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He sliced through her, pushing deep on that first stroke, but he satisfied neither of them. Suddenly both hands were on her hips and he forced her inexorably down, his cock surging high and hard inside her, filling every last corner and leaving her stretched and aching.

Breathless and nearly sobbing above him, Honor watched his face smooth from fierce scowl to a look of complete ecstasy as he found his home again inside her body. He paused for barely a minute before the urgency was on him again and he began thrusting hard and rhythmically within her. Honor met him, thrust for thrust, taking all he had to give and returning eagerly for more. They moved together as if they were two parts of the same machine, fitting perfectly together and working in tandem at their appointed task.

They struggled together for their pleasure, but it felt like more than that.

They moved and slid and strained against each other, but it seemed like a cooperative thing. She shifted her hips to let him slide a fraction deeper. He changed the angle of his thrust until he could reach the sweet bundle of nerves inside her and make her shiver with joy.

She braced her hands on his chest to keep herself steady, and he cradled her hips between his hands to be sure she didn’t fall away. They had become one.

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His pleasure was hers, her pleasure was his. The burst of ecstasy they shared at the end of the journey left them both breathless and aching and sure that the only way to stay sane in the future was to never be further apart than the touch of the other’s loving hand.

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Honor slept late the day of the howl, maybe because she barely slept at all the night before. When Logan had remembered how to breathe, he had insisted on paying her back for her sneak attack. One thing had led to another, and they’d ended up collapsed in a puppy pile of two in the center of the demolished bed just before the sun rose.

She didn’t wake again until after noon, when the sun found just the perfect angle to stream in through a bedroom window and burn the corneas right out from beneath her closed eyelids. It surprised her that she didn’t feel at all sluggish when she awoke, though. Instead, she felt energized and fierce and ready to face whatever the day brought to her. Well, she’d have felt a lot more ready if the day had been ready to bring her a howl, but hey, those were the breaks.

She showered and dressed quickly, planning to track down Logan as her first chore of the day. She had a vague recollection of an annoying buzz and some fumbling as he searched for his cell phone shortly after nine a.m. She’s heard some incoherent rumbling, then he’d slid out of bed, instructing her to go back to sleep and leaving her with a kiss. She thought she might also have heard her door closing and the sound of an argument right outside, but that could just have been her sleep-deprived imagination.

Either way, the only person who could tell her what happened was Logan, and she intended to seek him out. To satisfy her curiosity and so he could satisfy a few of her other needs as well.

She pulled on jeans and a long-sleeved top before stomping her feet into her favorite pair of battered hiking boots. A quick look at the thermometer outside 110

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the window told her the warm front still lingered over New England, so she grabbed an insulated vest from her closet and left it at that.

The house seemed particularly quiet as she tromped down to the kitchen, and she saw when she got there that neither Joey nor Logan had waited for the sleepyhead upstairs to get herself in gear. Still, there seemed to be a few cups left in the thermal carafe of coffee on the counter, so Honor helped herself to a mug and downed it with less enjoyment than habit. She scalded her tongue, but it seemed like such a minor problem in comparison to the high spirits she found herself in this morning. It just amazed her what a little good sex with the man of her dreams could do for a girl’s outlook.

Okay, so maybe Logan wasn’t the man of her dreams. He was a bit too domineering, and maybe a touch stubborn. And she really didn’t see much evidence of a poet’s soul in there anywhere, but still, he seemed just right to her.

There was a bit of a poetic streak in the way he made love, after all, and that seemed good enough to her.

If she could have whistled, she’d have sounded a jaunty tune as she headed for the front door, but as it was, she might have been humming something along the lines of a Disney theme song when the sight in her front yard brought her to a screeching halt halfway down her steps.

There stood Logan, looking as tense as a nun in a roomful of satyrs, clearly having a rather heated discussion with a man she had thought she wouldn’t have to deal with for another three years. Graham Winters. And beside Graham, stood a small blonde woman with a baby balanced on one curvy hip and a very irritated expression on her pretty face.

“I told you over the phone, brother, this discussion is over. I’ve made my decision, and I’m not going to change it because you got a bug up your butt.”

