When I let her go, we stepped to the end of the room. Kylie’s gaze drifted over the wreckage. “So... we don’t have to worry about any more of those jerks showing up, do we?”
“I don’t think so. From what we heard, this was their last-ditch effort, all-in to take us down. Otherwise Phillipe wouldn’t have shown his hand.”
And we’d defeated them. The rogues were decimated now—the ones who’d wanted me and my alphas dead, at least.
My legs wobbled under me. I might have tipped back against the wall if a large hand hadn’t caught my arm.
“Hey,” Nate said, bending to kiss my temple. “The shift and the fighting took a lot out of you.” He glanced at Kylie. “Do you mind if I borrow her and make her get some rest?”
“Please do,” Kylie said with a sweeping gesture. She shot me a grin and a wink as the bear shifter ushered me away.
The other alphas were waiting in the hall. “What about the rest of your kin?” I said to Marco.
“Ah, they’re pretty good at looking after themselves,” he said in his usual languid tone. “I gave a nice little speech and passed out some orders. That should hold them over for at least a few hours.” His expression turned more serious. “We’ll have the funerals tomorrow.”
“And luck willing, no more for a long time after that,” Aaron remarked. He took my hand as we headed to my guest suite.
When we reached the door, the four guys followed me in. I crawled onto the bed, and they piled on around me. The morning’s exhaustion was already catching up with me. I yawned and set my head on the pillow, surrounded by their warmth, and just like that, I was out.
*
I woke up, a little groggy and achy but feeling a lot more alive than before, to a streak of late afternoon sun drifting through the window. I stretched on the bed, and my mates stirred. Looking down at myself, I grimaced.
“Okay, I think a bath is in order before dinner.”
Marco slid off the bed with a chuckle. “As much as I’d like to join you for that, I think I’d better touch base with my kin. But I will see you at dinner... and after?”
The lilt of his tone sent a flutter of desire through me. I pushed myself up to meet him, pulling him into a kiss. “Of course ‘and after.’”
I’d already checked out the bathtub in the suite’s bathroom. Like the bed, the circular tub was plenty big enough for five. Four should be a piece of cake. I turned the taps until the water was gushing out in a steamy stream. A handful of sea salt to make it nice and invigorating—perfect!
“I take it we’re all invited?” Nate said, strolling in after me.
“The more the merrier. I’d like to think of it as a big, wet reset button in this visit. Good-bye, rogues! Hello, whatever the heck shifters usually do!”
“There’s plenty of time for you to learn all of that,” Aaron said. He slipped his arm around me and pressed his lips to my shoulder. “And I look forward to guiding you along the way.”
“Hmm. Me too,” I said with a suggestive waggle of my eyebrows that made him laugh.
As I plunged into the hot water, West finally emerged from the bedroom. He took in me already submerged and his fellow alphas climbing in after me, and shrugged. “Why not?”
Well, that was about as much enthusiasm as I could hope for from my wolf shifter.
The whisper of the water against my skin brought back the memory of the more pleasant activities I’d gotten up to this morning. My little interlude in the pond with Marco. All the fun that could be had while playing around in the water. I licked my lips, looking around at my mates. Then a deeper urge gripped my heart.
I could have lost any of them today. If one of them had been caught by the wrong bullet, like Coreen’s husband had... Just the thought of it wrenched at me.
They needed to know just how much they meant to me.
I glided through the water over to Aaron. He smiled, reaching to cup my cheek. I settled on his lap and leaned in for a kiss. His other hand settled on my waist, his thumb stroking over my side as our mouths pressed together slickly. I was plenty hot and bothered already by the time I eased back. But I held myself a little away from him and gazed into his bright blue eyes.
“I love you,” I said, the feeling of it rushing through me as if saying the words out loud had uncorked a whole new bottle of adoration.
Aaron’s face lit up. He kissed me again, even more deeply this time. Then he said, with his lips just an inch from mine, “I love you, Serenity. Always.”
I drifted from him to Nate beside him. The bear shifter welcomed me into his arms, already grinning. I snuggled into his embrace and kissed him hard, wanting him to feel how much this mattered to me. He rumbled in his chest, his fingers caressing my back. I touched the side of his face as I pulled away to meet his warm brown gaze.
“I love you.”
“I love you too,” he said. “Don’t you ever doubt it.”
I brushed my lips to his again. Then I turned. West watched me from the opposite corner of the tub. His body was tensed, but his dark green eyes looked softer than usual.
“Come here, Sparks,” he said. “I might as well get my kiss.”
Did he think he wasn’t getting the rest? Well, maybe I wasn’t totally sure either. It was a little hard to follow how I felt with all the push-pull between us. But if he was offering a kiss, he’d better believe I was going to take it.
I floated over to him, half expecting him to change his mind. Or to grab me and plant one on me so hungry it made my head spin.
He reached for me, easing his fingers around my wrist to tug me a little closer. He teased his other hand into my hair. We held each other’s gazes for a moment, his strangely searching. A flutter passed through my chest. Then he drew me the rest of the way to him.
His mouth claimed mine with a tenderness I couldn’t have been prepared for. His lips coaxed mine apart to deepen the kiss, and just like that, I was lost in him. Lost in the gentle passion of his embrace, lost in the smell that lingered on his skin as if he’d brought the forests of his home here with him.
This was the man I’d known my mate could be. The one I’d caught glimpses of in the rare moments when he let his guard down.
My head was spinning when he released me from that lip-lock. I stared at him for a second, catching my breath, my whole body aflame with both lust and a more heartfelt longing. I drew in a breath to say what I’d said to the others, what felt undeniably true now—and the door thumped in the other room.
As I swiveled around, Marco strode into the room. He was frowning, his eyes dark with concern.
“A few of the rogues escaped,” he said. “Not so many that we’d need to worry about them on their own, but—my people’s reports say they headed north. Straight toward a troop of vampires that just annexed my New York property and is now moving on from there. It looks like the rogues have even more allies than we realized. And they’ve just incited a full-scale paranormal war.”