Page 55 of In the Mouth of the Wolf

A growl rippled through me. It wasn’t fair to be jealous or angry at someone for their exes. Moon knows I had plenty of my own. But vampyrs were another story, and the thought of the two of them having been together for years filled me with rage. How dare a bloodsucker try to take what was ours?

“You never will.”

“Mm, no, I definitely will not.”

Her neck sat tantalizingly close, and my anger from watching the vampyr try to take her from me the other night took over. Perhaps I should have allowed Cam to go first – he was technically our leader, even though he’d never exerted his authority over us before and we didn’t operate as a pack that way. But my desire to possess and protect the sweet little omega on my knot propelled me forward. I brushed the hair from her creamy skin and struck hard into the crook of her shoulder.

Her body lurched and she yelped in surprise, but I held her steady in my arms and between my teeth, letting the power of the bond course through us.

When the pain made way for pleasure, I released her, lapping up her sweet blood and closing the wound.

Another orgasm tore through her, and mine soon followed. I kept a tight grip, one hand splayed across her abdomen and the other grabbing one of her breasts, while she held onto the arms of the chair, riding out our shared release.

“Elias, did you just…?”

“Yes,” I answered, my voice heavy and low. “You’re mine forever now, Marlowe.”

A smile crept over her face as she sighed, leaning the back of her head against my shoulder. “Good.”

27

MARLOWE

They say smell was the sense most strongly connected to memory, and my dad’s lingering scent of sage and vetiver hit me hard, dredging up long forgotten childhood scenes. I remembered what it felt like to sit on his lap while he read to me, the scratchiness of his whiskered chin when he kissed my scraped knees.

Trips to the park, sledding in the winter. Hugs after tantrums and secret cookies when my mom wasn’t looking.

The night he never came home. My mom crying in their bedroom.

I had hoped he’d left some clues to his disappearance. What had been so important he had to leave, so important he’d never see his family again?

But so far, we were coming up empty.

Elias had confirmed that while most of his friends and acquaintances knew he’d been married since he still wore a ring, not as many people had known about me and my brother, and he had apparently never talked about us.

But he had been such a valuable and successful member of the community with his business and outreach that no one had really questioned it.

We were almost finished going through all his paper files. Thankfully, my dad had been enough of a luddite to insist on hard copies of everything, because I wasn’t sure we’d ever be able to get into his computer.

The safe was also a mystery. I hoped he’d been forgetful enough that he’d written the code on a scrap of paper and shoved it in a desk drawer, but we unfortunately hadn’t had such luck.

A folder in one of his cabinets labeled “Oakmoss Fellowship” caught my eye, and my body went stiff.

Elias noticed my reaction, quickly coming to my side. “What is it?”

“The Oakmoss Fellowship… that’s the one I received. It paid for my undergrad and graduate tuition.”

My hands shook as I opened the file. My applications were the only papers inside. Tears sprang to my eyes as my fingers ran down the pages, reading my answer to the essay question about the biggest obstacle I’d overcome in my life.

I’d written about losing him.

“Did you know about this?” I whispered, my voice cracking.

He shook his head slowly, placing a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “I remember helping him set this up, but that’s where my involvement ended. I never knew it was for you.”

I gulped, clutching the file as I closed my eyes. “I only knew about the fellowship because of a random email I received. I just applied on a whim. I even encouraged Ezra to apply, but he wanted to take a gap year and travel before going to college. He died before…”

Elias wrapped me up in his thick arms, bringing me to his chest. He didn’t say anything, just offered silent comfort while I processed my discovery.

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