Jacob at the Break of Dawn

Dreamcatcher 3

Jacob at the Break of Dawn Cursed at birth with the ability to perceive the dreams, memories, and emotional states of almost everyone around him, planeswalker Jacob Walker has never given a thought to himself. After a harrowing war destroys his home plane, Morgana, he flees to the Earth plane in search of a savior to restore peace to the supernatural realm. When he arrives, he is met with Alexander Craven, a fiercely determined werewolf who believes himself incapable of love and has spent his entire life training to return to Morgana and join the fight. Giving in to the pull of fate, Jacob and Alexander join their vastly dissimilar souls, granting Jacob access to Alexander’s terrifying strength and making Alexander vulnerable to Jacob’s oversensitive psyche. In the dark hours following the end of the great supernatural war, their union may just provide Morgana with the hero it needs…if it doesn’t destroy them first. Note: Each book in this series features a different romantic couple. Even though the Dreamcatcher collection by Ellen Ginsberg shares an external story arc with the Songmates collection by Rayna Bradbury, each series can stand alone. Genre: Alternative (M/M or F/F), Paranormal, Vampires/Werewolves Length: 57,475 words

JACOB AT THE BREAK OF DAWN Dreamcatcher 3

Ellen Ginsberg

EVERLASTING CLASSIC MANLOVE

Siren Publishing, Inc. www.SirenPublishing.com

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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK IMPRINT: Everlasting Classic ManLove

JACOB AT THE BREAK OF DAWN Copyright © 2011 by Ellen Ginsberg E-book ISBN: 1-61926-000-X First E-book Publication: October 2011 Cover design by Les Byerley All art and logo copyright © 2011 by Siren Publishing, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission. All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

PUBLISHER Siren Publishing, Inc. www.SirenPublishing.com

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JACOB AT THE BREAK OF DAWN Dreamcatcher 3 ELLEN GINSBERG Copyright © 2011

Prologue Fate was calling Jacob, so he followed it. Or, more to the point, he chased it. He wasn’t much of a runner—none of the planeswalkers were good athletes—but he didn’t have much choice. His breath was labored and his muscles ached as he snaked his way through every deserted back alley in vampire territory, staying as close as he could to the path of that undeniable pull but trying his damndest not to get caught. That was important, he thought, doubled over and panting as he stopped for breath just outside the border of planeswalker territory. Destiny wasn’t worth much if he got himself killed trying to fulfill it. He knew that all too well. “Sometimes I can almost see them watching us, Mitchell. Like they’re here with us somehow. I think part of us is still on the Earth plane with them. They look so sad when they see us. Maybe we’re sick. Maybe we’re in a hospital. Or maybe we’re dead.” “Not dead. Not dead, not dead, not dead. They can’t kill me. Can’t kill Murdock. Even in death, they’ll feel my presence. I will not let Morgana have its peace.” “If you want a chance of peace when this is over, you have to send him. Ben will come back when the war is over. He’ll be old enough to

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rule, and they’ll listen to him. His parents are dead. Mitchell is gone. The wolves need a leader.” Jacob clapped his hands over his ears to still the onslaught of voices echoing through his head. All his life he’d heard voices and seen visions. At times they seemed to be coming from the people around him, fragments of their thoughts or dreams or emotions. Other times, they seemed to come from far away, from another plane or across the boundaries of life and death. He knew it wasn’t normal, but he’d never quite let go of the idea that it was more than just a disease, a mental illness or deficiency of some kind. He wanted to believe that terrible cross he’d had to bear would be of use to someone someday. Perhaps that time was now. He’d been hearing the voices more and more since the war ended. Sometimes they were no louder than a whisper, but today, they had risen almost to a scream. The cacophony in his head was growing clearer, too, sharpening from an indiscernible din into individual voices he could almost identify. The voices of people the war had made famous. They had all played a part in it, as heroes, or villains, or martyrs. “Lying in a hospital in a deep, deep sleep. And this is just a dream, Mitchell.” “Can’t kill Murdock—” “Ben will come back. Fate will call him back to Morgana. The wolves need a king.” Jacob glanced at the war-wrecked landscape around him, and he could understand the truth of that last statement. The three species that now inhabited the plane, the planeswalkers, werewolves, and vampires, hardly trusted each other enough to coexist, let alone rebuild the damages from the war. The werewolves in particular didn’t trust the other species, not after the way Murdock, the vampire king, had gotten planeswalkers to lure so many wolves back to Morgana to serve as slaves for the vampires. Murdock was dead now, killed by his own species, but there was no peace. The wolves didn’t trust the vampires. They needed a leader of their own.

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The noise receded until a single voice ran through his head, one that was faded, as if it were being broadcast to him through the past, rather than some parallel present. “Look up, sweetie. Step up on the ladder, Ben. You have to go now. Mommy and Daddy would have wanted you to be safe. No, I can’t go with you. I can’t go to Earth. Step up on the ladder, Ben. Look up—” Jacob looked up. The building in front of him stood on the outskirts of vampire territory, one of the last high-rises Murdock had commissioned before the war. When the war broke out, construction had been indefinitely halted on the building, and the ladder now leaned against a building half-finished. Someone had taken siege to the old construction site during the war, and the top stories were now missing. The ladder seemed to extend to nowhere, as if it were leading to the sky. “Climb up on the ladder, sweetie—” Jacob climbed. He wasn’t a fan of heights, but he climbed. Up and up and up, until the sense of vertigo overwhelmed him and his knuckles were almost white as they gripped each new rung of the ladder. He was nearly to the top, but he didn’t dare look down. He had to— “Look up.” He looked. And then he had to look again. From the ground, the streaks of white above him had seemed like faraway clouds, but from this distance, he could see clearly that they were the capped peaks of river rapids, moving from left to right, appearing out of the sky and dissolving back into it, a wavering, watery circle in the air. The blue patch of sky above of him wasn’t a sky at all. It was a river. Jacob looked up through the watery glass ceiling above him. He could see trees lining either side of the riverbed. And rocks. Lots of rocks, he thought nervously, for some of them looked like they might

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catch on him painfully if he stepped through the gate. Jacob’s gaze drifted upward to where he saw, towering above the river, a tall cliff that was familiar to every planeswalker in Morgana, if only through legend and dream. Ecstasy Rock. He was looking at the most famous—and least travelled to—plane in the known universe. Everyone knew of the plane rumored to possess few supernaturals, but he’d only heard rumors of a few who’d made it through. Unlike other planesgates, the gateway to Earth never stayed open for long. The locations of the gates were so obscure and mysterious that the chances of stumbling upon them while they were open were slim. Even those who actively searched for a gate to Earth had always seemed to fail in spite of their efforts. If someone was to cross the boundary into the mortal world, fate had to bring him here. “Lying in a hospital bed on the Earth plane…” “The war isn’t over. You can’t kill Murdock.” “Fate will bring Ben back. The wolves need a king.” Tentatively, he stuck a hand up to touch the watery sky above him, and his stomach sank when he saw his hand disappear into nothingness. Frightened, he pulled his hand back. He was twenty-two years old, but he had never been through a planesgate. Fate was urging him onward, upward, but his heart was pounding. In the distance, he could hear a manic howling. The wolves were out. Those who had stayed on Morgana after the war now roamed the plane during the brief daylight hours, looking to pick off the sleeping vampires and planeswalkers who had betrayed them during the war. Even if Jacob had done nothing to hurt them, they would know his relation to Murdock. If they found him, he was a dead man. Again, he heard the howling, louder this time, piercing through the chorus of ghostly voices in his head. He looked up once again into the jagged rocks and rushing rapids then took one tentative step up the ladder. Fate was calling him. The wolves were getting closer. He had nowhere to go but up.

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Chapter One “Maybe you should start at the beginning.” Jacob nodded. He understood the necessity of the command and appreciated how gently it had been asked of him, but he wasn’t sure it was something he could do at the moment. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to still the pounding in his head, but it didn’t make any difference. The dull, throbbing ache had been there for almost two days now, ever since he’d climbed through the gate in Morgana and come out on Earth, gasping for air and getting nothing but a mouthful of river water. In his mind’s eye, he’d gotten a glimpse of life on Earth, just as all planeswalkers did when they journeyed to an unfamiliar plane, but it hadn’t come out an organized, digestible packet of information he could access and store as needed. What Jacob got instead was a jumbled, chaotic mess that cut through his aching head like a dull, useless knife. River water. Watering can. Plants. Varieties of plant life, A-F. Life or death. Nearest cemetery, Woodland Hills, corner of Osteopathy and Jameson. Jameson Whiskey. Alcohol poisoning and its treatments. Nearest hospital, Borderland College of Osteopathic Medicine. That last one, he’d been able to use. “I came to the hospital,” he began, turning to the blond werewolf who’d asked the question. Lars, he’d said his name was. His kind green eyes urged Jacob to continue. “When I was on Morgana, I heard these voices—” “Lying in a hospital bed in a deep sleep—” “I think we’re still on the Earth plane, Mitchell.”

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“What kind of voices?” Lars asked. Jacob knew what the look in his eyes was saying. Lars, like everyone else Jacob had shared his secret with, was trying to figure out if he was crazy. He’d half wondered the same thing most of his life, even as he wandered through the planesgate, following those ceaseless voices onto the Earth plane and toward the nearest hospital. It was hard not to wonder when everyone he’d ever known told him he was crazy, or as his father used to say, diseased. True, he’d never met another planeswalker who seemed to wander through life in the dreamy haze he did, constantly plagued by other people’s ideas and emotions and thoughts, but Jacob knew now those voices and visions weren’t figments of his imagination. They belonged to someone else. When those voices guided Jacob into this room and he saw who was inside it, he knew beyond a doubt who those voices belonged to. Mitchell and Adrianna Craven, leaders of the rebellion on Morgana, hadn’t died in the war at all. They were right here, lying side by side in hospital beds in a small, cramped room in Borderland Osteopathic. Just like Adrianna told him they would be. And the man who was standing in front of him was their son. “I know what you’re thinking,” Jacob said. “You think I’m crazy, but—” The other werewolf, Danny, who had accompanied Lars, rolled his eyes and jabbed Lars with his elbow. “He thinks everyone’s crazy,” he said. “He’s a shrink.” Lars gave Danny a reproachful look, but he smiled at the smaller werewolf afterward just the same. There was something in that smile. Jacob had never felt it himself, but he could sense emotions in others if they were strong enough. And Lars felt something for Danny, so strong it was almost palpable. It was love. “He’s your mate?” Jacob asked. Lars nodded. Danny smiled. Jacob continued. “Then you should understand fate.”

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Lars’s lips thinned as he looked down at his parents lying side by side in the hospital beds. From the fragmented voices Jacob had heard whispered in his head, he knew Adrianna, too, had felt fate pulling her across the planesgate to return to Morgana. Ten years ago, she and Mitchell had tried to follow the call of fate across that treacherous planesgate to the supernatural realm. They hadn’t made it across. The only thing keeping them alive now were the machines in the room, whose constant whirs and buzzes and beeps signaled life stirring in the motionless bodies of the revolutionaries. That dismal display was all they had to show for what following fate had done for them. Lars looked at his parents for a long time, and then he looked at his mate. Danny looked back at him and smiled, and Lars reached down and squeezed Danny’s hand. “I believe in fate,” he said quietly. “Tell me what you need to do.” “Ten years ago, your parents started a war on Morgana,” Jacob said. “They rebelled against Murdock, and a lot of werewolves and planeswalkers followed suit, leading a war against Murdock and his vampires. Murdock is dead now—” “Murdock is dead?” Lars asked, his eyes wide. “You can’t kill Murdock.” Jacob shook his head. “The war isn’t over. Or at least, there’s no peace on Morgana. Murdock was killed by vampires, but the werewolves who are left on the plane don’t trust the vampires on Morgana anymore. They want to keep fighting. No one is there to lead them, either. The last king of the werewolves died at the start of the war, when his heir was only a boy. They sent him to the Earth plane in the hopes that he would come back as a man to rule over the wolves. And now I have to find him.” Danny and Lars exchanged a glance, and Danny looked at Jacob sadly. “I hate to disappoint you,” he said, “but there aren’t exactly a lot of werewolves on this plane. I mean, there’s us, obviously, and Lars’s brothers—”

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Jacob furrowed his brow, and Lars answered his unspoken question. “Jasper and Alexander.” Jacob nodded, committing the names to memory, and Danny continued. “And there’s Ben, Jasper’s mate, but apart from that, none of us have ever seen another werewolf.” “Ben,” Jacob said. “Benjamin Morris?” Danny’s nose crinkled. “It’s just Ben, but yeah. How’d you know his name?” Anxiety seemed to creep into his eyes, and he leaned into Lars, as if he needed protection from Jacob. He knew he was probably scaring Danny, but he couldn’t help it. He knew something had led him to the sleeping revolutionaries, but now he knew what. “Can you take me to him?” Danny seemed hesitant. “Why?” he asked. “Look, whatever you want with him…I think there’s probably some kind of mistake. Ben’s a good guy, but he’s just a—” “Take me,” Jacob said. “I have to see him. It’s important. I don’t know how long the planesgate will stay open, and I have to get back.” Jacob looked down at his hands. They were shaking. He stood from the hard, plastic chair he was seated in. “You don’t know how many lives depend on it. The future of the entire plane—” Lars laid a hand on his shoulder. “Calm down,” he said. “If you say it’s important, we’ll take you to him.” “It is important,” Jacob said, as calmly as he could manage. His head was pounding, and the voices were back, slicing through the fog of his brain with a single repeated sentence. “We need a leader.” **** Alexander Craven was born to be a hero, and the time had come to be one.

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He gripped the cell phone in his hand, pacing the kitchen floor anxiously as Lars continued to tell him what he’d been waiting to hear his entire life. “His name is Jacob, and he says he’s a planeswalker. I mean, I believe him. He knows all kinds of stuff about Mom and Dad, and Morgana, and the war. Danny and I are leaving the hospital now, and we’re bringing him back to see you and Jasper. And Ben. He says the werewolves need a leader.” Alex nodded, his throat dry, his heart racing, his head spinning as he tried to process what he’d just heard. Jacob was a planeswalker. A planeswalker could take him back to Morgana. Morgana needed a leader. Morgana needed Alex. “I’ll be waiting,” he said, and he flipped the phone closed. He took three steps toward the refrigerator, realized he didn’t need anything from it, and turned and walked toward the study. For twenty seconds, he managed to sit, perched on the couch with his back straight and palms resting flat against his jittering knees. Then he stood and walked out of the room. The hospital was less than ten minutes from their house. In less than ten minutes, he was going to meet his destiny. Until then, he didn’t know what the hell to do with himself. He stared into the kitchen, leaning restlessly against the entryway. At six-two and two hundred and twenty pounds, his big, hulking frame nearly took up the entire cramped entryway. He’d trained most of his life to acquire that mass of muscle, but it hadn’t come in much use until now, save for at the occasional odd job in construction or bouncing a bar. Both his brothers, Lars and Jasper, had found mates and invested themselves in careers here on the Earth plane. Jasper’s income alone was enough to pay to keep their parents on life support, and Lars seemed to take satisfaction in helping people overcome their problems, but Alex’s skills here had been mostly relegated to cooking

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and cleaning. He spent most of his days training for battle, but as far as his family was concerned, he was little more than a housemaid. That was about to change. Alex’s mother had been pregnant with him when she and his father came here. He didn’t remember Morgana, but he’d heard story after story about it when he was a boy, asking question after question of his parents, even after he’d learned the answers by heart. It comforted him to hear their stories. His father was a warrior. His mother was a revolutionary. Together, they were heroes. And Alex had every intention of being just like them. When Murdock, the vampire king, ascended the throne on Morgana, he’d been mad about expanding the vampire realm, cutting into the planeswalker territory and allowing his people to hunt the planeswalkers almost into extinction. When they had been nearly wiped out altogether, Murdock made a treaty with the leader of the remaining planeswalkers. The vampires would stop hunting the planeswalkers if they would lure werewolves back to the plane to be enslaved as the vampires’ food source. The way werewolves’ bodies healed naturally, they could provide a lot of blood, and the planeswalkers would be safe from the predators that had hunted them for all of time. They could rebuild. Renew their population. Flourish. To deny what Murdock was offering them, they would have to be angels or madmen. Alex remembered his planeswalker mother, with her silken hair and porcelain skin, as the most angelic woman he had ever known. She was madly in love with his werewolf father, in spite of the fact that interspecies relations were highly discouraged in the supernatural world. Adrianna hadn’t given a damn about that because she was in love, and people in love did crazy things. Needless to say, she hadn’t honored the treaty. Rather than bringing back weak, submissive wolves for Murdock’s vampires to enslave and feed from, she and a band of

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rogue planeswalkers had brought back strong warriors like his father to fight back against Murdock and his vampires. When Adrianna and Mitchell’s rebellion began a war on Morgana, they had every intention of staying to see it through, to fight for what they believed in. That was when Adrianna found out she was pregnant with Alex. Wanting to keep their son safe from harm, they fled to the Earth plane, certain fate would someday call them back to Morgana, certain that other planeswalkers would come after them to take the young couple and their growing family back with them. No one ever came, and eventually, Adrianna felt fate calling her and Mitchell to return to Morgana again. Once more, they found themselves standing at the planesgate, this time at the top of Ecstasy Rock, ready to plummet down into the world that awaited her below. Things didn’t exactly go as planned. The front door creaked open, snapping Alex out of his reverie. He straightened his shirt and ran a sweaty palm through his hair before he turned and strode into the foyer to see the creature that would finally bring him back to Morgana to finish what his parents had started. Lars nodded to Alex as he made his way through the study to greet them. “Alex, this is Jacob,” he said, clapping a hand to the shoulder of the young man standing next to him. Alex’s breath caught in his chest. Jacob was beautiful. For a split second, he almost stuck out his palm to shake Jacob’s delicate hand, but then he remembered how goddamn sweaty he was and instead settled for half a wave and a distressed smile. He brought his hand down, wiping both palms on the front of his pants then folding his arms protectively over his chest. “Do you want to sit down?” he asked, gesturing toward the study. Jacob nodded, and Alex breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t planned on meeting his destiny with an erection.

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Jacob sat in the blue high-backed chair in the study, crisscrossing his legs under him so that the entire chair seemed to engulf his small body. He had the same porcelain skin Alex’s mother had, the same frail frame that looked like it could be snapped in two if he weren’t careful. There were marks on his face and arms, little scratches and bruises, Alex guessed from going through the treacherous planesgate that had nearly taken his parents’ lives, and Alex’s first instinct was to pull Jacob into his arms where he would be safe after his dangerous journey. Instead, he just sat across the room from him on the couch and stared. “They said your name was Alex,” Jacob began. Alex nodded, lifting his eyes to meet Jacob’s. Christ, he felt like an idiot. He probably had over a hundred pounds and at least ten years on the poor kid, but something about the way he was staring at him made him so nervous he could hardly speak. “Yeah,” he finally managed. “My mom—Adrianna—she was pregnant with me when she left Morgana, so I—” “Then who’s Ben?” Alex bristled at the way the smaller man cut him off. He wasn’t sure what the hell Ben had to do with any of this. “Jasper’s mate,” he said curtly. “They’re both upstairs.” “Oh,” Jacob said. His forehead wrinkled in thought. “Where’s your mate?” Alex didn’t have time to respond to that slight before Lars returned from the kitchen, handing Jacob a cup of tea with one hand and balancing two beers in the other. He handed one to Alex and kept the other for himself. Alex popped the top and took a drink. Lars’s timing couldn’t have been better. He watched his brother cross the room and sit down in one of the other overstuffed chairs, next to where Danny was standing. Danny glanced from Alex to Lars and smiled mischievously. “Can I have a beer?” he asked. “You can have a juice box,” Lars said with a smirk. “Minor.”

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“Dick,” Danny quipped. He started to walk away from him, but Lars tugged on his arm with his free hand, pulling him back until he sat perched on the arm of the chair, his legs dangling against Lars’s. Lars’s grip loosened on him, and his hand slid down Danny’s until their fingers threaded together. He whispered something in Danny’s ear, and Danny grinned and blushed and leaned in closer to him. Alex turned away from them, embarrassed. It wasn’t that he had expected to find a mate on the Earth plane. Like his parents, he’d always believed that fate would bring him and his brothers back to Morgana, where he would find his mate. Up until a few months ago, he’d firmly believed there weren’t any other supernaturals on this plane at all. Then, eight weeks ago, Danny had shown up. Two weeks later, Jasper had found a mate as well. Alex had been delighted at first, figuring his own mate would show up and sooner or later, someone or something would lead them back to Morgana. But the weeks passed, and nothing happened. At least now he had Morgana to focus on. He turned to Jacob. “So what’s the deal?” he asked. “You need us to go back and finish the war?” “The war’s over,” Lars said in what Alex recognized as his best shrink voice. His eyes met Alex’s, and something in them begged him not to freak out. It was a tall order when Alex heard the next words out of his mouth. “Murdock’s dead.” “What?” Alex roared, anger propelling him out of his seat. In an instant, his claws had burst free from his fingertips and he felt his canines drop from his jaw. When he saw Jacob in the chair in front of him nearly spit out his tea in reaction, he ran his tongue over his aching gums, taking a few deep breaths to calm himself. When his claws had begun to recede back into his fingers, he turned back to Lars. “You could’ve told me over the phone, you know.”

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His younger brother merely shrugged in response, eyeing him like he anticipated a temper tantrum. In fairness, it wasn’t far off base from what Alex felt like doing. Instead, he let himself sink back onto the couch, turning to Jacob with a decidedly more narrowed gaze. “He was killed by other vampires,” Jacob said. “They seem all right, even if most of the revolutionaries don’t trust them.” The words hardly placated Alex. He bristled at the planeswalker’s implication that vampires, any vampires, could possibly be all right, and his heart skipped a beat at Jacob’s casual, unflinching use of the word was. As if the weight of the past implied in that one little word meant nothing to him. As if it didn’t imply some great epic battle where lives were lost and terror reigned in a world far away, while Alex slept soundly in his uneventful bubble, tucked safely away on the Earth plane. It wasn’t fair. He clenched his fingers into fists, trying to keep his claws from sprouting back out again and sticking into his palms. Murdock was dead. The war was over, and whatever its outcome, Alex hadn’t had a chance to fight in it. His whole life, the promise of this day, the one where he met his destiny, had calmed him, kept him cool and in control and at peace with the world around him, no matter how little he felt he belonged to it. He was a wolf. A warrior. Now, for the first time in years, he felt dizzy and weak. “So why are you here?” he asked, unable to keep the note of disdain from creeping into his voice. Danny began to open his mouth, but Lars shook his head at him before he could speak. Alex wasn’t sure what the hell that little interlude was about, but he was about damn sick of his brothers and their mates pushing him out of the action like he was just some fucking spectator. He turned to Jacob. “Well?”

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Jacob bit his lip as if he didn’t want to say the words. Finally, he gave a sigh and spoke. “Can you get Ben?” he asked. “And Jasper,” Lars added quickly, but Alex didn’t miss the strange, placating smile his brother had shot him. “What does Ben have to do with this?” Jacob didn’t answer him. “Can you please just go get him?” he asked. “There are some things I need to explain.” After another warning look from Lars, he added, “To all of you.” Alex sighed and stood from the couch, trudging upstairs to get Jasper and his mate. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear much more of what the planeswalker had to say, but he sure as hell intended to listen. War or no war, Jacob was still his ticket off the Earth plane and back to his home, his real home, where he could at least find his mate and some semblance of a normal life. There might not be a war for him to fight in, but there certainly wasn’t anything on Earth for him to stick around for. A terrible thought occurred to him just before he reached the stairs, and he turned, unable to keep from blurting it out. “Just tell me one thing,” he said. “You came here to bring us back, right? To Morgana? I mean, even without the war, there must be something…” Jacob’s eyes dropped to the floor, and Alex felt the tremble creep back into his hands. Fucking hell, he hadn’t felt this scared or anxious since his parents’ accident. His voice had trailed off when he saw the look on Jacob’s face, but his heart seemed to stop altogether when he heard his response. “Not all of you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I can only bring one person across the gate.” Alex glanced from Lars, to Danny, to Jacob again before slinking up the stairs to get Ben. No one said a word further, but the looks on their faces had told him more than enough to crush his spirit. He wasn’t going to be the one to go.

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Chapter Two Benjamin Morris, the great and powerful heir to the werewolf throne, the one remaining hope for peace on Morgana, sat across from Jacob on the couch in the Cravens’ study, fighting back tears as he held his mate’s hand. He was just a kid, a teenager. Probably not even as old as Jacob. And Jacob was pretty sure he’d just ruined his life. “I’m sorry,” he said uselessly. “Why?” Ben said. “Like I said, I’ll go. If that’s how it is, I’ll go.” His lip quivered as he said it, and Jasper stroked his hand over his back to comfort him. He closed his eyes, as if he needed to block out Jacob’s image to even feel his mate’s comfort. Jacob, too, was starting to feel a note of emotion creep into his throat. Some planeswalkers were wise, having visited so many different worlds and understanding so much of what life was about. Others, like Jacob, were just plain overemotional. “I didn’t know,” he continued, his voice breaking. He tried his best to steady it. “I mean, I knew you were mates, but I didn’t think about—” “It’s fine,” Jasper said, but there was a stiffness in his tone. “Can you just give us a minute?” Jacob nodded, sliding out of the chair he sat in. Walking to the kitchen, he set his teacup in the sink before turning to the back door. Absently, he headed toward it, not even sure where he was going. The only thing he was certain of was that he had to get the hell out of that house.

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He wandered aimlessly across the back porch and off it, through the yard and into the woods behind it, shoving his hands deep into his pockets as he let the events of the past hour wash over him. He had told the brothers and their mates about the war. He had told them about Murdock’s death and about what had happened after. He had told them about how everyone on the plane had seemed to almost sleepwalk through the day, their eyes glazed and murderous. The whole somnambulant population seemed dead set on continuing to fight with each other, almost as if Murdock had never died. He had told them just how badly they needed Ben, and that Ben would have to come with him as soon as possible. He didn’t know how long the planesgate would stay open, or when he’d feel fate pulling him back to it. Hundreds of thousands of lives were at stake, he’d explained. Put that way, the request he’d made of Jasper’s mate seemed like a small one. Just uproot his life, abandon his mate, leave his home, make a dangerous journey across a planesgate to a totally unfamiliar world, and stay there forever to rule it—probably not without incurring some opposition when the weres saw just how young and inexperienced their new king was. When Ben balked at the request, Jacob hadn’t known what the hell to make of it. All he was asking was one person’s teeny, tiny little life as a sacrifice to the greater good. Why should Ben give a thought to his own life when the lives of so many others were at stake? Jacob sure as hell hadn’t considered it. But then, Jacob had never had much of a life to begin with. Not only was his mind too much of a mess to ever maintain friendships or relationships with others for long, there was one other fairly significant detail that had pretty much squashed any chances he had for a social life as he grew older. Murdock was his father. Before Murdock rose to power, most of the vampires on Morgana were understanding of planeswalkers, even though the weaker species

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was essentially prey for them. It made sense, since Morgana vamps had all been planeswalkers before they were turned. In those days, the two species had lived mostly in harmony on the plane. Murdock, however, had little sympathy for the race he once belonged to, believing that the strong had a right to take whatever they could in life, even at the expense of those who didn’t share their strength. Jacob couldn’t help but worry at times that his father’s fucked-up beliefs were his fault, an attempt to overcompensate for the weaknesses of his son. Jacob, with his dreamy, wandering, mixed-up mind, was an embarrassment to Murdock. An idiot. A head case. Things had been so tense for so much of Jacob’s life, he hardly knew what happiness was. I love him, Ben had said of Jasper. Do you have any fucking clue what that’s worth? Jacob didn’t. Why should he? He’d never been in love. He certainly had never been loved by anyone. It just wasn’t something he expected to find. His parents certainly hadn’t been much help in that department either. They weren’t even mates. He was just the product of a quick and stupid fuck. A mistake, his father liked to remind him. A living, breathing mistake. God help him, Jacob believed him. It was hard not to, when his mind was such a useless piece of machinery he could barely think straight enough to see what was right in front of him. No sooner had Jacob thought the words than he plowed into a tree outside a clearing. It was as if some cosmic joke had reached its punch line and he was part of it. It figured, he thought sarcastically, but his sarcasm left him when he saw what else was right in front of him. Alexander, the oldest Craven brother, had also come out to the forest, although, from the looks of things, he hadn’t come out here to think. Jacob swallowed down his fear as he watched the much bigger

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man nearly rip the tree he stood before to shreds in one graceful sweep of his claws. Jacob tried his best to breathe as he watched Alex, shoulders broad, biceps bulging, strike the tree again. Jacob may not have ever been in love, but he was sure as hell turned on. Unfortunately, he was also scared out of his mind. He ducked behind a tree to watch the spectacle as Alex, both terrifying and impressive in his fury, continued to lay waste to the tree ahead of him, reeling back and attacking the tree with his claws and ripping massive curls of bark off it in the wake of each angry swipe. Briefly, Jacob recalled meeting Alex in the study. He had thought for sure that the majestic man was Benjamin Morris. Alex’s massive frame commanded attention and respect like none Jacob had ever seen. And then Lars had introduced him as his brother, and Jacob hadn’t known what the hell to think. For the rest of the time he’d stood in that study, babbling his head off about the series of events that led him there, he hadn’t been able to keep from looking at the bigger man, no matter how much Alex’s shoulders tensed and his eyes narrowed when Jacob told him he wouldn’t be making the trip to Morgana. Clearly Alex had made himself ready for it, but it simply wasn’t what fate had in store for him. Or was it? Jacob couldn’t help but wonder as he stood only inches from the man, feeling his nerves jangle and his stomach sink and his face burn like nothing ever had in his life. Not even the pull of fate had this much influence over him. He didn’t think he could pry himself from the view ahead of him if God himself had told him to. Even in his human form, Alex’s carriage conveyed the power and dominance that usually only came when a shifter’s inner beast took over. Jacob was almost hypnotized by the sight, and his hand

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stretched out toward him, as if he needed to touch him to remind himself what he was seeing was real. Jacob’s hand brushed Alex’s shoulder, and the bigger man turned and snapped at him. He squeaked out a reply, a rush of sorrys and I didn’t mean tos, pulling his hand away from Alex even as he felt his cock harden painfully from the rush of electric sparks that touch had sent zipping through his body. Yep, he was turned on, all right, but there was something else, too. A word that echoed through his head loud and clear, cutting through the usual chaotic din and silencing it with a single repeated word. Mate. Alex’s eyes had gone yellow, and their rough gaze over Jacob’s body practically drew goose bumps out of his skin. He’d lived his whole life on a plane full of bloodsuckers who viewed him as little more than an after-dinner cocktail, but he’d never been so aware of the delicate frame of his own body until now. Alex could probably snap him in two if he wanted to, and with the anger burning in his eyes, he looked like he wanted to. But God help him, Jacob was desperate to touch him again. Letting his cowardice win out over his libido, Jacob made a move to leave, but Alex held his hand out to stop him. Jacob stared at it, at the sharp points of the claws receding into his skin. They were disappearing now as Alex promised not to hurt him. So Jacob was safe. A sigh passed through him, but he didn’t know if it was from relief or regret. “What are you doing out here, anyway?” Alex asked. Jacob swallowed, hugging the tree he’d ducked behind for protection. What the hell could he say to that question? You believe in fate, right? Because remember when I touched you a second ago? I had this funny feeling you were maybe my mate, but since you obviously seem to hate me for whatever reason and could probably snap me like a twig if you wanted, I’m just gonna go ahead and fling

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myself off a cliff and through the gate to Morgana, where many big and scary wolves are, like you, very keen to tear my throat out. Jacob winced. Now that he knew that Ben was not the big, beefy warrior he’d anticipated, the idea of returning to the plane full of pissed-off weres eager to take out their rage on Murdock’s son was decidedly more terrifying. He’d expected the great Benjamin Morris would be able to coax submission out of any troublemakers they encountered, but having actually seen Ben, Jacob wasn’t so sure what was in store for them. He could sense fate welling inside him to pull him back to Morgana, and Jacob didn’t know how long the planesgate would remain open. He had to go back, but for all he knew, those pissed-off wolves could be waiting on the other side of the planesgate when he returned, ready to tear him limb from limb. God, what he wouldn’t give for someone strong to protect him. He stared at Alex, standing in front of him like a Greek god with muscles bulging out of the tight, thin fabric of his shirt. Jacob didn’t intend to clear his throat and talk. The words just sort of came tumbling out before he could stop them. “I have to ask you something.” “I thought you said you didn’t need me.” “Morgana doesn’t,” Jacob said. God, shut up, he practically shouted at himself for that one. “Thank you,” Alex said tersely. “Not right now, anyway,” he managed to explain, but he didn’t get out what he’d meant to say, which was, but I really, really do. “Keep rubbing the salt in my wounds.” Jacob furrowed his brow, searching his mind for the right connection that would tell him what the hell Alex had meant by that. Salt…salt…salt water, water fountain, shower, shower sex, sex on the beach—oh, hey, salt water again—beach scene from From Here to Eternity, sex scene, sexy movie, porn…Wow, his brain was really not working today.

