Out of Smoke and Ashes

  “That’s it, mate,” Cail growled back through their mate bond even as he kept his teeth clamped into her skin. “You take every inch of our cocks and you just keep fighting. We’ll fuck the fight out of you if it takes us the rest of the night.”

  She came again, the Alpha in her nowhere close to being under control, yet feeling her body finally respond to her mates’ demands. She arched her back, giving Brodey even better access.

  An image flashed through her mind, of her and her men shifted and fucking her brains out, their wolf cocks knotting and tying her to them…

  The force of the next orgasm tore a low, rolling, guttural howl out of her…

  And then she was back in her wolf form before she even realized what she’d done.

  Brodey must have sensed her shift because he shifted with her. Cail swore as he fell back and yanked his cock to safety. But then he shifted, too, and with amusement in his eyes, he clamped his teeth around the scruff of her neck and pinned her down to the ground.

  “You’re in trouble now, babe,” Brodey told her. “Oh, I’ve been dying to tie with you. You want wolf fucking? Then you’d better hold on.” Then she felt it, the bulge at the base of his cock, bumping against her pussy as he worked it deeper until it was completely buried inside her.

  With his front legs holding her, and Cail’s teeth in her scruff, all she could do was brace herself with her front legs as the force of Brodey’s fucking inched her along the ground. And then the bulge of his knot swelled, larger, securely tying him inside her as his own orgasm started.

  “Yes!” Brodey echoed his mental cry of triumph with a howl.

  Elain closed her eyes and shuddered as wave after wave of pleasure washed through her. Brodey still kept bumping his hips into her, every jolt doing indescribable things to her body, as if he’d hooked an electric cord straight to the pleasure center of her brain and flipped the switch.

  “Feels good, doesn’t it?” Brodey said, the wolf grunting with pleasure. “Once you go wolf, you…eh, never go—”

  “Shut up, Brodey!” Cail and Elain both screamed at him through the mate bond.

  He let out a growl but went quiet. Finally, his hips fell still but the knot in his dick remained hard and embedded deep inside her cunt. Every movement he made triggered another flurry of pleasure inside her. Part of her never wanted it to end, and part of her wanted him to hurry up and finish so Cail could have his turn.

  Not having ever done this with them before, she didn’t know if it’d be like with real dogs where they turned around or not. Apparently not, because after a few minutes she finally felt his cock begin to grow limp, the knot receding, until he was finally able to withdraw.

  But then he grabbed her scruff with his teeth and Cail was behind her in a flash.

  And it all began again. First fucking her, hard and fast and triggering another release inside her. “Can’t say I haven’t been thinking about this myself, babe,” Cail said.

  She felt it when his knot began to swell, too. His strokes grew short and jabby as he worked it inside her. He let out a pleased howl when he finally succeeded and the knot began to swell.

  Her world unhinged again. The bigger his knot swelled, the harder she came, unable to believe she could still be coming this hard, this many times, just from being fucked.

  And that was when she realized her Alpha had curled up into a happy little well-fucked fuzzball inside her.

  Oh. Okay then. Note to self, wolf fucking makes me sane again.

  That was the last conscious thought she had for several minutes as Cail fucked her even longer than Brodey had after his knot took possession of her cunt, tying them together as he pumped his cum inside her.

  Her entire body shuddered as wave after wave of pleasure washed away every other thought and feeling until her body finally collapsed into a quivering pile of fur with Brodey and Cail still holding her down.

  “Going to be a while,” Cail warned her. “You got me worked up pretty damn good.”

  She whimpered in reply, unable to form a cogent response.

  What felt like forever later, his cock finally softened until the point he could pull out. The men let her go, lying down on either side of her as she closed her eyes and dropped into blissful darkness.

  * * * *

  “Hey, babe?” That was Brodey, but she didn’t want to get up. She swatted at him and rolled over against Cail.

  “Yeah, that’s not going to work, dude,” Cail said. “She’s completely toast. Run back to the house and grab a truck.”

  “Shut up,” she mumbled. “Trying to sleep.”

