Chapter 181. Nesting V
Maisie
My mornings followed the same routine for pretty much the rest of the second week. I was an emotional mess. Angry one second, happy the next. Sobbing one minute, high as a kite in the next. I became marginally unhinged and possessive, growling whenever anyone came close to my mates.
And then, it shifted again. I became insatiable. Again.
The tonic seemed to turn every instinct inside me up too high. It was like my body had forgotten how to behave like a civilized thing and chosen instead to become a creature made entirely of need.
Sex. Sex. Sex. I wanted it, couldn’t have enough of it.
It did not matter which of my mates was on watch. If one of them was near me long enough, I ended up pressed against him in some empty corridor, making out.
"Please?" I said, purring against Soren, rubbing my breasts against his chest and reaching for his belt buckle. It was too complicated, so I just grabbed his cock through his pants. "Two minutes?"
"You know damned well I last fucking longer than two minutes," Soren snarled at me.
"Really? I don’t remember--"
"I know what you’re doing," he said, snatching his hand back from where he had begun to cup my ass. "School ends in thirty minutes. If you could wait until we got in the car--"
"Can’t wait," I panted, stroking up and down his length. "Please? Just the tip?"
"Never in the history of fucking has it ever been just the tip, Adams," he said with exasperation.
My lips started to quiver. I was going to start crying again. "You don’t like me anymore?"
"Fuck," he said, and lifted me, kissing me so hard, I completely forgot why I was upset, and half stumbled as he navigated us into the janitor’s closet.
And then, he fucked me against the door.
The next day, Mercer was sitting through my classes with me, I flat out took his hand and pushed it under my skirt, blinking innocently at him. We ended up doing it in bathroom. And it was out of commission until the next day because we broke... everything.
And at one point, when I should’ve been studying under Jericho’s supervision in the library, I crawled under the desk and took him so deep into my mouth, he let out such a predatory growl that sent everyone running out of the library. Including the librarian.
Then he was so kind as to reward me by fucking me against the shelves.
I was out of control.
Out of character.
Wild in a way that embarrassed me if I thought about it for too long.
And they never once made me feel foolish for it.
They were patient with me, holding me while I sobbed when my bras stopped fitting—again. When there wasn’t enough chocolates in the night to snack on and I began wailing in the kitchen, Soren took the drive out to buy out an entire cart. Quinlan went halfway across the city to buy me persimmons, and he didn’t get mad when he returned and I didn’t want them anymore.
Then I began hating my own bed.
So I started crawling into Jericho’s instead, curling around him like vines, because he slept better when I was tucked against his chest and, selfishly, I liked the sound of his breathing when he wasn’t fighting nightmares.
When that stopped being enough, I began stealing their scents, too.
Mercer’s shirt at night.
Jericho’s shorts in the day.
Quinlan’s shampoo because it made me feel absurdly, irrationally better.
Soren’s aftershave because... I didn’t have an explanation for that one. Sue me.
I was going insane and there was nothing I could do about it.
My afternoons were the only hours that still felt remotely mine.
Those were the hours I spent in the library.
The tonic might’ve blurred the edges and left me with only a handful of lucid hours a day--less than seven hours--but I never forgot Gruer’s words, neither did the questions quite let go.
One evening, while I sat sideways on Mercer’s thigh in the kitchen, I finally asked the thing that had been eating at me. "Do you know anything about the Thorne bloodline?"
Soren and Quinlan were making dinner. They looked so yummy, wearing aprons on their bare chests like walking brand ads. I had no doubt that if they were running an ad for aprons, it would sell out in seconds.
Mercer twirled my hair around his fingers. "You’re curious about your father?"
I nodded, sniffing his neck. I loved the smell of his aftershave. It made me want to eat him. "The little I have of him isn’t real. Sometimes it seems like I never knew him at all."
Soren set down a spoon and glanced over. "I had his file pulled from the Council records while I was looking into him."
That made me sit up straighter.
His tone was careful, which somehow made me pay even closer attention.
"He was a rogue," Soren said. "Spent time in Council prison. There are gaps in the records, but nothing useful. No confirmed parents. No siblings. No known children besides you. No traceable kin. It is as if he was simply... there one day, and then he wasn’t."
I frowned. "Then why was he named a rogue in the first place?"
To be named a rogue, there were a long list of crimes one could commit. Killing a member of one’s pack. Stealing. Working with fellow rogues. Leaking sensitive information about the pack to a different pack that could potentially lead to the pack’s downfall. Being born into a rogue pack.
I thought about the man I knew. His gentle eyes and even gentler hands. It was hard enough to believe he was an assassin. It was more than difficult to peel back that layer, but I forced myself to. Because something was nagging at me.
Gruer’s words about someone creating an anomaly. And why. And Ryder’s words of being... useful by being mated to them.
I had a gut feeling they were connected. I kept feeling like something was coming.
The last few weeks had been the happiest of my life. That was the frightening part. It was all so good it made my skin itch. I kept waiting for the moment something would come and tear it out from under me, because that was how my life had always worked.
And now, I had something I didn’t want to lose. Something I wanted to protect other than myself.
Them.
I had to find out what Ryder meant and how exactly Margaret was planning to use me. I had to find out what Gruer meant when he said I was an anomaly that had been created for a purpose. And if there was any way at all to take the Queen from her throne without getting anyone I loved killed, then I was going to find it.
No pressure at all.
Jericho set down a cup of hot tea in front of me. It smelled mouthwatering. "The precise records were wiped, but they say he grew up within rogue territory, which automatically qualified him as one."
Brilliant amber eyes met mine. "I’m sorry there isn’t much we can get you, malyshka."
I’d nodded like it was nothing, but I had made up my mind.