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Jacob cleared his throat and tried his best to chase the thoughts from his mind. It was relatively easy. All he had to do was open his mouth and let words tumble out of it until his erection died of embarrassment. Unfortunately, after about five minutes of that, Alex was growling at him again. “What did you need to ask me?” he asked. Jacob felt his face grow hotter, and his eyes dropped to his shoes. He waggled his toes inside them as he cleared his throat. Finally he managed to bring his eyes to Alex’s again. “Can I…touch you?” “Why?” That single, clipped word deflated all of Jacob’s hopes in an instant. Like a slowly dying piece of machinery, he sputtered out the leftover thoughts, unable to finish the sentence. “I just…I wanted to see if...I had this feeling…” He looked at Alex, the man he thought was his mate. He’d been so sure of it, but now Alex shrunk underneath his stare like even the weight of his eyes on him offended him. Eventually he turned away. Jacob didn’t have to learn the Earth word for what he was feeling. It was the same on every plane. Rejection. “Forget it,” he said. “It’s stupid. Anyway, I have to go.” Jacob turned to walk away. He was already three steps from Alex when a big, rough hand closed around his and lit up his whole body with love and longing. “Wait,” said the voice from behind him. Jacob waited. His time on Earth was running out, but he waited. One callused thumb stroked across the back of his palm. Instantly, his eyes closed and his lips parted, as if Alex had switched on some secret button inside him that had opened his entire body up to the big, hulking man that held his hand so tightly. With his considerable height and weight, Alex towered over Jacob, and he could still see a ferocity in the werewolf’s eyes that only burned brighter with the hunger Jacob saw in him now. Next to Alex, he felt small and scared and vulnerable, but in spite of that or—who was he kidding?—

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because of that, he wanted to forget the fact that he was on a fastrunning-out deadline and fall at his feet like a damn dog eager to follow his every command. He was his. Morgana could go up in flames for all he cared. So long as Alex stood here next to him and held his hand, he wasn’t letting go. He’d wait forever if Alex wanted him to. “Oh God,” Jacob gasped. He looked at Alex and was surprised to see the same fear in his face that Jacob felt in his gut. Alex nodded. “What do we do now?” **** Jacob didn’t respond to Alex’s question—or rather, he didn’t reply to Alex’s question. The open-mouthed kiss Jacob planted on Alex’s lips definitely registered as a response in his book, however utterly unexpected it was. For about thirty blissful seconds, Alex gave in to that kiss, reveling in the way Jacob pressed one flat palm to the side of his cheek as he rubbed his tongue against his. His other hand was still tucked safely inside Alex’s. Their bodies pressed together, and the tension that had been building inside Alex from the moment he’d seen Jacob blossomed into a raw heat that spread across his body. Oh, God, he wanted to fuck him. Instead, he pulled away. “What the hell was that?” Jacob raised an eyebrow at him. “Kiss?” “Why?” “Is that…not how sex gets started on your plane?” Alex’s cheeks heated with embarrassment. It was an unfamiliar feeling. He didn’t like it. He narrowed his eyes at Jacob. “Yeah, I know what sex entails. I just…” He struggled with the words, coming up with nothing. “Why?”

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“We’re mates,” Jacob said, his eyes searching Alex’s before he could turn away. He could feel fear rising inside him, for one of the first times in his life, and he didn’t want Jacob to see it in his eyes. “So…” He moved in toward Alex again, his small, soft hands creeping up Alex’s chest. Alex backed away, nearly bumping his back into the tree behind him. This time, Jacob kept his distance, and it took every shred of control Alex had not to grab Jacob, turn him around, and push him against that tree until the outline of his cock pressed against Alex’s thigh. It was just that he couldn’t. “Look, you’re a planeswalker,” he began. Jacob rolled his eyes. “I’m aware of that.” “And I’m a werewolf—” Jacob took a step toward him. “And your mom’s a planeswalker and your dad’s a werewolf. I get it. It’s unorthodox, but I kinda figured you of all people would—” “I’m not prejudiced, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” Alex snapped. Jacob held up his hands in protest. “Okay. Fine. What is it then?” He glanced down at Alex’s bulging crotch. Alex snapped his fingers in front of his face. “Eyes up here.” Jacob’s eyes widened as he did as he was told. “Sorry, I just…I mean, obviously you’re interested, so…” Alex let out a breath that he feared sounded more like a growl. He could see Jacob flinch even at the sound of it. He searched his mind for a plausible excuse as to why he was resisting what his cock so clearly, embarrassingly desired. It was no use. All he could think of was the truth. In his thirty-one years, Alex had had exactly ten lovers. All of them had been strangers, and all of those encounters had taken place at a certain discreetly advertised club in Austin. It was the closest place to Borderland that specialized in BDSM.

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Jacob took another step closer to him, closing the distance between them. His hand crept up Alex’s chest, and Alex had to bite his lip to keep from kissing him. “You’re not going to hurt me, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Jacob said softly. Alex closed his eyes, suppressing a shudder as he felt Jacob’s fingers trace past his nipple. “That’s not what I’m worried about.” It was exactly what he was worried about. Until recently, Alex hadn’t given much thought to mating, always conceiving of it as some faraway event that he’d have plenty of time to prepare for when the time came. Even in the past weeks, when his brothers’ matings had forced the issue to the front of his brain, he’d always imagined that when he found his mate, his tendencies toward dominance and punishment would recede and be replaced by other, gentler desires, ones more appropriate for a lover he cared about and intended to spend the rest of his life with. Only now, Jacob was here, and his smart mouth and slender frame as it leaned into Alex had done nothing but awaken every dominant tendency he had. With a vengeance. Jacob’s small hand had reached the curve of Alex’s collarbone. Alex would have sucked the whole damn thing into his mouth if he wasn’t so certain he’d probably snap it off. He pushed the hand away. Jacob replaced it, using his other to grab at Alex’s cock. Alex growled. Furious, he grabbed at both of Jacob’s wrists, turning him around to pin him to the tree. His breathing quickened as Jacob’s body rubbed against his, either to get free or grind his cock against Alex’s thigh. He wasn’t sure which, but in any case, he was doing a bang-up job of the latter. A slow, shaky breath escaped Alex. He breathed it right into Jacob’s ear as he spoke, slow and steady. “Don’t push me, angel.” Jacob smiled at the endearment. His hips didn’t stop moving for a second, instead finding a slow, torturous rhythm underneath him as he

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ground his hard dick down his thigh and up until their cocks almost touched. Alex’s eyes half closed and his mouth half opened with the force of his need. “Stop smiling, angel,” he said evenly. He didn’t know how he managed to keep his voice so steady. Jacob’s smile only widened. “Don’t call me that,” he said. “If you don’t want me smiling.” Jacob’s breath was hot and heavy against Alex’s cheek as he leaned down to speak into his ear. Jacob’s wrists must have felt the strain, but instead of squirming, he relaxed against Alex’s touch, submitting to his firm hold, and it only aroused Alex further. He inclined his head, only slightly, and it grazed Jacob’s lips. One soft kiss caressed his cheek before those lips moistened and traveled down his jaw. When they reached his neck, Alex was more panting than breathing. “I will call you whatever I want to call you,” Alex said against the shell of his ear. His voice still held a note of command, but even as he said it, one hand slipped from Jacob’s wrist and slid down his arm to stroke his hair. Jacob pressed his palm flat against Alex’s chest as he leaned in to lick his neck. The moist, wet muscle lapped against Alex’s neck until it was so hot and wet he thought it must have melted. He released Jacob’s other wrist, snaked his hands down his back, and squeezed his ass. Jacob moaned and wriggled under his touch, and his hands flew impatiently to his fly to undo it. If Alex could have turned him over and spanked him, he would have. That was bad, he thought. Jacob wasn’t some sub in a BDSM club. He was his mate. He didn’t want to hurt the delicate, angelic man who called to him so completely, but he didn’t think he could stop himself if he remained this close to him. Alex forced himself to pull away. “Okay,” he said. “That’s enough.”

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“Yeah, right,” Jacob murmured as his hands began their advance again. Alex slapped them away. “I said watch it.” He couldn’t help the roughness in the gesture or the anger in his tone, and it only served to further prove to himself just how close he was to losing control with Jacob. The smaller man held his ground, though, not making a move to close the distance, but his eyes never left Alex’s. There was a fire burning in those emerald orbs he hadn’t seen before. “Why should I?” he asked. “If you’re not going to claim me, then why should I listen to you?” Alex’s jaw fell open. He hadn’t been expecting that. He stared at Jacob, unable to respond. He didn’t think the little twink had it in him. Apparently unwilling to wait for an answer, Jacob squared his jaw and turned to walk away. “Screw you,” Alex heard him mutter under his breath. He’d hardly taken another step before Alex caught his arm, pulling him back, just as rough and dominant as he’d been with Jacob a moment ago, if not more so. Jacob turned back to him, his eyes still narrowed with anger, but he didn’t move a muscle in protest. If Alex didn’t know better, he could swear Jacob leaned into his touch. Alex didn’t want to be excited by that gesture of submission, but God help him, he was. “Do you have any idea how much you piss me off?” he said, keeping his voice as low as he could manage. “Probably not as much as you piss me off.” The thwack of Alex’s hand echoed through the air before he even knew he’d landed it on Jacob’s ass. The second he connected, Jacob’s mouth fell open and a soft rush of air escaped his mouth, but he didn’t say a word. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, and Alex couldn’t keep from staring at it. He shut his eyes. What the fuck was he doing? For the past ten years, he’d managed to keep a tight control over his sexual

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proclivities, keeping whatever fucked-up urges he had secret from everyone but the small smattering of one-night stands he’d hooked up with. Even those few encounters, he could have taken or left. Jacob was different, though. The moment he touched him, his entire body had lit up with a need he’d never known before. Even now, he could feel the gentle throb of Jacob’s pulse beating under his thumb as he held the crook of his elbow. It was driving him crazy. He loosened his grip, stroking that same spot as gently as he could. He didn’t want to dominate Jacob, knew it would be wrong to take his sweet angel in the rough way he’d taken his other lovers, but Jacob called to the beast inside him and it yearned for the smaller man’s submission. Alex opened his eyes. Jacob’s head was tilted upward, his body inclined toward Alex, his green eyes bright as he let Alex hold his arm. The fiery look from before was gone now, as if something in that touch had calmed him. “I’m sorry I hurt you,” he began. “I don’t mind if you hurt me,” Jacob said softly. “Yes, you do.” Alex firmed his hold again, and Jacob let him pull him closer, his body still, his eyes drifting closed. Carefully as he could, Alex ran a hand up the length of his torso and stroked the side of his face. Jacob’s head inclined into his touch, his cheek resting against Alex’s palm, his eyes still closed. Alex, too, closed his eyes, reminding himself, pleading with himself to be gentle with his mate. And then he kissed him. Dropping his hand from Jacob’s cheek, he only had to touch the bottom of his chin to tilt Jacob’s head into his and capture Jacob’s lips with his own. For a moment, he lingered there, recalling the way his wolf bristled under his skin the last time their tongues touched. He would have to bite Jacob to claim him, but for now, Alex needed control.

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It was a difficult battle. The second his tongue brushed those soft lips, he drew the organ into his mouth, gently sucking it as Jacob reached both of his small, soft hands up to cup Alex’s face. They climbed up the back of his neck as he continued to kiss him. Jacob’s shoulders arched upward, lifting his shirt up until Alex’s hand grazed the smooth, bare skin of Jacob’s lower back. Jacob moaned into Alex’s mouth, and Alex closed his big hands over either side of Jacob’s abdomen, sliding them up and down the sides of his stomach, grazing his pebbled nipples as they brushed up over them then dropped back down again. Jacob’s hold tightened on the back of his neck, and he writhed anxiously underneath Alex, as if his very body was willing him to strip the shirt off over his head. Alex wrenched his lips from his lover’s. “Take your clothes off,” he said, cursing himself for the command in his voice. Jacob did, his moments slow and shy. Alex’s heart pounded erratically as he, too, shed his clothes, but it stopped altogether when he saw Jacob standing naked before him. He’d been captivated by the sight of Jacob from the start, but now he was something else altogether. Just the strange, almost iridescent way his skin shone in the moonlight was enough to lend an ethereal quality to him, but there was also the thin build of his body, the ridges and hollows so delicate they looked as if God himself had sculpted them. He was striking, but there was something else about him that marked him as not quite human, almost angelic in his beauty, something he had no way of seeing before but was plain as day now. He didn’t have a stitch of body hair anywhere on him. His chest and armpits and—Alex choked down a dry swallow—his balls were completely smooth. Alex couldn’t stop staring at him. “It’s weird, isn’t it?” Jacob asked him, his eyes dropping selfconsciously to his body as he knelt carefully on the ground next to Alex. “It’s um, a planeswalker thing? I’m sorry. I should’ve warned you. I know wolves aren’t…” His face reddened as he trailed off. “I mean, you have…hair.”

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Jacob’s eyes dropped to the sparse patch of hair that trailed from Alex’s lower abdomen to his crotch. Naked as he was, it was impossible for Alex to hide the fact that he was hard as a rock. Jacob’s hand strayed slowly into the space separating them. It crept up Alex’s thigh to his hip, stroking the hard muscles of his abdomen. Alex sucked in a breath, tensing each one of the muscles as he felt it touched by Jacob’s soft fingertips. “You’re beautiful.” Alex’s eyes shot up to Jacob’s as he said it. “I mean…” Alex closed his hand over Jacob’s. “You too.” It was suddenly becoming very difficult to live with the space between them. Alex wrapped one big arm around Jacob’s slender body to pull him close. He gave easily under his touch, and his submission both thrilled and terrified Alex, wanting to control his mate’s every movement even as he chastised himself for the urge. Not here, he thought, not now, with Jacob. Their mating was supposed to be sacred, special. He managed to stay still as Jacob’s head dipped toward his upright cock, but when he began laving it with his tongue, Alex had to dig his sprouting claws into his palms to keep from taking Jacob’s head in his hands and fucking his mouth. Just the sight of the smaller man, sprawled out ahead of him on his hands and knees as he fought to swallow him down, was enough to nearly snap Alex’s control. Jacob took him slowly at first, inch by inch, wrapping his hand around the base of Alex’s cock to close the space his mouth couldn’t reach. That small, soft hand stroked Alex up and down, working in time with the firm suction of his mouth, while his tongue swirled and danced around the tip of his cock. Alex closed one hand over his shoulder and held it there as he fought the urge to guide his movements, to feel Jacob surrender under his touch like a silent promise of possession.

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He could see him growing needy. His chest heaved up and down, but his free hand never flew to his own stiff dick. Instead, it ran up the length of Alex’s thigh, rubbing and grasping at him, moving wildly as if to signal his want. Alex wanted to give him what he wanted, too, but he didn’t get the chance. Jacob seemed to direct all his desire into pleasing Alex as his mouth closed tighter over Alex’s cock. His head bobbed faster, and Alex’s balls drew up tight against him. He groaned, unable to do anything but delight in the sensation. “That’s it, angel. Touch my balls.” Jacob obeyed, his smooth grasp closing firmly over Alex’s sac. When he pulled Alex’s swollen cock out of his mouth to lick his balls, he couldn’t take it anymore. Breathing hard and heavy, he pushed Jacob’s head away, groaning. The sound drew a smile from Jacob’s face. “Good?” he asked. Alex nodded, trying to catch his breath. Too good. Pulling back, he moved behind Jacob to get him ready. When he parted the round globes of his ass to see his pink, puckered hole, he could see he had his work cut out for him. He sucked his fingers into his mouth then traced them around Jacob’s opening to slicken it. Centering a single digit on it, he pressed down gently until it began to breach the hole. Jacob whimpered. “You’re so tight,” Alex whispered. “There’s been a war,” Jacob panted as Alex snaked a hand around his hip to cup his balls, rolling them as he pushed the finger slowly in then dragged it out again. “Haven’t”—he took a breath as Alex repeated the motion—“you know. In a while.” “How long?” Alex asked. “A while,” he repeated, his whole body blushing at the admission. His previously pale ass had turned pink. Alex took up a steady rhythm, picking up speed until Jacob had begun to rock back to meet his thrusts. “More,” he gasped. “Please.”

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Alex added another slick digit inside him, and Jacob moaned, his thin body twisting this way and that as he adjusted to the sensation. God, he was so responsive. Alex had made men come before, but there was a special pleasure he took in the way Jacob’s whole body seemed to signal his need for his mate. Mate. The very thought of the word flamed Alex’s desire, and he drove Jacob harder, desperate to get him primed as he curled and scissored his fingers inside him until his every exhale came out a low, throaty moan. He withdrew his fingers, terrified that the force of his wolf, pushing out from within, would become too great at any moment. He wanted to fuck him just like this, pull his hair and smack his ass and bite him until he screamed with pleasure, but Alex couldn’t—wouldn’t—let himself do that. He lay down on the ground. “Get on top of me,” he said, rubbing his cock to spread the pre-cum over the tip. It was still slick from Jacob’s spit. Jacob looked at him, uncertain, but he knelt over him all the same. He lined himself up and pushed down. His breath hitched when the head of Alex’s cock entered him, and his face contorted with pain as Alex felt him clench around him. Alex stroked his thighs. “Breathe, angel.” He did, in big, chest-heaving gasps. Slowly, he began to push himself further down, even as his body seemed hell-bent on repelling the motion. Alex winced as he watched Jacob’s pained expression. He had hoped the position would make things easier on him, to give him the control Alex didn’t trust himself to take, but Jacob’s discomfort only seemed to grow as he struggled to fully seat himself. “Relax,” Alex said. Jacob didn’t. If anything, he clenched harder. Alex growled. “Really trying not to hurt you here.” “I’m fine,” he said, wincing as he forced himself balls-deep. “Just fuck me.” Alex couldn’t stop himself. His hand sliced through the air and landed on Jacob’s ass, pitching him forward with the motion. His

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hands shot out to break his fall, and his ass thrust upward, exposing itself as Alex landed a second blow. So much for self-control. “I’m sorry,” Alex began, worriedly examining Jacob’s expression for signs of hurt. Surprisingly, there were none. Relaxing around him, Jacob pulled back and began to thrust himself down on Alex’s cock in short, small bursts. Alex kept his hips still as Jacob rode him. The modicum of discipline he’d administered had done nothing but fuel his desire, but he was determined not to let his need overtake him. Jacob continued the slow, teasing ride, one hand jutting out ahead of him to gently press on Alex’s chest. His eyes were uncertain as he took his pleasure, and Alex wanted so badly to be a part of it. He wanted him pinned and bound underneath him, wanted him at his absolute disposal as he measured out pleasure and pain to suit his needs and will his lover’s orgasm out of him. God, he was a sick fuck. Choking down his desire, he studied Jacob’s still-uncertain eyes. “You’re okay?” he asked, rubbing his hands up his thighs and around his ass and trying not to grasp it. Jacob nodded weakly. “I’m close,” he said, “but—” Alex nodded in understanding. They needed to mate. Werewolves bit their mates during release to claim them. It was no wonder Jacob was terrified. Closing a hand around Jacob’s and drawing it to his mouth, he kissed his finger. Even at the gentle touch, his canines began to cut through his gums. “I’ll be careful,” he promised. “It’s not that,” Jacob managed as Alex gently lapped the digit. “You’re holding back.” His face contorted and his body shook as his thrusts became more erratic. “You have to let go.” At the sound of his command, Alex bit into the finger. Not as hard as he wanted to, but both he and his mate cried out as his canines pierced his skin and they came together. Alex reached down to milk Jacob’s cock, drawing the rest of his seed out of him as Jacob rocked

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up and down above him, but the lines of worry on his face only deepened with each new thrust. It was strange. Alex could taste his blood in his mouth, and they had sure as hell come together, but he didn’t feel the rush of emotional connection that he’d heard was supposed to accompany their mating, and the wound hadn’t healed like it should have. He continued to kiss Jacob’s finger, worried at the trickle of blood that was still flowing out of his skin, but Jacob pulled it away, not seeming to want the comfort. Alex could feel his cock start to soften as he looked up at him, his beautiful face marred by the lines that creased over his brow. “What’s wrong?” he panted. “We’re mated, right? I mean, I claimed you—” “Yeah, you claimed me,” Jacob said, climbing off of him. “I didn’t claim you.” Alex furrowed his brow. Shit. He hadn’t even known planeswalkers could claim their mates. They certainly couldn’t administer mating bites with those flat, human-like teeth of theirs. “Okay,” he said, his curiosity growing as he watched Jacob silently pull on his clothes. “Why not?” “I tried,” Jacob snapped. “You didn’t let me.”

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Chapter Three Jacob’s finger was still bleeding as he buttoned his shirt, trailing tiny dots of blood up each buttonhole he touched. The man who was decidedly not his mate still sat on the ground, still infuriatingly naked and gorgeous, studying him. “Let me help you with that,” he said softly. “No thank you,” Jacob said, turning from his prying gaze. It was enough that he’d already given up so much of his heart, letting his soul be penetrated by someone who’d rejected him at every turn. Now that Alex had claimed him, Jacob was going to feel Alex’s every movement toward and away from him for the rest of his life. Probably away from him, Jacob thought bitterly, seeing how fiercely he’d fought Jacob’s attempts to claim him and complete their bond. Finally, Alex rose, grabbing his underwear to cover up that glorious cock of his. Being naked after their mating went so horribly awry had irked Jacob, but seeing his lover dress again just filled him with sadness. God, he was a wreck. He blew out a shaky sigh and bit his trembling lip as the memory of their lovemaking washed over him. The overwhelming need to claim, to mate, was overtaking Jacob as he struggled to push himself down onto Alex’s cock. He could feel the well of psychic force swelling inside him, and he cast the power out to penetrate Alex’s mind, to feel himself enveloped by Alex’s thoughts as he impaled Jacob, but Jacob couldn’t reach inside his mate’s mind. Alex was forcing him out.

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A moment ago he’d been playful and dominant, and Jacob could feel their connection growing as their reciprocal needs fit into each other like spoons. That snug fit, that delicate balance, had collapsed when Alex repositioned himself, commanding Jacob to help himself to his own pleasure. Jacob didn’t want to. He wanted Alex to give it to him, to control for him when he could and could not have it. He wanted to tell Alex, but there was something final in his tone that defied refusal. Whoever Alex was, whatever desires he had, he was masking them from Jacob, trying his best to hide inside that impenetrable wall of stoicism. Jacob whimpered, unable to lose himself in his lover’s mind and feeling only the pain of Alex’s erection as it pushed inside Jacob’s channel. He needed Alex to release his desires to him, to give his mind over to Jacob, almost as much as Jacob wanted to give his body over to Alex. But he couldn’t, and Alex didn’t. He bit him, and Jacob, who had always been weak-willed, came. There was no union of souls, no emotional outpouring that was supposed to accompany their mating, no glimpse into the thoughts and images that haunted his lover’s mind. Just a quick and empty fuck that was over as soon as it started. Jacob willed his mind to push the memory away, and he startled to find Alex’s arms around him. Half-dressed, the bigger man was holding him, his naked torso pushed against the thin cotton of Jacob’s shirt as he stood behind him, running his arms up and down Jacob’s. “Can you just tell me what I did wrong?” Alex asked. “I just don’t understand what—” Jacob pushed his hand away. “You shouldn’t have had to.” Alex’s eyes narrowed at Jacob’s overzealous gesture. “Look, I don’t know how planeswalkers mate, okay? If there’s something I missed, something you tried to get me to do—” “I told you!” Jacob said. “I told you to let go!”

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“I did!” Alex said. His eyes flashed with yellow as his voice rose. Taking a deep breath, he lowered his tone. “Obviously I came, so—” “Yeah. That’s all you did.” Alex shook his head. “Okay. You’re going to have to spell it out for me, because clearly I’m not the brightest guy in the world.” Jacob breathed a long, shaky sigh. It was embarrassing enough to experience what had just happened. To explain it was something else altogether. Still, Alex stood, arms folded over his broad, bare chest, expression serious, commanding obedience. “Tell me, angel.” Jacob bit his lip. That single word snapped the thread of his resistance, and he spread his arms wide as he readied his heart for the chopping block. “I thought you were my mate,” he began. “I am,” Alex said. “No, you’re not,” Jacob continued. As Alex opened his mouth to protest, he raised a hand to silence him. “Look, if you were my mate, then we’d be made for each other. Our bodies, our desires, whatever, would be perfectly suited to meet each other’s wants and needs.” He stopped, pausing as he raked his eyes over Alex’s broad shoulders, his muscled abdomen, his wide, commanding stance. Alex was perfection personified. And Jacob was a mistake. He sighed. “I know I’m not the most…” He trailed off, embarrassed. Gathering his courage, he continued. “I’m not the most sexually exciting person in the world, but—” “I told you you’re beautiful.” “Whatever,” Jacob said, glad that he’d bothered to dress before the time had come for this particular conversation. His weirdly hairless, weirdly pale, weirdly skinny body might have been fine for all his past boyfriends, who, as planeswalkers, had all looked like him, but after Alex’s rejection, Jacob felt self-conscious as hell about it. He didn’t want the gorgeous, muscular, manly-looking werewolf

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studying his decidedly less exciting nakedness any more than he already had. “Look, I appreciate the white lie, but—” “It wasn’t a lie.” Alex more growled the words than said them, and Jacob swallowed around his fear. Liar or not, he certainly had a way of convincing people. Pacing back and forth, Alex muttered, “Why would you think it was?” “If you wanted me,” Jacob said quietly, “like if you really needed and desired what we were doing back there, I would have been able to claim you. Planeswalkers mate by latching onto their lover’s needs. It’s like a map of their souls. Their desires, their feelings, their dreams? We get a little piece of all of that when we mate.” Jacob paused, inwardly cursing himself for the reverence in his tone. It was useless. “But I can’t have any of that if you don’t want me.” Alex stopped in his tracks. His expression darkened, and Jacob knew he’d hit a nerve. For a long time, he didn’t say a word. Finally, he spoke. He stood ten feet away from Jacob, not making a move to close the distance. “I want you,” he said slowly. Jacob laughed bitterly. “Well, then, I must just be a lousy lay, because—” “I didn’t say that,” Alex said darkly. The sun had set, and in the moonlight, Jacob could see the glint of his claws pushing through Alex’s fingertips. His eyes narrowed, his shoulders slumped, and his anger exploded as he punched the tree next to him. Taking a breath, Jacob backed away. “This is fucked,” Alex said. Jacob shook his head. “It’s fine. We’re just not mates.” Even as he said it, he brushed his thumb over his punctured finger. The bleeding had stopped, but his wound still pulsed with a dull, aching hurt. The closer he got to Alex, the more it throbbed, the offset center of his need. It was like a compass, feeling its way toward magnetic north. Jacob turned away, his body tensing as if the gesture were unnatural. “Look, people have been wrong about this before—”

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“Well, we weren’t,” Alex said quietly. Something in the tone of his voice caused Jacob to glance up, and he could swear for a second he saw the glint of a tear brimming in the big werewolf’s eye. Alex huffed out a breath, and the glimmering speck disappeared. As if that were enough to banish whatever shred of emotion he felt for Jacob. As if that were enough to fortify himself against Jacob’s unwelcome psychic assault. Jacob’s own head was a mess of cosmic muddle. A thousand conflicting impulses charged his mind and body, and he stood, rooted to the spot, trying to sort through the mess, trying to settle on some action that would make sense of what had just happened. Gathering his courage, he approached Alex. The bigger man shook his head and turned away, but Jacob pressed against him, insistent. Even now, he could feel the growing hardness in Alex’s jeans pressing against his own. Something in him still responded to Jacob. But something in him resisted that response. “Tell me what you need,” Jacob finally said, taking his chin in his hand. “Tell me how to make you happy.” For a bare second, Alex let Jacob hold him. Then he pushed away. “What I need,” he said quietly, “you can’t give me.” The words were too softly spoken to be harsh, but the intent behind them was clear. Unlike Jacob, whose mind was a mass of confusion and contradiction, Alex’s commanding and strong demeanor suggested that once he made up his mind, he was a force to be reckoned with. It was useless to fight him. Jacob pulled away. “Okay,” he said quietly. He took a step away from him. His body protested the gesture, but he didn’t give a shit. If he stood there any longer, the bubble inside his throat would burst and he’d cry like a banshee. Alex hadn’t let him in his head. He hadn’t wanted him in there, possibly because he sensed what a mess it was. He wouldn’t have to put up with it much longer.

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Jacob turned and strode back down the worn dirt path. His knees were shaking, but his feet worked fine. They carried him step by step down the trail until he was standing at the top of Ecstasy Rock, feeling once more the urge to jump off. For a split second, he leaned over, eyeing the jagged rocks below, and wondered how much of the urge was fate’s call and how much was plain self-loathing. Then he heard Ben’s footsteps behind him and steeled himself for the rough and terrifying journey ahead. **** Alex stood there, numb, watching as Jacob disappeared into the dark shadows of the forest in the night. When he turned away from him, it was like the whole world had turned its back on Alex. In a way, he guessed that was probably true. What the hell else did he have left, anyway? Not Morgana. Jacob had dashed that hope to the ground just about the second he showed up. Not his family, either. He’d always hoped that when his parents woke up, he could have done something to make them proud of him, but that didn’t seem too damn likely anymore. His brothers were busy with their mates. And as for his mate… Alex growled, dashing his claws one more time against the tree he’d torn to shit earlier. It was a dumb animal thing to do, but then, he was nothing more than a dumb animal. Every goddamn lay he’d had in his whole stupid life, he’d treated like little more than a body to get himself off with. Including Jacob, he reminded himself bitterly as he recalled the hard smacks he’d landed against his ass and the callous way he’d fucked him with his fingers. He’d tried his damndest not to be such a selfish, uncaring prick when they mated, but even that had ended in disaster.

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Jacob couldn’t mate with him until Alex surrendered himself to his needs. And he wouldn’t do that, not with his mate. His needs were too fucked up. He slashed at the tree again, drawing curls of bark as his claws scratched across its surface. He winced at the pleasure that act of violence brought him. Christ, he was screwed up. Even when making love to his mate, he hadn’t been able to banish his need to dominate and punish. And that sucked because he felt something for Jacob, something more than even the pull of mating, something deep and terrifying. He cared about him. He barely knew the guy, but he cared about him, so much the emotion might take root and blossom into love if he let it. Alex hadn’t thought he was capable of that. Wasn’t capable of that, he reminded himself. He was a fighter, not a lover. He’d known that all along. And no matter how much it hurt him to tell that to Jacob, he couldn’t bear to let himself go. He couldn’t bear to hurt him. And he would, he reminded himself, staring at the deep gashes his claws left on the tree. He hated those damned claws now, but more than that he hated his big, stupid, clumsy body and the lifetime he’d wasted shaping it. With a sigh, he let that body slip away and gave himself over to the wolf inside him. He ran. In spite of everything, it still felt good. Even if his human life was over and he was good for little more than meeting the needs of a dumb, hulking animal, he could still enjoy this. Racing through the forest, he let every thought in his mind slip away except the snap of leaves and twigs beneath his feet as they met on the dry ground, barely even touching it as his muscles moved in perfect coordination. He had always liked shifting. His whole life, it was the only thing that made him feel truly free. As a human, his mind was constantly plagued by worries. For his brothers, for their mates, for his parents and whether he was protecting all of them and whether he was doing

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what he ought to be doing, but his wolf never had those concerns. He just gave himself over to instinct and let it take care of the rest. He wondered if this was what Jacob meant about giving himself over and letting himself go. His feet faltered underneath him on the thought, as if his very body rejected it. Alex slowed to a trot and snorted. Leave it to his half-human brain to ruin his moment’s peace by overthinking things. He lifted his head, crossing to a path that cut its way through the forest floor ahead of him. Stepping lightly onto it, he began to recognize the foliage around him and realized where his wolf was headed. It was the same place it always took him if he didn’t guide it, a sort of magnetic north for his supernatural self. Ecstasy Rock. Alex skulked slowly up the trail to the cliff, the one he’d climbed so many times before, searching for a glimpse of the planesgate his mother had so often alluded to in his youth. Alex had often come up this trail in the years since then, marveling at the strange fascination the picturesque local make-out spot held for him. The pull that drew him to the spot was at times nearly as strong as the one he’d felt when he touched Jacob’s hand and the whole world seemed to condense into the place where skin touched skin. For years, Alex had wondered about that pull, imagining what it would be like, believing that perhaps his own mate was waiting for him on the other side of the planesgate, staring just as dreamily back at him through the invisible boundary that divided their worlds. That fantasy had dissolved altogether when Jacob turned his back and walked away from Alex. So why did he still feel that pull now? He followed his instincts blindly, allowing his wolf to lead him all the way to the top where he would see the breathtaking view where the cliff looked out over the Devil’s River below. The whitewater rapids were treacherous, too dangerous in this spot even for expert rafters to navigate, and the shallow water and jagged rocks that stuck

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out from the riverbed below the rock made the steep drop-off an invitation to suicide. It was just this spot where his parents had jumped ten years ago. Unlike his brothers, Alex never stopped believing that there truly was another world waiting on the other side of the dangerous waters below. He knew his parents hadn’t intended to hurt themselves in trying to pass back through the planesgate to Morgana. It just wasn’t a very safe gateway to pass through. Alex’s father had been physically fine as he was rushed to the hospital. It was his mother’s fragile body that had nearly expired. She had severe head trauma, several fractured ribs, and broken bones. Her wounds had long since healed, but she and Alex’s father had been in a coma ever since the accident. That his mother had survived the fall at all had been a miracle. Alex picked up his pace as he got closer to the top of the cliff. He didn’t know why, but the image of the jagged rocks had set his wolf into protective mode, and he approached the end of the path with his ears and tail pointing straight out, his fur bristling up, his teeth bared. He didn’t know why. He’d never seen another soul out here except local love-struck teenagers, and they were usually much too absorbed in their own torrid romances to even take notice of Alex, let alone pose any kind of threat to him. As the top of the cliff crested in his line of sight, he saw there were two young, thin figures holding hands, standing at the edge of the cliff. His heart fell into his stomach as he came closer and was able to make them out. It was Jacob and Ben, poised at the edge of the cliff, ready to jump off. They would have to in order to go through the planesgate. Ben would be fine. He was small, but he was a wolf, and any injuries he suffered would heal right away. Jacob was a different story. Alex had seen how cut-up his body was from passing through the other side of the planesgate, had felt how delicate his body was in his strong

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hands, had seen how long his finger had bled just from the small nick he’d bitten into it. He’d never survive the fall. Working every muscle in his body as hard as he could, Alex raced toward them, leaping into the air as the two figures jumped off the edge of the cliff. Alex shifted in midair, his bones melting and reforming to allow his human arms to stretch out ahead of him and grasp for Jacob’s body. He cradled him close as they free-fell through the air into the waiting waters below. “Alex,” Jacob gasped, wriggling in his touch. Alex didn’t give him a damn inch, pressing him into his body, cradling his head in the crook of his massive shoulder. They fell faster and faster, velocity overwhelming Alex as he ground out two words into the ear of his mate. “Don’t. Move.” He turned his back to shelter Jacob from the fall as they crashed into the jagged rocks below. Pain shot through him as the rocks cut into him, tearing skin and muscle from his strong back. The strong current of the river was fighting to pull them apart, and he struggled to maintain his hold on Jacob as he sputtered against the crashing waves. Each hard stroke against the current strained against the torn muscles and ligatures in his back, even as his wounds tried to knit closed, but Alex gritted his teeth and fought. He’d never had anything in his life worth fighting so hard for. He won the fight. His body was strong. He’d spent his whole life conditioning it. Alex kept one strong arm firmly wrapped around his mate as he swam against the current to the riverbank. Finally, he pulled up, dragging his mate onto the land with him, frantic to check him for injuries. Jacob coughed and sputtered as he stroked his hands through his wet hair. He’d tried his damndest to keep him from the rocks, but it

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was a hard struggle. Worse, there was blood all over him from the injuries Alex sustained when he hit the rocks. His heart pounded frantically as he stared at Jacob’s red-tinted clothes, wondering how much, if any, of that blood was his. “Fine,” Jacob sputtered. “I’m fine. I hurt, but—” “Where do you hurt?” Alex asked. There were scratches and cuts down Jacob’s arms he had only just noticed. He was terrified to find how many of them were there. “Scratched,” Jacob panted, “just scratches.” Alex bit his lip as he lifted Jacob’s shirt to see a long, deep gash running down his stomach. He shook his head, feeling tears brimming in his eyes. “I fucked up. I should’ve been more careful. I should’ve been able to keep you from getting hurt. I’m so stupid—” Jacob cut him off, pressing a kiss to his lips. Alex sure as hell hadn’t expected that, but he couldn’t help but accept it. He stroked a hand through Jacob’s wet hair, cupping his head to press against him just as gently as he could. He could give him that much comfort, at least. Finally, Jacob pulled away, needing to catch his breath. “We didn’t go through the planesgate,” he said. Alex furrowed his brow. Until now, he hadn’t even considered going through was a possibility. Now he wondered why they hadn’t. He’d been physically connected to a planeswalker when they hit the water, but something had held them back. Before he had time to consider what that something was, Jacob was pressing against him, shaking. “You saved me,” he said. “Not yet.” Alex gently touched the skin around the gash on his stomach and winced when Jacob flinched beneath him. “Let’s get you to a hospital.” Jacob nodded, but his eyes had drifted off, past Alex. “Where’s Ben?” “He’s fine. He’s a werewolf. We heal fast.”