  “I know, babe,” Cail said, “but it’s almost dawn, and we need to get back to the house ASAP.”

  “I’m not moving.”

  She heard them both sigh. “I’ll get the truck,” Brodey said.

  A moment later, she heard the soft sound of him taking off on four feet.

  “Thank you,” she mumbled, her eyes never opening.

  He chuckled and pulled her close, tucking her head against his chest. “I have to tell you, I’m getting a little too old to sleep on the ground as a human.”

  That was when she realized both she and Cail were once again sporting two legs instead of four. And that he and Brodey had been talking out loud, not mentally, when she woke up.

  “When did that happen?” she mumbled against his flesh.

  “You shifted back in your sleep. We shifted back, too.”

  That was enough to make her pry open an eye. “You guys didn’t sleep?”

  “Hell no. We weren’t about to take our eyes off you. Are you nuts?”

  Now she felt guilty. She tried to sit up and realized she didn’t have the energy to. “Sorry.”

  He chuckled again. “No, it’s okay. No worries, babe. That was a first for you, though. Um, we were right that you were struggling deliberately, right?”

  “Yes.” She yawned. Somewhere inside her, at least for a little while, the Alpha had been reduced to a sleepy puppy. “Thank you.”

  “Okay. Good. Just checking.”

  “I’d make it super easy for you if I’d wanted you to stop.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I’d just say stop.”

  He laughed. “I guess that is pretty easy.” He stroked her hair, which she realized was now full of leaves and other debris. “Feeling at least a little better?”

  “For now. Don’t know how long it’ll last.”

  “Don’t say that around Brodey. He’d be happy four-legged-fucking every day, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t think I could take that. Death by orgasm is still death.”

  * * * *

  Ain came with Brodey, who’d pulled on a pair of shorts, brought another pair for Cail, and brought a robe for Elain to slip on. She dozed off in the truck as they drove back to the house, barely waking up again when Ain carried her into the shower in their bathroom.

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbled as he set her on her feet.

  “For what, babe?”

  She forced her eyes open to look at him. He was quickly stripping, tossing his clothes out of the shower, before taking her robe from her.

  “For running off.”

  He gently grabbed her chin and made her look at him. “It’s okay. It was a healthy thing for you to do to deal with this.”

  “Any news?”

  He sadly shook his head. “Sorry, babe. Nothing yet.” He turned on the shower and helped her clean up, picking the trash out of her hair and shampooing it for her, gently massaging her scalp as her eyes dropped closed and she soaked up the attention.

  “Where are Brod and Cail?” She had trouble keeping her eyes open.

  “They jumped in the pool. They’ll be in.”

  “Oh. Okay.” She heard him chuckle. “What?”

  “Whatever you did, you wore them out. I haven’t seen them that exhausted in a long time.”

  “Give me time to sleep and recover and I’ll show you,” she only half joked.

 
“I’ll take you up on that.”

  Chapter Ten

  While Mercedes hadn’t explicitly said so, Marston got the distinct opinion that saying no to her offer would have been detrimental to his health. She had cheerfully deflected all of his questions, telling him she’d make everything clear to him once they reached Maine. She spent the flight taking notes as she thumbed through an old spell book he recognized as belonging to Edgar.

  It turned out she had rented a house about thirty miles from the Maine wolves’ territory. Marston wasn’t sure he wanted to know where she got her income to afford it or the private charter flight that had taken them from Florida to Maine.

  He also wasn’t sure he wanted to be in such close proximity to those particular wolves. “Why so near to them?” He set his bags in the living room.

  She smiled. “I’m solitary. Not affiliated with any nest in the area. And yes, there are a few nests scattered around this part of the country. They’re ridiculously easy to find when you know what to look for. Fortunately for the idiots, their special form of stupidly closed-knit ways does help keep a lot of those clues out of the hands of most of the cockatrice hunters. The closer I am to the wolves, the less likely anyone from the nests will stumble across me. Or anyone from a different wolf Clan.”

  “What do you look for?”

