Mated for Keeps Boxed Set: a BBW Werewolf Shifter Romance (The Lost River Pack) (17 page)

And that was, she thought as she sagged bonelessly between Jackson and Nico, exactly how she wanted it.

No wolf—biped or otherwise—would miss this.

She may have started as the Yellow Canyon Pack’s breeding female, but Natalie was so much more.
Wanted
so much more.

Damien crouched beside them, rested his head at her shoulder with a long, loud sigh.

Gentler, with more caution, Alek’s lean hand brushed her cheek. “She’ll smell like one of us, now.”

Ben’s voice graveled. “She
is
one of us.”

Her heart warmed.

She’d given it everything she had. Done everything she could. Her wolf had loved the attention, but hadn’t surged ahead the way Natalie had felt it in the bedroom with Jackson.

If she was the problem, she’d just made that problem theirs. Victor was smart. He’d know the difference—and he’d see it for the slap it was. But this, this armor made of their fragrance and their mutual claim, was her only hope.

Please
, she thought. She raised a trembling hand, and Ben’s firm fingers twined with hers. Jackson held her close, and Nico pressed a sweaty kiss to her cheek.
Please let this work.

“I want to stay with you,” she whispered.

It was Alek who answered her. “You will.”

Whatever wavelength they shared, it pulled them closer together—wrapped them tight around her in a protective, supportive knot. For this moment, as their heartbeats slowed in unison, Natalie let herself believe it.

Pack.

I
t was
a beautiful day to start a war.

The sun streamed down over the woods, dappling the ground in shimmering patterns of light and shadow. Winter cut the wild wind with a sharp bite, but the sunlight helped ease the worst of it as Natalie walked step by shaking step closer to the meeting place.

Beside her, Nico matched his pace to hers, his customary bare feet apparently unaffected by the chill. She shot him a sidelong glance as they forged through the foliage, searching for any sign of nerves.

She had more than enough for everyone.

Nico’s shoulders were firm, but his mouth rested in a loose line that belied the gravity of the entire situation. His black-rimmed, white irises gleamed like diamonds, sharper than the lazy cast of his features indicated. For all his easygoing appearance, his stride remained purposeful. Strong.

On his left, Ben walked with a lumbering stride that made no secret of his authority. Someone who didn’t know better, someone who didn’t care to really look, might have mistaken the much larger man for the alpha.

Behind them, spread out in a fan, Jackson, Alek and Damien walked with soundless purpose. Natalie was as aware of them at her back as she was of Nico at her side, and the warm, enveloping feeling of them surrounding her helped take at least some of the edge off.

Some.

The feeling of wanting to throw up wouldn’t go away.

As they came closer to the clearing where the meeting was to take place, the sound of birdsong faded away. The wind rustled through the trees, rifling through the overhead branches and carrying the scent of trespassers to them all. Natalie’s throat closed as Victor’s too familiar scent filled her nose.

Her step hitched.

Alek touched her shoulder. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t have to, but Nico slanted her a glance that merged encouragement and reminder. She wasn’t alone.

Natalie wasn’t ever going to be alone again.

Her heart thudded in her chest, but her hands fisted at her sides and she lifted her chin with deliberate care.

She was ready for this. Ready for whatever came. She’d found the pack she wanted to be part of—no matter what.

But then, Victor didn’t usually care what
she
thought.

He was the first of the small group to distinguish himself as they cleared the rim of the clearing. Victor was a large man, bred thick like Jackson but tall like Ben. His powerful shoulders and heavily muscled arms bulged under his T-shirt, and his long black hair was held back in a pony-tail as thick as her wrist.

Anyone else might have mistaken him for a bear—at least until they took a good look at the feral edges of his features. Victor wasn’t a handsome man, but he was powerful.

And extremely dominant.

The moment the wind shifted, his back stiffened. He turned in the midst of the other five werewolves loosely arranged in their side of the clearing, his eyes so sharp she could feel the amber gleam cut even from this far away. The rest of his group were on their feet seconds after Victor paced across the clearing in wide, angry strides.

The wolves flanking her barely got a glance as Victor’s left hand reached out. Natalie’s breath caught in her chest as her whole body braced for a hand around her throat—for Victor’s brand of dominance.

But it didn’t come.

Jackson’s hand snaked out past Natalie’s face, and he was suddenly there at her side, his finger so tight around Victor’s thick wrist that the skin went white beneath. A single sound, a barely leashed snarl, warned, “Don’t.”

The pack behind Victor picked up pace, two slipping into a slightly lower posture that would give them extra power if they had to clear the distance in a spring. It was a predatory move, a shift of balance and priorities.

Natalie took a breath to say something, to defuse all of it, but Nico beat her to it.

