Page 56 of Return to the Pack

I deserve this. I deserve everything she’s giving to me. “I know. I fucked up. You were so broken when I found you—so mistrusting. All I wanted to do was protect you and keep you safe. You can let me in. I promise. Let me in again.”

I stagger up onto the bank and lick her face, and she’s still crying but she arches up against me.

“Shift,” she says, panting and squirming against me. I realize she wants to fuck, and I’m only halfway shifted when she grabs my cock and thrusts up against it. I sink into her, needing the connection more than I’ve ever needed anything in my life. My hind paws dig into the mud as I thrust deep inside her slick little pussy. She gasps, her head falling back, her eyes closing in bliss. This is how we bond, how we come back to each other, every time. Our relationship might be volatile, but this is always right between us.

The muddy swamp bottom gives way beneath my claws, and we both slide deeper, but we don’t separate. I lick her cheeks, swiping her tears away as I pump my cock deep inside her, my hulking form driving her pale little body down into her soft mud with each rough thrust.

“I loved you, Axel.” Her face is swollen and flushed as she stares at me with eyes of betrayal and a broken heart. But she opens her thighs wide, lifting her hips to let me go deeper.

“Don’t you love me anymore?” I say, my heart threatening to beat from my chest, my cock straining inside the tight grip of her shaved little pussy.

A beat lasting a lifetime stretches between us. I grind deep inside her, holding back as I feel my knot stretching her until she can’t bear it. Her sheath begin to clench rhythmically around my cock, and her arms flail, churning in the shallow water as I thrust against her cervix a few times.

“I don’t want to love you,” she whimpers. “But God help me, I still do. I love you, Alpha.”

Hearing those words makes me lose all control. My cum explodes into her, and I throw back my head and roar as my cock throbs so hard I see stars. Her cunt grips me in a second wave of orgasm, sucking and milking every drop from my engorged member. We’re shaking with the power of it before her grip on my cock loosens and my knot contracts enough for me to slip from her. I finish shifting into my human form and pull her onto the bank again.

There, I press my hands on either side of her face. “Let me make it better. Let me try again. I promise to never lie to you again. To never withhold the truth from you, even if I’m afraid to share.” I kiss her eyelids and her temples. I kiss her cheekbones and her chin. Finally, I make my way to her mouth, and she yields to me, kissing me with all the tenderness of a submissive mate.

The trees shudder with movement like bull elks are heading our way.

“Yo, Axel,” Warrick bellows.

Luna and I slowly pull away from one another.

A terrible thought ricochets through me. I left the fight—I left everyone to save my heart.

The outlaw triplets thunder through the trees, and I scoop up Luna and stand.

“We kicked their asses,” Warrick says, his chest puffing with pride. They’re all covered in tattoos and blood—a dozen injuries marr their thickly muscled bodies, and blood soaks their beards and runs down their chins and chests from where they tore into the wolves. But they look like they’ll all make a full recover. I’m surprised by the strength of my relief and happiness at that knowledge.

“It was epic,” Ethan says.

“Tell me,” I order. I kiss the top of Luna’s head as I step through the sticky mud, heading for solid earth where they stand.

“The war…” Warrick says, beaming with pride at his prowess in battle. “It’s over.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Luna

“We ripped those motherfuckers’ heads off and ate their hearts out,” Warrick bellows, shaking his shaggy head as we forge through the woods, heading back to the battleground.

He’s dripping with blood, and there are scrapes and bruises everywhere.

“We were all engaged in battle.” Warrick sweeps his hand through the air. “Callan was dragging a dying mutant freak by his tail. Ethan and I were double-teaming another, about to tear his throat apart from both sides. And then others started running to help us. We looked up, and we had the last two living mutants who hadn’t turn tail and run.”

He holds aside a branch for me to duck under.

“You did good,” Axel says, unwilling to release my hand. That’s okay with me because I don’t want to let go of him, either. We just went through something epic, and the bonds between us are stronger than ever. I can feel him pulsing through my bloodstream like a rushing river.

“Yeah, I didn’t know where the fuck you went,” Ethan says to Axel, with one raised eyebrow. “But then I heard Luna’s call, and I knew.”

He gives me the warmest look that turns my bones into jelly.

“So, what happened?” Callan says to me.

I gave him a brief synopsis of what just went down, omitting all the pain and rage I experienced when I thought Axel had betrayed me.