At the mention of someone else, Kane begins to growl again.

If I weren’t so drunk on witch’s brew, and if Kane weren’t an actual wolf at the moment, I’d know what to do. Instead, I edge back a little more, my heart thundering. I cringe when I feel my pussy pounding in time to it.

The lycan moves forward again, eating up the distance between us and then some. He’s so close—close enough to touch. The thought has me backing up faster.

A low, warning sound rumbles in the shifter’s throat.

“Kane, I know I’m on your territory, but you’re making me nervous. Can you⁠—”

I yelp when the back of my foot catches on a tree root, and I tumble to the ground. My hip hits the earth hard, and I hiss in a breath.

One moment, I’m laid out on the ground, and in the next, a massive wolf looms over me.

Maiden, Mother, and Crone.

I go absolutely still as Kane sniffs me curiously. His snout moves to my neck, and I feel his teeth graze my skin. I go very, very still.

“Please don’t bite me,” I whisper.

Sybil might’ve been blasé about it, but I don’t have any interest in being a werewolf.

Kane pauses, then breathes my scent in once more, his tongue licking the flesh before his teeth graze it again, this time more deliberately, like he’s considering the notion.

I lift my hand, readying a spell to push him away, when I see his pelt ripple. In the next instant, his form shifts, his fur receding into his skin as his torso broadens. His translucent magic hovers around him as he transforms.

In less than a minute, the shift is complete, and the wolf is gone. In its place is a very sweaty, very naked man, his heavily muscled body pressed to mine, his face buried against my neck.

He takes deep, heaving breaths as he recovers from the shift.

Unfortunately, all I notice is how fucking good he feels against me. Too good. I reach for him, needing more contact. My prior worries are distant things. Inconsequential, really. This is Kane. I like Kane. I wouldn’t mind kissing Kane.

I drag him onto me, and he doesn’t fight it. He shifts himself so his hips are settled between mine, pinning me in place, and his hand begins to languidly glide up and down the side of my torso, catching on my satin dress.

The lycan draws in a deep breath, then groans, leaning his forehead against my neck. “Fuck. You’ve had witch’s brew, haven’t you?” Kane’s voice is deeper than usual, as though his wolf is barely banked.

“Mmm.” I writhe a little against Kane. His body feels different than what I expected—his hair less coarse, his sweat-slicked skin less scarred. It throws me for a moment.

“You shouldn’t be on lycanthrope territory,” he says.

“I tried to leave. You wouldn’t let me.”

He huffs out a strained laugh. “Yeah, well, my wolf likes you, and he has fewer reservations about making that clear.” He laughs again, then touches the side of my face. “I’ve been worried about you. You okay?”

I nod, then shake my head. “I don’t want to talk about that.” I can barely think over this driving need.

I feel Kane’s cock trapped between us, and though he’s acting gentle and concerned, his body is taut with arousal. I grind against him, causing the shifter to groan.

“Fuck, Selene,” he hisses out, jerking his hips out of reach. “Please tell me you wanted to find me.”

“No,” I say, kissing the underside of his jaw and continuing to rub myself against him. “I had plans.”

He growls at that, and the wolf is wholly in his voice when he says, “Seems to me like you’re making yourself new ones.”

With that, he finds my lips and kisses me.

Just like the last time I kissed Kane, it feels wrong. All wrong. Because I called out to another man, because I stumbled unwillingly into this situation, because it’s the Sacred Seven and Kane’s not in full control of his magic, and I don’t want to get bitten. But most of all, because Kane isn’t Memnon.

I groan at the realization.

“I smell your need,” Kane breathes against my lips, mistaking the sound for something more carnal. His mouth returns to mine, and he deepens the kiss, grinding himself against me, his hard cock rubbing against me through the thin fabric of my dress. I gasp into his mouth as sensation floods me, my hands moving to grip his hips. And yet⁠—

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The wrongness is screaming at me and cutting through my arousal.

“Wait,” I say, breaking off the kiss, a note of panic entering my voice. My body is weeping at me for stopping, and I have to fight the urge to give in again. I place a hand against Kane’s chest. “Stop.” I force the word out, even as my traitorous hips grind against his.

Another growl rumbles low in Kane’s throat, his instincts clearly not liking my words. “Stop?” he says. He dips his nose to my neck and breathes in. “Your body, your very scent itself is telling me to fuck you. You’re dripping in arousal.”

I pinch my eyes shut. “I know, but…” I draw in a lungful of air and force my limbs to untangle themselves from his. “I can’t do this.”

I can’t. The longer I lie here, the more obvious that becomes.

Kane rears back a little, but he doesn’t get off me. Instead, he searches my features. “You can’t, or you don’t want to?”

I open my mouth⁠—

“It doesn’t matter what my mate meant,” a deep voice answers. “She said no. Now get the fuck off my fiancée.”

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER 17

Memnon looms like a god behind me, his magic pressing at his back like a storm cloud as he glares down at the shifter.

“Fiancée?” Kane echoes, gazing down at me. I can’t see his features well, but from what I can make out, he looks both confused and heartbroken. “Mate?”

I swallow, glancing away.

I didn’t tell him everything about the night I was arrested, nor have I mentioned that Memnon and I are soul mates.

Memnon’s magic wraps around Kane’s body and rips the shifter off me, throwing him against a nearby tree. Kane hits it with a grunt. Before he can move away from the tree trunk, the sorcerer’s power pins him to it.

Memnon strides forward, murder in his eyes. He looks like he’s going to rip the shifter’s spine out through his chest. “If it’s not the lycanthrope who thought to touch what’s mine.”

Memnon, I am not a piece of meat to fight over.

Of course you’re not, he says smoothly down our bond. You are the reason for my existence. But I will fight over you.

“Do you remember what I told you when I saw you last?” Memnon says, stepping in close to the bound lycanthrope.

While he speaks, Memnon’s power brushes against me, wrapping around my midsection and slipping beneath my back. I think it’s supposed to be a reassuring caress, but the sensation of his magic against my overstimulated skin has me gasping.

Whoever made that brew should be arrested. This amount of arousal feels criminal.

Memnon continues, “I said that if you ever touched Selene again, I would cut off your dick and feed it to you. And what have I found here? You touching my unwilling fiancée.”

A low growl starts up in the shifter’s throat. “Unwilling? You want to talk about unwilling? You stalked Selene and broke into her room. You threatened to hurt me to get her to do your will. And now you’d have me believe she’s engaged to you?” He laughs in Memnon’s face. Kane’s eyes move to mine. “Tell me you willingly agreed to that.”

I don’t know how Kane so easily sees through this farce of an engagement.

The sorcerer’s magic is gathering; I can see the agitated ends of it lashing around him like whips, and I know he’s about to do something awful.

“Memnon, don’t hurt him,” I gasp out.

My mate doesn’t so much as flinch at the order, but his magic rapidly descends back into his body until the night air is entirely clear of it. Knowing all that violent magic is now bottled up inside the sorcerer unnerves the shit out of me.