Ali came out of the shower wearing nothing but her panties, and toweling off her long, auburn hair. Her pupils were dilated and her face was flushed with color, like she and Holt had just had another round in the shower. Even though my dick went rock hard at the sight of her beautiful body, knowing Holt had just satisfied our mate again set off an explosion of warmth in my chest.
I liked knowing I could rely on Holt to protect, satisfy, and provide for her. Somehow it calmed my wolf on a biological level. Like, if something happened to me, she would still be taken care of. And seeing her like this, almost completely bare and confident in her body, in us seeing her in this intimate way, helped soothe my wolf and hope we were close to a claiming.
“Hungry, sweetheart? We’re going to take you to the diner for breakfast,” I told her, giving Holt a nod and holding up his phone to show him the text as he emerged from the bathroom.
“Sounds great,” she murmured, then stopped. “Wait—both of you are taking me? Won’t that look weird?”
“I thought of that.” I winked. “We’re meeting three friends, so it will simply look like a group breakfast.”
She smiled, gave a slight shrug as if my answer had been all the reassurance she needed. “Fun. Who are they?”
“They’re another triad like us,” Holt explained, grabbing clean jeans from the dresser. “Two wolves and a human female. We thought it might be nice for you to talk to someone in your situation. Rachel is the newest member of our pack. Nash and Cord claimed her last year.”
“So this is a big secret, right? I mean, obviously. I can’t tell my friends, can I?”
My heart skipped a beat at the possibility, but I calmed when I realized she recognized it was something to keep private.
“Sorry, sweetheart.” I walked over and settled my hands on her waist. Her skin was warm and dewy from the shower. “It’s a hard and fast rule to protect the pack. I know that might be hard for you.”
She shrugged, seemingly undaunted. “I get it.”
I leaned in to nibble her neck, mostly just because I needed to fill my nostrils with her intoxicating scent. “You’re amazing.”
Her laugh was soft and husky. “You two are pretty amazing yourselves.”
Reluctantly, I let her go. I didn’t want to leave this bedroom, ever, but that wasn’t realistic. My dick—or my wolf—weren’t in charge.
Thirty minutes later, we followed Ali to the diner. She’d insisted on driving herself so it didn’t look funny to anyone who might notice, and we didn’t argue. We didn’t need to add navigating town gossip to the list of hurdles we had to overcome with her to get to the claiming.
Hopefully, Cord, Nash, and Rachel would help get us one step closer. Even though our biggest hurdle wasn’t Ali, but her hateful father and the open meth case.
11
ALI
“I heard you found out these two guys are more than they seem.” Rachel, a friendly blonde who looked about the same age I was, waggled her brows from across the table at the diner. Theo, Holt, and I had slid into one side of the booth with Rachel, Cord, and Nash on the other. Cord and Nash were her mates, two scent-match shifters who’d found her and decided to make her theirs, just like Theo and Holt wanted to do with me. Plus, they’d married her, judging by the wedding rings on their fingers.
“Yes.” I laughed in relief because it was good to have someone who understood what it was like to find out there was something superhuman about the guys she’d gone to bed with. And I wasn’t referring to their super-sexy dick skills.
“You just can’t stay away, can you?” Bessie, the diner owner, said to Rachel as she came over and poured a round of coffee for all of us. She’d run the diner for as long as I could remember. I came in with my friends in high school, and I knew my dad met his friends in the mornings here for coffee. It was the unofficial meeting spot for West Springs.
Rachel smiled at me and gave me the inside scoop, leaning forward toward me. “I work here. That’s how I met Cord. I spilled a full glass of water in his lap.” She laughed at her own mistake.
“Because she was so taken with me,” Cord supplied with a wink. I knew he was a doctor in town, his office just down the block, but I hadn’t seen him as a patient myself. I’d been away at school when he’d taken over for the one who’d retired, and thankfully had been well enough to not need him.
“That was before she’d met me,” Nash piped in. I could see why Rachel thought both her men attractive. This one had a quick smile and an easygoing nature. Holt had said he’d been raised in Montana, and only recently moved to West Springs when they’d found Rachel.
Shocked that they were so open about being shifters in front of Bessie, I watched her for a reaction, but she just smiled indulgently at everyone at the table. Everyone except me.
She gave me a curious look that bordered on suspicion, and I realized with a start that she must be a shifter, too. And she knew who I was because she knew everyone in town. Or rather, who my father was. A rancher. A wolf killer.
It made my chest constrict with pain every time I thought of it. The fact that one of their pack had died by a rancher’s gun years back was beyond tragic. It explained and crystallized some of the weird tensions in this small town that I’d never really understood. Like why the West Springs folks seemed so insular, and looked down on the ranchers in the valley.
“Theo, it’s good to see you, son. Haven’t seen you since Christmastime.” Bessie nodded to Theo.
Theo slid his arm possessively around my shoulders. “Well, I’m officially back in town on business, but, ah, the discovery of our mate turned everything on its head.”
Bessie’s eyes widened as she looked between me and Theo and Holt. “You don’t say?” She met my gaze now, and her nostrils flared like she was trying to get my scent. If I didn’t know what she was, I wouldn’t have noticed the subtle gesture, but now I was tracking everything wolfish about my new boyfriends and their pack mates. “Well, how are you taking it?”
I straightened my back. For some reason, it seemed terribly important to me that I answer her question correctly. “The news?” I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant, if it was the surprise of Holt and Theo being shifters, or fucking two guys at once. I went with the first. “I’m a little shocked, honestly. I only found out last night. But I’m still here.”
Bessie gave a soft scoff. “It’s not like they’d let you go, even if you wanted to.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Bessie!” Holt looked slightly alarmed.
“Oh, I didn’t mean it that way.” Bessie waved a dismissive hand. “It’s just that their biology won’t allow it. As a doctor, Cord can probably explain the science behind it.” She tipped her head in his direction.
“We brought her here to put her mind at ease, not freak her out,” Theo muttered, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “So, thanks for that.”
Bessie laughed, nonplussed. “Well, I know when I’m not welcome. I’ll take your orders if you know what you’re having.”
She wrote down what we wanted and left for the kitchen. As soon as she was gone, I demanded, “What was that all about?”