“A bug up my butt?” The Silverback alpha looked less than amused. “My best friend of thirty-some-odd years tells me over the phone that he’s leaving and 111

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never coming back home, and
I
have a
bug up my butt?
Excuse me, you giant idiot, but my butt is just fine! My problem is not my ass, it’s you! The pain
in
my ass!”

“I can tell you right now that you’re both being pains in my ass,” the blonde snapped, though even from the stairs Honor could see that her arm around the baby remained relaxed and secure. “Can’t we go inside and sit down to discuss this like reasonable human beings?”

“We aren’t human beings, Missy. So back off.” Honor winced at the look on the Silverback Luna’s face when her husband gave her that particular order. The alpha needed to count his lucky stars that he hadn’t married a witch, because that look had ‘HEX’ written all over it in great big capital letters.

“True, and some of us damned sure aren’t being reasonable, either. So don’t tell me to back off, you great big pile of canine testosterone. I am trying to keep two good friends from killing each other. You want to give me a little bit of a break here?”

Graham snarled. “The only things I want to break are
his
legs.” He pointed at Logan and his lip curled back with menace. “Followed by his arms, and then each of his ribs, in turn. After that, if I’ve calmed down, I’ll moved on to clavicles, but if he keeps pissing me off, I’m going to forget those and move straight to his thick, useless, no good
skull!
”

“I’d like to see you try it,” Logan growled back so low and menacing that Honor almost took a step backward. Instead, she caught herself and crossed her arms over her chest.

“I have a better idea.” She raised her voice to be heard over the rumble of growls and the thickness of more than one skull. “How about no one breaks anything in my territory, and the people I don’t know tell me what the hell they’re doing here uninvited.”

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All three heads turned in her direction. Well, all four, if you counted the baby’s, but
honestly as small as he was, she thought it would more fairly be called three and a half.

She met each of their gazes with a level one of her own and raised one eyebrow in inquiry.

Neither man spoke; they were too busy casting each other sidelong glances and
maintaining their ridiculous growls. Missy stepped forward to the bottom of the stairs
and offered Honor a polite bow of her head.

“Hello. I assume you are the new Alpha of the White Paw Clan. I bring greetings from your cousins in Manhattan, the Silverback Clan. My name is Melissa Winters, but I hope you will agree to call me Missy.” She offered the formal greeting, but then turned to glower at her mate. “And if my husband weren’t a complete and utter dolt, he would tell you that he is Graham Winters, Alpha of the Silverback Clan. We’ve come and brought our son Roarke with us because my imbecile of a mate believes his friend Logan is incapable of making his own decisions about his life, despite the fact that he’s a grown man and has proven himself more than able in all things during his years as the beta of our pack.”

“Missy.”

The blonde ignored the warning tone in her mate’s voice. “Now, perhaps you can convince these two wonders of intellectual achievement that it would really be a better idea to take this inside and have a rational discussion, rather than airing all our dirty laundry out in full view of local passers-by. What do you think?”

Honor thought she liked Missy Winters already. She fought hard to keep her lips from curving and gestured to her front door. “I think that’s a sensible idea. If you’d all care to follow me, we can sit in the living room and have coffee or tea while we…discuss the issues at hand.”

She turned and began to lead them into the house when a flash of beige at the side of the house caught her attention. She paused and looked but saw 113

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nothing and continued into the cabin. She expected Missy to follow behind her, but the human mate of the Silverback alpha was too smart for that. She waited until the men grudgingly made their way inside before she brought up the rear.

Covering their lines of escape, as the case may be.

Missy did, though, take her seat first when Honor offered one. She perched on one end of the sofa, settling baby Roarke in her lap and dragging Graham over to stand beside her. Logan remained beside Honor near the entrance to the room, and Honor wasn’t quite sure if she should be happy about that.

“Feel free to set him down,” she offered, smiling into the baby’s wide, hazel eyes. “It’s been a while since we had a cub around here, but I doubt there’s anything he can really destroy.”

Missy laughed out loud. “You don’t know Roarke the Wreck, then. Trust me, we’ll all be happier if Wrecker stays here in my lap.”

