APEX - Season 2

Ch. 27: What Needs to Happen

"Fuck our families. This is about us. What we are to each other. We both know what needs to happen."

She grabbed onto my ass, attempting to move me towards her pussy, but I resisted her easily.

"Calla." I lowered my lips to hers, kissing her deeply but briefly, then trailed my lips down to her neck. She shivered again and I knew her resistance was melting away.

Pulling back, I locked eyes with her. "This is our last chance. It's our only chance. You know what we have to do. What's it going to be?"

She said nothing for a moment, but her eyes flickered, and I knew what her answer would be.

She nodded and turned her head, baring her neck for me. "Claim me, Alpha. Make me yours."

Finally. "I've wanted this since that first day in the elevators."

"You hated me that first day, and I hated you."

"That was only denial at work. We both knew."

I lowered my mouth to her and opened it, sucking in a bit of her skin as my teeth sank in.

She yelped as I drew blood, tearing away enough flesh to leave my mark. I lapped at the wound and felt something give way in my mind. A barrier limiting the link on our minds began to collapse.

This is what it's supposed to feel like, between two mates, she said to me in her mind.

The bliss was unlike anything I'd felt before. It was sexual and sensual and emotional and intimate all at once, as though everything you can be for another person was present and completely felt in the same moment.

In the middle of my bliss, Calla screamed. It was an ear-piercing scream of pain and as bliss fell away, I realized something terrible was happening. Hands with sharp talon-like claws grabbed at her from out of the darkness. We were no longer in her bed, but in some sort of void.

"Calla!" I pulled at her, hoping the hands would give up and fall back, but instead, they doubled their efforts, leaving long, bloody scrapes along her arms. Unlike the blood of the claiming wound, which had had no adverse effect on me, this blood made me woozy.

Each second that passed, the monster hands succeeded in pulling her farther away, until she was no more than a dot on the horizon, and then, not even that.

I yelled and collapsed, shouting her name repeatedly. The pain was as intense as the bliss had been. I started to believe my heart would stop beating. How could I go on with her torn away from me? I'd been able to do nothing to stop it from happening.

I cried out again and didn't stop until a hand clamped down on my shoulder, shaking me.

Opening my eyes, I looked around, disorientated. I was on my hands and knees on a bed—my bed—not Calla's. There was no void hellscape, only the familiar furnishings of my bedroom, and a weak sunlight breaching the sides of my blinds indicating the time of day.

"That's some nightmare you were having."

I turned over to see the disapproving scowl of my youngest brother staring at me from the side of my bed. "What are you doing here Liam?"

"Saving you from yourself, If I can," he answered. "Get up and get showered. We need to talk."

"Excuse me?" He should have known better than to speak to me with such entitlement. "Who's the Alpha here?"

"Oh, now you're interested in exercising your role in the pack?"

After that horrible dream, his smart talk made me want to smack him. "When do I not?"

"Quite a bit, lately." He continued to scowl at me but finally bent his neck. "Happy now?"

"Not really."

He threw a towel at me and pointed to the bathroom. "Don't take too long."

That led to me taking my damn time in the bathroom. When I finally emerged squeaky clean but still grumpy, Liam had parked himself at my kitchen bar, a cup of espresso steaming in front of him. "Have a seat."

"Don't tell me to have a seat in my own house," I told him as I sat down. "And you're welcome for the coffee."

He handed me an identical cup and I took a sip. The little brat did know how to pull a good shot. "You should be a barista."

The scowl returned. "That's a human occupation."

"Since when?"

"Look," he said, peering at me like my fourth-grade teacher when she caught me staring out the window during class. "I don't have the time to argue with you on subjects that aren't debatable. We're werewolves and we don't do menial labor. If this wasn't such a twisted world, that would be a given by everyone—humans and werewolves alike. But I'm here for a more important reason than career segregation between the species."

"Oh yeah?" I was already dreading having to endure what was coming next. "Just why are you here, Liam?"

"To talk some sense into you. And judging from what you were yelling in your sleep, you really need it." He shook his head. "Fucking Calla."

I let out a growl. "Do not say her name like that."

"Why not? She's got you all fucked up in the head."

"No, messing with my head is my family's department."

"See? There you go. She's causing you to doubt your own family...your own pack! Would you choose her over us?"

I thought back to my dream—the good part before it turned into a nightmare. "Why should I have to choose?"

"Well, let's see...maybe because your brother is going to be mated to her just before the next full moon. Do you not see how twisted it is that you know that, but you still can't let her go?" He shook his head like he couldn't believe he had to reprimand someone as ignorant as me. "I knew she'd do this to you."

"She didn't do anything to me. We did it together." She's my true mate, I wanted to tell him. But the words felt dangerous when said in present company.

"No, it's her. She's a leach. She saw you as a means to get Crown out of its descent into Alpha-less oblivion. You came along with your money and power and good looks. And she made her move."

"Shut the fuck up Liam. That's not what happened."

"But now...now she's got herself a high-ranking Rawlings brother. Sure, she had to make a show for your sake that she's upset it's not you she was paired with. Maybe she was a little annoyed not to have bagged the Alpha. You're the grand prize! But after she sits on it for a while, she'll realize her consolation prize will do. And then, she's going to drop you. Hell of a lot easier for her to go along with what our families have planned rather than give it all up for someone she'll never have."

I shut my eyes. If I had to listen to him much longer, I wasn't going to be able to control myself and he'd find himself on the losing end of a showdown. "You truly don't know what you're talking about. You don't know Calla."

"You don't know her either. She's just a Crown woman. Beautiful. Great tits which I'm sure is what helped lure you in, but in the end, she's just a schemer and a con. You're better off with Skye and you know it."

"Skye? Come off it, Liam. I'm not interested in her."

"You would be if Calla hadn't hypno-pussy-tized you."

I growled again. "For the last time, shut the fuck up, Liam. And while you're busy doing what I tell you, finish your espresso and get out of my apartment. And give me back my key. I don't even remember giving it to you."

He downed his shot, slapped my door key on the counter, and stood up. "That's fine. But I want you to think about what I've just said to you. Calla isn't your mate. She couldn't possibly be. If you two decide to do something stupid like upending her union with Aamon, it won't end well, especially for her. Don't throw away your future and your pack's wellbeing for her. She's not worth it."

He let himself out my door before I could pound his head into it.