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Warlock and the Bear

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Школа кожевенного мастерства: сумки, ремни своими руками
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  Warlock and the Bear
  
  
  Banford & Beauty Bears
  
  
  
  
  
  Mina Carter
  
  
  
  
  
  New York Times & USA Today Bestselling Author
  
  
  
  
  
  Copyright No 2019 by Mina Carter
  
  All rights reserved.
  
  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
  
  
  
  Cover Model: Ryan Lee Harmon
  
  Model Image by: Reggie Deanching
  
  
  
  
  
  Contents
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 1
  
  
  
  Chapter 2
  
  
  
  Chapter 3
  
  
  
  Chapter 4
  
  
  
  Chapter 5
  
  
  
  Chapter 6
  
  
  
  Chapter 7
  
  
  
  Chapter 8
  
  
  
  Chapter 9
  
  
  
  Chapter 10
  
  
  
  Chapter 11
  
  
  
  Epilogue
  
  
  
  
  
  About the Author
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 1
  
  
  
  
  
  It had been a long-ass day, in a long-ass week, and it wasn’t over yet. Morgan Jones sighed to himself, snapped the band from his wrist around his hair to hold it in a low ponytail, and looked at the house in front of him.
  
  As houses went, it was nice. Unassuming. Very suburban three-point-four children and white picket fence. Golf and PTA. The problem was not the house, but the red glow in the windows.
  
  An unearthly scream shattered the air, sounds of torment echoing from within the cream walls of suburban normal.
  
  The homeowner moaned, her face pale with fear as she wrung her hands. “It’s getting louder.”
  
  Morgan stopped his lip curling back as he flicked a glance over the stylish black clothes and the ‘gram-worthy silver pentagram around her neck.
  
  A modern ‘witch’.
  
  He used the term loosely. Very loosely. He doubted the woman had ever even been within pissing distance of serious magic. No, for her and her ilk, magic was prettily-illustrated ‘spells’ written in their bullet journals and crystals that matched their decorating aesthetic. They played with herbs to make spelled teas and picked tarot cards because they looked good.
  
  Magic—real magic—didn’t work like that.
  
  It was raw and powerful and primal. It wasn’t pretty, nor did it play nice if you wrote it down. The tarot deck of a real magic user didn’t look good, and often didn’t have cards that all matched, if they used cards at all. Some used runes, some used tea leaves and others, entrails. Crystals were powerful and contrary tools that often refused to comply with anything, much less a decorating scheme.
  
  Herbs? He’d known battle-hardened mages avoid a witch’s herb garden, as did most of the local wildlife. Rumor had it a badger had wandered into his grandmother’s herb garden once. It had massacred three cow herds and caused a minor news incident before they’d gotten the situation locked down and out of sight of the humans.
  
  And that was the number one law, upheld by all those of the paranormal persuasion.
  
  Humans did not find out about them. End of story.
  
  Which meant witch-wannabe here was in serious shit. She’d fucked up a spell and managed to summon a demon. Not in a midnight ritual somewhere out in the wilds of nature where it could have slipped under the radar. In her own damn house. In the middle of a human town, not even a para-controlled one like Beauty, the shifter town where Morgan had hung his hat since he’d left the army.
  
  “Okay,” he growled. “Give me a rundown of exactly what you did. Don’t leave anything out. I need to know the spell you used, so I can figure out where you fucked it up.”
  
  She blinked up at him, tears in her eyes. “I didn’t mess it up. I followed the spell exactly. To the letter. Someone has to have cursed me…”
  
  He resisted the urge to facepalm. Curses weren’t as easy to pull off as everyone thought.
  
  “…I can’t have gotten it wrong. I’m a good witch. A white witch,” she all but wailed.
  
  “Lady,” he bit out on a growl, wondering why the hell he’d picked up this job anyway.
  
  It wasn’t like he needed the money. He owned his own club, had more spare cash than he could shake a stick at, and it was all his—he was beholden to no one for what he had. He certainly didn’t need to pick up shitty little jobs like this that paid fuck all.
  
  The problem was any other caster she’d have gotten for what she was offering… well, the demon would have eaten him or her for breakfast, and then Morgan would have had to deal with a demon in control of a warlock’s body. No, it was easier to just sort this crap here and now.
  
  He sighed. “There’s no such thing as white magic or black magic. There’s just magic, and believe me, it will fuck you over given half a chance. It’s why you shouldn’t fuck with it unless you know what the fuck you’re doing.”
  
  Normally he didn’t swear so much, especially in front of a woman, but people messing about with magic thinking it was harmless really got on his last nerve. In a stomped all over it in hobnail boots kind of way.
  
  Magic was not harmless. Ever.
  
  “No no no, my coven mistress says there’s good and bad magic,” she replied stubbornly.
  
  “Yeah, right…” he drawled. “And your coven mistress knows fuck all.”
  
  Witch-wannabe stiffened and looked him up and down. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing? You don’t look… very… magicky?”
  
  He chuckled. “Lady, you called for an oathbreaker, which means you get what you’re given. Unless you wanna ‘fess up to the authorities? And I ain’t talking about the police.”
  
  Summoning a demon and potentially exposing the paranormal community to human scrutiny was a serious offense. If she was caught by the Guard and brought before the local Elders Council, she’d be in big trouble. She paled even further, and he seriously thought she was about to do a face-plant on the asphalt. Before he could put a hand out to stop her busting up her pretty face, she shook her head quickly. “No, no need for that. Are you sure you can deal with it?”
  
  “The spell you used?” he prompted. “Can’t do jack shit without that.”
  
  “Yes, yes, of course. I have it here,” she said, pulling out her phone and flicking through her social media.
  
  “Of course you do,” he sighed. Not only had she written a spell down, but she’d taken a photo of it. Great.
  
  She held it out to him. “Look, I did exactly as it said, down to the letter.”
  
  Morgan scanned the image and closed his eyes for a second. It was in runic, a language older than dirt and notoriously wily. No magic user with any sense in their heads wrote a spell in runic. The damn stuff would always find a way to twist the outcome.
  
  “Yeah. No, you didn’t,” he told her, easily reading it and making sense of the form of the spell. “This one here? You needed Daet… it’s almost the same, but you missed the crossbar. That’s Taez… and it’s a fucker. It’ll twist any spell you put it in. It’s one of Loki’s own symbols.”
  
  She blinked. “The little squiggle thingie? It didn’t work with the birds. I-I didn’t think it would matter if I left it out.”
  
  Oh, Mercy give him strength. She’d altered a runic symbol because it didn’t fit with her drawing. He growled and took the phone off her. Quickly, he deleted the post and rooted around in her hundreds of selfies to find the original.
  
  “Leaving it out is what got you a fucking demon in your kitchen. You need to find this…” He showed her the image. “And burn it. Now… please, for the love of all that is holy, tell me you used a normal pentagram to do your spell? You didn’t alter it in any way, shape or form?”
  
  She looked offended for a moment, then another wail from inside the house made her pale even further. “No,” she admitted in a small voice. “It was just a normal pentagram. I put flowers inside though, for…”
  
  Her voice trailed off as he shot her a look. If she was going to say for social media, he might actually turn her into a frog. Or a toad. Or a horny-tailed lizard. Something fugly, and he’d make her stay like that for at least a month.
  
  “Okay,” he muttered, pulling his talisman pouch from beneath his shirt and closing a big fist around it. “I can deal with this. You just stay back. Do not enter the building no matter what you hear, understand?”
  
  She nodded, her eyes wide with fear. “W-what are you going to do?”
  
  He grinned nastily, a white flash of teeth in his tanned face. “Show that demonic asshole exactly what a warlock can do.”
  
  
  
  
  
  It had been a long-ass day, in a long-ass week, and she really needed a drink.
  
  “Rack ‘em up, Ash,” Lilly ordered as she walked into the Beast, the lone bar in the town of Beauty, and headed straight for the bar.
  
  “One of them days, huh, Braun?” Ash grinned at her as he reached for some glasses, lining them up on the bar before starting to fill them with ice and rum.
  
  Normally, when she was out with the girls, they drank cocktails… or the Beasts’ version of it anyway. Mostly Ash just mixed different drinks, put an umbrella in the glass, and gave it a dirty name.
  
  But not today. One look at her face, and he didn’t need to ask what she wanted. This was a hard rum sort of day.
  
  “You could say that,” she groused, with far more of her bear in it than normal. Given that Ash was also a shifter, albeit a werepanther rather than a bear, she didn’t bother to conceal what she was. “Bennett’s getting clingy.”
  
  She sighed as she downed the first rum and closed her eyes to savor the burn all the way down to her stomach.
  
  “Oh?” Ash’s eyebrow winged up as he cleaned and dried glasses before putting them back in the rack. “He’s had a thing about you for years, so that doesn’t surprise me.”
  
  “What? Bennett?” She blinked in surprise and reached for another glass. Hopefully after another five or so, she’d start to feel a pleasant buzz. If her bitch of a bear didn’t decide to dump all the alcohol out of her system in one go. It had done that once, in the middle of a girls’ night. Right out of her pores. Looked like she’d had a shower. Fully clothed. Not fun.
  
  “Who else are we talking about?” Ash smiled as he leaned against the bar. “Unless you’d like to talk about Morgan instead?”
  
  The heat flared over Lilly’s cheeks before she could stop it. Rather than fluster though and give Ash the reaction he wanted, she dead-eyed him. “Magic boy? Why would we talk about him?”
  
  Her tone was disinterested, and she had the second rum. She wasn’t interested in the tall, handsome, muscled warlock at all. Uh-uh. No sirree.
  
  “Huh, just thought you might be interested. That’s all…“ Ash smiled broadly. “Does that mean you might be interested in a little… kitty action?”
  
  She grinned, back in familiar territory. Ash had hit on her the moment he’d first met her and hadn’t stopped since. It was the sort of friendly, never-gonna-happen type of flirting that she was comfortable with.
  
  “Yeah, yeah… I know how that’ll end. Me, chained to the fridge, bringing you milk all the time as you demand tummy rubs.”
  
  “Dammit,” the big werepanther chuckled. “And there I thought I’d be every woman’s perfect pet.”
  
  “That’s a dog, handsome,” she threw back at him.
  
  “Woof woof.” The cat winked.
  
  The main door to the bar opened, and automatically she checked in the mirror behind the bar to see who had come in. Her hackles went up. They were all bears, but that wasn’t why she was on high alert. As enforcer for the Beauty clan, bears she could handle, even if they got a little rowdy as bears were sometimes wont to do.
  
  No, the problem was Bennett.
  
  For the last week, he’d been tailing her on the job as clan enforcer, on the orders of their prime, to see if Bennett would be a good fit for the team. Young, fit, and with a powerful bear, he’d make an excellent enforcer. She had no problems with him in that way.
  
  No, Lilly’s issue with him was personal. Or rather, the fact he had steadily been getting way too personal with her. It had started with joining her for lunch. Which was fine at first, they were working together after all, but then the other day she’d needed to drop something off at the post office and he’d demanded to know where she was going, why, and who she was meeting. Not normal co-worker level of interest. No. It had verged on possessive. And since they weren’t mated, nor had she given any hints she wanted them to be, that was a problem.
  
  “Uh-oh,” Ash murmured. “Watch your six, beautiful.”
  
  Sure enough, Bennett stormed across the bar to stand behind her, bristling with anger. She ignored him for a moment, downing another rum.
  
  “Where have you been?” He demanded, his voice deep with his bear. “You didn’t go home after we finished up at the Black place.”
  
  “None of your business, Bennett.”
  
  She met his eyes in the mirror. It was easy to tell Ash was a veteran. There were mirrors in strategic places around the bar, ensuring there were no blind spots. She wouldn’t expect anything else from a guy who’d served with her boss.
  
  “Once we clock off, my time is my own.”
  
  His eyes were dark with his bear and he curled his lip back. “Who were you with, Lilly? You were with someone. Who was it?”
  
  She turned in her seat but didn’t get up. Not just yet. She didn’t need to. If Bennett was stupid enough to try anything with her, she could have claws in his throat in a heartbeat.
  
  “I said it once, and I’ll say it again, none of your business. Your trial for the enforcer team is over, and I’ll be meeting with Dean to give him my recommendation tomorrow.”
  
  And that was it, the sum total of their involvement with each other. She was head enforcer for the clan, he was a potential for the team. End. Of. Story. Bennett didn’t seem to see it that way.
  
  “Dammit Lilly!” He ground out. “The looks you’ve been giving me all week… There’s something between us. You feel something for me. I know you do. Admit it.”
  
  Behind Bennett, the door opened again, and two men walked in. Dean Sterling, prime for the Beauty clan, and Morgan Jones, his warlock buddy. A little devil on her shoulder tempted her, aided and abetted by the alcohol and her hussy of a bear, and she slid off her seat to slide by him.
  
  “Sorry Bennett,” she said, patting him on the shoulder as she passed. “But I’m spoken for. Hey handsome… thought you’d never get here.”
  
  Dean and Morgan looked up as she approached, surprise on their faces. For all of a fraction of a second as she walked into Morgan’s arms. Rising on her tiptoes, she wrapped her arms around his broad-as-a-barn shoulders, plastering herself against the front of his body, and pressed her lips to his.
  
  
  
  
  
  Morgan had walked right into one of his fantasies.
  
  He had many surrounding Lilly Braun, the clan’s head enforcer. She was tiny, packed with curves, and gorgeous. Had she been human he’d have charmed her and had her in his bed in a hot second. Unfortunately, she wasn’t human, and all that gorgeousness was attached to one of the meanest she-bears Morgan had ever met.
  
  Still… he’d have done her. Just one problem. No one hit on Cast Iron Balls Braun without her express permission, and possibly a note from her parents, the principal, and any other authority in the local vicinity.
  
  So when she planted one on him, right there in the middle of the bar, you could have knocked him down with a feather. The instant her lips brushed his, though, he was hooked.
  
  Automatically, his arms closed around her, one holding the tiny curvy form captive against his broad chest while the other slid up her back to bury itself in her hair. It was a bad idea, and at any second he expected claws in his throat.
  
  Instead, she murmured softly and parted her lips. Invited him in. It was like lightning had struck, and anyone could have been forgiven for thinking he was the bear from the growl that rumbled up from the center of his chest.
  
  He didn’t need a second invitation.
  
  Unable to stop himself, driven by purely male instinct, he tilted his head to deepen the kiss. Fire filled his veins as he plundered her soft little mouth, taking everything she offered and wanting more. Much, much more. The first soft brush of her tongue against his sent a bolt right through his body, his cock punching to full mast in a heartbeat.
  
  Before his lizard brain could start thinking about finding a horizontal surface and taking this to the next step—The next several steps, all night long—a deep, dangerous growl started up.
  
  It wasn’t him, he was sure of that. The rumbles he’d been making were ones of need and desire. This sound was low and malevolent—the sound of bloody and brutal violence about to happen.
  
  Morgan reacted on instinct. He tore his lips from Lilly’s and shoved her behind him, using his bigger form to shield her as he flicked his wrist, casting a spell with half a thought and holding it ready as he looked for the threat. Only those with magical blood would be able to see the potential of magic caged in his hand.
  
  A bear stood in front of them in human form. Just. Fury rolled off him, his eyes dark, and fur poked through his pores, just visible over his collar.
  
  “Bennett?” Morgan frowned, not ready to dismiss the spell just yet.
  
  Lilly struggled, but he held her behind him easily, not about to let her put herself in harm’s way. Yeah, she was a mean-ass shifter who could probably play chicken with a bus and come out the winner, but she was still female, and all his male instincts insisted on protecting her.
  
  “Mine!” The younger man growled, his darkened eyes latching onto Lilly.
  
  Morgan had worked with shifters for years, ever since he’d joined up. As soon as they realized he was an oathbreaker, a magic user without a family affiliation, he’d been transferred into the supernatural units. So he’d seen all sorts of shifter-types, and easily recognized one who was about to lose touch with his humanity.
  
  “Bennett, wanna calm it down a little there, bud?”
  
  Morgan deliberately kept his voice low and calm. No sudden moves. Being mauled by a bear wasn’t on the top of his list of things to do today. Or any day. Because that was going to end one way, with him blasting the unfortunate teddy into next week.
  
  “We don’t wanna put on a show and scare people off, do we?” he added pointedly, trying to get through to the man under the bear. Bennett was clan-born and bred, he knew the laws just as well as Morgan did. Better.
  
  Humans didn’t find out about them.
  
  And while Beauty had a resident bear clan, not everyone in town had paranormal blood. There were humans living here as well, like the group by the door, glasses paused halfway to their lips as they tried to watch what was going on without looking like they were.
  
  The low growl from behind him only added tension to the situation, and he tightened his arm on Lilly’s in warning. Challenging a bear on the edge was never a good idea, which was why he hadn’t. Not yet. Warlocks were just as hardy as shifters, so he could take Bennett in a fight. Probably. Definitely in human form, but that would require him to throw some serious magic to lock Bennett’s bear away.
  
  “How about we take this someplace else, eh?” Dean said, stepping up and wrapping his arm around Bennett’s shoulders and neck in a male-bonding, bros kind of way. Only someone who knew him would clock the hardness in his eyes, and only those sensitive to either magic or shift potential would feel the shiver over their skin as the bear prime locked the younger man’s bear within his skin. It was a nifty trick only alphas could pull off.
  
  “Move,” Dean ordered them all, nodding toward the door. “Back to the lodge. And yes, that means you too, Braun. You can explain what the fuck you think you’re playing at.”
  
  “Me? I wasn’t the one about to… let the cat out of the bag!” The woman behind Morgan squeaked with an edge of a rumble in her voice. Fuck it, even with a hint of her other nature showing through, she turned him on.
  
  Without saying anything, he turned on his heel, bundling her toward the door at the same time as Dean marched Bennett that way, the two of them working like a team. Just like they always had.
  
  He cast a quick glance at Bennett as they reached the door, making sure to keep him and Lilly apart. It hadn’t escaped his notice that Bennett’s black gaze hadn’t left Lilly for a second. Poor guy couldn’t even talk—the snarls from his enraged bear lodged in his throat. Morgan hadn’t seen a bear so far gone for years.
  
  Anger filled him. He wasn’t an idiot. Lilly had only kissed him because of Bennett, and he didn’t like being a patsy for anyone, not even a babe as hot as Lilly.
  
  Which meant little miss “hey handsome” had some fucking explaining to do…
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 2
  
  
  
  
  
  She’d fucked up. Like fucked up, good and proper.
  
  Kissing Morgan had seemed like an awesome idea at the time. If Bennett thought she was in a relationship with the big warlock, then he’d drop the idea of them as a couple. Right? Because between the two men there was no contest. Bennett was cute and all, young and virile, but Morgan was… ohmygod handsome with a dangerous edge that got all her attention, and a hard, muscled body she appreciated on a very feminine level.
  
  But kissing him had been a bad idea. A really bad idea. Lilly sat in the passenger seat of Morgan’s truck, Dean in the back with his arm still around Bennett’s neck as the younger bear snarled and struggled. Admittedly, it wasn’t much of a struggle, not with Dean’s shift magic wrapped around him closer than a boa’s coils.
  
  The journey back to the lodge was short and sweet. Thankfully. The tension in the big truck was stifling, something that kept her quiet almost as well as the sheer stunned surprise that still rolled through her after that kiss.
  
  She’d thought it would be a quick peck on the lips. One brush, convince Bennett they were a couple, done.
  
  She hadn’t expected his arms to close around her, or his hand to drive into her hair. She hadn’t expected him to kiss her back. Or deepen the kiss. She certainly hadn’t expected the heat and need that had hit her like a flash fire as soon as he did. The memory of his lips covering hers, the sweep of his tongue against them as he’d demanded she open up, filled her mind and it was like she was there again.
  
  A shiver hit her, and she wrapped her arms around herself, trying not to look at him. It didn’t work, and he caught her side-look, an irritating as fuck smile curving the corner of those sinfully full lips.
  
  Great job Braun, she chastised herself. Now he’s onto you.
  
  Fuck. Her weakness where the big warlock was concerned was something she’d kept under wraps since he’d arrived in Beauty. They couldn’t work. He was a warlock, and she was a bear. The two didn’t work… they just didn’t.
  
  Most magic users had a thing against shifters, so why should oathbreakers, those who had left their families or been exiled, be any different? Hell, she’d even heard him once tell Dean that shifter blood was nothing special, that they were boring. Practically human.
  
  They pulled up outside the lodge. Bennett had calmed enough that it just took Dean’s hand on his shoulder to get the younger bear out of the car and into the lodge. He paced the main room like a caged bear, shooting looks at Lilly and Morgan.
  
  “What the fuck did you think you were doing, Bennett?” The prime all but exploded, fury on his face. “Beauty is our town, yes, but there are still humans here. We can’t show ourselves. You know that.”
  
  The guilt that showed on Bennett’s face hit Lilly twice as hard. Shit. She’d done that. Pushed him so much that he’d almost broken the rules. But just as quickly, she pushed back against the emotion. No. She was not responsible for a man’s reactions. He knew the rules. He knew no meant no. She wasn’t responsible if he was a jerk and didn’t see that.
  
  “Sorry prime,” he muttered, bowing his head as the bigger man stalked around him. “I… I guess I lost sight of what mattered for a moment. I…” He looked up and toward Lilly.
  
  She sucked in a hard breath at the need and longing there. Shit. He had it bad. But… her bear didn’t feel anything for him. In fact, the creature positively turned her nose up and huffed. And if her bear didn’t like a guy, it was a non-starter.
  
  “Don’t look at her,” Dean growled, drawing Bennett’s attention again. “Look at me. You almost revealed us, over a female. That’s unacceptable. You’ll be on lodge duties for the next month, understand me?”
  
  Lilly kept her expression level. Lodge duties meant Bennett would be coming here every night after he’d finished his day job, and doing anything that needed doing about the place. Any and every menial task required to keep the clan’s lodge running… including cleaning toilets and laundry. Usually they all pitched in, every bear in the clan on rotation, unless someone pulled extra as punishment. Even Dean, their leader, was on the rotation.
  
  “Yes prime,” Bennett didn’t look at Lilly again, his tone despondent.
  
  “Good. Now get out. Report back here tomorrow.”
  
  At the order the younger bear filed out. As he went, he shot a look at Morgan, his bear visible in his eyes.
  
  Dean groaned as the door shut behind Bennett and turned on the two of them. “Okay, tell me what the fuck just went on? You do realize he’s half matestruck, don’t you?”
  
  Lilly stilled. Matestrike was rare. So rare most people thought it was a myth. And it was bad. It meant a bear had fixated on a potential mate to the point he could barely think, and he’d stay that way until the fascination was broken, or he mated with the object of his affections.
  
  In this case, her.
  
  “Don’t look at me.” Morgan held his hands up in surrender. “I’m the victim of unsolicited kissing here.”
  
  Lilly gasped. What an utter asshole. “I didn’t see you arguing though,” she shot back at him. “And I didn’t ask you to kiss me back!”
  
  “No. I agree,” Dean replied with a sigh, rubbing between his brows. “You looked like you were enjoying it. More than enjoying it.”
  
  The warlock just shrugged. “What can I say? I can’t help it if the ladies find me irresistible.”
  
  “Oh, get over yourself,” she growled. “I’d have kissed Dean if he was single. But he’s not, so it was you. And I only kissed you to get Bennett off my back.”
  
