Take Down: A Rejected Mates Wolf Shifter Romance (Reach for the Moon Book 3) Read online

  Take Down

  Sam Hall

  Copyright © 2021 by Sam Hall

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover by CJ Romano

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Stalk me!

  Author Note

  Trigger Warning

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Epilogue

  So what next?

  Acknowledgments

  Stalk me!

  Stalk me!

  Stalk me!

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  Author Note

  This book is written in Australian English, which is a weird lovechild of British and American English. We tend to spell things the way the Brits do (expect a lot more u’s), yet also use American slang and swear more than both combined.

  While many people have gone over this book, trying to find all the typos and other mistakes, they just keep on popping up like bloody rabbits. If you spot one, don’t report it to Amazon, drop me an email at the below address so I can fix the issue.

  [email protected]

  Trigger Warning

  This book contains references to past abuse. This includes suicide and self harm, though it is talked about briefly and is not shown in flashbacks.

  It also includes an antagonist that preys on nix/ulva and draws power from abusing them. A very minor character is killed.

  There are also two scenes at the end that deal with a very minor character escaping a domestic abuse scenario and another escaping a physical but not sexual child abuse scenario.

  But rest assured, all the bad guys get a butt kicking ;)

  Chapter 1

  I was asleep, so that was why I could feel him.

  A press of lips at first, just the one, but I blindly sought more. I found them, found him, taking another kiss, then another. I heard his low groan, deep and masculine, felt the slow slide of his hand over my hip, only to grab my arse and pull me close.

  “Paige…” He rasped my name like a prayer, but it was a ragged, desperate thing. A plea of sorts. I answered it as best as I could with a deeper, hungrier kiss.

  I knew it was Aidan the minute my hands touched his chest, felt his skin hot against my palms as I wriggled closer, leading to his arms going around me.

  “Paige…” he groaned as I settled my hips over his, rocked back and forth, connecting us, yet not far enough. His fingers dug in almost painfully, like he worried I’d try to get away.

  But I couldn’t.

  Something inside me, it tightened, twisted, had me pacing endlessly in the place above the gym, unable to sit still, until we packed up the cars and got on the road. I had a fight on my hands on more than one front.

  Nance was going down screaming for everything she’d done, but that wasn’t all.

  “Need you…” we panted, each to the other.

  “Paige?”

  He tried to hold onto me, this dream Aidan, to drag me back into the narcotic depths of his arms, reaching out to me from his subconscious to mine, dragging me back down, but the voice was insistent.

  “Paige?”

  I opened my eyes, panting, my hands clenched into fists and my cunt twitching wildly as I felt the ghost of Aidan’s body trail away. Zack looked down at me, concerned.

  “We’re here, love. We need to decide where we’re staying.”

  “Ring Aidan,” I croaked out, something that got the attention of the other guys in the car.

  “You sure about that?” Declan said. “He’ll still be under Nance’s control, wouldn’t he?”

  “Not for long,” I promised with a dark look. “Aidan, this town, everything—it’s mine, and I’m taking it back.”

  Dec nodded and then pulled out his phone, making the call.

  Chapter 2

  We sat in the car on the road out the front of the converted dance studio that Dad had bought and Selma had moved out of. Everyone was waiting, but none more than me. It was early morning, so I caught every moment of Aidan’s car pulling up, sitting up straighter when he got out of the car and walked around the back to the property’s entrance.

  “Now?” Lorcan said, looking at the rest of the group.

  “We go in first, in case this is an ambush,” Mason said.

  “No,” I snapped.

  “We make sure everything’s on the up and up, that he’s alone,” he continued, his focus fractured as he watched me shift and wriggle on the backseat. The pull, it was yanking on me like a leash on a dog. I needed to be up and out of this bloody car and into…

  “No one’s going to stop you from going to him,” Micah said gently, and at his words, I became conscious of the growl fading in my chest. What the fuck had I been doing? “He’s your sixth. We know you need him.”

  “And he needs you,” Mason said. “If he’s at all sensitive to the bond… We just want to know what Nance has done to him.”

  “I don’t give a shit what she’s done, she’s not doing it anymore!” I snarled. “He’s mine.”

  They all went very still and very quiet. I could feel their eyes on my skin, and while I soaked in their attention like a flower in the sun, it wasn’t enough. I scratched my fingers down my arms, trying to relieve an ache in them that had started the closer I got to Lupindorf and had only gotten worse when we arrived.

  But I knew what would fix it.

