“Oh god,” I gasp, knees weakening. I’d forgotten how this feels.
My body responds like it’s been starving, every nerve ending lighting up. I increase the pressure, finding a rhythm that makes my breath catch. The alphas’ scents linger in my mind. I hate that I want them. Hate that my body craves theirs.
But right now, in this moment, this pleasure is mine.
Just mine.
I slip a finger inside myself, testing and exploring territory that I had been denied for years. The stretch burns slightly, but it’s a good burn. A healing burn. My thumb continues circling as I add another finger, and the pressure builds low in my belly.
“Fuck,” I breathe, moving faster now. My hips rock against my hand, chasing the sensation. Water pounds against my back, steam fills my lungs, and everything narrows to this single point of contact—my fingers against my flesh, reclaiming what was taken.
“This is my body,” I whisper again, pressing against my clit, harder, moving faster.
When I come, it crashes over me, my entire body convulsing. I bite my lip to keep from crying out, as pleasure courses through me, the pleasure I’d forgotten was possible.
I slide down the shower wall until I’m sitting on the floor, water pounding on my head, my hand still between my legs as aftershocks ripple through me, as a sob tears from my throat.
“Fuck,” I gasp between heaving breaths.
The tears come fast and hard, mixing with the shower spray. Five years. Five fucking years they took from me. Five years of my body being a source of nothing but pain.
I pull my knees to my chest and let the sobs wrack through me. It’s not just about the pleasure, it’s about reclaiming something I thought was gone forever.
It’s my body.
Mine.
Not theirs. Not the alpha who sewed me shut. Not these new alphas who make me feel things I don’t want to feel.
Mine.
26
Archer
Silas catches my eye from across the counter. His hands move in quick, fluid signs.
“Good idea, teaching Blue to defend herself,” I translate aloud.
Elias nods from where he’s leaning against the fridge, pretending to be helpful. “She seemed to enjoy it. Almost took my head off with that roundhouse kick.”
“That was the point,” I say. “Figured it would help her feel safer here.”
We work preparing dinner for a while without talking, but Darius’s absence sits in the room like a fifth chair nobody wants to acknowledge. We’ve always been a unit, the four of us, ever since the coup. Even when things were at their worst, we ate together. Trained together and held the pack together by showing up and being in the same room.
He’s been pulling away since the discovery of Blue’s wires. Since he realized what he’d done by refusing to let Blue shift. The guilt is eating him, and instead of dealing with it, he’s disappearing into the woods with an axe and pretending that’s the same thing as fixing the problem.
He needs to get his shit together and apologize to Blue before he loses her for good. Because if she decides she can’t trust one of us, that doubt bleeds into the rest.
Silas signs again. I read his hands.
“Yeah,” I say. “I know. I’ll talk to him.”
Elias opens his mouth to ask what Silas said, but before he can, footsteps pad into the kitchen.
Blue. Barefoot. Hair still damp from the shower, leaving wet patches on the oversized t-shirt she’s wearing. My t-shirt. I try not to smile and fail.
She looks comfortable. Relaxed in a way I haven’t seen from her before. There is no tension in her shoulders, no scanning for exits, no clenched jaw. Just padding into the kitchen as she belongs here.