RISE OF THE LYCANS - Mates and Bonds

Selena

He collapsed on top of me and rolled us onto our side. Coming down from the high of orgasm, I realized he was knotted tightly in place.

Despite getting an annual heat suppressant injection, the heat had come out of nowhere. The haze of frenzied fucking over the last three days left me exhausted, sore, and still hungry for more. His arms wrapped around me, pulling my back to his chest. The warmth of his body soothed me, and I was already growing used to having him beside me, holding me.

“Sleep.” He nuzzled into my neck. “I’ll wake you when the food is here.”

We had done nothing but mate, sleep, and eat the past few days, and it was amazing. Nothing existed in the world outside of this hotel room. Turning my head back, I captured his mouth for a kiss. His beast had been rough and demanding, but his human side had worshipped and loved me. Lukas continued kissing and caressing my skin like I was the most beautiful thing in the world.

Closing my eyes, I listened to the purr in his chest and drifted away into bliss.

I woke to the smell of food and found Lukas spooning something from a serving pot into a bowl. He tore a chunk of bread from the baguette, dipped it into the bowl, and brought it to my mouth. With a smile, I opened my mouth and allowed him to feed me just as he had the past few days.

“How are you feeling?” He asked tenderly.

“Exhausted but wonderful.” I took another bite of the warm bread soaked in the coq au vin sauce.

The heat had passed, but the sight of him in his boxer briefs, seated at the edge of the bed feeding me, made me long for him. I wanted him to hold me and love me all over again… outside of heat. He moved the fork to my mouth, and I happily ate the tender, delicious chicken.

I shifted into a sitting position on the bed and felt the soreness between my legs. I tried to recall what had happened through the mating haze, and memories started flooding back. One little detail seemed to keep coming back to me, and I wanted to ask how it was possible. Did he really have a magic dick?

Knotting was normal when mating in wolf form, but no one ever mentioned that lycan anatomy was uniquely special. Lukas, Rex, the triplets, Kairo… surely they weren’t all virgins, so why wasn’t anyone talking about it? Did no one notice? How could they have missed it?

“What are you thinking about?” He asked casually as he took a bite of potato.

“Your magic dick,” Stella hummed.

“I’m thinking about how wonderful the coq au vin is.”

“Liar.” I heard him say it but didn’t see his lips move.

Shifters from the same pack could communicate through the pack link, but it felt like he was listening to my thoughts.

“Busted,” my wolf whispered, and I could have sworn the corner of his mouth twitched.

“I was wondering what time it was. All the curtains have been pulled tight, and I’ve lost track of time.”

“You want to try again? Or would you like me to spank it out of you?”

“He’ll be spanking your ass. Not mine,” Stella snickered, and Lukas laughed.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied, but I couldn’t seem to make eye contact.

“Knotting happens after a lycan reaches maturity, which, as you know, is at the age of twenty-five.”

My face heated, and my mind raced. How the hell did he know what I was thinking? Only a mate could read your thoughts. Then it hit me.

“Persephone said that lycans have the ability to read minds,” I narrowed my eyes at him.

“Reading someone’s mind requires sinking my claws into them.”

“Then how is it possible?” I questioned as his eyes fell on my neck.

“I couldn’t stop myself,” he replied.

My hand shot to my neck, and I felt the tenderness of his bite. “You marked me!” I gasped.

“You’re all I want.”

“But we’re not true mates. We don’t have that stupid tingling bond that our parents brag about,” I said, as my eyes burned with tears. “What happens when one of us stumbles across our real mate?”

“That won’t happen,” he growled.

“How can you be sure? Are we staying in this room forever?”

“A lot has happened in the last five days—”

“Five days? We’ve been here for five days?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

Five days of mating. No wonder I was so exhausted and sore. I tried to figure out the day of the week. The ball was on Saturday, and my graduation is on Friday… Wait… “Grandma Dori!”

“It’s okay,” he chuckled. “Today is Thursday. Your graduation is tomorrow, and Grandma Dori is fine. The Eiffel Tower is still standing, and nothing is missing from the Louvre. My sister is with Grandma.”

If I had been missing for five days, Jose would have noticed my absence. Would Erick have told him? I needed to call him.

