Saving a Wolf: Moonbound Series, Book Six (11 page)

Maggie was shivering in rage. She was going to jump the dude.

Luther grabbed at her arm again and tried to anchor her.

“You can’t!” she shouted. “They’ll all be killed like Faye.”

“We don’t know that.” Dr. Lee’s eyebrows lifted. “None of the alphas want to lose these girls, but we can’t allow you all to put yourselves in harm’s way any longer, when you’re untrained.” He moved around Hannah and put his hand on Maggie’s shoulder. “Look. Your alphas never realized what kind of danger this would put you in when we initiated this mission. Yes, you’re all enforcers, but this island has defenses we never expected, and requires tactical action. We need to contact Bill Cavanaugh in the Defense Department and ask him to send in the Black Wolves.”

Luther stepped between Maggie and the doctor, raising his finger into the man’s face. “You don’t know how brave she has been,” he said. “Or the rest of them. They’ve all been willing to take risks to see this through. And me, you can’t order me around. I’m going to personally make sure that Adrian Rossi can’t hurt another living thing if I have to rip him apart myself.”

Dr. Lee smiled and looked down at Luther’s raised finger. He held up his hand to stop the bodyguards from advancing. “I know you have a special hatred for this man, Luther, and I can understand it, but—”

“Just give us one chance,” Hannah piped up.

Her father froze and his previously relaxed smile tightened dangerously in the corners. He whirled on her.

“One chance, that’s all we need.” Maggie picked up the mantra. “Let us use Luther’s contacts. I installed a back-door into the mainframe this time, and from the main control access. If I can get back in, I might be able to find out what kind of failsafe caused Faye to die the way she did.” She sighed. “Please, just give us a chance first.”

Dr. Lee glanced around the room at the determined faces, and his gaze landed on his daughter.

Hannah had edged away from him and one of the wolves put an arm around her shoulders.

“I still have a man on the inside,” Luther said. “Let me get ahold of him. If I can get us back on the island, without hurting anyone else, then we might be able to disable whatever killed Faye, and get the rest of them out.”

Dr. Lee released a tight gust of air, keeping his shoulders level. He wasn’t showing fear, which a group of animals—spirit or not—would have pounced on. But he was about to be persuaded.

“I promise, no one from the team will be in harm’s way. And you can always call in your Rangers as a back-up plan.”

The older man nodded, at last, and the entire room gasped a breath.

Maggie’s fingers gripped his and Luther couldn’t help smiling. They were going to get the chance to take down the monster, after all.

Now, all they needed was a plan.

“
I
want to mate you
.”

Maggie swallowed her gum, coughed, and looked up at Luther from over her laptop screen. Snorts erupted from all corners of the living room where members of the team were doing their damnedest to keep from laughing out loud.

“You’ve already done that,” Niko wheezed, covering his huge grin with the palm of his hand. “It’s called sex.”

He glared at Niko, but the Chicago mobster just snickered a little more. The team slowly rose from their respective seats and filed out of the apartment, probably down to Julianna and Alex’s. Still, it was nice of them to give she and Luther a modicum of privacy.

Her breath caught in her throat. Luther had said he needed time. It’d only been a couple of days since Hannah’s father had left with Faye’s body to do follow up testing in Seattle.

The team, including Luther had been shut up in the apartment just on the off chance that Adrian had anyone following Julianna. Better safe than sorry.

Now out of the blue in the middle of the afternoon…he declared his intentions to bond. He called it mating, but she knew what he meant.

Why now?

He rose from his seat and knelt on the floor in front of her.

She set her laptop aside and smiled. “You mean, bond?”

“I guess. You said there was another link that would connect us for life. I know I said I needed time, but I don’t need any more.”

“Bonding is equivalent to marriage in our circles.”

“I haven’t gotten a ring yet.”

Her smiled widened. “A ring can be for later. Fate will bring the tattoos for the bond.”

