Free Watching Out For Fangs (The Cloverleah Pack Book 7) by Lisa Oliver

wanted to close his eyes and sink into the softness of the bed. Now he was lying down, even with his cock throbbing in time with his heart, his tiredness was overwhelming him.
    “An inner circle enforcer,” Josh said, draping his arm across Vadim’s chest and resting his head on Vadim’s shoulder. Vadim stilled, but Josh just snuggled in anyway as though he had a right to be there. Vadim knew it would be churlish of him to move away. Josh’s blood was still calling to him, but without the urgency from before. He felt…safe.
    “What does that mean?”
    Josh hesitated, and then must have come to some decision about trusting Vadim, for the moment at least. “There are three beta wolves in the inner circle – me, Tobias and Troy. I joined the pack a while ago, Troy is one of the original members now mated to Anton, who you will meet later, and Tobias came later still, from the San Antonio pack where I was born. We don’t have the same sort of hierarchy in this pack - like you would expect in other packs because there are so many Alphas here. We all have a say in the decision making process.”
    Vadim frowned at the thought. He’d always believed that wolves were bound by their status at birth and that each pack only had one Alpha. The men in Cloverleah clearly followed Kane, but could it be by choice? Was Kane not the strongest wolf? He had so much to learn about his new home.
    “How about you turn that sexy brain of yours off for a bit, and get some sleep,” Josh said softly, his words breathed across Vadim’s chest. “There’s plenty of time to sort it all out in the morning.”
    Thankful, for the moment at least, Vadim let his mate tell him what to do yet again, and sunk into the bliss that only a safe place to rest could offer.
    /~/~/~/~/
    Josh lay quietly, his mind, his wolf, his whole body overwhelmed by the events of the evening. He thought he’d been handling Vadim’s absence rather well. He’d gone out into the woods after the meeting with his pack mates where they let him know his lonely fate, howled out his pain and then got on with his work – protecting his pack. When Kane had forced him to take some time off for food, sleep and relaxation, Josh had punished his bike, pushing it along the myriad of back roads around Cloverleah, desperate to keep any depressing thoughts from his brain.
    It wasn’t the first time he’d felt the pain of rejection, although admittedly this time had been different. Vadim had bonded with him and while he might have been unconscious at the time, Josh’s wolf had accepted the bond for the permanent tie that it was, and pined for a man Josh had only drooled over from afar. Determined not to be like the twins, Troy and Scott, damn near dying because their mates had rejected them, Josh kept his human-self busy and did his best to console his wolf side with lots of patrol work.
    But no matter what he did, Vadim had never been far from his thoughts so the second he had caught a hint of Vadim’s scent – a strangely alluring mix of myrrh and apricots – Josh’s wolf jumped to take control. For the longest moment Josh felt like he was playing catch up with his wolf side – his wolf already knew their mate and as far as his wolf side was concerned that same mate had left them once and that was completely unacceptable. Josh’s human side had tried to make sense of the vampire’s reasons through logic and fair thinking. The wolf had been running entirely on instinct.
    Fortunately Josh had a strong relationship with his wolf side, which was just as well for Vadim, Josh thought with a wry grin in the darkness. If Josh hadn’t managed some element of control then the wolf would have had his dick in Vadim’s ass and his teeth in the man’s strong neck within five minutes of meeting. Even now the earthiness of the myrrh, so different to the scent of a shifter, was teasing Josh’s senses. There was an air of something ancient and powerful his mate and Josh wondered how old