“Where’s my phone?” Everything was so hazy that I couldn’t remember what I had done with my phone.

“Sweetheart, it’s almost midnight. We’re going to eat and sleep, and then we’ll talk to Balthazar in the morning.”

“Balthazar? Balthazar is here?”

“Everyone is here,” he said, lifting another forkful to my mouth. “A lot has happened, and we’ll discuss it in the morning.”

Discussing it in the morning could mean a number of things… things I didn’t want to think about right now. My eyes dropped to my lap, and I noticed teeth marks near the inside of my thigh.

“That was my lycan,” he said.

“Kas,” I smiled.

Werewolf shifters had an inner wolf that was capable of independent thought and communication. Their wolf had a separate identity and name. Lycans were shifters with an inner beast that was part of them all the time. A feral creature that communicated with emotion and instinct. A lycan was capable of shifting any body part at any time and did not need to be one or the other. So their wolf, or beast as it was often called, did not have a name.

I fought to keep the tears from falling as the memories came racing back.

“It’s not fair,” my seven-year-old self tried to understand. “Why doesn’t your wolf have a name? I bet that makes him sad.”

“Aunt Demeter said she named Uncle Balthazar’s lycan,” Lukas tried to calm me.

“His wolf is very big and scary,” I sniffled. Balthazar’s lycan was the first lycan I’d ever seen, and he was different. Lukas could also shift into a lycan, but he was cute.

“Mine will be bigger when I’m older,” Lukas told me as he puffed out his chest with pride. “When we’re mated, you can name mine if you want.”

“Kas,” I said with a soft whisper. “I’m going to call him Kas.” Even at such a young age, I had always known Lukas was going to be mine.

“He likes it,” Lukas smiled.

“How do you know?”

“Because you’re his favorite girl, but don’t tell my mom. She thinks she’s everyone’s favorite.”

His voice called my name and I blinked away the sweet memories.

“Selena?”

I raised my gaze to meet his warm eyes. I wondered if he was going to blame the bite on my neck on his beast. “Who marked my neck?”Ccontent © exclusive by Nô/vel(D)ra/ma.Org.

“Kas marked you here,” he touched his fingers to the left side of my neck. Sadness rushed through me because a mate touching their mate mark should have sent the most intense waves of pleasure through my entire body, and I only felt his touch on the surface.

I nodded my head in understanding. “So, Kas marked me.”

His hand moved to the right side of my neck, and his fingers caressed a tender spot. “I marked you on this side.”

“Two marks?” I wondered if the marks would last since we weren’t true mates.

His hand continued moving, and he tenderly caressed the back of my neck. “We both marked you here as well.”

My mouth fell open with shock. Three claiming marks. I looked down at my body and noticed more bite marks besides the ones on the inside of my thighs. They weren’t like the ones that typically decorated the necks of mates, but they were still bite marks. His hand moved to my shoulder and down to my left breast.

“This nibble was me, too,” he cupped it in his hand possessively before his hand continued to roam down my body. It stopped on my hip, where his finger circled another bite mark. “This was also me.”

His other hand reached around and slipped under me, squeezing the right side of my butt. “This was my beast.” I felt the sensitive sting of the bite. “He loves your ass. Damn near lost his mind at the club when we saw it.”

Wolves had accelerated healing, but bites from mates healed slower. I wondered how long it would take and if the ones on my neck would remain. As a healer, I could use my gift on others but not on myself. If I wanted to make these disappear faster, I’d have to ask my sister because I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask my father.

“Our parents—” I started to say.

“I don’t care,” he replied with absolute certainty. “Rex can become Lycan King, or Storm, for that matter.” He reached for another hunk of bread, dipped it in the bowl, and lifted it to my mouth.

We continued eating in silence, and I couldn’t help worrying about the fallout tomorrow morning. I wasn’t ready to face the family, to hear them tell us how we’d offend the Moon Goddess and how that could doom our families.

“All I care about right now is taking care of my mate,” he forked a mushroom and dragged it through the side of mashed potato before bringing it to my mouth.

I ate and admired the man I had loved my entire life. There was a sweet and tender simplicity in watching him care for my every need. When we finished eating, he placed the tray in the other room and climbed into bed beside me.