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“Is that him?” Jacob asked. His eyes narrowed on a sight just past Alex’s head. He turned to see what his mate was staring at, and Jacob pointed to direct his gaze. “On that rock?” Alex’s eyes widened as he spotted Ben sprawled out on a nearby rock, his thin body limp, blood running down his head. He should have healed by now, but he wasn’t moving, and the stiff way his body was sprawled out didn’t look comfortable. He could see his chest rising and falling, but something about the unnatural way he was lying made him look dead. Either that or in a long, deep sleep. That was when Alex realized what was wrong with him. He was unconscious. **** Jacob squinted into the bright light above him as he took in his surroundings. Halogen lighting. Hospital smell. Clean, stiff sheets. Untouched food tray hovering above his bed. And Alex’s worried eyes fixed on his as he sat in the chair next to his hospital bed, holding his hand so tight Jacob thought Alex might crush it if he tried to pull away. But that was the last thing Jacob wanted to do. “You’re awake.” Jacob nodded, trying to sit up. He flinched when his ab muscles lit up a fresh rush of pain from the gash in his stomach, and Alex hurried to stroke a hand over his temple, urging him to lie back down. “Hey, hey, hey. Don’t—” The concern on his face was precious, but it really wasn’t necessary. “Alex, I’m fine. I’m barely hurt.” “This is barely hurt to you?” “Yes!” Jacob rolled his eyes. “I’m a planeswalker. I get hurt really easily—” “Yeah, exactly!”

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“—which means I’m used to it. And this,” Jacob said, gesturing to his stomach, “is nothing. Trust me.” Alex’s face hardened into a mass of rigid lines. He looked deep in thought. Briefly, the words they’d exchanged before their mating flitted through Jacob’s mind. “I’m sorry I hurt you.” “I don’t mind if you hurt me.” “Yes, you do.” Jacob stared at Alex, recalling the way his desire had seemed to blossom as he landed two hard, punishing strokes on his bare ass. Was that what this whole mess was about? Some misplaced worry he’d been too rough with him? Jacob stroked his thumb over the back of his hand. Tentatively, he spoke. “I don’t mind a little pain sometimes.” Alex let go of his hand abruptly. “Can we please just talk about anything else?” he asked. Jacob sighed, his eyes adjusting to the sights around him now. The room itself was unfamiliar, but he’d been in one like it before, when he waited alongside Adrianna and Mitchell Craven for some sign to tell him what to do. He’d sat in this same hospital a long time, trying to figure out how to make sense of the mess of his life, of the lives of everyone who was still alive on Morgana after the war. When he found out about Ben, he’d thought he’d found the answer. So much for that. “How’s Ben?” Jacob asked. He could still remember the terrible way Ben had slumped in Alex’s arms as he carried him out of the water. He knew for a fact that wolves couldn’t really get hurt, not unless they were stabbed or shot by a silver blade or bullet, and that whatever the fall had done to Ben should have healed, but his head and stomach were bleeding, and he wouldn’t wake up, even after Alex had gotten help and EMTs had taken him out of the woods on a stretcher. They’d explained that he must have hurt himself in the fall, but it didn’t look like he’d smashed

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his head on the rocks. The wound in his head was a sharp, rounded point, like something had poked into it. Or stabbed, maybe, was more like it. Alex’s eyes flitted away from Jacob’s momentarily. “The doctors are optimistic,” he said. “He’s still out of it, though. Jasper has a hell of a theory of what happened. Have you ever heard of mates sharing dreams with each other?” Jacob nodded. “Yeah, all planeswalkers do that.” Dreaming was like planeswalking lite—a trip to another world without the dangerous business of tumbling through a planesgate. While Jacob’s body was safe and sleeping, he could visit any manner of worlds his mind created. He had looked forward to sharing dreams with Alex, to letting their shared inner lives create a private world of their very own, but Alex didn’t look excited at the idea of dreamsharing. He looked scared. “What about nightmares? Have you ever heard of planeswalkers getting hurt in their nightmares?” Jacob furrowed his brow. Nightmare, nightmare…Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven, Alexander Craven, sex, hot sex, sweaty sex…Nope. Nothing. “What’s a nightmare?” “You know, like a bad dream.” “Why would you have bad dreams?” Alex’s face reddened. “Because people repress things!” Jacob raised an eyebrow. “They do?” “Yes!” Alex snapped. “Stupid shit happens all day long, and people don’t like to think about it, and they push it out of their heads as best they can until they fall asleep and don’t have other things to focus on. Important things.” “Yeah, but if something’s upsetting you, shouldn’t you—” “I didn’t say me. Nothing’s upsetting me,” Alex snapped. His face was red, and his eyes flashed the telltale yellow of his wolf’s. If he wasn’t upset, he had a weird way of showing it. It reminded Jacob of

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his father, of the way a certain word or phrase would seem to set him off during the few times Jacob had seen him. Jacob bit his lip as he realized he hadn’t yet told Alex who his father was. He should. Alex would want to know, but…Jacob sighed. He didn’t think his mate—if that was what Alex was—would like to hear about it. Instead of telling him, he kept his mouth shut. Maybe there was something to this repression thing after all. “I don’t think planeswalkers have nightmares. Everyone does this here?” Jacob asked. Alex blew out a long sigh. “Yes. And when you wake up, you comfort yourself that it’s just a dream. Except now that Jasper and Ben are mated, dreams aren’t just dreams anymore.” Jacob nodded. That seemed right. It wasn’t like dream sharing was exactly like planeswalking—from what he understood, mated planeswalkers never physically left their beds when they fell asleep together. But he’d certainly heard of strange little paranormal phenomena occurring when a particularly vivid dream was shared. He’d heard of some mated planeswalkers who had brought things back from their dreams into their waking reality, and of some who’d made love in dreams and woken up with the love bites to prove it. Those, however, were all pleasant enough tokens of shared dreams. Jacob swallowed hard as he recalled Alex’s explanation of nightmares. It seemed like he had certainly had them before. If Jacob mated with Alex, would he share those nightmares, too? It was hard enough for Jacob to get control over his thoughts during the daytime. So much of what ran through his head was worry and anxiety. He couldn’t imagine if all that fear was given free rein over his mind at night. Especially if his mate got dragged into those fears with him. Alex nodded. “Jasper had a dream this guy stabbed Ben with a silver hook, right in the same place where his head was punctured. It’s weird. None of us really know much about being half-planeswalker, so we’re not sure—”

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Jacob held up his hands to stop Alex from taking the thought any further. He didn’t want to dwell on the unpleasant idea. “I’ll talk to Jasper.” “Thanks,” Alex said. For a moment, he seemed to relax, but only for a moment. Soon, those tiny lines of worry were creeping back onto his face again. “He might be a little upset with you. You know, about Ben?” Jacob’s throat tightened. “I thought you said Ben was hurt because of—” “He is,” Alex said quickly. “It’s just that after what happened to our parents…” Jacob cringed, remembering what Lars had told him about why Adrianna and Mitchell had fallen into unconsciousness. They had jumped off the same cliff, into the same rocks. None of the brothers seemed to know why they hadn’t made it across the planesgate, but in light of their parents’ current conditions, Jacob’s decision to jump off that cliff into the planesgate with Ben must have seemed like a terribly callous one to Jasper. “I didn’t think he’d get hurt,” Jacob said quietly. “What about you?” Alex asked. Jacob could feel the tears coming now, hot and fast and impossible to stop. Damn it, he couldn’t cry now. He’d feel like an idiot losing control of his emotions in front of Alex, but it was starting to look like he wouldn’t have a choice. “I’m not like you,” he said. His voice was shaking. “I don’t have control over my emotions or actions. Stuff just overwhelms me, and I can’t stop it. I don’t even know where it’s leading me half the time. I just knew I had to go to the cliff, the same way I knew I had to—” Mate with you. Jacob couldn’t stop the words from running through his mind, but he managed to snap his mouth shut to keep from saying it. Alex had made it perfectly clear how he felt about being claimed by him. “The same way you felt about me?”

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Jacob dropped his eyes from Alex and fixed them on a point far away in the room, a blank white corner of the wall. He hoped that fixating on that nothingness would clear the crap from his head. It didn’t. “I have a lot of shit running through my head,” he said. “It doesn’t always mean anything.” “What I said back there…” Alex began. Jacob bit his lip. He didn’t think he could hold back any longer. He took a long, shuddering sigh and blew it out. “Just don’t.” “I’m sorry.” Jacob’s eyes snapped up to Alex, and a tear slipped down Jacob’s cheek. Alex reached up to brush it away. “I didn’t mean it.” “So why’d you say it?” “Because I was scared.” Jacob stared at Alex. With all the possible answers he’d been expecting to hear—and his overactive imagination had concocted a lot of them—he’d hardly even stopped to consider the possibility that the big, hulking man before him, this warrior, this werewolf, could possibly have been scared. “Of what?” Jacob asked. Certainly not him. He barely weighed a hundred and twenty pounds with his shoes on. Alex’s blue eyes darkened and dropped to the floor. Jacob sighed. “Fine. Don’t answer.” “This isn’t easy for me.” Alex growled and raked his hand through his hair. Instead of smoothing it, the action caused a stray lock to fall over his forehead, making him look sexier than ever. Too bad, because his mouth was clamped shut as a steel safe. Jacob’s lips opened involuntarily, and then he willed them closed again. Don’t say it. Don’t say it. “What isn’t easy?” Goddamn it. Jacob winced. It looked like he’d lost that battle. “You know.” Alex’s shoulders heaved up and down as he sighed. “Being…vulnerable. Or whatever.”

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Alex ran a hand up Jacob’s arm, leaving a long trail of electric sparks in its wake. When he reached Jacob’s shoulder, he lifted his hand to touch his face, but Jacob turned away. It wasn’t fair. He was drawn to Alex, to his strength and his size, but not if it meant never getting inside his head or knowing what he was feeling. Otherwise, their mating would just be a one-way street. “Jacob,” he said softly, but Jacob kept his head turned away. “I want to be with you.” “Well, too bad,” he said. “Because I don’t know how sex is on your plane, but on Morgana—” “Do you know what BDSM is?” That got Jacob’s attention. He turned around, and Alex continued. “Or bondage? Or D-s, or—” Jacob raised a hand to silence him. Hopefully it would distract Alex from the way his cock was starting to tent out the sheets. “I’m aware of BDSM.” Alex heaved out a sigh. For a moment, he turned away from the bed. When he looked back at Jacob, his muscles were tensed and he was wincing. He’d never seen anyone look so uncomfortable. It was as if Alex was about to confess to being a serial rapist or psycho killer, but instead he closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and said, “I’m kind of…into that.” He only opened one eye to gauge Jacob’s reaction, as if he couldn’t bear to see it with both. Jacob shrugged. “Okay, so…?” “So it’s fucked up! And I don’t think I can ‘open up’ or whatever without trying to…” He growled with frustration. “And obviously I don’t want to hurt you or make you do something you don’t want to—” Jacob raised an eyebrow. “Who said I don’t want to—” “Honestly, angel? You really don’t seem like the type.” Jacob pursed his lips in thought. True, it wasn’t like BDSM had entered into any of his past relationships, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t curious. Especially now that he had someone like Alex to take charge of him. Someone strong, dominant, sexy…He shook his head

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to clear it of the thought. That line of thinking wasn’t going to deliver him anything but a stiff dick. “Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t give it a try,” Jacob protested. His cock, in particular, seemed pleased with the idea. “Anyway, I doubt you’d hurt me or anything. It’s not like you don’t know what you’re doing, right?” Alex’s eyes hardened. “I know what I’m doing. I just don’t know how I feel about it. All the other guys I’ve done this with, they were just strangers. I didn’t know anything about them other than that they wanted to be dominated. I don’t want to do any of the screwed-up stuff I’ve done with someone I actually care about.” Jacob couldn’t help but smile at the way Alex had confessed to caring about him. He considered what Alex had said. “Screwed up how?” “Can we please not talk about this?” “I mean, are you just talking about bondage and spanking, or was there like—” The growl that escaped Alex’s lips stopped Jacob from taking that thought any further. “Okay, okay.” Still, he had to ask. “But…I mean, they liked it, right?” “Yeah, but—” “And you liked it?” Alex looked at Jacob, his handsome face marred by guilt and embarrassment. Try as he might, Jacob couldn’t figure out why Alex’s desires seemed to upset him so much, but it certainly seemed like a sore spot. “It’s sick. And weird. And I don’t want to like it,” Alex finally said, “but…damn it, I’m screwed up, okay? I don’t want to screw you up, too. You’re too…” His brow furrowed, as if looking for the right euphemism. Jacob bit his lip. He had a feeling he already knew what Alex was going for. “Weak?” he said, supplying the word for him. Jacob was surprised when Alex shook his head no. “You’re too perfect, angel.”

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Jacob certainly hadn’t expected that. A smile crept across his face at the endearment. “Angel,” he repeated. “Why do you call me that?” Alex shrugged, leaning over him to brush his hair off his forehead. “Because you are,” he said. Jacob’s eyes closed involuntarily at the words, but when he opened them, his mate’s were full of worry again. Before he could ask what was wrong, Alex’s fingertips gently grazed the deep, bandaged gash his bangs had been hiding. “Saw that, huh?” Alex nodded. His lips were pressed together so tightly, Jacob doubted he could have responded if he wanted to. “I’m fine. Trust me.” “I don’t want you going back through that planesgate. It’s too dangerous.” Jacob bit his tongue. Alex was right. Even if Ben’s injuries hadn’t exactly stemmed from planeswalking, crossing the gate was dangerous. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if he killed himself trying to do it, but Morgana needed Ben. Fuck, he needed Ben if he ever planned on returning to his home plane. He could hide out on Earth a while, but if he waited too long, the planesgate could close, and he didn’t know how long it would be before it opened again. It seemed like the Craven family had been waiting for a very long time for someone to cross it and find them here. “I have to go back sometime,” he said slowly, “but I can’t do much until Ben’s awake. Or healed, for that matter. I don’t want to hurt him any more than I have.” “You never think of yourself, do you?” Alex asked. His eyes were big and round as they stared into his. “Maybe not.” Jacob smiled. He liked the way his mate was looking at him. “We can try again, you know.” He paused, gauging the look in Alex’s eye. It didn’t harden, and he didn’t pull his hand away. “If you want.”

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Alex’s hand big hand closed over his. He felt warm and protected with him holding it, but there was still worry etched on Alex’s face. “What if I hurt you?” “I trust you,” he said. Alex’s shoulders slumped a little, and he seemed to relax. “Just don’t shut me out, okay?” “No, I mean like literally hurt you. You seriously have no idea the things I want to do to you. And you saw how big my cock is.” Jacob felt his face flush as his own cock throbbed under the suddenly much-too-thin hospital sheet. Yep, he remembered all right. Leave him alone in here with the door closed and a box of Kleenex and he’d remember it for maybe the next ten minutes. “Are you blushing?” “No. Maybe. Shut up.” Jacob cleared his throat and shifted under the sheets before Alex noticed any other reactions his body had to discussing his eight-inch cock. “And you’re awfully confident about the size of erections on Morgana. You know, comparatively speaking.” Alex’s eyes narrowed. “Are you implying you’re accustomed to larger erections?” “What, are you kidding me?” Jacob snorted. “All my other boyfriends were planeswalkers. Haven’t you ever heard anyone say, ‘He’s hung like a werewolf’ before?” “Can’t say I have.” Alex’s eyes wandered down Jacob’s body to the tented patch of sheet he was trying so hard to hide, and he smirked. “And I have it on pretty good authority planeswalkers aren’t so bad themselves.” Jacob couldn’t see the dopey smile he felt spreading across his face, but he was pretty sure it was there. He squeezed Alex’s hand. “Can I kiss you right now?” Alex leaned over and claimed his lips. Restricted as he was to the clumsy hospital bed, he’d only meant to try for a peck, but once those soft lips pressed against his, he couldn’t keep his from opening. Alex’s tongue eagerly darted inside, and he could feel a hand running

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up his neck to pull his head closer. He gave in to the tug, leaning in as close as he could, until his bruised elbow clanged against the bed rail. “Damn.” Alex pulled away, his face full of worry as he examined the spot he’d bumped. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Very okay,” Jacob sighed. Even the slow trace of Alex’s thumb over his elbow was erotic. He didn’t want to claim his mate in a hospital bed, but if he didn’t get out of there soon, his dick was going to wage a serious protest against that sentiment. “I should probably go, huh?” Alex asked. His voice was breathy, and his hands were lingering dangerously close to the bulge in his jeans. Jacob nodded, his eyes locked on that thick denim bulge. “Probably a good idea. You should see when I’m getting discharged.” Alex nodded. “Anything you need while I’m out? Change of clothes? Better food?” Kleenex? Lube? Sex toys? “Nope.” Jacob shook his head furiously, trying to get the words eight-inch cock out of his mind. “Just um…close the door on your way out.”

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Chapter Four Alex’s hand tightened around Jacob’s when Jasper walked into the hospital room with Lars. Neither man looked happy to see Jacob, but Jasper looked downright furious. Jacob swallowed around the lump in his throat. “How’s your mate?” he asked. “Still in a coma,” Jasper snapped. “Thanks.” Jacob bit his lip. “He’s a werewolf,” he said. “I didn’t think he’d get hurt.” “Or maybe you just didn’t think at all,” Jasper said. “Jas, come on. Leave him alone.” “Don’t fucking call me Jas. Only Ben gets to call me Jas, and he’s…” Jasper voice wavered, and he wiped his eyes. Pulling his hand away from them, he narrowed his gaze on Alex. “Fuck, what are you doing with him, anyway?” He pointed to Jacob, and Jacob felt his face flush. “Are you just so desperate for a mate that you—” Lars’s hand closed around Alex’s shoulder and squeezed. Jasper closed his eyes, his face strained with pain. When he opened them, he looked back at Alex. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be a dick,” he said. His gaze narrowed again as it flitted to Jacob. “At least, not to you.” Jacob swallowed down the lump in his throat that had formed as the memory washed over him. He couldn’t help but be reminded of it as he stared at the door to Ben’s room, looming large and terrifying in front of him from where he stood in the hallway. He hadn’t seen Jasper since that day, or any of the Craven clan except for Alex. He couldn’t put it off any longer, though. Ben had woken up yesterday—thank God—and Jacob had promised Alex he’d see him

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before he left the hospital. That didn’t exactly leave a lot of time, since Jacob was getting discharged tomorrow. The hospital had kept him a while, mostly due to some unusual blood tests his planeswalker DNA had turned up, but the wounds from his fall were healing fine. Now it was just the ones Jasper seemed ready to inflict on him that he had to worry about. Jacob stood up to peer through the window. Alex was supposed to meet him, but he wasn’t there yet. That was unfortunate, but at least Jasper wasn’t there. Jacob stood outside the door a moment, weighing his options, before he swallowed his fear, opened the door, and walked in. The friendly laughter that he’d heard from outside the door came to an abrupt stop as his footsteps echoed across the floor of the private room and stopped in front of Ben’s hospital bed. “Hi,” Jacob said. His throat was raw. Two sets of eyes stared at him before sharing a look with each other. Jacob didn’t know what was communicated in that look, but he was betting from the guarded way Danny leaned back in his chair and stiffened his jaw that it wasn’t good. Not that he could blame them. Jacob sighed as the memory of his meeting with Jasper and Lars again tugged at his conscience. He’d been informed—politely by Lars and not so politely by Jasper—about just how much both Ben and Danny had been through in the past weeks. After meeting and mating the half-planeswalker brothers, the two had both experienced more than just bad dreams with their respective mates. Lars had been nearly killed by one of Danny’s nightmares, Jasper had suffered injuries twice while dreaming with Ben, and Ben had only just managed to pull himself out of his own frightening dream state. It wasn’t like either of them needed any more drama in their lives. Jacob bit his trembling lip, not sure what to say. An apology, he imagined, would probably be useful, but he wasn’t sure he could keep his voice steady long enough to get one out.

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Ben broke the silence. “Fancy meeting you here,” he said with a smile. He didn’t look uncomfortable or out of it, but Jacob didn’t know how well Ben could possibly be feeling. He might be awake now, but his head was bandaged, and his arm was attached to an IV drip. And that was all thanks to Jacob. Briefly, he remembered how Ben had come to him up at the rock. He’d shuffled up to the edge of the cliff, almost somnambulant in his resolve to jump, but just before he had, something had permeated his consciousness and he’d smiled at Jacob. All memory of how Ben had lashed out at him when Jacob told him that he had to leave his mate seemed to disappear with that smile, and Ben had taken Jacob’s hand before they jumped. He wondered whether Ben remembered that moment. Ben smiled at Jacob, tentatively. “Next time you want me to go on a trip with you, I’m totally campaigning for better travel arrangements.” “Or you could just not go at all.” Jacob’s eyes snapped over to where Danny was sitting. Ben might not be upset about what happened, but Danny’s eyes were dark, and his cheek was puffed out, as if he’d stuck his tongue there to stop himself from saying anything worse. Ben gave him a look, and he sighed with frustration. “I’m just saying.” “I’m really sorry about that,” Jacob said, his voice shaky. “If it’s any consolation, I talked to Lars and Jasper, and they don’t think, I mean, considering what’s been going on with you guys, with your nightmares, that it was the fall that hurt you.” “Probably didn’t help, though,” Danny added pointedly. Jacob let out a ragged sigh as he struggled to recall the particulars of his meeting with Alex’s brothers. He hadn’t meant to sound so detached, so informative, but he was afraid if he didn’t focus on those dry, factual details, he’d fall apart altogether.

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“Um, they think the fall knocked him”—Jacob turned his gaze to Ben and corrected himself—“you unconscious. And then you had the nightmare. And that’s where you got hurt.” “So what?” Danny asked. “So that proves it’s fine to just drag him off a cliff with you? That what happened isn’t your fault?” “It is my fault,” Jacob said. “He wouldn’t have gone unconscious if it wasn’t for me.” He turned to look at Ben, feeling one hot tear slide down his face. “I’m really sorry.” “Then I forgive you.” Jacob raised his eyes to meet Ben’s, but the firm, kind resolve on his face didn’t waver. He smiled at Jacob. “Hey. I was there, remember? You seriously have nothing to be sorry for.” With that, the tears that had been welling in Jacob’s eyes the entire meeting started to spill over. He’d barely talked to Ben before rushing in to uproot his life, hadn’t even asked him if going to Morgana was what he wanted or how it made him feel to leave his mate on the Earth plane. When Ben had arrived at Ecstasy Rock, his eyes glazed with the same somnambulant look Jacob had often seen on planeswalkers back in Morgana when they were in the grip of fate, he had merely nodded to Jacob once, taken his hand, and jumped. But here Ben was, treating him like an old friend or a war buddy or something. It was a closeness that did not seem to be lost on Danny. “Yeah?” he said. “Well, I don’t forgive him.” A low growl escaped his throat as his hands gripped the bed rails so tightly his knuckles were nearly white. Ben shoved at Danny to push him away. “Next time you’re as upset as he is, I’m going to be a total dick to you. Seriously.” Danny glanced at Jacob’s teary eyes, and his face softened with what looked like pity. “Damn it,” he grumbled. “Look, I didn’t mean to upset you, I just—” “It’s fine,” Jacob said, wiping his face. “I do this all the time. Really. God, that’s embarrassing. I just…it gets really…um…because I’m a planeswalker. You know?”

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Ben stared at him blankly as he tried to gasp out a sentence between sobs with no luck. “Um…no?” Jacob sighed, taking a deep breath to try to calm himself. Just one sentence. That was all he needed to manage. Finally, he settled on one. “You have no idea what I’d give to be a werewolf sometimes.” After another long breath, he tried another. “You guys probably never cry.” Ben snorted. “Are you kidding?” He jerked his thumb over at Danny. “This fucker cries all the time. Probably because he listens to so much emo.” Danny kicked the bed with his foot. “Shut up,” he shot back, but Jacob relaxed when he saw the reluctant smile on his face. “And I’m not emo.” “Then what’s with the skinny jeans, hipster?” Ben poked his hand through the rails of the hospital bed to jab at Danny’s side, and he jerked away. “What’s with the David Bowie shirt?” “Oh my God, you’re such a dork. David Bowie is not emo. You’re off by like thirty years.” Jacob perked up at the name then glanced at Danny’s T-shirt to see the familiar pale, made-up face plastered on it. Yep. They were definitely talking about the same guy. “I don’t know what emo is,” he said tentatively, “but David Bowie is definitely a planeswalker.” Once again, Jacob felt the heat of two sets of eyes staring at him. “Sorry, could you repeat that?” Danny waved his hands in front of his face as if he were trying to clear away a daydream. “For a second there, I thought you said that David Bowie is…” “A planeswalker,” Jacob repeated, but it did nothing to quell the confusion in either set of rounded eyes before him. Jacob really couldn’t figure out where the confusion came from after some of the interplanal album releases he’d heard on Morgana. “I mean, come on. The Man Who Fell to Earth? Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars? Did you really think that guy was human?”

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“You’ve seen The Man Who Fell to Earth?” Ben asked. “You like Ziggy Stardust?” said Danny. “Yeah.” Jacob shifted his gaze to a spot on the wall just behind Ben’s head. He felt like a bug in a glass display. “Why?” Danny raised his eyebrows at Ben, and a silent dialogue seemed to pass between them. When it finished, Danny smiled and turned his eyes to Jacob. “Do you want to be our friend?” Jacob could feel the familiar blush rising on his face, but this time, it was from happiness, not embarrassment. He couldn’t help watching a moment ago as the two friends had their moment together. It had been forever since he’d been close enough to someone to do that. He missed it. “Okay,” he said. It was funny. When Jacob came to the Earth plane, he’d been so focused on what needed to be done for Morgana, he’d hardly imagined he would find anything here for himself. Now he had two friends and a mate. Well, almost a mate. Technically, they hadn’t exactly worked out that whole mating process yet. Jacob furrowed his brow. He wondered if there was any process for befriending people on Earth. “What, um…what does that entail, exactly?” Ben smiled. “Come here,” he said, shifting in his bed to sit up higher. “We’re going to teach you our secret handshake.” **** Alex stood outside the hospital’s sliding double doors, banging his head against the building’s brick exterior. It hurt like hell, but at the moment, it seemed a decidedly more comforting option than the alternative, which was to be a man, go inside, pick up Jacob from outpatient, and bring him home. And then have sex with him.

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Telling Jacob about his embarrassing predilections had been one thing. But letting him experience them firsthand…A thousand and one unpleasant scenarios raced through his mind chronicling the myriad ways the single most important orgasm of his life could go unbelievably, horribly, painfully awry. He could hurt him. He’d never hurt a sub before, but he’d never topped a planeswalker, either. Not to mention the whole letting go of his inhibitions thing. Even when Alex had minded his inhibitions, Jacob had seemed to consider sex with him more painful than anything else. Which brought up the whole question of his performance as a whole. He’d only had sex ten goddamn times in his life. Well, eleven now. If you counted the whole mating debacle. Which he preferred not to. Alex banged his head against the brick wall again. Hard. It served him right, given the monumental miscalculation he’d made in spending all his time training for war and bloodshed when he apparently should have been out with Jasper, rediscovering the Kama Sutra. Alex cringed. Not with Jasper, though. That…ugh. “Man troubles?” came a gravelly voice from behind him. As if Alex could be any more grossed out. “He’s my brother,” he snapped. “Who, the little cabana boy in room 303?” Alex turned around abruptly to see the gray-haired head nurse he’d passed a million times on his way to his parents’ hospital room. Nurse Betty had kept a vigilant watch over the neurology patients for as long as Alex had been coming to the Borderland Osteopathic Hospital, but this was the first time he’d heard a single word from her. It was a hell of an introduction. “He’s not a cabana boy,” Alex retorted. He doubted the elderly nurse had meant to offend him with the term, but Alex didn’t like the idea of anyone thinking of his mate as some random twink he’d picked up.

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Glancing at Betty again, he realized he wasn’t so sure how she’d placed the two of them together at all. Sure, he’d visited Jacob an awful lot in the past few days, but Alex had hardly assumed the hardened old head nurse had taken much notice of the two of them, or even pinned Alex as gay, for that matter. It wasn’t like he was in the closet or anything. It was just that, given the nature of his past sexual relationships, he tended to keep his sex life pretty private. Alex furrowed his brow. Fuck. Maybe that did make him a sort of closet case. He shook his head to chase away the thought. Not happening. Not anymore. He didn’t want anyone thinking he was ashamed of his angel. He turned to Betty somewhat confidentially before asking, “Not that you’re wrong about it, but what made you assume he’s my—” Alex had to stop himself before saying the word mate. “Boyfriend,” he finished lamely. Nurse Betty raised an eyebrow at him. “Honey, I’ve seen you walk past every nurse in this hospital who’s ever fixed her eyes on you like she was damn near invisible. The only time I’ve seen anything resembling the dopey-ass grin on your face you get when you walk out of 303 was that time one of the neurology techs brought in True Blood on DVD.” Alex quirked an eyebrow at the woman. “You are really very observant.” She waved his compliment away with one hand. “You know, I saw him, Mr. 303, about two, three days ago when he first came into your parents’ room. Your brother and his cabana boy—” “Danny’s not a cabana boy either.” “—well, they came and collected him just when I was starting to think he didn’t have anywhere to go. He just sat there like a puppy for days. Left when visiting hours were over then came back again in the morning, dressed in just the same raggedy clothes and looking like death warmed over. I gave him a blanket and some Jell-O while he waited on account of knowing he wasn’t gonna ask for anything. Only

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time he bothered to push the call button was once when your mom’s heart monitor went offline.” Alex nodded. That sounded about like Jacob. “He’s a keeper, that one,” Betty added. “Only person he doesn’t give a damn about is himself.” “That’s what I’m afraid of.” Betty’s eyes rounded, and her lip curled in the expression of a woman with a lifelong addiction to gossip. “Go on.” Alex’s eyes dropped to his toes as he shuffled his feet uncomfortably. He raised them to meet Betty’s inquisitive gaze. “It’s kind of personal.” “Fair enough,” Betty said. “But if this is about sex, I’ll just say I probably know a whole lot more about that Jasper and his cabana boy than whatever it is you’re not telling me.” “He’s not a cabana—” Alex cut himself off, eyeing Betty. “Really?” Betty smiled. “And seen a lot more. For that matter.” Alex smirked. That was fast. Ben had only regained consciousness the day before. Granted, he and the others had teased Jasper about rushing certain aspects of Ben’s recovery, but he hadn’t expected the warning was actually necessary. He knew firsthand that the safety rails on those hospital beds were a damned inconvenience. Which meant Jasper was either very stupid or very desperate. After the embarrassment Alex had suffered in the past few days, he would be grateful to hear either. “Go on.” Before Betty could open her mouth, a big hand closed over it. “Not happening, Betty.” Alex turned to see Jasper standing in the open double doors of the hospital entrance. He smiled sardonically at Betty as he clapped a hand to her shoulder, steering her toward the entrance to the hospital. The gruff old nurse looked none too pleased. “Go peddle your damn gossip somewhere else. And the next time you walk in Ben’s room between rounds, I’m charging admission.”

