Page 18 of Marked for the Pack

“Heath, what the hell?” I growled as he sat down with me in his lap beside Flint. My mate winked at me.

“You thought I wanted to sit with that big lug?” Heath laughed. “When I could have you in my lap?”

His playful smirk was like a magnet, drawing my gaze down to his lips. Lips I had yet to kiss. I swore I felt myself getting wet just from the thought.

Shaking my head, I forced myself to remember I shouldn’t want to kiss Heath, anyway. Flint was my mate, and Heath was an asshole. Judging from what I’d overheard in Moonblessed about him, I was just one of his many playthings. Of course, he didn’t care about me. To him, I was just a fling, a passing fancy until my heat ended.

Flint smiled over at me as though nothing about this arrangement bothered him. Gage was busy texting away on his phone, though I knew the battery was well on its way to dying after days in the wildlands, even with keeping it mostly off. Heath’s big hands slid around my hips, drawing me closer to him, until I was resting against his hard chest. He was cuddling me like I was his girlfriend, someone who actually mattered to him.

I took a deep breath and decided not to make a scene in front of these people, who seemed to mind their own business. As a rankless wolf in Ironwood, I’d gotten used to appeasing more dominant wolves, and this time was no different.

To think about something other than the presently awkward circumstances, I spoke in a voice low enough for only the Howling Echo to hear — I hoped. “I had no idea there would be so much travel between states… by so many different species.”

“There’s always someone looking for a better life, little wolf.” Heath’s mouth hovered close to my hair, and his chest expanded as he inhaled my scent. I became hyper aware of every time our breaths synched up.

“We’ll get off at the next stop,” Gage announced. “We have… friends coming to meet us.”

Flint nodded, as if he knew exactly who his pack alpha was referring to.

I twisted to look at Gage. My pulse was only now returning to normal after the panic he’d caused by intercepting the bus.

“Gage…” I started, then realized it would be stupid of me to look like I was berating my pack alpha.

Anyone who observed such behavior would know something was up. So I changed it to a question at the last second.

“Why did you run in front of the bus like that?”

His intense, sky-blue gaze bored into me, seeming to soften for the briefest of moments before hardening again when he glanced between Heath and Flint. “Because I would never ask my packmates to do something I was unwilling to do myself.”

“Gage is so hard-headed, the bus would’ve sustained more damage than him anyway,” Heath whispered into my hair.

It seemed his playfulness was back, and I didn’t know what to make of it. Or Flint’s lack of concern about it. Or my body’s responsiveness to the proximity. Feeling something hard pressing into my hip, I knew Heath was getting just as turned on as I was.

Why was my body betraying me like this? I wasn’t sure I believed Flint’s idea that my wolf might choose more than one mate. Especially when I wasn’t sure I would ever actually shift.

But if Flint had been my true mate all along… I remembered the night Gage had bent me over the table, while Flint clenched his fists and watched. I remembered when Heath had carried me back to the cabin and Flint had caught the scent of both of them on me. And the way he’d held me the night after Heath had his way with me.

I’d always heard that an alpha would go insane if someone so much as looked at his mate the wrong way. I knew Flint cared about me, but he wasn’t behaving the way I expected a mate — especially an alpha — to act.

He said his wolf didn’t mind my interest in the other two. I struggled to believe that, as a formerly rankless and currentlypackless wolf, I could deserve one alpha, let alone more like Flint was suggesting. But... if Flint was my true mate, only he should have turned me on. Yet here I was, in Heath’s lap, my arousal inappropriately surging.

I felt a flash of shame when Heath murmured into my hair. “Whatever you’re thinking about…” He took a deep inhale, his hard chest expanding against me. “I’m glad all the other shifters on this bus are subordinate wolves. Otherwise, your siren song of a scent would start a fight right about now.”

He was right. Thinking about all my sexual experiences with the three of them had gotten me all hot and bothered. And his husky voice so close to my ear only fanned the flames higher.

I did my best to think of darker things to calm down my raging libido. Which wasn’t easy with a rod of steel pressing into my hip, constantly calling my attention back.

By the time the bus came to a stop, I still didn’t have any answers, and I couldn’t very well ask the guys anything in front of an audience and potentially jeopardize our safety.

Half the passengers piled out of the bus, and Heath set me on my feet. When another man’s eyes fell on me, Heath stepped in front of me with a growl. “She’s ours.”

“Alright, okay. Can’t blame a man for having eyes, you know?”

And then, to my absolute shock, Heath grabbed my hand and pulled me down the aisle behind him, growling at anyone who so much as glanced my way. Passengers of every species disappeared down the street or headed off into various buildings.

“It’s a mixed-species town, too?” I blinked.

“It is,” Flint said, taking his place at my side.

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