Exhale (Flesh and Bone, #1)

by Joel Abernathy

Beverly “The Mattress” Holk could change her last name every other week to match her new husband’s, but when the one openly trans person in the history of Clarksville swapped a few letters out, no one could get it right.

I returned home with some combo platters and egg rolls, feeling very much like I imagined a victorious male lion might after letting the females in his pack do all the work and dragging home an antelope carcass for his young.

All I knew was that Nicolae had become the most important name in my world, and my entire life was hanging on the moment he decided to call.

the hardness in his eyes made him look cold. Otherworldly. That look that so rarely came into Francesca’s and Ellie’s eyes seemed to live in his.

“I know that you don’t want to hear this, but I would have killed myself before I ever laid a finger on her. If you listen—and I mean truly listen, with the part of you that knows things you shouldn’t know, and not your ego—you will know this to be true.”

Those familiar golden eyes stared back, full of amusement rather than the hunger I would have assumed a thing that probably burned a million calories a minute would feel when looking at meat on two sticks.

The muscle on his chest stretched it apart until he adjusted it down. The guy was enough of a threat in his human form.

“You were ready to piss yourself a moment ago. Your heart’s still racing, but your blood stinks of adrenaline. You’re ready to fight me to defend your daughter’s honor.” “Damn straight,” I said without hesitation. Nicolae watched me for a few seconds longer before chuckling. “What’s so funny, prick?” “You are an odd soul. Idiotic, but brave in your own way.”

“Like it or not, you are part of the pack now,” he said in a tone that made me think he didn’t like it, either. “How do you figure that? I’m human.” “Ellie isn’t. I am the Alpha of the Ursache pack, and Francesca was my rightful mate. By proxy, that makes her child mine as well.”

“You turn into a crotch-munching hell monster and you’re worried I’m gonna embarrass you?” “That kind of talk is exactly what I’m referring to,” he said in a tone of disapproval. “You are the consort of an Alpha she-wolf and the father of the heir to the Majerus pack. I can’t have you talking like a drunken sailor.”

“She’s trans. When they realize that —“ “They won’t hurt her, but she will be expected to take a female mate when she comes of age and produce an heir, the same as any other Alpha.” “Well, that’s fucked,” I snarled. “Mating is a political act for werewolves, and producing an heir is considered a duty, not an option,”

The sight of him stopped me short, proving that he could take my breath away in more ways than one. I hated myself for reacting that way, but the man was a fucking god come down to grace the mortals with his presence.

“There’s that country boy charm, but it doesn’t fool me. I’ve seen the way you look at Nicolae,” she said with a glimmer in her dark eyes. “What, you mean the disgust and jealousy or the way I fear for my life whenever he’s threatening me?”

“Omegas are even rarer than Alphas. They’re…special.” “Special how?” I asked warily. “Special as in they’re made to bring packs together. There’s just something about the presence of one that’s very…” She paused, her eyes darting up toward the ceiling as she searched for the word. “Calming.” “So they’re the wolf equivalent of aromatherapy?”

The rough handling didn’t bother me. It was Nicolae’s uncanny ability to rip away my defenses and reveal the very hidden desire he stirred that made me feel vulnerable. To know that he was not only aware of it but planning on using it against me to exact a revenge far subtler than bloodshed.

Because evidently, werewolves and functional alcoholism went together like peanut butter and jelly.

“You respond to my touch like an omega would,” he finally said in answer to my confusion. “Every erogenous zone makes you squirm. And your scent…”

It was fainter, subtler, quieter. This was… God, it was exhilarating and at the same time, it made me want to dive out that window and hope for the best, because falling twenty stories seemed safer than staying here to let him keep playing with my head this way.

I felt some force pulling me toward him, daring my lips to brush his, but I knew that I’d regret it. Not because I had any shame or decency, no. Because it would confirm what he already knew, if not from my scent, then from my erection grinding against his.

I knew the lust in them because it mirrored the darkness in my own soul, and as he took his fill of my naked body, I knew he wanted me as badly as I wanted him.

“Good boy,” he breathed, his breath hot on my dick.

I’d never known I needed pain to feel the reality of another person. To really feel him. His body. His weight pushing up against me. His heat, his pulse pounding against the membrane of my most sensitive place.

“Nicolae.” I breathed his name like a prayer. And it was. He was my god of sex and rage, and I was his sacred whore, offering myself up fully to his mercy.

It was cruel what he was doing to me. Or rather, what he wasn’t. The cruelest he’d been yet. Couldn’t he see I was dying? That every moment he kept himself from me, he was prolonging my torture?

Maybe I was just weak. For him. For the one person I needed to hate in order to maintain my own identity. If I didn’t hate him, who the fuck was I?

“It’s part of mating,” he grunted. “What?” “I’m an Alpha werewolf. You do the math.” “Fuck! You could’ve warned me—” “I didn’t know this would happen,” he snapped. “It’s not supposed to.” “This can’t be the first time.” “It’s not. Just the first time it’s happened with someone other than an omega. I knew you had the other traits, I just wasn’t expecting my body to respond this way.”

I needed something else, something I couldn’t put into words, but he knew. “I know what you need,” he whispered. And he did.

When the last of his seed was in me and the last of mine was spilled between us, all I had left to my name was his. Nicolae, on my lips, in my veins, carved on my skin in indelible ink, forever.

Who knew the god of wolves ate ass like a professional?

You could only give someone what didn’t already belong to them. As soon as Nicolae touched me, I felt like I’d come home. Like I’d never belonged to anyone else, including myself, and he was just finally reclaiming what had been his all along. It made the truth that he would never actually want me that much sharper.

It was one of those weird fatherly pride moments, knowing I’d raised a kid who could throw shade while being polite. I could feel our ancestors smiling down on me.

I want many things that surprise me these days. All of them revolving around you.”

“Tell me something,” he demanded, brushing his lips over my jaw with tenderness that felt cruel. “Why do I want to open you up and pour myself into you until there is no part of you that isn’t tainted by me?”

Nicolae was like the tide. Every time he drew closer, I knew it was only a matter of time before he drifted even further away.

“I want to be with you. Not just now, but always. Not just as my mate in name only, or the man I fuck because I can’t convince myself to stay away.”

“I’m not letting you go that easily. You may have already given up, and I know you’re afraid to face this, but I’m not leaving you a choice. You’re mine. Whether it’s for a month or a lifetime, you’re mine and I will not let you do this alone.”

I was somehow inexplicably an omega. I only cared that Nicolae was with me. That he was alive, and this goddamn hunt was over, and he didn’t hate me for killing the woman we’d shared and grieved and suffered for. I realized only then that the heat and the fever and the pain were gone.

“I love you.” It was the first time he’d said it, but his words were so deliberate and his gaze so full of the echo of them that I couldn’t doubt it. “And she nearly took you from me. I would have killed her myself if you hadn’t, even if she took me down with her. You are my mate, Jack. My destined one. Nothing short of death itself can stand between us, and I’d fight that, too.”