He drew me to him, and I naturally buried my face in his shoulder. Everything felt so right with him, and yet something kept nagging in the back of my mind. His arm reached down to my leg, and he hooked it around his waist. My wolf started humming with pleasure, and his was purring again. It seemed to be their language of love.

I was pulled from my sleep by the ringing of a cell phone. Lukas answered it, and after a moment, he told whomever it was that we were going to shower and be there in thirty minutes.

“Who was that?” I mumbled.

“Storm. She left a bag of clothes and some of your things outside our door. The family is expecting us up for breakfast.”

Lukas joined me in the shower, and I blushed remembering snippets of what happened during the mating haze. He had attempted to take a shower with me that ended with us pressed against the shower wall, tied together with his magic dick.

“If we didn’t have family waiting for us, I would give you my magic dick right now and remind you exactly how it happened the last time we were in here,” he grinned.

My wolf yipped, and heat pooled between my legs. Five days of mating and I still felt insatiable. My core was throbbing for him, and it wasn’t because of a mating haze. His blue eyes dropped to my chest, and I felt my nipples harden. When he looked up at me, his eyes had turned into dark, spinning galaxies.

“Kas…” I said in a low whisper.

He lowered his head to my neck, scenting me before he started licking and kissing my neck. I let out a deep breath I didn’t know I was holding and dug my fingers into his thick black hair. Breakfast was in half an hour, and I tried to remember how long knotting lasted. He pulled back and looked at me. Tilting his head to the side, he smirked, knowing what I was thinking. He wanted me as much as I wanted him.

His mouth covered mine, and he kissed me hard and demanding. I moaned. The wet warmth of his mouth nearly sent me into a frenzy. The shower continued to rain down on us, and the heat radiating from him encased me. His strong arms lifted me with ease, and I wrapped my legs around him.

“MINE!” Kas growled, and I cried out when he sank into me. The stretching burn was a delicious fire between my thighs that sent me spiraling with each thrust.

Lukas rocked back and forth as he pumped every long inch in and out of me. My inner walls squeezed around him, and he groaned. When I met his eyes, they flashed back and forth between the dark swirling of his lycan eyes and the cool blue of his human eyes.

“I love the feel of you wrapped around me,” he rasped.

I tried to hold my pleasure back, but I was losing the battle. Lukas picked up the pace, and I felt the first waves of my walls convulsing around him. I writhed against him, and the sounds of his moans deepened. His pelvis ground against me, and I could feel his knot swelling. It should have felt strange and foreign, but it didn’t. It felt absolutely natural and elevated intimacy to a mind-blowing level.

We left the hotel room and took the stairs at the end of the hall leading to the rooftop. My heart was pounding, and I couldn’t help feeling like a lamb going to the slaughterhouse. Rejecting a destined mate was something that just wasn’t done. A soulmate was a gift from the Moon Goddess, and we were going to offend her and our families.

“We’ve done nothing wrong,” he said. “My heart and soul have always belonged to you. If loving you is wrong, then I don’t ever want to be right.” He kissed my forehead and then pushed the door open to the rooftop.

“Maybe we should reconsider that private island escape after all?” I whispered nervously, feeling like I wanted to vomit.

I tried to remain calm when the sight of all of them hit me. My parents were standing with Ares and Eudora, wearing serious expressions. Wylder was seated with Tymber in his lap. Only, she didn’t look like she was cuddling up to her mate. She looked like she was trying to keep him from pouncing on something… or someone. My eyes followed Wylder’s glare and found Cynder standing in a corner with Alpha Zane LaRue and his brother Zander standing close. Beside them, Ranger stood with his arm around my sister.

“Sol?” I called out to her, and she glanced nervously in my direction.

Storm and Rex sat quietly with Grandma Dori and Caspian, who looked like they were waiting for the show to start. The only thing they seemed to be missing was a bucket of popcorn. Flaym seemed uncertain as he paced back and forth. Persephone wasn’t here, but her parents were. Balthazar and Demeter were seated at the table, but no one was eating. They wore the same concerned expression as my parents. They were probably angry that I had harbored their daughter at my apartment and allowed her to attend the ball.

I swallowed the lump forming in my throat and squeezed Lukas’ hand for support. My stomach churned, and my nerves were getting the best of me. Despite the beautiful assortment of food laid out, no one was here to enjoy breakfast, not even Wylder or Flaym.