  “Oh, certain patterns of crime literally appearing out of nowhere in very small, rural, usually agricultural towns. Robberies, murders, an explosion of meth labs and other activities. They’ve basically had to resort to drug dealing to make any kind of a living in the States and elsewhere. And authorities mistake them for drug gangs, of course, helping them hide their identity. When things get too hot, they shut down and move. They’re fairly nomadic. They might stay in a certain region for a long time, like the Brussels nest did, but they won’t stay in the same neighborhood for more than a year or so, usually. Not unless it’s a large enough area to cover what they’re doing.”

  “They can’t all be that nasty, can they?”

  “Most of them are. It’s rare for a cockatrice to totally break free from their nest. They’re liable to be killed for it out of fear of information leaking.”

  “But your brothers did.”

  “Yes, and that’s only because they ended up destroying their local nest themselves. Other nests didn’t care enough to go after them, figuring it was an internal power struggle gone horribly awry.”

  “I still don’t understand what your plan is. You’re trying to take over the cockatrice? I thought you were one of them? And if they’re as scattered as you say they are, how do you plan on doing that?”

  Her smile held no humor and chilled Marston to his very core. “Wrong, wrong, and wrong. My mother was a full-blooded, powerful cockatrice. Unfortunately, unlike Edgar and Lenny, who were my half brothers, my father isn’t.”

  “What was he? Human?”

  She let out a snort. “Nope. Life would have been easy if he was. Our kind will accept human-cockatrice hybrids. My father wasn’t human, so it made me ‘impure’ in their eyes. If it hadn’t been for Lenny and Edgar, the nest likely would have killed me outright when my mother died and then they discovered I had survived.” She let out a disgusted snort.

  “Then what was your father?”

  “Wolf. Alpha wolf, as a matter of fact.”

  Marston stared at her. “A wolf? You’re part wolf?” Well, that explained a lot about her. “Is he alive?”

  “For now he is. But when my mother told him about being pregnant with me, he was less than thrilled. For starters, I was illegitimate. He already had a mate. If you could call the poor woman he marked that. Never stopped him from fucking around on her, that’s for sure. From what I understand of wolf codes of conduct of the various Clans, she must not have been his One, because he never would have considered doing it.”

  “Yes. Most Clans in modern times adhere to that. Some don’t. For example, Rodolfo Abernathy has always been an arsehole when it comes to ignoring the Code of the Ancients.” He hoped if he kept her talking he might survive this.

  She stood and went into the kitchen. She returned a moment later with a can of Coke and popped the top. “His second issue was that my mother was a cockatrice. Apparently he considered them good enough to fuck, but not good enough to father a bastard child with. My father tried to take care of my mother and take care of the problem.”

  “Not in a good way.”

  She shook her head. “Nope. Fortunately for me and her both, cockatrice are pretty damn resilient. Chased her down and off a cliff. She shifted mid-fall and the fuckers didn’t see her. Survived to give birth to me a month later.” Her face clouded. “He found out she survived and had her tracked down again. They killed her that time. Thought she was still pregnant. Edgar and Lenny raised me. I always swore I would get revenge, especially for what the bastard told her when she told him she was pregnant.”

  He didn’t ask. He suspected she’d tell it in her own way and time.

  She looked at him with eyes that suddenly felt very familiar. “He told her no bastard wolf-atrice would see the light of day, much less any inheritance, or Pack or Clan status. Purity of blood and all that bullshit.”

  Marston felt a chill settle in his gut. “No.”

  She grinned a decidedly wolfish grin. “Oh, yes. And Daddy dearest doesn’t even know I’m alive.” She cocked her head at him. “You look a little queasy. Want a soda?”

  He nodded as he slumped down into a seat at the table. He’d jumped out of Rodolfo’s frying pan into the decidedly hotter fire of Rodolfo’s pissed-off, illegitimate daughter.

  She returned and handed him an open can of Coke. “Thank you.” He drained half of it in one swallow.

  “You’re welcome.” She stood there, watching him. “You never had any pups to fulfill the blood oath, did you?”

