Free Bonded To The Pack (Military Werewolf Menage FMMMM Steamy Romance) by Nikki Wild

BONDED TO THE PACK
     
     
    "I just want you to be prepared, dear. When men come home from war, sometimes they're…changed."
     
    I smiled tolerantly. "Of course I know that," I said dismissively, and turned my eyes back to the hangar door.
     
    Michael was coming home, and that was all that mattered. I wasn't about to let some fear-mongering old soldier's wife get me down. My perfect Michael, with his perfect face, and his perfect personality; he was the perfect husband. And seven months of deployment wasn't about to change his perfection, not in my eyes anyway. She could take her warnings and counsel to someone else. Jenny Whitman didn't need her advice.
     
    The MPs had set up barriers for us to stay behind. They said it was for our own safety, but I think it was more for the safety of the returning battalion. All around me were crazed family members, delirious with the promise of seeing our men again. We pressed against each other in a hot mass of shoving and grappling, each one of us wanting to be the first to spy our loved one as he deplaned.
     
    My height was a disadvantage of course. It always was. I was starting to feel claustrophobic in this throng. I couldn't see over the shoulders of the father dancing in front of me, and the people behind me were shoving to get past. I felt panic starting to rise in my throat, some of my confidence ebbing away. What if the woman was right? What if Michael had changed?
     
    We had done the best we could, staying in contact is often as his schedule allowed, but between the vagaries of satellite phones, and Michael's own responsibilities, in the past few months our contact had been few and far between. I looked down at the snapshot of the two of us together, the last picture I had taken before he was deployed. It was getting crumpled in them crowd, and I clutched it to my chest.
     
    When the drone of an approaching aircraft vibrated through the hangar, a shout went up and the whole crowd thronged forward as one. I felt myself lifted, my feet several inches off the ground, carried forward by the crush of bodies pressing from behind. The MPs shoved and shouted, but it was pandemonium. None of us were going to risk not being the first to see our boys return home.
     
    When the massive hangar door rolled upward, the barriers gave way, and we all spilled out onto the rain slick tarmac. I expected to see a cargo plane, but it was actually a commercial airliner filled with Marines.
     
    When they rolled the stairs up to the plane, I jumped and twisted trying to spy my husband. The first Marine exiting the plane didn't look familiar. Nor the next one, nor the next one, nor the next one. The panic that had lodged itself in my throat began to rise even higher. Had I been wrong? Was he not actually on this plane?
     
    Finally I spied a familiar, broad-shouldered figure. His hair was longer after seven months deployed, his beautiful face more etched with care and worry. But it didn't matter. That was my Michael. He had come home to me
     
    Behind him trooped three other Marines I didn't recognize. They seemed to move in lockstep, sticking together almost shoulder to shoulder. Strangely, I didn't see anyone launch themselves at those three men.
     
    But I launched myself at my Michael. "Baby!" I screamed throwing elbows at the crowd and shoving my way to him.
     
    He turned in the direction of my voice, and his lips curved into a wolfish smile that stopped me in my tracks. The way his eyes raked up and down my body, with frank and unadulterated lust was so unlike my private, almost prudish Michael that I stared at him in confusion.
     
    "Jenny," he said, low and dangerous.
     
    "Michael?" I said it like a question, even though my eyes could clearly see that this was my Michael. But the way he held himself, the way he looked at me, the way he said my name like he was tasting every letter on his tongue, that was all different somehow.
     
    "Come here," he rasped, opening his arms.
     
    I went to