The Game

“We’re going to play a game, beautiful,” Derik purred, running his finger down my cheek.

I was standing in an empty ballroom with my three alphas, and each one looked as devilishly sexy as the other. And they wanted to play? Yes, please.

I smirked up at him. “What kind of game?”

“Not that kind of game, Spitfire.” Braxton chuckled, and I gave him a dramatic pout.

And then Kai was behind me, wrapping his arms around me. “We could play that kind of game; it’d be much more fun.”

He kissed over my neck, and I rolled my head to the side to give him better access. I sighed as my body warmed beneath his touch. My eyes met Derik’s, who was watching with heavy lust in his eyes.

I grabbed his hand and brought it to my lips. “Are you sure we can’t play my game instead?” I asked, and he hesitated, considering my offer before closing his lips over mine.

It was a tender kiss that had me excited for what he might be agreeing to, but he stepped back.

“Our game first, then yours,” he promised.

I nodded, grinning at him before looking behind him to where Brax was placing a wooden chair in the middle of the room, then another one facing it.

I left Kai’s grasp and went over to the chairs, running my fingers along the back. “What game is this?”

“We’re going to play with your shadows.” Brax smirked, and I raised a brow.

“The good ones?”

“Only ever the good ones, Spitfire.”

“How are we going to play with them?” I asked as Derik and Kai came over.

“We’re going to see exactly what you can do and how strong they are when you actively try to use them,” Derik explained.

It was a good idea, but it had my stomach twisting a little. I hadn’t even known I had them until the blood moon, and I had never tried to use them before, so I had no idea what I was meant to do.

“Okay, how?”

“Sit down,” Brax said, and I sank into one of the chairs, waiting for my next instructions. Brax sat in the chair opposite me.

“We’re going to play hide-and-seek.” Kai grinned. “But you’re going to find us using your shadows.”

“I thought I wasn’t allowed around the estate?” I asked, exposing the flaw in their plan. I was starting to prefer my game idea much more than theirs.

“First of all, that was only until the wolves knew about you, now they do. And secondly, you won’t be leaving this room. You’re going to let your shadows find us and tell you where we are.”

Derik smirked, and I blew out a tight breath. That was a lot to ask considering I’d never used them before, but I wanted the same answers they did.

And if I could manage something like that? I’d be able to find them whenever I wanted. That sounded fun.

I smiled at the idea, and Kai laughed a booming laugh.

“Told you she’d like the idea.” He winked at me, and I blushed a little at how well he had guessed my thoughts.

“So, how do we do this?”

Brax grabbed my hands and turned me to face him.

“Go hide, boys, I need our little winter born to concentrate on something other than our dicks for a bit,” he teased, and I poked my tongue out at him.

Childish, I know, but it made him grin before kissing me, tugging at that tongue of mine with a suck that made me melt into him. I wrapped my arms around him, kissing him back, leaving my seat to climb on his lap.

“Yeah, that’s how to make her concentrate,” Derik said in a sarcastic tone, and I knew he was rolling his eyes.

Brax chuckled and pulled back, lifting me off him and putting me back on my chair. Kai put his hands on my shoulders and tugged at my ear with his teeth.

“Stay, human. Be patient,” he said, then kissed me and strode from the room.

Derik did the same, and I turned to Brax. “You really think I can use my shadows to find them even though I’ve never seen the estate in full and I’ve never used my shadows intentionally before?”

“But you have channeled before.”

“I thought you said no more channeling?”

“During sex,” he corrected, and I had known that, I was just procrastinating because I was scared to start using a power within me that I didn’t understand.

I had no idea what was going to happen when I started to, and the story about Elias, the other winter born, had been kind of off-putting to the whole magic side of things.

But I had to trust the alphas. They said as long as I kept my shadows pure and didn’t let the others in, I would be fine. But my brother had said not to trust the wolves.

I had no idea what to think or do.

“Stop overthinking. You’ll stress out if you do that, and it’ll make it harder to channel,” Brax said, and I shook out my limbs, trying to loosen up.

“I don’t know if I want to use the shadows yet.”

“Look, the shadows within you are nothing to be afraid of. They actually help you, probably more than you realize. You have loyals, which are like guardian angels in human terms.

“When you get a sense of an emotion someone else is feeling or an instinct that something isn’t right, they’ll ‘whisper’ to you”—he raised his hands in quotation marks—“but it just means they are the ones telling you those things, letting your human mind and body feel what it needs to.

“For example, you’ll feel when someone is lying to you, you’ll feel when their intentions are bad, and if you’re powerful enough, you should be able to use them to channel at a distance, which is what we’re going to try today,” he said.

I nodded, hoping I could do what he was saying.

I kind of liked the idea of just leaving them alone inside me and keeping things the way they were, but I only had until the next full moon to come up with some way to tell the bad shadows to fuck off so they didn’t take it out on my brother.

“How do I do it then?”

“I’ve never taught anyone to do this before, definitely not a human. I’m not sure how anything works in you.

“Since I have magic to help mine but you don’t have anything but shadows in you, this is going to be me learning as I go too,” he explained, and it gave me no confidence whatsoever.

But then again, I sucked at learning anything. My lessons in the village had not gone well. I had an easier time just doing the thing I needed to learn rather than getting told about it, so I gave a hefty sigh and looked at Brax.

