STORY EXCERPT

Jonas collapsed in the snow when his legs could no longer hold him. The cool snow on his belly felt good as he continued to gulp in air. He turned his head and watched Gideon skid to halt and shift. His brother was tall, lean, and not even out of breath.

“Snarl all you like, Jonas, but you will hear me out.”

Gideon looked different from just two hours ago. His eyes were still the same bright blue as his own and their sister’s, Celeste’s, but now the blue looked cold, hard. His white-blond hair was also extremely short and stuck out in spikes from his head.

Jonas narrowed his eyes, working through the possible reasons for the change in his brother. Gideon had hacked off his shoulder-length hair, probably with scissors, before running after him. Then the breeze brought him the subtle musky scent twined to Gideon’s normal scent. Mating musk.

Jonas didn’t move, just took control from his feral wolf and shifted back to human. He lay face down in the snow, the sweat freezing on his skin. It felt good. His soul was wrapped in ice, and now so was his body.

“Where the fuck did you think you were going?”

He ignored Gideon. His strength would return in another few minutes, then he’d shift back, run again.

Gideon snarled at him in frustration. “Boothe found Harper.”

Those three words shattered the ice around his soul and let the wild flames of his wolf’s fury burn through his body. He found himself standing in front of Gideon with no recollection of ever having moved.

“He got that sick fuck’s network operating again?” Jonas knew that Boothe had been working tirelessly on restoring Camilo’s network of tracking devices. The tracking devices he’d implanted into human beings so he could monitor his sex slaves wherever they were on the planet.

“A sick fuck that Bailey, your pack mate, took a bullet in the chest from, so that he could kill him.”

Jonas smiled. “I’d have done the same to circumvent the Alpha’s order not to kill that human scum.”

Gideon narrowed his eyes at him. “But you didn’t, did you? You let Paxton Mortlake take a bullet so that you could kill the man who set a bomb under my clinic.” Gideon growled at him, his eyes beginning to glow red. Jonas scented his brother’s rage. “Is this how you repay the years of loyalty our pack has shown you, by letting them get shot?”

“That’s a low blow, Gideon.” Jonas moved like lightning, gripping his brother around the throat and lifting him off the ground. “I never asked a single person for any fucking favors.”

“No,” Gideon husked, hanging limply in his hold. “They did it because they love and respect you.” Jonas released Gideon, his hand feeling scalded by the heat of his brother’s anger. “Because you are pack.”

Jonas shook his head. “This is pointless. It’s history I can’t change.” His heart clenched and his gut twisted. More things he couldn’t change, like the way he’d made their parents suffer before they died. “Harper?” he managed to croak out through a throat gone bone-dry.

The fire burned brightly in Gideon’s eyes now. “Yes, Harper is what’s important to me right now, and yet, I have to run after you for hours before I can go and free her from the bastard who’s holding her captive in god-knows-what sort of hell.”

Jonas closed his eyes and willed his wolf to wait. To wait until they held the man who was hurting their mate in his claws. Hurting her? Torturing her? He couldn’t even think of what else was possibly being done to her. When he found him, he would tear him apart.

“Don’t, Gideon,” Jonas found himself saying. “Don’t say it out loud. I can’t think straight when I recall what Aeryn said about Camilo. When I remember what Bailey told us of how his captives were treated.”

“You think I don’t remember that Camilo had Harper for an entire week before he sold her to some other monster?” Jonas looked into Gideon’s eyes and saw his own tortured pain living in their depths. “That I’m not imagining what has been done to her in the weeks since that new monster obtained her?”

Jonas saw how selfish his uncontrolled response had been. “She’s your mate, too.”

Gideon shuddered as the fire drained from his eyes, and he stared deep into Jonas’s eyes, into his soul. “Her scent is all I can smell. Saving her is all I can think about. I don’t know what she’s already been through, but I do know I can’t change a single second of it. What I can do, however, is go and fucking get her and bring her home to her sister and her mates. Together, we can make her whole again.” Gideon swallowed hard, his eyes glittering with unshed tears. “I have to believe that we can do that because I know I’ll die if she does, Jonas. I want her that much already.”

For ten long years, Jonas had thought of little else but death, from being freed from the torture of his existence. “I find I don’t want to die today, Gideon.”

“That must be unsettling.”

Jonas felt his lip curl into a smile. “It certainly is.”

“Will you want to die tomorrow?” Gideon’s wolf prowled deep in his eyes, waiting, watching, as it had done for the last ten years.

Jonas had to consider his feelings on the matter before he answered his brother. “Not unless Harper Collins is dead,” he said honestly.

“That’s a start.” Gideon gripped his shoulder. “As of two hours ago, she was still alive and she was in Denmark.”