  He shook his head. “No.” He took another drink.

  “Why is that?”

  He was still trying to wrap his head around the news. “I’m gay. And I’m a Beta.”

  “No wildly sown oats floating around out there, huh?”

  He finished the can and let out a belch. He didn’t want to think about this. “No,” he lied. He felt a little dizzy and attributed it to his nerves and the fact that he hadn’t eaten in a while.

  “Did Rodolfo kill your sister and brother-in-law?”

  He shrugged and rubbed at his forehead. The room felt hot. He loosened his tie. “I don’t know. It wouldn’t surprise me. Liam was their youngest, but he was already grown and had left home when they died. I…” His tongue felt thick. “I thought it was an accident, but perhaps not. I lost track of him years ago…”

  She stood in front of him, looking down at him, her arms crossed over her chest. “When was the last time you were with someone?”

  He looked up at her and squinted, had trouble focusing. “What?”

  She grabbed his tie and leaned in close, her flinty grey eyes glinting. “I said, when was the last time you got laid?”

  What’s wrong with me? He stared at her, not able to process her question.

  She grinned and used his tie to haul him to his feet. “Come with me, pops. I have a job for you.”

  * * * *

  Marston didn’t understand where he was or why he felt the way he did or why the light in the room looked funny. When he tried to sit up, he realized he’d been shackled to the bed, his wrists encased by engraved silver cuffs that looked all too familiar.

  And he was naked.

  Mercedes appeared in the doorway, dressed in a bathrobe. “Oh, goodie. You’re awake. Don’t worry, pops, you’ll soon grow to like this. And yes, before you ask, those are cuffs like the ones Edgar and Lenny had. They’re from the same batch they ordered. I snarfed them from Lenny’s place after that damn dragon bitch killed him a couple of years ago.” She sighed. “I warned him not to get cocky, not to try to take her by himself, but nooo. He wouldn’t listen to me or let me help. Neither of them would, and now they’re
both dead because of her. I’ll show her and all the others.” A brief moment of what might have passed for sadness flashed across her features before she shook her head and it disappeared.

  He tried to break free of the charmed restraints and realized how utterly futile it was. “What did you do to me?”

  “You got roofied, pops. And I pumped you full of Viagra. You’re welcome.” She strolled over and sat on the edge of the bed. “You did good for an old dude. Especially once I gave you a little extra incentive.”

  “What?”

  She leaned over to the bedside table and picked up a small remote control. “This.” She hit a button.

  His body arched, straining as something in his ass started buzzing right against his prostate. She shut it off, but not before he belatedly realized she’d earned interest from his wilted cock.

  She giggled. “See? Don’t worry, you loved it. Both times. You might as well get comfy because I’m ovulating and until I’m sure it’s taken, well…” She shrugged. “Hey, look on the bright side. There are probably plenty of submissive, kinky men out there who’d love to be held as a sex hostage by a hot, younger woman.”

  She stood, turning before she got to the door. “Oh, by the way, before you start running through a lot of possible escape plans that totally won’t work, I’m not going to kill you when I let you go. But as a little insurance I did tape our earlier lovefest and have you on record as saying some great things. Like how you’d love to kill Rodolfo and how he’s a stupid fuck.” She grinned. “And what a great fuck I am. Thank you very much, by the way. You fight me, or royally piss me off, I’ll just make sure to overnight copies along with GPS coordinates to dear old Daddy and leave you tied up with a GPS tracker duct-taped to you. I’m sure he’d love a chance to de-nut you for what you said as well as for tainting the wolf gene pool with his bastard wolf-atrice daughter. He is your uncle, after all. Well, granduncle, if I figured the family tree correctly.”

  She let out a positively evil giggle that sent a shiver through his soul. “Why do you think my brothers agreed to work with you in the first place? Do you honestly think they’d have sided with a wolf that wasn’t hooked in with someone as powerful as Rodolfo Abernathy? Well, especially because you were hooked in with him. And now, as they say, you know the rest of the story.” She waggled her fingers at him. “Rest up. You’ll need it.”