ROMANCE: Mason (Bad Boy Alpha Male Stepbrother Romance Boxset) (New Adult Contemporary Stepbrother Romance Collection) (21 page)

“Rachel, if you don’t get out of there, you’re never going to get away. You’ve been trapped with that lunatic for four years already. When are you going to save yourself?”

I opened my eyes, staring at the bedroom door again.

“Don’t talk about him like that,” I said and my voice was hard. “He’s my husband, and until we sort things out, that’s how I’d like you to see him.”

“But darling—“

“No, mom. I made a choice. I’m old enough, and it’s my life. No matter what happens, I do love him.”

I hung up on my protesting mother and switched off my phone. It was one thing if I was struggling with my husband, if our relationship wasn’t what it should have been. But I was willing to risk my life for him. I realized that only after I’d talked him down. And if I was willing to die for him, why was I going to leave?

I walked into the room, tiptoeing around the bed, but Argos turned and looked at me. His eyes were the blackest black I’d ever seen it, and I suddenly wanted to cry. This nightmare was far from over, but it was a start.

“Did you mean that?”

“What?” I asked.

“What you said to your mother.”

He must have heard the conversation. I nodded slowly. I’d meant every word. Argo closed his eyes and he looked frail, sunken into the pillows.

“I thought you’d given up on me,” he said in a whisper.

“No, Argos. You’re the only one that gave up. It’s not too late though.”

When he looked at me again his face looked different. He was full of emotion. He grabbed my hand and tugged on it. I kicked off my shoes and climbed into bed with him. His body was warm and he pulled me against him. He may have looked frail, but he was still stronger than any human being.

He pulled me closer and kissed me, saying everything with his lips that he couldn’t put into words. I kissed him back, and I meant it. Whatever happened, I realized I had a family. A pack that was willing to stick by me, willing to follow if I would lead. With a whole pack behind us, how could we fail?

Argos tugged at my clothes. I grinned.

“You’re supposed to be sick,” I said.

“Werewolves heal really fast,” he said with his mouth against my neck. His hands roamed my body, tracing my contours and fumbling with my shirt before he ended up on the bare skin of my breasts.

I pulled off my own shirt. He was already naked. I got rid of my pants as well, and he moved so he lay against me with the length of his body pressed up against me. I felt him hard and hungry against my belly, tracing a slick trail of lust. He pushed his hands into my hair and kissed me before he rolled me onto my back and climbed on top of me.

“That stunt you pulled in the woods was a hell of a turn on,” he said. He ran his fingers through my hair and I could see the lust on his face.

“I though the female wasn’t supposed to dominate the male.”

He shrugged and his pupils dilated until they almost ate up the irises.

“Not a lot of people stand up to me.”

I wanted to answer, but he kissed me again, hard and urgent, and I forgot what I wanted to say.

When he entered me it wasn’t just about the sex. I cried out, and I felt the wave of power that accompanied him, but it was more than that. It was like he was knitting whatever had broken back together. He was fixing the wounds that had ripped open when we’d torn apart. He moved inside of me, and with every push and pull he healed a little bit of me, of us.

I ran my hands up and down his back, aware of his body hovering, moving, over mine. He kissed me, and the sex was different. Charged and powerful, and soft and gentle, all at the same time.

When I orgasmed it was with the same wash of power that I usually felt from him. My body rocked and jerked and I felt the heat, searing my skin and burning me from the inside out. I moaned and squirmed under him.

He released inside of me almost at the same time, and we rode it out together. The sensation was more sensual than erotic, but when I came down from it again I traced my hands over his muscles, and I noticed how much bigger he was. Everything about him screamed authority and power.

When I looked into his eyes, they were still black. No yellow, no wolf. Just me and Argos, and the promise that we would start over.

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BONUS

MATED AND PREGNANT

By Sicily Duval

Chapter 1

There are a lot of misconceptions about werewolves. We’re not all that bad. Sure, we grow fur every now and then and we share skin with a monster. And yes, sometimes we can’t always control ourselves and blood drives us crazy. But we don’t steal children in the middle of the night and we don’t put our inner-animals first. And we definitely don’t turn humans unless we really have to.

We’re more like a race of our own. Werewolves marry werewolves to have werewolf babies who become adult werewolves and carry on our legacy. It’s only when humans get arrogant and involve themselves in our business when things get messy.

Dalton and I have been married for four years. There are times when being married to an Alpha is a challenge. I have to share the top of his priority list with a pack of fifty three other wolves. It’s not always easy. But it’s always worth it.

In our world things are very straightforward. Alphas and the wolves in the inner circle – the eight wolves that are closest to the alpha, the ones who can succeed him – are all pure bred werewolves. No human blood, not for centuries. For them marriages are arranged with other pure bred wolves. It makes them stronger and their offspring have a higher chance of being Alpha’s as well. At the end of it we need the strength to fight and survive and a pack is only as strong as its alpha.