ADULT EXCERPT

His kiss was a branding. He devoured her mouth as he sent her a tumult of emotions through their newly forged bond. She felt his love. He loved her beyond words, beyond sense, and she pitied Hoeg if he ever had the misfortune to come face-to-face with Jonas Schaffer. Jonas would annihilate him.

The water was warm as Jonas stepped into the bath and lowered them both into it. She decided his kiss, his mouth, his body, was more important than luxuriating in a bath and lost herself to the passion he’d ignited between them.

“I want you,” Jonas growled, verbalizing her own feelings exactly. She didn’t know whose emotions were whose as desire rampaged through their bond to her.

“I didn’t think it would be like this. Feel like this,” Harper said, gasping as she rested her forehead on his. “It’s too much.”

“It’s not enough,” Jonas said, his own breath coming in short pants, his burning red gaze scorching her with the intensity of all he was feeling. Need, want, love, possession, territorial rage.

“Is this normal?” She asked the question, not caring if it was or it wasn’t.

“From what I’ve witnessed in the last few months—” Jonas cupped her ass, pulling her tight to his body. His hard cock pressed against her stomach, pulsing in time with the drumbeat of his heart. She loved the raw and wild beauty that Jonas encompassed. Her man. Her mate. “—it’s normal for this pack.”

“My pack,” Harper said, affirming his claim, their bond, their future in just two words. She hugged him tight, her hands slipping on his hard, wet shoulders.

“Marry us,” Jonas said, kissing her quickly and pulling back to stare deeply into her eyes.

He looked crazed, and she knew what he wanted, what he needed. He needed all of her. “Yes.”

That one word freed him from something deep and dark, banishing it until she could feel nothing but the joy he was openly sharing with her.

“On paper you marry me, as I’m the eldest.” Jonas’s smile was wide and free from any lingering pain and self-doubt. He was a beautiful man in this moment. “But in the ceremony for the pack, you wed us both.”

She was his, theirs forever, in every way. “That sounds perfect, Jonas. Perfect.”

“You’re fucking perfect.”

Jonas lifted her effortlessly, and she knew what he needed, what they both needed. She reached between them and placed his cock at the entrance to her pussy. He didn’t make her wait, lowering her gently onto his shaft as they both moaned.

“I feel you in here.” Harper pressed her hand to her sternum. He lifted his pelvis, filling her completely. “I feel you everywhere,” she managed to gasp out, grinding herself onto him and shuddering at the rough stimulation to her sensitive clitoris.

She rode up, then met his thrusts as she pushed back down onto his hard length. The slide of his cock over her swollen and aching pussy was delicious torture. She moved faster, the water in the bath splashing wildly and sloshing onto the floor. She clung desperately to Jonas as his hands moved under her butt and parted her ass cheeks. One finger circled her tight opening, and she tensed, faltering in her rhythm. She’d had sex twice before tonight. Both times had been straight vaginal sex and both unsatisfying in the extreme.

“I’ve never,” she said without hesitation. This was her mate.

“I would never hurt you,” Jonas said, his finger continuing to gently massage. As she grew used to his touch and relaxed, it began to feel good. “Gideon and I will take you together. Fill you with our cocks.”

Harper started to move on Jonas’s cock again. Her trust in Jonas was absolute, and she let go of all fear. She was free to feel, experience, enjoy, all that they were sharing. She lost herself in Jonas, the feel of his body against her, inside her. His touch. Him.

Harper clung to Jonas as they moved faster and her pleasure rose with each hard thrust of his cock. Pleasure rose and yet her body hungered for more. She needed more. Harper was desperate for the pleasure to peak. Just as she feared she’d go mad if she couldn’t fly off that edge, Jonas’s finger breached the tight ring of her asshole. The slight sting morphed to pleasure and ignited her orgasm.

“Mine,” Jonas said, sucking her neck and letting his sharp canines slide right into his mark again.

Wave after wave of pleasure pulsed through Harper’s body as Jonas came, too. He sucked hard on her neck, his big body shaking as he moaned, his cum marking her as his, claiming her again.

It was primal, instinctual, and hot as hell. Harper had never dreamed that sensations such as these were even possible, and now she knew she’d never get enough of them. Never get enough of her mates.

Collapsing against Jonas’s solid chest, Harper reached out for Gideon, hoping she could connect to him, needing him to know that she was thinking of him, that he was hers, even when he wasn’t physically there with her.

With surprisingly little effort, she felt him. Cold filled her, fear sending icy tendrils snaking through her veins. The acid burn of anger suffused the air around her and stung her throat as Jonas tensed.

“He’s coming.” Jonas’s tone made it clear that the words were a death sentence. Harper only hoped that what transpired led to Hoeg’s death, not to the death of one of her mates. She may have survived weeks of torture and degradation, but she wouldn’t survive losing one of them.