  She wouldn’t have kissed Dean, her prime, in a month of Sundays, but they didn’t need to know that.
  
  “Second choice?! Lady, you wound me,” Morgan exclaimed, clasping his hands over his heart dramatically.
  
  “Dickhead warlock.”
  
  He was, he really was. She had no idea why she’d kissed him now.
  
  But he really could kiss. And she really wished she didn’t know that.
  
  “Ball-buster bear,” he shot back.
  
  “I’d like to bust your balls.”
  
  “I’d rather you do something else with them.”
  
  “Children!!” Dean’s roar stopped the squabbling, and they both looked at him. He glared at Morgan.
  
  “Stop antagonizing her.”
  
  She turned her head, about to be completely juvenile and stick her tongue out at him when Dean turned his glare on her. It was not the amused and amiable look of a happy man. It was the pissed off look of her prime.
  
  “And you. I have no clue why you dragged Morgan into this, rather than come to me, but now you can live with the consequences. For the next however long, until Bennett’s fascination with you has worn off, you and Morgan are an item.”
  
  “What?”
  
  “You gotta be kidding me! Why am I being punished?”
  
  They both exploded together. Lilly’s head snapped around. “So you see being with me as a punishment, do you?” She accused, her temper flaring. “Well it ain’t no better for me, handsome. You think I want to put up with an arrogant jerk like you? I’d rather mate a were-hyena. At least they have manners.”
  
  And with that, she stormed out, slamming the door behind her.
  
  
  
  
  
  Morgan shook his head as the door slammed.
  
  “That girl seriously needs a personality transplant, or to get laid. Or something,” he chuckled, looking over at Dean.
  
  But Dean’s expression wasn’t the smiling one he expected. Instead, Dean’s face was set in firm lines.
  
  “Well, you need to figure out which, because you’re stuck with her for the next couple of weeks,” he bit out.
  
  “What? Don’t tell me you were serious with all that crap about being an item?” Morgan’s jaw hit the deck.
  
  “Are you deaf as well as stupid?” The big bear asked, raising an eyebrow. “Or perhaps I’m speaking Swahili?”
  
  Morgan didn’t point out it wouldn’t have made any difference if he was—a small spell could solve any language issues. But instinct warned him that being a smartass was not a wise course of action. Not right now, not when Dean looked like he was ready to rip heads off. And Morgan had no intention of one of them being his.
  
  “I thought you were just saying that to scare her. Braun, I mean. Put her in her place for kissing me.”
  
  Dean smirked. “Yeah? Because you have such an issue with women just up and kissing you out of the blue, don’t you? Don’t you answer that,” he ordered as Morgan opened his mouth. “No. I wasn’t joking. Bennett is so close to matestruck, I could virtually taste it as soon as we walked into the bar. Which means at the moment, he’s a clear and present danger to Lilly. And it could cause panic in the rest of the clan it if got out. Some idiots still believe it can be passed on by touch.”
  
  Morgan’s ire fled, every cell of his body still as he focused on Dean. “What kind of danger?”
  
  So help him, if the guy touched a hair on her head, screw all the rules, Morgan would take him apart, piece by piece.
  
  Dean ran a hand through his close-cropped hair. “When a bear gets matestruck, it’s total obsession. All they can see, hear, and think about is the woman they want. And it’s usually males. I’ve never heard of a female getting matestruck. Ever.”
  
  “So he’s going to mope around and write bad poetry to the sparkle in her eyes or something?” Morgan asked hopefully.
  
  He’d never heard of this matestrike thing, but then, he wasn’t a shifter. Until he’d joined up, he hadn’t had much to do with them. Not with the family he’d come from. Shifters of any type were seen as mere animals. That wasn’t to say those with magic didn’t have their own issues, even obsessions, but it was normally the allure of power rather than another person.
  
  “I wish.” Dean sighed and dropped into one of the deep leather couches. “No. He’s more likely to try and carry her off to his lair and keep her there until she agrees to mate with him. Or mate with her anyway.”
  
  The blood froze in Morgan’s veins. “He’d kidnap and rape her? My god, why didn’t you say?”
  
  He’d already started to turn, ready to rush out of the door and go after the bear-woman when Dean spoke again.
  
  “Hold up. It’s not that desperate. I’ve locked him into his human form for now. So, if he does try and kidnap her, he’s got to do it as a man without his bear. And against Lilly Braun? He’d be fucked. And not in a good way.”
  
  “Yeah. She’s got a temper on her, for sure.” Morgan relaxed a little, a smile crawling over his lips. “So, if she doesn’t need protecting, why the farce?”
  
  Dean’s gaze pinned him. “Because it’s not enough. As long as she’s unmated, then Bennett will be a danger to her. Even if I sent him to another clan, he’d make his way back. No, the best way is to make him think she’s mated to someone else.”
  
  “That’s bullshit,” Morgan spat in exasperation. “You guys keep saying you’re not animals, and now you tell me you don’t get that no means no?”
  
  “Like humans, some people are just assholes.” Dean’s voice dropped low with frustration and his bear. “And it’s even worse with matestrike. Literally, he will not be able to tell that her protests are real. He’ll concoct some story in his head about people turning her against him. It’s a sickness, and a very serious one.”
  
  The prospect of Lilly, any woman, in that situation chilled Morgan right through to the soul. “So I get to be the sacrificial lamb, huh?”
  
  Dean chuckled. “You get to live with a hot chick you’ve been eyeing up and wanking over for years.”
  
  “Hey!” Morgan protested. “That’s not true. I have not been eyeing her up. I’ve been ogling her. Big difference.”
  
  Dean barked a laugh. “I note no argument to the…” He moved his fist in a jerking off motion.
  
  Morgan chuckled as he turned to leave. “Fuck, no. I’ve done that every night since I met her.”
  
  
  
  
  
  She wanted to drive away and leave the asshole warlock in the dust, she really did. But, as Lilly emerged from the lodge, she realized she’d missed one important detail.
  
  He’d driven them here.
  
  “Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me,” she hissed, staring at Morgan’s truck parked in front of the lodge. But, as much as she stared, it stubbornly refused to turn into her little pink SUV.
  
  For a moment her gaze flickered to the road. She could walk back to town. It wasn’t that far and… She looked up at the darkening sky. Nope. It would be dark when she got home and while she wasn’t scared of the dark, she’d be cold, damp and even more pissed off by the time she got there.
  
  She shivered at the thought. She hated being cold. Even more than she hated paper cuts. So walking home was out. A quick query to her bear about shifting to run home was met with a snort.
  
  No help there then.
  
  Lilly knew better than to push. Her bear was a force of nature, and unfortunately, very much her own creature. Quite what had her in a snit now, Lilly had no idea. She got moods occasionally. Like when she’d decided she didn’t like cashmere all of a sudden and poked fur through Lilly’s skin every time she wore the stuff. Eventually Lilly had gotten it out of her bear that she thought it was made from bunny rabbits, and she was protesting their ill-treatment.
  
  It was just her luck to have gotten an eco-warrior for the other side of her shifter-soul.
  
  Growling to herself about asshole warlocks again, she stomped to Morgan’s truck, folded her arms, and leaned against the passenger door.
  
  It wasn’t more than a minute or two before he walked out, the door to the lodge swinging shut behind him. She’d looked up and for a moment, all she could do was drink in the sight of him as he walked toward her. Tall and heavily muscled, anyone could have been mistaken for thinking he was the bear, not her.
  
  Quickly, she got herself under control. The last thing she needed was for him to figure out what he did to her. The asshole’s ego was big enough already, he didn’t need her adding to it.
  
  He didn’t look impressed, his expression hard as he walked down the steps in front of the lodge toward her.
  
  “Meeting with Dean go okay, loverboy?” She threw at him archly. “Please tell me he’s given up on that ridiculous idea of you a—”
  
  He didn’t stop when he reached the bottom of the steps. Before she could stop him, he had pinned her against the side of his truck with his hard body. Heat swirled in his eyes before he crashed his lips down over hers.
  
  A muffled squeak of protest sounded in her throat, and she tried to push him off. She really did. But it seemed her hands hadn’t gotten the memo that he was an asshole, and instead of pushing him away, her traitorous fingers curled around the edges of his leather jacket instead.
  
  Her protest became a moan as he parted her lips with a hard tongue, driving inside to slide against hers in an inferno-laden dance of pure temptation. She gasped, losing all reason as she pressed herself against him. She kissed him back in hot, open-mouthed exchanges, her entire body aching.
  
  He broke the kiss abruptly. “That should convince him you’re hot for me.”
  
  She felt the smile against her lips a moment before the penny dropped. He hadn’t kissed her because he’d wanted to. He’d kissed her because they had an audience. Bennett must be watching them.
  
  “You fucking asshole,” she hissed, beginning to struggle against him. He stopped her with negligent ease, a big hand around the nape of her neck and a hard thigh between both of hers. His thumb brushed just under her ear and rendered her a weak, puddle of ohmygod need.
  
  “Stay still,” he warned in an undertone as he leaned in, his lips brushing against her skin where his thumb had just been, lover-like. “He’s still there. We want to sell this, don’t we?”
  
  “Bastard,” she hissed, but she stayed where she was. They were only in this situation because of Bennett. If she pushed Morgan away now, then they’d be right back to square one.
  
  “I’ll have you know that my parents were married,” he rumbled, nuzzling just under her ear. “And to each other, before you say anything.”
  
  She stilled at the information. He’d never mentioned his family before. When she’d asked Dean a few years ago where the warlock was from, he’d reminded her that oathbreakers were outcasts. Disowned by their families. Whoever Morgan’s family had been, he didn’t have anything to do with them. He was on his own.
  
  She snorted. “Don’t need to be illegitimate to be an asshole, though, do you?”
  
  “I wouldn’t say I’m an asshole,” he argued. “I identify more as a dick.”
  
  “You got that right.” Her lips wanted to curve into a smile, but she locked it down.
  
  He was not funny. No way. No how. Cute. But not funny.
  
  “So we have to do this? Pretend to be a couple.”
  
  She made sure to stress the word pretend. Because that’s all they were doing. As hot and sexy as the warlock was, he wasn’t for her. She’d spend most of her time wanting to climb him like a tree, granted, but the other half wanting to throttle him. It just wouldn’t work.
  
  “Yup,” he breathed, his teeth grazing against her earlobe. She fought down the shiver and locked her knees so she didn’t end up a little puddle on the ground at his feet. Wouldn’t he just love that? Probably make a comment about other activities while she was down there.
  
  “If you stick your tongue in my ear, I’ll fucking gut you, asshole,” she warned, and he chuckled, pushing away from her. Instantly, she missed the feeling of his hard, muscled body against hers.
  
  “Noted. And we’re good, he’s gone.” He looked down at her, blue eyes dark with something she didn’t want to recognize. “Okay sweetcheeks, your place or mine?”
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 3
  
  
  
  
  
  Lilly’s place was complete and utter chaos.
  
  Morgan stood in the doorway of the living room and felt like he’d been physically assaulted. It wasn’t that the place was untidy. Not quite. It was there was stuff…everywhere. A large L-shaped sofa dominated the room, covered in throws and pillows in cozy fabrics and textiles. The sort of tactile offering he’d come to expect from bears. They loved to cuddle down into things. Beds, sofas… someone’s arms.
  
  He fought back the memory of Lilly nestled in his arms, and the accompanying physical reaction. She hadn’t been there because she wanted to be, but because of bloody Bennett Allan. Didn’t make his reaction, or the aching erection that accompanied it, any less real, though. He’d have reacted the same to any woman all over him like that, he told himself, not just Lilly.
  
  He carried on looking around the room. The bookcase overflowed, books stacked next to it and on the coffee table. Although books weren’t all the bookcase contained. There were candles and little ornaments, wooden boxes lodged between the books and photos. So many photos.
  
  They filled the mantlepiece, the open fireplace of which dominated the room. Baskets of logs on either side said the sexy she-bear liked to cuddle up in front of a log fire in the evening.
  
  A smile creased his lips. His little Lilly was a hoarder. Definitely a hoarder. One with a fondness for cute little animal ornaments, and romance books. She was a closet romantic. A fact that was totally at odds with her hard as nails attitude as an enforcer.
  
  His amusement fled when he almost tripped over a pair of high heels in the doorway.
  
  “What the f…”
  
  His eyes widened. They were hooker heels. Higher than any person should be able to walk in, and black patent leather. The same kind dancers in strip clubs wore.
  
  His blood heated at the sight of them as he imagined Lilly in one of the little outfits the dancers wore. Less. Then his imagination took him on a little joyride where Lilly gave him a very personal dance. He growled as his cock punched to full mast, hard and aching against the inside of his jeans.
  
  “Watch out in there,” Lilly called out from the kitchen. “I wasn’t expecting visitors, so I haven’t tidied up. Give me a few, and I will.”
  
  “What are these?” he demanded, walking into the kitchen with the heels looped on one finger.
  
  Her eyes widened fractionally for a moment before she set a bland look on her face and continued to dry and put away the dishes. “We call those shoes.”
  
  “Hahaha.” His dry tone indicated his lack of amusement. “Why do you have them?”
  
  She winged an eyebrow up at him. “Well, usually I put them on my feet…you know, so I don’t cut myself when I go outside.”
  
  “I live above a club, Lilly,” he growled. “I know a pair of pole-dancers shoes when I see them. What I’d like to know is why you have them?”
  
  “Because I’ve been learning to pole-dance, why else?”
  
  “What? When?” he exploded, then frowned. “I’ve never seen you at the club.”
  
  She chuckled and put the last of the dishes away. “That’s because you’re never there when class is on.”
  
  “Class?”
  
  He groaned, putting two and two together.
  
  Sandy, one of the regular dancers, was a fitness instructor.
  
  “I thought those classes were for aerobics.” For old ladies.
  
  Not pole dancing. Definitely not pole dancing. And absolutely, definitely, not Lilly pole dancing.
  
  She shrugged as she tried to move past him in the doorway. “Pole-dancing is excellent aerobic activity. You should try it sometime.”
  
  “I’d rather try something else,” he growled as he blocked her path.
  
  The shoes thudded to the floor by his feet as he turned, pinning her up against the door frame.
  
  The kiss outside the lodge, while it had been hot as hell, had been to prove to Bennett, lurking in the tree-line unseen, that Lilly was his. This kiss was different. This kiss was for him. Because he wanted to. Because he couldn’t go another moment without tasting her again, without feeling her soft curves pressed up against him.
  
  And this time he knew what she tasted like, so he had half a second to anticipate before his lips covered hers. But his lips had barely touched down, he’d barely gotten a taste of the sweetness of her mouth parted under his, when something hard and sharp pressed against the inside of his thigh.
  
  He froze, opening his eyes to find Lilly looking at him, her eyes dark with her bear, and realized she had a claw pressed against his inner thigh. Master warlock he might be, but magic would do fuck all if she shredded his femoral artery.
  
  “We might be forced to play a part here,” her voice held a deepness that warned him she was not playing. “But you do not get to grab me any time you feel like it. Pretend, remember? And as long as you do, then we’ll get on just fine.”
  
  “Whatever you say, sweetcheeks.” He lifted his hands in surrender, taking a careful step back. Away from her and the claw in his crotch. “Just wanted to spread the love, that’s all.”
  
  She snorted. “Yeah. I’m sure you tell all the girls that. Let’s get one thing straight. I am not one of your groupies. We’ll get this done, get Bennett un-matestruck, and then we’re done. Reading me?”
  
  “Yes, ma’am,” he smiled, but knew it didn’t reach his eyes. “Loud and clear.”
  
  “Good. You can sleep on the couch. I’ll throw some bedding down.” She bent, scooped up her shoes, and walked out of the kitchen without a backward glance.
  
  His breath punched out of his lungs as soon as she left the room. Groaning, he leaned against the doorframe and considered just beating his head against the wood. What had possessed him to grab her like that? He was a fucking idiot.
  
  If he wanted to get laid there were easier options. None of whom would hold lethal claws up close and personal with his family jewels.
  
  So why was the only woman who interested him the one woman who’d rather shred his dick than touch him willingly?
  
  
  
  
  
  It was the dream again. The one he always had. The one he woke from in a cold sweat with the sheets tangled around him. That was, if he could tear himself from the dream’s clutches.
  
  It was always the same. He was running through the woods near the home he’d grown up in. Running endlessly through the trees away from the big house behind him. Away from the empty corridors and cold, soulless rooms of the coven. It wasn’t a place of happy memories and soft, fuzzy childhood games. It was a place of tradition and protocol. Of duty and strict lessons designed to turn him into his father. A coven leader determined that his son should follow in his footsteps. A fate he’d run hard and fast from.
  
  In the dream he was looking for someone. Desperately looking for someone. His mind always shied away from who. He never saw her. Never caught up with her. Even though he knew she was there, she was always too far ahead of him. Always just around the next corner or through the next doorway. Sometimes he got close enough to hear her laughter, close enough to catch a glimpse of her skirts sweeping around the corner, close enough to smell her perfume.
  
  But he could never catch her, even though every cell in his body told him he had to. No matter how fast he ran, or how hard he tried, it made no difference.
  
  He’d tried everything. He took different routes, both public and through the secret passageways known only to a select few, to try and cut her off. It didn’t matter though.
  
  She always slipped away from him, and each time, the agony of loss brought him to his knees in the main hall with portraits of his noble family, all coven leaders, through the ages.
  
  This time was no different.
  
  He raced through the coven, turning this way and that. Desperation rode him. He had to catch her. This time, he had to catch her. His heart pounded as he raced down the wide corridors.
  
  The scent of her perfume was stronger than he’d ever smelled it. He’d almost seen her hair as she’d swept through the door ahead of him. He’d never been so close. In all these years, he’d never been so close.
  
  Hope filled him. This time. He was actually going to catch her this time. After all these years. Anticipation coursed through him, his breath coming in short, sharp pants as he crashed out through the door.
  
  And… he was eight years old again, standing in the coven hall, looking for the mother he’d never see again.
  
  Because she’d left. Left the coven. Left his father. Him…
  
  “Why!? Why do you bring me here all the time?” He raged at the portraits around him. “Haven’t I suffered enough? I get it, she’s gone. She’s not coming back. Happy now?”
  
  He dropped to his knees with his head bowed and his eyes closed. This was how the dream went. Sometimes he tried to wake himself up, but this time, he didn’t bother. Once the dream got hold of him this bad, it wouldn’t let him go until the morning.
  
  “Shhh! It’s okay,” A soothing voice murmured in his ear, and he started in surprise. Had she come back? Finally? After all these years?
  
  “I got you. You’re okay. Go to sleep.”
  
  He couldn’t open his eyes. A delicious warmth spread through his body like a large, weighted blanket and robbed him of his strength. A soft moan escaped him as he was pulled from the dream, the hard floor beneath his knees disappearing and becoming a soft mattress. Gentle fingers stroked through his hair, tumbling him further into sleep before he could wake properly and see if his rescuer was real or just another dream.
  
  Because cast-iron balls Braun would never hold him like this, ease his fears, and watch over him as he slept. No, it had to be another dream. Another figment of his fevered imagination. The need to have something… someone… for himself manifesting because of the situation.
  
  Nothing more. Nothing less.
  
  Just a dream.
  
  
  
  
  
  “No! No!”
  
  The cry stopped Lilly in her tracks halfway across the landing. Still damp from her shower, she wrapped her towel tighter around herself and looked down the stairs. That had been Morgan’s voice.
  
  Perhaps the rogue bears had come back and somehow gotten in? She padded down the first step. The hall at the bottom of the stairs was dark, just a few slices of light throwing abstract patterns across the floor.
  
  “Please… Don’t go!”
  
  Shit. It was definitely Morgan and he was begging someone, a tortured note in his voice. The sound was one she would never have thought to hear from the self-assured hunk.
  
  Who was he talking to?
  
  Despite herself, she snuck down a couple of steps. Lightly, just in case he was on the phone with someone and heard her. She was fairly sure he wasn’t the kind of guy who wanted someone to see him when he was vulnerable.
  
  “Please. Don’t leave me!”
  
  The plea this time ended on a whimper, and she was done. Whoever it was, she was giving them a piece of her mind. Morgan Jones might be a pain in the ass and a jerk at times, but he was part of her clan, and she protected her clan. Always.
  
  Her bear’s snarl erupted from her throat as she hit the floor at the bottom of the stairs. She hooked a hand around the post to spin herself into the sitting room in a practiced move to face whoever Morgan was pleading with.
  
  And stopped dead.
  
  There was no one in the room but Morgan.
  
  She frowned and focused on him stretched out on the sofa bed that dominated her living room. He was asleep, his hair a wild mess around his face as he thrashed in the sheets.
  
  “Please, mom. Don’t go, I need you,” Morgan begged again in a rough voice, the deep tones contrasting sharply with the child-like plea.
  
  Shit. He was having a nightmare. A bad one by the sounds of it. About his mother.
  
  “Hey, Morgan. You awake, bud?”
  
  She kept her voice low and soft as she crept forward. It was never wise to wake a sleepwalker abruptly, and while he wasn’t sleepwalking, it was kind of the same thing. Wasn’t it?
  
  And the last thing she wanted was to wake him and get turned into a frog or something for her troubles.
  
  But he didn’t wake.
  
  “Morgan?”
  
  At the side of the bed, she touched his shoulder gently, trying to shake him awake. He rolled onto his back, arm up over his face, and the sound of pain he made almost tore the heart right out of her chest there and then.
  
  “Shhh!” she whispered, sliding into the bed next to him. "It’s okay.”
  
  Without thinking, she wrapped her arms around him, bringing him close to stroke her fingers over the back of his neck and shoulders. He was huge, his heavily muscled body easily dwarfing hers, but right now that didn’t matter. All that mattered was easing his pain. “I got you. You’re okay. Go to sleep.”
  
  He murmured, but the sounds of pain started to recede. She carried on making soothing noises, sliding her fingers through his hair as she held him. Trying to give comfort and ease his distress. He didn’t wake up. Instead, he sighed, and his breathing leveled out as he slipped deeper into sleep.
  
  A few minutes of quiet later, she figured he was asleep enough for her to slip from the bed and let him rest comfortably. But as soon as she moved, he turned over and wrapped a strong arm around her waist and held her captive against him.
  
  “No. Don’t go.” His voice was low and raspy with sleep, the words whispered against the side of her neck.
  
  She froze, her eyes wide. Was he awake? Had he been awake this whole time? But he didn’t speak again, his breathing long and easy, the thud of his heart strong where his chest was pressed against her back.
  
  Slowly, she relaxed. She should stay a little while, she told herself, to make sure he didn’t drop back into the nightmare. Just five minutes, then she’d extricate herself from his hold and go upstairs to bed.
  
  Within three, she was asleep.
  
  
  
  
  
  Morgan woke slowly. Comfortable and with that warm, fuzzy feeling that spoke of deep sleep and good rest. So much so that he didn’t question the warm, curvy body wrapped around him. He just accepted it and pulled his female companion closer to nuzzle the side of her neck.
  
  A low rumble of appreciation filled his throat as the scent of warm woman and whatever she’d used on her skin—a combination of flowers and woods after the rain—surrounded him. It was instantly, deeply familiar to his sleep-addled brain so he didn’t question it.
  