“Can I get anyone anything, then? Coffee? Tea? Milk for the baby?” Graham launched his attack swiftly and unexpectedly. “You can get your claws out of my beta, bitch, and let him come home where he belongs.”

“Graham Alexander Winters, I am going to
kill
you!”

“I beg your pardon?” Honor’s words barely registered over Missy’s shriek, but she knew Graham had heard them by the way he growled.

“Don’t beg me for anything. I wouldn’t spit on you to put out a fire. You’ve taken the best friend I ever had and all but cut off his dick to hand to him. He’s going to give up his entire life for you, and you have the nerve to stand there as if nothing is going on. You make me sick.”

“Watch your fucking mouth, you bastard.” Logan’s entire body tensed until Honor thought she’d be able to use his skin for piano wire. He voice came out as a growling hiss, forced from between clenched teeth. “Don’t you
ever
talk to my mate that way again. Do I make myself clear?” 114

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Missy leapt to her dainty feet and proceeded to stomp one violently on the hardwood floor. “That’s
it!
” If that wasn’t the Silverback Luna screaming at the top of her lungs, Honor didn’t particularly want to experience the real thing. “I am
sick
of you two morons acting like junkyard dogs! It’s disgusting, and I’m sure Honor’s not real keen on it, are you, Honor? I can call you Honor, can’t I?”

“Of course, Missy. I’m honored. But I’d be even more honored if someone would
explain to the alpha
of this pack just
what the hell
is going on the
middle of her
living room!?
”

Graham opened his mouth on a sneer. “You—”

“Someone
other
than you,” she clarified. She could see the Silverback’s hackles rising, but his mate slapped him hard across the chest.

“Give it a rest, Silver Chief. This is Honor’s territory, and even if she does owe you fealty, she still has the right to tell you to shut up in her own house. So shut up.”

Missy turned to Logan and pointed an imperious, schoolteacherly finger in his direction. “You, I suggest, ought to begin explaining to your new mate just exactly why my husband got me in the car at nine-thirty this morning with a teething baby and made me drive three hours to another state because he was a little upset by a phone call.”

“What phone call?” Honor looked at Logan, her confusion plain in her face.

“You mean that was your cell phone I heard ringing this morning?” Logan nodded. “Yeah. Graham was calling for an update on my opinion about your fitness to run the pack.”

She stiffened. “And what did you tell him?”

“The same thing I’m telling you right now. That this is your pack, and you are more than able to run it as your see fit.” He drew back his shoulders and met her gaze, then shifted his up over her left shoulder in a sign of respect to a dominant Lupine. “And that it’s my hope that you will grant your mate the 115

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honor of lending you any assistance you might need in the course of your duties.”

If it hadn’t been for Graham’s outraged roar, she figured the sound of her jaw dropping would have echoed to the ceiling beams. “You
what?
” He clenched his jaw and drew a deep breath. “I hope you will grant your mate, grant
me,
the honor—”

“No, I heard you, you idiot. I meant what the hell are you talking about? I’m not going to be running this pack. You’re going to tell the Silverback that I’m not fit to be Alpha—which I’m really not, by the way… Okay, so I’m fit, but I’ve realized I don’t really
want
to be the Alpha, so it’s really the same thing, isn’t it?

And then we’re going to go back to Manhattan where you can be beta of your own pack and I can concentrate on my pottery. And on continuing to be madly in love with you and giving you mind-blowing sex at least twice a day.” She shrugged and smiled. “I had it all worked out.” Logan was shaking his head before she made it to ‘idiot,’ and he didn’t stop when she did. “No. You don’t understand.” He met her eyes, this time, his own golden ones soft and warm like aged whiskey. “
I
have it all worked out. I already told Graham that I’m resigning my place as his beta and leaving the Silverback Clan. I’m going to move up to Connecticut, because this place is your home, and these folks are your family. Then we’re going to go to the howl tonight and you’re going to take your place as Alpha and proclaim me as your mate. I realized last night that even in the Rite of Mating, the female alpha’s chosen mate has the right to fight off all other potential mates on her behalf so that their pairing can be made official.”