Chapter 14
Warm fingers pressed beneath my chin and I tilted my head upwards to let the doctor—Wolfie’s brother-in-law—do his work. “Hmm,” Dale murmured absently before pulling out a lighted something-or-other and peering inside my left ear.
I was pretty sure there was nothing wrong with my brain that a visual inspection could sort out. Still, it was hard to grumble when the pair had driven several hours to give me access to the only certified medical doctor able and willing to work on werewolf-kind.
“Well, you look like you’re still alive,” Dale said at last, tucking away the tools of his trade as he completed the physical portion of his assessment. “And even though the DSM-5 doesn’t cover shifters, I’d say your intangible symptoms line up nicely with a diagnosis of recurrent dissociative episodes linked to adolescence.”
“English please?” I prodded, a quiver running down my spine. That definitely didn’t sound good.
“Growing pains,” Dale translated gently, patting my head as if I was a child. And since he’d watched my early childhood from the other side of his very own mountain, I probably was still a knobby-kneed, filthy-faced ten-year-old in the doctor’s eyes. “From what other shifters have told me, your blackouts seem entirely normal,” he added, attempting to ease my fears.
Normal, maybe, but the symptoms couldn’t have popped up at a worse time. All-Pack was just around the corner and now I risked keeling over while trying to win the support of the unknown-to-me alphas. Werewolf turf battles were all about appearances, so fainting fits definitely wouldn’t do me any favors.
Plus, there was also the problem of our personal stool pigeon to contend with. Sure, Grey had helped prevent a catastrophe yesterday during doggy obedience school, but he was camping out at Wolf Landing for one reason and one reason alone—to ensure our pack failed at its territorial bid. Proving that half of our clan’s current leadership was subject to random blackouts definitely wouldn’t help our cause.
“Is there anything I can do to expedite the process?” I asked, looking up into Dale’s kind eyes.
“Rest,” he answered unhelpfully. “Eat your vegetables. Get a good night’s sleep and keep your stress levels low.”
Beside me, Wolfie snorted, then continued shoveling a combination of steak, eggs, and bun-less burger into his mouth. “She shouldn’t be passing out,” he muttered, dropping a piece of fried liver into my upturned palm. The gesture should have been disgusting, but my wolf perked right up at the sight of the iron-rich morsel. Obediently, I slid it directly down my throat.
“No?” Hunter asked. His own choice of dinner was remarkably similar to that of my former alpha, but my mate had merely drawn a smiley face of ketchup across the offerings before losing interest in the grub. Unlike Wolfie, Hunter neither knew nor trusted Dale and wasn’t particularly keen on the one-body manhandling his mate.
“No,” Wolfie answered simply. For the second time that evening, alpha eyes met and locked, and I shivered as a wave of something rolled across my skin. Their gesture didn’t really feel like a stare-down, but there was definitely silent communication of some sort going on.
Abruptly, I realized that I didn’t particularly want Hunter and Wolfie to be talking about me behind my back. “We need to get home,” I said, attempting to scoot out of my seat, an impossible feat with over-protective males hanging over me on every side. “We’ve already left Wolf Landing alone for far too long. Who knows what Ginger will do if outpack shifters turn up with both pack leaders absent?”
“Well,” Hunter started, his eyes abruptly dropping to his plate. Rather than finishing his sentence, he bit into a massive sausage, suddenly far more interested in his food than he had been previously.
What the heck? Were my mandatory counseling session and physical exam insufficient secrets for Hunter to be hiding from his mate? What else had he neglected to mention?
To my surprise, it was Wolfie who broke the silence. The alpha’s booming laugh drew a smile onto my lips even though I had a sinking suspicion that I was part of the joke. But how could I not share the amusement of the wolf dancing beneath my companion’s skin?
“You didn’t tell her,” my former alpha said after a moment, when his mirth had faded enough to allow him to speak.
“Not yet,” Hunter muttered beneath his breath, his ears turning a magnificent shade of red.
How cute was that? Despite the fact that my mate was clearly keeping me in the dark on purpose, I couldn’t help reaching across the table to grab his hand.
“I’m not going to be mad at you, Hunter,” I soothed. “I already promised, remember?”
In response, my mate peered so intently into my eyes that for a moment I forgot that Dale and Wolfie even existed. Something between us shifted, slid, and reconnected in a new and better way.
The uber-alpha had found it easy, I knew, to shower me with thoughtful gifts and to guard my back in battle. How much harder, though, was it to stick out his neck from a relationship perspective, risking my wrath when he went over my head to call in reinforcements?
I valued Hunter’s bravery when he chose not to take the coward’s way out and let me suffer in peace. And our bond was so secure that I didn’t even have to speak the words, either aloud or into his mind, for Hunter to feel the warmth of my regard.
Immediately, his wolf began prancing with pleasure, my own beast meeting it pounce for pounce. And when Hunter finally spoke, his voice was the sure, firm bass I was used to. “I’ve called in backup to keep Wolf Landing safe until All-Pack is over. Terra and a few of her friends are already there and Wolfie’s going back to join them tonight.”
He paused and cleared his throat, then added, “So what do you say to taking the night off and enjoying ourselves with no bloodlings breathing down our necks?”
I let my mate dangle for only a second before gracing all three males with a wide smile. “Well, Dale did say to rest. Who am I to disobey doctor’s orders?”