  He’d never been lacking in female companionship, so waking with a woman in his bed was nothing new. What was new, though, was the need to keep her close. Normally all he was interested in when he woke was a round of morning sex, but not today. He was just as happy to snuggle, a deep sense of contentment filling him.
  
  His eyes still closed, he savored the feeling of holding her, her soft curves pressed up against the harder planes of his body. She was still asleep, her steady, deep breathing calming to him on a soul-deep level.
  
  A murmur in the back of his throat, he nuzzled her neck, kissing along the soft skin and was rewarded with a shiver and a little sound of pleasure he instantly wanted to hear again. So he kissed again, a little trail of butterfly kisses against the satin skin. Working his way down to where her shoulder met her neck, he grazed his teeth gently against her delicate skin and smiled as her breathing caught on a little moan.
  
  She was so sensitive, so responsive. His body surged to life, his cock, at half mast when he’d woken, punching to full mast to press against the back of her thigh. All he had to do was urge her forward, lift her leg a little, and he could slide balls deep into her welcoming softness.
  
  But he wouldn’t do that, not until she was good and ready for him. He could be an ass at times, but when it came to the bedroom, he’d never been accused of being selfish. Making sure his lady got off, several times, was what got him going.
  
  So he carried on kissing her neck gently, his hand sliding slowly over her hip and down her thigh as he did. God, she was so soft, her skin like silk. He could get lost in just kissing and touching her. Her breathing sped up as she started to wake, arching her back and shoving her ass toward him with a small sound of pleasure. He took that as permission to carry on, sliding his hand around her thigh and up toward the sweet delta between her thighs. At his nudging, she parted her thighs, bringing her knee up a little to give him better access.
  
  His fingers brushed the briefest of strip of hair before he stroked her pussy lips, a growl in the back of his throat at the soft, smooth skin. He’d never felt anything more erotic in his life. Parting them with a gentle touch, his growl deepened at the hot slickness he found there. She was already wet for him, but he’d make sure she was wetter before he eased into her. Without arrogance, he knew he was built on the big side, and she was so tiny… he didn’t want to hurt her.
  
  He easily found her clit, stroking and teasing it gently. Each stroke of his finger was followed by a circle around it before he dipped down to tease the entrance to her body. Stroke. Circle. Tease. Until she moaned and panted, her hips rocking against his hand.
  
  Oh, she was delicious. He nipped her neck again, savoring the catch in her breath, and slid a finger deep into the welcoming embrace of her body. Her silken walls clenched around him, and he groaned, imagining them wrapped around his cock. He wasn’t fully awake, and he must have had too much to drink, because he couldn’t recall what she’d felt like last night. Or how they’d met…
  
  It didn’t matter at the moment, he decided, as drunk on the soft sounds she was making and the feel of her body as he must have been on whatever he’d drunk last night.
  
  She whimpered when he added a second finger to the first, stroking her from within as he brought his thumb into play against her clit. Her hand closed around his wrist, but not to push him away. Instead, she held his hand where it was, rocking against him.
  
  He groaned as she rode his fingers, fucking herself on his digits and turned her head, seeking his kiss. A kiss he happily gave her, eyes still half closed. He didn’t want to open them at the moment. If he didn’t, he could imagine the mass of dark hair he’d gotten a glimpse of belonged to Lilly. He could pretend this woman, whoever she was, was Lilly.
  
  At the thought, his cock jerked, aching savagely. God, yeah… what he’d give to have Lilly Braun in his arms like this. Whimpering and panting as he finger-fucked her and stroked her toward climax. Knowing that as soon as he did, as soon as she came, he’d lift her leg just that little bit more and slide his cock balls deep inside her tight little body. He closed his eyes and deepened the kiss, swallowing her little moans of pleasure as she got closer to the edge. Odd, because she even tasted like Lilly had when he’d kissed her the… other… day…
  
  His eyes snapped open as the fog of sleep cleared from his desire-addled brain. The reason she felt like Lilly was because it was Lilly. It was Lilly grinding against his hand, on the verge of coming, the pair of them wrapped in the sheets of the sofa-bed in her living room.
  
  Fuck. Me.
  
  He should stop, now. He couldn’t remember why she was in bed with him, but she was obviously still half asleep. He tried to pull away, but she growled, her hand around his wrist like iron, and she kissed him again. His control broke, his hand driving into her hair to support her head as he plundered her lips.
  
  He carried on stroking her, feeling the unmistakable signs of her impending climax. He swallowed her gasp and felt her shatter apart. Her hips bucked, and she clenched hard around his fingers. The hot, wet rush of her climax made his cock ache savagely, but he didn’t move, didn’t push her forward and claim her as every male instinct he had urged him to.
  
  Instead, he carried on stroking her, stretching out her pleasure as long as he could. Kissing her through it and savoring every moment. Because as soon as she realized who he was, he sure as shit wasn’t getting a second chance at touching her like this.
  
  She shivered, riding out the aftershocks, and he felt the moment she woke fully. Her eyes snapped open and she looked at him from mere inches away.
  
  “Holy crap,” she whispered. Which was a fair comment since they were wrapped around each other, naked, and he still had his fingers buried deep inside her pussy.
  
  Gently, he pulled free of her, ignoring the pang of disappointment. She let go of his wrist like his skin had burned her.
  
  “Doesn’t have to be weird unless we make it weird,” he suggested softly. “Just a nice dream. Or frien—”
  
  “If you say friends with benefits,” she growled, pushing at his shoulders to get free. “They’ll never find your damn body!”
  
  “Not saying a word. Honest!” he flopped onto his back, hands up in surrender, as she slid from the bed. “Anyone ever told you that you’re cute when you’re mad?”
  
  She growled again and flipped him the bird as she stomped from the room. Morgan made sure to get a good look at her beautiful and very naked ass as she went, and then dropped his head back to the pillows and groaned.
  
  He’d had a taste of Lilly’s passion at long last… and he wanted more. Much more. Like every cell in his body kind of obsession wanted more.
  
  The trouble was, she’d probably become a nun before he could tempt her into his bed again.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 4
  
  
  
  
  
  She’d let Morgan Jones, big, bad warlock, touch her… make her come. Lilly groaned and leaned her head against the steering wheel of her little SUV.
  
  Her cheeks burned. He’d had his hands on her, his fingers in her pussy as he’d stroked her until she’d come all over his hand. She’d let him make her come and it had been the best, hardest, most fucking awesome orgasm she’d ever had.
  
  And it had been from arrogant, pain-in-the-ass Morgan Jones. Which was no surprise. She’d known from the moment she met him that he’d be dynamite in bed. He gave off that sexy aura that said he knew what he was doing between the sheets.
  
  She closed her eyes. She’d been right about that. She’d realized that as she’d come apart in his arms. But he was an asshole who wanted to be ‘friends with benefits’ so there was no way it would work between them.
  
  Ever.
  
  Couldn’t she just use him for sex?
  
  Snapping her eyes open, she growled at herself. That was so a no go. She ignored her bear’s complaints that the warlock was the hottest thing on two legs they’d ever met. It didn’t care Morgan wasn’t a bear… which was odd, since before it had been adamant that the only acceptable male was a bear male.
  
  “Shit!” She slammed her hands against the steering wheel. She couldn’t use Morgan for sex, and they still had to live together until Bennett got over his matestrike.
  
  So there was only one option left. She pretended it had been a dream, like Morgan suggested. And next time she heard him having a damn nightmare, she left him the fuck alone to deal with it.
  
  He had nightmares… About his mother leaving him.
  
  Just like that, her heart melted and she wanted to wrap her arms around him all over again. But perhaps dressed in more than a towel this time.
  
  Her cell chirped for an incoming message and she looked up. Reaching for it on the passenger seat, she couldn’t help the smile as she saw the name on the screen. Morgan J.
  
  “Talk of the devil,” she murmured as she swiped the screen to read the message.
  
  All clear on the Kellan property. No bears or abracadabra. Anything your end?
  
  She shook her head. Looked like it was business as usual. Well, if he could carry on like nothing had happened, then so could she. Thumb typing rapidly, she replied.
  
  All clear on the Elwes place. No bears, rogue or otherwise.
  
  Since the murder of a young girl and the kidnapping of a couple of bear-children, the entire clan had been on high alert. All the enforcers were out checking over the outlying properties on the edge of town for rogue activity.
  
  Her cell chirped again.
  
  Lunch?
  
  Definitely business as normal then.
  
  Yeah. As long as you’re buying.
  
  After hitting send, she watched the screen like a hawk, waiting for the little dots to tell her he was typing. They started, and her heart leapt a little. Then they kept going… and going… and going.
  
  “What are you doing, writing a damn book?”
  
  Yep. Cafe on Main. 10 mins.
  
  “All that typing for that?”
  
  Grumbling to herself and wondering what the hell he’d been typing, she put the vehicle in drive and headed back toward town. To a lunch date with a hot warlock. She blinked. Oh. My. God. She did not just think that. One little (actually one rather large) orgasm, did not a relationship make.
  
  But… he was kind of hot. More than kind of hot. Very hot. And, he’d made her come. He hadn’t just stuck his dick right in her at the first hint she was interested, even though she was half asleep.
  
  A small smile curved her lips. He gave off the aura of being this big, badass kind of guy and… her smile faded—he had nightmares.
  
  “Okay. We can do this,” she announced to the empty car as she drove toward town. “Totally do this.”
  
  It took less than ten minutes to get to town, and by the time she parked, she was about to hyperventilate.
  
  “I can do this. I can do this,” she muttered, putting the SUV into park. Then Morgan’s truck pulled up next to hers and she lost her nerve.
  
  “Oh shit, I can’t do this.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Morgan had no idea how Lilly was going to react to him. Not after she’d left the house like a bat…no, a bear out of hell this morning. He’d intended to catch her in the kitchen before they left for the day, to talk about what had happened. And he’d pushed the boat out, even making pancakes and coffee. But she’d swept downstairs and out the damn front door instead.
  
  Before he’d gotten halfway to the door, her little pink SUV had fishtailed out of the drive and sped off down the road. The only contact he’d had with her since had been on the enforcer’s group chat, where they got their orders for the day.
  
  He’d finally cracked and messaged her privately with his report. A message, not a call. Something told him she wouldn’t pick up and talk to him, but he hadn’t been able to resist trying his luck and offering lunch.
  
  Her replies had been short and sweet, but she had replied. And turned up. His breath punched out of his lungs in sheer relief as he parked up next to her car and got out.
  
  Her wary look as he rounded the hood hit him in the gut, but he covered it with a smile.
  
  “Hey.”
  
  He kept his voice as light as he could. A difficult feat when all he wanted to do was pull her into his arms and learn the shape of her lips all over again. She was like a drug to him, even more so now he’d had her in his arms as she came apart. Even more so now that he knew what her kisses tasted like when she came. And definitely even more so now that he’d heard the beautiful little sounds she made when she did.
  
  But he didn’t allow any of that to show on his face as he walked toward her. She looked wary, and he’d bet the entire contents of his father’s treasure coffers that she didn’t want anyone to know that. Him especially.
  
  So he kept it all business.
  
  “So, I checked out all the properties on the list you gave me,” he said, sweeping an arm out to indicate she should precede him into the diner. “And they’re all clean. No bear or magical activity whatsoever.”
  
  “Yeah, same for me. Well, the bear activity anyway. I wouldn’t know about magical stuff,” she said, sliding into one of the booths next to the window. It was obvious she was relieved that they were back on a ‘normal’ footing. “It makes me sneeze but that’s it. I can’t tell if anything’s been used recently, like you can.”
  
  Morgan hid his smile as he slid into the seat opposite. He could do more than tell if a spell had been used recently. He could tell what, when, and, given the right circumstances, track the caster to their current location. His level of power was off the charts, a lot more than an ordinary oathbreaker, but revealing just how powerful he was would raise too many questions. And his father had spies everywhere looking for him. There was no way he was going to get caught that easily. Not after all these years.
  
  He caught the eye of Trinity, the waitress behind the counter. “Two of the special and coffee please, Trin,” he called out, knowing without asking exactly what Lilly would order. One of the benefits of living in a small town… everyone knew everything about everyone. And, well, he might have noted every single thing about Lilly Braun from the moment he’d met her.
  
  But a lunch order was easy. She always ordered the same thing he did. The pie. Apple pie and whipped cream. Each and every time.
  
  “I don’t think they had a spellslinger with them to be honest,” he said, refocusing on Lilly.
  
  “No?” She asked, picking at her little fingernail the way she always did when she was nervous. He didn’t think she was aware of the tell, and he wasn’t about to clue her in. It was tiny, and no one else would notice it. But he did.
  
  “Nope.” He shook his head. “There weren’t any echoes… like residual traces at the Black place or at the Watson’s place when they grabbed the girls. If a ‘slinger had been there, I’d have known about it.”
  
  “You’d have known about it, huh?” She chuckled, reaching for a mug of coffee as Trin put them down on the table. “Full of yourself, aren’t you? Anyone would think you were some big muckety-muck magic lord like whatshisface…” She motioned to the newspaper in front of them.
  
  Morgan froze as she pulled it toward her and he caught sight of the story on the front.
  
  Lord Maximillian seen with hot mystery blonde!
  
  It was accompanied by a picture of the Lord, heir-apparent to the Passenfal coven, one of the oldest and most powerful covens in the country. Max was also his younger brother.
  
  Lilly snapped the paper open, pursing her lips as she held the picture up next to him.
  
  “Yeah… he kinda looks like you. You sure you’re not a magic lord in disguise?” She gave him a mock-stare.
  
  Shit. He knew she was joking, but even so, his heart sped up.
  
  The idea that the missing Lord Arran would be camping out in a backwater town like Beauty as a tatted up ex-soldier was preposterous. Which was exactly why he’d done it.
  
  With a nonchalance he didn’t feel, he shoved her hand and the paper away.
  
  “Yeah, right. I’m as much a Lord as Trin is the next Queen of England,” he scoffed, smiling up at Trin as she slid two filled plates onto the table.
  
  Predictably, the food got Lilly’s attention, and she dropped the paper.
  
  “Pie twins.” She offered him a smile as she dug in.
  
  Popping a forkful in her mouth, she closed her eyes and moaned. The little sound of pleasure and the look on her face made him bite back a groan, lust roaring through his body. He wanted that again. Wanted to hear that noise when she was beneath him… when he claimed her for his own.
  
  “Not eating?” She asked, waving her fork at his untouched plate.
  
  Quickly he picked up his fork and took a bite, but he didn’t eat as quickly as normal, watching her covertly instead. He didn’t try to talk while they ate. He’d been around bears long enough to know that food trumped everything else, and he wouldn’t get anything out of her until she’d finished. Dean Sterling, his army buddy, was exactly the same.
  
  He didn’t have much of an appetite though, more interested in watching her as she demolished the pie and then eyed up the slice he was pushing about his plate.
  
  “You want it?” He pushed it toward her.
  
  Her gaze flicked up to his and she shook her head, a flush over her cheeks. “I shouldn’t…”
  
  He snorted. “Why the hell not? Life’s too short. Have the pie.”
  
  He pushed it closer, taking her empty plate. “If you give me some crap about getting fat or whatever, I’ll put you over my knee. Because you’re gorgeous just the way you are.”
  
  “Oooh… I’m scared.” She pulled the pie closer and dug in.
  
  He hid his smile, concentrating on his coffee. He’d never understand why women couldn’t just be happy the way they were, rather than half starve themselves. Didn’t they know men loved them anyway? They were small and curvy and god, he had to stop thinking about Lilly’s curves or he wasn’t going to be able to walk out of here without giving himself away.
  
  
  
  
  
  He hadn’t mentioned the incident that morning. Like… at all.
  
  Confusion and relief had rolled through Lilly in equal amounts as she’d devoured two helpings of pie, the conversation between them flowing easily until it was time to head out.
  
  “Heads up,” Morgan rumbled as he held the door open for her. “We got company.”
  
  Bennett was across the road. Watching them. His eyes were dark with his bear, and hers rose to the surface, the growl already forming in the back of her throat. Couldn’t the guy take no for an answer?
  
  But he couldn’t. She knew that. It wasn’t a case of free will when matestrike hit, and although she knew she could take him if it came to down and dirty fight, she would have to hurt him. Like, really hurt him, and probably kill him. And she didn’t want to do that.
  
  Morgan leaned down, his lips almost brushing against her ear, and his arm around her waist, as he murmured. “I know you probably don’t want me touching you, but we gotta sell this, beautiful.”
  
  “Oh… I don’t know about that,” she said in a breathy voice, giggling and turning in his embrace to loop her arms around his neck. “I think there are some things a girl could get used to.”
  
  She was playing a part, she told herself. Just a part. It was all to make Bennett believe she and Morgan really were an item. So why did it feel so good to press herself up against his big, muscled body, and practically purr against his lips?
  
  “Playing with fire, beautiful,” he warned her, teasing her by withholding the kiss she wanted. Play wanted. Pretend-for-Bennett wanted.
  
  Her growl wasn’t pretend though and he chuckled, finally giving in and kissing her properly. The first brush of his lips was fairly innocent. Kissing in the street where everyone could see, that sort of innocent.
  
  On the second brush, though, she couldn’t help the slight gasp or her lips parting in invitation. He growled and backed her against the side of his truck. Pinned her between the cold hard metal and the hot steel of his body.
  
  He plundered her mouth. Parted her lips with a hard sweep of his tongue and drove within to sample the sweetness beyond. The growl that rumbled up from the center of his chest was so deep, it did things to her on a primal level. From the sound alone, she could have sworn he was a bear. One her bear wanted to come out and play with.
  
  The kiss went from hot to supernova in a heartbeat, and she gasped, unable to resist kissing him back. He teased and she followed, thrusting her tongue into his mouth and tangling it with his in hot open-mouthed kisses that made her blood simmer with heat and her heart pound.
  
  She should stop. She knew she should. But she couldn’t. She needed to kiss him. It was a soul deep… no, a cell deep… need. A compulsion. An obsession.
  
  “Oi!” A female voice broke through their sensual haze. “You two get a room before I have to chuck a bucket of water over the pair of you!”
  
  Lilly started, breaking the kiss as sense returned. She was plastered all over Morgan… ohmygod… And worse, she was practically dry-humping the hard thigh he’d thrust between hers. And was that…
  
  She pulled back to find the big warlock watching her, amusement in warm, blue eyes. Her eyes widened as she realized what the hardness pressing against her was.
  
  “Oh my god,” she whispered and went to push him away, but the tiny shake of his head warned her. Shit, Bennett must still be there…
  
  She threw a look at Trinity, who was grinning at them like a loon from the doorway of the diner. “Hey… can you blame me?”
  
  The other woman grinned. “Nope. I was wonderin’ when you were gonna make your move, or if I was gonna have to lock you both in the storeroom over the weekend or something.”
  
  “I wouldn’t mind being locked up anywhere with you for an entire weekend,” Morgan whispered, nuzzling just under her ear. She pinched his side, where no one could see, in warning. This was an act—Nothing more. Nothing less—and the sooner he got with the program, the better.
  
  This morning… had been an aberration. He’d caught her off guard, and half asleep. She couldn’t be held responsible for what happened in what she’d thought was a very nice, albeit very graphic, dream.
  
  She smiled for Trinity’s benefit. “You know, I think I might have to drag him off and try that somewhere… a little more private.”
  
  “You go, girl! Have fun, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” Trinity threw back and pushed off from the door, disappearing back into the diner with a wave.
  
  “Is he gone yet?” She demanded in an undertone, giggling as Morgan nuzzled her neck again. Her demand disappeared on a gasp when he nipped her neck. The graze of his blunt, human teeth sent a bolt of heat through her so complete she nearly threw him on the hood of his own truck and ripped every stitch of clothing right off his body there and then.
  
  “Never bite a bear.” Her claws punched through and grazed his skin through the leather over his shoulder.
  
  He pulled back to look down at her, the warm blue of his eyes nearly swallowed up by the dark heat swirling through them. “And why not?”
  
  “Because that’ll get you bitten back. And there’s no coming back from that,” she almost growled the warning. Biting was reserved for mated couples, or couples well on their way to mating for life. It wasn’t a casual sex sort of thing.
  
  “You’d end up mated to me for life. And the last thing you want to be is mated to a bitchy she-bear who hates you for taking that choice away.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 5
  
  
  
  
  
  After the excitement of lunchtime, Morgan’s afternoon turned out to be slower than a race between a sloth and a snail. He sighed as he walked through the barn at the back of the Partner property.
  
  “Ain’t naught but cobwebs and mean-ass rattlers back there, boy,” Old man Partner had proclaimed, but he shrugged and gave permission when Morgan said he needed to check anyway.
  
  Isiah Partner wasn’t a bear, so he’d had to give some cock and bull story about the army drafting him in to check for a suspected terrorist operating in the area. Since Isiah was a well-known conspiracy theorist and probably had a tin-foil hat or seventeen in his closet, the story had worked. Isiah had hurried off to check his bunker was prepared for doomsday, and Morgan had headed on out to check the back boundary lines of the Partner land.
  
  And… nothing. Apart from grass, grass and more grass. And some birds. What kind of birds, he had no clue, he wasn’t an ornithologist, and since none of them had the familiar buzz of shifterkind, he’d ignored them.
  
  Circling back, he approached a rundown old barn. It had obviously been used for livestock at some point during its life but now stood alone and forlorn, some of its cladding ripped away to reveal the wooden bones of its structure.
  
  But his thoughts weren’t on building maintenance as he circled the back of the barn. Instead, they were squarely focused on the curvy she-bear he’d woken up with in his arms this morning.
  
  What the fuck did he do about Lilly?
  
  He’d hoped that chatting over lunch would help. That she’d perhaps admit shyly that she’d been thinking about him all morning, unable to get him out of her head, and suggest they try the whole naked in bed thing again.
  
  He snorted to himself. And the twenty-fifth of December saw him donning a red suit and squeezing himself down chimneys to deliver presents to ungrateful brats more concerned with the latest smartphone than the magic of giving.
  
  All he wanted to do was get her in his arms again. He had it worse for her than he’d ever had it for any other woman… hell, his cock had barely gone down since this morning, springing back to life and full attention at the merest thought of the curvy ursine bombshell. All he could think about was fucking her, claiming her as his own, but there was no way she was the friends with benefits kind.
  
  So he was between a rock and a hard place. He could pull the moves, seduce her into bed and fuck her finally. But once she realized he wasn’t the relationship type, there would be fuck all chance of him getting between her legs again. And given she was both a bear, and an enforcer, with a volcanic temper, she might even remove his equipment.
  
  “Shitshitshitshit,” his hissed, shoving a hand through his loose hair.
  
  And that was when he heard it. The slight murmur of raised voices.
  
  He froze. Every warning sense he had tingled, bringing the hackles up on the back of his neck. And they weren’t his magical senses, either, but the good old-fashioned combat senses he’d learned serving Uncle Sam.
  
  He crept nearer.
  
  “We had a fucking deal. You can’t back out now!” The voices grew louder as Morgan moved toward the rear of the old structure. Pressing himself against the wooden walls, he peeked through a gap in the boards. He could see part of the inside, but it was all dust motes and fuck all else.
  
  “We can do whatever the fuck we want!” That was a deeper voice than the first, with the growled edge that said bear.
  
