“I want to tell you how to bring the women back.”
Ashlee grinned. “So, it’s safe then, from the curse? We can bring the other women back?”
Mary Jo nodded. “Yes, the shifters will no longer try to kill their mates. You removed the curse when you spilled the witch’s blood. And Tristan is strong; his magical connection to the pack will keep others from being able to do what the witch did.” Mary Jo approached Ashlee and placed her hands on her shoulders. “But the danger isn’t done, darling. It’s just beginning. The men will need their women in the battles that will come.
I don’t know how Kendrick can be stopped. If I did I would have stopped him thirty years ago. But I do know it will be mated couples who will be our salvation.”
“How do we find the women to bring them back?”
Mary Jo leaned over and kissed Ashlee on her cheek. Electricity shot through Ashlee’s body and her head pounded. She almost fell down, but Mary Jo held her up.
“Now you know what I know.” She kissed her other cheek. “Good luck.”
Tristan saw Ashlee’s head move back and forth on the pillow and he took a deep breath of relief. She’d been so still, almost not breathing, and it had terrified him. He wasn’t even clear why she’d been unconscious for twelve hours when physically she seemed so perfectly well.
“Ashlee, are you coming back?” He kneeled down next to the bed and stroked the hair off her forehead. He’d almost lost his precious gift. Silently, he promised himself he would never again come so close to losing her.
Her eyes still closed, she whispered, “I’m so sick of these women doing that to me.”
Women? “What are you talking about, little one?”
Ashlee opened her eyes and stared into his. His heart dropped into his stomach and he felt joy surge through his system. She was awake, and even if she wasn’t making any coherent sense, she talked. Ashlee threw her arms around him and squeezed him tight against her. He wrapped his arms around her as his body shook with unexpressed emotion and finally fear within him released.
She pulled back to speak. Her voice shook. He touched her face, gently stroking her features as he lowered her on the bed, sure that she must be still weak.
“The women in your family keeping knocking me on my ass to deliver knowledge to my brain. One of these days, I’m going to short circuit and then what good will I be?
Answer me that.” Ashlee tried to sit up again and Tristan leaned over to help her. She closed her eyes again like they pained her and Tristan moved to sit next to her on the bed.
He pulled her into his arms, needing to feel her warmth against him.
“I’m afraid you’re still not making any sense to me. Have I missed something?”
“When your Aunts wanted me to know how to do the spells to save you, they imported their lifetime of knowledge into me magically and knocked me unconscious for four hours. It hurt like hell.”
Tristan could imagine the scene, and it explained what had happened to his Aunts.
He was glad they were with their mates, but furious that they’d placed Ashlee in danger.
She never should have been left alone to face the mystics. It was far too early. He swallowed down his temper. Nothing he could do about it now.
“So who keeps doing it to you? My aunts?” He would get Ashlee to make sense.
“No, now it’s your mother.”
He narrowed his eyes to look at her before he massaged her neck. “Ashlee, I never saw you hit your head, but I think you must have. Maybe we should get your father back here to check you out again.” He had started to move when she grabbed his arm.
“Your mother is waiting for your father. She wanted me to know how to bring back the women, how to restore the pack, so she imparted the knowledge and it knocked me on my behind again.” Ashlee laughed, and the sound filled him up. “I’m going to have to start being careful when I let people touch me. It really hurts my head when they do that.”
He grinned at her. Her claim sounded impossible. His mother had been dead for years. Yet…why was it any less possible than all the other things they’d dealt with over the last thirty years? “Shall I enact a rule? No one wanting to dump information into Ashlee’s brain may touch her without permission?”
She lowered her eyes for a moment and then raised them as she reached up to touch the side of his face. His heart stopped for a moment before it started pounding again. Just the touch of her hand on his skin was enough to bring him to his knees.
“Your eyes are still wolf.” Her voice was little more than a whisper.
“They always will be now. It comes with the Alpha job.” He paused, unsure how to continue. “Do you hate it?”
Ashlee shook her head. “Just have to get used to it.”
“Do you hate me?” And there was the question he had to have answered. He’d been out of his mind, crazed. Could she ever forgive him?
“Of course not. None of this was your fault. What a ridiculous question.” Ashlee growled at him, loudly. He repressed the urge to crack up. His mate, who just a week ago hadn’t even known she was a wolf, now growled like a pro.
“I was worried.”
Ashlee leaned over to kiss him, and for a moment he stopped breathing, but as her lips pressed into his, he was reborn. Tentatively, he felt Ashlee’s tongue push into his mouth where he gladly welcomed her. He’d almost lost everything, and then he’d been given more than he ever imagined possible. Never again would she be disappointed or hurt.
She pulled back and looked at him. “Are you still worried?”
He shook his head and kissed her again, angling his body to push her down on the bed. Tristan tried to tell himself to slow down, she’d been injured and exhausted, but Ashlee seemed to want to move a frantic pace, and he was glad to oblige her. She pulled at his shirt and he threw it on the floor.
Feeling turnabout was fair play, he quickly took hers off too. She grinned at him.
“Wow, for being the big Alpha, you still take direction pretty well.” Her voice was teasing and he wanted to lick it up.
He kissed up and down her neck, stopping every once in a while to suck on a particularly sensitive area. “You called me Alpha out in the circle today. I don’t want you to do that again. I’m your mate, that’s how I want you to think of me.”
“You’re both, Tristan, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. In certain circumstances, I’m going to think of you as my Alpha. My wolf won’t have it any other way. And—oh, I can’t talk while you do that to me.” He’d obviously hit on a spot she liked, so he spent a little extra time nuzzling it.
She sighed, and he was done talking. He drew her closer, needing her heat, demanding the connection between them. Her mouth was heaven to him; each press of her lips or small noise she made sent waves of pleasure through his body until he thought he might explode from it.
It was different this time. The few days they’d spent away from each other had made Ashlee more confident, more sure of herself, and Tristan, who would have sworn he couldn’t have been more attracted to Ashlee than he already was, fell even more under her spell as his love for her furthered his protective instincts. She was his. She’d kiss only him for the rest of her life. He was Alpha now, responsible for everyone and everything that happened to his pack. He was powerful, but she owned him. With one look, she could destroy him, and yet the woman who had been gifted to him seemed willing to forgive him for the horrible things he had done. He cherished her. Because of Ashlee, he could live with his burdens, as long as she kept kissing him like this.
His chest pressed against hers, he fiddled with the closure of her bra until she finally took pity on him and undid it herself. At the sight of her freed breasts, his groin strained painfully against his pants, but he would not rush. He would make it last for both of them.