  I’d heard his voice, tinny and metallic sounding from Declan’s phone speaker, as he spoke to my mate. My mate. I grit my teeth, readying myself to have the argument with my guys, to explain why we needed to do this, when it occurred to me—I didn’t need their permission. I leant across, popping open the door, and wriggled out, even as Zack’s hands sought to keep a hold of me.

  I felt it as soon as my feet hit the ground—home, need, him. I heard the doors open and slam shut, then footsteps following mine as we made it clear to the street we were back. So much for the subtle approach we’d discussed taking. But as I rounded the corner, I knew he hadn’t felt it, not consciously, not until this moment now. His face was all cool professionalism, looking slightly bored as he stood in the doorway, leaning against the wall. Then he looked up.

  The last time I’d seen him, he was a blank eyed doll, aping true love with Selma. His gaze had been constant, an uninterrupted one of adoration, but that wasn’t what love, attraction, need looks like. I watched those golden eyes widen, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed, a faint frown forming then smoothing away.

  “Paige?”

  He caught himself taking a step towards me, and only his sense of professionalism stopped his hands when they reached for me, something that made him frown all the more. “Declan called and said…” His voice trailed away when he saw the guys round the corner.

  “This is one of Paige’s dad’s properties? Selma’s moved out?” Mason asked, stepping forward.

  “Yeah, she’s getting ready to leave town for good. Got a plane ticket booked and everything,” Aidan replied, not looking like someone who was healing from a breakup at all. Rather, his eyes always, always came trailing back to me. “She moved out not long after the time we came here.” His brow creased slightly. “We…”

  It was then I saw it—all of it came rushing back. His eyes flashed silver, a low growl forming in his chest as his feet brought him to me, but Micah stepped in his way, holding out a hand.

  “Last thing we knew, you were marrying Selma. You stood up in front of the whole town after you’d spent the night with our girl, and told them that you loved Selma.”

  Micah punched hard, physically and verbally. He held nothing back, his smile a cruel mirthless curl of his lips, and Aidan looked like he absorbed every blow. He shifted unsteadily, blinking as if that would help.

  “Enough,” I said, shaking off my pack’s grip and walking over to him.

  It was weird to rush to his
side. It was weird to look up into his eyes, see the bond and Nance’s bullshit warring within them. It was weird to put my hand on the bare arm of an almost stranger, to feel the corded muscle of his forearm tighten, and know intimately how his skin felt against mine. But it didn’t stop me from doing it.

  “Paige?” He said my name like it was a question, like I knew the answer to it, and I did. I could feel it, thrumming between us, a compulsion, a need.

  Which probably should have had me on high alert as it was, but right now, I was swept up in the tugging desire to get closer. I didn’t move, but he did, until my body was sheltered by his, his hand reaching up to push a strand of hair back from my face.

  “Paige, you OK?”

  That was Zack, always Zack. He wouldn’t tell me what to do, but he’d watch, wait, check in, and see how I was going with things. My eyes flicked sideways, and I smiled at him, something that seemed to settle the others. How could I not? I could feel that sense of connection throbbing through all of us, a tangible force, one that just got more powerful as the guys came closer.

  “We need somewhere to lay low for a bit. We’ll call a town meeting, spring what we know on Nancy before she knows what’s coming,” Mason said, fixing the other man with a deadly stare. “You were under her spell, coerced by her to take a woman with no interest in men as your mate, to please her and your dad. I don’t want you anywhere near Paige.” At that, Aidan’s lips peeled back from his fangs in a silent growl. “But something in her, it wants you, so I won’t get in your way unless you cause a problem.” The other guys clustered closer, a veritable wall of masculine vigilance. “If you hurt her, if you lay a fucking finger on her without her permission…”

  “You’ll have a problem with all of us,” Lorcan said, eyes shining bright. “I’ve got no fucks to give about this town, none but for her. If I have to tear it down to get to you for hurting her…”

  “I can’t hurt her,” Aidan said, his face mobile as he struggled with the realisation. “I…”

  The potential endings to that sentence filled the air around us, stealing all the oxygen until we were all gasping.

  “Let’s take this inside,” Declan said, eyes darting around. “It’s gonna take a while, and I’m dead on my feet.”

  “Of course.” Aidan switched back into business mode, unlocking the front door and ushering us in.

  “Thank fuck the bed’s still here,” Dec said, hooking me around the waist and dropping both of us down on the raw mattress.