  Morgan altered his position, and a small group came into view. Brad Harrison and a couple of Anderson’s little pack were in the back of the barn with some men Morgan had never seen before. His eyes narrowed. They were all bears, that was easy to see. Shifters moved a particular way, and once you knew what you were looking for, you could easily pick out which type as well. Even in human form.
  
  It looked like battle-lines had been drawn, with Anderson’s assholes on one side and the new bears on the other. They had to be the remainder of the rogues responsible for the attack on the Watson’s place a couple of weeks ago. What he still couldn’t work out though was why. It had been bothering him since the attack. It hadn’t made sense.
  
  Why kidnap Jeb’s older daughters as a distraction only to loop back and attack the same house with Jeb’s wife, baby daughter, and Dean’s mate, Kacie, there?
  
  At first his mind had gone down dark routes. There were some branches of blood magic that used body parts. And a female baby bear shifter? Gold dust for that kind of shit.
  
  But even so, it seemed unlikely other bears, no matter how assholish they were, would hand over a baby of their own kind for something like that.
  
  “It was supposed to be an in and out job,” the biggest of the rogues snarled, looming over Harrison threateningly. The smaller man flinched, and Morgan grinned. Harrison should be wary of larger bears. Especially after he’d been soundly beaten in the pit by Creed. If Morgan was him, he’d really want to avoid the beating that the bigger bear seemed eager to dish out.
  
  “Instead, we lost Jack, Carlos, Rafe, and Sam. Four good bears. All trying to kill your prime’s human mate.”
  
  They’d all thought the rogues were after the Watson girls. No one had thought it might be a plot to get to Kacie.
  
  “She’s not just his mate, she’s his fated,” Brad argued mulishly, finally showing some backbone. “If she dies, then he’ll fold, and Anderson can take over the clan.”
  
  Morgan’s breath hissed in over his teeth. The fucking backstabbing little shits. It was a power grab for the clan, set up in the most reprehensible way.
  
  “Well, deal’s off.” The big bear folded his arms. “Pay us what was agreed, and we’ll be out of your hair.”
  
  “We ain’t paying you until the job’s done.” Harrison seemed to find some backbone from somewhere, squaring up to the other bear.
  
  Morgan moved forward, leaning in to see if Harrison got the kicking he deserved.
  
  Something under his foot cracked.
  
  He froze. It was an unforgivable lapse, especially for him and given his background. He was just glad neither Dean nor any of his old unit were here to see it. He’d never live it down.
  
  “What was that?”
  
  “Someone’s outside!”
  
  He needed to be gone. Yesterday. Moving his hand, he murmured a spell and stepped sideways, the shadows wreathing him like a second skin. It was a complex bit of magic, one he’d learned from an unusual source, and it had saved his and his squad’s asses more times than he could count.
  
  He’d grown up with people slinging spells at him. Often complicated as hell spells that required him to know the caster’s ethnic origin, religious affiliation, and inside leg measurement before he could formulate a defense. On the whole, bullets were easier. They didn’t care or alter position based on the position of the moon, what he was wearing, or if some sacred mouse farted two fields over.
  
  The bears poured out of the barn, yelling and stomping. They milled about the front doors, running into each other before the two different groups split off and started to search.
  
  “Where did he go?”
  
  “Did you find him?”
  
  “Nothing around here.”
  
  The shouts went up as the bears searched around the barn. Morgan grinned when two walked within feet of him, shrouded by the spell.
  
  The grin broadened as Harrison cuffed one of the others up the side of his head.
  
  “You fucking idiot. There’s nothing here. You’re jumping at shadows again. Come on, let’s go.”
  
  
  
  
  
  An hour later, Morgan had made it back through the fields to his well-hidden truck without any of the bears spotting him and driven back to the lodge. Sitting in a comfortable lounge chair in Dean’s office, he finished his story and looked at the two bears in the room with him; Dean and Lilly. Both looked concerned and annoyed. But then, members of your clan colluding with the enemy to kill someone’s fated mate to facilitate a clan takeover was about as serious as shit got.
  
  “And you’re sure none of them saw you?” Dean demanded, his voice low and terse.
  
  Seriously? After everything they’d been through?
  
  “Can’t be sure.” He dead-panned. “I think the clown outfit might have been a little conspicuous. Of course they didn’t see me, you idiot, when have I ever let the enemy see me?”
  
  Dean raised an eyebrow. “Well there was that one time back in ‘08...”
  
  “Oh, fuck off! I was the goddamn bait!” He shot back, ignoring the snort from Lilly’s direction as she hid a smile behind her hand. Badly.
  
  He shot Dean a baleful look, trying to warn him he was breaking the bro code. The part that said no guy should show up a brother in front of a hot chick.
  
  Dean grinned, obviously enjoying his discomfort. “Still let them see you before we were ready.”
  
  “Not my fault you assholes were slow.”
  
  Morgan flipped him the bird and focused on Lilly, instead. “No. None of them saw me,” he told her. “I didn’t recognize any of the rogues, but Harrison was there and a couple of others from Anderson’s lot. Lee Elder, Ed Petty, and Shawn Williams.”
  
  From the look on her face, the names weren’t a surprise to Lilly. All four were single-minded sheep who believed all the crap Anderson spouted because it fed into their own hate-fueled beliefs. Forget logic and fact—if he told them that black was white, they’d believe him.
  
  “Right.” Her voice held a firm edge. “I’ll have the team pick them up.”
  
  “No.”
  
  They both looked at Dean in confusion. He looked thoughtful.
  
  “I’m sorry, boss?” Lilly ventured. “You don’t want me to have them brought in? What if they try something else?”
  
  Dean shrugged. “Let them try it. We have the advantage now. We know who is working with the rogues and why. We’ll just make sure Kacie is never without a guard, like ever, even for the bathroom.” He looked at Lilly. “Find me another female enforcer, in case you and I aren’t with her. I don’t care if you have to ship one in.”
  
  He leaned back in his chair. “We’ll give them enough rope to hang themselves with. You might want to brief the enforcer team,” he ordered Lilly, expression severe. “But just the ones you trust.”
  
  “Yes, boss. On it.”
  
  Dean and Morgan watched her go, a tiny, curvy force of nature.
  
  Morgan turned around to find Dean watching him.
  
  “So how are things going with you two? Any issues with Bennett?” the prime wanted to know.
  
  Morgan shook his head. “He’s lurking, but so far it’s been public places. I haven’t spotted him around the house at all.”
  
  “Okay. Good.” Dean growled and ran a hand through his hair. “Never rains but it fucking pours, doesn’t it? I could do without this crap with Bennett on top of Anderson and his assholes kicking off.”
  
  Morgan chuckled. “Anderson’s assholes. Sounds like band name.”
  
  Dean barked a short, sharp laugh. “Yeah. Doesn’t it?”
  
  “Don’t worry about Bennett. I got that one covered,” Morgan assured him. “You concentrate on Anderson’s lot. Unless, I mean… I can fucking toast him if you like?”
  
  He wiggled his fingers for effect, calling a little magical fire to crawl over his skin. It was a light show, nothing more. But then, sometimes magic was bluff and show. It was illusion and convincing your audience that you were more powerful than you were. Real magic, the dangerous kind, was rare—you didn’t see it coming and there weren’t many capable of handling it.
  
  Morgan was one of the few.
  
  But that didn’t mean he wasn’t above a few parlor tricks every now and then.
  
  Unfortunately, Dean knew it.
  
  “Oh, put it away, showoff.” The bear prime snorted with amusement. “No, I need to deal with this and be seen doing it. There can be no doubt about who controls this clan.”
  
  
  
  
  
  “Seriously? You and Morgan Jones?”
  
  “Oh, for god’s sake, don’t look at me like that. There’s nothing wrong with the guy!” Lilly spat in exasperation as both her friends looked at her. “He’s hot. He’s built like a Greek god, and those muscles?” She bit her lip. “They feel just as nice as they look.”
  
  “Yeah… but Morgan Jones?” Kait whispered.
  
  “I knew it!” Kacie caroled, fist-pumping the air. “I knew you had a thing for him.”
  
  Both women perched on the edge of the big sofa opposite her, watching her avidly. Human women, not bear-women, but where gossip was concerned, they were bigger predators than any of the bears born and bred.
  
  “What?”
  
  They watched her like a pair of velociraptors. Bright eyes. Bright, unblinking eyes.
  
  “You know what we want,” Kacie said bluntly. “Details. We need details.”
  
  “Old mated women like us need to get our kicks and live vicariously through you,” Kait agreed.
  
  “Old mated women?” Lilly spluttered. “You haven’t been mated more than a couple of weeks, either of you! You’re not out of the honeymoon period yet, so don’t give me that!” Then her smile broadened a little evilly. “Unless... Don’t tell me. Neither Dean nor Creed are any good in the sack…”
  
  “Useless.”
  
  “Hasn’t a clue.”
  
  They both deadpanned.
  
  “Lying bitches. I’ll tell them that.” Lilly laughed. “Okay. He can kiss, I’ll give him that. Like really kiss.”
  
  Kait made a circling motion with her hand. “Gonna need a bit more than that. Creed says you two have been holed up at your place for days. I think moving a guy in is a little more than a kiss, don’t you?”
  
  Lilly winced. “Well, ordinarily… yeah. But there’s a bit more to it than that.”
  
  “I’d say,” Kacie added. “Spill the beans. Now. Before we go track down Morgan and ask him.”
  
  “You’re total bitches, you know that.” Lilly was beat. “Okay. I’m not sure how much Dean and Creed have told you about our culture and bear-clans but there’s something called a fated mate. That’s what you two are. It’s like a soul bond, if that makes sense?”
  
  They both nodded.
  
  “Apparently Dean knew I was his for years,” Kacie grumbled. “But the stupid man didn’t say anything.”
  
  “Yeah, well, that will be because of the rule about humans knowing about us,” Lilly explained. “Not all humans can cope with the knowledge that things like werebears live among you. Sends them cuckoo. If that had happened and you hadn’t been able to cope with finding out about Dean… he’d have had to kill you.”
  
  A silence fell that was so absolute the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece sounded like a death knell.
  
  “Yeah. That’s grim shit right there,” Kacie muttered. “But I like bears, so he’s still an idiot.”
  
  Lilly snorted. “Can’t argue with that. Just don’t tell him I said it, okay? He’s still my boss.”
  
  Kacie looked offended. “Girl code. Nothing will pass these lips. Including any hot details about Mr. Muscles Warlock. So… spill. Now. Before we have to get nasty…” She wiggled her fingers, motioning toward Lilly’s ribs. Automatically her stomach clenched. She was ticklish as hell and they both knew it.
  
  “There’s nothing to tell,” she admitted. “We’re not together. Morgan is staying at my place because Bennett Allan has matestrike.”
  
  “Oh shit,” Kacie breathed.
  
  “Why?” Kait demanded. “What’s matestrike?”
  
  “Well, as Dean explained it, it’s when you get a furry stalker.”
  
  Lilly almost snorted at Kacie’s explanation. But, to be fair, it was accurate. “Yeah. Kind of. It means that Bennett has fixated on me as a potential mate. Until it wears off, he’ll be a right royal pain in the ass. And the quickest way to deal with a matestrike is to convince the afflicted that their desired partner is mated to someone else…”
  
  “Ahh!” Both girls chorused.
  
  “Hence… Morgan moved in with me until Bennett’s got his head on straight.”
  
  Kait nodded. “Makes sense.”
  
  But Kacie’s look was more direct.
  
  “Yeah… but why Morgan? Dean told me what happened in the bar. There were other shifters there…” She grinned, the expression saying she knew she had Lilly pinned.
  
  “So why did you kiss hot-lips Morgan?”
  
  
  
  
  
  Twilight had begun to darken the sky as Lilly pulled into her drive hours later and parked behind Morgan’s big truck. She’d barely managed to avoid having an escort home—both her human friends wanted to protect her from Bennett if he should show up.
  
  Her lips curved into a smile.
  
  She was under strict instructions to give three rings when she got home, to let them both know she was safe. Three rings. Not a text. They’d been very particular about that. Apparently, Bennett could pretend to be her in a text, but he wouldn’t know about the three rings.
  
  Cutting the engine, she grabbed her purse and rooted inside it for her cell. She found Kacie’s number and waited for the requested three rings, then did the same for Kait. Both responded with a thumbs-up text that made her smile. They had to have been virtually waiting with their cells in their hands.
  
  She had no doubt one or both of them had been timing her as well, and if she hadn’t called within an acceptable amount of time, they’d no doubt have called in the cavalry.
  
  Warmth filled her. She had awesome friends, and they’d always had her back, even if they hadn’t always known what she was. She’d always had to be careful to protect them from her world, but now they knew about the clan, knew about her ‘other’ side, and they’d accepted it without question. They’d leapt whole-heartedly into her world, and she couldn’t be happier. She didn’t have to hide that side of her anymore, and it was a great relief not having to watch everything she said or pretend to be something she wasn’t.
  
  Dropping her cell back in her purse, she got out of the car to the sound of raised voices. Kids’ voices.
  
  “Oi, half-skin… go back to where you come from!”
  
  “Yeah! We don’t want your kind here!”
  
  “Half-skin, half-skin!”
  
  Her hackles rose at the bear-centric taunts. This road was almost entirely shifter houses, but they were still close enough to the center of town they needed to be careful. She was about to round the back of Morgan’s truck like a hurricane and send them all packing when a deep voice cut through the air like a whip.
  
  “Enough! You think this is funny? A crowd of you picking on one person? Huh?” Morgan demanded, and he was more pissed off than she’d ever heard him.
  
  “Huh? Nothing to say for yourselves now someone bigger and meaner than you is here?”
  
  Lilly edged around the back of the truck to see a group of bear kids huddled in a mass in front of the big warlock. A small girl stood at his side, no more than six or seven. Lilly had never seen her before, which meant she was one of the Jenkins who had just moved in down the street after joining from another clan.
  
  Right now, though, she looked terrified, shooting glances between the warlock and the gang who had been tormenting her, her body language saying she wanted nothing more than the ground to open and swallow her whole. But as Morgan spoke, her spine straightened a little and, warily, she reached up to slide her hand into his.
  
  Lilly held her breath, but Morgan didn’t skip a beat, his larger hand tightening around the little girl’s.
  
  “And what’s this about ‘your kind’?” he demanded. “Last I checked, you were all bears.”
  
  Several of the kids looked startled. It was one of the clan rules, drilled into them from the cradle. Never say it in the open. Ever. It could, at best, put you in the pits, at worst, it meant expulsion from the clan. Even worse than expulsion… it could mean an entire clan would have to move.
  
  No one wanted to be the reason the clan had to move.
  
  Morgan held up a hand wreathed in blue fire. Their eyes went wide at the display of magic.
  
  “I can say it because I took precautions. You didn’t, did you?” he chided them sternly. “In fact, the only person I didn’t hear throwing around forbidden insults—the only one I didn’t hear breaking the rules—was my little friend here.”
  
  He smiled down at the girl, who practically glowed. Returning his attention to the gang of bear kids, his stern expression returned. There were six of them, all from local families she’d be having words with.
  
  “So I’m going to ask again,” Morgan growled, doing a good impression of a pissed off bear himself. Sometimes a bear’s mate would begin to sound more bearlike themselves. It had happened with both Kait and Kacie— they both pulled cute little growls now when they were annoyed. But Morgan wasn’t a bearmate, so that growl had to be natural.
  
  “What’s this about ‘your kind’? Are you, or are you not, all bears?”
  
  One of the kids, James McKinnon—a little POS—opened his mouth, but Morgan wasn’t done.
  
  “If anything other than ‘yes sir’ comes out of your mouth, I can take care of that and turn you all into weasels for a week.”
  
  “You wouldn’t dare!” James squeaked, outrage in his voice. There was genuine fear as well, well-hidden by his attitude as he tried to maintain his status among his little group. To prove to them that he was ‘the man’ and not afraid of anything. Especially a non-bear.
  
  Lilly realized there was a superiority complex at times in the clan against non-bears, as though bears were somehow superior to anyone who was not.
  
  “Dean Sterling would never let you,” the boy carried on, his shoulders squaring at the very mention of the prime’s name. “He’d have you in the pits in a heartbeat,” he threatened with relish. “And tear your throat out.”
  
  Morgan laughed, the deep sound of genuine amusement rolling through the air. “Oh, I’m sure he could try. How do you think I know that your prime’s allergic to weasel fur? I’ve turned him into all manner of creatures, and not only would he let me turn you into something small and prey-like, he’d probably say a weasel is too good for you and order me to turn you into something slimy, like a frog.”
  
  There was a gasp and the little gang’s collective nerve failed them. With cries of alarm, they bolted, hurtling off up the street as fast as their legs could carry them.
  
  Morgan chuckled again, but didn’t bother to follow them.
  
  “Would you really have turned them into frogs?” the little girl asked, awe on her face as she looked up at Morgan.
  
  “Of course.” He looked down with a smile. “They’re bullies, and I hate bullies.”
  
  “Have you really turned the prime into a weasel? And he let you?”
  
  Morgan chuckled. “Wanna know a secret?”
  
  She nodded and he leaned down. “I’ve turned your prime into a toad before. He doesn’t scare me at all. You know who really scares me?”
  
  “Uh-uh?” She shook her head, her eyes wide.
  
  Even Lilly found herself crowding closer. Who was Morgan scared of? She didn’t think the balls-to-the-wall, best of the best warlock was frightened of anything.
  
  “Your head enforcer, Lilly Braun.” He dropped his voice, and looked around as though he didn’t want anyone to hear. “She’s mean as hell and scares the daylights out of me. Wouldn’t want to end up in the pits with her.”
  
  The girl snorted. “Don’t be silly. Girls can’t be enforcers. They’re girls.”
  
  Morgan leaned back, shock on his face. “Are you kidding me? Who told you that rubbish?”
  
  “My daddy, and my uncle. They said girls aren’t strong enough to be enforcers.”
  
  Lilly’s lips compressed into a thin line. Looked like she needed to have a word with Mr. Jenkins if he held to attitudes like that.
  
  “Pfft… utter rubbish,” Morgan exclaimed. “If anything, girls make better enforcers. The meanest and most dangerous bears I’ve met have been she-bears. I wouldn’t want to tangle with any of them. So if you want to be an enforcer, then you go for it. Okay?”
  
  The biggest grin spread over the little girls face and she nodded enthusiastically. The fact Morgan was astute enough to realize the girl needed her confidence building was impressive enough, but to figure out the best way, as well? Yeah, the guy had hidden depths.
  
  “Okay, enforcer. Wanna show me which house is yours?” Morgan asked.
  
  “I don’t need you to protect me!” The little girl retorted fiercely.
  
  “No, not at all!!” Morgan put his hand over his heart. “But I need you to look after me. Lotsa bears around these parts who’d prey on a poor, innocent warlock like me. So how about it?”
  
  “Okay. I’ll protect you.”
  
  Lilly’s heart melted as the girl led Morgan down the street toward her house. He didn’t argue, just let her lead the way. Yeah, he’d make a great father.
  
  Quickly she locked down the thought of a little bear-boy with Morgan’s blond hair and blue eyes, totally ignoring the pang in the center of her chest. Not happening. Morgan and her? Not mates… she was still waiting for her fated mate. A nice bear guy, not a warlock.
  
  No way. No how.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 6
  
  
  
  
  
  “Hey. What are you doing here?”
  
  Morgan froze as he walked through the door and spotted her in the kitchen, a look of surprise on his face.
  
  Lilly gave a small smile as she stirred the pasta sauce. “I live here?”
  
  Then she made the mistake of looking up, and her breathing caught at the sight of him in the doorway. He was framed by the light, his face almost in shadow. The light kissed him from behind, outlining the large, heavily muscled frame; the broad shoulders and wide chest, lean waist and hips. The powerful thighs and calves. Had he ever played sports? Was that why he was built the way he was?
  
  She didn’t know, and at the moment, her ability to think had hightailed it over the horizon. All she wanted to do was walk across the kitchen and right into his arms. After what she’d seen earlier, she needed to kiss him again. They’d kissed this morning yes, but she’d been half asleep and she couldn’t remember…
  
  No. That was a lie and she was honest enough with herself to recognize it.
  
  She remembered everything about this morning. It was seared into her memory for all time. All. Time. She remembered everything about the way he’d held her, touched her… saw to her pleasure rather than taking anything for himself. The way his arms had enfolded her protectively as his kiss had seared her all the way down to her soul.
  
  And he wasn’t the arrogant, self-centered jerk she’d always thought he was.
  
  So why couldn’t she just kiss him? They were both consenting adults, there was nothing stopping them from kissing.
  
  Stirring the sauce, she turned the heat down and turned to walk toward him. With each step she took, the tension in the room mounted. He didn’t move. Undaunted, she came to a stop in front of him and lifted up on her tiptoes to reach his lips. Gently, she pressed a kiss to them.
  
  He still didn’t move, watching her as she pulled back to look up at him.
  
  “What are you doing, Braun?” he asked, his voice a heavy rumble.
  
  Her estimation of him went up another notch. He hadn’t grabbed her, nor deepened the kiss at the mere hint she might be willing. He hadn’t done anything, just watched her warily.
  
  “What does it look like?” she whispered, kissing him again. “I’m kissing you.”
  
  Her lips brushed over his as she learned their shape and texture. At first, they were firm, closed against her, but the more she kissed him, the more she sensed him relaxing. Then he growled and hauled her into his arms, up against his hard chest, and kissed her back.
  
  He didn’t mess around. These were not soft kisses. Instead, he claimed her mouth, parting her lips with a sweep of his tongue to drive within. A deep rumble reverberated through her chest, a growl of approval direct from her bear as she melted in his arms. Heat swept through her as his tongue found hers and slid against it in short, hot strokes that made her want to mewl and whimper as she pressed herself harder against him.
  
  The kiss went from hot to supernova in a heartbeat, and then, with a curse, he yanked his lips from hers.
  
  “Yeah, but why?” he demanded, hands on her upper arms to stop her moving in again.
  
  She looked him in the eye. “Because I want to. Because I like you. Don’t you like me?”
  
  “Fuck, yeah, I like you. More than like you,” he growled and moved faster than anyone she’d ever met.
  
  In the blink of an eye, his big fist was tangled in her hair, to tilt her head back so he could look down into her eyes. His gaze was piercing, a little uncomfortable, but filled with so much heat she was forced to bite back a whimper and press her thighs together.
  
  “But we carry on like this, and we won’t just be kissing,” he promised.
  
  Hot and cold shivers raced over her skin and she nodded. “Yeah, I know.”
  
  “Know what? That we won’t just be kissing?” He growled again, his grip tightening. It wasn’t painful, just firm. Holding her in place so she couldn’t move. Of course, with her inhuman strength, she could easily have broken his grip and thrown him across the room if she’d wanted. But she didn’t want to, so she just looked up at him.
  
  “I know we won’t just be kissing,” she whispered.
  
  “We’ll be fucking,” he promised her in a hard voice, spreading a large hand over the back of her hips to press her harder against him as if to back up his words. Her knees went weak at the hardness she felt against her stomach.
  
  “I’ll strip off every stitch of clothing you have on, spread your pretty little thighs, and drive balls deep into your pussy,” he leaned down to murmur by her ear. “I’ll make you take every inch of my cock and have you begging for more. Do you want that? Because if we carry on, that’s what’s gonna happen.”
  
  “Oh, moon,” she couldn’t help whispering. “Yes. Yes… I want that.”
  
