Chapter 173

Justin’s POV

Helen scurried away from me, tidying her skirt and pasting an innocent look on her face. I yanked the front of my shirt down to cover my exposed erection, holding one hand across the other in front of any indiscrete lumps.

It wasn’t enough. At least not for me to remain uncaught. The warrior took one look at me and blushed crimson.

“Alpha King, I-I’m so sorry,” he stammered. “I thought it was important. I didn’t realize . . .” His voice faded out, and he turned away, facing the door.

“It is important,” Helen said, stepping in front of me.

I used the moment and her cover to tuck myself back into my pants. If anyone had ever said I’d stop that close to orgasm, I’d have laughed at them. But I guess there are at least a few things that can interrupt, even at near climax.

“She’s right,” I added. “Finish delivering your message.”

He turned back around but couldn’t meet my eyes. “Right. The visitor is a witch. She says her name is Selina Crow.”

Helen, Randy, and I all looked at one another.

“Isn’t she the witch who wrote that article about Helen’s bloodline?” Randy asked.

“That was the name on the article,” Helen confirmed. “At least we know she’s a legitimate researcher. We should hear what she has to say.”

I wanted to kick everyone out so Helen and I could quickly finish what we’d started. But before I could make the order to the warrior, she was already on her way out the door. He led her away from my office to wherever our guest waited.

Part of me was proud of my luna for being ready to face the business of the pack head-on without needing to wait for my permission or anyone else’s. But my load still sat in my balls, making them ache uncomfortably. That part of me really wanted my desperate, panting, horny mate back.

When Helen had first come to me, she’d been willing to spread her legs and service me at the slightest suggestion of sex. Was that because the genes from her ancestral pack left her needing my essence so badly that she couldn’t help it?

Two horrible thoughts occurred to me. First, if she was acting on instinct, the drive to awaken her true potential, then had she been attracted to me at all? Or was I just a means to an end for her? Was she simply called to my side because of the power I offered her?

Which brought up my second fear. If she needed to gain power from her lovers, and we hadn’t been sleeping together in months, was she getting it from someone else?

Beowulf snarled at this thought. “Kill anyone sharing our mate.”

“Shut up,” I snapped at him. “We don’t know she’s sleeping with anyone else.”

“Then demand she tell you who he is and kill him. Do it in front of her, so she knows lovers won’t be tolerated.”

I stopped following Helen to keep my argument with my wolf private. She didn’t need to deal with him. That was my job.

“I’ll ask Helen if there’s anyone else,” I told Beowulf.

“And you’d believe her? After she stabbed us?”

I knocked my forehead against the wall. “And we were wrong about that. We told her we were and apologized. We had proof practically slapping us in the face. I’m not letting you talk me into alienating our mate again.”

I righted myself, clenching my hands into a fist. “In fact, I know how I’m going to start showing Helen I can be the mate she deserves. I’m going to ask if there’s anyone else. If she says yes, I’ll forgive her. And if she says no, I’ll take her word for it.”

“You’re a weakling,” Beowulf snarled. “I’m disgusted to belong to you. It’s a natural order. You’re the alpha, and the alpha dominates everyone beneath him. It’s like what happened back in the office. Who cares what our mate wants? Our balls still ache because you refused to just thrust inside and finish the deed. A real alpha would let me breed our mate the way nature intended.”

“By force?” I snapped.

“Fucking right. Helen’s a she-wolf. Throw her down, mount her, breed her, force her to submit.”

I shook my head. “Even the alpha in a pack of mortal wolves treats his mate better than that. You think I should behave more like an animal than a wild dog?”

Beowulf only growled in response to this.

“Besides, we tried the ‘fuck her until she dies’ method. We nearly lost our mate, physically and emotionally.”

“Then she’s not strong enough to be worthy of us.”

“We don’t get a second chance mate!” I yelled, ignoring the staff walking past who were watching me argue with myself like I was crazy. “She gets stronger every time I give her my essence. Imagine how strong she’ll be in another year or ten. But not if I let you break her, kill her.”

He growled at me again. “Whatever. But don’t expect me to participate while you walk around with blue balls catering to her.” He curled up inside me, making a show of being asleep to ignore me.

“I let you have your way before, and it was a disaster.” He might be ignoring me, but I knew Beowulf wasn’t asleep yet. “This time, I’m going to do better. You’re all about power, and especially now that I know about her abilities, I think we have a shot at becoming the ultimate power couple. But it’s going to take time and work to make it happen. So go ahead and pout. But I’ll show you what we’re both capable of.”

I’d barely made it to the front door when Helen’s scream sent fear coursing through my body. I bolted in the direction the cry had come from. How could she have gotten hurt in my own house? I had security everywhere.

After her scream, the house had fallen deadly silent. I didn’t live in the sort of near-palace of a mansion that my father had lived in, but it was a huge place, and I didn’t know where she was meeting with the witch.

Wait. This witch. What if she was working for my father, or worse, the Huntsman? How could we have trusted a visitor just because she’s written a material compiling data on paranormal beings? That meant she was an academic, but it didn’t mean she was trustworthy.

I looked in several rooms before finally finding Helen sitting in a chair at the kitchen table. She stared straight ahead, eyes wide with fear and pale as a ghost. Not a single muscle twitched. She was so still she could have been dead if she weren’t still upright.

In front of her, a laptop stood open, and beside it lay a piece of paper. The warrior who had brought Helen to meet the witch and Randy both stared over Helen’s shoulder at the screen. Both of them wore masks of horror on their features.

But the witch was nowhere to be seen.

“What’s going on?” I demanded.

I gave Helen a gentle shake, trying to call her back to attention. She shuddered, and tears dripped down her face. But she still didn’t say anything.

I looked at the paper for a clue, but it only contained a name. Jacob Orias Cypress. What the hell was that supposed to mean? It was just the name of the Huntsman. It didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.

“For the love of God,” I snarled. “Would someone just tell me what’s going on? I thought Helen was really hurt. She sounded like she was dying.”

“That might be the end result, after all,” Randy murmured. He pointed to the laptop. “The witch told us the answer was in Jacob Cypress’s last name. We know why no one recognizes what he is and how he can defeat whole races of supernatural beings.”

Randy swallowed hard, going even more pale. “Orias is the name of Jacob’s father. And Orias . . . is a demon.”