As the last white stream filled her mouth, she moaned and swallowed, cleaning the head of him with a slow, tongue swirl that made him shiver.

Lyonis was shaking everywhere with the force of the orgasm. Or maybe it was from her sexy little finish at the end. Damn he had no idea but if this was his mate’s idea of dominating him, then he might be on board for further experimentation.

Now that she knew escape wasn’t much of a possibility, Willow, surprisingly, felt relaxed. There were no worries about being caught or finding a way to leave. A part of her was actually relieved.

She had no idea what this meant for the future. If she left him, she’d destroy him. Not only would it devastate him but the pack would suffer as well, and the way they relied on him, well, she wasn’t sure she could go through with it. Chloe had told her to stay until the situation with this new demon was taken care of, then if she was still unhappy she’d have Tyrian help get her out. Instead of delighting her, the thought sent her into a sort of panic.

Of course, when she’d asked Lily for advice, she’d simply recommended “boning the hot Alpha” as much as possible. According to one of her recent dreams, Willow mated with him. So far, she refused to think much upon that. And hey it wasn’t like Lily’s dreams were always correct, because they weren’t. But when they were right, it was a 100% sure thing. Willow didn’t want to think about the possibility of mating with the Alpha. She hadn’t even figured out how she was supposed to stay here, without getting any soft feelings for him. He was a gentle man in many ways, actually nice. So not what she’d originally thought.

Even over the past few days, she’d watched the way the pack members sought him out for advice or questions. He never gave quick answers but would contemplate the matter seriously—no matter how trivial it was. Earlier that day a teenage boy with a thick head of blond hair asked Lyonis how he could get girls to like him more. The boy was taller than most for his age and nearly bone thin giving him a lanky and gangly appearance.

Lyonis had nodded gravely as if the question was the most dire and important ones of all time. He then grabbed his shoulder and said, “Danny, the first thing you need to do is figure out what makes her happy, then you give that to her. If she likes to talk, then talk to her. If she likes flowers, then pick her some.”

Danny had watched the Alpha with a look of grim wonder. After the boy left with a new look of excitement, Lyonis had turned to her and winked. Willow blushed. No one had ever winked at her before. It made her stomach spin with a peculiar feeling somewhere between embarrassment and excitement.

Surprisingly, since that morning sex they’d had, he hadn’t brought it up. She’d expected some sort of fight over it. After all, he hadn’t liked being tied up. But ha! He got what he deserved after the way he treated her in that damn club. There was almost something strange about him now that she’d taken the leap and done that. He watched her with different eyes, almost as if he was assessing her. It was starting to drive her nuts to the point where she finally threw up her arms and yelled “What!” when he kept watching her. But he’d only given her a small smile.

Today, Lyonis was showing her the other parts of the pack’s town. “You’ll need to be acquainted with everything if you’re going to be my queen,” he said, taking her into the big building in which he’d first announced her as his mate.

Willow laughed. “That’s the biggest if in the history of ifs, my friend.” He looked down at her and one corner of his mouth curled up.

“I have no problem with starting as your friend—so long as we work up to what I want.”

Willow rolled her eyes. “Whatever. So what is this place?” The main floor of the building was big enough to be an auditorium and two hallways led off it with offices on either side.

“This is our headquarters. We use it for larger meetings with the pack and to keep with what the other packs are doing. And down here,” he said, taking her by the hand and pulling her into a hallway, “we have our workout facilities, a medical facility, and offices.”

Lyonis led her into the healing ward first. The room was massive and looked like a hospital room complete with gurneys, a washroom, and medical equipment she couldn’t even name.

“Why do you need such an elaborate healing ward? This place looks like a mini-hospital.”

“It basically is. Being a shapeshifter doesn’t make you immune to death or pain. As I mentioned before, we’ve had some problems with the local humans in the past years. They know what we are and don’t like it, and of course there’s the occasional skirmish between members.”

“Not all of the humans hate you, I’m sure.”

He nodded. “That’s true, but some seem to hate us simply because we’re different. Just the way of life, I guess. Every now and then, we get illegal hunters on our land. They try to hunt us in animal forms. Man, woman, child, they can’t tell the difference and they don’t care.” Willow grimaced at the thought.

“Aren’t there any legal repercussions for these assholes?” He laughed at her and shut the hospital door behind them.

“Sadly, no. Right now there is no universal governing board for us. No separate government to join any of the packs, let alone the vampires and other beings. The human government’s motto seems to be to ignore us as much as possible.”

“But what about when they hurt one of you?”

He shrugged. “We’ve tried taking it to court before, but the human’s defensive is always that they thought they were shooting another animal, that they had no idea it was a shapeshifter.”

“But if they’re on your land...”

“I know. It’s a lie. They used to try to hunt us, but I’ve put a stop to it. It’s been years since anything like that has happened. I have trained guards, even cameras covering the edge of the property so we can see if anyone comes in. We’ve had to amp up security to keep everyone as safe as possible.”

Neither of them spoke as he led her deeper into the building and down several flights of stairs.

“This place didn’t look nearly so big from the outside,” Willow noted.

“That’s part of the design, and the defense of this building. Here is where our guards train. Other come here to work out, but mostly the guards use this.”

“What kind of training do they do?” He smiled at her as if he was pleased by her question. Shit, Willow thought. She wasn’t trying to make him think she was interested in any of this—even if she was. But it was too late, the question was out.

“Hand to hand combat, shifting while fighting, things like that.”

“Oh, that’s—” The sound of footsteps stopped her. Willow turned to see Thane and Jackie running into the room with a hard, worried look in their eyes. Lyonis tensed instantly.

“What’s wrong?”

“We found a piece of Stephanie’s clothes off the trail,” Thane said. He paused as if he didn’t want to say what he was about to. “There’s blood.”

“Show me, now!”

Willow jumped at the sound of Lyonis’ voice. She’d never heard him sound so angry. She hesitated as they all made for the doors, but then he turned back to her and nodded his head for her to join them. Willow followed; no matter how much her stomach and instincts told her not to. Stephanie was missing and now they’d found her blood. She couldn’t help the lost feeling inside her that kept telling her it was her fault.

They broke into a run outside of headquarters. As an avid runner, she was able to keep pace with them as they made for the surrounding forest line that cocooned the small town. She watched as pack members, walking by in their daily lives stopped and looked at them with alert eyes. Please don’t let her be dead.

It took nearly fifteen minutes for them to come to a stop. Willow didn’t know what she expected to see, but this wasn’t it. It just looked like a forest. The floor was covered in dark soil; leaves covered the ground with the oncoming of winter and trees stood tall and imposing. The wind blew and rustled the dry branches and blew back the hair from her face.