  He pulled back to look down at her, his handsome features drawn tight with triumph. Without warning, he leaned down and lifted her up, walking her backward to set her ass down on the island counter. His lips claimed hers in a searing kiss. She gasped and he slid his tongue in to tangle with hers, the kiss heating within seconds.
  
  She had no idea whose hands stripped off her top and bra, or his shirt. All she knew was the utter satisfaction of all that satin skin over steely muscle under her hands, and the bone-melting pleasure as he cupped her breasts in big, calloused palms.
  
  Her soft sigh was drowned out by a deep groan as he leaned down to take one of her nipples into his mouth. A whimper escaped her as warm, wet heat closed around the turgid peak and she clung to his shoulders. He laved attention on first one and then the other, soft kisses and licks interspersed with sucks that drew lines of fire from her nipples right down to her clit.
  
  “I have to taste you,” he broke away to declare, pushing her back flat onto the counter as he wrestled her jeans and panties off her hips and down her legs. She bit back a giggle as her clothing fought him and he growled.
  
  “What?” he demanded darkly, but she caught the quirk at the corner of his lips. “I’ve finally got you here, you think I’m gonna let some pain-in-the-ass clothing stop me?” he said as he finally got them to her feet and dropped them onto the floor unheeded.
  
  “Oh… moon’s teeth…” she murmured as he yanked her closer, parting her thighs as he dropped to his knees. The counter was just the right height for him to wrap steely forearms around her thighs, his hands parting her pussy lips as he licked her slit all the way up to her clit. She keened softly, trying to twist away, and he chuckled, easily holding her in place.
  
  “You’re not going anywhere, beautiful,” he promised. “Not until you’ve come all over my face.”
  
  Oh. My. God. He totally did not just say that. Lilly’s cheeks burned as she realized that, yes, he had just said that. He had just told her he planned to eat her out until she came.
  
  She whimpered as he leaned forward and this time, when his tongue slid between her pussy lips, he didn’t stop. He feasted on her like a starving man at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
  
  Each lick was hotter than the last as he explored her. Found her clit and stroked it with his tongue. Soft, long licks combined with hard slices of his tongue until she wriggled and squirmed in his hold. But he didn’t take pity on her. Instead, he slid his tongue down and teased the entrance to her body, pushing inside to fuck her with his tongue before returning to tease at her clit until her body was on fire.
  
  “Morgan… please!” she cried out, on the edge as she gripped the edge of the counter.
  
  He rumbled in approval… and clamped his lips around her clit to suck hard. She screamed as she shattered apart, her hips bucking as her body clenched hard. He growled and kept going, stretching out her release until she lay pliant and shuddering on the cool countertop.
  
  He was gone for a moment and she wondered why, turning her head to see him turn off the pasta sauce. She blinked. How the hell had he remembered such a thing when she could barely remember her damn name?
  
  Then he was back, gathering her up into his arms to walk through the ground floor.
  
  “Bedroom,” he ordered softly.
  
  “Top of the stairs, first on the left.”
  
  That was the sum total of their conversation. But with each step he took up the stairs, she felt the tension between them stretch to breaking point. Shouldering open the door, he gave the room a cursory glance before crossing to the bed and laying her on it. Her back had barely hit the cool sheets before he was over her, that big, hard body braced on his hands as he claimed her lips in a quick, hard kiss.
  
  She murmured in pleasure, tasting herself on him, and slid her hands through his hair. She loved his hair. But before she was finished kissing him, he pulled away, a wry little chuckle in the back of his throat as he stood up.
  
  “If I don’t get inside you soon, I think I’ll fucking explode,” he admitted, hands virtually tearing his fly open. His cock sprang free, and she realized two things. One, he went commando and two, he was frigging huge.
  
  “Don’t worry, beautiful… I’ll go slow,” he promised as he caught her wide-eyed look.
  
  “Moon, no…” she breathed, motioning him closer. Just the sight of him had her wet with need again. She’d always liked her men on the big side, and half the battery-operated boyfriends in her bottom drawer were marketed as ‘extra girthy’ so she wasn’t intimidated by his size.
  
  “Fair’s fair,” she smirked up at him. “Come here.”
  
  It was his turn to look stunned as she hooked a finger in the jeans that rode low on his hips and pulled him toward her. Before he’d finished taking the step, she ran her tongue up the underside of his shaft and murmured in pleasure as his taste exploded on her tongue. A second later she’d wrapped her lips around him and sank down over the broad head of his cock.
  
  He was… yeah, huge, and she hummed in pleasure, barely able to fit him all in. So, she wrapped her hands around him as well and stroked his shaft as she sucked. He swore, his hands shaking as he drove them into her hair, holding her still as she sucked him off.
  
  She’d barely managed to bob her head down over him a couple of times before he swore and pulled her off him. A second later, she was flat on her back again, with him looming over her, his hard knee parting her thighs roughly.
  
  “Any more of that, and I won’t last,” he panted, a rough edge to his voice as he reached between them to fit the head of his cock against her. “And much as I want that, I want to fuck you more. I want the first time I come with you to be when I’m balls deep inside you.”
  
  She nodded but didn’t get chance to say anything. With a roll of his hips, he filled her in one hard thrust that left them both gasping in pleasure.
  
  She clung to his shoulders as she felt herself stretched wide and tight around his invading cock. It felt wonderful, perfect… so perfect that it felt like being home. Like he was the other half of her soul.
  
  She looked up at him, stunned to see the same expression mirrored on his face. Then he closed his eyes and groaned, grinding his hips against hers. His cock pulsed and throbbed deep within her, distracting her from the troublesome thoughts.
  
  “You feel so good,” he murmured in a rough voice, bracing himself on a forearm next to her head and pulling his hips back. He drove back in a second later, the movement a slip-slide of pure sensation and pleasure. “So hot and tight. So fucking wet for me.”
  
  She bit her lip. Whimpered as she moved with him. Each heavy thrust sent showers of sparks through her blood, adding to the hard pleasure coiling between her thighs.
  
  “You wanna talk or screw?” she demanded on a pant, drawing him down for a hard kiss. Times like these she wanted it hard and fast.
  
  Slow and gentle was for mates. Was for spooning in bed and mating bites. For a second, just a split second, she imagined that with Morgan. With the big warlock wrapped around her, taking her from behind as he bit down on her shoulder.
  
  “Fuck me,” Morgan breathed as her body clenched hard around him. His movements stuttered but then he sped up. But he didn’t stop talking, even as each thrust slammed the headboard against the wall behind. “You’re fucking beautiful. I’ve always wanted to see you like this. Spread out under me as you take my cock.”
  
  He moved, sliding a hand between them to stroke her clit, and between one second and the next, it was too much for Lilly. She shattered apart, screaming his name, as the biggest orgasm she’d ever had slammed through her.
  
  “Fuck!” He growled, sliding his hand free and under her to yank her hips up to his. His thrusts were harder, stronger, elongating the crashing waves of pleasure as they drowned her in ecstasy. She didn’t have the brain power to marvel at his strength.
  
  But within seconds, his thrusts altered. He slammed into her one last time and stiffened. His teeth grazed her neck as he growled his release into her hair, his cock jerking and pulsing as he bathed her inner walls with his white-hot seed.
  
  She couldn’t stop the smile as she came down from the biggest high she’d ever had.
  
  She’d fucked hot Morgan Jones. And he wasn’t as good as the gossips all said he was.
  
  He was better.
  
  
  
  
  
  OH EM GEE! You didn’t!
  
  Lilly smiled as the message from Kacie popped up on her cell, shortly followed by one from Kait. The squee emoji. All she’d done was message them that she’d done it, and they’d known exactly what she meant.
  
  She’d done it with Morgan Jones. And not just once. Many times. The man was insatiable. Lilly bit her lip as memories of the previous night rolled through her mind, sending shimmers of heat sashaying through her blood.
  
  Moving around the kitchen, she filled the coffee machine with water and opened the cupboard with the filters and coffee in it. Her cell pinged again. It was a message from Kacie again.
  
  Kacie: So, what was it like? Doing the dirty with a warlock.
  
  Lilly sighed and shook her head, but Kacie was still typing.
  
  Kacie: OMG, I can’t believe I just said that. But are warlocks different from bears in the sack?
  
  Lilly picked a filter out of the packet and slotted it into place. Her next glance at the screen showed little typing dots next to Kait’s name.
  
  Kait: 3 weeks ago you didn’t know either existed. Shut up and let her talk, would you?
  
  Lilly grabbed her phone, rapidly thumb-typing. What do you mean, what’s it like? They don’t have 2 dicks, you know!?
  
  Kacie: Well dammit, ruin my fantasy, why don’t you? Wait… are there any like non-human peeps with 2 dicks? What about the abominable snowman? I bet he’s got 2 dicks.
  
  Kait: FFS Kace, you’re obsessed with dicks. Perhaps we should tell Dean…
  
  Kacie: Bite me, bitch. NOT YOU LILLY!
  
  Lilly sniggered as she spooned coffee into the filter, adding an extra scoop for good measure. She liked her coffee strong in the morning. Like strong enough to peel her skull back from the eyeballs and galvanise brain cells with lightning.
  
  No, she typed after dropping the lid down and turning the machine on. No peeps with 2 dicks as far as I know. And the ab.snowman is a myth. Like the Easter bunny. Not everything in movies are real, you know?
  
  Kait: For reals? What about vampires?
  
  Kacie: PLEEEEASE tell me there are elves. Or pixies. Gotta be fairies of some type.
  
  Lilly opened a cupboard and retrieved a couple of mugs before replying.
  
  There are vamps, but they’re way more dangerous than the ones in film. And yes to elves, fairies, and pixies.
  
  Kacie: Really? HOW CUTE!
  
  Lilly laughed. Pixies are assholes, though, and not tiny. They’re like badass tattooed punks. Usually stay in cities.
  
  Kacie: :(
  
  Kait: Dragons?
  
  Lilly didn’t bother to answer for a moment as she left the mugs lined up and turned around, nibbling her lip. Perhaps she should make breakfast? Morgan had made pancakes yesterday. Even though he’d cleaned up after himself, she had smelled them when she got in.
  
  She was still kicking herself for that one. Never mind the embarrassment of waking up with some dude’s hand between her thighs as he made her come, she’d missed out on pancakes by storming out. That was like breaking Bear Girl Rules 101.
  
  Her eyes fluttered closed as her mind gave her a replay of waking up with Morgan touching her. Of him making her come. Her eyes opened for her gaze to collide with the island, and her cheeks heated. All the things they’d done… How many times they’d done it. The man had been insatiable. And absolutely dedicated to her pleasure.
  
  She bit her lip as she turned back around to check the coffee, savoring the warmth that spread from the center of her chest. They were good together, in bed, at least. He was a kind and generous lover one moment, fierce and demanding the next. The dichotomy confused but delighted her, and her bear, the utter tart, was besotted with him.
  
  Perhaps it could work between them, she mused as she watched the drip-drip-drip of the coffee pot. She wrapped her arms around herself, a smile on her lips.
  
  She hoped so. She really hoped so.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 7
  
  
  
  
  
  The hot water hit his skin in a storm of a thousand tiny needles. Morgan hissed in pleasure, closing his eyes as the spray played over him. Like most bear’s, Lilly’s home was a haven of luxury, from the sumptuous and tactile fabrics she’d used for her soft furnishings, to the elegant and warm woods of the flooring.
  
  Everything was picked with a purpose and her own taste in mind. Truly a bear’s lair. And obviously she liked a power shower. A little bit of pain with her pleasure. A small quirk hit his lips. He’d picked that up over the last few nights they’d been together. The little sounds she’d made as he pinned her down, nipped her lip or earlobe softly almost had him coming on the spot, it was so erotic. His memory supplied him with an instant replay of the night before.
  
  God, she was awesome. He’d never met a woman so in tune with her sensuality, or so giving. Anything he’d wanted, she’d been down for. Not that he was particularly kinky, but sometimes a guy didn’t want to stop and ask permission to do something. Or even worse, feel like he had to persuade his partner. Those were games for teenagers. He wanted a woman just as into sex as he was.
  
  Lilly was that woman. She’d met him, more than matched him, and left him wanting far more.
  
  He’d known being with her would be mind-blowing, had suspected it from the moment he’d met her. And he’d wanted her the moment he’d laid eyes on her. Who wouldn’t? She was tiny, curvy and utterly gorgeous. More than that. She was strong and a kickass enforcer. But it wasn’t just about physical strength or being a bear. Even if she’d been garden-variety human, he had no doubt she’d still have been a powerful woman who knew her own mind.
  
  Those were the things that drew him to her like a moth to flame.
  
  Plus the fact she really didn’t give a shit about his looks. Actually, it was especially that. Morgan wasn’t stupid. He knew how he looked. Most women he met started drooling as soon as they saw him and made no bones about propositioning him. Hell, he’d had underwear and scraps of paper with numbers scrawled onto them stuffed into his waistband walking down the damn street in broad daylight. It was embarrassing, and he hated it. Not that most guys understood. Usually they laughed at him, then told him to enjoy the attention, not even getting it when he pointed out that if he was female and they’d been male, most of them would have been arrested on the spot.
  
  It was a double standard that made his teeth ache from gritting them so damn much.
  
  But Lilly had never treated him like that. Never expressed an interest. Hell, half the time she knocked him down a peg or two, in scathing verbal attacks that totally cut him down to size.
  
  He’d always wondered about it. About why the one woman who didn’t seem to want him was the only one he wanted.
  
  But now he’d had her. The smile spread over his lips as she stepped into the bathroom to brush her teeth and he could ogle her underwear clad figure again. Now he’d had her, and he knew that sharp tongue and disinterested act were just that. An act.
  
  She was as into him as he was into her.
  
  “Hey beautiful,” he rumbled, catching her gaze in the mirror. “Come here often?”
  
  The line was so bad he got a smile out of her. Quickly, she finished her teeth and turned around, leaning back against the vanity to boldly eye him up and down.
  
  “With a view like this, I’ll have to make sure to come more often.”
  
  Just like that, the atmosphere in the small room went from teasing to crawling with sexual tension.
  
  “Oh, I’m all for more coming.” He lifted his hand to beckon her, the other lazily fisting his already hard cock in lazy strokes.
  
  “You’ll get me wet,” she chided, but crossed the distance between them.
  
  “That’s the idea.” He grinned, reaching out to haul her into the shower with him. It was one of those walk-in types, with two sheets of glass, so it was easy to pull her in. She squeaked in mock-outrage but didn’t fight him, even though they both knew she easily could.
  
  “I don’t know why you bothered to put these pretty things on,” he told her as he dragged his lips up with side of her throat. He held her to him, her back to his chest, with one hand as he quickly and efficiently stripped her of her underwear.
  
  She giggled, the sound low and sexy, and ground her ass back against his groin. He was forced to pause, his hand filled with her soft breast, and count to ten before he could carry on. Gods, she affected him like no other woman.
  
  He carried on kissing her neck, the water cascading over both of them as he shoved her feet further apart. A hand on her hips tilted them back to just the right angle. They both moaned as he eased inside her. A slow, slick ride of pure sensation.
  
  “Oh fuck,” Lilly whispered, clutching at the shower screen. Her knuckles whitened as he thrust in, balls deep. He rested his forehead against the back of her neck, until his eyes uncrossed. Buried in her tight, wet heat was a special kind of heaven. One he knew he’d never find again. Ever. She was it. He could easily fall in lo…
  
  He pushed the thought away quickly. He didn’t do the L word. He wasn’t in love. He never fell in love. If he loved someone, then they left him.
  
  Lifting his head, he picked up the pace. Started to drive into her hard and fast, chasing the ecstasy he knew fucking her could bring. She growled and pushed back against him, clenching hard around him until his eyes crossed.
  
  But two could play at that game. A wicked grin crossed his lips as he reached for the shower head, unhooking it and snaking it around her body.
  
  “Oh fuck…” She whimpered as the needle spray of the water hit her clit. She squirmed in his hold, as though trying to get away from the spray but parting her thighs wider at the same time. He grinned and fucked her harder. Faster.
  
  It didn’t take long, no more than a minute or two, before he felt the tell-tale tightening of her body as her climax approached. He didn’t give her any mercy. Instead, he sped up, ruthlessly pushing her up and over the edge.
  
  She screamed his name as she shattered with pleasure around him. The tight silken sheath clenched around him, clamping down so hard he swore. With a growl, he fucked her through the orgasm and into the next. Only then did he growl, fire racing down his spine to encircle his balls, and allow himself to follow her into ecstasy.
  
  
  
  
  
  Anderson was either really clever or as dumb as a rock.
  
  Lilly sighed to herself as she nodded to Will Reed, her relief for the twenty-four hour watch the enforcer team had on Anderson and his merry little band. She’d been following him since this morning, and so far, all she’d discovered was that the guy was every stereotype of a small-town cop. All of them. Every. Single. One. The sort of caricature found on low-budget shows to signal the setting was small-town Hicksville.
  
  Anderson wasn’t a cop. He was just playing one. He drove around in his patrol car, looking the part. The trouble was, he used the same route each and every day.
  
  As kids, it had been awesome. They’d all known where Anderson, then a deputy, was going to be. And as a kid intent on getting into trouble, that knowledge was invaluable. Hadn’t helped with the enforcer team though. She grimaced. As a kid she’d been convinced they were somehow telepaths, because they’d always turned up just at the point she and her friends were thinking about doing something that would get them into trouble.
  
  Edwins, the crabbiest bear ever, had headed up the enforcer team back then. She’d been sure the old bastard had hated her. He’d been harder on her than any of the other kids. Now, of course, she realized he’d spotted her potential. He’d even named her as his replacement before he’d died, a fact that still warmed her heart. She often swung by his grave. Not the one in the neat human cemetery, but his real one in the clan’s sacred burial ground in the woods.
  
  Anderson was no Clarence Edwins, that was for sure.
  
  She’d spent the morning watching him ‘investigate’ the theft of Mrs. Howden’s prize bantam, George. Since everyone in town knew of the rivalry between Mrs. Howden and Mr. Moore when it came to breeding birds, she’d bet her ass that they’d find George happily pecking at feed in Mr. Moore’s garden.
  
  But so far, Anderson had ummed and ahhed, double-checked the damaged cage and finally suggested that local foxes might be to blame. Finally, he’d retreated to the cafe for coffee and donuts and read the daily news. Obviously, he needed to relax after such a high-stakes and complex investigation.
  
  But other than that, he’d done nothing noteworthy. She hissed in frustration as she walked down the street, pulling her cap down low over her eyes as a car passed her. She wasn’t worried they, or Anderson, would notice her. Not with the aversion charms Morgan had given the whole team. Hell, if she hadn’t been wearing hers to allow her to see through the illusion cast by the others, she wouldn’t have even recognized her own team.
  
  Sliding into her car, she yanked her hat off and ruffled her hair, quickly checking her appearance in the mirror. As usual, her mascara had migrated to become smudges under her lower lashes that made her look like a damn raccoon. She had no idea what he saw in her. She couldn’t even do the makeup thing right, not like Kait, who looked like a model half the time.
  
  Her lipstick was long gone, and she smiled a little, remembering Morgan kissing it off at lunch when they’d managed a few private minutes behind the cafe. If they hadn’t been out in the open, who knows where that would have ended up.
  
  Morgan.
  
  Just the thought of the big, handsome warlock made her smile, warmth spreading through her chest. She couldn’t wait to see him again. Moon, she’d never thought she’d be the kind to hanker after a man but… what she and Morgan had was special. She could feel it. Her bear could feel it.
  
  Yeah, yeah… she knew the statistics. Relationships between bears and humans didn’t often work. Relationships between bears and magical folk even less. But just this once, she thought it might. She and Morgan were meant to be together. If he’d been a bear, she was sure he’d be her fated mate. He had to be. She’d never felt like this about anyone before. Like ever.
  
  Putting the car into gear, she pulled off, eager to get back to the lodge and… debrief. Yeah, it was all about the debrief, she told herself. Totally professional. Nothing to do with seeing a certain sexy warlock again.
  
  Honest.
  
  
  
  
  
  Harrison was as boring as fuck.
  
  Morgan’s heart leaped as he spotted his relief, Jason Abram from the enforcer team, drive past him and park up a little way down the street. He didn’t acknowledge the guy, nor did Jason so much as look Morgan’s way.
  
  Instead, the big warlock simply put his truck into drive and pulled off. It was heavily disguised, the spell he’d placed on it earlier making the distinctive metallic behemoth look like a little old lady’s battered sedan. He’d even added the little old lady at the wheel, barely tall enough to see over the steering wheel. The plates were obscured, spelled, so that if anyone looked at them they quickly lost interest and started to think of their shopping list instead. All in all, he’d done everything to ensure his stake-out today had gone smoothly.
  
  He needn’t have bothered, because he’d drawn the short straw and ended up with Brad Harrison. Who was as interesting as watching paint dry. All he’d done all day was work out in his garage, tinker with an old bike that was never going to start, and drink more beers than Morgan could count. Which accounted for all the time he’d spent in the can.
  
  Morgan had gotten so bored he’d seriously considered wrapping his boots in bubble wrap and trying to kick himself to death.
  
  Why couldn’t Harrison have done something? Like contact the rogues again. Or something nasty, so he could swoop in and save the day. In a way that would impress Lilly, he realized. More than that, he wanted her to respect him and his abilities— in more than just the bedroom.
  
  But no, the fucktard hadn’t done anything, so he was forced to return to the lodge empty-handed. He sighed with frustration as he reached the turn for the lodge and headed that way. If Harrison did anything now, it would be Jason who called it in and got all the glory.
  
  Pulling up at the lodge, he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Lilly’s little pink SUV already parked where the main lodge met the extension wing. Picking the space next to hers, he spared the little vehicle a glance. He needed to put a call into Thom. Get Lilly’s SUV checked over and tricked out to keep her safe if she had an accident.
  
  Then he groaned and dropped his forehead against the steering wheel in front of him. Chaos, he was an idiot. Lilly was a bear. She could probably play chicken with a semi and walk away. But even knowing that didn’t stop his need to protect her. The first time he’d felt protective over any woman. Ever. And she could rip his spine out through his ass and beat him with it if he stepped out of line.
  
  Yeah, he’d always had a thing for strong women.
  
  Resisting the urge to yank his cell free and call Thom, he got out of his truck to head inside. Before he got halfway a large figure stepped out and blocked his path.
  
  Instantly, he kicked himself for his mistake—he’d managed to get caught in a bottleneck alone between his and Lilly’s rides and the lodge wall. It was an unforgivable lapse, one that would have earned him endless piss-taking had anyone from his old unit seen it.
  
  In a heartbeat, he was locked and loaded, and not with anything so mundane as a rifle. He reached for power, the magic that resided in his soul, and the flame of active spells crawled up his arms from his clenched fists. Blue flickered against the wall, the color of his magic, highlighting the features of the bear in front of him.
  
  Bennett Allan.
  
  “What do you want, Bennett?” he snapped, taking his power level down a couple of notches. Much as he wanted to fry the fucker’s brains for thinking about Lilly, he couldn’t kill Bennett. If he so much as laid a finger on her though, Morgan wouldn’t be responsible for what happened.
  
  But he couldn’t kill him for just being an idiot. Because, bear or not, only an idiot would try and face down a warlock. Not without a small army for backup and possibly a few anti-tank weapons in the wings.
  