Luther shook his head and grinned. “You talk about Fate like it’s an entity. Not a person, but—”

“She’s a goddess. I do believe that. She’s the source from where all magick originates. She brought us all on this mission. The chances of so many of us finding our mates in such a short time, one right after the other, are astronomically ridiculous. Without Fate’s intervention none of us would’ve been in the right place at the right time. The magick you feel between us…is her. She is very real.”

“We get tattoos?”

A chuckle slipped from between Maggie’s lips. “Yes. Fate will design us a unique set of matching bracelets.”

“We get these via email? Or—h”

She slapped his arm and rolled her eyes. “Really?”

“Hey, I’m the newbie at all this wolfy-magick-bonding stuff. But I was hoping you and your friends might go out to the beach with me tonight so we could sorta have a ceremony…if this is that kinda thing. But if you want to do it privately, just say the word. You said there wasn’t a rush, but I feel like there’s something missing between us and I just can’t stop feeling like this is what it is?”

Tears welled and rolled down her cheeks. The bond was exactly what was missing between them. She was so happy to be at his side, safe and secure, and protected in his arms. But a bond was so much more.

A bond would seal the cord that’d grown between them into place. It
was
why he felt something was missing. Why she also felt it acutely.

“Am I doing it wrong? Should we wait until after all of this?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I’m just happy,” Maggie answered as he wiped her cheek with his thumb, brushing away the steadily streaming tears. “There’s nothing you could do that would make me happier.”

“So tonight?”

“Tonight.”

T
he beach was dark
, and the
swish-ahhh
of crashing waves brought a natural musicality to the isolated strip of white sand. A hazy, nearly-full moon hung in the sky, but it was the torchlight that illuminated the night.

Each of the team members—Niko, Hannah, Andrea, Donovan, Danielle, Alex, and Julianna—stood in a half-moon around Luther and Maggie with a dripping torch in their hand. The salute of fire made the whole scene feel like Camelot.

Luther and Maggie faced each other inside the circle and he took her hands. He couldn’t get enough of looking at her. The colorful spray up and down her arms contrasted with the cream of the dress Julianna had picked out for her.

Truth be told, he would’ve married her in a garbage bag, and she would’ve been stunning. But the dress and the flicker of the flames…he never could’ve imagined such a breathtaking bride.

Mate
.

She squirmed under the squeeze of his hands. “Are you sure you’re ready?”

Luther squared his shoulders and nodded. “Couldn’t be more ready.”

“I’m going to say the words of the spell, and the tattoos will write themselves.”

“Wait.” He gripped her hard and her brows practically floated to the sky, around her wide eyes.

“Luther, if you’re having second thoughts, that’s fine. We can do this any—”

“Stop talking, Mag.” One corner of his mouth tugged up. “Before you say the spell. I need to say something.”

With a tight breath, she whispered, “You can say anything you want.”

He raised his voice so the whole team could hear, but he locked on to Maggie’s deep, fathomless eyes. “A week ago, I was a shell. Today, I am full. I think this Fate thing you talk about is real. I don’t know how it works, and I don’t think I have to know. But I see the evidence.” Emotion took hold of his throat and gripped hard. He pushed out a quick breath and blinked at the sky.

“Luther, you don’t have to—”

“No. I do.” He swallowed and met her eyes again. “You make me want to be the person you think I am.” He shook his head. “I’m not that man, yet. But I know that with you around, I will be.”

Tears slipped down Maggie’s cheeks. “You are a good man, Chris Parker.”

From somewhere in the circle, Niko whispered, “Who’s Chris Parker?”

Maggie’s smile widened and she tilted her head to one side. “It’s a long story, Nik. The important thing is, Chris Parker is a good man.”

Luther’s mouth went dry and tears burned their way up his throat. “Chris Parker was a cop killer, and Luther Frost was a criminal. But you made me something else. You gave me a purpose, and a family, and that’s more than I deserve.”