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Betty rolled her eyes at Jasper. “I’ll be sure to alert the nurses.” The double doors slid open to admit her as she stepped toward them, but she turned back to Alex and said over her shoulder, “Best of luck, sweet pea.” Then, narrowing her eyes at Jasper, she added, “At least that one has the good sense not to jerk off in my ward.” Jasper’s face reddened as Betty disappeared into the hospital. Alex watched him with amusement. “I take it Ben’s made a full recovery, then?” Jasper scowled at him. “Fuck off.” Alex leaned against the brick facade of the building. “Seriously, though, he’s okay? I know I already said this, but Jacob feels terrible about what happened. I mean, really, he—” “It’s fine.” Alex wondered about the truth of that statement. The low growl in his voice seemed to contradict his words. Jasper sighed. “I mean, I was fucking pissed about it until Ben woke up, but I guess they’re friends now. Him and Jacob and Danny.” His eyes darkened with jealousy. “And you know how I’d hate to break up the fucking Mickey Mouse Club.” “For someone who used to sleep around as much as you did, you are really weirdly possessive of your mate.” “Oh, shut up,” Jasper said. “Look, it’s not like I’m jealous or anything.” Alex quirked an eyebrow at Jasper, and he shoved his hands into his pockets. “Look, all I’m saying is if Ben likes him, I like him.” Jasper rolled his eyes. “Anyway, I don’t really have a choice, do I? Ben can really be very persuasive.” Alex smirked. “I heard. Although, you should probably save the heavy petting for when Betty can’t walk in on you.” “What were you even doing discussing my sex life with her, anyway?” Alex reddened. “Um…” He racked his brain, trying to think of a reason he would have been standing outside the hospital talking about sex with an octogenarian female. One that didn’t involve him

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cataloguing to Jasper the details of his embarrassingly nonexistent sex life. Jasper waved his hand in front of his face. “Forget it. Are you picking up Jacob? I was just headed home. I can give you a ride if you want.” “Um…” Alex stammered. Jasper stared at him. “Is there a problem?” “Um…” Alex stared at Jasper as he tried to regain the breath that was slowly failing him. Jasper raised one dark eyebrow and curled his lip into a smirk. “What kind of problem?” From the bemused expression that had settled on Jasper’s face, Alex could tell he’d already pieced together this had something to do with sex. It wasn’t surprising. From what Alex could judge, Jasper was always thinking about sex. His drug- and booze-laden youth had been pretty much a twenty-four-seven orgy, and although the drugs, booze, and orgies had disappeared with the advent of Ben, Alex had a sneaking suspicion there was still an awful lot of sex happening. In fact, he had more than an idea. His room was right next to Jasper’s, and their house seriously needed soundproofing. “I take it Jacob’s made a full recovery as well?” Alex fixed his gaze past Jasper to where the hospital shuttle was picking people up in the parking lot. If he made a break for it now, he could just catch it and save himself from any further torture. The shuttle pulled away, and Alex reluctantly glanced back at Jasper. “Yeah,” he said finally. “He said he feels a lot better.” “Really wasn’t what I was asking.” “I’m not going to discuss my sex life with you.” “Are you kidding me? You’re still going to deny me the details? After all the shit I’ve told you? I’ve waited thirty years to see you get the good deep dicking you deserve—” “Jesus, Jasper!” Alex glanced around him, nervously, and then lowered his voice. “I’m not getting…dicked.” “Okay then, to give the good, deep—”

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“Obviously I’ve had sex before!” Alex blurted before lowering his tone. “We’ve had sex already. Me and Jacob. It just…wasn’t…” He winced, trying to find the words. Jasper looked at him curiously. “Good?” Alex growled. “Gentle.” Jasper’s mouth rounded into an O, and he shut it respectfully. After a moment’s silence, he said, “So you guys—” “Yep.” “And it wasn’t—” “Nope.” “And you didn’t—” “Mate?” Alex sighed. “Not exactly.” “And today?” “Just waiting until we get back home.” Jasper nodded. “Well.” Jasper turned, facing straight forward, but Alex’s face burned nevertheless like his brother was trying to peer right into his soul. He hadn’t exactly meant to blurt his problem out like that, but there it was. And it might be awkward as hell to admit it, but if he’d even half listened to some of the stuff Jasper had drunkenly confessed to him over the years, he’d probably be considerably better prepared to handle this mess. Still, it didn’t make it any easier to talk about. “Gentle how?” Jasper finally asked. Alex’s hands curled into fists at his sides, and he pounded them against the wall behind his back. “I’m gonna fuck it up.” Jasper squinted into the sun, sliding a pair of sunglasses out of his pants pocket and slipping them on. “Well. I mean, there’s not exactly a whole lot to fuck up. You know?” “No, I don’t know. Look, I don’t expect you to understand this, but it’s not like I have a whole lot of experience with relationships—”

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Jasper rolled his eyes. “Oh, sure. Why would I understand that? You know, I might have fucked around a lot, but it’s not like I ever had an actual boyfriend before Ben.” Alex continued. “—outside of BDSM clubs.” “BDSM?” Jasper’s eyes widened, and Alex bristled at the twinkle of amusement he saw in them. “Awesome,” he muttered under his breath. “Fuck you. Look, I get it. I got myself into this shit, and it’s my fault, but you know, I kinda figured that when I met my mate, I would be able to pull my head out of my ass and treat him like an actual human being. Not a…” His mouth puckered with distaste. “Sex slave. Or whatever.” Jasper stared at him thoughtfully. “Does he want to be a sex slave?” Alex rolled his eyes. “You know, for a smart guy, you can be really dumb sometimes. Think, Jasper. Do you want Ben to be a sex slave?” Jasper snorted. “I mean, sometimes…” Alex threw up his arms in frustration. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. Look, he’s my mate. I get it. It’s special. But that doesn’t mean you have to be—” “Decent? Respectful? Considerate?” Jasper shook his head. “Perfect.” A short laugh escaped his mouth, and he rubbed his temple as if the very memory gave him a headache. “The night me and Ben mated? I had to break him out of some wacko’s mad scientist compound, which involved killing the bastard, dealing with cops, trying for the very first time in my life not to think with my dick, and then basically getting ambushed by a mating bite. Which, for the record, kinda fucked both of us up for a while.” Alex stared at his younger brother. In spite of the torrent of idiocy Jasper had spent most of his early adulthood engaging in, this was probably the first time he’d seen the guy admit his own inadequacies. It probably wasn’t his intention to do so, but he could see now that

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there were a lot of ways that being with Ben had straightened him out. Even if, as Jasper suggested, the mating itself had been less than ideal. “Okay, so even if the sex isn’t great—” “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Jasper shook his head, waving his hands in front of him to dismiss the idea. “I didn’t say the sex wasn’t great.” A big, doofy smile spread across his face, and his eyes glazed over. “Actually, the sex was—” “Really don’t want to hear about it.” At Alex’s words, Jasper snapped his mouth shut. In the silence, Alex couldn’t help but think of his own previous mating attempt. It had been great, actually, for a moment. Until he’d fucked it all up, that is. He looked at Jasper, helplessly. “I’m gonna hurt him.” Jasper opened his mouth to protest, but Alex cut him off before he could. “I told you I was rough with him.” “Okay, okay.” Jasper smirked. “Did he like it?” “What does that have to do with anything?” Jasper rolled his eyes. “God, you’re like a fucking virgin.” “Shut up!” Alex turned from Jasper, pacing halfway down the sidewalk away from the hospital entrance. It was only his outrage that made him turn back. “And anyway, even if that wasn’t an issue, it’s not like I’m mating a werewolf. He gets hurt. He doesn’t heal. Oh, and for the record? Mating a planeswalker? Basically means dropping all of your mental and emotional guards and letting him psychically wander around in your head. Why should I let him in there? It’s my head, not his.” “And it’s his body, not yours,” Jasper countered. “Why the hell should he give you that if you’re not going to offer him anything in return?” Alex could feel the hair on the back of his neck prickling. He didn’t like to admit it, but Jasper had a point. And that ticked him off. It ticked him off more when his brother took a step closer to him and put a hand on his shoulder, peeking over the rims of his sunglasses to

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look at Alex’s eyes. He was fuming so much now, they were probably yellow as hell. Still, his brother looked at him with a compassion Alex didn’t expect from him. Alex had never been particularly close to either Jasper or Lars, who were both brainier than him and had stopped believing in Morgana the day of their parents’ accident. Alex had never been part of the closeness they shared, and the rift between him and them had only seemed to deepen in the past weeks since they both found their mates, leaving him, as always, the odd man out. Only now, here he was, soliciting brotherly advice. With a sigh, he let some of the rigidness go out of his formerly tensed muscles, inclining his gaze ever so slightly toward Jasper to indicate he cared to listen to what he had to say. Kind of. “I know you’re kind of an independent guy, and you like your privacy, but you’re going to have to get used to this if you don’t want to screw things up between you guys. Even if he wasn’t a planeswalker, you’d still be able to share dreams, you’re going to feel each other’s emotions, and you’re going to be sharing a soul from now on. And if you don’t think you can handle that—” Alex didn’t want to contemplate the end of that sentence. “I’m not letting him go.” Jasper patted his shoulder twice then pulled away from him. “Well, I guess you have your answer then. I’ll go bring the car around for you guys.” And with that, Jasper turned on his heel and strode toward the parking lot. He only got a few steps away before he stopped and turned back. “One more thing.” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “If you really don’t want to hurt him? I mean, physically?” He glanced at Alex as if to gauge whether he was interested. That snarky grin was on his face again, and Alex wasn’t so sure he wanted to know the reason for it. Still, he was interested. “Go on.”

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Jasper’s smirk widened, but he hesitated, eyeing Alex as if he were trying to gauge just how fast he needed to bolt out of the parking lot if the bigger man decided to come to blows over what he was about to say. Then he shrugged apathetically and said it anyway. “I think you should let him do you.” Jasper was halfway across the parking lot before the statement registered and Alex bolted forward, ready to smack the smug, selfsatisfied expression right off his smiling face.

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Chapter Five “So…” “So…” Alex smiled at Jacob, and he tried his best to smile back, but it was starting to get a little awkward. There were only so many times they could both utter the word before the fact that they both still had their clothes on became readily apparent. Alex’s eyes drifted to his lap before fleeing determinedly away from it as he quickly stood and paced across the room. “So this is my room. It’s pretty basic,” he said, gesturing around the neat and sparsely decorated space. “Dresser. Nightstand. Closet.” His voice faltered a little. “Bed. Which you’re obviously sitting on.” “Yep.” Jacob nodded, his throat dry. “Here I am.” “Well, there it is then. You like it?” “Very much,” Jacob managed. Alex’s hands may have pointed out the various accommodations, but his eyes had remained fixedly on the all-too-conspicuous bulge jutting out from his crotch. He didn’t know how much longer he could take this. “Should we get naked?” Jacob blurted. “Yeah, okay.” They shed their clothes wordlessly. Jacob was still sitting on the bed, while Alex stood across the room from him. It had only been a few days since he’d seen his mate’s magnificently muscled body naked, but it still took his breath away. Slowly, he let his eyes wander along every inch of Alex’s perfect frame until he reached his pale blue eyes. He dropped his gaze in embarrassment, realizing the view

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was probably considerably less impressive from where Alex was standing. Alex didn’t take a single step toward the bed. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.” Alex’s eyes dropped to his very impressive rock-hard erection. “You really think I don’t want to?” This time, Alex came closer. Jacob’s head swam as the distance between them lessened to a fraction of what it was. Alex reached out and grazed a hand across his cheek. “I told you you’re beautiful.” “I know, but…” The tide of memories swam back through Jacob’s mind, forcing him to dwell on the last time they’d been this close. On the look in Alex’s eye as he’d pulled away from him. On the cold wall of nothing he’d felt as he’d tried to claim him. Jacob bit his lip. “Can you say it again?” Alex took him by surprise as he slid the patch of sheet away from his thighs and crotch, leaving him exposed again. He turned his eyes away as Alex’s heated gaze practically burned a hole through his weirdly skinny, weirdly pale, weirdly hairless body. A hand steered his chin back up until his eyes met Alex’s. “You’re beautiful, angel.” “Angel,” Jacob repeated in a whisper. Alex nodded. “My angel. If you want to be.” For a single, raw second, the flood of thoughts and memories and dreams that ceaselessly swirled in Jacob’s head came skidding to a halt, as suddenly as if the world had stopped spinning on its axis. Suddenly there was nothing between the two of them but silence, so palpable Jacob wondered how it was he couldn’t hear his heart trying to thud its way through his chest. Jacob nodded slowly, his eyes locked on Alex’s. He didn’t think he’d ever wanted anything so badly in his life. Two strong arms pulled him into their grasp, and Jacob was suddenly lifted off the edge of the bed and laid back down underneath

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Alex. For a moment, he nearly opened his mouth to protest being carried like that, but still…swoon. One of Alex’s hands stroked through his hair and another slid down his side to clutch at his hip bone as he settled himself next to him on the bed. Jacob’s hands, too, shot out from him, darting across Alex’s broad shoulders and massive pecs and the hard, cut lines of his abdomen. God, he was ripped. Jacob was already dizzy with need just from touching all those smooth, hard planes of flesh, but when he closed his eyes and felt a moist wet path tracing its way down his own stomach, he had to open his mind to every unsexy thought he’d ever had just to keep from coming on the spot. Garbage bags. Bag ladies. Any kind of lady. Heterosexual sex. Sex. Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex— Alex spread his legs and dipped his head between them. Jacob could feel his warm breath on his balls as he paused there, his thumbs tracing tiny, exacting circles on the sensitive insides of his upper thighs as if he were afraid to press any harder. Jacob steeled his breath in and out as he glanced down to see the hesitant look in Alex’s eye. “For the record?” he said, his voice strained with need. “I’m pretty sure anything you do is going to feel fucking amazing.” One hand cupped his balls, and a slick wetness sucked his entire length inside it. Jacob whimpered as Alex pulled back all the way to the tip and began to trace slow circles around his cockhead. He could swear he felt every single blood vessel down there pulsing in time to the staccato rhythm of his heartbeat as Alex began to work Jacob’s dick in and out of his mouth. Jacob’s hands ran down to scratch up and down Alex’s head as his tongue laved his entire length, darting eagerly up to the tip and all the way down to the base. Jacob spread his legs wider, lifting his ass off the bed as his hips rolled in time to the long, slow laps Alex lavished on his cock. Every other blow job he’d had in his life paled in comparison. There had been something exacting about the way his previous boyfriends had

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chased his orgasm, wanting to get it over with as either foreplay or a hasty afterthought following the main event. The exploratory way Alex was working his every inch kept his body humming with need and his mind humming with desire. His desire. He wasn’t used to feeling it. All his life, it had been like a whole other world existed inside Jacob’s head, unable as he was to keep himself from intuiting the needs and wants and wishes of everyone around him. He’d hardly had time to spare to give a thought to himself, but Alex had drawn that need out of him, had sharpened it to a point that now pierced his heart. It hurt to want something so personally, so much he could hardly stand it. He wanted to feel that need fulfilled. When Alex sucked one and then another of Jacob’s balls into his mouth, he couldn’t hold back any longer. “Please,” he panted. “Alex, I need you.” Alex pulled away, his head turning to kiss the crease of his thigh. He didn’t dare push his head downward, but God, he needed so bad. “I’m right here, angel.” “Fuck me,” he breathed. “Please. Make me yours.” Alex’s brows drew together, and he shook his head. “I don’t want to hurt you.” He crawled up the bed toward Jacob, and Jacob’s arms shot out to draw him close, as close to him as he could get. “You won’t hurt me,” Jacob said. Alex didn’t move, but Jacob wasn’t above begging. “Please. Please, please, please—” “Stop begging me!” “Or what?” Jacob dared him. Alex growled, low and angry, and his hands closed tight around Jacob’s thighs. He could remember the way those hands felt, the way Alex felt when he’d let his resolve slip and cracked his palm down on Jacob’s ass. He wriggled under Alex’s

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touch, trying to get him to grab and smack his ass again. “Go ahead,” he dared him. Alex shook his head. “You can’t be like that.” “How?” Jacob breathed. He was close to losing control. He just needed a little push. “Like a bratty little sub.” Alex growled again. It was not a sound Jacob had ever expected to be erotic, but damn. Jacob had to remind himself to breathe just to keep his head from spinning. “If we’re going to do this,” Alex began, “I need you to listen so I won’t want to punish you.” Jacob thought he’d like being punished quite a bit, but if Alex was going to give in, even a little, to what he wanted, Jacob wanted to help him however he could. More than anything, he wanted to make him happy. “Okay.” He nodded. “I can do that.” “And if I ask you to do something, I need you to do it.” “Okay.” “If I hurt you, you tell me to stop.” “Okay,” Jacob repeated, but Alex only stared at him, his eyes heavy with concern. “I don’t want to hurt you, but if you piss me off—” Jacob couldn’t keep the amusement out of his voice, recalling what happened the last time Alex used that term. “You’ll spank me again?” “Don’t test me, angel.” Jacob smiled, recalling Alex’s words in the hospital room. Do you know what BDSM is? He locked his eyes on his lover’s, knowing full well what his needs were. “Yes, sir,” he said, smiling. Alex’s eyes widened at the term, but then a wide, goofy smile spread across his face before he cleared it. “Turn over,” he said, low and commanding. He wasn’t trying to mask the note of domination in his voice anymore.

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Jacob turned, pressing his face against the pillows and sucking in a breath. He folded his hands underneath his head and closed his eyes, feeling Alex’s hot, wet breath move down the small of his back. Fuck, hadn’t he had already been played with enough? He didn’t know if he could take this. He squirmed underneath the downward trail of Alex’s tongue until a firm hand grasped his ass. “Don’t move,” Alex commanded him. Jacob stilled. It was going to kill him, but he did. He didn’t feel or hear anything else for a moment until Alex added, “Unless I tell you to.” Jacob grinned, feeling his cock harden painfully at the command. It pressed into the mattress, stiff as a board as Alex tongued his way down Jacob’s crease and parted his cheeks. He squirmed to push his legs apart until Alex’s strong hands pressed into his thighs, holding them still, even as they spread wide open. “I said don’t move,” Alex told him. There was a warning note in his voice, and for a bare moment, Jacob almost dared to test it. Then he felt Alex’s hot, wet tongue plunge inside his hole. He yelped at the sudden invasion, and he kept his mouth open, letting it fix into a silent scream as he struggled to keep his back from arching and his ass from pushing against the blinding rush of pleasure. Somehow, he managed to stay still, letting the sensations build until they nearly overwhelmed him. Behind him, he could hear the soft thwack, thwack of Alex stroking himself. Thank God. Jacob was already so close he didn’t think he could hold out long enough to bring Alex to the edge with him. Just when Jacob was certain he couldn’t stave off his orgasm any longer, the wet pressure receded and disappeared. Jacob breathed out a sigh. Then Alex’s tongue was replaced by two insistent fingers pushing into him. “Alex,” he panted as the fingers retreated, “I can’t—” “You can,” he said as he invaded again. God help him, Jacob could. He felt those fingers attack and retreat in time to the soft sound of Alex jerking off behind him.

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Alex’s fingers curled inside Jacob, stroking his prostate until he was almost out of his mind with need. Abandoning Alex’s orders, he shifted and squirmed, fisting his fingers on the bedsheets beneath him, humping the mattress and bucking against Alex’s steady, rhythmic touch. He couldn’t help it. He’d heard the note of desperation in Alex’s voice when he gave the order, but now, more importantly, he could sense his own need, unfamiliar as it was, pressing against him, growing and swelling until he could no longer hold it. He needed to claim Alex, needed to feel his lover open his mind and soul to unite with his. Jacob’s mind sought Alex’s, pressing at his defenses, seeking entry, but there was something he continued to hold back, some dark note of need he was denying himself. It was a need that grew exponentially as Jacob flagrantly disobeyed him, writhing and kicking and jerking under his touch. Alex pulled away, but it didn’t stop Jacob’s panting. “Let go,” he said. “Please, Alex, I need—” “Sir,” he panted. “Call me sir.” “Yes, sir.” He was so damn close, he’d call him anything he wanted. Still, he couldn’t break through that wall, that last line of Alex’s defenses. He was holding something back. Desperate with need, Jacob continued to wriggle against the sheets, and Alex grabbed his ass to stop him. Hard. Fuck, it excited him. And it excited Alex, too, he noted, feeling those walls of resistance give as he squeezed at Jacob’s flesh and restore as he relaxed his grasp. Was this what he was missing? That edge of pain? In a haze of inspiration, Jacob pushed his ass into the air. “Fuck me,” he said, palming his cock with one hand. “If you don’t make me come now, I swear to God, I’ll—” Before he finished the sentence, Alex pushed his hand away, pinning his wrist to the bed. Jacob moaned, feeling his cock pulse at the show of domination.

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“You’ll come when I tell you to,” Alex said, his voice laced with need. Jacob smirked, feeling that thread of resistance thin to the breaking point. A single word would set him over. Or two. “Make me,” he said. In an instant, Alex’s strong arms jerked him back onto his lap. He was thrown sideways over it like a rag doll, facedown on the bed, his ass still sticking in the air as he felt the first smack land. “That’s for squirming when I told you not to.” Alex’s mind opened to Jacob, and he felt their souls entwine. Smack. “That’s for trying to come before I let you.” Jacob moaned aloud, thrusting out his wrist blindly toward Alex’s mouth. He’d bitten him once before, but God, he wanted to feel those fangs sink into his wrist again. Smack. “And that,” Alex groaned, licking his palm, “is for not telling me I hurt you, when I—” he gasped, and Jacob could feel his hard cock pulse underneath his own. “When you—” His voice wavered, and Jacob felt his own body trembling on the edge of orgasm. One kiss, one touch, one word could send him over the edge. “When I know you don’t want—” “I want it,” Jacob panted. “Please. I’ve never wanted so bad—” He gasped as Alex’s hand closed over Jacob’s ass, rubbing it now, soft and gentle and tender. Jacob had never been so torturously close to coming without falling over the abyss. Ever muscle in his body tensed as he tried to stave off his orgasm. “Oh, please,” was all he managed. “Come,” Alex whispered, and Jacob came, shooting hot, pulsing jets all over his lover’s lap. He sucked in air in big, gulping breaths as Alex pulled his body up to his, kissing his nose, his mouth, his eyes, his cheeks. “I’m sorry, angel,” he whispered. “Did I hurt you? I’m so sorry if I did.”

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Jacob shook his head no. Hot tears were running down his face, but they weren’t from pain. They were from happiness. “Alex,” he breathed, “can you feel it? We’re mated. We’re mates now.” Alex’s eyes widened and his eyes searched Jacob’s. “But I fucked up,” he said. “I hurt you, and I—” “You let me in,” Jacob said, taking his hand and pressing it to his chest where his heart thundered wildly underneath the skin. “You can feel what I feel now. And believe me, I’m not upset.” Jacob let his hand slip from Alex’s, dropping it between Alex’s legs where his mate had laid him across his lap and where Jacob had come like crazy under the hot, stinging smacks of his palm. Alex’s eyes were still uncertain as they watched him, but Jacob had a pretty good idea of how to make that disappear. Crawling off the bed, Jacob knelt in front of Alex and pressed his thighs apart, leaning in to lick the milky white spots of his own cum off of his lover. Alex’s breath hitched as Jacob moved closer to his cock. By the time he arrived there, sucking the tip into his mouth and laving at the salty pre-cum, Alex’s hands were guiding his movements and Jacob’s dick was impossibly hard and ready for another round. He pulled out, looking up at Alex. His mate still hadn’t come yet, but his dick was wet and he’d gotten Jacob good and ready to be fucked by it. “Tell me how you want to fuck me,” he said. “I wanna see you,” Alex said, pulling Jacob into his lap again. Jacob climbed on top of him, but this time, Alex didn’t wait for him to impale himself inch by inch. His big hands closed around Jacob’s hips and thrust him down, and Jacob shouted as Alex’s full length penetrated him in one long, swift stroke. “Okay?” Alex asked, his voice breathy. Jacob nodded, closing his eyes to relish the sensation of them being so intimately joined, of Alex’s cock as far inside his body as it could possibly be. He wasn’t going to move a single muscle to change the situation.

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Before he could protest, though, Alex’s hands slid up his sides, hooked under his armpits, and pulled him up. Alex’s stiff dick slid out of him then attacked him again as his mate’s strong grip dragged him up and down his cock like a rag doll. Not knowing how much of this dizzying push and pull he could take, he moved his hips in time with Alex’s movements, and together, they reached a pace that had them both panting. Alex’s grip loosened behind Jacob, causing him to fall backward, his head lolling back, exposing his throat to the large werewolf. Alex growled and leaned in to feast at his collarbone, lapping and sucking and nipping at the flesh while Jacob took over thrusting on top of him. “Bite me,” he panted as Alex sucked at his throat, his fangs resting against Jacob’s hot skin. Alex hesitated against his throat, but Jacob couldn’t wait to feel his teeth on him. That single nick of his finger and his embarrassing orgasm after hadn’t been nearly enough to seal their mating. He didn’t want to be coddled. He wanted to be fucked, and sucked, and claimed. “Please, sir,” he begged. “Please, I need—” He didn’t even make it to the end of the sentence. Alex bit down, and they both went off like rockets. Alex’s body gave underneath him, and they both collapsed on the bed. Even as they fell, Alex’s grip never relaxed around him, pulling him as close to his body as possible as he lapped at Jacob’s neck, as if he wanted to draw as much of his mate as he could inside of him. Jacob reveled in the feel of his tongue on the bite. It had hurt at first, but that hurt had melted quickly into pleasure as he felt Alex take his blood, his soul, into his body. Jacob relished the strange sensation of his skin as Alex licked at his wound, an act that made the formerly raw and exposed area feel almost as if Alex’s ministrations had sealed it shut. He reached up to touch it, and raised an eyebrow at Alex at the bumpy patch of scar tissue there. “It healed,” he said. “How did it heal already?”

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“Because you’re mine, angel,” Alex whispered, pressing a final kiss against the bite. He kissed the fingers Jacob pressed against it, too, and Jacob could feel him smile against the digits. “Or maybe I should call you mate.” Mate, Jacob repeated to himself, happily. Alex was his now, forever. And nothing on this plane or the next was ever going to tear them apart, he thought sleepily as his eyes closed and he gave himself over to the darkness. **** Murdock felt at home in the darkness. He turned restlessly in his bed, the silken sheets sliding off his cold body. He had long since woken, but he didn’t move a muscle to rouse himself, instead waiting for his servants to part the canopy that encompassed the wide bed as they did every evening before they attended to his waking. These silly nightly rituals weren’t the reason for his influence over the legions he commanded, but nevertheless, they were important. And besides, he wanted to linger here just a little longer before the throngs arrived to attend to him. He had just had the most marvelous dream. Murdock closed his eyes, just for a moment longer, letting the memory wash over him. The rough hands measuring out discipline to the weaker body bucking and shouting underneath them. The rush of strength and power as the dominant mind gave itself over and joined with Jacob’s. The familiar lines of his face when Murdock finally glimpsed the identity of Jacob’s mate. This living man would now reside within Jacob’s mind and body and soul with the legions of others who already existed there, with Murdock, who now ruled over those legions. Murdock was no longer alive, was not even undead anymore, but his spirit had found a vessel in the mind of Jacob Walker. Murdock had been embarrassed, mortified even, of Jacob’s lifelong affliction when he was alive, but

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now his tendency to draw the souls of others inside him like moths to a flame had proven quite useful to his dear old dad. Anyone who Jacob’s vulnerable mind had drawn into it had made himself vulnerable to Murdock as well. There were many spirits gathered here that had been tortured, beaten, or harmed for pleasure during the war, but Murdock would take an especial joy in abusing this new soul. Alexander Craven looked exactly like his father. Murdock had been waiting to exact his revenge on Mitchell and Adrianna Craven for a very long time. And now he would have it. Their oldest son had been handed to Murdock on a silver platter. He had mated with Murdock’s son. Murdock was roused from his thoughts when the canopy was flung open to reveal the throng of waiting, nameless servants ready to attend the vampire king the moment he sat upright. He rose, arching his back, opening his eyes, and smiling to the attendants who had anxiously awaited the ritual. As was the nightly custom, they applauded him wildly. The nervous, waiting throng kept clapping, waiting for some signal from their king to cease. A slight nod of Murdock’s head toward the nearest of them, accompanied by a restrained and dignified smile brought the applause to a halt. “That’ll serve nicely. Thank you,” he told the man. Then, before the man could turn to fetch his clothes, he caught his arm. “Bring Jacob.” The servant nodded and bowed, wandering to the door and disappearing out of it in that strange, somnambulant way all the inhabitants had here. It wasn’t the way Murdock remembered Morgana before his death, where even the undead territories of the vampires pulsed with vibrant energy. No, the inhabitants of this realm may be alive, but just barely. Out on Morgana, they were probably hardly even cognizant of their actions. Instead, they were drawn here, to Murdock, through one of the multitude of red doors that resided in Jacob’s mind. Those doors opened up from time to time, ferrying in

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and out the legions of those who simply could not bring themselves to get over the scars they’d suffered during the war into this ethereal afterspace Murdock had fashioned into his kingdom. The crimson-colored double doors to his inner chambers opened, and Jacob entered, trailed by the servant who returned to blend in with the throng of attendants who stripped off Murdock’s bedclothes and helped to dress him in his bloodred tails and top hat. Jacob made no move to join the others. His eyes darted around the room, taking in his surroundings. “Nice, isn’t it?” Murdock mused, holding his arms out as the servants helped on his topcoat. “A little of me, a little of you—” Jacob’s face hardened as he cut him off. “I didn’t have anything to do with this.” “Oh, but you did,” Murdock insisted. He followed Jacob’s gaze to the dizzyingly high ceilings, the monstrous bedposts, the strange angles of the black-and-white tile on the floor. “You remember this place, just as you’re seeing it now. You were just a child, of course, when you visited me here, which accounts for some of the more dramatic structural choices.” Jacob’s head tilted upward to the nearly never-ending ceiling before falling back down to meet Murdock’s eyes. “Is this a dream?” Murdock smiled. “For you it is. Back on the Earth plane, I imagine you’re somewhere snuggled safe in the arms of your mate, sleeping soundly, thinking yourself safe until your mind slips from your grasp, carries you away to dream, and brings you here. To where I live.” Murdock tapped his temple then gestured to Jacob. His eyes were wide and nervous. “Where are we?” Jacob asked. “In your head.” Jacob flinched as if he’d been stricken. “Get out!” Murdock smiled, remembering the dreadful feeling of invasion that he’d once experienced a lifetime ago as a planeswalker. It was difficult to see the way his son was so like him in that regard, sharing

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the same sickness he’d once had, the same disease that made him so susceptible to the onslaught of other people’s inner voices and feelings. He could still recall the never-ending rush of emotion and desire and dream and memory that had once invaded him from too many places to sort out. It had been uncomfortable and terrifying, but he’d believed it was a gift once. That was what Jacob’s mother had tried to convince him of at a time in his life he’d most needed to hear it. He’d been lonely, and frightened, and miserable, and she’d told him what he experienced was something to be proud of. He’d never wanted to believe anything so badly. Like most men on Morgana, he wasn’t interested in women, but he’d been pathetically lonely and embarrassingly moved by the sentiment, so much so that he’d slept with the wretch. That mistake had led to the birth of Jacob, who had come out just like Murdock. The wriggling, screaming reminder of what he’d done in a moment of weakness was more than enough to bear. Shortly after Jacob’s birth Murdock sought out the king of the vampires himself to take his dreaded mortality away. After his first death and rebirth as a vampire, he felt nothing in his head but blissful silence. Better still, he felt power surging inside him, strength. Rather than believing himself at the mercy of the ideas and impulses of everyone around him, he felt in control. At peace. He might have regretted believing Jacob’s mother the night she’d duped him into fucking her, but she was right about one thing. He had potential to be more than the sniveling, overemotional idiot he’d been as a planeswalker. Once he was turned, he’d reached that potential. It was a fine exchange for his mortal soul. “That isn’t really my choice, is it?” he asked coolly, turning his back to Jacob and staring into the gilded full-length mirror that stood upright alongside his bureau. He saw nothing in the mirror of his own reflection, only Jacob’s worried eyes as he no doubt tried to navigate his way through the storm that raged inside his head. “You’re the one who brought me here, after all, along with everyone else.”