  “You need to let her go,” Bennett growled, his eyes darkened with his bear. “You don’t love her. I do. I can make her happy.”
  
  Guilt washed through him. No, he didn’t love Lilly. He couldn’t risk it. Everyone who loved him left. And he didn’t want her to leave. Not yet.
  
  “You can’t make her happy because she doesn’t love you,” he told Bennett bluntly. Dean had told both of them they shouldn’t sugar coat the situation if Bennett confronted them. That it was best to be as blunt as possible in the hopes it would snap the younger bear out of it.
  
  “She’ll never be happy with you,” Bennett snarled, something in his dark gaze making Morgan shiver. He wasn’t looking at the man, or even the bear anymore, he was sure of it. Something older and wiser peered from Bennett’s eyes, weighing and measuring him. Somehow, he knew he’d been found wanting. “She’ll never be happy with you because you can’t let her in.”
  
  Before Morgan could reply, Bennett growled and turned on his heel to disappear around Morgan’s truck. Flames still at the ready, just in case it was a ruse, Morgan followed him. But there was no ambush, no attack.
  
  Instead, there was a trail of ruined clothes leading across the parking lot, and the sight of Bennett’s hairy bear rump disappearing into the forest beyond.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 8
  
  
  
  
  
  “Hey Jones.” Dean looked up as Morgan entered the room, an easy smile on the bear prime’s face. “Good of you to join us.”
  
  Morgan’s eyebrow winged up. “I didn’t realize there was a scheduled start time for this.”
  
  “There isn’t.”
  
  “Then why on my case, itinerary-monkey?”
  
  “Asshole warlock.” Dean threw back, not at all bothered by Morgan’s quip. They’d been doing this for years, it was practically required.
  
  “He’s just snarky because he’s been bored all day,” Lilly piped up from the corner. He took a moment to appreciate the sight laid out before him like a fine painting.
  
  The late afternoon sun caught her hair from the window behind her, rendering her dark hair a halo of fire and turning her eyes to shades of amber. She looked more like one of the fabled phoenix shifters than the bear he knew her to be.
  
  “Bored? Who says I’ve been bored?” he asked as he dropped into the chair in front of Dean’s desk.
  
  “This.” She held her cell out, scrolling through her recent messages. There was page after page of memes and funny pictures of cats. He’d been sending them all day, trying to get her to crack and talk to him.
  
  He shrugged. There was only three of them in the room. They’d agreed that all planning went through the three of them and only the three of them. Not that there was any suspicion that they had a mole in the clan, but it always paid to be security conscious. Especially at times like these.
  
  “You were just a little later than we expected,” Dean explained. “All good?”
  
  “Yeah. All good. Just some… non-bear stuff to deal with,” Morgan replied, sweeping his hair off his face with both hands. He didn’t bother to mention the little altercation with Bennett outside. It had nothing to do with the Anderson situation, and it had just been words anyway. Nothing he couldn’t handle.
  
  “So, anything doing with Harrison?”
  
  He was suddenly the center of attention for both bears. It was like being stared at by two rattlesnakes, and a hell of a lot more dangerous. He could deal with two snakes. Two bears, both alphas? Yeah, that would take more magic than he wanted to use against anyone he didn’t want to kill.
  
  “Nope. Didn’t move from his place all day. Boring as watching fucking paint dry.”
  
  Dean’s brows snapped together. “What are these assholes playing at? It’s like they disappeared off the face of the earth.”
  
  Morgan caught Lilly’s gaze and she shook her head, hair dancing on her shoulders. She’d had no luck with Anderson either, then.
  
  “And you’re sure there was nothing different about his routine? He didn’t try and contact anyone?”
  
  Morgan shrugged. “Not in his pocket, dude, so I wouldn’t know if he’s normally such a boring fuck. But no, he didn’t contact anyone that I saw. Not unless it was by telepathy.”
  
  Dean arched an eyebrow. “Could he have used the internet?”
  
  Lilly shook her head. “No cable out that far, and he doesn’t have a PC.”
  
  Morgan and Dean both turned to look at her.
  
  “How do you know that?” Morgan demanded. Was there some history between Harrison and Lilly that he didn’t know about? Jealousy flared, white hot, to claw at his guts. He couldn’t see the pair of them together… Harrison was a dick and Lilly was altogether too intelligent. But, could it have been a youthful thing?
  
  Her lips quirked.
  
  “I may have done a little scout around his place while he was at the Beast the other night. All in the name of intel…”
  
  They both continued to look at her. Dean’s reply held the edge of a growl. “Don’t head out alone like that again.”
  
  “Yeah, what he said,” Morgan added, not liking the idea of her being in Harrison’s place by herself, bear or not.
  
  She gave them a level look right back. Then she blinked and gave a little mock-start.
  
  “Oh, I’m sorry, were you both talking to me?” she asked, saccharine-sweet. Her eyes were wide and innocent; Lilly at her most dangerous. “I thought for a moment you were telling the clan’s head enforcer, an alpha bear with a proven track record, not to do her job?”
  
  Morgan’s expression set. She had them there. He just didn’t like the idea of her going alone into danger. Yeah, sure, he and Dean had often done it back in the day, but this was Lilly… it was different.
  
  “It’s not your job to put yourself in danger like that,” he told her. “I haven’t spent the last week at your place keeping you safe just for you to go throw yourself under the damn bus like that.”
  
  “Keeping me safe?” There was a higher edge to her voice as she faced him down. “Is that what you’ve been doing?”
  
  Danger Morgan Jones... Danger.
  
  “Of course. Why else would I be sleeping there?”
  
  She blinked, and the shutters closed in her expression. “Right. Just so we have that cleared up. I’ll make sure that I don’t put myself in danger. If we’re done here?”
  
  She didn’t look at Morgan, transferring her attention to Dean. He lifted his hands as if in surrender, leaning back in his chair.
  
  “All done. Let me know where you have everyone assigned tomorrow and keep me updated on progress.”
  
  “Will do,” she said, her voice clipped. She levered herself up out of the chair and, walking past Morgan without so much as a glance, left the room.
  
  He watched the door for a couple of moments and then turned back around.
  
  To find Dean watching him, an amused look on his face.
  
  “What?” he demanded.
  
  Dean’s grin broadened. “I’ve seen that look before. Be careful tangling with that one. Bear women are like nothing you’ve ever dealt with before.”
  
  Morgan raised an eyebrow. “Who says anyone is dealing with anyone?”
  
  Dean’s bark of laughter was short and sharp. “Really? You expect me to believe that? There’s no way, with the tension between you two, that you’re not tapping that.”
  
  He leaned forward, his expression suddenly serious. “I’m not pissing about, Morgan. Be very careful with Lilly. She’s an alpha, and a she-bear. If she falls in love with you, bonds with you, then you need to be all in, because that’s it for her.”
  
  The words stunned Morgan. He’d never considered that Lilly might fall in love… much less bond with him. He laughed to cover the thread of nerves that tried to roll through him.
  
  “She won’t fall for me, don’t be stupid. She’s a big girl, Dean, one who knows her own mind and what the score is. We’re just scratching an itch while we can, that’s all.”
  
  Dean folded his arms, eyebrow raised. “Yeah, if you say so.”
  
  Morgan chuckled. “I mean, come on. Can you see me settling down with any woman, especially a bear woman?”
  
  The sudden chill in the room made them both freeze, but it was the low and dangerous growl from the other side of the door that made Morgan’s heart sink.
  
  He closed his eyes at the sound of running feet. He knew who it was.
  
  “Then you’re a fucking idiot, Morgan.” Dean’s tone revealed he was not amused at all anymore. “Any man would kill to have Lilly. Now go after her, because if you lose me my head enforcer, I’ll gut you myself.”
  
  
  
  
  
  “…knows her own mind and what the score is. We’re just scratching an itch while we can, that’s all.”
  
  The words, followed by Morgan’s rich, deep laugh, froze Lilly in place outside the door to Dean’s office. She’d doubled back to tell him Will Reed wasn’t on duty tomorrow. He had to look after his kid because his mate had a prenatal appointment.
  
  The clan demanded a lot from its enforcers but the one thing it did not fuck about with was family. Nothing was more important than family.
  
  But she hadn’t gotten that far. Morgan’s words filtered through the thick wood to her disbelieving ears. She tightened her grip on the handle, intending to shove the door open and inform him that if she hadn’t before, she certainly did know the score now. But his next words delivered the final nail in the coffin of their fledgling relationship.
  
  “I mean, come on. Can you see me settling down with any woman, especially a bear woman?”
  
  If she’d frozen before, then she was a living statue now. Agony laced through her chest like a slow-blooming flower, spreading from her heart in lightning bolt fractures.
  
  Here she was, starting to think about happily ever after and white picket fences, and he wasn’t even serious about her. Had never been serious about her. This was all a game to him.
  
  Scratching an itch.
  
  The growl welled up from her very soul, the place where her bear lived, as the creature voiced the betrayal they both felt.
  
  Snatching her hand back from the door handle like it was acid eating through her skin, she didn’t wait to see what else the asshole warlock said but fled instead.
  
  She tore through the lodge. The few clan members in residence squawked and almost fell over each other to get out of her way. She barely saw them in her need to get away. To escape. Tears nearly blinded her as she crashed through the main doors and stumbled outside.
  
  How could she have been so stupid? How could she for one minute have thought that she and Morgan Jones could have a future together? He was a player, nothing more, nothing less. She knew that.
  
  Look at all the women he’d dated since coming to Beauty… Although dated was stretching it a bit. No, a lot. Party girls and booty-calls, all arm candy with barely two brain cells to knock together, and those two were only concerned with clothes and men. Half relied on men like Morgan to get by, and the other half… well, their primary source of income was more the horizontal variety.
  
  “Hey Lilly. Are you okay?” A soft voice asked in concern and she looked up to find Eliza Watson in front of her, baby Poppy held in her arms.
  
  “Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks for asking,” Lilly croaked, sliding past her quickly and fleeing toward her SUV. Even out here, she couldn’t get away from him— Morgan’s huge black truck corralled her little car.
  
  “Lilly! Wait!” Morgan called out, crashing through the main doors of the lodge just after her.
  
  “Go to hell, asshole!” she yelled back, enough of her bear in her voice to make it nearly a roar. Yanking her keys from her pocket, she opened the door and dropped into the driver’s seat with more force than finesse.
  
  “Wait!!” Morgan reached the passenger door a split second after she triggered the locks. He yanked ineffectually on the handle, hair swinging against his broad shoulders.
  
  “Lilly, dammit! Let me in!” he demanded, his expression a cross between concern and anger.
  
  “Go to hell!” she repeated at the top of her lungs and tried to start the car. The problem was, her hands weren’t working right. The keys slipped from her fingers into the footwell.
  
  “Fuck! Seriously?!” She hissed, dashing at her cheeks to clear the tears. She was angry-crying because there was no way in hell she was crying over asshole Morgan Jones. No way. No how.
  
  “Come on Lilly,” he cajoled, bending down to look at her through the window. “Let’s talk about this, okay, baby?”
  
  “Baby? Baby?!” she screeched, leaning down and managing to grab her keys from the floor. They went into the ignition on the second stab. “I’m not your fucking baby!”
  
  “Of course you are. Come on, Lilly, be reasonable,” he pleaded.
  
  “No,” she snarled viciously. “I’m just an itch to be scratched. Remember?”
  
  His face paled and panic showed in his eyes.
  
  “You’re not, I promise you’re not,” he got closer to the window, his expression pleading. “I was just... I’m a fucking idiot, okay? I didn’t mean it like that.”
  
  She wasn’t in any mood to listen to him.
  
  “Then exactly how did you mean it? No, wait,” she frowned. “I actually don’t fucking care.”
  
  “Lilly, open this godsdamned door.” He yanked on the handle. She was so the wrong person for him to be pulling that growling shit on, and if he pulled her door handle off, then she was going to be pissed. The last thing she needed on top of all this was a damn repair bill.
  
  “I’ll blow the motherfucking thing open,” he threatened.
  
  She went cold, looking at him with murder in her eyes.
  
  “Do it,” she invited in a silky-smooth voice. “And you’ll find out what a truly pissed off she-bear looks like.”
  
  As she spoke, her nails lengthened into claws, razor sharp, and twice as deadly. Morgan’s eyes widened at the display. Part-shifting was a purely alpha trait. It was what separated them from the rest of the clan. To do it so easily…
  
  “Leave it, bro.”
  
  Dean’s arm snaked around Morgan’s chest as he lifted hands wreathed in blue fire, obviously about to carry out his threat and blow her car door off. With a surprising amount of effort, the big bear prime dragged the warlock back a few steps.
  
  “Let her calm down first.”
  
  Yeah. Like that was ever happening. Lilly didn’t spare the warlock another glance as she put the car in drive and spun the hell out of there in a shower of grit and gravel.
  
  She was done with men in general, warlocks in particular, and hell would freeze over before the name Morgan Jones would ever cross her lips again.
  
  
  
  
  
  He’d fucked up, he’d well and truly fucked up, and now Lilly had left him. Just like he’d always known she would.
  
  Morgan closed his eyes and downed what was left in the bottle in his hand. He dropped it on the bar to join a horde of its brothers and motioned to Ash to keep them coming.
  
  “You okay, bud?” Ash asked as he put another cold one down in front of Morgan. While they hadn’t been in the same unit at the same time, they’d both served, so like all veterans, they looked out for each other. At the moment, though, Morgan didn’t want or even deserve anyone looking out for him.
  
  “Yeah… No. Just keep ‘em coming,” he growled, downing half the new beer in one long swallow. Perhaps if he got drunk enough, he could forget the look of pain and betrayal in Lilly’s eyes.
  
  It was for the best. She might have been falling in love with him, and that wouldn’t do. He couldn’t fall in love with her, so it was best they just walk away now, before hearts got involved and someone got hurt.
  
  Lilly already had gotten hurt, a small voice in the back of his head whispered, darkening his mood even further. The memory of the look in her eyes—the pain and betrayal behind the anger she’d directed at him—made him wince and drop his head. The tears she’d dashed away desperately so he didn’t see them damned him.
  
  He didn’t deserve her—he never had. With a growl of self-loathing, he downed the rest of the beer in one go and reached for the next. And the next. Anything to burn the memory of the look on her face out of his brain.
  
  Within an hour he was falling-down drunk.
  
  “Hey bud, you okay?” Ash appeared in front of him and Morgan blinked, trying to work out which of the three versions of the werepanther was the real one. They stubbornly refused to reveal which one, so he focused on the Ash on the right. One thing he’d learned from years of faking sobriety was that the more you concentrated on walking in a straight line, the more you staggered, and it was never the one in the middle.
  
  “Yup. All good. Keep ‘em coming,” he ordered with a thumbs up. Then he slid sideways off the barstool. He was only saved from face-planting on the ground by grabbing the edge of the bar.
  
  The three Ashs snapped into one. The one on the left. Sonofabitch. Ash looked at him levelly, a knowing expression on his face.
  
  “Yeah, right. Do I need to call Dean to come get you?” He didn’t want a drunk warlock in his bar. Hell, no one wanted a drunk warlock in their bar. He'd once known a warlock who'd leveled a couple of city blocks on a bender after his fiancée had left him.
  
  Of course, it hadn't helped that she'd left him for another warlock. The jilted lover had thrown the bar they were drinking in at his rival. Literally. The fight that had broken out raged through the night and well into the next morning. It had taken nearly a dozen warlocks to deal with the damage and wipe the memories of all the local 'normals' so that their world didn't come to the attention of the human authorities. All three responsible had been persona non-grata for a long time after.
  
  "No." Morgan said quickly. "I'm good. No need to call him."
  
  Given that Lilly was one of Dean's bears, the last thing he needed was his friend getting on his case about it. Especially as he'd been a complete asshole and they all knew it.
  
  It was more than that. He knew about bears, he'd been around them long enough, both in town and before, to know he shouldn't have even considered getting involved with Lilly. Bears didn’t do casual.
  
  Like ever. he'd been thinking with his dick, and look where it had gotten him... He'd hurt the only woman he'd ever truly cared about. He didn't love her. Not yet. But he could have and that was what scared him.
  
  He'd leave Beauty.
  
  It was the least he could do. She had a job to do in town, with the clan. It wouldn't be fair if she had to deal with him—see him—every day. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he was running again, but he quelled the thought with the same ruthlessness and determination he put into learning new spells.
  
  "Hey bro. How you doing?" Dean's deep voice behind him made Morgan groan, and he looked at Ash accusingly.
  
  The werepanther held his hands up, palms out. "Nothing to do with me,” he murmured before moving off to serve another customer.
  
  Morgan turned in his seat to face the music. The hard look on Dean's face didn't bode well. For the first time ever, Morgan wondered if this could be the deal breaker for their friendship. It was a sobering thought. He'd always assumed that they would stick together through thick and thin. But Dean was also prime, the leader of his clan, and he had a responsibility to those in his care. Like Lilly.
  
  Dean opened his mouth, but before he could say anything a shrill ring emanated from his pocket. Morgan didn't allow the relief that rolled through him to show on his face. Saved by the bell. It was cliché, but he'd take any reprieve offered.
  
  "Yeah, this is Sterling...What?" The big bear almost roared into the cell, his voice so far from human a couple of the shifters in the bar turned around in concern. While Beauty was primarily a bear town, there were a few other types of shifter. Right now, the two rabbit types at the end of the bar looked ready to disappear up their own asses.
  
  “Yeah, we're on our way."
  
  Dean clicked the call off with a clipped movement and went to slide it away in a front pocket his T-shirt didn't have. With a hiss of frustration, he shoved the cell into a back pocket instead. Something about the movement was odd, but the next words out of Dean's mouth scattered Morgan's ability to concentrate.
  
  “Sober up," he ordered. "And make it quick. Bennett has Lilly."
  
  Morgan's world ground to a halt. His heart stalled, and he felt sick. For a moment, he couldn't do or say anything—he was utterly frozen into place. Then fury roared up from the center of his soul. In an instant, he went from three sheets to the wind to stone cold sober.
  
  "When?" He slid from his stool to follow Dean, everything else forgotten in his need to find her. To make sure she was safe. "How long has he had her?"
  
  "Aren't you going to settle up?" Dean nodded toward Ash and the empty beer bottles on the bar. "We all have to follow the rules, you know? Even hotshot warlocks."
  
  “Huh?"
  
  Dean was talking about his bar tab. Sliding his buddy a sideways look, he said, "I run a tab, settle up at the end of the month. You know that..."
  
  "Yes, yes. Of course," Dean passed a hand over his face, rubbing at his eyes. "Sorry. Just tired. You ready?'
  
  Morgan's expression was grim as he indicated the door.
  
  "After you."
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 9
  
  
  
  
  
  Lilly gasped, going from the blackness that surrounded her to wide awake in a heartbeat. She hadn't been asleep, it was too abrupt for that. It only took half a second for her memory to catch up, her heart slamming against the inside of her ribcage.
  
  She'd still been crying when she got home, her eyes full of tears as she fled for the sanctuary of her home... her lair. It was perhaps because of that she and her bear completely missed the dark shadow in the darkness by her door. Belatedly, she'd caught the edge of a male bear's scent and the sharp stink of magic. Before she could do anything, something had hit the back of her head hard, and then she'd known no more.
  
  Her bear snarled, ready to do battle, and Lilly sat up abruptly, spreading her fingers ready to drop claw. But her body wouldn't obey her. She sat up alright, and her hands moved, but her claws remained where they were, hidden beneath her human skin.
  
  "What the fuck?" she hissed, but at the same moment she clocked the presence of others in the room and scrambled backward.
  
  Her ass hit the wall behind her as her sense of smell kicked on. There were two other bears here and—her nose wrinkled— a magic user.
  
  "Glad you could join us, princess," Harrison smirked from the other side or the room, where he leaned against the wall by the door. Lilly let her snarl break free and lunged forward, only to slam into what felt like a brick wall.
  
  A high, tinkling laugh filled the air, one filled with an air of superiority and derision which set Lilly's teeth on edge. A woman stepped up beside Harrison, looking Lilly up and down with contempt curling her immaculately-lined red lips.
  
  "Dumb fucking animal," she said. "I really don't know what he sees in you."
  
  Lilly blinked, and sneezed again as the woman's scent reached her. Thick perfume irritated her sensitive sense of smell.
  
  The magic-user.
  
  Lilly studied the other woman. In head-to-toe black, with a large silver pentagram around her neck, she had to be a coven witch. There was no way she was an oathbreaker, she was entirely too polished for that, and… soft.
  
  Lilly had met a few female warlocks, and they were nothing like this woman. They were like steel made flesh and carried themselves like warriors instead of sashaying around like this witch did. She couldn’t help feeling that they would be just as happy to get up close and personal with fists as with magic in any fight.
  
  She couldn't imagine any female warlock in those sweeping black skirts and… yes, she spotted the distinctive red sole of some very expensive pumps as the woman turned.
  
  She ignored the subtle jibe. While she wasn't vain... how could she be when she turned into a couple of hundred pounds of bear at least once a month… she didn't need a bag over her head before a guy would sleep with her either. She sneezed again, sniffling as she asked, "What who sees in me?"
  
  Movement caught the corner of her eye, and she turned to see Bennett, half hidden by the shadows at the back of the room. His eyes were dark with his bear and fixed on her.
  
  "Oh... " She breathed in realization. "He can't help it. Matestrike just happens."
  
  She didn't know why Bennett had suddenly fixated on her as he had but it wasn't like she was a hag.
  
  The woman laughed again, the high-pitched sound filled with arrogance. "And what makes you think that?"
  
  She took a few steps forward to look contemptuously at Lilly. Deep inside, Lilly’s bear snarled in warning. The creature didn't like the woman, not one little bit, and Lilly had to agree with her.
  
  “Think what?" She watched carefully where the female magic user stepped. If she could work out the limits of the spell, then she could do something about it. What, she had no idea, but it was the only plan she had, so she was going with it.
  
  "That matestrike happens?" Lilly shrugged. " It just does..." Her words trailed off when Harrison sniggered and witch-bitch rolled her eyes.
  
  "What am I missing?"
  
  Now, someone sensible would have ignored the question and left her in the dark about their plans. After all, she was in no position to do anything about it. Whatever spell had been used, it had very effectively caught her in an invisible cell. More than that... it had locked her bear deep within the cage of her human body so she couldn't call on it. But, in the tradition of bad guys the world over, neither Harrison nor his witchy companion could resist boasting about how awesome they thought they were.
  
  "I'll use small words, so even you can grasp the concepts involved," witch-bitch said, her tone like she was speaking to a child. Lily's bear snarled, a promise that Miss Witch would be meeting them in a dark alley someday and it wouldn't be a meeting she'd enjoy. Not at all.
  
  "I wasn't talking about the dumb mutt back there, but by all means, let's start with him. Matestrike can occur naturally, or..." She studied her red talon-like nails. It was interesting that, despite her obvious dislike of bears, she'd chosen to emulate one of their main features. "Or it can be helped, if you get what I mean?"
  
  Lilly favored her with a look that would give a gorgon a headache. Sudden sympathy filled her for Bennett. They had him under some kind of spell, which made him just as much of a victim as she was. She had to get them both out of here. Somehow.
  
  Everything made sense now. Why Bennett had gone off the deep end, and a minor frisson of attraction and flirtation had evolved into something very dangerous.
  