“That’s enough.” Two words. Softly spoken.

Rife with command.

Jackson let go just as Victor pulled his arm away, but he didn’t leave Natalie’s side. She was very much aware of the heat of him, the solid weight of his presence at her right shoulder. Aware, and grateful for it.

For the first time, Victor’s gaze flicked to the others with her. His nostrils flared, jaw hardened to stony fury echoed in his tawny eyes.

She didn’t have to look at them to know the Lost River wolves bristled. The tension in the air thickened as Nico shifted just enough that his shoulder edged up in front of Natalie’s left. The power thrumming under his skin only vibrated faintly. Just a taste.

Just a warning.

One wrong move, and there’d be bloodshed. Six against five. Ordinarily, Victor would have the upper hand, but this wasn’t ordinary. He didn’t risk it. Even after Jackson had touched him; as good a challenge in the language of wolves.

Why? Natalie’s eyes fixed to his throat, to the bob of it as he barely swallowed a growl.

Victor’s hand dropped to his side, fingers splayed to keep the pack he’d brought with him from following through on the unspoken tension. “Let’s go,” he said to Natalie, his voice a graveled order. “We’re going home.”

Natalie’s breath felt like desert air in her throat, but somehow, she managed to inhale. To shake her head. “No.”

The other wolves he’d brought finally caught up, fanning behind Victor in a semi-circle that mirrored Nico and his group. The crackling energy caught between both felt as if she’d been locked in an air tunnel, battered from both sides by forces too violent to simply let go.

Only the strong stayed in a pack, but established packs often forgot that strays that didn’t die in the wild got stronger for it.

Victor seemed to realize this much—or maybe he thought his claim trumped strays’, because he didn’t reach for her again. He simply took one step closer. A step that put him almost shoulder to shoulder with Nico.

But his fierce stare, his aggression, was all for Natalie.

A slight. An insult. Whatever else Victor thought, he didn’t consider Nico worth acknowledging.

Something the wolves flanking him noticed, too. Natalie watched Nicholas and Cameron—two strong enforcers who’d tried mating with her before—exchange a glance.

Behind her, Damien’s low growl throttled off on a sharp sound when Nico raised a calming hand behind him.

Her knees trembled as she fixed her eyes on Victor’s chest. It expanded, strained his T-shirt as he took a deep breath through his nose. The smell on her, the obvious fragrance of semen she’d wiped off but hadn’t washed, caused his features to blacken. His mouth twisted. “So you let them fuck you.”

She shuddered. Her fists strained by her sides. “I chose them.”

“You aren’t mated.”

Her chin came up, and her gaze lifted to his eyes. “I’m not mated to you, either.” She could have slapped him and surprised him less; his eyes narrowed, thin slits of furious amber as his muscles locked in rigid violence.

He wanted to backhand her. It wouldn’t be the first time. Victor didn’t tolerate disrespect.

Natalie had a whole lot of it to serve him.

But he didn’t pin his anger on her—not yet. He’d save it for when she wasn’t flanked by werewolves who all looked like they’d give his boys a run for their money. Natalie opened her mouth to demand what she wanted—to force him and his men to go—but Victor didn’t let her.

He never did.

His body turned, his anger pinned on Nico and unfolded with all the power and force that allowed him to run a strong pack like the Yellow Canyon wolves. The air turned bloody and hot, the sensation of it on her skin caused the fine hairs on her neck to prickle.

Every instinct demanded she cower.

“You,” Victor snarled. “
You
stole what is rightfully mine.”

Nico’s head tilted faintly. Natalie knew what it was to feel his wolf, to sense it on the wind—she’d watched him corral his own ornery wolves with it, but she’d never realized how different it really was until his eyes flared, crackled with the slow roll of dominance beneath his skin.

The air around Natalie cooled, but it didn’t ease. It grew too thick, too full, as if too many things fought for control of the space.

She sucked in a ragged breath.

This time, it was Jackson’s hand that slipped to the small of her back. Large and warm, firm and steady. Another hooked at her hip—Alek’s again. Tight but not painful. Secure.

Nico didn’t have to touch her. His strength, his protection, enfolded her—enfolded all of them—in the utter surety of his position.

Strays, maybe, but Victor wasn’t stupid. When Nico neither looked away nor stepped back, the first flash of doubt creased the skin above the Yellow Canyon alpha’s aquiline nose.

“We stole nothing,” Nico said, every word clipped to a cool, calm quick. It carried across the clearing with easy authority—made sure every last one of Victor’s wolves heard him. “You had Natalie locked up in a crate like some kind of animal. Is that how the Yellow Canyon Pack treats its females?”

