Chapter Twenty-Two

Havermouth, Present Time

The night was still young when she saw Talen to the door, and she stood, wrapped in her satin dressing gown, waving him goodbye as he reversed the expensive Ute out of her driveway, feeling very much like the domesticated housewife waving her husband off to work.

Talen’s headlights caught in the iridescent light of a wolf’s eyes, and Aislen sighed heavily. The giant white and grey wolf sat in the hedges next to the driveway. As she watched, the wolf shifted, revealing Heath crouched on one knee. He lifted his head before slowly rising to his feet.

“Well, I guess you had better come in,” she sighed. “Before one of the neighbours see you.”

He walked, a silky shift of muscle under the moonlight, avoiding the gravel, climbing over the veranda fence with athletic ease, and walking to stand before her, looking down. She lifted her eyebrows and stepped back, so that he could enter the house, closing the door behind him.

It was a test, she thought, as she led the way down the hallway to the kitchen and put the kettle on. After Rhett’s shocked reaction the one time she had said what they were out loud, it had never arisen between them again. She had avoided any reference to how they, or she, were different, and they hadn’t done anything to force a confrontation about it.

For Heath to shift in front of her was an act of defiance: This is what we are, acknowledge it.

“Why me?” She turned on the kettle and gasped as she turned and smacked into his naked body. His hands caught her before she hit the cabinetry or fell. “Um, thanks,” her palms were on his chest, and fuck, he felt good, she admitted to herself.

“Why me, what?” He asked, his voice deeper than normal, his cock pressing against her, caught in the folds of her satin robe. He knew that she wore nothing beneath it. His thumb rested under the bone of her jaw, tilting her head to the side, and his fingers trailed over the line of her throat, rubbing lightly over where Talen’s teeth marks were.

“Why me?” She whispered the words, her eyes fixed to the strong line of his shoulder, to the muscles that rippled his skin, the musky-forest greenery and fur scent of him filling her lungs. So different to how he smelled pressed and perfect, his skin patted over with the crisp ocean-spray scent of his cologne.

She knew the taste of his skin, the sweetness of it under the salt. It was scored deeply into her memory.

“You have fucked your way through most of this town,” she continued. “Why do I matter enough that the three of you are…”

He inhaled near her hairline. “You know why, you are just… As you have always been, too fucking stuck up to recognize it as what it is,” he said under his breath. “You tell Rhett that you know what we are… and yet you hold us to standards that don’t apply to us. You get angry at us for taking what is ours, in the way that our people have always done.

“In your fucking obstinance, you have almost torn us apart, and yet you see yourself as the victim,” his grip on her upper arms tightened as his anger grew. “And then you leave for five years, leave us… incomplete… and return with an attitude as if we are an inconvenience to you, and you take a fucking… Someone else into your bed.” She didn’t miss that he hesitated between the words. They knew, she thought to herself, what Talen was, as much as she did.

“We don’t know what you are,” Heath growled the words through his teeth. “Because you won’t share that with us.” His words shook her slightly. “You give us nothing, and yet expect us to lay ourselves bare before you. You are a hypocrite.”

Her lungs emptied and her body responded, heating under his aggression, his anger, and he inhaled, smelling it on her, his pupils dilating. He rubbed his cheek against hers, his eyes closing as he breathed in her scent before pausing, and she both felt and heard him swallow hard. “The power that you have over us…” He ground out angrily. “It’s not fair that nature arms you in this way.”

“Arms me?” She hissed out, incensed by the accusation. “As you said, the three of you have taken, and taken, and humiliated me for anything I have given, any sign of willingness. Is it any wonder that I didn’t expose myself to you when the slightest vulnerability wasn’t just shared with you, but held before the entire town? You know what they call me? The Triquetra’s whore. Your whore. Your slut, as Cameron says. I’m the slut, even when it is the three of you who started this… I carry the burden of your lust. I shoulder the weight of judgement that comes from your fucking…”

He threw her over the kitchen bench and the impact stole her breath. Her fingers wrapped over the edge of the surface as he thrusted into her, clenching in reaction. She was slick still with Talen’s cum, otherwise the pain would have been worse, her logical mind told her as Heath’s palm flattened on her face, holding her skull to the kitchen surface as he fucked her.

His fingers ground against her clit as he thrusted, skilfully coaxing her body to orgasm, and she came, fighting back confused and frustrated tears, feeling like the eighteen-year-old that she had been five years before, her mind foggy and body confused because of what they did to her. Heath sagged over her, the heated palm of his hand stroking over her back tenderly, the gesture so contradictory to his body against hers, and yet also so telling.

“Let us love you,” he breathed out against her shoulder blade.

“Is this love?” She wondered, sucking in a wet breath. “Because it feels like hate.”

His in-drawn breath was sharp, and he was silent for a long moment. “Aislen…”

She sobbed, her fingers clawing the kitchen surface. “It is always the same with you three,” she said in anger. “You take and take and take, and then you humiliate and laugh at my shame. Tomorrow, will the whole town know that you raped me on the kitchen bench of my family home, the day before my father’s funeral? Will they see you as a hero, showing the fucking stubborn gothic bitch her place, under a man and under a man’s needs? Will they point and stare at me, the slut that spread her legs for you, Cameron, and Rhett, like they did five years ago?

“But it’s my fault that what we had didn’t work out, when you were never there for me, you never stood behind me, never supported me. If anything, you delighted in shredding me publicly, pulling me down and apart. Yes,” she hissed the word out. “I took the scholarship, and I didn’t come back, because whilst I was away, I learnt that someone who cares about you, stands behind you and has your back. Did the Triquetra ever have my back?

“No, but I’m the stuck-up bitch that tore you apart,” she shoved her palms against the kitchen bench, pushing back against him, and he recoiled. “What did you do to me?” She snarled at him. “I tore you apart? Only after you stripped me to the bone, humiliation after humiliation, betrayal after betrayal. If you can’t see what you did to me,” she sneered. “Then that is on you, Heath Gale, and nothing to do with me. Get the fuck out of my house, and my life. Another two days, and this fucking hell is behind me.”

He inhaled, his pupils pinpointing visibly in the grey of his eyes. For a long moment, she thought that he would respond, and then he turned and headed towards the front door. By the time he stepped into the front yard, he was a wolf, and not a man at all.

But, she thought, watching with resignation, hadn’t that always been the truth?