  "She got 'im good!" Harrison crowed, unable to hide his delight any longer. "I didn't think it would work, but the boss’s plan came good, and you're all fucked. Things about here are gonna change! And it's about time."
  
  Ice rolled down Lilly's spine. "What do you mean?"
  
  Witch-bitch laughed. "You really think this was all about one dumb mutt's love life? Gods... "She shook her head. "Mr. Ri—. My boss has a vested interest in this town. A clan of stupid bears aren't in those plans."
  
  "You're trying to destroy the clan?" Lilly frowned. "It doesn't make sense. Or rather him helping you doesn't make sense." She nodded toward Harrison. "Which means you're not going to destroy the clan but change its leadership."
  
  Grudging admiration filled the witch’s eyes. "Maybe you're not as dumb as I took you for. Not that it's going to help you."
  
  Lilly began to chuckle, then she outright laughed.
  
  "So forcing a matestrike on Bennett and kidnapping me was supposed to do what exactly? Bring Dean running to save me?" She wiped the tears or laughter from the corner of her eyes. "Oh lady, your info is so far out of date it’s not even a joke. There might have been a time when everyone expected me to mate the prime because we're both Alphas but that boat sailed a long time ago. He has a fated mate. He isn't coming to save me. No one is."
  
  With a sinking heart she realized that was true.
  
  After blowing up at Morgan in the Lodge parking lot, she was on her own. No one would even realize she was missing. Morgan wouldn't come looking for her, he wouldn't even know. Not even if she died tonight, and it was likely she would. There was no way she would submit to Bennett, and with how deep he was into matestrike... she wouldn't make it to sunrise.
  
  Agony laced through her. She was on her own, and despite everything he'd said... all she wanted was to see Morgan one last time. He was a jerk, but he was her jerk and... She sucked in a hard breath.
  
  And… She loved him.
  
  She loved Morgan Jones.
  
  More than that. Hot on the heels of her feelings came another realization. He was her fated mate. She caught a hint of amusement from her suppressed bear that she’d finally worked it out.
  
  The woman’s small, cold smile froze Lilly’s amusement. There was something she was missing. There had to be.
  
  “Oh honey,” Witch-Bitch laughed softly. “I’m sorry, but you’re just not that important. This whole thing here?” She motioned between Bennett still growling softly in the corner and Lilly. “This is just a side-gig. He turned me down for you. Me! I wanted to see what you had that I didn’t, and then take that all away.”
  
  Lilly looked at Bennett in confusion, but the witch clucked her teeth in frustration. “Not him, you dolt. Arra... I mean Jones. The Oathbreaker.”
  
  Lilly felt her eyes go wide at the revelation. “You did all this because you were jealous?”
  
  The witch’s tight smile said it all. “More or less. But witches don’t get revenge. We get even. On an epic scale. Don’t worry, Loverboy won’t be far behind you at death’s door. Once we’ve stripped him of his power, he’ll be easy pickings, and your precious prime will be all alone without his pet warlock.”
  
  She snapped her fingers in front of Lilly’s face, just her side of the spell-line that separated them. “And that’s what happens when you piss off a coven princess. There’s no way you can win, little teddy bear, so enjoy your last few minutes.”
  
  She turned to go, then looked over her shoulder. “Just so you know, if Jones doesn’t play ball, it’ll be your face I wear as I plunge the blade into his heart. Toodles!”
  
  
  
  
  
  The bitch.
  
  Anger exploded though Lilly with the force of a supernova and she hurled herself at the magical barrier as though she could break through it through sheer force of will alone.
  
  She couldn't. It didn't budge an inch. Instead, she just felt like she'd run into a brick wall. Repeatedly.
  
  "Hey asshole! You come back here and fight me, you fucking coward!" she roared, her voice still distressingly human.
  
  She could feel her bear, right there under the skin, so close she could almost feel the fur poking through her pores. But she couldn't reach her, no matter how hard she tried.
  
  But the witch didn't come back. Instead, her mocking laughter floated back through the door. Lilly looked at its pitted surface. She hadn't paid much attention to her surroundings when Harrison and the witch had been in here, other than to note that they were in a basement of some type.
  
  The battered door and cobweb-covered utility shelves next to it suggested no one had been down here for a while. The rusted cans just visible despite the spiders’ best efforts were at least a couple of decades old. Which meant this place wasn't just unloved. It was abandoned.
  
  Lilly kept her eyes forward despite the sounds of movement behind her. She was stuck in a basement with a bear who was quite possibly mad, either through enchantment or with lust, it didn't matter which. The end result would be the same.
  
  He would rip her to shreds.
  
  "Hey Bennett." She kept her voice low and calm as she turned around. She couldn't afford to make any sudden moves. At this point, Bennett could interpret anything as hostile, and trapped by the spell, she couldn't get away. A quick look around confirmed there wasn't even anywhere to hide. The same shelves as by the door lined the walls, the detritus of family life just visible under the dust and cobwebs.
  
  "You remember me, don't you?" she said, keeping her gaze downcast and not looking at him directly. That could be seen as a challenge, and without the ability to fight...
  
  Instead, she focused on his feet. The fact that she could see them, see human feet, was a good sign. It meant he hadn't completely lost himself to the madness yet.
  
  "It's me, Lilly."
  
  Please remember me.
  
  She froze as he emerged to white shadows. He was still in human form, but just barely. Fur poked over the top of his shirt, and the fabric strained at the seams over his shoulders. His dark eyes locked onto hers and she caught her breath. There was nothing of Bennett looking back at her. It was just his bear.
  
  He took a step forward and she stiffened. She couldn't run, even if she hadn't been held by the spell. If she did, he'd be on her in a heartbeat. But he didn't roar and charge like she'd expected him to. Instead, he walked toward her.
  
  Each slow step sent her heart rate higher, her blood pounding in her ears. She didn't try to talk again, not even when he reached her and leaned in to sniff the side of her neck. With every second, she hammered at the door that kept her from her bear, and tried not to think about how quickly Bennett could have fangs in the soft flesh of her throat
  
  His lips brushed her throat and she froze, her breath catching in her throat. A soft whimper escaped her before she could stop it. She closed her eyes. This was it. She had nowhere left to go, nothing left to fight with, and no way to reach Bennett. Not with him held fast in the clutches of the witch’s spell.
  
  "Shh." His voice was strangely deep. "Not fear. Safe."
  
  That wasn't Bennett. Lilly's eyes widened, and she turned her head to meet his dark gaze. Shit. She was talking directly to...
  
  "You're his bear." she breathed in wonder.
  
  There were stories, some going back to ancient times, about shifters whose inner beast could operate independently, even taking over the human body like the human could control the animal form. They were seen as either blessed by the moon or cursed, depending on what time period the story was from. But they'd long been considered a myth, just a fairy tale told to bear children.
  
  Slowly Bennett's bear nodded, dark eyes locked on hers.
  
  "Man asleep. Sick," he offered. "Stink female made him sick."
  
  "Stink female?" Lilly frowned. "You mean the witch? You could sense the spell she used?"
  
  The bear nodded, a displeased growl in the back of his throat.
  
  "Made man want you." He looked her up and down, but there was none of the lust of matestrike in the dark orbs. "You not ours."
  
  "No." she breathed, hardly able to believe what was happening. Somehow Bennett's bear had managed to not only take over but also fool the witch and Harrison. It was more than she could have dared to hope for...
  
  "No, I'm not. You see that? How? Bennett was so convinced..."
  
  The bear huffed. "Man stupid. You not our female."
  
  She didn't know what to say to that. How could his bear know that when Bennett didn't? Ruthlessly, she shoved the thoughts away. They could work all that out later. Right now, she had to find some way to save Morgan.
  
  Witch-bitch and her merry little band planned to strip his magic and kill him—using her face—and she couldn't allow that to happen. Even if he was a lying, two-faced asshole who'd only used her to scratch an itch, she loved him, more fool her, and she couldn't let them kill him. Not while she still had breath left in her body.
  
  "Okay," she paused to pick her next words carefully. She'd never thought she'd ever be in the situation where she'd be speaking directly with someone else's bear.
  
  So how did she reach it? It wasn't like speaking to her own bear... She froze. Why not? Why shouldn't it be exactly like speaking to her own bear? They were the same, weren't they?
  
  "Okay." she reached out and put her hand on his arm. He reared back for a second until he realized the touch was non-sexual. Bears were just tactile creatures. "It's okay. I have a male, but he's in danger. Can you help me save him?”
  
  “You help man? Take stink-thing away?”
  
  She nodded quickly. “My male? He can fight Stink-woman. Stop her things. Okay?”
  
  She held out her hand, holding her breath as she waited for him to trust her. To help her.
  
  Relief punched out of her lungs in a rush as he took both of hers in his larger ones. A frisson of something passed between them. Without the shield of his humanity, she could feel the power that resided in his soul.
  
  “Your bear pretty,” he smiled. “But hiding. We stop her hiding now.”
  
  With those words, he shoved his shift magic through their joined hands. Agony flared through her, magic exploding through every cell in her body as the other bear shattered the spell that held her captive.
  
  Lilly screamed.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 10
  
  
  
  
  
  Morgan had been born into a coven. Which meant that he'd grown up with mind games and politics. The magical community was not a nice one, not at all. A seemingly normal conversation could be fraught with danger in a society where the slightest inflection or hand gesture could mean the other was casting a spell.
  
  Some, like Morgan, were so good that they didn't even need those. The innate ability to cast was so rare Morgan kept it to himself, making sure to put on a show when he cast unless he was absolutely balls to the wall. Some spells—like the one he'd needed to save Kacie, Dean's human mate, when she had been injured—were too complicated even for him to cast unaided, but the majority, especially combat spells, were at his command with just a thought.
  
  However, a lifetime of noting every move the people around him made meant that Morgan was hyper-aware. And there was something about Dean that was just a little bit off.
  
  "Any idea where he's got her?" Morgan asked, tension running high as Dean drove them out of town. "How long has he had her?"
  
  Every cell in his body hummed with concern and anger at the idea of Lilly in Bennett's clutches. Matestrike was no joke. According to Dean, people died in its grip. Both the afflicted and their victims.
  
  "Do you think he'll..."
  
  He couldn't get the words out. If Lilly refused Bennett or fought him in any way, then he'd kill her, and they both knew Lilly wasn't one to take being kidnapped lying down.
  
  "Probably already has," Dean replied dismissively. "He's always held the hots for her. I imagine he ripped that pussy up as soon as he got her somewhere secure."
  
  It took real effort and a lifetime of experience for Morgan to keep his expression unchanged. The casual cruelty and disinterest in the comment took his breath away. It was like Dean had forgotten that Lilly was one of his bears.
  
  More than that, she was his head enforcer. The relationship between a prime and his or her head enforcer was a complex and close one. In some ways, it was closer than that of mates. When he'd first come to Beauty, he'd been jealous of the link Dean had with Lilly, especially since he wanted to be close to her himself.
  
  So for Dean to make such a comment... something was wrong. All Morgan's hackles went up and he slid a sideways glance at his friend—who was now no longer a friend but the enemy.
  
  His agile mind worked at the problem as Dean drove them out of town toward--surprise surprise—the Black place. He didn't think that Dean had suddenly had a personality transplant—he'd lived and fought beside him for years in hellholes well behind enemy lines that no one would admit to having troops in. He knew Dean, inside and out, which left two options. Either he was under the influence of a spell, or this wasn't Dean. Normally he’d have pulled a little magical investigation to figure out what he was dealing with, but not now. He didn’t want to tip whoever it was off that he knew.
  
  Magic was involved both ways. Which meant whoever was pulling this shit had fucked up. They'd given him advance warning of what he was walking into. It might only be the tiniest clue, but he'd operated on less before and come out the winner.
  
  Determination wrapped around the anger coursing through his soul and he cracked his knuckles. Whatever these assholes were playing at, they would regret fucking with him. When it came to Lilly, his need to protect wasn't just soul deep, it was apocalyptic. The whole scorched earth thing...? Yeah, that was going down.
  
  "How'd you know where he'd taken her?" Morgan asked as they pulled up behind the back of the main house and got out of the vehicle.
  
  He kept his tone light and conversational, treating Dean exactly the same as he would normally treat him, even though he knew his friend was compromised. That was half the battle with situations like this, and he knew from experience not to show his hand too early. He had the advantage here—they had no idea he was onto them already—and he wasn't about to waste it.
  
  Dean joined him around the same side of the truck and indicated one of the barns set behind the house.
  
  "Will Reed called me," Dean said, his manner changing as they rounded the edge of the first barn. For a moment, Morgan looked at him in surprise, wondering what the hell he was doing. Then he realized Dean was trying to move like a soldier. Or rather, like someone who had never been one thought a soldier moved like.
  
  Quickly Morgan blanked his expression. The man with him wasn't Dean. Not even a Dean who was be-spelled.
  
  Relief rolled through him. Good. That meant if shit went went sideways, as it often did when magic was involved, then he didn't have to worry about having to fight or worse, kill, his best friend.
  
  "Keep quiet." Dean murmured, nodding toward the last of the barns. "They're in there. We have the element of surprise."
  
  Oh, we most certainly did. Whoever had cast the spell had paid so much care and attention to appearance, even replicating the tiny scar at the corner of Dean’s mouth, but they had completely ignored the most important part of the whole facade: actually acting like Dean Sterling.
  
  Idiots. He took his position on the opposite side of the main door to the Dean lookalike. On the left. It was a further indication that this wasn't Dean. He always preferred to take the left. It made no difference to Morgan. He could come out kicking ass and taking names, no matter what side he was on.
  
  Dean lookalike held up three fingers, then two, then one ... counting them down. On zero, they kicked the door in and burst into the barn with a crash of breaking wood.
  
  In almost the same breath, Morgan twisted, blue flames crawling up his arms, and blasted Dean with a fire bolt. The bear prime was caught by surprise, taking the shot in his side and flying backward to crash into a pile of old pallets. He didn't get up, blood trickling down the side of his face.
  
  Slow clapping got his attention and he turned, hands spread ready to cast, to find a welcoming committee. Anderson, Harrison, an older guy he didn't recognize, and a woman he definitely did. Ms. Modern Wicca, with her selfie perfect 'witch' look stood next to the older guy, her expression smug.
  
  Older guy was the one clapping, his face wreathed in smiles of amusement and condescension. Like he was the cleverest person in the room and wanted everyone to know it.
  
  Magic-user.
  
  Morgan recognized the type. He'd seen them often enough before he'd left the 'loving protection' of the coven. A little bit of power and they got all pumped up on their own importance and thought they were gods themselves.
  
  "I must admit, I didn't expect you to make this so entertaining." he said, dropping his hands. "Or to nuke your only ally so spectacularly"
  
  Morgan shrugged. "That wasn't Sterling. He was just pretending to be."
  
  "If he was using an illusion spell then that would have cut off when he was knocked out," Ms. Wicca argued.
  
  Morgan gave her a hard look. Did they really think he was that stupid? "No. All it means is that he didn't cast the spell."
  
  He transferred his attention back to Anderson and the old guy. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't blast you all to hell right now. Because I'm not seeing Braun or Bennett anywhere here. Where are they?"
  
  "Safe." Old guy answered, his voice hard.
  
  "And as long as you cooperate, they'll stay that way." Anderson broke in, his sharp look at his companion saying he didn't like the magic-user taking over. Morgan filed that nugget of information away for later. Dissent in the ranks was something he might be able to use.
  
  “Cooperate? That’s a good one.” Morgan allowed his broad grin to spread over his face and flexed his fingers. Who the hell did they think they were messing with? He wasn’t some coven-soft magician who would run at the first threat. He was a battle-hardened warlock, tested in the fire of—
  
  “Before you start slinging spells,” Ms. Wicca’s soft words got his attention, and she held something up in the palm of her hand. “You might want to consider the health and well-being of your little bear-girlfriend.”
  
  Morgan’s blood ran cold as he recognized the object in her hand. A destructia orb. Its black glittery surface swirled with what looked like quicksilver storm clouds. It was unmistakable. If there was just the one here, then he might have a chance, but one orb could never contain a spell as devastating as destructia. There were always three, not including the control orb Ms. Wicca was holding.
  
  “Where are the others?”
  
  Ms. Wicca grinned, but it was Anderson who spoke. “One is with your girlfriend. The others are near Sterling, and that fucking skin, Creed. Now you’re going to do exactly what we say, or we’ll blow the lot.”
  
  “What do you want me to do?” Morgan kept his voice level and calm, trying to figure this out. He knew Anderson’s angle. He’d wanted more power in the clan as long as Morgan had known him, and Dean had blocked him at every turn. So getting rid of Dean and his enforcer team made sense. “Why not just blow them up right now? It’s what you want, isn’t it?”
  
  Just saying the words sent a cold sweat down his spine. His friends gone. Lilly… gone.
  
  “Yeah, no.” Older guy broke in. “That’s not going to work for us. Mr. Riley wants a nice transition of power that can’t be questioned by the rest of your furry lot. Half your bears being blown up? That’s gonna raise too many questions. Far better if a few have accidents, and then a pit challenge, so our man Anderson here takes over.”
  
  Morgan snorted. “Yeah, right. Like either Dean or I will let that happen.”
  
  He flexed his fingers and the blue flame up his arms swelled to prove his point. Forget a handgun, he was a quicker draw with a spell.
  
  “We have plans for Mr. Sterling, don’t you worry. But you? You’re going to do exactly as you’re told and step into the circle.”
  
  The two witches stepped aside to reveal a magic circle sprayed on the packed dirt floor of the barn. Morgan’s heart froze in his chest at the sight of it. He recognized it instantly. Every coven-bred magic-user would.
  
  It was the circle they used for the worst kind of magical offender, the kind who had committed crimes so heinous they couldn’t be trusted with magic anymore. The circle on its own wasn’t dangerous, but once inside, and if they spoke the incantation that went with it, the spell would flay the magic from his very soul, separating him from the witching and the power of the earth itself.
  
  He would be… human.
  
  He laughed. “Really? There’s no way I’m stepping into that.”
  
  He might look like a swan on the surface, but underneath he was paddling like fuck, trying to think of a plan. There had to be a way out. A way around this that didn’t involve people getting blown up or him losing his magic.
  
  “Tick tock, loverboy… make your decision.” Ms. Wicca held up her hand, waggling the orb at him. Her kohl-lined eyes studied him closely. “Of course, there is a third option…”
  
  His gaze latched onto her with laser focus. “What?”
  
  She smiled wide, like a crocodile that had seen its next meal. “Your father wants you back, Arran. Retake your oaths, and swear fealty to the covens again…”
  
  “Who the fuck is Arran? I think you’ve got me mixed up with someone else, doll.”
  
  She laughed, sharing a look of amusement with the older guy. “Oh, I doubt that very much. We know who you are... Lord Arran of Evamendes, heir to the Passenfal coven. Your father is eager for you to return to take up your rightful place at his side.”
  
  Anderson about choked, looking between the magic-users and Morgan.
  
  “Spellslinger here is a fucking lord?! No way.”
  
  Ms. Wicca looked at the bear like he was something nasty she’d scraped off her shoe. “Lord Arran is from one of the purest magical bloodlines in the world. I utterly fail to see why he would even talk to creatures like you, much less ally himself with your prime.”
  
  She transferred her attention back to Morgan and gave him a sultry look. “Come back to us, Arran. Rejoin the covens and claim your future.”
  
  He folded his arms, shaking his head. “I’m an oathbreaker. Ain’t no coming back from that for anyone.”
  
  And there wasn’t.
  
  She shrugged. “As coven leader’s daughter, I will vouch for you. I’ve wanted you since I saw you in Mercy’s Fall last year. You did take a little tracking down, though. And that stunt with the demon?” She shuddered, and then smiled. “It was worth it though, to ensure you were who I thought you were.”
  
  At the mention of the nightclub, run by a friend of his in the nearby city, things began to make sense. He didn’t remember her from his visit, but that wasn’t unusual. She wasn’t his type. His type ran to small and curvy with fur at certain types of the month. But, as a coven princess, she would be looking to make alliances with Passenfal, even with a disgraced son of the line. He hadn’t paid too much attention to her during the demon incident. Her level of magic was low to middling, and there was no way she was from one of the major covens, probably a backwater one making a play for power by promising his father they could get him back into the fold.
  
  Morgan’s face set as he looked at her. “Why would you do that?”
  
  She sauntered closer. “Because I want to see this resolved without bloodshed. It’s so,”—she shuddered—“uncivilized. Please, Lord Arran. We can resolve this, and no one needs to get hurt. We’re not bothered about the bears. We’re just here for you.”
  
  He’d left his coven because his father was an asshole who’d driven his mother, a normal, away. That loss, and the inability to see it was all his fault, had turned his father into a cold-hearted bastard Morgan wanted nothing to do with. Just like he wanted nothing to do with the politics and mind-games of a coven ever again.
  
  But… if it saved his friends.
  
  If it saved the woman he loved…
  
  He loved Lilly.
  
  The thought exploded through him with the force of a nuclear bomb, and he realized he’d always loved her. Right from the moment he’d met her, he’d known. He’d just been lying to himself, trying to protect himself because he was a coward.
  
  He focused on the female witch again, his gaze direct and focused.
  
  “You’re sticking your neck out a lot here. What’s in it for you?”
  
  Ms. Wicca’s smile grew even broader as she walked toward him, a sway in her hips.
  
  “Because you’ll be my consort. As soon as I saw you in that club last year, I knew you were the one.” She trailed a blood-red-taloned hand over his chest and shoulders as she circled him. “No bear woman will ever be good enough for you.”
  
  He winced internally to hear her say that, and suddenly realized how bad it sounded. It wasn’t that Lilly wasn’t good enough for him, he wasn’t good enough for her.
  
  And in a heartbeat, he made his decision. He didn’t want to live life without Lilly. His magic he could live without, but not the woman who made his heart beat in his chest.
  
  Leaning in, he didn’t bother to keep his voice low as he replied. “You can tell my father to go fuck himself. I’m happy right where I am. And you? I wouldn’t touch you with Anderson’s cock, darling. Prep the spell. I’d rather have Lilly than magic.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter 11
  
  
  
  
  
  Morgan was a lord. An honest to goodness magical lord. Nobility. Lilly, hidden in the shadows near the back door of the barn, sucked in a gasp at the revelation.
  
  " You can tell my father to go fuck himself. I’m happy right where I am. And you? I wouldn't touch you with Anderson's cock, darling."
  
  As declarations went, Morgan's growled comment wasn't what most people would consider romantic. But to Lilly it was the most romantic thing she'd ever heard. Until he spoke again.
  
  "Prep the spell. I'd rather have Lilly than magic."
  
  She pressed her hand to her mouth as tears filled her eyes. He'd chosen to give up his magic for her.
  
  He'd chosen her.
  
  Before she could get too teary and emotional though, Anderson's head snapped up, and he sniffed the air in suspicion.
  
  Shit. They were running out of time.
  
  She'd wanted to wait until the rest of the clan got here. In a move of either supreme arrogance or utter stupidity, they'd left Bennett's cell on him, perhaps figuring that the matestruck bear would be too far gone to use it. He might have been, but his bear was intelligent enough to realize Lilly could use it to call for help. So she had, but only gotten Dean's voicemail.
  
  Fuck it, of all the times for the prime to turn his damn cell off.
  