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Grandly, he gestured around the room to the dozens of waiting servants. Slowly, they turned their cold, dead eyes to Jacob, their milky white gazes sliding over him, some of them almost flickering with a spark of recognition as they beheld their captor, the one who had channeled their souls onto the Red Plane. The stupid little shit didn’t even know he’d done it. “Who are they?” Jacob asked, his eyes almost flashing with recognition at some of them. “Are they all from Morgana?” Even as he asked it, the floors underneath them, the walls surrounding them, even the ceiling above them began to pulse with a red glow, and hundreds of bright red doors appeared, ghostlike, out of those surfaces that had seemed so solid a moment ago. “Here and there. A few weres, a few vamps, a few planeswalkers, all of them miserable and suffering because of the war. They came to see me separately, to deal with whatever mundane scars I inflicted upon them, but wouldn’t you know? Your diseased little mind just makes it so easy for me to gather them all in one place. As if their pain was your pain, too, and you just couldn’t get a good night’s sleep without dwelling on it. It’s actually rather pathetic when you think about it. You just care so much. You can’t stand the idea of all those dead, all those suffering. Even the ones you barely know. Even the ones you despise, like me. Tell me something, Jake. You think all planeswalkers are as weak as you are?” “I know they aren’t.” “That’s right. Because you’re special, aren’t you?” Murdock took care to speak the words as savagely as he could, furious at the small voice in his head that still wanted to believe the words about his son, about himself, the way he was so long ago. Murdock had ensured Jacob’s mother had never told him that, threatening to kill them both if she ever breathed a word to their offspring about how special, how unique his abilities made him. He didn’t want the bastard to believe her. It was much easier to control Jacob if he thought of himself as an abomination, the same way Murdock had thought of himself before he

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was turned. “My little psychic lightning rod. You know, most of your race is content to open their minds only enough to cross through planesgates, but not you. You just let every little unimportant thing permeate your consciousness until it’s wormed its way inside your very soul.” “That’s not true,” Jacob choked out. Murdock smirked. “Is that so? Why, because you’ve finally found something important to you?” Jacob stared at him uncertainly. The poor little creature looked almost afraid to think. Murdock cupped his chin, tapping one long, sharp nail lightly against his cheek and furrowing his brow in a parody of thought. “Think hard, now. Something new and exciting and oh so very, very precious.” His lip curled. “Or perhaps I should say someone.” Jacob’s eyes widened, and his mouth fell open stupidly. His hands fluttered up to it, but hell if Murdock knew why. He hadn’t made a sound. Finally, he shook his head. “Fuck you,” he breathed. As if the very words had given him courage, his muscles tightened, and he flung himself toward Murdock. A flick of Murdock’s wrist shot a blast of power toward the little brat, and he was flung backward onto his ass. Murdock smiled with satisfaction. He’d gained a lot of things when he was turned vamp, the growth of muscle and body hair, the yellowing of his eyes, and the sprouting of his delightful fangs and claws, but that little display of power, the ability to command the bodies of others, to toss them effortlessly away from him just by flicking his wrist or flexing his arm, that had been invaluable. Before he began his afterlife, Murdock had been weak, diseased, plagued by insights into the minds of everyone around him, whether he wanted to glimpse them or not. But planeswalkers grew stronger when they were turned, and Murdock was no exception. Rather than being assaulted by the thoughts and feelings of others, Murdock the vampire had gained control over their physical actions. It was a most unusual development, so unusual, in

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fact, that it had given him a decided advantage in seeking the vampiric throne. By flaunting his telekinetic energies and bending others to his will, he’d risen to the position of king in no time. He’d been a pathetic, helpless, powerless planeswalker, but as a vampire, he was the most powerful being on the plane. It was as if that power had been lying inside him, dormant and untapped, all along. He’d just needed a little strength to access it. Murdock studied Jacob, moaning as he hit the floor, glaring up at his father through the errant strands of dark hair that fell in his face. There was a fire in the eyes of his sad little bastard son that hadn’t been there before he mated Alexander Craven. Murdock was a little afraid of what that fire might blossom into. “I hate you,” Jacob said, his hands balling into fists, though Murdock hardly knew what the point of that little display was. Jacob hadn’t even any claws to scratch him with. “I swear to God, if you touch him…” “You’ll what? Go on. What is it you could possibly do?” Murdock kept his voice even, schooling from it any trace of worry. He didn’t know what Jacob could do, given the right circumstances. But then, neither did Jacob. He dug his useless fist into the floor. “I hate you.” Murdock tsked, crossing to Jacob and jerking his elbow to pull him from the floor. The boy flinched as Murdock dusted him off and flashed a smile at him. “Come now, son. Is that any way to talk to your father?” Jacob squared his jaw, and his eyes darted past Murdock to some faraway place the old vampire didn’t bother to see. Those green eyes were watery, but instead of giving in to the sadness as he once would have, he now held back the tears admirably. He really had gained something from mating the wolf. And that was another reason Murdock had to destroy Jacob’s mate.

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“Now,” he continued, “I have a playdate in the club with your little friend.” Murdock waved his hand. “Big friend. Whatever you want to call him, his parents are long overdue for a little payback, and I intend to have fun getting it.” Jacob didn’t turn to look at him, and he didn’t let those tears fall, but Murdock could swear he saw something die in his eyes at those words. Those eyes were so like Murdock’s, or rather, like his used to be before he’d abandoned that green gaze for the feral yellow his beastly irises now shone with. For a moment, staring at that lovelorn gaze, Murdock almost felt a pang of pity. He didn’t like it. Swallowing down the instinct, he edged a finger under Jacob’s too-slight chin and lifted until the boy had no choice but to stare into Murdock’s cold, dead eyes. “Try to stop me,” he said, “and I will slit your throat from ear to ear and bleed you ’til you’re dry.” The tip of Murdock’s nail pierced Jacob’s skin, and he cried out. To prove his point, he stuck his finger in the air to show off the single glistening drop of blood on it before he sucked it into his mouth. When he replaced the digit, Jacob’s chin was fairly shaking. Murdock smiled. That was more like it. “And Jacob? Believe me when I say that I won’t be the only one who touches him.” **** Alex couldn’t see a thing. His eyes and head were covered with some kind of dark cloth or blindfold, and he seemed to be pressed against some kind of wooden contraption. Not some kind, he corrected himself, feeling the uncomfortable position of his arms and legs and the restraints against his wrists and ankles. A St. Andrew’s Cross—a piece of equipment he was well familiar with but had certainly never been strapped to. Alex had no memory of getting there, only of opening his eyes to blackness

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and the uneasy sensation of being spread-eagle and strapped down for punishment. Faintly, he could make out the subdued murmurs of what seemed to be a very large crowd gathered behind him. He could make out dozens of voices, however unlively they were, not so much chattering to each other but muttering to themselves. There was something hollow, dead, in those voices, and it sent a chill down his spine. Whatever this place was he’d found himself in, he didn’t like it one bit. How the hell had he gotten here? The last thing he remembered was falling asleep with Jacob, he thought, and suddenly, he realized he had to be dreaming. The realization did nothing to break the spell he was under or change the circumstances of his situation. His mind might be in charge, but he couldn’t control it. He was trapped. The low murmur of the voices died down as footsteps began to echo through the room. The sound of the wooden steps approached Alex then stopped. A short and dramatic silence filled the room, and then the sound of feedback rang out as a microphone was tapped and a throat was cleared beside it. “Gentlemen. Ladies,” a voice spoke into it, rich and dark as velvet. After a pause, it continued. “Planeswalkers, werewolves, vampires. My dear undead fans and friends, welcome. I am glad that you turned out for the show tonight. Although, I suppose, I didn’t give you much of a choice in that matter.” The voice chuckled. After a moment, some of the audience members joined it, as if they were following the lead of that speaker rather than expressing their own amusement. Something in that calm, self-satisfied chuckle upset Alex much more than the quiet, desperate muttering of the voices that had filled the room earlier. This was not the voice of a man uneasy with those voices or unhappy to be here. This smug speaker seemed to regard his audience—his fans—as his

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own personal property. As if the show he alluded to had been arranged for his own entertainment rather than theirs. A shudder passed over Alex’s spine as he wondered what part he would play in that entertainment. Footsteps echoed across the floor, taking their time, drawing out the act as they strolled closer to Alex. When the last step echoed through the room, it was so close it could have come from Alex’s own feet. A sardonic laugh echoed in the microphone and he felt a cold, rubbery hand slide down his arm and pause to clap him twice on the shoulder. “Who are you?” he ground out to his assaulter. “Who am I?” The owner of the smooth, low voice chuckled. “Tsk, tsk, Alexander. I would think your parents would have told you about me by now. You could say I’m an old friend of the family’s—or perhaps, more accurately, an old nemesis. ” That same cold hand touched his cheek once more. Like everything else in this terrible place, it felt dead. There was no note of human warmth in it—or rather, Alex thought with a chill as he registered the gentle feel of long, pointed nails at the tips of the fingers that rested on his skin—nothing human about it at all. “Murdock.” There was no question in Alex’s voice as he said it. The way the vampire’s pointed words made the bile rise in Alex’s throat had told him enough. “Aren’t you the clever one?” The hand slid away from Alex, but he felt its serpentine touch linger on his skin long after it had gone. When he spoke again, he was once again the showman, his voice booming into the microphone to address the now-restless crowd. “We are here tonight to welcome a very special guest, a guest my not-quite-beloved bastard son has been kind enough to invite here, someone he’s grown so very close to.” Murdock paused as if for effect, and in that silence, Alex contemplated the words he’d spoken. His son. Murdock had a son. “In fact, perhaps Jacob would like to introduce our guest himself. Why don’t you give a warm Red Plane welcome to Mr. Jacob Walker?”

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Lackluster applause and tired but curious grunts sounded all around the room, but Alex was hardly listening to it. Jacob Walker, he’d said, just as plain as day. Jacob, his mate. Jacob was Murdock’s son. It was impossible, Alex thought. Murdock was a vampire, and Jacob was— More footsteps echoed across the stage, cutting off Alex’s thoughts. These footsteps were different than Murdock’s, though. The low scuffle that sounded suggested that someone was being dragged toward Alex by one or more larger captors who he struggled against. Jacob was here, Alex realized. Murdock had introduced him. He meant to bring him onstage. Or drag him, if he had to. Anger welled inside Alex, and he kicked and pushed at his restraints. The metal clasps were tight as a drum. Whatever was about to happen, he couldn’t do a thing to stop it. “Well, Jake? Wouldn’t you like to introduce your mate to the audience? They’ve all been waiting so patiently.” A frightened whimper, a shaky breath, and a sniffle penetrated the silence beside Alex. “No? Well, then, maybe a more private discussion is in order.” In one swift movement, the blindfold was yanked off Alex’s eyes, and he saw Jacob’s tear-stained face ahead of him. Alex’s wolf prickled under his skin as Murdock grabbed the back of Jacob’s neck and roughly shoved him toward Alex. “There,” Murdock said, his face close to Jacob’s, gesturing between them. “You see the family resemblance?” Alex could. Jacob’s face was smooth and angelic, and Murdock’s was older and marred with hard lines that seemed to suit the scowl on his face, but underneath it, he could see the same nose, the same cheekbones. Jacob bit his trembling lip and turned his eyes downward, his long lashes wet with tears that dripped down his face as he shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry, Alex—”

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He reached out to stroke Alex’s face, but Alex couldn’t touch him back. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay,” he repeated, but his voice trembled as he said it, and he knew that it wasn’t. His whole life, Murdock had come to represent evil incarnate for him, and now here he was next to him, next to his mate, digging his fingernails into the back of Jacob’s delicate neck, and Alex couldn’t do a damn thing to stop him. More than anything, he wanted to shift, to let the wolf clawing and scratching inside him to burst free so he could bound at Murdock and tear out his throat, but even if he could, even if he were free to do so, he didn’t know how Jacob would react to him hurting Murdock. They were family, after all. Alex could hardly believe it, but the more he looked at Murdock’s sickening, sneering face, the more he saw Jacob’s features reflected in it, and the more he wanted to claw at that face to rip them off of it. Instead, he stood, motionless and naked, while his mate tried to comfort him. Wake up, he pleaded with his mind. Wake up. Wake up. Nothing happened. He could close his eyes and open them a thousand times, but it did nothing to strip from him his surreal surroundings. “That’s enough of that,” Murdock said, pulling at Jacob’s arm to wrench him away from Alex’s side. Jacob struggled against the touch, and Murdock reeled back his other hand to slap him across the face. A murmur of subdued interest rose up from the audience, but Alex drowned it out with the roar that the callous gesture drew from his chest. “Don’t touch him!” he shouted, jerking against the binds that held him. Alex couldn’t stop Murdock if he wanted to. “Run, Jacob!” he shouted, but it was too late. There were others, he could see, surrounding every entrance to the stage, a cluster of too-skinny vampires with feral eyes that seemed to inch hungrily closer to Alex’s mate as he searched each of the places they guarded for a safe exit. There was none to be found.

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Murdock chuckled, quietly at first, but the sound soon built to a manic laugh. “Oh, you’ll do nicely,” he said. “I like that fighting spirit. It just makes it so much more entertaining to have you at my mercy. But now, I really must insist that the show begin.” The lights dimmed, and Alex felt the heat of a spotlight turn on his back. He angled his head to see the shine of the light as it filled the spaces around him, and he felt a strange, sinking dread when he noticed its color. Bloodred. “Now,” Murdock began. “May I ask, who here has a taste for warm, flowing blood?” The rustle and murmur of the audience was more alive than Alex could recall hearing them since he’d been here. Murdock continued. “And who here has a grudge against a revolting little interspecies couple called Adrianna and Mitchell Craven?” Again Alex could hear the crowd stirring behind him, moving closer to the stage. He couldn’t turn his head around to see, but the inhuman hiss and raw snap-snap of their fangs clicking together echoed in his ears, sounding their approach from behind and stirring his wolf to prickle uselessly against his bound skin. He’d never heard the sound before, but he’d heard it described once, by his father, in one of the endless conversations in which Alex had pushed him for details about his battles with the vampires. Mitchell hadn’t wanted to answer then, but Alex had begged, coaxing the details out of the reluctant storyteller. He knew now why his father hadn’t wanted to recall the details, hadn’t wanted to remember. Hearing the vamps stalk toward him, sensing their hunger, unable to defend himself or his mate from their snapping, clicking, ever-approaching fangs, he thought he might lose his mind. He kept his eyes locked on Jacob, feeling despair and revolt and misery as Murdock braced his arm across his neck and closed a clawtipped finger around his shoulder. The pain inside him was unreal as the gesture drew his wolf to the surface. It clawed and snapped and growled inside him, straining at the metal bindings to shift and losing

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the fight. The sheer feeling of inadequacy was doubled when he looked into his mate’s eyes and saw him looking back at him with something more than fear, something Jacob was feeling for Alex, on his behalf. It reached out to Alex and the unwelcome emotion slid around him like a snake until he could identify what it was. Pity. His mate pitied him for what was about to happen. That was when he heard the air split behind him with the crack of the whip. It didn’t quite touch him, not just yet, but Alex sensed it moving behind him, so close it had the crowd behind him cheering and screaming for more, drowning out the small cry of his mate as he protested. The hazy dread that had dwelled inside him until now had sharpened into a crystalline fear of his role in the evening’s activities, for he knew now what was to come next. He had played around with whips before, had used them on subs to enact scenes that drew their potency from the appearance of pain. He had given it, and they had taken it, but there were always limits, always certain lines drawn that Alex would not dare to cross. There was always consent, and there was never blood drawn, never anything that would bruise or scar or cut. This time would be different, though. It was what the audience wanted, and Murdock had made it his business to be a fine showman. As Murdock made his final ministrations and ados, Alex could feel the desire, the hunger of the vamps behind him swelling, could feel them growing impatient for the main event. Murdock would whip him, and he would cut him, but Alex hardly expected to feel the hot rush of blood on his back when the whip cracked down on it. The vamps would lick up every drop. Crack! The first blow landed, and he felt himself swarmed by cold hands, cold fingers, cold mouths and tongues, lapping and licking at the hot stinging pain in his back. Again, the whip cracked, and again, and

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again, ripping his skin, even as claws and fangs dug into it from every conceivable place. His wolf struggled to heal, but the cuts were too many and too deep, and they were torn over and over as the life was drained from him. Just a dream, he told himself, it was just a dream, but he couldn’t believe it. Even as he repeated the words to himself he could remember what happened to Jasper and Lars when they found themselves dreaming after mating with Ben and Danny. The hurt they’d experienced in their dreams was all too real upon waking up, as were their injuries. Denial shot through Alex like a rocket. He was strong, he told himself, he was strong and he could take it, but the years he’d spent training and shaping his body were only a distant memory now, engulfed by the powerlessness he felt welling inside him. Black spots swam in front of his vision, but behind them, he thought he could see Jacob struggling, thought he could hear his voice echoing in his ears as if he were shouting through a long tunnel, thought he could see the blur of Jacob’s small body as he broke free from Murdock. Alex fought the darkness that was trying to overwhelm his vision. Jacob was heading toward him, running right into the fray, and if he reached the feeding frenzy, the vamps would devour him. He would suffer like Alex, but unlike Alex, he would die. His fragile body wouldn’t heal, and they would drain him dry. In the dream and in reality. The sheer sense of horror the thought brought to Alex’s mind was like a jolt to his consciousness. He was pulled from the hazy blackness that engulfed him, but it wasn’t enough to stop the nightmare, wasn’t enough to save his mate. He had to wake up. ****

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Rough hands shook Jacob awake, and his eyes flew open when he heard his mate calling his name, his voice laced with an unmistakable edge of distress. He looked at Alex, whose face was red and eyes were yellow and wild. He wriggled against the hands that pinned his shoulders down to the mattress. For the first time since the first day he’d seen him, he felt afraid. “I’m awake,” he gasped. “Alex, you’re—” Scaring me. He stopped himself before he could say it, but from the expression on his mate’s face as he dropped his shoulders, retreating across the bed, he knew it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference if he had. Alex must have felt his fear. They were mates now, and they could feel each other’s emotions. They also shared each other’s dreams, Jacob realized. The memory of that world they’d inhabited just a moment before slid into him with a slow, sinking dread. Remembering what Alex had said about his brothers’ experiences with dream sharing, and how Ben had nearly died from the injuries he sustained in his shared dream with Jasper, Jacob’s eyes searched Alex’s body for traces of the deep lashes he’d seen inflicted upon him. There was no silver involved, so Alex would have healed by now, but there should have been blood, and lots of it. And yet, only a few small smudges and drops of blood were visible on his arms and shoulders, nothing compared to the vast amount of blood Jacob had seen drawn from his mate. Jacob felt sick when he realized where the rest of that blood had gone. The vampires who had lapped and feasted at his mate’s raw, cut-open wounds had drunk it all down. Jacob could hardly bear to watch his mate in the throes of such torture. Alex needed so badly to be in control. That terrible dream must have been unendurable for him. And it was all Jacob’s fault. He sat there silently as Alex retreated into the bathroom to clean himself up, letting the anxiety build until his mate returned and he could no longer take it anymore. “I’m sorry,” Jacob said quietly.

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“For what?” Alex asked. His voice was casual as he sat back down with Jacob, but he kept his distance from him on the bed. Jacob didn’t know how much, if any, of the dream Alex remembered, but he noticed that the warm note of caring was gone from his mate’s voice now. So was his term of endearment, his pet name. He wasn’t Alex’s angel anymore. Jacob bit his lip. If Alex did remember the dream, he knew exactly who Jacob was now, who he belonged to. Who he’d never escape. He should have told Alex before they mated, before that danger could reach him, too. Now that it had, there was no use hiding anymore. “It was my fault,” he whispered. “My dream.” That wasn’t the word for it, though, Jacob realized. Nightmare. That was what Alex had called bad dreams back in the hospital. And this dream had been terrible, as bad as the life he’d left on Morgana. The one he’d almost forgotten in his happiness at having finally found his mate. Alex looked at Jacob. His eyes were cautious and guarded, just like they’d been when Jacob first met him. Alex had looked at him differently since that first tense encounter. His gaze had become softer, warmer, but not anymore. “When I woke you up,” he began, “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Jacob shook his head no, and Alex seemed to relax a little. But not much. “Thank God. After everything that happened with Danny and Lars and Ben and Jasper, I was so worried something would happen to you. I woke up and I remembered how you’d been heading for that crowd of vampires—” He stopped himself short when Jacob’s eyes shot up to meet his. The look that passed between them was enough to communicate what he’d suspected, what Alex would have said if he hadn’t stopped himself. He remembered everything.

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Slowly, Alex moved to fill the space between them. A hand closed on Jacob’s shoulder, rubbing it softly, but there was hesitation in the gesture. “You scared me.” “Is that all I did?” Jacob asked. He could feel Alex’s abating fear clearly, but there was something else there, too, something that wasn’t dissipating in the wake of their shared dream. Jacob’s mind haunted him with the echoes of those nightmare images. Alex’s chained body. The way they’d beaten him and drank his blood. Murdock’s smiling face as he took Jacob’s hand and introduced him as his son. The hard lines that formed on Alex’s face when he said it. “What are you talking about?” he asked. “What else would I have felt?” Anger. Betrayal. Disgust. Humiliation. Jacob couldn’t sort through the mass of sticky discomfort that clung to Alex’s mind to pinpoint it, but he was certain what he was feeling was right in that neighborhood. “I was there,” Jacob said. “I know what they did to you.” Alex’s hand dropped from his shoulder like it was suddenly made of lead. “I’m strong,” he said. “They didn’t hurt me.” “Yes, they did!” “And I healed,” Alex retorted sharply. “So you can stop giving me those pitying looks because I don’t need them.” Jacob bit his lip, turning his head from him. Alex’s hands came creeping back to hold him, but he pushed them away. “It’s okay,” he said. “You don’t have to touch me.” “I didn’t mean that, angel.” The term forced his eyes back to Alex, and the tenderness there surprised him. Jacob took a shaky breath, drawing his hands up to wipe the tears welling in his eyes. “You did, though,” he said. Even with the look in Alex’s eyes and his sudden burst of repentance, he knew it. “And you hated it. You hated being hurt, but mostly, you hated being helpless. And it’s my fault you were like that.” Alex’s face darkened. “How do you figure?”

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Jacob shook his head, feeling the lump in his throat and waiting for the tears to start falling, just like they always did. They didn’t, though, not this time. Briefly, he remembered the glimpse he’d gotten into Alex’s mind when they mated. While Jacob had spent most of his life at the mercy of every notion and impulse that filtered through his consciousness, Alex seemed to be the exact opposite. He was forthright, and stoic, and loyal to a fault. He didn’t fall to pieces the way Jacob did because he simply didn’t let himself. He was too prepared for anything that came his way to be rattled by it—at least, he had been. Jacob must have taken some of that stalwart strength when they mated, just like Alex must have taken some of his sensitivity. He was definitely rattled now, Jacob thought, hating the way his mate seemed on edge, shifting uneasily, as if the sensations inside his own body were foreign and unwelcome. Jacob didn’t doubt they were. That was how they felt to Jacob, even after a lifetime of enduring them. “You felt different when we mated, right?” Alex avoided his eyes. “I liked mating you, if that’s what you’re asking.” “It’s not,” Jacob answered, surprising himself with how sharp his voice was. “You’re more like me now. More sensitive, more open, more vulnerable—” “So what?” Alex said, just as sharply. Jacob bit his tongue. He’d obviously hit a nerve there. “I know you don’t like it. It’s fine,” he said, still feeling that awful well of emotion in his throat. It was almost worse this way, not being able to give full force to his emotions. There was something cathartic about letting go, but now things just stuck with him, so much that he worried he’d carry each new scar and injury inside him for the rest of his life. Was this how Alex felt all the time? His head tilted up when Alex took his chin in his hand. “What I don’t like,” he said, low and forcefully, “is knowing just how hard things are for you. You feel so much all the time, and you don’t think

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before you act. You rushed in to save me when you could have gotten hurt, and I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop you. If I hadn’t woken up…” His voice broke as he stroked Jacob’s cheek with his hand. Jacob closed his eyes, feeling the gentle touch of the rough hand against it. “I don’t want to lose you.” “Why?” he asked. “And don’t tell me you like how this makes you feel. You told me at the hospital you don’t like feeling vulnerable.” “I said it wasn’t easy for me,” Alex corrected. “And I said I’d give it a try. To be with you.” Jacob nodded, covering Alex’s hand with his own. It wasn’t exactly what he needed to be reassured, but it was a start. And it was honest. Still, that small admission only went a small way toward clearing the air after the dream. He sighed, bracing himself for the discussion they still had to have. “You still haven’t said anything about it. About the worst part.” “What’s the worst part?” Alex asked quietly, but Jacob felt the stab of knowing dread pierce him even as the words left his mouth. “You heard him,” Jacob whispered. “You heard him say it. He’s my father.” “That asshole isn’t your father.” He could feel the rage welling back up in his mate, could see it reddening his face. “It’s not even possible. He’s not even a planeswalker. That’s just—” “And if he was my father,” Jacob said slowly, “I guess you’d pretty much hate me.” He swallowed down his fear as he waited for Alex’s response. “Wouldn’t you?” He couldn’t sort out the mass of emotions that welled inside Alex as he asked the question. Instead, he sat in the silence, thinking about how hard Alex had trained to go to Morgana to fight in the war and how disappointed he’d seemed when Jacob told him the war was over. He’d wanted to fight, to be a warrior, to have a hand in Murdock’s destruction. It didn’t seem terribly likely he’d relish being mated to the guy’s however-estranged offspring.

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Strong arms closed around him, pushing his doubts impossibly out of his mind, and he nearly wriggled out of them to ensure that his mate had understood him right. “You know who I am,” he said. “I may hate him, but it’s true. All Morgana vamps were planeswalkers once, before they were turned. And when Murdock was a planeswalker, he and my mom—” “You know, I may not be into women, angel, but I have a pretty good idea of where babies come from.” “Don’t make jokes,” Jacob said, twisting in Alex’s arms. It only made Alex hold him tighter. His head came to rest on Jacob’s shoulder, and his cool cheek rested against Jacob’s burning ear. “I’m telling you, it’s true. He’s my father, and I’m linked to him. And now so are you.” He drew in a shaky breath. “Damn it. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I should’ve said something.” Alex looked at him sternly. “Do you think Danny and Ben told their mates everything about them before they mated? Or Jasper and Lars, for that matter?” Jacob shrugged. “Did they?” “From what I understand, absolutely not. Remember what I told you about how nightmares happen when you repress things? Ben and Danny both had things that upset them, things from their past that they didn’t like to talk about or even think about. That was where those nightmares came from. Or at least that’s what Lars says.” Jacob nodded. Since Lars was a psychologist, there was a good chance he knew what he was talking about. Maybe there was a way out of this mess after all. “So if we talk about it, the nightmares will stop?” “I don’t know. If you really want to stop them, though, there’s a pill you can take that will help. Danny took it for a while, and he said it stopped the nightmares.” Jacob could hear the hesitation in Alex’s voice. “But you don’t think I should take it?”

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“It’s your choice, of course, but no, I don’t.” Alex frowned. “Taking that pill isn’t going to make what’s in your head go away. It’s just going to make you ignore it. And I don’t exactly want someone like Murdock lurking inside your head.” “But what are we supposed to do about it?” Jacob asked, his voice quivering. He was doing his best to hold it together, but all he wanted to do was curl up in a ball and sob. “I don’t know if I can face him again. You saw how he is, and you know how I am. I can’t fight him. I’ve never been able to.” “That was different,” Alex said firmly. “You’re not alone anymore. Whatever happens from now on, I’ll be right there with you, angel. And the next time he comes near you, I’m going to kick his ass,” Alex said then pressed a kiss to the top of Jacob’s head. It sent a warm blush rippling down his body he felt all the way to his toes. “Even if it is just in our dreams.” That did it. The sob that had been caught in Jacob’s throat since he’d woken up escaped as he collapsed against Alex’s hard chest. His arms ran up and down his sides as he kissed the sleep-tangled hair atop Jacob’s head. Finally, the bubble of emotion had burst, and he cried, letting the tears slicken his mate’s chest. Alex only smiled and wiped them away before kissing him square on the mouth. Jacob caught his breath as he pulled away. “Oh, God,” he said. “I love you.” The frank admission after only a few short days sent dread spiking up in his chest. He certainly didn’t expect to hear the words back from Alex yet, something he was certain would only send him into a fit of however unjustifiable paranoia until he pried the words from his mouth. For a normal, sane person, these things took time. Even having a muscle-bound Adonis for a lover was no excuse for dropping the L word so soon after his mating. “Oh, shit,” he gasped, feeling a fresh wave of tears on the horizon.

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Alex stared down at him, an almost shell-shocked expression on his face. Shit, Jacob thought again, until his mate opened his mouth to speak. “Really?” he asked. “No. Mistake. Forget I said that.” It hardly mattered though, Jacob realized. The force of the emotion he’d felt welling up inside him was so strong it was probably flowing off him like a big, fat psychic mood ring. Alex must have felt it, too, because he quirked a suspicious eyebrow at him. “You know, it’s not like I minded,” he groused. “Really?” Alex’s arms snaked tighter around Jacob, pulling him close until they were lying side by side together. He kissed the soft space behind his ear, and Jacob’s anxiety began to dissipate. It wasn’t the response he’d longed to hear, but for now, it was enough. His mate’s arms around him were all he needed. “Jacob?” Alex asked softly into his ear, just before he’d drifted back to dream. “Mmm?” Jacob murmured sleepily. “Can you say it again?” Jacob smiled. “I love you,” he whispered, and Alex kissed him again, softly and sweetly enough to chase away any lingering fear from the nightmare Jacob had experienced. He let his eyes drift closed again, still thinking of his father and Morgana and the uncertain future that awaited Alex and his brothers and their mates. He’d been trying not to think of it before tonight, but he let his mind linger on it now, thinking that whatever that future held, he could handle it. He trusted fate to guide them. It had brought him to Alex, after all.

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Chapter Six “What will happen to the boys?” “They’ll find their mates. It’s not like something you can help them with.” “I believe in fate.” “I know I didn’t believe it at first, and I know things weren’t easy for a while, but this is fate, you and me…” “I feel them sometimes. The boys. I don’t know if it’s because they’re part planeswalker or because I haven’t let them go and they’ve done the same for me and you—” “God, you boys are really becoming regulars here, aren’t you?” For a moment, Jacob didn’t know if the voice he’d heard was in his head or out of it, and it took him a minute to look up and see the young nurse standing in front of him in the waiting room. “Guess so,” he told the nurse, who smiled sympathetically and wandered off down the hall to the nurses’ station. Jacob sighed as he watched her walk away. Stacy, he remembered from the last time he was here. It was only a few days ago, just before Ben was released. Stacy didn’t know the half of it. After the terrible nightmare last night, when he had drifted back to sleep with his mate, Jacob had a dream, not just about him and Alex or Murdock and Morgana, but about Alex’s brothers and their mates, about Adrianna and Mitchell Craven, about all of it. The dream was one of the kind he’d had before, where he’d wake up once only to find himself still dreaming, still playing out the same scenarios in an endless loop, unsure where the boundaries between sleep and waking

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life began and ended, unsure for however brief a time that they even existed. In his dream, Jacob had woken up at the bottom of Ecstasy Rock alone. He went to the hospital, where he found Mitchell and Adrianna, just as he had when he first came to the Earth plane, only in his dream, they sat up and greeted him. They’d been waiting for him to come and take them to the top of Ecstasy Rock, so Jacob took them and they jumped off. The drop-off was scary, and people were hurt, and as he free-fell through that endless blackness, he was overwhelmed by voices from Morgana, begging him for help. He hit the ground hard, and it hurt, but it was as if that hurt was needed, as if he had to be scarred and injured and finally healed if he wanted to cross that gate. He woke up again, alone, at the foot of the cliff. This time, he went to the hospital again and found Danny and Lars in the room with Lars’s parents. They all went with him to the cliff and jumped. The next time Jacob woke up, he found Ben and Jasper in the hospital. The last time, he found Alex, and the two of them made the terrifying leap together. Before they reached the rocky waters below the cliff, he woke up, thinking of fate. He couldn’t help it. The voices were back, and they were loud as hell as they hammered through his mind. For a few hours, he’d chalked it up to coincidence. All damn morning, those voices yammered at him, but Jacob pushed them, as best he could, to the back of his head. He lay in bed awhile, fooled around with Alex, went downstairs for breakfast, ate, and by that time, was ready to chalk the whole thing up to coincidence. Ben was due out of the hospital today, and Jasper was supposed to be bringing him home any minute. But less than half an hour after Jasper carried his mate upstairs and shut the door behind them, the phone rang and Alex answered it. Adrianna and Mitchell were awake. After ten years, they were awake from what the entire hospital had believed was a stage ten coma. Only they weren’t sluggish, or

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unresponsive, or confused, or even physically weak as one would expect a person awake from a years-long sleep would be. Their bodies had aged ten years since they jumped from Ecstasy Rock, but according to the doctors that were busy running all measure of tests on them, Adrianna and Mitchell seemed as if they’d scarcely rested more than a few hours. It was as if their minds and spirits and bodies hadn’t been resting in the hospital room at all, but had instead been wandering around of their own volition on some secret unknown island. Or another plane, Jacob thought distantly. Or trapped between two of them. Ben and Danny roused him from his thoughts again when they returned with coffee. Jacob took the cup, gratefully, and smiled at his friends. “Everything okay?” Ben asked, taking a seat next to him. “You looked kinda deep in thought.” Jacob nodded. “Yeah, fine.” He glanced at the door to the room where Mitchell and Adrianna were apparently now conscious and talking. Alex, Jasper, and Lars had only recently been granted admittance inside, but for the time being, visits were restricted to immediate family members only. He looked at Ben, and the voices were back again. “…but this is fate, you and me…” Ben raised an eyebrow at him. “Sure you’re okay?” Jacob shook his head. “Sorry. Things get a little…overwhelming sometimes.” He couldn’t stop looking at Ben. It was weird. Usually, when he heard the voices, they came from some faraway place, but these were different. A lot of them were familiar, and some of them seemed like they were coming from his friends, from Alex’s brothers and from Danny and Ben. He could have sworn that last voice was Jasper’s. “Did something happen after you got back from the hospital?” Jacob asked Ben uncertainly. “Ever since you got back, I keep hearing these voices.” He glanced from Ben to Danny. He’d told

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them about the voices before, but it had always been a past condition, something that had happened to him in the past from time to time, not an ongoing trance or hallucination or something. He didn’t want his new friends to think he was some kind of lunatic. “Is this weirding you guys out at all?” Danny smiled. “It would take a lot more than that to weird us out. What kind of voices are you hearing?” Jacob sighed. “A lot of them, but…” He looked at Ben again. “I think one of them is Jasper’s. Did he say anything to you? After you got back from the hospital?” Ben smirked. “Um, Jasper says a lot of things in bed.” Jacob glared at his friend. “Yeah, not exactly what I was talking about. Look, did he say something to you, something about fate?” Ben raised both eyebrows at him. “Yeah. Why?” Jacob shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s like something needed to fall into place or whatever before their parents woke up.” Ben bit his lip. “Jasper had a hard time believing in fate after what happened with his parents. But then, this morning, he said…” “He said he believed. I know. I keep hearing it in my head. It’s like everyone’s there, and there was some kind of puzzle piece, some moment of clarity or whatever that was needed from each of us before things could move forward.” Ben nodded. “There’s something else, too,” he said. “When we were…” He paused a moment, and his face reddened. “Um…earlier? We bit each other again, like we did when we mated, and now look.” He pulled down the bandage on his head, which had covered the deep gouge he’d had in it since the night he and Jacob tried to planeswalk, the night he met a ghost from his past, Dr. Pierson, in his nightmare. Jacob blinked at the place where the wound had been. Yesterday in the hospital, he’d seen it still bleeding through the bandage, but now it was little more than a deep scratch.