“So I just channel? Then I should find them?” I asked impatiently, and he smirked with a little nod.

“That’s where I was going to start, since you already managed that.”

“Cool,” I said, then closed my eyes and thought of the other times I had channeled.

I hadn’t exactly tried, but I remembered thinking of the connection, so I did the same thing.

I felt Brax straight away. His shadows were there, reaching out, inviting me in. I clutched his hands tighter and sucked in a breath, my stomach tightening as his shadows met mine.

I felt when his touched mine, like a whisper dancing across my skin. It was so intimate and warm, the way my eyes were closed, we were barely touching and yet I could feel him so damn strongly.

His scent of rain filled my nostrils, the taste of him on my tongue. I remembered his touch, his kiss on my lips, his body filling mine. It was all right there, taking over my mind the further I explored him with my shadows.

“Wow,” he breathed, and I smiled.

“I feel it too,” I whispered back.

“I didn’t know it could be so…intense,” he admitted, and I fidgeted in my seat as the heat pooled in my abdomen, making my breaths harsh and my throat tight.

“I can feel you touching me. I can smell you, taste you,” I explained, and his shadows spread over more of me, filling my body with a hot weight that had me desperate.

“Let go of my hands, hold the connection,” he breathed, like he was just as tense with desire.

It was suffocating. The longer the connection went, the more intense it became. I pulled my hands back from his, but it didn’t change a thing. I still wanted to find him and fuck him just as much as before.

My shadows twined with his, caressing everything inside me as they danced like they were their own entity. It was the strangest thing; I couldn’t see them together, and yet I felt them joined in every part of me.

And then it got stronger.

The power from his body trickled from his shadows, where mine found it and I took it. I couldn’t help it; it was like a shining light within me that I had to have.

My body soaked up the leaking magic from him until he ripped the connection away. My eyes flung open and I stared at him, my heart racing, my body buzzing.

He was leaning over his chair, breathing hard. “End of game,” he snarled, gripping his head as he clenched his eyes shut.

I frowned, the hostility biting into my armor, hurting more than I wanted it to. “What was that?”

“You went from channeling to siphoning. Don’t,” he huffed, then sat straighter in his chair, his face pale as he swallowed, then blew out a breath.

“I didn’t know. Sorry,” I said, not exactly sure what he meant but sorry for whatever it was.

He narrowed his eyes on me. “You sure you didn’t mean to?” he challenged, and I frowned at the accusation in his voice.

“I’m sure. You have shadows, check if I’m lying,” I snapped back, annoyed that he thought I had done it on purpose. Especially after the intensity of the connection.

I had thought it had been something, but obviously not if he was questioning me. He tilted his head to the side and his eyes went pale before he nodded once. I felt him dig for the lie, but he wouldn’t find one.

“You don’t trust me?” I realized, and he hesitated.

“I just have to be sure,” he said quietly, but there was something in me that tugged.

He wasn’t lying, it didn’t give me that impression, but he was holding back, and I frowned at him.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

He eyed me, then shook his head. “You’ll feel me stronger for a bit.”

“And you don’t like that?” I stated.

“I don’t care that you will feel what I feel or my intentions, I care that your shadows are stronger than I’ve ever felt and it makes me nervous.”

“You’re still holding back.” I crossed my arms across my chest and hung one leg over the other.

“You know everything you need to know at the moment, Spitfire,” he breathed, then smirked, trying to break the new tension between us, but I knew it was just a distraction.

“Your shadows disagree. Mine are still telling me otherwise,” I explained, and he clenched his jaw.

He looked away, then pulled his chair closer so he was right in front of me.

“Your power, harnessed, could be exactly what we need to fight the war that’s coming. But it could also be the end of the Werewolf Territory if you don’t learn what you’re doing.

“Some of the wolves on the council believe keeping you could be our downfall. They believe you knew what you were doing on the night of the blood moon, that you planned to get called back and are working from the inside to take us down. Feeling what I just felt, I know you could do it,” he explained, speaking every truthful word with an ominous tone.

But I didn’t care what the council thought. I had no idea what the hell I was doing, and I had no ulterior motive. They’d figure that out when I helped them beat whatever was coming.

I did care what my alphas thought though, and it almost seemed like Braxton had questioned me too in that moment.

“And what do you believe?” I asked, tensing for the answer.

That’s when his signature grin spread across his face. “I believe that we have a secret weapon in and out of bed, and we’d be stupid not to use it to help us win.”

I smiled at that, his body pushing a familiar warmth through me. He was showing me it was the truth, that he trusted me, and I needed it.

I soaked it up, then licked my lips, about to get off my chair when he placed his hands on my thigh.

“I don’t want to play the game anymore. I had something better in mind,” I said, holding the sides of his face, my fingers moving up to the topknot on his head.

We both knew that if I pulled his hair out, we were fucking. The feel of his hair through my fingers, the strands brushing my shoulder as he thrust inside me… It was irresistible not to when those memories stole my focus.

He chuckled and grabbed my hand, holding it in his on my lap. “You have two alphas to find, Spitfire.” He winked, then sat back and nodded to me.

I sighed and closed my eyes. I knew I had to find them. The quicker I did, the quicker I got what I wanted, so I didn’t hold back. I went hunting, my shadows reading my intentions and racing to find my alphas.