  It’d been stripped bare of any trace of my cousin, just an empty room, an orgy sized bed, and two bedside tables. I felt my mates physically and spiritually each time one of them got on the bed, draping themselves around me. But I watched him, Aidan, his eyes burning like silver fire as I felt gentle kisses pressed to my neck.

  “You want to be here,” Lorcan said to him, and I could hear the cruel lilt in his voice.

  “You want to touch her.” Micah turned my lips towards his, grinning before taking a taste. “If he wants that, he has to prove himself. Make sure he’s good enough for my queen.”

  I smiled at his words, kissing him back at the audacity and sweetness there. He knew I was tough enough to work things out myself with Aidan, but the fact he wanted some assurances that the other man wouldn’t hurt me warmed something deep inside me. Something that had me leaning over, stealing more kisses, but when I pulled away, Aidan hovered there like a puppet on a string.

  “You… We…”

  He barely breathed the words, his claws springing free as his hands clenched and then released, over and over. I felt the nip of Micah’s teeth as the other man waged war with himself.

  “You could’ve had this,” Lorcan said, tugging me over, being just as facetious with his affection. “You could have spent your days between her thighs, just like we do.”

  “You’re being cruel. Nance mind raped him,” I said.

  “And we’re helping him throw off that compulsion for good,” Zack said, hauling me back into his arms and laying me across his legs, tits thrown out from the angle, his hand sliding to my waistband. Aidan tracked every single second of that. “You can’t have a sleeper agent for a mate. He has to be in.” A low snarl started in Aidan’s chest as Zack’s fingers toyed with the button of my jeans. “All in.”

  When Zack’s hand burned against the skin of my stomach and lower, when he pushed his hand beneath my jeans to cup me, whatever held Aidan back stayed in place until I gasped, until Zack swept his fingers through my folds. He yanked his hand free, only just popping the broad tips into his mouth to lick them clean, when Aidan launched himself at me.

  “MINE…” Aidan roared, and something settled inside me at that. He threw himself down on the bed, his body covering mine, the guys all getting stiff and very alert in response, but I held them back.

  I understood that primal pull towards each other. It was what finding your mate was supposed to be like, but seeing him, unleashed and ferocious for me, I needed that. I reached up and cupped his cheek, those moonlit eyes closing at the feel of my caress, his grimace fading and being replaced by something much more naked.

  “You’re her,” he said in a low whisper. “It’s you.”

  The part of me that had spent the last five years with humans, the wary part that Zack had fostered, that refused to let me get caught up in some smooth-talking guy’s lines, she struggled to deal with what rose up right now, but underneath that? The wolf raised on romantic tales of being hit by a lightning bolt of love and lust and bone-deep knowing that someone was for you, she almost purred in response. My hand went to his hair, just glorying in the silken feel of it between my fingers.

  “I dreamed of you,” he said in wonder.

  “You did.”

  “Not just now or recently. I’ve always dreamed of you. When I was a kid, when I was…”

  My hand went still as I considered his words. How the hell could that be true? I thought of Lorcan’s recount of his childhood dreams, but we’d been friends of a sort. But Aidan… I had a front row seat to his confusion, his realisations as they came thick and fast before he scooped me up and held me to his chest.

  “What the fuck, Peters?” Mason growled out.

  He buried his face in the crook of my neck, breathing me in deep like that would trigger something, then his lips caressed the skin when that wasn’t enough. All the questions and protests I might’ve had faded away at the press of them. I pulled back, not because I wanted to, but because I needed to see into his eyes, see the man touching me.

  His eyes had softened, become reassuringly golden hazel again, as he stared back, like all of the world’s knowledge could be found within mine.

  “Why the fuck do I feel like I’ve just woken up from some shitty nightmare? That night with Mason…that’s the last clear thing I remember. How long’s it been?”

  “A while,” I said with a shrug. “Sit down, and we’ll talk about what we know.”

  Chapter 3

  “You sure about this?” Mason asked, sitting up stiffly, giving Aidan the side-eye.

  “Nope, but I’m taking back what my aunt stole,” I replied, “and I’m starting with Aidan. We need to know if I can hold her off, if I can break her compulsions. If I can’t…” I looked Aidan over, trying to see past what my instincts were telling me, what the ache in my fingers and teeth and heart said, and strove to see him. Was this all part of his dad’s plot to get him close to me? He seemed inordinately focussed on getting the two of us together. I shook my head and looked at my pack. “Then we’ve got other problems.”