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“Jasper felt better, too,” he said. “His arm, where it was hurt from the dream? It’s totally fine now.” Jacob considered this. If Ben was fine, they could try to go back to Morgana. And if Jasper’s mother was awake, she could bring Jasper across the planesgate, too. “So you think we’re going back to Morgana now?” Danny asked. Jacob glanced over at Danny. “I don’t know,” he said. He hadn’t given it much thought since that night he and Ben had tried to make it across the planesgate. It was weird. When he’d come back here, all he’d been focused on was finding a way to fix Morgana, but after meeting Alex, all that had mattered was working out their mating. If he were to go back now, he wasn’t sure how it would play out. Being Murdock’s son, he was still probably on the Most Wanted list of every werewolf on the plane. And even if Ben was able to organize the wolves—a difficult task, given his young age and less-thanformidable size—interspecies harmony had never really worked out on any of the supernatural planes. Even if Ben vouched for him as a friend of the wolves, he would have to deal with the prejudice of other planeswalkers after mating a werewolf. Suddenly, the door to the Cravens’ hospital room swung open, and Jasper peeked his head out of it. He smiled almost sheepishly at Ben. “I never thought I’d say this,” Jasper began, “but do you want to meet my parents?” Ben glanced from Jacob to Danny and back to Jasper. “Only if I can bring my friends with me,” he said with a smirk. Jasper rolled his eyes. “If you must.” Jacob knew well enough that was as much of an invitation as they were going to get out of Jasper, so he and Danny and Ben headed into the hospital room they had all come to know so well since meeting the Craven brothers. The room was different this time, though, from the other times Jacob had visited it. Before, things had been all tension and worry, regret and doubt. Now it was full of hope. Adrianna and Mitchell were alive and well.

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He walked to Alex’s side, and his mate put his arms around him. Jacob sighed, feeling Alex’s strength wash over him as he placed his hands on his mate’s arms and closed his eyes. When he opened them, Adrianna and Mitchell were looking right at him. “So this is Jacob,” Alex said. “And that’s Ben and Danny.” “Way to steal our thunder,” Jasper quipped. “But yeah, that’s the basic idea.” Adrianna looked at Mitchell from where she lay in the hospital bed. She glanced from Alex, to Jasper, to Lars, and then took in each of her sons’ mates. Jacob knew what she was doing. As a planeswalker, she was more in tune with fate than Mitchell was and could sense its force in other people. She wanted to be sure her sons had made the right choices. Adrianna smiled. “All right,” she said. “I approve. Mitchell?” Mitchell looked around the room. “Is it my imagination, or has our family somehow doubled in size?” Danny squeezed Lars’s hand and smiled. “It’s not your imagination,” he said. “And for the record? It’s a really good family.” “I like him,” Mitchell said, turning to Lars. “Good kid, that one.” Lars smiled, leaning against the windowsill that Danny had hopped up on to take a seat. “Thanks.” Mitchell glanced at Adrianna, but her eyes were fixed on Jacob’s. He shuffled his feet, squirming under Alex’s careful hold of him, unsure what her penetrating gaze was capable of discerning. Finally, she spoke. “I know you,” she said. Jacob choked down a dry swallow. Most of the planeswalkers on Morgana knew him, thanks to his infamous father. If Adrianna had ever seen Jacob on Morgana, she would have been much younger then, having spent the intervening years on the Earth plane, but for Jacob it would have only been a matter of months. If she recognized him now, however vaguely, she would figure out who he was soon enough.

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“Jacob Walker,” he said, finally. He glanced around the room at Jasper and Ben, at Lars and Danny. He and Alex hadn’t exactly shared the secret of his parentage with his brothers, unsure how they would take it, but it didn’t seem like it would be able to remain a secret for long. He opened his mouth and let it go. “Murdock’s son.” Every pair of eyes in the room flew to Jacob, and he felt his face redden and his body shrink into Alex’s protective touch as they did. He closed his eyes, not wanting to look at his friends or their mates or Adrianna and Mitchell, not sure what he’d see in those gazes he felt burning against his skin. “He didn’t tell you because he didn’t know how you’d react,” Alex said. “And for the record—” “For the record,” Adrianna broke in, “Jacob is as good as Murdock is bad. So if any of you are harboring any doubts about his loyalty, you can get rid of them right now. I’ve had dreams about him, ten years’ worth. Whatever his father is, there is nothing of that inside him. None of the bad stuff, anyhow.” She looked right at Jacob, and he dragged his eyes up to meet hers. She smiled, and he felt better. “You shine like a beacon in the darkness, angel.” Jacob cocked his head at her. “That’s what Alex calls me. Angel. How’d you know?” “I didn’t. It just suits you.” She continued to look at Jacob. There was still warmth in her eyes, but she chewed thoughtfully on her lip and worried her hands in the thin blanket that covered her, plucking at a loose thread. When she looked back up at Jacob, her expression was serious. “Have you been here long?” The tone of her voice was amiable, but Jacob sensed the meaning behind it. “About a week,” he said. “The war’s over back there.” Adrianna’s eyes widened at this, but she said nothing. Mitchell turned his head to his mate, and the tension that hung between them in that moment was almost palpable. “Is that so?” he asked quietly, more quietly than Jacob would have expected from the large and intimidating werewolf.

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Something about the way Mitchell looked in that moment reminded him of the way Alex had looked when he heard the same news. Certainly the older wolf’s reaction was more subdued, and he kept his focus, almost neurotically, on his mate, as if focusing on her would keep him from leaping up, eyes flashing yellow, fangs cutting gums, like Alex had. Like Mitchell probably wanted to do. Jacob recognized the look on his face, all right. It was the guilty, hurting anguish of a warrior who’d been sidelined during the fight. Finally, Mitchell looked up at Jacob, lifting his chin and straightening his back. “How’d we do?” “Murdock’s dead,” he said, “but…” “But?” Mitchell’s word hovered in the air while Jacob took a breath and started in, once again, on the story that had become so familiar to all of them. He told Mitchell and Adrianna about the vampires who had killed Murdock, about the interspecies fighting in the wake of the war, and the voices that led Jacob through the planesgate and onto Earth, looking for a leader. About Ben, and the hopes Jacob had for the young king. About how those hopes were thwarted when they failed to make it across the planesgate. About Danny and Ben and the way their nightmares seemed to bind them to people who they were once close to, people who had died and in their death were trapped on a dark plane behind a red door, a door that was created out of the strength of their hurt and confused feelings for those dead but not forgotten. And about how, in Jacob’s case, that meant the most powerful and dangerous being who had ever existed in Morgana. Murdock. Jacob wasn’t sure how much his mate would want the others to know, so he chose carefully the information he gave them about he and Alex’s nightmare with Murdock and the Red Plane. As he explained it, Ben stared at him thoughtfully, leaning back in the plastic chair he sat in. “The way you said things are in Morgana, with

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everyone still upset from the war and fighting…You said it was like Murdock never died.” Jacob nodded. “He was all we knew for so long. He was a monster, but he was everywhere. Everything was about Murdock, not just for the vamps, but for all of us. No matter how much you hated him, there was no escape. I think that’s why he can control all those people on the Red Plane, even the werewolves and revolutionaries who hated him. They look just like everyone did on Morgana, just sort of sleepwalking through life, under some kind of horrible trance or something. They don’t seem to care that the war ended because they’re still so obsessed with Murdock. It’s like no one can let him go.” The words no sooner left his mouth than he suddenly understood what Ben was getting at. He looked over to where Ben was seated next to Jasper, and Ben nodded and glanced toward the window at Danny. Danny looked from Jacob to Ben then shoved his hands deep in his jacket pockets and dropped his eyes to where his sneakers dangled off the windowsill. He kicked one black Converse against the wall, woefully. “Shit,” Danny sighed. Ben nodded. “Yeah. Exactly.” Jacob felt Alex’s hands brush across his hair and stroke the side of his face, and he angled his head up to look at his mate. “Did I just miss something there, or did you guys just have a whole conversation without moving your mouths?” “I told you that secret handshake was bad news,” Jasper muttered. Ben gave his mate a warning look before turning to Alex. “I was screwed up because I couldn’t let go of Pierson. Danny was screwed up because he couldn’t let go of Thomas.” “Jacob’s not screwed up, if that’s what you’re implying,” Alex broke in. There was a low growl in his voice.

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“It’s not,” Danny finished. “What he means is that all of Morgana is screwed up, like Jacob said. They’re sick and distrustful, and they won’t stop fighting. Probably because they can’t let go of Murdock.” Alex looked down at Jacob, uncertainly. “Not sure I’m following you guys, angel.” Jacob bit his lip, forcing his eyes to meet his mate’s. “You said that when Danny and Ben had nightmares, the people they were afraid of were behind red doors. Murdock called the place the Red Plane. It’s more than just a place in my mind because of how I am. I can’t keep people’s thoughts or feelings out of my head. Maybe it works the other way, too. Maybe my dreams are shared with other people, other species on Morgana. Like a gathering place that everyone on the plane is sort of drawn to.” Jacob drew out a long, shuddering sigh. “If that’s what’s going on, they’re fucked, because Murdock’s in there, too, and I don’t know how to keep him from hurting them.” The room was silent for a moment, and Jacob felt the weight of that silence pressing down against him from all angles. It had been bad enough knowing that his unguarded, oversensitive mind had made Alex vulnerable to Murdock’s abuse. Now he had to deal with knowing he’d exposed all of Morgana to his father’s psychic influence. Tears welled in his eyes, and he fought to keep his breath steady. It was a losing battle. He could feel his thin frame heaving against Alex’s strong chest, and soon his mate’s hands closed around his shoulders. “So it’ll never end,” he said. “No matter what, he’ll still be there, and it’ll be my fault because I can never get rid of him.” “That’s bullshit,” Danny said. “I dealt with Thomas, and Ben dealt with Pierson—” “I’m not like you guys,” Jacob said firmly. “I can’t get past things, and I can’t keep things out. Do you know how I even knew to come to the Earth plane? To find you guys?” He turned to Ben. “Step up on the ladder, Ben. You have to go now. Mommy and Daddy would have

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wanted you to be safe. No, I can’t go with you. I can’t go to Earth. Step up on the ladder, Ben—” “What is that?” Ben stared at Jacob, his brow worried, his face pale. “Where’d you hear that?” “It’s your memory,” Jacob said. “Someone said it to you ten years ago. You don’t even remember it, and I can’t get it out of my head. Along with everything else that’s in there. If I could be different, if I could let go of this stuff, I would, but I can’t. I can’t fix it, and I can’t control it.” “Why should you?” Adrianna broke in. Jacob looked at her, her face watery through the tears in his eyes. He wiped them and saw the sad, sweet smile on her face. “You might not be like other planeswalkers, but that doesn’t mean the way you are is wrong. It’s not meant to be controlled. It’s fate.” Her eyes drifted from Jacob to where Mitchell lay next to her. He gave her a slight shrug and a smile, and she glanced around the room, looking at everyone in turn. “I think it’s time we told you boys what we think happened to us.” Alex’s hands tensed on Jacob’s shoulders, and Jacob laid his hand over one of them, entwining his fingers in his mate’s. He felt those fingers relax a little as Mitchell sat up and began to tell the story. “The doctors said that when we came to the hospital, Adrianna was badly hurt, head trauma and all that. You’d expect her to be in a coma, but me…” “Superhuman immune system,” Lars said, filling in the blanks. “Exactly.” Mitchell nodded. “Adrianna hit her head on the rocks on Earth, and that loss of consciousness prevented her from going across the planesgate. I was fine, though, so I passed through. Or would have, if my mate hadn’t been stuck here on Earth. Instead of me going through all the way or her being here all the way, fate sort of trapped us between two places at once. Our bodies and minds and spirits were in two places at once, half here, unconscious, and half in the space between the two planes. And we were basically stuck there for ten years.”

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“I don’t mean to burst your bubble, Dad,” Jasper began, “but I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have been able to get across if Mom was stuck here. Seeing as you’re not a planeswalker.” “Normally I would say you boys are right,” Adrianna said. “But there’s something we learned before the war, when the revolution started, things that I think might come into play now.” “Like what?” Alex asked, his voice more worried than Jacob could remember it sounding. “There’s more than one way to cross a planesgate,” Adrianna said. “Planeswalkers are naturally more in tune with fate. A planeswalker can sense where gates are and instinctively cross them. They can even bring someone across the gate with them if that person is physically connected to them when they reach it. Planeswalking is a gift, but it isn’t a quality exclusive to planeswalkers.” “Whoa,” Danny said. “Are you saying anyone can planeswalk?” Adrianna continued. “It’s more like a skill that can be developed, or that you can possess. Like any other skill, it comes easier to some people than others. If your mind is open enough, if you’re willing to surrender yourself to something outside yourself, if you’re able to put your life in the hands of a force you can’t see, you can get across.” “Well, that’s great, right?” Ben asked. He smiled at Jacob. “It’ll be just like you said before. Look, I don’t know how I feel about being king of anything, but if it’ll help Morgana, I’ll do it. I’ll go, and I’ll help get the wolves in line.” He glanced shyly around the room. “I mean, hell if I know how, I’m sure we can figure something out, especially if Mitchell’s there to convince the other wolves. We’ll all go together. God, it’ll be a million times better than last time because no one will get left behind.” Hope surged in Jacob’s chest, but something stopped it, a slow, creeping feeling of doubt, edging into his mind from somewhere outside his own body. He glanced up at Alex, and his face was a tight mask of lines. “And what if we’re not open?” he asked. “I mean, what

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if we can’t surrender ourselves like that? What happens then? Can we even go across then?” Jacob recalled the night that he had tried to bring Ben across. Alex had caught him in midair as he fell off the cliff, wrapping his arms around him. That physical contact should have been enough to get them both across the gate, but it didn’t. Jacob knew well enough what Alex was thinking now. Alex thought it was his fault they didn’t make it across. For years, he had believed in fate, in Morgana, in the possibility of other planes, and in his parents’ stories. It was one thing to believe, though. That carefully cultivated fairy tale had been fine for Alex as long as he was in control of it. To trust in another force to guide him, to surrender himself completely to it, probably seemed more than scary to Jacob’s mate. It must have seemed damn near impossible. Before Adrianna could answer his question, Jasper leaned back in his chair and gave Alex the eye. “You know, for someone who had as much faith as you did in this stuff for the past ten years running, you are really being a hell of a worrywart. Has anyone ever told you it might be in your best interest to just chill out for like five seconds?” “Just you,” Alex replied stiffly. “He said, his voice laced with worry over whatever the hell he’d found to worry about…” Jacob didn’t have to wonder. It was as much in his mate’s nature to be closed-off and in control as it was in Jacob’s to surrender himself to the whims of the universe. And Jacob didn’t know whether either one of them could change. **** “So,” Adrianna said, gesturing with her hand as far as the IV sticking out of it would let her, “tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself for the last ten years.”

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Alex could hardly stand to look at her. Even that flippant gesture of her wrist, exacted so easily, so casually after a decade of lying limp on the hospital bed, was overwhelming. The swarm of doctors and nurses that were still regularly filtering in and out of the room had taken his dad for tests just as he’d arrived in the room, leaving him alone with his mother. He loved her, of course, just as much as Mitchell. It was just that it was easier with his dad, especially during such a strange and surreal moment. His dad was the easygoing one, the joker, but his mom, like Jacob, had her moments of overwhelming emotionalism. The older Alex had gotten, the more uncomfortable those moments had made him, and the more he had avoided her. Was still avoiding her, he corrected himself, staring at the wall ahead of her, saying nothing. “You know, your brothers were a lot more talkative.” Alex sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. His brothers had hardly expected this day to come. Alex had imagined this moment so many times that a week ago, he could have recited the whole thing word for word, every line of dialogue in their joyful reunion. A week ago, though, it was just a fantasy. Now it was real. It wasn’t playing out like he expected. “Your brothers also had the good manners to at least introduce me to their mates.” “I introduced you and Dad to Jacob already.” “So that’s the last we’ll see of him then?” she asked. “You think I don’t want to spend any more time with your mate? He doesn’t like us?” On the contrary, Alex had the distinct impression that his mother adored Jacob, and he knew Jacob loved his parents, especially Adrianna. Unfortunately, he was still shaken up after what he’d learned the last time they were in the hospital together. In the days that had followed that first strange meeting, Alex had done his best to

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keep Jacob’s mind off of it. It had been relatively easy. They had spent most of those days in Alex’s bedroom. Of course, Alex thought, glancing back down at his mother, there had been other reasons he’d been avoiding the hospital, too, reasons that made him less than eager to come back today. In light of those reasons, he’d determined it was almost certainly best not to bring his mate along in case things got tense between him and Adrianna. And they likely would, considering what he had to say. “Why didn’t you tell us we could planeswalk?” Adrianna’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, and she lay still for a moment, the soft lines on her face deepening as if she were trying to find the words to answer him. “And don’t say I didn’t ask,” Alex added. “I must have asked you and Dad a thousand different questions about this stuff when we were kids, and still you didn’t—” “You weren’t ready,” she stated, cutting him off. “We weren’t ready, all of us weren’t ready, or I wasn’t ready?” Adrianna’s lips thinned, and the silence hung in the air around them like a leaden fog. Well, that answered that question, Alex thought. His mother’s revelation in the hospital room yesterday must have seemed like a miracle for his brothers and his mates, who were relieved to know that finally, everyone could return to the supernatural plane and that no one would be left behind. Alex hadn’t bothered to correct them on that point, but he’d caught the look in his mother’s eye when she’d said it. She looked right at him. She knew all too well what he was like. Briefly, his nightmare from the other night washed over him, and he shuddered at the feelings of helplessness and vulnerability, so unfamiliar and unwelcome. It would have been a bad dream for anyone, but God, it had chafed him to feel so exposed like that. Even afterward, when he had tried to reassure Jacob that he wasn’t upset with him, that he couldn’t have hurt him if he tried, the words had sounded hollow and meaningless. He cared about Jacob, so much it

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hurt, but he didn’t know how to cope with the changes their mating had brought. Worse, he didn’t know if he could. Anyone can walk through a planesgate, his mother had said, as long as you have the right state of mind, but Alex knew he never would. He could still remember grabbing Jacob on his fall off Ecstasy Rock. In Alex’s arms, Jacob hit the rocks, but if the planesgate was as open as he seemed to think it was, they both should have fallen right through. He’d wondered about that at the time, but he knew why now. He couldn’t go through because he didn’t have the right frame of mind necessary to do it. The way Jacob was, the way his mother was, they were about as opposite Alex as people could get. He couldn’t be like them if he tried. He just wasn’t wired that way. His mother gestured to him. “Come here,” she said, waving that same bandaged hand to Alex and nodding at the chair he hadn’t yet seated himself in. Alex shuffled toward it. His feet seemed to stick on the floor on the way across the room, but he made it over and took a seat, so close to the hospital bed he could reach over and touch the hand that IV needle disappeared into. Instead, he shoved his hands deep in his pockets. Adrianna rested a hand on his elbow, and he raised his eyes to meet hers. She gave him the same knowing look she’d bestowed on him a hundred times as a kid, the one so simultaneously full of tenderness and reproach it almost seemed to scream, I still love you, idiot. Now get over yourself. He hadn’t seen it in so long it almost brought tears to his eyes. Almost. He fought them down. “You’re not fooling anyone with this act, you know.” “What act?” “That you’re some kind of black sheep or something. That you don’t belong in this family or you aren’t pulling your weight or whatever it is you think of yourself. It’s not true. I’ve heard stories from your brothers. I know what you’ve been up to all these years.”

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“Right,” Alex said sarcastically. “A whole lot of nothing. Some fucking accomplishment. I’m sure you guys are really proud.” Adrianna swatted him. “Watch your mouth.” He rolled his eyes in lieu of protest. When he did, she smiled. “And we are.” All the rush of emotion that had crept into him during his mating, or, more precisely, that his mating had opened up inside him, began to flood his senses once again, making him feel shaky and uncertain and scared. “Why?” he asked. His voice sounded small, like a child’s. “For one thing, you held this family together. Your brothers may give you a hard time, but they look up to you. They always have.” “They think I’m an idiot. And a weirdo.” “They don’t think either.” Her eye twinkled, and her lips curved a bit. “Well. Jasper might think you’re a little weird.” Alex heaved out a sigh, but she squeezed his arm as she continued. “But you’re strong. And you’re determined. And you can be stubborn as hell about having your way—” “I know,” he said, cutting her off. “I’ve heard it a million times before.” He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it since his mating and the nightmare that followed it. It was exactly why he feared now that he wouldn’t be able to planeswalk. “Jasper and Lars lost their faith when we jumped. You didn’t. You held this family together. Lars told me things never would have worked out with Danny if you hadn’t been there to talk to him. And Jasper said if it wasn’t for you, he never would have cleaned himself up and gotten his act together long enough to even find Ben.” “Jasper said that?” Adrianna nodded slowly. The expression on her face was dead serious. “You kept your faith in us when everything in the world suggested it was wrong to do so. That takes an openness that you may not believe in, but I do. Your faith is what kept us around. You remember what Lars said, about the red doors? How Danny and Ben

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kept those people around after they died, just because they wouldn’t let them go?” Alex nodded, his voice tight. “I couldn’t let you go. I couldn’t let any of it go, not after I’d spent so much time—” “Thank you,” Adrianna said softly. She moved her hand to take his. This time he didn’t fight it. She squeezed it tight. “When I hurt myself on the rock, I stayed alive. Against all odds, something was keeping me here, keeping me going. Knowing what I know now, I wonder if it wasn’t your belief that Mitchell and I would be okay. I don’t even think we’d be here now if it wasn’t for you. You saved us, sweetheart, just by being who you are.” Alex bit his lip. It was as if the weight of the entire world had fallen off his shoulders. All he’d ever wanted, all he’d ever hoped for with his training and his single-minded determination, was to be of some use. To be needed. To have a purpose. It didn’t make a damn bit of difference whether that purpose was served fighting vamps on Morgana or helping his family find their way back to each other. Or being with Jacob, for that matter. “So,” his mother said, clearing the emotion from her throat with a single, forceful cough. Alex gently let go of her hand, and she smiled as she wiped her eyes. “You mated a planeswalker, huh?” Alex raised an eyebrow at her. “How’d you know I was thinking about him?” “Don’t know. Maybe because you have that stupid smile on your face you got every time you looked at him.” Alex didn’t exactly delight in how easily his mother had read his expression, but there was something almost thrilling about the extent to which his mate affected him. He might not have a mating bite to show for it, but he’d sure as hell been marked. “He seems sweet,” Adrianna said. Then her mouth widened in a smile again. “God, you guys really like ’em young, don’t you?” “Mom!” Alex said, his face burning with embarrassment.

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Adrianna laughed, the sound ringing through the room. Alex had to admit, it felt good to hear it after all the tense hours he’d spent in there over the years. Still, though. There were some things he didn’t care to joke with his parents about. “Okay, okay,” she managed, finally calming down. “You had to let me get that one in. You know the head nurse keeps referring to them as your cabana boys, right?” “I’m well aware of that fact,” Alex said. A knock came at the door, and Stacy, one of the younger nurses on the floor, peeked her head in the door. She smiled shyly at Alex. “Five minutes, Mr. Craven. Then we’ll need your mother for more tests.” Alex nodded, and the nurse smiled again and disappeared. When the door clicked shut, his mother glanced at him helplessly. “They’re relentless with those tests, you know. And don’t think I don’t know we wouldn’t have every news crew in the state in here if Jasper wasn’t off barking at them.” “I know,” Alex admitted. In addition to the army of medical professionals parading in and out of the room since his parents had awoken from their ten years’ sleep with miraculously few mental or physical side effects—or more precisely, no side effects at all—there had been a swarm of reporters to deal with. Jasper had volunteered his sharp tongue and sizable bankroll to keep them at bay, but there had been precious little peace for his parents in the days since their nowinfamous recovery. “You know, it’s going to be hell getting out of here anytime in the next decade. I don’t even think fate itself will be able to tear the hospital staff away from us and sneak us through that mob outside when it’s time to go back through the planesgate. At least not without a little help.” She glanced at the door suspiciously. “How well would you say you boys know that Nurse Betty?”

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“Actually,” Alex said, a bemused smirk creeping into his tone as he recalled the things Betty had revealed during their last conversation. “I would say she knows Jasper pretty well.” Adrianna raised an eyebrow at him. “Do I want to know?” “Probably not. But I’m sure when the time comes, he can be of help.” Alex stiffened a little as he considered the implications of his euphemism. When the time comes. He glanced at his mother again. “Do you really think I can make it through? I mean, last time we tried…” The intensity of the look Adrianna gave Alex stopped him midsentence. “I think you know as well as I do just how unbelievably headstrong you are.” Alex bit his lip, nodding. He knew, all right. He also knew that stubbornness probably wasn’t a quality that would allow him to open his mind up and let his body be transported to another reality. “Which means,” Adrianna continued, her insistent tone cutting through Alex’s thoughts, “once you make your mind up to do something? Anything is possible.”

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Chapter Seven Alex sat cross-legged on his bed, his palms resting flat against Jacob’s, trying to channel the psychic energy of the universe. God help him, the things he did for love. Love? He’d been trying his level best to even out his breathing, as Jacob had instructed him to do, but that thought stopped him. He kept thinking about that night that Jacob had said it to him, but as much as it thrilled him to be loved by his mate, he couldn’t bring himself to say the words back to him. Certainly Alex felt something—a lot of something—for his mate, but whether or not it was love was another matter altogether. As much as he wanted it, the weird, ephemeral feeling was too intangible to pinpoint. And with how dense Alex was, he doubted he’d recognize love if it leaned over and smacked him. “Ow!” Alex was jarred out of his thoughts when Jacob leaned over and smacked him. Opening his eyes, he jerked his hands away from his mate’s. “What the hell was that for?” “I told you to stop judging every thought that passes through your head as good or bad. You know this is never going to work if you don’t listen to me. And sit up.” “Okay, okay, sorry!” Alex protested, trying his damndest to stack the vertebrae in his back. He didn’t know what the hell that meant, but from what Jacob had told him, he gathered it had something to do with not slouching. In a demented, New Age, touchy-feely sort of way, he mentally added, remembering the utter solemnity with which

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Jacob had attempted to guide him through breathing exercises. Alex snorted. Breathing exercises. Like he really needed to practice that. “Ow!” he shouted as Jacob slapped him again. “Look, I’m really trying not to judge this stuff.” “Really?” Jacob asked. “Really,” Alex promised. “If this is what works for you, I trust you.” “Well,” Jacob said, clearing his throat. “I mean, I never said exactly that it worked for me. I just sort of do it naturally.” “Yeah, but you’ve done this stuff before, right? I mean, I practice shifting, and you practice…stacking your vertebrae. Or whatever. Right?” Alex asked, waiting for reassurance from his mate. Jacob, however, had suddenly gone very quiet. “Right?” “Um…” Alex narrowed his eyes at Jacob. “Where did you get all this stuff you’ve been telling me?” “WikiHow?” Alex raised an eyebrow at Jacob, whose quickly reddening face was turned determinedly toward the comforter. He hadn’t exactly checked into it himself, but he had a sneaking suspicion there wasn’t a Wikipedia page on how to better condition oneself for planeswalking. “On what?” Alex asked. Jacob smirked as if at a private joke. “Rather not say.” “WikiHow on what?” The smirk widened into a grin. “Astral projection?” “Oh, you are so dead.” Jacob laughed and shrieked as Alex grabbed him with both hands and flipped him over onto the bed, pinning him down before he could squirm away. “Okay, okay! Give!” “Nope. Too late, angel,” Alex said, lowering himself over Jacob. He ran a hand experimentally down his back, and Jacob shivered. Christ, even the small shudder of his mate under him was getting him hard. “I’ve got you right where I want you.”

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His hand settled on his mate’s hip, shoving down the waistband of his pajama bottoms. His thumb traced small circles around the soft skin there before tracing a line sideways until he reached the very top of his ass crease, that tiny dimple just above the place where his cheeks parted. Stroking it, he drew a needy moan from Jacob. “Well, then,” he said in a low, breathy voice, “I guess you’re just going to have to punish me.” Abruptly, Alex brought his ministrations to a halt. He smiled apologetically at his mate as he crawled off of him. Just what the hell was wrong with him anyway? Here the poor kid told him he loved him, and the only thing he rewarded him with in return was a rockhard erection every time he contemplated whipping his ass. “Sorry,” Alex said. “That was stupid.” Jacob gave him a warning look. “Sex with me is stupid?” he muttered. “You really know how to stroke a guy’s ego.” Alex growled. It wasn’t like he didn’t want to be stroking a whole hell of a lot more than that. “That wasn’t what I meant.” “Well, then what did you mean?” Jacob said, sitting up. As soon as Alex opened his mouth to answer, Jacob put up a hand to stop him. “And don’t tell me you’re still hung up on this BDSM stuff, because I’m pretty damn sure the last time you took me over your knee, I came all over your lap.” And licked it off afterward, Alex mentally added, his cock pulsing at the very thought. Go away, erection. He fairly shouted the command at his cock, but it wasn’t listening. The memory of Jacob kneeling between his knees and lapping his own cum off Alex’s thighs was too tempting a distraction. As if conspiring against his willpower, Jacob crawled into Alex’s lap and took his head in his hands. “How many times do I have to tell you I like the way you are?” he said. Alex shook his head. If Jacob liked him now, it was only because he’d kept the worst of his desires from him. “You might think that

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now, but I kind of doubt you’ll feel the same way when I have you on your knees with a ring around your cock and clamps on your nipples.” “Are you trying to turn me off right now? Because I have to say, it really isn’t working.” Alex growled with frustration, but Jacob continued. “We were made for each other, remember? If there’s something you want, that’s what I want to give you.” “You don’t know what you want,” Alex muttered. Jacob’s face crumpled with hurt. “Thanks a lot.” “No,” Alex protested, pulling his mate back as he tried to crawl away from him. “That’s not what I meant. Remember our nightmare? How you ran at me into that crowd of vampires? You’d do anything for me, even if it hurt you to do it. And that worries me.” “Do you honestly think you could hurt me?” Alex didn’t, but it didn’t make him feel like any less of an insensitive, demanding brute. “Have you ever hurt anyone doing this?” Alex sighed. “No, but that’s not the point.” “What is the point?” “That it’s not…” A thousand words flashed through his head. Normal. Natural. Decent. Fair. “Nice,” he finally settled on. Jacob smirked, wrapping his arms around Alex’s neck. “Oh, and that’s exactly how I want to be fucked. Nicely. God, give it to me, baby. Oh, yes. Right there. That’s…nice.” “I respect you,” Alex said, utterly unamused at Jacob’s sarcasm. “Look, I know we’re different, and I know I joke around, but I do. All this shit you can do, it’s amazing. And when you respect someone, you don’t tie him up and spank him.” “Says who? Jerry Falwell?” Alex stared blankly at Jacob. “How do you know who Jerry Falwell is?” “We get some of the same TV stations on Morgana,” Jacob said. Then he wrinkled his nose. “The sermons don’t really translate,

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though. I mean, pretty much everyone’s gay there, so most people just think he’s doing stand-up comedy or something.” “I have to go to Morgana,” Alex muttered under his breath. “And you will,” Jacob said. “Just as soon as you stop thinking of everything exactly the way it’s laid out in that stubborn head of yours.” Alex sighed. He knew Jacob had meant it as encouragement, but Alex doubted his mate had considered just what a monumental feat he was asking of him. With Alex, everything had always had to be his way. He’d been a stubborn kid and a willful teenager, but things had gotten much worse after his parents’ accident. Even though his younger brothers were adults when it happened, he couldn’t stop feeling like his older age and bigger body left him responsible for making sure no one in his family got hurt again. It wasn’t a bad impulse, but that unflinching need for control had become like a bit of a drug for him as he dealt with his parents’ unending sleep. It was probably what had drawn him to the Dom lifestyle in the first place. Only now, they were awake, and he needed to find a way to ease that ironclad grip he had on his life. He had to give himself over to something outside himself if he wanted to make it across the planesgate. Or someone. Jacob remained curled in his lap, stroking one slow index finger over his eyebrow. Alex closed his eyes, and Jacob’s finger traced a path down the side of his face to his bottom lip. He rubbed his fingertip against it, and Alex opened his mouth, almost willing it to push inside. In all the times they’d fucked—and there had been quite a few, given how short a time they’d known each other—Alex had set the pace, guiding Jacob’s movements, telling him what to do. He’d stopped himself short of any kind of bondage or discipline, but there was still an undeniable power dynamic at play. The way Jacob touched him now, letting his hands wander at will, exploring and

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testing his body to gauge his reactions, was different from what Alex was used to, but no less erotic. Slowly, deliberately, he sucked Jacob’s finger into his mouth, stroking his tongue over it. Rather than pushing the finger further inside him, Jacob pulled away, raising a curious eyebrow at him. “Say I did,” he said, his voice a little breathless, “want to…experiment.” Alex had intended for the word to refer to playing with BDSM, but the fresh memory of Jacob’s finger as it started for a bare second, to fuck his mouth lent a somewhat different meaning to the euphemism. “I mean, you know I wouldn’t expect you to submit to me outside the bedroom or act like a slave or anything?” “Of course not.” “And you wouldn’t think I was a total weirdo for wanting to dominate you?” Jacob rolled his eyes at the question. “Would you think I was weird for wanting to submit to you?” Alex snorted. Obviously not, he thought, but he had to be sure. “And you wouldn’t feel degraded or abused or anything?” “Sweetheart,” Jacob said, the frustration in his voice almost lending it a dominant tone, “the only thing I would feel is sexy as fuck.” The combination of the endearment and Jacob’s uncharacteristically coarse language was enough to draw a smile to Alex’s face. He didn’t think he’d ever deign to let anyone call him sweetheart before, but coming from Jacob, all it did was get him hard. He’d never quite heard his little mate speak to him so sternly before, but damn if that almost exasperated tone didn’t manage to finally hammer the point through Alex’s head. There wasn’t anything demeaning about letting someone else take charge. In fact, Alex thought, recalling once again the feel of Jacob’s soft hands roving his body and his fingers sliding into his mouth, given the right circumstances, he wondered if it couldn’t be kind of hot. “Kiss me,” Alex said.