“You marked her,” Ares said. It wasn’t a question but a confirmation of what he could see. The man I had always believed would someday be my father-in-law looked displeased, and I couldn’t help the tears pooling in my eyes.

“She’s my mate!” Lukas snarled at him.

“Sweetheart, everyone loves Selena,” his mother said. “We all thought you were destined for one another—”

“I don’t care about the Moon Goddess. My lycan knows what she is to me,” he declared.

“This breakfast looks amazing,” Grandma piped. “We should eat.”

“My wolf also feels the same about Sol,” Ranger announced. “He’s felt it for a long time.”

“It was heat-induced lust,” Wylder growled. “Nothing more!”

“Daddy!” Cynder cried out. “I’ve felt the same draw to Zane for as long as I can remember.”

“You’re not destined mates!” Wylder snapped.

“Cynder is mine,” Zane growled. “She will be Luna of Crescent Moon.”

“Grammy Lucy won’t allow it,” Caspian said.

“Why not?” Wylder snarled at Caspian. “Is my Cynder not good enough for the mighty LaRues?”

“Not at all,” Caspian replied, shaking his head. “But you know how Grammy feels about the rejection of soulmates in favor of a chosen mate.”

“We should eat,” Grandma Dori said. “We don’t want the food to get cold. Oh… is that smoked salmon?”

“It’s already cold after waiting for the love birds to grace us with their presence,” Flaym snipped.

“Cynder is not a chosen mate,” Zane insisted. “My wolf is sure of her.”

“Maybe your wolf is just desperate for a mate,” Wylder snarled.

“Daddy!” Cynder wailed.

“Isn’t that what you called Zane the other night?” Flaym lashed back.

“Flaym…” Ares warned.

“Don’t talk to your sister like that,” Tymber shrieked at Flaym.

“How dare you!” Cynder removed her shoe and aimed it straight for her brother’s head.

“Do you realize if you do this, you still have a true soulmate out there,” my mother warned.

“News flash,” Storm interjected. “No one has found a true soulmate in over a decade… maybe even two decades.”

Balthazar pushed back from the table and made his way closer to us. He sniffed the air, and I could feel the tension in Lukas’ body. Balthazar’s eyes swirled, and the strong aura of his lycan radiated in waves. I wasn’t sure if he was so powerful because he had lived for so long or because his lycan was created by a Goddess. I suddenly felt like that scared little seven-year-old pup when I first set eyes on Balthazar’s full-grown lycan.

“Uncle Balthazar,” Lukas gave a tense nod of greeting.

“Do either of you three recall taking anything that would induce heat?” He asked thoughtfully and stepped closer for another sniff.

I exchanged a confused look with my sister and Cynder. Did they also experience heat the night of the ball?

“No,” I replied. “I had my last heat suppressant injection when I came home for the holidays.”

“Heat sets in once you’ve met your destined mate,” Ares said suspiciously. “Did any of you find your mate and reject them?”

“No,” Cynder replied. “The only one my wolf has ever felt a draw to is Zane.”

“It’s a chocolate croissant,” Grandma told Caspian, passing a platter of pastries to him. “I don’t understand why the French insist on calling it pain au chocolat?”

“Something isn’t making sense,” Ares said.

“I know,” Grandma replied. “The pronunciation is even funny, pan oh shock-o-lah.”

“Grandma, he’s not talking about croissants,” Rex told her, taking the platter of pastries and setting it down.

“Maybe the Moon Goddess has decided to stop playing her matchmaking games and let us pick our mates,” Storm suggested.

“Then all the unmated females would go into heat upon reaching maturity,” Rex said in disagreement. “We’d have a lot more pups running around.”

“Lycans can only reproduce with their destined mates,” Demeter added.

“Don’t you want pups?” My mother pleaded, looking heartbroken. Both of her daughters were choosing to go against the wishes of the Moon Goddess, which gave her a slim chance of ever having grandchildren.

“Rex and Storm can produce heirs for the throne,” Lukas announced. “I don’t care about offspring.”

“Is that so?” Balthazar chuckled. “You should care.”

“Why’s that?” Lukas asked.

Balthazar’s grin widened. “Because you’re expecting a pup.”