Cameron and Nicholas exchanged another glance. Then they both looked at her. Natalie couldn’t read either man’s expression—Cameron was Victor’s second, always much harder to read under a mask of projected indolence, while Nicholas was so serious, he’d give Alek a run for his money.

Natalie hadn’t minded either of them in small doses. They’d been kinder than some.

When she met their eyes, they didn’t snarl or posture. Cameron’s mouth slipped into a half-smile, but if it was supposed to be encouraging or some kind of other message, she just couldn’t tell. His spring green eyes, pale like jade, had never really warmed to her.

Victor bit back a snarl. “So she spread her legs for you and now you’ll do anything for her, is that right?”

Jackson’s low, muted growl shuddered through the hand at Natalie’s back.

She locked her teeth before she said something awful.

This was Nico’s part. Only he could meet the alpha head-on. That was law, and even Natalie knew the Lost River strays barely qualified as pack enough to establish it.

Nico took half a step forward. There wasn’t much room between them, but he didn’t need much. He stood toe to toe with the much larger Victor, head tilted back to meet the other alpha’s gaze head on. If he felt at all disadvantaged in his bare feet and shorter, leaner build, there was nothing in his demeanor that suggested it. “I suggest,” he said softly, “you watch your tone when you speak about one of mine.”

Victor turned his head and spat. “I’ll talk about what is
mine
however I please.”

“I’m not,” Natalie cut in, her whole body shaking with the effort to remain standing. To remain
here
, and not tear off across the forest, run with fur and fang until she could leave behind this clearing—these men.

This pack she didn’t want.

But that would abandon the pack she did.

She set her jaw, forced herself to stare at Victor as his head jerked in her direction. And oh, he hated it. Loathed the fact that she met his gaze with such impunity.

She could all but smell his hunger to bleed her on the wind.

Behind him, Cameron shifted. A subtle shake of his head could have been a warning, or simply awe.

She’d always been meeker. At least then.

But that wasn’t her. She wasn’t
her
when she was with the Yellow Canyon Pack.

Natalie wanted to be herself. Whatever, whoever, that was, she wanted it more than anything else—and the Lost River wolves wanted her, too. Wanted to love her.

To be loved by her.

She reached behind her and threaded her fingers with Jackson’s. Skin to skin, palm to palm, his warmth bled into her hand. Eased some of the ice clawing its way up her spine.

With him, with all of them, she could stand up. She could face Victor.

“I’m not going back,” she said again, and this time her voice rang clearly. “As a free, unmated wolf, I belong to no one. I am no pack’s prisoner, and no alpha’s possession.”

When she took a step forward, Nico shifted aside. Just enough that his position—his support—was clear.

God, she loved him. She loved all of them, these strays who banded around her.

Whose support bolstered her now.

The wind pulled through her hair, whipped it into a streaming banner as she reached out and twined her other hand with Nico’s.

The men behind Victor glanced at each other. Then at their alpha. Waiting.

Watching.

“You heard the lady,” Nico said, still in tones that carried. And for all their volume, his voice didn’t bite. It didn’t lash. It simply rumbled with an alpha’s certainty. “Pack law states you are under no obligation to treat us
as
a pack, but know that we have in our midst a female who bonds us. The choice is yours.”

A muscle twitched furiously in Victor’s face as his gaze flicked from Nico to Natalie to the wolves around them both.

When it landed on Jackson, it lingered.

And darkened.

His lips peeled back from his teeth.

Cameron stirred. “Victor.”

The alpha jerked his chin. It took him a moment to swallow whatever instinct gripped him, but when he did, he squared his shoulders. Unbowed, undefeated. “We aren’t so many that we can afford to tear apart the strong.” It was as if every word was wrenched from Victor’s mouth. Like it pained him to even vocalize what he’d see as a compliment rather than a statement of truth.

Cameron reached behind Victor and nudged another man’s shoulder. The dark-skinned werewolf was named Devon. She’d never had the opportunity to try to mate with him, but the sheer disgust on his face made her glad for that.

She didn’t know if Devon hated her or the situation, but his near-black eyes touched everything with barely throttled annoyance. Even his own alpha.

Devon brushed Cameron’s hand off and turned around. When he strode back the way they’d come, Nicholas followed.

Victor took one step back. Just one. The vein in his forehead pounded. “I challenge you.”

Natalie’s eyes widened.

Wait. That wasn’t exactly what she expected. A challenge to a stray? One on one? That wasn’t what she’d thought. It wasn’t supposed to come to bloodshed. She’d
seen
what Victor did to those foolish enough to challenge him. Smelled the blood on him, the stench of death. For all his talk, for whatever he said
now
, it had never stopped him from tearing out the throat of those who moved against him.