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Jacob smirked. “Is that an order?” Alex shook his head. “It’s…” A request, he’d meant to say, but before he could, Jacob’s hand dropped to his lap to touch his cock through the thin fabric of his cotton pants. He grazed his fingers over it teasingly, and suddenly the idea of begging didn’t seem so out of the question. “Any way you want, just kiss me.” He swallowed as Jacob’s fingers slipped under his waistband. “Please?” he asked. Alex met Jacob’s eyes as he studied him. There was hesitation in his eyes, but there was desire there as well. “I told you, I like it when you take control. You don’t have to be ashamed to want that.” “I’m not,” Alex said, but when Jacob gave him a questioning look, he recanted. “Okay, maybe I am a little, or was, but I think I’m starting to understand now. It’s like you said, I need to open up and stop judging things. So I’m trying.” He took a breath. “And part of that is understanding other viewpoints outside of my own. I thought maybe if I didn’t always need to control you, I could understand what you liked about letting go.” Jacob gave him a questioning look. “So what are you saying?” he asked. His fingers had halted in their movements and stayed splayed just under the band of Alex’s pajama pants. There was only a fraction of an inch between those soft fingertips and Alex’s cocktip. Goddamn, he wanted Jacob to close that distance. “I want…” Alex began, and then a flush rose to his cheeks when he realized how he intended to end that sentence. He wasn’t sure if that flush was from embarrassment or excitement. Maybe both. “I want you to play with me for a while,” he finished. Jacob smiled. “Yeah?” “Are you going to make me beg for it?” He smiled knowingly at Jacob. He doubted his mate would let things go that far, but he was willing to push him. “Because I will.” Alex cleared his throat. Suddenly it had gotten very dry, and the end of his thought came out in a whisper. “If you want me to, I will. I’d do anything for you, angel.”

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That seemed to settle it. In one delicate motion, Jacob brought his fingers up to Alex’s mouth again, grazing them against his bottom lip at first, but then pressing them all the way inside his mouth this time. Alex opened his mouth wide to allow the intrusion, lapping at the two slender digits until they began to rub against his tongue of their own volition. In and out, he pushed against Alex’s mouth, his eyes locked on Alex’s the whole time. Those green orbs were big and curious as he explored, and they continued to watch him as he pulled them out, stroking them across his teeth and gums and letting Alex kiss his fingertips. He licked his lips as they withdrew, missing the invasion until Jacob replaced them with his mouth. They kissed, hungrily, greedily, nipping lips and sucking tongues as both men fumbled at each other’s clothes to pull them off. Jacob yanked Alex’s T-shirt roughly over his head, moving so quickly that his head stuck in the collar and his arms tangled in the sleeves. Giggling, he slowed his motions, using more care as he freed Alex from the soft cotton prison. When he’d gotten it off, they lay down on the bed together. Alex had already managed to strip Jacob of his shirt and pants, and he ran a hand down Jacob’s smooth chest to tease the tip of his hard prick. He closed his eyes as Jacob, too, began to touch him in turn, stroking one wet finger over his pebbled nipple. His breath hitched as he widened his motions over Jacob’s cockhead, reaching lower to tease his balls. Almost reverently, Jacob kissed the bulging muscle of his bicep, and Alex smiled, delighting in the pleasure his mate took in his body. Uncertainty flooded him when Jacob took hold of his arm, lifting it above Alex’s head, but any reservations were silenced as he bent his head to the soft skin under his arm and began to lick and suck at it. “God, angel,” Alex breathed as Jacob pinched his nipple. He’d never had the patience before for this kind of slow, building tease, and now he knew why. His mate had hardly even palmed his cock and he was already grinding against his leg to try and rub off an orgasm.

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Impatiently, he reached down and pulled off his pants. As soon as they were off, Jacob replaced his mouth on Alex’s chest and smiled against it as he started to kiss a line down his body. Alex’s hands played in his hair, but he let Jacob take his time getting down there, letting him kiss and lick along the ridges of his stomach and run his hands up and down the fronts of his thighs. He licked the line that divided the muscle plane of his abdomen and sighed against it happily. In all the time he’d spent training and developing his body, he’d never given a thought to what it would do for his sex life. If he’d known the worshipful way those muscles would someday make his mate look at him, he probably would have only redoubled his efforts. “Can I just lick you forever?” Jacob murmured against his skin. “If you want,” Alex said, his voice strained. Good as it sounded, he didn’t know how he could possibly last that long. Luckily, Jacob took that as his cue to suck Alex’s painfully hard erection into his mouth. Alex moaned, spreading his legs wide as Jacob’s head bobbed up and down between them. The rhythm he set was faster than before, his touch firmer, and the sudden contrast had Alex biting his tongue to stave off his orgasm. He rippled his fingers through Jacob’s hair, pressed them into his own thighs, and then dug them into the bedsheets. The building pressure overwhelmed him so fast he didn’t realize his claws had pushed through his fingertips until he heard those claws rip through the cotton sheets underneath him. His eyes flew open, and Jacob’s head snapped up, releasing his cock with a pop as they both stared at the long tears Alex’s claws had made in the sheets from clutching them so hard. “Damn,” Jacob breathed between gasps. “Yeah,” Alex agreed. They both laughed, but when Jacob moved his hand back to Alex’s wet cock, his eyes trailed helplessly back between his legs and his laugh became a groan. With one hand, Jacob groped and tugged at

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his balls while the other pressed the inside of his thigh open. His wet, teasing hand slid underneath his balls to his perineum and lower. When it pressed down firmly against the taut skin of his tight hole, Alex yelped. Jacob’s concerned eyes flew to Alex’s face immediately. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have.” “It’s okay,” Alex said. As much as the touch had surprised him, he didn’t want his mate to think he’d hurt him. And anyway, he figured, it wasn’t like he couldn’t take it. Slowly, he moved his hand down to Jacob’s and closed it over his, guiding his fingers back down to the place they’d found before. Jacob’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as they lingered there together. He looked at Alex as if he’d just been given some private secret Alex had never confessed to anyone. It was true in a way, Alex supposed, but there was something else in those green eyes, too, something resolute and loyal that told Alex he could trust him. Gently, Alex took his hand and urged Jacob’s fingers to press inside him. When he did, Jacob’s mouth fell open and his other hand found his own cock. Alex closed his eyes as Jacob began to move inside his body. His mate’s touch was tentative and careful, but God, he could feel every inch of it. Slowly, he guided Jacob’s wrist back to drag the finger out, wincing and holding his breath. “Does it hurt?” Jacob whispered, his voice quiet and reverent. Alex didn’t want to tell him yes. Instead, he urged Jacob to push back in, so far this time that single slender finger hit a spot inside him he’d never felt before. In an instant, that sharp, burning pain blossomed into pleasure, and Alex cried out, surprising himself at the abandon inside his voice. His hand slipped from Jacob’s wrist, and Jacob pulled out quickly afterward, mistaking his cry of pleasure for one of pain. Needing to feel those fingers inside him again, Alex opened his eyes, and he stopped his mate with a look. “Again,” he panted. “Please.”

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Jacob thrust in again, finding that same spot and causing Alex to move his hips in tandem with Jacob’s movements, swiveling them, bucking against them, eager to find that place inside him that made him feel as if the boundaries of his own body had dissolved into the ether. Jacob was there to pull him blissfully back to earth. His lips found the soft skin at the inside of his thigh and began to suck and nibble at it, lapping all the way up to Alex’s balls before he pressed another finger inside of Alex. In some small, distant part of him, Alex registered the pressure of that extra digit pushing in and stretching his body, but the rest of him was too busy moaning and twisting and clutching the sheets to give a damn. The steady rhythm of Jacob’s movements began to give, and Jacob pulled his mouth away from Alex. “I’m close,” Jacob panted, “I mean, if you want to fuck me…” He took a breath. “We should do that.” He breathed again. “Like right away.” Alex looked down to see that Jacob was still stroking himself, his sweet expression a mask of concentration with closed eyes and a worried brow. Jacob was trying so hard to keep control of his body, but in that moment, Alex would have given him anything he wanted. “Don’t stop,” he said. Jacob continued, hard and fast and reckless, drawing from Alex a loud, long moan that seemed to set off his mate like a firecracker. Alex had never been so wild or so loud as he was today, but God, if his mate wasn’t a screamer. He felt Jacob’s seed paint the insides of his thighs and his fingers curled inside of Alex. “Oh, fuck, angel,” he moaned as his own orgasm started to build again. Panting, Jacob responded by fucking his fingers harder into Alex’s hole, but Alex wanted more, wanted those hands not only inside of but on top of him. He guided Jacob’s hand to cover his cock, and suddenly it was all Jacob, Jacob guiding his movements, Jacob measuring out his pleasure as he writhed and moaned and ground his

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hips into his fingers and hand. The fingers his mate used to stroke his cock were covered in his own cum, sliding up and down his dick through the slick, sticky liquid so fast Alex was surprised they didn’t slide off of him. That same slow-building pressure was engulfing him now, threatening to swallow him, but he didn’t want to let it go. Suddenly, he heard Jacob’s voice in his ear. “Come,” he breathed, the word strained and frantic as if he was still hovering on the edge of his own pleasure rather than having just taken it. “Please come. Just like this. I want to make you feel so good. Please, please, baby. I love you so much. I want to see how happy I make you. Please come for me.” Alex came, hard as he ever had, the milky white liquid spurting all over Jacob’s hand and Alex’s stomach. Jacob bent his head to lick it from him, and Alex moaned as his mate sucked gently around the head of his softening cock, working to lap up every inch. Alex didn’t wait for him to finish. He drew his mate close to him, dragging him up to meet his mouth with his, and kissed him. When he pulled away, Jacob’s cheeks were bright red against his pale white skin, and he was smiling blissfully. “Good?” he asked. Alex looked down at Jacob, resting his head on his chest. He arched an eyebrow at his mate. “Do you really need to ask?” Jacob’s smile widened. “Well…” he began, his voice radiating a confidence Alex had never heard in it before. He liked it. “Well?” Alex teased, bringing Jacob’s hand to his mouth. His fingers were still sticky, and Alex could taste his own cum on them. It tasted salty. He liked Jacob’s better. “Well, I suppose I could assume from certain…” Jacob trailed off as Alex continued to lap and suck the semen off of Jacob’s fingertips. Jacob gave him a look. “That’s my job, you know.” “I don’t care.” Suddenly, Jacob’s expression darkened. “Are you sure you’re okay with this? I was worried at first. You know, after the nightmare? I just didn’t want you to feel like you were…or I was…fuck.” He

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buried his face in the crook of Alex’s shoulder, and Alex ran his fingers between his shoulder blades. “That feels good,” he murmured. Alex continued to stroke that same patch of skin as he considered Jacob’s question. It did seem like the nightmare, that horrible feeling of powerlessness and humiliation he’d felt at being restrained and whipped, might have occurred to him when Jacob had him at his mercy, but it hadn’t. He’d been too focused on pleasure, his and his mate’s, to even give it a passing thought. It was the same with the dream, he realized. He’d been miserable in his restraints, but mostly because of the way they had prevented him from keeping Jacob safe. “I just don’t want you to feel like you had to,” Jacob said. “Not at all,” Alex said, drawing Jacob’s fingers to his mouth again to kiss the nail beds. “Kinda like your fingers in my mouth.” Jacob sighed with apparent relief. “Okay, but the next time you fuck me, I demand that you spank the holy hell out of me.” Alex’s cock was still softening from the monster orgasm he’d just had, but that sure as hell made it wake up and take notice. He moved his mouth close to Jacob’s ear. He wasn’t embarrassed about his desires anymore, but there was something intimate about the idea of sharing his needs with his mate. It made him want to whisper them to him. “Awfully demanding, aren’t we, sub?” He said the word sub softly, almost like an endearment, and he couldn’t help but feel his heart swell at how pleased Jacob seemed with it. Sub, he had called him, and there wasn’t anything wrong with that. Jacob was his, after all. His mate. His sub. His angel. “Sub. I think I’m gonna like that,” Jacob crooned back to him. “Me too,” Alex agreed. “I’m sorry it took me so long to come around to the idea. I just want you to understand, the other guys I’ve been with, that was about control. It was only about control. This…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it, so instead he squeezed Jacob’s hand and pressed it to his lips. “What’s this about?” Jacob asked softly.

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Good question, Alex thought. His heart was pounding, and he could feel his mate’s breath on his chest. He wrapped his arms around him, pulling Jacob as tightly to him as he could, but God, he couldn’t bring himself to say what he knew his mate longed to hear. “It’s okay,” Jacob whispered. “You don’t have to.” He moved his body against Alex’s and turned around to be spooned. Alex thought if he could just see his mate’s trusting emerald eyes, he could find the courage to say it, but they were gone now. There was just the smooth skin of his back pressing against his chest and his rounded ass against his groin. He rested his chin on Jacob’s shoulder, bringing his mouth close to his ear. “I don’t know what I’m doing with you,” he began. “I’ve never even really had a relationship before, so—” “I told you, you don’t have to say it. You’re with me. It’s enough. I still love you,” Jacob said. That last whispered statement dug at the ache in Alex’s stomach, urging him on. “You make me feel things I didn’t think I was capable of feeling. And do things I didn’t think I could do. I don’t even think I was a whole person before I met you, but now…” His breath hitched, stopping his sentence. “You make me feel…” There was so much emotion swelling in his body, he couldn’t begin to sort through it. Unable to put a name to those feelings, he closed his mouth with finality. Jacob might have brought him to a place where he could be more open, but after a lifetime of living in an emotional vacuum, of fucking people he barely knew, of never being in a serious relationship or even on a date with anyone else, what the hell did he know about love? Besides, he was used to living on the Earth plane, not Morgana, like his mate was used to. People didn’t mate here. They got married. Sweeping declarations of love didn’t always seem to mean what Alex thought they ought to. He didn’t want to tell his mate until he was sure. And how the hell could he be sure about something so indefinite and indescribable?

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Coward, an inner voice whispered at him, and he cleared his throat, determined to explain himself. When he opened his mouth, though, his words failed him. He sighed with guilt, but his mate just squeezed his hand and pulled him closer. “I understand,” he said. “This is about something else.” “Yeah,” Alex agreed lamely, cursing himself for his characteristic lack of eloquence. “You know what I’m talking about, right?” “I know,” Jacob whispered. He turned and smiled at Alex, rubbing against him. “You meant sex, right? I mean, judging by the hard-on you’re pushing into my back.” Alex swatted him on the ass, and he laughed. “Okay, now I know it’s about sex.” “I hate you,” Alex said against his ear, but his voice came out soft and caring. “I hate you, too,” his mate replied just as sweetly, “liar.” Alex’s skin heated, and he knew he was blushing. For once in his life, he didn’t give a damn. Jacob had managed to penetrate his soul and mind and now even his body. His mate was knocking at the walls he’d so carefully constructed around his heart and locked himself inside. Alex worried about Jacob pushing past those walls, worried about how he’d feel when he got inside them, scared and naked and vulnerable. He lay there, holding his mate, heart pounding, hands shaking, head spinning, and stomach turning. As much as he worried, though, he didn’t feel weak at all, even as the emotion he’d been circling around hit him with the intensity of a freight train. “Jacob,” he whispered, but his sleeping mate didn’t make a sound or move a muscle. He said it anyway. “I love you.” Still sleeping, Jacob nuzzled closer to Alex’s chest, hugging Alex tighter and making his heart swell with happiness. He held tight to that feeling as sleep overwhelmed him. They hadn’t talked about nightmares since the last one they’d shared, and there was always a bit of anxiety about falling asleep, but not this time. This time all he felt was peace.

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And love, Alex thought with a dreamy, drowsy smile. He was in love. He loved Jacob. He was invincible.

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Chapter Eight Someone small and scared was whimpering in the darkness. “Alex,” the voice begged, “please—” A growl interrupted the plea, and Alex’s eyes flew open, searching the darkness. His heart clenched when he saw the empty bed beside him. He hadn’t recognized the voice as Jacob’s at first. He knew why it sounded unfamiliar now. He wasn’t used to hearing his mate this scared. Only once before had he heard Jacob’s frightened whimper, soft and trembling as it was now. It was in their nightmare, and Alex’s inner beast had roared against his useless human skin to save his mate. Was he dreaming now? Alex didn’t know and he didn’t give a damn. He’d promised his mate he would never let the dangers of that dream find him again. He didn’t intend to break that promise. Keeping his body still, Alex gave his eyes over to his wolf, letting them shift to help him see in the dark. It killed him not to acknowledge his mate’s frightened whimper, but he couldn’t give away that he was awake, not until he’d surveyed the room, sized up his attacker, and planned his attack. The small shift satiated the beast inside him a little, but the knowledge that his mate was in danger brought a snarl to his lips and a growl to his throat that he could only silence for so long. He’d wait though, just a few bare seconds until he could be certain how best to strike. He wanted to surprise the bastard when he tore his throat out. The bastards, he corrected himself when his wolfen eyes saw clearly. There was Jacob, standing in the center of the room, naked as he’d been when he fell asleep earlier that night, and there was his

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captor, a man almost as large as Alex, grasping Jacob’s thin, bare arms in his hands. Alex could scent he was a shifter, and it would be enough of a struggle to take him down, but he didn’t make a move to do it. Instead, he lay paralyzed, his mind racing, fear surging through his body almost as sharply as it rose inside his mate’s. There was nothing he could do to help him. Standing ahead of the man that held Jacob, forming a snarling, growling protective wall around the bed where Alex lay, were a half a dozen wolves. For that many of them to be hiding in Borderland undetected was impossible. They must have come across the planesgate, Alex determined, but hell if he knew how. There were no planeswalkers anywhere. Adrianna had shared with her family the secret of getting across without them, but Alex doubted these huge, hulking monsters, poised for attack, could have possibly figured that out on their own. They didn’t seem willing to make themselves vulnerable to anything. In fact, quite the opposite. They looked dominant and deadly and murderous. That jarring realization brought Alex’s musings to a halt. All the thinking and planning in the world wouldn’t gain Alex an edge in this fight. He was just plain fucked. All he could do was fling himself, bloodthirsty and suicidal, into the fray and hope to God his mate got out alive. He didn’t wait another instant. Alex let himself melt into a murderous beast as he gave himself over to his animal instincts to roar and rage and protect. Leaping off the bed, he snapped his jaw open a second before it contacted the furry scruff of the animal ahead of him, and he sank into the warm skin underneath it, vicious as he could. For a human, it would be impossible to kill a werewolf without a silver blade or bullet, but as another supernatural, Alex knew he could if he struck hard and fast enough. Small cuts and scratches would heal, but his strong jaws could rip out a jugular or snap a spine. He could land a fatal wound if he was quick enough. It was going to be damn difficult, though.

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Sharp claws scratched down his back, and he bucked backward to thwart his attacker as he continued to struggle against the first wolf. His victim was flailing and whimpering now, but his attacker had redoubled his efforts, and Alex had to turn to him to fight him off. As soon as he did, he was faced with another wolf. And another. He was surrounded. Fear sank into his body, pushing into him, trying to overwhelm his body and penetrate his mind, but he fought to keep it out. Jacob had racked his mind and body and spirit and reached his inner sanctum, but he needed to be his old self now, needed the emptiness and singleminded, cold-blooded purpose he once felt, back when the only welcome surge of feeling he allowed was the rush of adrenaline as his body broke free of the limits that tried to bind it. One involuntary tense of a muscle, one pang of remorse, one whimper of his mate’s voice in his head and his focus would snap. Six wolves would descend on one, and he’d never stand a chance of even reaching his mate. Further and further he retreated, into that place inside where, void of emotion, he could snap and bite and claw his way out. His body was a machine primed for survival, and his every instinct pushed him through that fighting wall of fur. He felt his body scratched and clawed, hurt and healed, feeling muscles and ligatures tear and reform, blood flow and tissues broken, testing the very limits of what he could renew, restore, recover, and still continue to fight. He made it out alive. Better than alive, he’d won. Panting, shaking, he tore himself from the last, now dead, attacker, and turned to free his mate. His heart sank into his chest when he did. Once again, Jacob wasn’t there. Still shifted, Alex ran down the stairs, out the door, through the woods, far as he could go and as fast as he could manage. He had to follow the scent of his mate, had to attune himself to the pull that urged them together like magnets, and the more he did, the more he

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felt that same cold edge of fear fighting to penetrate his mind. Jacob was out there, and as Alex’s paws shot out and came together, hard and fast from years of practice, he could feel the gap between them closing. His mate’s frightened mind and overwhelming emotions latched onto Alex like a sieve, sapping his energy, making him feel like he was moving through a haze or in a dream as he made his way to the cliff. He couldn’t push his mate away for fear of losing him, but by the time he began to race up the all-too-familiar path to where he knew his love was waiting for him, his legs wanted to buckle under him and his stomach longed to upchuck the icy ball of dread lodged inside it. He could see the messy tufts of his mate’s brown hair poking up as he sprinted the last yards of the path up to the cliff. His mate’s captor struggled to pull him up the last few feet to the drop-off as Jacob fought against him, kicking and screaming fiercely to wrench his body back in the other direction. When his eyes locked on Alex, Jacob’s arms shot out toward him and he screamed his name, redoubling his efforts. Alex leapt toward him, letting his wolfen feet give way to human hands that reached out to Jacob’s open arms. They connected at the edge of the cliff, and the force of their contact flung the three of them—Alex, Jacob, and the monster who’d kidnapped him—off the cliff together. Alex fought the bastard tooth and nail for his mate, but he couldn’t pull him away. As they free-fell off the cliff, he could feel Jacob giving himself over to the force of fate, the pull of the planesgate, and the more Alex struggled to pull his mate’s attacker off of him, the more he felt his mate slipping away. He grasped at Jacob’s hands, at his arms, at his back, trying to pull him close, trying to keep him safe, but his strength was useless. That fragile, thin body was lost to him. They hit the water, and Jacob disappeared into the ether, taking his attacker with him.

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Only Alex suffered the impact of the jagged rocks as they sliced into the muscles of his back. Only Alex remained on Earth, alone and hurt and bleeding. His wounds knit closed and his pain receded, but nothing could stop the ache in his heart. He’d failed. His mate was in danger, and he’d failed him. The dam of his emotions broke, and there was nothing he could do to keep them at bay. He let his body swell and shudder and sob with the weight of his loss, trying to will his mind to regain the connection he’d felt so strongly between them a moment ago. He’d worried only a moment ago that the intensity of emotion he’d received from Jacob would distract him, but he let it overwhelm him now, yearning for anything that would help to remind him of his mate, anything that would help to bridge the gap between them. He concentrated as hard as he could, until he could swear he felt that connection swell with the force of his efforts, and even then he steeled his mind to focus harder. As if he could will himself back to Jacob. As if he could bring his mate back to him. As if he could join them together in a single unit, with both their gifts melded together as one, his strength and Jacob’s perception and understanding. A month, a week, even a day ago, he would have judged the task insurmountable, even laughable, but he didn’t bother his mind with such ideas anymore. He was done judging. He opened his mind, hoping he could feel his mate flood into it. **** Jacob panicked when he felt Alex slip away from him as he crossed the planesgate. The weight of his mate fell away, and it was only his captor holding him. He turned and twisted to get away, kicking and clawing and biting just to pull away from the much larger man as they tumbled through the void connecting the supernatural and natural realms. Jacob felt his captor shift as they fell, his claws biting into Jacob’s skin to try to subdue him. The cityscape of Morgana

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vampire territory had already started to crystallize, but Jacob could sense that something was wrong. He was cut. The wolf that held him scratched too hard, and Jacob felt the loss of blood, too much of it all at once, pulling him back through that void, making him dizzy. Morgana and the wolf faded back into the ether until he could feel nothing but the ragged, open wound on his head and see nothing but the thick drops of red that ran down from it. That slow trail of liquid crimson eclipsed all else, blurring his vision and burning his eyes. The last thing he remembered was reaching up to try to wipe it away, and seeing with clear eyes that the whole world itself had turned vividly, impossibly red. He closed his eyes and let the dizziness overwhelm him. When he came to, two lips pressed onto the cut on his head, and as they did, his wound seemed to heal, the same way Alex’s mating bite had sealed when he licked it closed. Only these weren’t the soft, warm lips of his mate’s. They were thin, and they were cold. Murdock’s. His father’s. That same sick cold shot through him like a knife, causing him to tense even as the pain of injury died away. He opened his eyes and backed up, far as he could, onto the bed. The silken crimson sheets were sliding under his grip, and he felt his back hit the headboard and his heart pounding in his throat. Jacob looked around him. Murdock’s chambers were the same as they’d been in his last nightmare. Except for the two of them, the cavernous room was empty, but those strange red doors Jacob had seen emerge from the floors and walls and ceilings were there as well, beckoning Jacob toward them with their eerie glow. He didn’t know where the hell they went, but the chance might be worth it if it took him away from Murdock. Imperceptibly slowly, he inched toward the edge of the bed. It wasn’t slow enough, though, and a sudden jolt of energy from outside him jerked him back to the place he sat. Recovering from the blow, he

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looked up at Murdock. He sat on the edge of the bed, staring into the space ahead of him. “I wouldn’t, if I were you,” he said coolly. “What do you want with me?” Jacob asked. Several long, tense moments passed before Murdock answered him. “Bait,” Murdock said simply. “I want to use you as bait. We’ll wait here for your mate to come, and when he does, I’ll have my revenge.” He isn’t coming, Jacob almost said, recalling the feeling of loss as he’d slipped through the planesgate without his mate, but he didn’t dare inform his father of this. He didn’t want to give him any more information than he had to, didn’t want to let him any closer to even the idea of his mate. Jacob stomach clenched, remembering the pain he’d inflicted on Alex the last time Murdock got ahold of him. “It wasn’t enough before?” “It’s never enough,” Murdock said quietly. There was blood on his lip, Jacob’s blood. Absently, Murdock licked it away, but there was none of the thrill Jacob was used to seeing in his father’s eyes when he performed the gesture. His yellow eyes were cold and dead and mirthless. “Why?” he asked desperately, pleadingly. “Morgana was fine until you took over. The vampires fed off the planeswalkers, but they didn’t decimate them. You did that. You were one of us once, and you did that. Why couldn’t you live with that balance? Why did you have to keep taking more and more until—” “Because I wanted it,” Murdock snapped, standing and pacing the room. His voice was angry, but there was a note of defense in it, a vulnerability Jacob had never heard in his voice. “Because I was strong enough to take it, and that made it mine to take.” “But why? Why do you care what I say to him if you’re never around to see him? He’s just a child. The voices scare him. He needs to know that they won’t hurt him. He needs to hear that he’s okay.” “He’s not okay! He’s—”

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“Do you really believe that it’s a disease that makes him like this? I told you, there’s nothing wrong with the way you are.” “The way I am? I’m not like that anymore.” “Of course you are. You have a gift. Although I don’t think this is how you ought to be using it.” “I’ll use it however I like. I’m stronger now. Quite strong and quite powerful. You’d do well to remember that. You’d do well to listen to me.” The voices in Jacob’s head were clear as if they’d just been spoken. Jacob recognized both of them. His mother and father were speaking about him, it seemed, but he’d never heard them speaking to each other before. He’d never even seen them in the same room with each other. Growing up, Jacob had always assumed his mother was as afraid of Murdock as everyone else on Morgana was, if not more so. But the way she spoke to him just then, quietly and sympathetically, suggested otherwise. Jacob wondered when that had changed. “Say to him what you said to me, even once, and I swear I’ll hunt you down and kill you both.” “What are you doing?” Murdock asked. His eyes searched Jacob’s, and for the first time Jacob saw fear on his father’s face. As if he knew what had happened. “What did you hear?” “Hear?” Jacob asked. “What are you so afraid of?” his mother asked. “Do you honestly want him to hate himself as much as you hated yourself? To be as miserable and frightened as you were when you saw the same visions and heard the same voices—” “What voices did you hear?” Jacob asked. “I don’t hear any voices.” “I don’t hear them anymore. And I’m not afraid of anyone.” “Including him?” his mother asked, a challenge in her voice. “Like you said, he’s just a child. If I were afraid of what he could do, I’d kill him now. Should I? Be afraid?”

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His mother said nothing for a moment. When she finally spoke, her voice was different, weaker, the way Jacob remembered it. “I won’t say a word,” she said. All around him, the room was changing. The multitude of doors were opening, and light poured out from each as the legions of planeswalkers, vamps, and weres began to filter into the room from every conceivable place. They stumbled toward Murdock, drawn toward him like a magnet, as if his very being commanded their presence, drawing them out of the red doors, drawing them to him. As if he couldn’t keep them away. “You were just like me,” Jacob said quietly, suddenly understanding. “Weren’t you? You used to hear things, see things, and you thought it made you weak and vulnerable.” “I was never weak,” Murdock said. The throng of servants was coming closer to Murdock, swarming him, surrounding him. Each of the countless red doors had swung wide open to accommodate the influx of people, but it also let in that bright and penetrating light. Bathed by the light, Murdock flinched. He shrank from its glow, but there was nowhere to go. It was everywhere. “No,” Jacob said, “but you thought you were. You thought there was something wrong with you. You probably wanted to be changed,” Jacob said. “You wanted to be a vamp so you couldn’t get hurt anymore—” Murdock tensed and growled at the words. “And I was never hurt.” “And when you were changed, it made you powerful. Instead of being overwhelmed by everything everyone felt, you could control them. You could force them to do things. Mom told you that you had a gift, but you didn’t believe her, did you? Not until you were changed. And once you were, you understood what you could do. What you could always do, if you’d just put your mind to it instead of giving up.”

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Cowering to block out the rays of the light, Murdock looked smaller, weaker, but there was a wall of people around him. “Why were you afraid of me?” Jacob asked Murdock. He didn’t respond, only hid behind that wall of mute and lifeless vessels. Finally Murdock raised his hate-filled eyes to Jacob, and as he did, the crowd turned as a single body to face him. The same spiteful look in Murdock’s eye was echoed in each of their gazes. “Why?” Jacob asked again, his voice pleading. He didn’t expect an answer, and he didn’t get one. And those murderous eyes were still staring him down, poised and ready to strike. Jacob tried his best to swallow his fear, to hold on to the memory of his mother’s words as she defended him, but surrounded by that throng of attackers, he just felt so very small. Back in his bedroom, Jacob had watched as Alex had fought off a dozen wolves. They had descended on him, snapping, snarling, and full of fury, but Alex was stronger, and he had fought them off. Jacob was surrounded by dozens of wolves now, and vamps, and planeswalkers, all of them staring at him like predators regarding their prey. “Where are you, Alex? I need you.” He cast the thought out into the void, not expecting an answer. His mate was strong, but he couldn’t hear things the way Jacob could, couldn’t feel that connection across the world that separated them, couldn’t even make the journey across the distance. “I’m right here, angel. I’m always with you.” Jacob’s eyes widened, feeling adrenaline coursing through his veins, feeling hope shoot through him. His gaze darted frantically around the room, but all he saw were those angry, faded faces washed out by the now-blinding light. “Where?” He searched the room again, frantic. “Where?” The mob of washed-out faces was moving closer, closing in on him now, but his fear wasn’t rising. There was something else

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growing inside him, a strange ripple underneath his body, where his wolf was prickling under the surface of his skin. His wolf? Jacob looked down, shocked to see claws peeking through the nail beds on his fingers. “Not yours, angel. Mine.” A strange surge of power from somewhere deep inside him lifted his hand again and flung it outward, casting the claws out ahead of him. It was the same gesture he’d seen Murdock make a thousand times, the same one he’d used to control the actions of so many people in his life and in his death. Jacob knew where that power came from now. It came from the “weakness” that he so often mocked Jacob for, from his special abilities to connect and merge with other people’s minds and souls. He just needed a little strength to help him wield it. He had that strength now, he realized. He had Alexander. The second Jacob’s wrist shot out ahead of him, his attackers fell back as if stricken by some unseen force. When he pulled his hand back, the crowd swayed with the movement, as if they were marionettes and he was the puppeteer. He swung his arm again, and they collapsed like dominoes around him. As they did, he could see Murdock once again, his face again betraying the fear that seemed so foreign to it. Murdock twitched, as if to shake the fear out of him, and his face contorted with rage. Opening his mouth to bare his fangs, he hissed at Jacob, making his way toward him across the room through the maze of open doors that lined it. The light flooding from the open doors continued to brighten, seeming to fuel Murdock’s frustration and slow his progress toward the bed. Watching him approach, Jacob felt the surge of power inside him again, rising up stronger than even before, unstoppable in its progress. With a final swell, claw and fur and fang burst from his body. Jacob stared in amazement as Alex’s wolf exploded, ghostlike, from his chest. It seemed like a specter at first, a dream or a hallucination, and

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Jacob had to blink his eyes to be sure he wasn’t seeing things, but that ghost solidified into a real, tangible being in midair, as real as if Alex had been in the room with them all along. He leaped through the air, fangs and claws exposed as he slammed into Murdock. His skin tingling, his chest heaving, Jacob watched from the bed as the wolf’s strong jaws sank into Murdock’s throat, tearing it out in a single fluid motion. An inhuman wail rose as Murdock sank to his knees, the front of his body a mask of blood. That same wail died as his head slumped lifelessly onto his chest and his face began to shrivel and age like an old rotten piece of fruit. Alex, now shifted back into his human form, stood still over the body, his eyes transfixed as it completed its change. Jacob’s eyes met Alex’s, and he nodded. It was over now. Murdock was dead. They weren’t the only ones who noticed. The crowd of supernaturals that had flooded the room earlier had begun to stir, rising from the floor, dazed, as if they had all just awoken from a dream. Alex gazed around the room at them, his body tense, a fire in his eye Jacob recognized from when he’d attacked the wolves earlier. If there was to be another fight, he wanted to be ready for it. There wasn’t. As Alex turned to see the masses of supernaturals on the floor, they halted halfway in their movements, bowing their heads. They didn’t rise from the floor, not all the way, not altogether. Instead, their bodies made a single motion, rippling through the crowd like a wave as they turned to look at the man who had killed Murdock, who had freed them from his psychic grip. They were kneeling. Alex stared at them, looking just as uncertain with the kneeling masses before him as Jacob had been with his ability to command them. Curious, he swung his hand out again, but noticed no change in the masses now that Alex’s wolf wasn’t lurking inside his body. So much for that. Alex crossed to Jacob now, mindful of the gaps that

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were still yawning up from the floor where several open red doors lined the tile. The light was still radiating out of them, bright as it had been before or, if possible, brighter, as Alex reached the bed and Jacob reached out to his open arms. He felt a rumble underneath him as their hands touched, and looked up. The high ceiling of the room was cracked, and light was shining in from outside it. The cracks grew deeper, and a piece of plaster crumbled and fell, sailing to the floor dangerously close to Alex’s head. “Look out!” Alex wrapped his arms around Jacob, pulling them both out of the way of the falling plaster, but more cracks had begun to rise in the walls and ceiling, and more of the room had begun to crumble around them. The floor shook again as it began to give way, and the throngs of supernaturals dropped down into the lighted doorways and between the cracks. Jacob fought to stay on the bed with Alex, nearly sliding off the edge and plummeting off of it. He slipped from his mate’s grasp, but Alex’s hand shot out and grabbed his, so tightly he worried he might pull it from the socket. “Hold on,” he said, and Jacob tried to scramble back onto the bed as the room exploded into light. There was no ground left to stand on, and he was certain any moment they would either free-fall into that endless light or be swallowed up by it altogether. Whatever would come of them, he held onto his mate’s hand, worried that once again he’d feel him slip away as they tumbled into whatever strange space awaited them. He wouldn’t let it happen. It couldn’t, not anymore. He had seen exactly what the two of them were capable of now that their souls had united. And nothing in this world was ever going to tear them apart.