Her tears fell in earnest and she squeezed his hands. “Fate doesn’t make mistakes.”

With a smile, Luther glanced around at the circle. “Anyway, continue your ceremony. I just wanted to say, I’ve never loved anybody before. But I can love you. That’s weird for me to say out loud, but there it is.” He sighed through tight lips.

Maggie closed her eyes. “
Chun tú Geallaim mo chroí agus anam go deo.”
She took a deep breath and repeated the spell once more. “
Chun tú Geallaim mo chroí agus anam go deo.
”

At her words, metallic green marks materialized around their wrists, wrapping and knotting into a double-set of intricate bracelets on each wrist. His matched hers, exactly.

“Holy shit.” Luther let go of one hand and held his up to the torchlight. “Magick tattoos.”

She giggled and pulled him toward her. Her lips parted for him, and when he kissed her, it truly felt like they had sealed something. Muffled claps came from the team members, slapping one hand against their thighs or arms or stomachs, trying not to disrupt the very skillful torch-holding.

“That was fast.” He took her hand in his and held it up to examine it.

Maggie let out a little sigh and examined them closely. “Wow, I forgot. They’re… these are not like my family’s tattoos.” She traced the outline of his bracelet with one tiny finger.

“Well, Luther’s not part of your family,” Donovan said. “The magick would write a new pattern, for a new wolf pack.”

“A new pack,” Maggie whispered. Her eyes met his. “We just started our own pack.”

Luther couldn’t help the ten-mile smile that spread across his face.

He had a family. A mate.

“Wait,” Alex piped up. “That makes Luther an alpha.”

The whole group laughed and Maggie just stood, quietly holding his hands, while everyone else talked around them.

She was his family, and that was all that mattered. The pack stuff, the politics, that was all well and good. But he belonged to someone. And she belonged to him.

Luther chuckled and looked at the sky.

She’s mine.

“What?” she asked, leaning in to him. “What’s so funny?”

He winked at her and pulled her tight against him. He snaked his head around hers and whispered, “Who’s your alpha?”

C
hapter
One

3 weeks later…

Toronto, Ontario

“
S
o you really trust this
guy?” Andrea sipped her cappuccino and sighed. Liquid caffeine. Best drug in the world. It wasn’t as good as coffee back home in Texas, but it was better than what she normally got down in Choaca. The flight to Toronto had been brutal and she’d been delighted to see her favorite coffee shop in the airport terminal.

Andrea glanced across the table at Luther, who had a coffee cup in one hand and his other arm around Maggie’s shoulders. Those two were almost always touching. Once upon a time, she knew what it felt like to be so in love. So drawn to a person that you couldn’t exist without their touch. She swallowed and flashed a friendly smile, pushing the dark memory back into the vault where it stayed.

They’d had to wait three weeks for the right john to travel to the island. This friend of Luther’s was their only chance—
Vadik Nabatov.
It was a huge risk. Not only was he a complete stranger, and a mercenary for hire, they were going to have to break her pack’s cardinal rule. They would have to tell him about wolves…about magick. It put them all in danger for a human to know.

Why didn’t anyone understand this?

“I already told you. I trust him with my life. With Maggie’s life,” Luther answered calmly. “He’s one of the best at what he does. Instincts unlike any I’ve ever seen.”

She nodded and rubbed a sweaty palm across a denim-clad thigh. Being nervous wasn’t something she was used to. Even through all the shit they’d dealt with in Choaca, it’d been a team of wolves working for the higher purpose of saving other wolves. As the mission had twisted and turned and wrapped around each and every one of them, they’d involved one human after another. Granted Julianna and Luther had turned out to both be destined mates to wolves on the team, but it hadn’t been easy to stomach. She’d grown up in a small town where the secret of being Moonbound was guarded ever so carefully, and now they were about to share it with yet
another
human. Her brother would flip a gasket.

“Breathe, woman,” Dani snapped, shifting in her seat next to Niko.