***
Our old tent still smelled of Ginger, Cinnamon, Glen, and Lia...and not just because some of my original pack mates must have snuck away earlier in the afternoon to set the structure up in the secluded valley miles away from Wolf Landing’s constant interruptions. No, the richer undertones were leftover from when the faded purple canvas had sheltered all five of us in July, at a time when Hunter was just a scary figure hovering at the edge of our combined attention. Now, as I unzipped the door and crawled toward the electric lantern hanging inside, I realized how far we’d come in one short summer of independence.
“If you want, I can sleep outside and guard the entrance just like old times,” Hunter rumbled as he followed on my heels, mind tuned to my nostalgic thoughts.
A thick air mattress topped with soft sheets and down comforters had replaced the slender mats and sleeping bags we’d depended on back in the day, and I pulled my mate down beside me into the cocooning fabric. “You didn’t guard the lintel then,” I retorted, snuggling into his warmth. “I seem to remember that you slept in the car with Quill.”
My mate growled at the mere mention of the malevolent male, but his fingers were still playful as he pulled the zipper of my parka slowly up and down. The whir of opening and closing teeth reminded me that I had teeth of my own, and I nibbled along the knife-sharp edge of Hunter’s powerful jaw by way of retaliation.
“I fell asleep in the car, but I always woke up just outside your tent,” my companion murmured, his breath catching as I moved on to the erogenous zone alongside the cartilage of his left ear. “I lay there and dreamed of being inside,” he added, neither of us certain whether he meant inside the tent or inside me. “I’d run my fingers up and down your spine....”
Reaching beneath my finally-unzipped jacket, my mate suited actions to words, his fingertips bumping across each vertebra as if he were a concert pianist warming up for a performance. Sure enough, the motion set off cascades of harmony that vibrated through my limbs before culminating in a crescendo of heat at my core.
I wanted to relax into the burst of pleasure. But my grasp of language was already fading fast, so I took a deep breath instead and said the words I needed Hunter to hear while I was still capable of the effort. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what was going on sooner,” I started, only to be halted by my mate’s broad palm across my lips.
Sometimes I forgot the overwhelming power Hunter kept coiled up within his wiry frame. It was only in moments like these that I realized he and his wolf were a well-oiled killing machine and that the gentleness he assumed in my presence was the greatest gift imaginable. “Don’t apologize to me,” he murmured, one side of his mouth quirking up in memory of our shared joke from a few days prior.
I allowed myself to be silenced. Instead, reaching around his restraining hand, I unzipped the front of his fleece then tugged at his sweats. The clothes were baggy and far from flattering, but Hunter liked to be ready to shift at any given moment, and I now appreciated the gesture.
The nice thing about one-size-fits-all clothing, I mused as my mate lifted his hips and allowed me to draw away the only fabric shielding my greedy eyes from his chiseled musculature, is how easily it comes off.
“Well, that’s patently unfair,” Hunter growled, taking his hand away from my mouth so he could deftly remove my far more numerous layers of clothing with the same velocity a ten-year-old might use to unwrap his Christmas presents.
My head spun with Hunter’s speed and dexterity...and also with the thrill of sensation every time his fingers brushed against my skin. “Mmm,” I murmured.
“Better,” he breathed in reply once my skin, like his, was thoroughly exposed to the cold air.
For several moments after that, I lost my train of thought entirely. Tiny thuds of falling snow atop our tent’s canvas were the only sounds audible beyond the rustle of sheets and the whimper of panting breaths. Hunter’s hot lips traced a lacework of snowflakes across my face, my neck, my breasts, my shoulders and I lost myself in his embrace.
Only when I’d become a mass of yearning nerve endings did his fingers finally skim down lower, drifting across belly and hips. I quivered in the wake of the sought-after touch, my moans joining the whisper of wind brushing snowflakes off the canopy above our heads.
“Cold?” my mate asked, misunderstanding my reaction. Before I could twist my tongue around a negation, though, I’d been swept beneath the covers, the lamp above our heads clicking off as Hunter drew me deep down into his den.
Five months earlier, the uber-alpha’s easy mastery of my body would have sent me shying aside, reaching for the throwing knives that even now lay abandoned beside my boots on the cold plastic tarp that made up the tent’s floor. Four months earlier, I would have hidden my wolf away to shield us both from the alpha compulsions that sat waiting on the tip of my partner’s tongue.
But now, I relaxed and allowed my animal half to join Hunter’s in joyous abandon. Beneath our skins, the beasts wound together, cavorting and spiraling in time with the twisting pleasure of our furless human skins.
“I don’t need an apology for past secrets,” my mate whispered between kisses, his lips like fire following the path his fingers had so recently blazed down the length of my unclad body. Each touch resembled a branding iron, creating invisible stamps that claimed me as his and him as mine.
Yes, there, I breathed or said or thought or sighed. I was tugging at his hair and shoulders now, pushing him past where he’d paused at my belly button, fingers joining tongue to halt a few critical millimeters away from their desired goal.
“You didn’t block me out, so we’re all good,” Hunter finished, absolving me of guilt in a crime I’d already forgotten about committing. Then, at long last, clever appendages slipped inside my aching core. Hard muscles slid across quivering skin. The scratch of incipient beard fled thighs and found neck as his shaft pierced me into oblivion.
In the distance, a limb cracked beneath the weight of falling snow. Two wolves howled from beneath our skins. And, from human lips, Hunter and I harmonized with our lupine natures’ songs, joined in ecstasy and abruptly whole.