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Chapter Nine Jacob opened his eyes, and he was in Alex’s arms again. He didn’t remember falling through the planesgate, only waking up, cuddled against his mate just the way he was before the wolves came and captured him, as if the whole thing had been a bad dream. He blinked his eyes, turning in Alex’s arms to face him and nudging his mate until he started to stir. “Mmm?” he asked sleepily. “What happened?” Jacob asked. For the life of him, he didn’t know if he’d been on another plane or if he’d just had the longest and weirdest nightmare of his life. “Nothing, angel, go back to sleep.” “Okay.” Jacob nodded against Alex’s chest, his heart pounding, his breath quick and heavy. He didn’t know if he could go back to sleep, but God, he was glad he was safe for the moment. Suddenly, Alex’s eyes flew open, taking Jacob in. His hands, already wrapped around Jacob’s stomach and shoulders, grasped at him desperately. “Oh my God,” he panted. “Oh, Jesus, I thought I’d lost you. You were—” “On the Red Plane,” Jacob finished. “I don’t know how I got back here.” His eyes searched his mate’s, looking for the answers that he was wondering himself. Alex had laid waste to practically a whole pack of wolves in this room earlier, but there was no trace of them now, only the darkness of the room they’d fallen asleep in. “Was it all just a dream? About the wolves? About Murdock?”

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“Does it matter?” Alex asked against Jacob’s throat, squeezing him impossibly tighter. It wasn’t like there was very much room left between them to begin with. “Guess not,” Jacob panted. One of Alex’s arms was wrapped tight around his chest, pushing his shoulder against Alex’s chest, and the other was pushed flat across his back, just as tight as it would go. His neck rested against the crook of his shoulder, his chin digging into his clavicle as he pressed kiss after hard, sloppy, desperate kiss into the side of Jacob’s throat. Jacob tried, with some effort, to inhale. “Alex, you’re kind of crushing me.” “I don’t care. I’m not letting go.” All the same, he loosened his grip enough for Jacob to take a breath. But just barely. He breathed in and out, feeling Alex’s chest heave in rhythm with his, and let himself relax into his mate’s restricting grip. He couldn’t move, but he didn’t mind. He was in his mate’s arms. There wasn’t anywhere else he wanted to be. Alex’s arms stayed wrapped around him, still and unyielding, but his hips shifted, and Jacob could feel the hard length of his cock pressed against his mate’s. Suddenly, Alex’s protective confinement was transformed from a feeling of comfort to one of utter eroticism. “Alex?” he breathed. “You’re not moving, angel. Get used to it.” Jacob’s cock, already hard as nails, fairly pulsed at the words. “Definitely used to it,” he muttered. Then, summoning his courage, he added, “You should restrain me more often.” Alex’s breath had been warming his neck at a slow, steady pace, but at Jacob’s last statement, it stopped altogether. “Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?” “Maybe.” Jacob smirked as he felt Alex’s cock already grinding against his thigh. “I take it you like that idea?” Alex growled softly into his ear, and suddenly those hands were alive and crawling over Jacob’s naked skin. He sighed inwardly, loving the gentle pressure of those hands as they skimmed over his

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body, but wondering what it would be like to be plucked, played with, teased, and tortured by them. Jacob sucked in his breath as Alex dipped his head to lave at one of his nipples. When he took the hardened nub between his teeth, Jacob bit his lip and moaned. He didn’t want to push Alex, not so soon after they had only just discussed the subject of D-s at length, but the way his mate’s hands roamed up his arms, resting over them but not quite pinning them onto the bed as he continued to torture Jacob’s nipple, made that an almost insurmountable task. Alex reached one hand down between Jacob’s thighs—which practically fell open the instant his mate’s fingers grazed them—and then wrapped his fingers around the base of his dick and held them there. It had suddenly become very difficult not to think about cock rings. Jacob managed to keep his mouth shut, but the moan that escaped his throat was low and long and needy. Alex wrenched his mouth from Jacob’s nipple and whispered against his chest. “What do you need, angel?” One of Alex’s palms pressed flat against his cock, the fingers still encasing the base tightly. His other hand came down from Jacob’s wrists to pluck at the nipple that had yet to be sucked. Jacob didn’t want to say it, but he’d never been very good at controlling himself. “What did you say earlier”—he gasped as Alex twisted the sensitive nub before stroking his thumb over it—“about nipple clamps?” He’d anticipated Alex’s ministrations coming to a woeful, regrettable halt, but instead his hand only tightened around his cock and his fingers twisted harder around his nipple. “Is that what you want?” Alex asked. His voice was low and dark, the way it got when he wanted his words to be heeded. Jacob could only whimper in response. “Tell me, angel,” he said, and licked his throat.

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“Yes, sir,” Jacob breathed, and he smiled at the groan that title drew out of his mate. Alex left the bed, and Jacob lay there in the darkness, waiting for his mate to return and wondering what dark instruments of pleasure he would bring with him when he did. He heard a dresser drawer creak open, and he could just make out Alex’s outline as he turned over his shoulder and said coolly, “If you’re touching yourself when I get back, that’s ten.” Wanting to please his mate, Jacob didn’t move a muscle, but damn, if those words didn’t make it even more difficult to keep his fidgeting, eager hand off his dick. The drawer creaked shut, and Jacob held his breath as he listened for Alex’s approaching footsteps padding across the floor. He wasn’t moving yet. “I want to be very clear about some things,” Alex said. “About what you’re comfortable with and what you’re not.” Jacob swallowed hard. Alex’s tone was serious as hell, but it was also turning him on like crazy. He sat up on the edge of the bed and squinted into the darkness. When he did, he could just barely see Alex, or more precisely, the outline of Alex’s erect cock jutting upright from between his legs. “Yes, sir,” he said, closing his eyes and imagining that cock between his lips. A footstep sounded in the space between them. “If you want a safe word, you can have one,” came Alex’s voice, “but I’d prefer that if you got uncomfortable, you just told me no.” He took another two steps toward Jacob, and they echoed through the silence. He was close. “Yes, sir,” he breathed again. “If there’s anything you want me to avoid, any squicks or triggers that might upset you, I want you to tell me now.” Jacob remained silent, and a last single step closed the space between them. His eyes were still closed, but he could feel his knees pressed apart as Alex knelt between them. A hand stroked his face.

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“Well, angel?” A hand grazed the inside of Jacob’s thigh, and it was grasping God knows what inside it. “Anything I should know?” “Yes,” Jacob moaned. “If you don’t touch me soon, I’m going to be very, very uncomfortable.” Alex leaned in so close to Jacob that his smile grazed the side of Jacob’s cheek, but his voice remained low and steady. “Hands and knees, angel,” he said. “That’s five.” That single command seemed to set fire to Jacob’s entire body, and he bolted off the bed, presenting Alex his ass, but he was surprised when a firm hand snaked around his hips and held his cock. Immediately, his mouth flew open to inquire about the apparent change in plans, but remembering his role, he closed it again, listening for his lover’s words to guide him. A thick, stiff strap wrapped around his balls, belting the base of them like the leather band of a watch around a wrist. “This is a cock ring,” Alex explained. “It’s going to make you harder and you’re going to last longer with it on.” Jacob doubted that he could get much harder than he already was, but he imagined a little help staving off his orgasm was well-advised if Alex was going to start reddening his ass any minute. “Okay.” “Okay?” There was a note of amusement in Alex’s voice as his hands hovered around Jacob’s dick, the leather strap of the ring not quite clasped around his cock yet. “Okay, sir,” Jacob corrected himself, practically panting the words. It wasn’t that he didn’t get off on addressing his lover like a Dom. It was just that it was hard to remember all the rules with his ass in the air and a sex toy slowly closing in around his cock. “I want it. I mean, I want it, sir. I mean, please sir, can I have it?” He felt the pressure tighten around his balls and heard a snap echo through the room. If his dick had ever been this rock hard in his entire life, Jacob was hard-pressed to remember when. “Oh, shit.”

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Alex’s low, sexy laugh sounded behind Jacob as his knees were pushed apart. “That one, angel,” he said, “I’ll let you have for free.” Jacob didn’t know whether to be grateful for or disappointed in Alex’s generosity, and he didn’t have time to figure it out either. Smack! Jacob whimpered as the first stinging blow landed. It was only one smack, but he could swear the heat from it reached the tips of his fingers and his toenails. “Count, angel,” Alex commanded, and Jacob nodded, thrilling at the words. “One,” he said, loud as he could, but his voice was trembling. Smack! “Two.” The second blow landed, lighting his whole body on fire with desire. Before he had time to recover, Alex’s palm cracked down on his ass again. “Three!” And another. “Oh, God, four!” Just one tender touch, one caress of his cock, fuck, even a strong, cool breeze could probably make him come right now if he let it, but that was only what he wanted. Alex knew what he needed. Jacob ground his teeth and bit his tongue and waited for the last delicious bite of pain. Smack! “Five!” he shouted, reveling in the painful sensation blossoming across his backside. That welcome jolt of pain dissolved into pleasure as Alex’s punishing palm lay flat across those sore, swollen cheeks, smoothing across them and making Jacob shudder with the cavalcade of erotic sensations the motion ignited. The heat of his mate’s body hovered close as he leaned over Jacob’s ear, pushing his hair back to whisper inside it. “You’re doing so good, angel.” Jacob couldn’t help but grin at the endearment, even as it made some of the ungodly heat in his groin flush across his face. “Yes, sir,” he said, closing his eyes.

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Two big arms encircled his waist and lifted him onto the bed. “Alex!” he yelped a second before he was dropped back down onto the bed on his back. Alex didn’t say word one about the slip, and this time, Jacob was definitely grateful he didn’t. The spanking had been erotic as hell, but he honestly didn’t think he could take another second of that sweet torture without reliving some pressure from his now superhumanly hard cock. He lay back on the bed, and Alex climbed over him. For the first time since they’d started their play, he was close enough for Jacob to see his eyes in the darkness. They were caring and playful and shining with lust. “Think you can take a little more?” he asked, running a thumb over Jacob’s nipple. Jacob could see, too, what he held in his other hand. It was a clothespin. “Um,” was the best Jacob could manage. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to. It was just that he was starting to feel a little dizzy. He glanced down at his cock, and his eyes widened. It was bright red and hard as a rock, but what surprised him was how huge it looked with the ring around it. Alex’s hand wandered down from his nipple, sliding lower to that area of his body that had been so badly overwhelmed with desire for what had probably only been minutes but already seemed like hours. Alex caressed the inside of his thighs and Jacob brought his knees up, eager for the gentle pressure Alex placed on his dick. His mate didn’t cup his cock or stroke it, only laid the tips of his fingers across Jacob’s throbbing member, unmoving. Jacob whimpered at the touch, unable to keep the noise from escaping his throat. “Oh, please, Alex,” he begged and worried his lip at the disobedience. Alex didn’t seem to notice the slip, however, as he ran his hand across Jacob’s cock, not quite stroking it, not quite cupping it. It was almost like Alex was petting him. “God, angel. You have any idea how sexy you look like this?” he whispered. “All trussed up and laid

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out waiting for me? I can feel how much you need me. And I am so fucking hard for you.” Jacob choked down the dryness in his throat, licking his lips as he glanced down at his now much larger cock. The hardness of it was driving him crazy, but he couldn’t say he wasn’t exactly enjoying it. Nor could he say he wasn’t curious about the whole more intense orgasm thing. “Put the clothespin on,” he said. Alex’s eyes widened. “Really?” Jacob nodded, fisting the sheets under him. “Really,” he said with a gulp. “But from here on out? I can’t be held accountable for anything that comes out of my mouth.” Alex looked up at him, and he smiled winsomely. “Yes, sir,” he joked as he crawled up the bed. He reached over onto the nightstand and plucked a wooden clothespin from off of it. When it closed around Jacob’s nipple, he shouted, bucking his hips into the air. “Oh, God, son of a mother…fuck! Fuck!” Alex cocked an eyebrow at him. Jacob panted. “What?” “That is the most creative swearing I have ever heard.” Jacob didn’t have the energy to be embarrassed by it. His entire face and body were already on fire. “Will you please just lick my nipple?” Alex did, in long, lazy laps, and the contrast between those languid licks on one hardened bud and the sweet, stinging pain on the other had Jacob grasping for his mate’s other hand, ready to affix the other clothespin, ready to do whatever the fuck was needed to bring his long-awaited orgasm closer. Finally, a blinding hot pressure surrounded his other nipple. Tingles rippled down his body, radiating out from his chest, his cock, his balls. Those tiny electric sparks seemed to combust as Alex swirled those clothespins around in small, careful circles, making Jacob writhe and moan and swear like a sailor before Alex finally abandoned his nipples for what lay throbbing and needy between Jacob’s spread thighs.

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In some far-off, distant place, he heard the snick of a bottle cap opening and soon after felt the first cool then hot fingers pushing into his entrance. There was a pressure and a burning he was used to when those fingers pushed past the ring of muscle, but this time he hardly noticed. It was merely one more sensation this time, one more brush of pain and pleasure melting into the overwhelming wave of ecstasy. Two, three fingers slid in and out of him, and he moved with them, urging them in and out. Somewhere he was aware of Alex stroking himself. Somewhere he could hear his mate calling his name and swearing over his body’s display. Somewhere he was keenly aware of just how precious his mate made him feel, of just how lost he’d be without him, of just how much he loved the man. But mostly, there was just this raw, pulsing need. Alex held his legs wide apart and high over his head when he finally fucked into him. His thrusts were long, and frenzied, and hard as they hit his prostate. As soon as he’d started, Alex was already shaking. Jacob curled his toes and kicked his legs and let his body writhe beneath his lover’s. He couldn’t wait another single second. “Please,” he begged. “Please, please, please touch me.” Alex dropped a hand between them, almost fumbling for Jacob’s needy, wanting cock. He made it two fast pumps before Jacob screamed and shot out his release between them. He was still coming when Alex jerked and spilt inside him, squeezing and licking and biting the meat of his calf as he held it above him. As the wave of pleasure crested and finally began to fall, Alex tugged at the place below his balls where the cock ring was snapped, and it fell open and he pulled it away. Jacob sighed loudly as the pressure abated and relief washed over him. His aching nipples, too, felt sweet release as Alex plucked the clothespins from him. With nothing between them now but their skin, Alex gathered him up into his arms. Jacob wrapped his arms around his mate’s neck, but his

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body went limp in his lover’s touch, falling against his chest, sucking in breaths in big, heaving gasps. “So good,” Alex said against his skin between the kisses he pressed against his face and cheeks and ears. “You were so perfect, angel. I love you so much.” “You love me?” Jacob asked. He was so damn dizzy, he honestly didn’t know if he’d heard right. “I love you, angel,” came the voice again inside his ear. Jacob didn’t ask again. With every ounce of strength left in his body, he kissed the man he loved. Alex’s hands stroked softly through his hair, and Jacob held that kiss as long as humanly possible. When he finally came up for air, his head fell into the crook of Alex’s neck and his body slumped against his lover’s. He was sore and exhausted and as happy as he’d ever been in his life. He didn’t think he could hold himself upright, but he didn’t need to. Those strong arms held him up against his lover’s body, acting as his strength. They belonged to him now. His arms, his strength, his mate. Forever. **** “Are you ready for this?” Jacob asked. He squeezed Alex’s hand as he stood only a few paces from the edge of the cliff. Alex gazed off the drop-off to Ecstasy Rock to the whitewater waves crashing below. It had been over a month since he and Jacob had dreamed of Murdock, and he and his family had been preparing for this moment ever since then, waiting for the time when fate would call them back to the cliff. Jacob had woken up in the middle of the night last night, swearing to Alex that today was the day, and he had trusted his mate’s judgment. Even Alex had felt something deep and powerful drawing him to the planesgate. He just didn’t know if he was ready to cross it.

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“I—” he began, but Jacob sighed before he could even say it. He cocked an eyebrow at his mate. “How do you know what I was going to say?” “I can feel you worrying away in there,” Jacob said, standing on tiptoes to press a kiss to Alex’s temple. He lingered there, letting his mouth fall just to the shell of his ear. “And for the record? It’s exceedingly unnecessary. I have six werewolves looking out for me, remember?” Alex nodded, but that wasn’t what he was worried about. Even if his mate was Murdock’s son, he doubted anyone was going to fuck with Jacob. Anyone who did was getting flattened like a pancake. Plus, the wolves had already discussed a plan of action for keeping Jacob and Adrianna safe in Morgana. He was more worried about the last time—or times, if he counted the dream he and Jacob had—he’d failed to make it through the planesgate. “Jacob’s not the only one worried.” Alex turned to Ben and raised a curious eyebrow. Ben sighed, his brow creased with worry. “Look, I’m all for helping out Morgana and everything, but this king thing?” He shook his head. “I can’t stop worrying about it. Jasper doesn’t even listen to me half the time. How am I supposed to keep an entire planeful of pissed-off, bloodthirsty werewolves from picking fights with vampires?” “You’ll be fine,” Jacob said. He smiled at Alex. “I have a feeling things will have calmed down over there a little.” Ben sighed and shook his head. “Yeah, but it’s not just that. Danny told me what they used to do for kings back in old-school Europe. You know Louis XIV’s servants used to wait in his bedroom so they could clap for him when he woke up? I don’t want anyone standing around my bed in the morning. I always wake up with a hard-on.” “No one is going to be staring at your morning wood except me,” Jasper said. “Not that it isn’t worth clapping for.”

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“Is anyone else afraid of heights?” Danny asked, backing away from the edge of the cliff and leaning against a tree. Lars took both of his hands in his and eyed him. “You didn’t tell me you were afraid of heights the last time we were up here.” “Um, the last time we were up here, I probably didn’t notice because I was too busy getting ready to—” Lars cleared his throat, and Alex couldn’t help but wonder why he’d suddenly gone bright red. Danny smirked, watching his mate carefully, and continued. “The last time we were up here, I was a little distracted.” “I bet,” Lars quipped. Danny leaned his head against his mate’s shoulder and smiled. “You don’t think you could maybe take your clothes off before we jump, could you? ’Cause I could definitely use a distraction before we throw ourselves off that cliff.” “Yeah, I’m not getting naked in front of my parents.” “Where are our parents?” Jasper asked. “Right here,” Adrianna said breathlessly as she made her way up the path, hand in hand with Mitchell. “You know, you guys could have taken a little more time getting up here. Not all of us are kids anymore. And it was kind of a hectic morning.” Alex smiled at this, shooting a look to Jasper. Between the two of them, they’d managed to sweet-talk a number of the overnight nurses who were smitten with the Craven brothers to aid with springing their parents from the hospital early this morning. It hadn’t been too difficult a feat, really. All they’d had to do was imply that they merely wanted to take their parents across the street for an early breakfast on their anniversary before getting them back to Borderland Osteopathic for another endless round of tests. Then Jasper had driven like a bat out of hell out of the parking lot so they could all sneak into the Borderland State Park before the morning hikers and forest rangers made their way up to Ecstasy Rock and recognized their now semi-famous parents.

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Remembering they were under a bit of a schedule, Alex took Jacob’s arm, feeling his nerves jangle as he eyed his mate. “So, are we ready to get this show on the road?” he asked. “You’re going to be fine,” Adrianna said, eyeing Alex. She turned around to look at each of her sons and their mates. “That goes for all of you.” “Yeah, but how do you know?” Alex asked. “I mean, I know you’ve done this before with other non-planeswalkers, but…” “For one thing, you’re not exactly non-planeswalkers. You boys are just as much mine as your father’s. Remember that,” Adrianna said, giving them all a stern look before it dissolved into a smile. “And for another thing, you’re in love. If you can take someone into your soul, surrender yourself to another person the way I know you boys have for your mates, then you have what it takes to cross a planesgate. It’s an act of faith, pure and simple, in what fate has planned for you. Which I assume you boys have now.” She clasped Alex’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Am I right?” Alex nodded. “I think so.” He glanced at his brothers. For a long time, his younger brothers had struggled with that faith, but now, standing alongside their mates, nodding their heads as confidently as he had, he could tell they were going to be okay. Jasper smiled, breathing out a shaky breath. “Okay. Last one off the tall, scary cliff’s a rotten egg.” “Hold on a sec,” Alex said. He turned to Jacob, pulling him into his arms. “Come here.” Taking his mate’s face in his hands, he kissed him, locking their lips in a long, slow kiss and lapping at his tongue until he heard Jacob’s inward sigh and his mate practically collapsed against his chest. As he did, all his love and his mate’s seemed to swirl between them, swelling until it seemed so infinite it might even fill the vast and terrifying chasm below the cliff. When Alex pulled away, his mate was smiling dreamily and his brothers were trying to find a spot in the distance to nonchalantly stare at.

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“Wow,” Jacob breathed, practically panting against him. “You know, just because we’re about to jump into the abyss together doesn’t mean you’re never going to get the chance to kiss me again.” “I know. That was just because I love you.” “I love you, too,” Jacob said, smiling wider. Alex wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but there it was. “Now are you ready for this?” “Yeah,” Alex said. He could sense something, strong and deep and comforting, urging him toward the planesgate, and he trusted it as much as he trusted Jacob. If he had to, he’d give his life to that allencompassing pull. “I am.” He glanced around him to the family he loved so much, took his mate’s hand and a deep breath, and jumped into the vast spaces below. And fate, as always, took care of the rest.

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Epilogue “Is it still Saturday?” Danny asked, glancing up at the sun that had finally begun to set in the sky. Mitchell smiled at his youngest son’s mate. Even though it had happened decades ago, he could still remember the first day he and Adrianna had spent on Earth after being in the supernatural realm for so long. The day had passed so damn quickly that he’d thought he was hallucinating when the sky darkened and he could see the moon shining above him. “Get used to it, kiddo,” he said, grinning at Danny. “You’re going to be eighteen for a very long time.” “Lucky bastard,” Jasper quipped, drawing a warning glare from Ben and an eye roll from Danny. “Easy for you to say,” Danny muttered, glancing at Lars. “I’m never going to get that beer, am I?” Jacob looked up at Danny with amusement. “You do know the drinking age on Morgana is like sixteen, right?” “Awesome,” Danny breathed. “I think I like it here already.” “Well, that’s good,” Alex cut in, “because I don’t think I could handle making that trip across the planesgate again.” A chorus of nods and sympathetic moans met Alex’s statement, and Mitchell exchanged a knowing smile with Adrianna. Their sons and their mates weren’t as used to planeswalking as they were. Consequently, the journey back to Morgana, which had dropped them all onto the hard ground with a chorus of thuds and less-than-graceful face-plants, had been a little hard on their novice bodies. Adrianna glanced back up at the setting sun. “It is getting late, though,” she said. “We should probably get out of vampire territory.”

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Alex nodded solemnly. “I’ll keep a lookout here. You guys go ahead.” He bent to kiss Jacob on the head before he ushered him toward Danny and Ben. “Go catch up with your friends,” he said. “I’ll come find you.” Jacob nodded and caught up to the group, gesturing to a nearby alleyway. “We can cut through here,” he said. “I know a shortcut.” Mitchell took Adrianna’s hand as they followed Jacob and the others. He couldn’t help but catch Adrianna’s eyes wandering over the landscape from time to time as if to gauge the myriad ways in which the war had changed things. “It’ll be okay,” he whispered, and she nodded, a small surge of relief flowing off of her at his words. Mitchell smiled at the feeling. It was one they hadn’t shared for a long time. Truthfully, he had no reason to believe what he’d said. In fact, if Jacob’s description of the Morgana he left only a few weeks ago was to be believed, things might still be fairly chaotic here. Those few weeks might not have amounted to even a full day in Morgana. And yet, upon arriving, Mitchell couldn’t help but feel a strange surge of hope radiating off of the landscape. Things had changed in Morgana since Mitchell had seen it last, and the war had caused a great deal of destruction. But they could rebuild. They could make the plane great again. Better, even, than it had been before. “Mitchell!” The voice pulled Mitchell from his thoughts. “Holy crap, Mitchell Craven, is that you?” Mitchell looked up to see a familiar figure heading toward him through the alleyway. He squinted toward him. “Tobey?” He walked forward to greet his old friend with a hug. Tobey pulled away from it reluctantly. “God, it’s great to see you,” he said, his hand still lingering on Mitchell’s arm. Adrianna gave Mitchell a knowing smile, and he sighed. Tobey was about the most loyal friend a guy could hope for, but he had also been half in love with Mitchell since they were puppies. Apparently, some things never changed. “Wow. It’s been like…months, right?”

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Mitchell snorted. “Try thirty-one years,” he said, gesturing to the streaks of white that now peppered his blond hair. “We were on the Earth plane.” Tobey let out a low whistle, looking over Mitchell again. Mitchell looked at his friend, too. He looked exactly as he had when they were twenty-five, which, Mitchell supposed, Tobey technically still was. “Geez, you’re like a dad now. I mean, a hot dad, but—” Adrianna cleared her throat, and Tobey’s eyes shot over to her. Mitchell gave his friend a meaningful look. “You remember my mate, Adrianna. Right, Tobey?” Adrianna smiled and held out her hand to Tobey. “Hi, Tobey. It’s good to see you.” “Good to see you,” he said sheepishly, his cheeks reddening as he shook her hand. “Is Dad bi?” Jasper whispered, leaning into Lars. He was rewarded with an elbow to the stomach. “Ow! What the hell was that for?” “He’s not,” Tobey quipped. “Believe me, I’ve tried.” Jasper raised an eyebrow at Mitchell, and he cleared his throat, turning his attentions back to Tobey. “Tobey, these are my sons, Jasper and Lars. Guys, this is my best friend, Tobey Lennox. We go…way back.” “Apparently,” Jasper said under his breath. This time Adrianna was the one to elbow him. “Ow, Mom!” Tobey shook hands with Jasper and Lars, but when his eyes drifted to Jacob, he froze. “I know you,” he said. “Don’t I?” “I don’t think so,” Jacob replied. Tobey shrugged. “I just had the weirdest feeling of déjà vu. What’s your name?” “He’s Jacob Walker,” Ben said. “Alexander’s mate. He’ll be here in a minute. That’s Danny, Lars’s mate, and I’m Ben.” Jasper nudged him, and Ben sighed. “Benjamin Morris,” he said reluctantly.

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Tobey’s eyes widened. “The Benjamin Morris? Wow.” He looked at Ben, sizing him up. “You’re a little young, aren’t you? I mean, no offense. Your majesty.” Ben rolled his eyes. “None taken. Trust me.” “God, this is perfect, though! You can help restore order amongst the wolves again. Thank God.” Tobey snorted. “Some of the vampires have this crazy idea in their heads that they’re going to turn this plane into a democracy.” Ben raised his eyebrows hopefully. “Really?” Tobey nodded. “Yeah, and not just for the vampires, either. Look, things have been really chaotic here lately. There’s this meeting that’s supposed to take place here in a little while. Everyone’s supposed to go to it. I guess that because all the old monarchs are dead, they think we should start some kind of new union, but if you’re here to claim the crown and restore the monarchy…” His nervous eyes raked over Ben’s thoughtful expression. “That is what you’re going to do, right?” “Um…” “Right?” Tobey asked frantically. “Right?” “I mean, I’ll definitely give it some thought, but…” Ben tried to wipe the smile off his face as he looked at Tobey apologetically. “I mean, if they’re already going to have this meeting, shouldn’t we at least hear what they have to say?” Tobey’s eyes darkened, bearing a haunted look Mitchell had never seen from his friend before, and for the first time, Mitchell had to wonder what had happened to his friend during the war. He shook his head in apparent frustration. “Un-fucking-believable…” he groused. “You don’t like the idea of a democracy?” Mitchell asked. Tobey snorted. “Not if it means living peaceably with a bunch of vampires. After what they did to me in the war…” He cleared his throat. “To us,” he corrected himself. “I really hated them. I wasn’t even going to go to the meeting, but I had this really weird dream that sort of changed my mind.”

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Jacob looked at him thoughtfully. “Did it involve a really big, buff werewolf?” Tobey snorted. “Well. I have a lot of dreams about big, buff werewolves…” “Not that kind of dream,” Jacob said. “This werewolf had a fight with Murdock, and when he won, it was like everyone was free. All the vamps, and the wolves, and the planeswalkers, and they all got along. I had the same dream back on the Earth plane, about a month ago, but for you, on Morgana…” “It was just last night.” Tobey looked at Jacob as if he’d seen a ghost. “Who are you, anyway? Do I know you?” Jacob smiled, fixing his eyes behind Tobey, where Mitchell could see Alex approaching them. “Turn around,” Jacob said. Tobey turned, and his eyes widened when he saw Alex. “That’s him,” he said. “That’s the one from my dream.” He walked toward Alex, watching him reverently. Alex glanced at Jacob, and Jacob smiled. “He wants to thank you,” Jacob said, “for the dream that he had about us.” Alex looked first at Jacob, then at Tobey. “I don’t know why,” Tobey said, “but I get the feeling you saved me somehow. Saved everybody.” He paused, staring at Alex. “Can I shake your hand?” Alex nodded, taking his hand. “It’s nice to meet you,” he said, “but I didn’t save everybody. We did it together.” He nodded at Jacob. Tobey nodded, still looking a little dazed as he let go of Alex’s hand. He turned back to Mitchell and smiled at him. “So…what do you say? You want to go to this meeting? See what this whole United Morgana thing is about?” Mitchell looked at Adrianna. “Up to you,” he said, closing a hand over his mate’s waist. He wound his other hand in her long hair. She was just as beautiful as she’d been three decades ago, when they first met. It had been a long and difficult journey, but he had the feeling

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they had finally come to the end of it. “You think we can work out a happy ending here?” “I think so,” Adrianna said. She smiled and quickly kissed his lips. Mitchell’s hand closed tighter around her waist, and he suddenly hoped that whatever the meeting was, it would be very, very brief. He had other plans for his mate today. Tobey cleared his throat, and Mitchell pulled away, his hands still wandering over Adrianna’s body. “Well, I don’t know about you two,” he said, “but I wouldn’t exactly call this an ending. Half the plane is still torn up from the war, there’s three species here, none of which get along and a third of which still can’t decide whether or not they think the rest of us are friends or food. Also, some of us haven’t found our mates yet. “As far as I’m concerned,” Tobey continued, “this is just the beginning.” Mitchell smiled at Tobey, but he had a feeling his old friend was referring to another story. As they turned back toward the setting sun to find out what the next day would bring in Morgana, Mitchell couldn’t help but glance around at all that his family had already found. He looked from Adrianna to his sons and their mates and felt an enormous sense of peace wash over him that they’d all finally found their way home. He took his mate by the hand, and together they led their family off into the sunset.

THE END HTTP://TWITTER.COM/#!/ELLENLOVESYOU

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ellen Ginsberg is the pseudonym of an Austin-based writer who has published numerous works of fiction and nonfiction and has had plays professionally produced in New York, Washington DC, Chicago, and across the Midwest. She graduated from Truman State University with her Master’s degree in English in 2010, and moved to Austin, TX with her husband, who, as a heterosexual male, may nevertheless be the single most enthusiastic supporter of her recent endeavors in M/M erotic romance. She loves her readers dearly and invites them to email her anytime at [email protected] or find her at http://twitter.com/#!/ellenlovesyou.

Also by Ellen Ginsberg Everlasting Classic ManLove: Dreamcatcher 1: Danny in the Dark Everlasting Classic ManLove: Dreamcatcher 2: Ben in the Shadows Available at BOOKSTRAND.COM

Siren Publishing, Inc. www.SirenPublishing.com