  "We got company," Anderson snarled his voice deepening with his bear.
  
  "Crap. Go go go!" She yelled at Bennett, and between them, the two bears destroyed the back wall of the old barn as they crashed through it.
  
  "What the fuck!”
  
  "Bears!"
  
  "Kill them!”
  
  The barn erupted into yells and bellows as Anderson and Harrison both dropped their heads and charged Lilly and Bennett.
  
  For a moment her gaze collided with Morgan's. A brief moment filled with emotion as she tried to convey everything she felt in a single look. He nodded, and relief surged through her. He knew. Knew that she'd heard his declaration, his decision, and what it had meant for him to make it.
  
  Then he wheeled away, the blue flames over his arms ramping up to inferno levels as he took on the two magic users. That wasn't a fight she could help him with, so she turned to the one she could win.
  
  The whole exchange with Morgan had taken less than a second and both enemy bears were still only halfway through their change as they lumbered toward her and Bennett. It was almost laughable. Anderson seriously thought he could take Dean Sterling on in a pit challenge? The big prime would tie this asshole up into a human pretzel before he'd even managed to poke fur through his pores.
  
  She'd heard their plan and it was just as ridiculous. The loss of his fated mate wouldn't make Dean distracted and more docile in a fight. The only thing it would do was make him even more lethal. He wouldn't just track down every single person involved, his vengeance would ensure even their great-grandparents felt the backlash.
  
  Bennett roared and shifted, meeting Harrison in a clash of mountainous fur. She had no idea how it worked with Bennett himself asleep, but she had to trust his bear. The creature was honorable and intelligent. It hadn’t led her wrong yet.
  
  So she concentrated on Anderson, time slowing down as he lumbered toward her, a smile of triumph spread over his furry face as he clocked she was still in human form. He thought he had her. That there was no way she could change in time to fight him.
  
  Already, his massive front paws were spread to swipe at her head and stomach, disemboweling her even as he decapitated her. Not even a full-blooded shifter could survive something like that. With such massive wounds, she wouldn’t have time to shift to heal the damage before she bled out.
  
  But she wasn’t just a full-blooded shifter. She was alpha. She launched herself forward, her bear exploding out of her human body between one heartbeat and the next.
  
  She barely felt the pain as her bones cracked and lengthened, her body gaining mass and muscle. Her muzzle pushed forward, fangs already bursting through her gums and dropping down to fill her larger mouth at the same moment paws the size of dinner plates hit the packed dirt floor.
  
  Thundering forward, she met Anderson in the middle of his charge in a collision of heavy muscle and fur. A roar of fury ripped from her throat as she laid into him with teeth and heavy claws. She became a force of nature, her only goal to kill her opponent.
  
  Within seconds, she knew she could. Anderson was older than her, and far less powerful. His bear was strong, yes, but he wasn’t an alpha, much as he wanted to be. But he wanted it for the wrong reasons. He wanted it to make people obey him, to fear him, to worship him… and completely forgot that the role of an alpha was to protect those weaker than himself.
  
  She was alpha. She was stronger. She could beat him.
  
  But she didn’t want it over that quickly. For everything he’d done, for all the people he’d hurt and planned to hurt, she wanted him to suffer. So, with the sounds of the magical battle raging behind her, she started to take Anderson apart piece by piece. She ignored his grunts of pain as her claws sliced deep. Time after time. Until his fur turned red and blood splattered on the floor at their feet. Still, she danced around him, giving into the fury in her soul. This asshole had hurt people, tried to use a good man, Bennett, to hurt and kill her. He’d conspired to hurt and kill her friends.
  
  She didn’t want to kill him. She wanted to utterly destroy him. Carve away everything he held dear until he was a whimpering wreck of a man on the floor, begging at her feet to make the pain go away.
  
  The barn fell silent behind her, but she didn’t notice. She didn’t notice anything but Anderson as he stopped fighting and started to block. She didn’t notice anything else as he lost his hold on his bear. The creature, knowing it was beat, retreated within his skin, hiding so far down she couldn’t even sense it, and leaving the man, naked, and at her mercy.
  
  She padded forward, her massive paws leaving bloody footprints on the floor. Anderson tried to curl in on himself, protecting his stomach and head. She shoved her muzzle close to his neck, and he whimpered in fear. Growling, she opened her mouth to grip his neck and shoulder. Her fangs pressed in, indenting the skin as she increased the pressure.
  
  “Please don’t kill me,” Anderson begged pathetically, terror rolling from his pores in a thick, seductive perfume. Just one snap of her jaws, and it would be all over. He would be dead, and she would never have to worry about him hurting anyone she cared about ever again.
  
  “Lilly… he’s done. You don’t need to do this.”
  
  Morgan’s deep voice reached her, and she looked up to find him standing a few feet away, his hands spread in entreaty. His expression was concerned. Not for Anderson, she realized, but for her.
  
  “You don’t have to do this. You don’t need to kill him. It leaves a stain on your soul, babe. You don’t need that. Not for him. He’s not worth it.” He carried on talking, taking a step forward.
  
  At some point, he’d defeated the two witches and the rest of the clan had arrived. Dean, Creed, and a couple of the other enforcers stood behind Morgan with grim faces and blood-splattered skin. Her gaze flicked back to Morgan and she met his gaze levelly, then lifted her head in challenge.
  
  This was who she was, what she was. He had to accept all of her, including her bear, or they didn’t have a future together.
  
  Morgan smiled, his piercing blue gaze taking in her ursine form, the blood splattered fur… everything.
  
  “You’re beautiful, Lilly. Come back to me.”
  
  He held his hand out, and she dropped Anderson like a hot cake, not careful as she walked over him toward the man she loved. Between one step and the next she folded her bear form into her human one and stood before him clad in nothing but blood. To his credit, he held her gaze all the way, not looking down once.
  
  “Did you mean that?” she demanded, looking him in the eye. “About giving up your magic? Or did you have a plan all along? I mean... you’re a lord.”
  
  “None of that means anything.” He shook his head. “And there was no plan. If it was a choice between you and magic, I’d pick you every time, my love.”
  
  She froze, hope starting to fill her chest. “Say that again.”
  
  He frowned, but warmth danced in the back of his eye. “If it was a choice—”
  
  “No.” She cut him off. Asshole warlock. “You know what I meant. You know what I want.”
  
  “I do.” He smiled and reached for her hand, then knelt down. “Lilly Braun… in a choice between my magic and you, you would win every time. Neither my magic, nor any title, mean anything to me without the reason my heart beats. And,” he smirked again. “In case you missed it, that’s you. I love you. Will you marry me?”
  
  She blinked, blindsided, her heart thundering in her chest. “Say that again.”
  
  Morgan’s grin broadened. “If it was a cho—”
  
  She growled at him. “Not that part, asshole.”
  
  He chuckled. “If you’re going to call me names, I won’t propose again.”
  
  “Propose?”
  
  “Yes. Lilly, you’re my reason for living. Will you marry me?”
  
  
  
  
  
  They'd finally made it home after the evening's excitement. Anderson and the witches had confirmed that they'd been brought together by a third party—a local crime lord named Riley, looking to expand his territory. His name and that of the town he’d based himself in was familiar.
  
  Morgan grinned. As it happened, an old army buddy of his and Dean's had just put down roots there. he was sure Reese would love an opportunity for a little action, especially as his buddy, Danny, was due back in town any time soon... and Danny had no idea Reese had taken Danny's little sister Bobbi as his mate.
  
  But much as he'd have liked to have been there for the call to Reese, once the witches had confirmed that they hadn’t relayed his location to his father, Morgan had more important things to worry about, like the tiny woman wrapped in a towel in his arms.
  
  The first thing Lilly had done when they got home was shower the blood off her skin. He'd considered telling her that the towel wasn't necessary, that naked was good, really good, but the memory of what she'd done to the last guy to piss her off stayed his tongue. She was glorious when she was mad, but he liked his skin in one piece, thank you very much.
  
  "That spell you did to free Bennett was amazing," she murmured as they lay together on her bed. She'd only just stopped shivering, the after effects of adrenaline and shock. While she was an enforcer, and used to kicking ass and taking names, her days usually didn't involve threats of death or most of her clan being wiped out by outside forces.
  
  "Oh, it was nothing," he shrugged at the praise and trailed his fingertips over the bare skin of her back above the towel. "Once I figured out what they'd done, it was easy to replicate the shift magic to remove the strike."
  
  "Really?" She looked up at him with interest. "You can manipulate shift magic that easily? I thought only primes could do that... " she frowned. "Does that mean you could trigger my shift even if I didn't want to?"
  
  He shook his head. Her concern was understandable.
  
  "The only reason it worked is because Bennett's bear let me in. Shift magic is a very specific form of magic. It's like DNA." he explained. "Or survival instincts. It’s hard-coded. It's what lets you guys shrug off most minor enchantments."
  
  "Oh?" she looked at him with interest. "So how did they manage to enchant him at all?"
  
  He grimaced. The spell had been a nasty one. After seeing it, he was embarrassed to be a magic-user.
  
  "It was a twisted version of a love spell. They used herbs and the real attraction Bennett had for you and boosted it massively, tipped it over into obsession, and triggered matestrike. The reason it didn't work is because Bennett's bear is capable of independent action. I knew a wolf that could do that once. It's fascinating.
  
  "And even if I think your bear is the cutest thing ever, I would never do that to you. I would never take away your choices like that."
  
  The burst of warmth and pleasure in her eyes told him it was the right answer, and she snuggled closer. So close he was forced to catch his breath at the feeling of her soft body, her curves, pressed up close and personal against him. He'd removed his shirt before lying down to hold her so all it would take would be for that towel to slip a little...
  
  "Thank you," she breathed, turning in his arms to press a kiss against his lips.
  
  His arms tightened around her and he kissed her back. Gently at first but with increasing passion. She wasn't the only one affected by the events of the day. He might not be shaking on the outside, but he'd come so close to losing her he knew the bruise on his heart would take a while to heal.
  
  "I can't believe you made me ask twice," Morgan broke away to whisper against her lips. "I was on my knees and everything."
  
  Her grin was swift and unrepentant. "Perhaps I just like a guy on his knees."
  
  Heat and amusement hit him like a wave.
  
  "Is that so, minx?" He tickled her side, making her laugh and squirm to evade him. The towel slipped and he found himself with an armful of curvy, naked woman.
  
  He flipped on his back sprawling her over his chest and driving his hand into her hair to kiss her deeply. By the time he lifted his head, their breath was ragged.
  
  "You can have me on my knees any time, beautiful," he murmured, looking deeply into her eyes. "But don't expect me to be doing something fit for public viewing."
  
  The heat and darkness in her eyes was enough to make him catch his breath, his cock jerking savagely where it was trapped between them.
  
  "Is that so?"
  
  Mischief curved the corners on her lips, and she rolled her hips. He swore at the added stimulation, well aware there was only a thin banner of cloth between him and where they both wanted him to be.
  
  "Well, why aren't you there already then, my lord? "she murmured, reaching up to graze her currently human-blunt teeth against his stubbed chin.
  
  "I said that out loud, didn't I?" he groaned, already boosting her up so he could tear open the fly of his jeans. His cock sprang free to slap against her inner thigh.
  
  "Uh-huh." She caught her breath as he pressed against the entrance to her body. He surged upward, filling her in one hard thrust that made them both gasp.
  
  He closed his eyes as a shudder rolled through his body from the top of his head all the way down to curl his toes. Whenever he was inside her, it was like he was coming home.
  
  She was his home and always would be.
  
  He'd have stayed there, savoring the sublime feeling of being buried balls deep in her welcoming heat, but his little bear had other ideas. Placing a small hand in the middle of his broad chest, she pushed upward and started to ride him, need and desire stark on her face.
  
  He watched her in erotic fascination. He loved her, loved everything about her. His hands tightened on her hips, helping her as she impaled herself time and time again on the thick evidence of his need for her.
  
  It wasn’t a gentle lovemaking, it was need and fear for each other. Raw and primal. A reaffirmation of the fact they’d survived and found their way back to each other. The air around them filled with the sounds of their joining, feminine gasps, deep, masculine groans, and the sound of skin on skin.
  
  It wouldn’t take him long, already feeling the familiar tingling along his spine and around his balls even as he felt his love’s pussy beginning to clench and spasm around his length buried inside her.
  
  She paused, eyes dark, sudden need and wariness written on her face. He smiled as he caught the little glance to the side of his neck and sat up abruptly with her in his lap.
  
  His hand slid into her hair, cupping the back of her neck as he pulled her closer. “Bite me, Lilly. Like you need to. Claim me as your mate.”
  
  He shuddered at the thought of carrying her mark, the bite scar that marked a bearsmate. He’d only ever seen them on women before, but he didn’t care. He wanted hers. Wanted everyone to know she was his.
  
  “Only if you bite me as well,” she whispered, and he read the answering need to belong in her eyes. He didn’t have the same equipment as she did, but he nodded anyway, a plan forming in his mind.
  
  He rocked his hips, upping the pace, and she gasped, holding him close. Her lips whispered over his skin, where his neck met his shoulder and then, just as she came, she struck.
  
  Morgan growled, the feel of her fangs in him calling his climax, dragging it from him even as his lips murmured a small spell and he bit down. She lifted her head and screamed as she came, clenching down hard around him as he emptied his seed deep into her silken depths.
  
  The pleasure seemed to go on forever, locking them together, his arms wrapped around her curvy body. Eventually though, Morgan found he could move, and he fell backward onto the bed, taking her with him to sprawl over his broad chest.
  
  “You bit me,” she murmured happily, lifting a hand to the side of her neck. He looked down. There, written in the shimmering blue of his magic, was a bite-mark. A claiming mark. He rumbled in satisfaction, knowing he had a matching mark on his own neck, and his hand tightened in her hair.
  
  "Now everyone knows you’re mine and I’m yours. I love you, Lilly. I always will."
  
  She grumbled in the back of her throat, the nearest thing a bear came to a purr.
  
  “I love you too, even if you are a dickhead warlock.”
  
  He laughed. “Yeah, but I’m your dickhead warlock, and don’t you forget it.”
  
  With a grin, he started to move again, eliciting a gasp from his new mate. She lifted her head and looked at him.
  
  “Already?”
  
  He grinned. “Always. All night, every night. I’ve got something to prove, you know.”
  
  She bit her lip, already moving with him.
  
  “What’s that?”
  
  He reached up to brush his lips over hers. A promise.
  
  “That I’m the only man you’ll ever need for the rest of your life.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Epilogue
  
  
  
  
  
  “So none of you will step into the pit?”
  
  Dean Sterling’s deep voice was filled with both his bear and a carefully controlled fury that would ensure anyone with half a brain knew not to cross him. In front of him stood Anderson, Harrison, and what remained of their little rebel group.
  
  Only now, without the backing of their magical friends, they weren’t half so brave. Instead, they stood huddled together, their clothes ripped and bloody from the final battle with Dean and the enforcers, or where they’d been hauled from their homes to face justice. They looked so scared and dejected that Bennett almost felt sorry for them.
  
  Almost.
  
  His bear growled within him and the newly-confirmed enforcer’s jaw tightened as fury welled up from the depths of his soul. He felt no pity for them. None at all. These assholes had tried to destroy the clan he loved and tried to kill his friends. They tried to use him as a weapon to kill the woman he’d thought he loved.
  
  His gaze slid sideways to where Lilly, the clan head enforcer, stood just behind Dean. Beside her, on the side nearest to Bennett, was Morgan, her warlock lover, his expression as grim and forbidding as Dean and Lilly’s. A small smile curved Bennett’s lips as he spotted the new mating marks they both carried. At least, despite all of this, they’d found their way to each other.
  
  Morgan caught Bennett looking and winked. Just a flicker of his eyelid but it was enough. After he’d lifted the spell on Bennett that had made him think he was madly in love with Lilly, and that everyone was conspiring to keep her away from him, they’d reached an unspoken understanding. He’d been spelled and couldn’t help it, and no one would mention it again. Something that he would be forever grateful to the big warlock for.
  
  “No?” Dean growled. “Why does that not surprise me? Fucking cowards, the lot of you. As prime of the Beauty Clan, I hereby exile you from our fellowship. You will gain no hospitality or friendship here either now or ever in the future. I banish you to wander the lands from this day forth. Be warned... other clans have been informed of your transgressions and have stated they will offer you no sanctuary. Jones?”
  
  Morgan stepped forward, raising hands suddenly sheathed in blue fire. The small gaggle of bears in front of him shrieked and covered their faces as tendrils lashed out to lick each of them on the forehead. When they dropped their hands, each of them bore a blue mark on their foreheads. A moon with a line through it... banishment marks. Some clans tattooed it, some branded it with silver. The Beauty Clan did it with magic. A mark that could never be removed, that was always there for anyone with non-human blood to see.
  
  “But where will we go?” Anderson asked, confusion in his eyes. “We have families... jobs...”
  
  “Not my issue,” Dean bit out. “Your families will be offered the chance to stay or they may leave with you. Your jobs? Well, I suggest you all get to writing resignation letters, because if any of you are still in town at sundown, then we’ll call The Hunt.”
  
  Anderson staggered back, fear stark on his face. The Hunt was a clan’s final solution. Rather than facing the prime one on one in the pit, they would be hunted by the entire clan. A clan that would show them no mercy, not after they’d tried to destroy it.
  
  Harrison was the first to break, a sob escaping him as he stumbled backward and then ran as though all the hounds of hell were on his heels. With panicked cries, the others followed him, leaving the clan to watch them race away through the woods.
  
  “Make sure to send out enforcers to ensure they’re not on clan land by nightfall,” Dean rumbled, turning toward Lilly.
  
  She nodded, about to speak, but Bennett stepped forward.
  
  “With all due respect, Prime. I’ll do that. Lilly and Morgan... probably want some time to themselves?” He suggested, motioning toward their new mating marks.
  
  Dean’s gaze swept over him, then to the couple and back again, and nodded. “Good suggestion. You do that.”
  
  Bennett breathed a sigh of relief. After everything, after nearly becoming part of the plot against his clan—he’d be paying back that debt for months, years... hell, probably the rest of his life.
  
  “Thank you,” Lilly smiled, her hand brushing against his arm as the clan dispersed to head back to the lodge. He paused, surprised by the contact, but his bear rumbled in happiness. It liked Lilly. Not in a sexual way, they’d already established that his feelings for her were driven by the spell he’d been under, and besides, his bear had made it very clear that she was not their mate.
  
  “You’re more than welcome.” She smiled up at Morgan as he pulled her into his arms.
  
  “No worries. Enjoy your... honeymoon?” He couldn’t think of anything else to call it, but they didn’t take offence at his stumble. Lilly giggled and nestled against Morgan, who grinned.
  
  “Thanks man, appreciate it.”
  
  “Isn’t this nice?”
  
  The sardonic drawl made them look up. Bennett blinked. In the middle of the path in front of them stood a tall man who looked so like Morgan they had to be related.
  
  The temperature in the air dropped to glacial, the warlock’s expression setting into hard lines.
  
  “What do you want, Dad?”
  
  Bennett felt more than heard the clan’s collective intake of breath. Since the fight with Anderson’s lot yesterday, it had gone around the clan like wildfire that Morgan wasn’t just any oathbreaker. He was a noble, a lord... but he’d walked away from it all.
  
  And this was his father, Lord Evarmendes of the Passenfal coven, the oldest and most illustrious coven in the country.
  
  And, from the expression on his face, he was a prick. No wonder Morgan had run away to join the army. Bennett didn’t blame him. He’d met a few nobles, and they were all assholes. Like serious assholes.
  
  Evarmendes sniffed, looking at the bears like they were something unpleasant that had crawled out from under a rock.
  
  “For chaos’ sake, put the animal down, Arran, and come home where you belong.”
  
  It was the wrong thing to say, every single bear in the group giving voice to a growl. It was low level, just on the edge of human and witch hearing but threatening nonetheless.
  
  Morgan’s expression didn’t change. Instead, he pulled Lilly closer, his hand covering hers in the center of his broad chest.
  
  “I am home.”
  
  Evarmendes scoffed. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous. You’ve had your fun, now it’s time to come home and take your rightful place as my heir.” He raked Lilly with a contemptuous look. “And marry a woman befitting your bloodlines.”
  
  The chill intensified, and Bennett realized it was rising from Morgan himself. The warlock’s voice was as deep as any bear’s and rang with power.
  
  “I’m only going to say this once more. I am home. I’m not leaving. I’ve made my choice. My life is here.” He looked down at the beautiful woman in his arms. “With Lilly.”
  
  “You... you’re serious.” Realization dawned on Lord Evarmendes face, utter shock in his eyes. Then his face twisted in anger. “You do this, and you’re dead to me, just like your faithless bitch of a mother. I’ll bet she’s here as well, isn’t she? I’ll make you both regret this!”
  
  “Just try it, asshole.” It wasn’t Morgan who spoke, but Dean. His bear filled his voice, his claws already dropped to tip his fingers. “And lord or not, you won’t leave this place alive.”
  
  Evarmendes snorted. “You can’t stand against my magic, bear.”
  
  Bennett stepped forward, dropping claw, as behind him, the rest of the pack did the same. Morgan smiled.
  
  “One bear, and you might have a chance, Dad. But this lot are ready to call for The Hunt, and not even you can survive all of them, can you?”
  
  Evarmendes looked around them, fear spiking in his eyes as he opened and closed his mouth like a guppy on speed.
  
  Morgan laughed. “Fuck off, dad, and never bother us again. Because if you do, I won’t stop this lot from tearing you limb from limb.”
  
  Evarmendes didn’t reply or swear everlasting pain or revenge or any other such crap. Instead, he clicked his fingers and disappeared.
  
  “Well...” Morgan said aloud. “Hopefully that’s the end of that. Now, Lilly and I have a mating to celebrate. Anyone up for a drink in the Beast bar?”
  
  “First round is on me!” Ash, the lone werepanther in the group, shouted above the chorus of approval and the clan swarmed down the wooded hillside toward the lodge and their vehicles, eager to get to the celebration.
  
  Bennett tagged along slowly behind, smiling to himself at the sight of Lilly and Morgan, arms around each other.
  
  Someday, his bear promised. Our female is coming, I can feel it. She’ll be here soon.
  
  He nodded.
  
  He hoped his bear was right.
  
  
  
  
  
  Thank you so much for reading WARLOCK AND THE BEAR!
  
  I hope you loved reading Morgan and Lilly’s story as much as I loved writing it!
  
  
  
  
  
  If you liked the Banford and Beauty Bears, you’ll LOVE the Project Rebellion series!
  
  
  
  
  
  A hospital manager with a heart of gold meets a soldier with a dark secret…
  
  
  
  
  
  Read PERFECT MATE now!
  
  
  
  
  
  I appreciate your help in spreading the word, including telling friends. Reviews help readers find new books! Please leave a review on your favorite book site!
  
  
  
  
  
  SIGN UP TO MINA’S NEWSLETTER!
  
  
  
  
  
  About the Author
  
  
  
  
  
  Mina Carter is a New York Times & USA Today bestselling author of romance in many genres. She lives in the UK with her husband, daughter and a bossy cat.
  
  
  
  
  
  Connect with Mina online at:
  
  minacarter.com
  
  
  
  
  
  WANT THE LATEST NEWS AND CONTESTS?
  
  
  
  
  
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