Read with BonusRead with Bonus

Chapter5 Help the Pack

As the haze of passion faded, all three seemed slightly shocked by what had passed between them, but neither Gwyn nor Dorian released her, continuing to hold her between them even as their unsteady breath evened, and their heartbeats slowed.

"You are on heat," Dorian said quietly.

"Not yet," she denied it. "Not until tomorrow."

"Close enough," Gwyn's smile was lopsided and heavy with seduction. "To not make a difference in the best ways. You are very lucky, Harper, that there's cloth between us, right now. Because it is very, very tempting to remedy that."

"Oh, get off me," she snapped irritably, pushing away from his chest. "You had your opportunity, Gwyn Randal, and you rejected me. As did you, Dorian Hemming," she added when the alpha at her back did not move.

"The position is useful," Dorian leaned forward, his arms and chest pressing her tighter to Gwyn, and placed his lips near her ear. "As we need to talk to you without being overheard."

'say it then," she hissed. "And let me up."

"We have established our human identities sufficiently that we believe it is safe to return and help our pack," Dorian breathed into her ear. "And we need to find out the best way to do that. We have money, Harper. We just need to find a legal way to funnel it to aid our family."

She closed her eyes. "There is no legal way," she told him, barely putting sound behind the words. "Werewolves incomes are capped and monitored. Small amounts of cash, carefully spent, can help, but too much, and they will notice. We are indentured and collared slaves, Dorian, and that is what we will remain. You did the best thing, the wise thing, in leaving and starting fresh. I only wish…" It caught in her throat.

"That we had taken you with us," Gwyn finished for her, but his eyes were on Dorian's and not hers, and she sensed it was a continuation of an old argument between them.

"It is not easy to give up pack and family," Dorian's response was to Gwyn and not to Harper. "You know that."

"You are free now," she told them. 'stay that way."

"We will take you home," Dorian murmured.

"It is not safe…" She protested. "You don't want to come to the attention of the authorities, Dorian. You don't want them to look too closely into you."

"Our IDs are sound," he was not bothered. "And will with-hold their scrutiny. Plus, two human men taking a werewolf female home… No one is going to question, beyond wondering if…" He paused and swallowed, embarrassed.

"If I am doing you for a bit extra on the side?" She finished for him. "You are right. No one will question beyond that." She sighed. She did not want to return home on the bus, with a couple of grands worth of notes in her pockets. "Alright," she agreed.

Besides, a secret, inner voice whispered, she wanted to spend every moment that she had in their company.

It was not surprising, she thought. They were her mates, still. They might have rejected her, but she had stubbornly held onto her end of the mate claim, refusing to let it go.

Dorian eased away from her back reluctantly, and Gwyn smiled at her ruefully as she lifted off of his lap. She kicked open the hidden drawer beneath the seats and pulled out a pouch of wipes. "Clean yourselves up whilst I go change, I will meet you out front," she tossed the wipes onto Gwyn's lap before sliding through the privacy curtains.

In the changeroom, she closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the lockers. "What are you doing, Harper?" She demanded of herself. "You cannot have them." And yet, that part of hr that clung to the bond, surged with excitement at seeing them again.

As she pulled on her threadbare jeans and oversized sweat shirt, both items selected for the purpose of hiding her from the human male gaze whilst travelling too and from the club, she listed to herself all the reasons she could not have Dorian Hemming and Gwyn Randal, starting from the fact that they had rejected the mate-claim, lived as humans, were her step-brothers by marriage, and finishing with the truth that taking two mates would result in ostracism from the pack, no matter how much they needed her, that would be a step too far for them.

By the time she made her way down the dark, dingy alley with its overflowing industrial sized garbage bins and rats that scurried away into the shadows at her approach, she had managed to convince herself that she had her hormones under control, and then she saw Gwyn pushed himself off the wall at the mouth of the alleyway, his hands in his pockets and his suit jacket pushed back revealing his narrow waist and strong thighs, immediately causing her hormones to laugh at her mockingly.

"shit," she muttered under her breath.

"dorian's just getting the car," he told her making no move to leave the alleyway, not wanting to draw any more attention to them than necessary. "Harper," he said softly, his grey-blue eyes intense. "dorian is right. It is not easy to be pack-less. There is a loneliness to it that is… indescribable. We are social animals by nature, being alone is unbearable."

"You have each other," she told him.

"And that is the only reason that we have been able to do this successfully. Dorian and I… Well, people think that we are twins, and I think, at spirit, we are. I couldn't do this without him. But I…" He reached out and cupped her cheek. "I would have been selfish enough to take you with us."

Her breath caught in her throat, and, for a moment, he inclined over her, as if intending to kiss her, and then a yellow Ferrari pulling up to the curve caught his attention, and his hand dropped from her cheek, guiltily. "dorian is here," he said, unnecessarily.

Previous Chapter
Next Chapter