Dalton and I were lucky. He’s the alpha and I’m a purebred. But our marriage wasn’t arranged. It didn’t have to be. I fell in love with him the moment I saw him. Looking at Dalton is a power trip on its own. He’s big and muscular, stronger than the other pack members and he has amber eyes that turn yellow when his wolf comes out. They’re like fire, and I burn up every time he looks at me. His wolf is a majestic creature, deadly and dangerous. It has chocolate brown fur, the same color as Dalton’s hair.

In stories and myths they’re always saying how hard it is to be a werewolf. The animal doesn’t always fit in with society, and human morals don’t always fit in with the wild side of the animal. There are countless books about the struggle between the human and the beast.

I disagree. That might be the case if the wolves tried to fit into a standard human society. I can imagine our differences would start to show then. But we don’t try to fit into it. We have societies of our own, and rules that work for us. We all have jobs that are assigned to us, and we do them because we know that if every member does his job, the pack works together as a unit. And in unity there is strength.

Werewolves have natural enemies. Witches are the worst – we don’t like them and they don’t like us. It becomes a problem when they’re selfish enough to want the monopoly on magic. We have doses of it to be able to change, to sense each other’s feelings and emotions, to lend and borrow strength. To be what I believe every community should be.

We have some other enemies too; we don’t like other lycanthropes, it’s always a matter of hierarchy, and we don’t care for vampires either, but that’s more of a discrimination issue. We pity the poor creatures that have to drink blood to survive. We don’t like any of those, but we don’t fight them unless we’re provoked. Contrary to popular belief, werewolves are peaceful creatures. Add a mouth full of vicious teeth to that, a bad temper and an involuntary change once a month and it’s not always easy to believe. But the only supernatural beings that pick fights with us are the witches.

For this reason, Dalton is strong and he has to keep the pack strong. They need him, his strength, and he needs them. We’re all connected in some way. And for the same reason, we have to choose exactly when we can afford to become vulnerable.

Pregnancy makes us vulnerable. A female can be pregnant for up to two years, and the closer it gets to the time of birth, the more vulnerable the female becomes. Towards the end of it she’s not allowed to change. The body goes through a hell of a lot in a change, and even though the body can shape around a womb in the beginning stages it’s hard later on. Many wolves lose their babies when they can’t stop the change – and with full moon it’s almost impossible not to change. If the female manages to carry to term the birth is dangerous for both involved.

In short, reproduction is a nightmare that leaves the mother as easy prey and the father worried and divided between duty and love.

Right now the witches are rallying against us. We can all feel the magic building the air as we creep on to full moon. They warned us last month that a war was coming, but a warning is never enough to prepare us. Dalton has been building up his strength for the fight. He’s been hunting more, blood gives strength, and he’s been training hard.

This month was the month were he couldn’t afford to be weak, where his pack needed him more than ever.

And it was also the month where I wish the earth would open up and swallow me whole.

I’d ordered a lesser wolf to run into town for me and grab a handful of pregnancy tests. Not one but five. I wanted to be sure. I hadn’t had any of my cycles, and my whole system has been messed up. Those were signs of a pending fight, when we got ready for battle all the things that could drain us stopped. But those were also signs of pregnancy.

I couldn’t afford to be pregnant. Not now. Not when Dalton needed me to back him, when I needed to rally the other she-wolves and work out rotations for those who would watch and protect the young wolves that weren’t mature enough to fight.

I spent an hour in the bathroom, scraping enough courage together to take the tests. If we were pregnant now, Dalton was going to be angry. In an alpha couple everything was planned and arranged. He had to tell me when he was ready, not the other way around. We never really worked like other couples do. He didn’t tell me who I had to be, he wasn’t my alpha the way that other alpha couples were. But he was still my superior, and this…

I took a deep breath.

Five sticks lay in a row on the bathroom cabinet. Minutes felt like seconds sometimes. And sometimes they felt like years. My stomach turned, a knot of nerves like a fist under my ribs, and I tried to close my eyes and breathe, focus on slowing down my heartbeat. It was the same concept as going through the change, but I didn’t go that far. Just far enough to slow my heart rate down, to cool my boiling blood.

When it was time I looked at the sticks. All five of them had the same result.

I was pregnant. My stomach turned and I suddenly felt nauseous, like it had just been waiting for me to find out before it reared its ugly head. I turned to the toilet and threw up.

In some situations there are girls that wish they would miscarry or something would go wrong so that they don’t have to have the baby. No one would wish for something inhumane, but everyone that falls pregnant without wanting it wishes for a way out.

For me that didn’t make a difference. Even if I miscarried, even if something went wrong, it wouldn’t matter. I was pregnant now so I was a target. And I would be pregnant with a pure bred, which just made it that much more sure. And above all – and this was the bit that had me retching into the toilet again – was the fact that Dalton and I hadn’t agreed. This had been an accident, and an accident in a werewolf community, even in marriage, as an issue.

I waited for Dalton to come home. He was at a pack meeting, the inner circle had questions about safety and security. The idea had occurred to me to keep this a secret for as long as possible, with the length of a werewolf pregnancy I wouldn’t show for quite some time.

