moved in, forming an honour guard of sorts, though a libidinous one. I couldn’t seem to stop staring, taking in Dane’s lean body and Axe’s heavier one, Weyland grinning the minute he caught my eye. Because I was ending the day as I began it, with them naked before me, but this was oh so different. I discovered them, each and every one, my eyes raking over the way their bodies paid homage to me and only to me. I stared into each one of their eyes but when I got to Weyland, his hand slid down. Over his taut stomach, past a nasty scar on his hip and then I watched his fingers close around his straining shaft.

“All for you,” he told me, part promise, part temptation. “All we have is all for you.” And as his hand swivelled up and down his length, it felt like something was being reclaimed.

Would it have been like this last night, if everything had gone to plan? Would they have watched me claim their brother just like this? Would they have listened to my sobs of pleasure and joined them with their own? Would they have moved closer, just like they did now, sheltering me with their bodies, narrowing my focus down to just this?

“Gael…!”

I yelped my mate’s name, my fingers becoming claws as they dug into Gael’s chest. He leaned into the pain, seeming to read it as pleasure. “Darcy…” he panted, “Darcy…!”

We were making love, but the way a wolf loves has claws and fangs. I snatched my hands away, the fingertips covered with his blood and then I shoved them into my mouth, his taste bursting on my tongue.

I was burning, twitching, coming, and Gael was right there with me. I heard his strangled shout, felt him shove up as hard as he could and that’s when it hit us. Fire, the sweetest of fire, it can burn you to a crisp or it can reduce all the dross to ash and leave you to step free.

So we did.

My mates groaned, hard and wanting, hands on their cocks, working them in time with our pulses, when they erupted. Perhaps I should’ve been horrified. Perhaps I should’ve dragged up the memory of this morning, holding it close to my chest to keep me safe, but right now, I couldn’t. We were joined together by pleasure, one pack, one heart, one body, one soul, and when their cum hit my skin, I smiled. I rode the waves of bliss right up until they finally fell away and then I collapsed down onto the bed.

Bodies covered mine, hot and sweating, but I couldn’t think of anywhere else I wanted to be. Whatever this was, it felt like it was an exorcism of sorts, a warding away of the queen’s evil, and so I snuggled in tighter. But finally, after my heart rate had slowed and so had theirs, I mumbled, “I’m going to need another bath.”

“In the morning,” Weyland rasped. “Give us this for tonight. Smelling you marked with our seed…”

“If I have my way, I’ll outlaw baths for you,” Axe told me. “You’ll stink of us, warning off every bastard who thinks to look twice at you. We’ll paint your skin over and over, telling the world who you belong to.”

I chuckled then, having no intention of submitting to whatever primaeval urge that was, but liking the sentiment just fine. Mine, my heart beat. All mine.

8

Helping the refugees seemed an entirely natural impulse, right up until they began to arrive.

We emerged from our sleep at first light. I was sticky and hot, pinned to the bed by so many big bodies, but somehow I couldn’t find it in myself to complain. We were together and right now, I was painfully aware of how precious that was. But Gael woke first, ever vigilant, and when he saw my eyes were open, he pushed the others off me. Then he kissed me, slow and soft, just to feel me rather than rouse me, before we were all forced to get up and get ready for the day.

So here I was, blinking, freshly washed, despite Axe’s protests, dressed in simple, clean clothes, standing in the courtyard of the citadel when I heard the sound of voices.

“You’ll take the single women,” Dane said, right as the first people came walking into the open space. “See them housed, clothed, then find out what else they need.”

“What?” I yelped. I looked around frantically at the others. While I was a duke’s daughter, Linnea was the one who ruled the roost, not me. People indulged me or tolerated me, but that was it. I stared then at the tired and battered faces of the people as they filed in, saw the way they eyed the place suspiciously and I could hardly blame them.

“And the families,” Weyland said. “We’ll look after the single men.”

“There’s women that’ve been raped, beaten, brutalised,” Gael said, staring out at the growing crowd with a forbidding expression, but his anger was for them, not at them. “There’s every likelihood that at least some won’t want to be within five feet of a strange man.”

My heart sank as I considered his words, but I couldn’t deny their truth.

“We’ve always known that you are a queen,” Axe said, shooting me a smile. “Show them.”

Before I could argue, Dane stepped forward and silence fell instinctively over the crowd.

“Friends, we’ve brought you here to provide you with what you need in the short term. We have rooms, food, shelter and clothing ready for you and your families.” There were small murmurs in the crowd at that, but Dane forged on. “It’s not enough. What you deserve is your homes back.” More murmuring then, and I watched people shift restlessly, many clasping their wives or their children closer. “You should be able to live on the land your forefathers did, to raise crops and cattle, to build a life safe from the ravages of Reavers.”

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