Page 42 of Soul of the Chaos

Fuck. I couldn’t deny Silver anything. I pulled out and coated my dick with more lube, hoping to take some of the sting off our impatience. Notching myself at his entrance, I began to slide inside, pushing against his natural resistance.

He whined and made to thrust back, but I braced his hips with a firm hand, forcing him to stay still.

“Don’t want to hurt you,” I growled. “Never want to hurt you.”

“That’s the point, Mongrel,” Silver breathed on a sigh, relaxing into my dominant hold like melted butter. “You could never hurt me. But you better fuck me, mate, or I’ll have you down on that bed and my cock up your ass so fast you won’t have time to snarl.”

My hips obeyed before my brain had even caught up with the carnal image, slamming home balls deep as Silver cried out in triumph.

“You’ve done it now, pup,” I rumbled, taking his sensitive ear lobe in my teeth and tugging. “You’ll get no mercy from me.”

I released his ear as a shiver raced down his spine and goosebumps erupted across his skin.

“All I ask,” Silver murmured dreamily. “No mercy.”

“No mercy,” I echoed.

Bracing one hand against the wall by his head, I twisted it through the hand waiting there while the other dug into his hip. Then I lost myself to the call of the wild. The rhythm of a beast claiming his mate. A dominant beta gathering the submission of his omega into his soul to protect for all time.

The magic swirled and surged as I pummelled his ass. Picking up my rhythm with ease, Silver matched my impossible pace, thrust for thrust. Together, we galloped headlong off the cliff and into the stars as the magic of the Chaos exploded in our veins.

As I came, I lunged. My teeth easily pierced his skin, right at the crook of his neck and shoulder, and my jaw clamped down so I could stamp my claim on his soul. This was a mark I wanted all to see. It was the mark of a wolf who had tasted bliss in the arms of his soulmate.

Silver howled in victory and turned, lightning quick, to strike. His teeth sinking savagely into my bicep and grinding down to the bone.

I growled in encouragement as the bond locked into place. Settling almost instantly as it wrapped securely around our souls in a promise that would never let go. Bliss and rapture ricocheted like falling stars between the part that was me and the part that was him. Until those pesky pronouns ceased to have meaning. And we were one.

We were claimed.

Then, I couldn’t hold it in any more. The feelings that had been building up to bursting all night long came tumbling out.

I slammed my head into the wall beside my mate. Dust and plaster rained down to the floor in a pretty cloud of devastation. There was no point in hiding. Not anymore. You couldn’t keep secrets from your bonded mate. Everything I had been bottling up—all that anguish and rage and despair from witnessing the night’s events—poured out of me in an undeniable tidal wave of furious grief.

17

ONLY IN YOUR ARMS

Silver

I wrapped my brave lover in my arms and held him grounded as he wept. That ineffectual rage he’d been bottling up all day—at the despicable things our kind was capable of when we sacrificed our humanity—he let it all go in a devastating outpouring of loss.

Mongrel clung to my love like a lifeline as his pain decimated him from the inside out.

I knew how much guilt and shame my mate carried into every day for things he and Grimm never had a say in. Actions his pack had taken under the tyranny of lesser wolves. Pain the Soul Reapers MC had caused during the reign of its forefathers.

The new generation had worked so fucking hard to build something new, something worthy on top of that rubble. Only a few of the old guard had stuck around long enough to see them do it but their loyalty to the cause was unquestionable.

Bulletproof and his mates. Cook. Doc. Narcissa’s folks—Granite and Checkers—too. But for the most part it was fresh blood who came to swear themselves to the new Soul Reapers MC. The cause Grimm had vowed would be at the heart everything we did moving forward.

Wolves had come from all over the valley to join us. Shifters who had grown up witnessing the destruction caused by forced claims and mate auctions like the one we’d broken up tonight.

Every time we took one down, we looked into the faces of the survivors and weighed the heavy toll on their souls. Winter had been particularly hard for Mongrel. No matter how far and wide he’d hunted, my beta never found his little cousin after she’d been sold. The broken little dove reminded him too much of Cassandra. Forced matings or allegiance matings were common enough, even for females born as wolves in those days.

The failure cut him deep. Haunted him. I knew Mongrel believed it had turned Benji in the end, sending him running into the arms of our enemies.

So now, to discover our own mate had been subjected to such torment—not knowing how terrible her treatment had been—it was too much for my beta to bear alone. Good thing he didn’t have to.

As the torrent of his tears began to wane, I gently shimmied around in his arms to hug him and used our new mating bond to surround Mongrel with all love he could handle. Then I pushed him gently onto our bed.

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