But I couldn’t risk that. I couldn’t risk being that vulnerable and no one knowing about it to look after me. I couldn’t run the risk of looking like I was undermining the alpha’s authority by keeping him out of the loop. And I couldn’t do that to Dalton, as my husband.

As the time ticked closer I watched the clock. Fear clutched at my throat. It had rolled over from nervousness to full blown fear. I had seen Dalton angry at other wolves, at witches, at a lot of things but me. He was more than a force to reckon with when he was upset. I didn’t want to be the reason for that. I didn’t want to be the one that drew it out of him.

But I didn’t have much of a choice.

When he came home he drew me into his arms.

“I missed you,” he said, pulling me against him. I smelled the animal in him. The closer we got the war, the stronger it would get. Right now Dalton was running on both sides of his personality. His body was rock hard, all muscle, sculpted and toned with his extra training. My body fit into his like we were made for each other, and there were times that I couldn’t believe my luck, that I’d managed to love the man I had been meant to marry.

But today was different.

Dalton breathed in deeply, and took a step back. He frowned.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. I looked up at him, and I couldn’t do it. I didn’t answer him. Didn’t make eye contact. Instead I wrapped my arms tighter around him, suddenly scared I would be forced to let go.

“Andrea,” his voice was hard, demanding. He never used my real name. My wolf inside me cowered away from the authority that clung to him, but I held on.

“I can smell it on you,” he said again. “You’re scared. And you’re hiding something.”

He didn’t usually use his alpha authority on me. Not unless it was serious. Well… wasn’t it?

I looked down at my hands. I couldn’t lie to him. He would smell it on me. Every emotion gave off a smell of its own, and lying smelled like air refresher would – something pretty to cover up a stench.

“I’m pregnant,” I said, getting it out as quickly as possible. Heat surged through my body. I started trembling. When I looked up at him his eyes were yellow. Something moved behind them, the animal inside, and I could feel his anger around me rising like a swell in the ocean. I looked away from him. Better not to make eye contact when his animal was closer to the surface than his human side.

“What?” he asked, his voice ice cold and brittle, but I knew he’d heard me. He was angry enough.

“I know we weren’t planning. And I’m sorry.” I took a deep breath and blew it out in the shudder.

I was apologizing even though I knew that nothing to be sorry about. I hadn’t made this baby alone. But Dalton’s anger climbed. I could feel it crackle around me, the air filled with electricity. For a moment I thought he was going to lose it, scream and shout, shift, break things. His anger looked violent. He opened his mouth to say something, moved his jaw, closed it again without a word.

I braced myself.

“I’m going out,” he finally said, his voice a low growl. He turned and walked away, the electricity following him and leaving me behind in a void. He was practicing immense self-control. He was going to shift and run it out of his system, outside in the woods where the only thing he could harm was animals.

I heard the door slam, and sank to the floor, trying to breathe.

It was almost midnight when he finally came back. I was curled in bed, a question mark around my own tummy, wondering if it was possible for something that glued other families together – a baby – could tear ours apart. Dalton walked into the room and flicked on the light. He knew I wouldn’t have been able to sleep. I sat up and dared to look into his eyes, but his eyes were back to normal, and his face was full of emotion. He took my hand and pulled me up, folding me in his arms.

“It’s okay,” he said, breathing into my hair. “We’ll figure this out.”

I melted against him. The tension and fear drained out of me. He was being perfect, the alpha that protected, the man that loved. In his four words he’d told me that we would be okay. That he loved me. That he would look after me. That I would still be his equal in the relationship. That this didn’t change anything. Because we both knew that this just made everything harder, with the war coming and with the changes that he would need to save me from.

But if we fought together, we could do this.

Chapter 2

Sometimes when life-changing moments happen it feels like the world is going to change, and life won’t be what we knew it to be. But after I’d told Dalton I was pregnant, and we’d gotten to a point where we were together on it again, life fell back into its normal routine.

The night of full moon the silver light drew all wolves out of the house, and we made our way to our meeting point. Dalton practically hummed with power. I could feel it through our bond, and on my skin, radiating from him where he stood next to me. We were one of the last wolves to arrive in the clearing.

The whole pack was present, and their eyes were dark and haunted. Full moon held a lot of fear. The newer wolves, ones that had only recently come of age, didn’t have full control yet. There was nothing scarier than the monster inside you coming out and you had no leash for it.

Some of the older wolves stood spread out between them, ready to jump in if it was necessary, but even though couldn’t stop the change. It took a lot of power and self-control to stop the change completely during full moon, and the pack usually needed the help of the inner circle and the alpha to manage that.

I let my eyes drift over the faces of each and every one of our pack members. They were my family, my friends. We were all connected to each other and it went much deeper than just affection. We were all rooted in the same magic.

My eyes fell on Hilary, and fear grabbed a hold of me twisting my gut. She was pregnant, quite far along. Fifteen months. She couldn’t go through a change now.

“What is Hilary doing here?” I asked Dalton. His eyes found her immediately and he narrowed them.