Bound

Party Time

CLAIRE POV

Mila rounded the corner with a bit more gusto than necessary, eyes wild and clumsy feet tangling around themselves.

"Ben has flown the coop!" She panted in passing; searching the skies and the ground for evidence of his passing. I jumped to join the hunt, thinking that it would really be just my luck to have the local monarch representative come to a sticky end under my watch. Eventually we discovered the owl curled up under the knees of the same tree that Issy and Alfie had utilised last week.

Crisis averted, I puffed out my cheeks and questioned - not for the first time this evening - exactly how much trouble I would be in if I alpha commanded said monarch representative. I mean the answer was obviously a lot, but the real underlying question was whether or not it was worth it. Even if it were for his safety?

I glared at the snoring owl, and the world of trouble he would rain down on me. The creature community at large was convinced that an alpha wolf could only bind the will of another creature to their purpose if it was a pack member.

Probably not worth it.

So instead of that, I extracted His Drunkenness and locked him in a spare cottage with the remnants of his shredded tuxedo. Wondering if he had managed to become the first were owl in the history of creatures that had managed to give himself alcohol poisoning.

The moon had already been descending in the sky for quite some time now, but the creatures swayed by the tides of its power were nowhere near ready to descend themselves. I lost myself in the lunatic roil of intoxicated minds swirling in frivolous circles around my head.

Minutes that could have been hours, or years, passed and my feet never touched the ground. Instead they floated on the mad rhythms pounding through us all. Becoming one with the vibrations of life. Descending into the sensations of all becoming the experience of one.

After a timeless stretch of my existence, firm hands around my waist pulled me from the fray. I pulled powerful lungfuls of air in through a gasping mouth to find Xavier. My Xavier. My, back from the brink of hell, Xavier. I still couldn't believe it. The man that felt like home and adventure all wrapped up in a chiseled body to die for. He swept honeycomb and chocolate tresses out of amber eyes that seemed intent on searing through me and eating me up.

He wrapped his tanned hand around my pale one and pulled me to the side of the madness, where Alexi was waiting to wrap us both into conversation. One finger resting oh so casually on the pulse point of my wrist. As if he needed the reassurance that, yes, I was here and, yes, I was still alive.

Which was funny in a peculiar way, because I felt the same compulsion. Lifting suspicious eyes to trace his profile, suspecting the apparition would drift away on a puff of smoke in the firelight.

I had so many questions. All of them were tied to answers that opened serious issues I wanted to avoid. Just for one night, I wanted to pretend that I lived in a world where I could have two mates and that it was all going to be ok. That our individual statuses did not present obstacles that would do their best to tear this, whatever this actually was, apart.

So instead, we watched the revelry, engaged in it sporadically, and came back to each other. As if gravity pulled the three of us into the space where we became one.

"Alexi I have a very serious question to ask you." Xavier said with a gravitas that sunk the previously buoyant conversation pertaining to my first kill - the sparrow - and the ensuing six hours of freedom from responsibility.

Alexi's adams apple bobbed up and down once, and then twice as he dry swallowed with anxious anticipation. "Yes..." eventually escaped the confines of his mouth, about an octave higher than his regular cadence.