Acceptable Risk by Candace Blevins Read Free Book Online Page A

her again. She said, “I will keep your secrets,” as she
thought about everything she’d learned tonight, and drank the wine
without thinking about what was in it. She said the phrase again,
and without warning, she was engulfed with feelings, emotions, and
the sense of running through the woods with four legs, the wind in
her fur, the forest alive with colors and smells.
    Mac held her tighter, and she screamed as she
felt her finger being cut off. Ranger was suddenly in her thoughts,
telling her she was okay, ordering her to make a fist and feel all
of her fingers. She did, and she remembered Ranger in her ass at
the end, Mac jacking off as he watched, and Jonathan holding her
boobs together with his cock thrusting between them.
    The room came back into view with a thunderclap,
and she jumped and gave another small scream as Mac asked, “What
the fuck?”
    “You okay?” Ranger asked.
    Bethany shook her head as Mac said, “I’m human,
and I can hold it together for Bethany, but I’m not okay.”
    Duke spoke so softly, Bethany barely heard him.
“Look at their auras.”
    Ranger said, “Fuck,” as Jonathan said, “Shit.
Tell me what I just felt. What happened?”
    No one spoke, and Duke finally said, “We all
caught pieces of each other. I saw Ranger running through the
woods, saw someone cutting one of Mac’s fingers off when a few were
already missing, and saw Bethany freaking when Mac started changing . Ranger took control, reminded Mac he has his
fingers back, and then steered them all to a shared memory before
bringing us all out of it. I don’t know what they got from me.”
    “They didn’t get anything from you,” Ranger
said. “I saw you and your brother fighting, before you left the
pack.”
    “What’s going on with our auras?” Bethany
asked.
    “You’re joined. It’s one aura with two people.
We did the ritual with the two of you joined,” Duke explained.
    The three men standing around them looked as if
this were the end of the world. Bethany didn’t understand, so she
said, “And?”
    “Two werewolves can perform a ritual, but three
can’t unless they intend to form a pack,” said Jonathan. “They just
inadvertently formed a small pack. Someone will have to rise to
Alpha, the other two will have to accept him. However, that isn’t
the worst of it.”
    “No,” Duke agreed. “My brother will see this as
a threat to his pack. I left Chattanooga in part because I realized
he was on the fast track towards becoming Alpha. I didn’t want the
position, but I knew my wolf would never bow to him. Killing him
and holding the position were the last thing I wanted, so I cut
ties and left town.” He sighed and sat in a chair. “Leaving town
only postponed my having to fight him to the death,
apparently.”
    Bethany tilted her head towards Mac. He looked
down, their eyes locked, and she asked, “Why are our auras joined?
What does it mean?”
    “I don’t know. They taught me how to see them,
and I’ve seen human couples who seemed to be walking around in one
aura, but I don’t know what it means.”
    Jonathan sat beside them and said, “It just
means you’ve connected at a soul level. There’s nothing especially
metaphysical about it under normal circumstances. However, it
would’ve been nice if someone had noticed before the ritual.”
    “I’ve never heard of someone being so close
after one night,” Ranger said. “There shouldn’t have been a reason
to look.”
    Gen moved to Duke’s lap and he pulled her into
an embrace, holding her as if he needed the connection. “Can
someone break the ties ya’ll just made?” Gen asked. “Maybe the
person who oversaw my binding? He can do things in—” She stopped
talking as if someone had clapped their hand over her mouth, and
she looked up with an embarrassed smile. “Yeah. Guess I’m not
supposed to talk about that.”
    “I don’t know who she’s talking about,” Jonathan
said, “but there may be another