Chapter 37: 37
Flasback
As I watched her, my eyes drifted to the base of her neck, where the moonlight hit a patch of pale skin. There, faint and silver, was the ghost of a scar I had given her years ago—not a bite, but a scratch from a frantic moment of young, clumsy love.
I reached out, my thumb barely grazing the mark. Suddenly, a flash of memory hit me so hard I saw stars.
“Silas, stop! We’re too young,” she had laughed, her eyes bright as we rolled in the autumn leaves behind the Alpha’s estate. I was eighteen, arrogant and drowning in my own power. I had pinned her down, my heart hammering a rhythm only she could hear.
“I’m never letting you go, Lyra,” I had promised, my voice thick with a vow I didn't know how to keep. “You’re mine. My Luna. My life.”
“Always?” she had asked, her voice small.
“Always.”
The memory twisted like a knife in my gut. I had broken that "always" into a million pieces. I looked at the woman in the bed—the mother of my sons, the survivor of my cowardice—and the urge to protect her felt like a physical weight, a suit of armor I was finally being allowed to wear again.
Little by little, the need for physical contact became an unbearable ache, a screaming hunger in my marrow. I carefully stretched out my arm, moving with the precision of a hunter, and wrapped it around her waist. I pulled her back against me, pressing my chest firmly against the curve of her spine.
The moment our skin made full contact, a rush of absolute pleasure and profound peace ran through me from head to toe. It was a spiritual homecoming. It was as if, finally, after an eternal, bloody war, I had crossed the threshold of my true home.
Lyra, lost in the depths of her sleep, seemed to recognize the touch. Instead of pulling away or waking in fear, she let out a small, melodic moan of satisfaction. She leaned back into me, seeking the heat, fitting her buttocks perfectly against my groin.
Damn! My cock throbbed hard at the contact, a primal response to the woman meant for me. But I shoved the lust down with a ferocity that surprised me. This was no time for the heat of the flesh; this was about belonging. This was about a soul reclaiming its missing half.
I rested my chin in the crook of her shoulder, my nose buried in the silk of her hair. It smelled of cheap lavender soap and her. My large, rough fingers gently sought hers, intertwining with her small hand where it rested on the sheet.
She squeezed my fingers unconsciously, her grip firm and trusting. It was a gesture so intimate, so devastatingly pure, that I closed my eyes tightly to contain the emotion threatening to break me.
“You're mine, little puppy,” I thought, the words a silent vow directed at her sleeping heart. “Even if the world falls apart tomorrow, even if Wyatt brings his armies to the door, tonight you're mine. And I will never let the fire take you again.”
I felt my wolf go completely still, a rare and perfect peace settling over us both.
I lay there, wide awake, the ultimate sentinel watching over her sleep. Every time she murmured something unintelligible or shifted her weight, I held my breath, my muscles coiling, ready to leap through the window and shift back into the shadows if she woke up. I couldn't let her see me like this—not yet. I was a thief in the night, stealing the affection I had forfeited years ago.
But the Moon Goddess seemed to be on my side, weaving a veil of deep, heavy sleep around the room. Lyra slept on, wrapped in the warmth of the bond we both shared in the sacred silence of the night.
Given that, I allowed myself to close my eyes for a moment, savoring the heavy, comforting weight of her body against mine. I breathed in the scent of my mate and my home, knowing that this—this small, worn mattress in a house with peeling wallpaper—was the only place in the entire universe where I truly belonged.
From Lyra’s point of view.
I opened my eyes when the harsh dawn light hit my face directly, cutting through the thin curtains of my bedroom.
Usually, waking up was a battle; my body would feel stiff from the biting morning cold and the accumulated fatigue of a woman who carried the world on her shoulders. But this time, something didn't feel right.
I felt... different. My limbs weren't heavy. Instead, I was enveloped in a deep, comforting warmth, as if a bonfire had been burning beside me all night, chasing away the shadows of the North.
Still half-lost in the haze of sleep, I reached a hand out to the empty side of the bed. A sudden, violent chill ran down my spine.
The mattress was slightly sunken, and the sheets retained a residual warmth that was definitely not mine. My heart skipped a beat, then began to thud like a trapped bird. I inhaled deeply, and the world seemed to tilt on its axis.
That scent.
It was a mixture of crisp pine, rain-washed earth, and a raw, masculine musk so powerful that it made my inner wolf—usually silent and broken—leap with a sudden, shameful satisfaction. It was a king’s scent. It was his scent.
“No, it's impossible,” I whispered, sitting up so abruptly my head spun. I ran my hands over my face, trying to scrub away the lingering sensation of being watched.
I felt strangely fulfilled, humming with an energy I hadn't remembered having in years. My lips felt sensitive, swollen, almost as if they had been brushed by something more than just the cool night air.
“Were my dreams about Silas becoming so real that my mind is starting to invent smells?” I muttered to myself, my voice dripping with self-mockery.
I shook my head hard, trying to dispel the image of his dark, predatory eyes stalking me in the darkness of my room. Silas was at the lodge, surrounded by his Council and his pride. He wasn't here, in a shack with peeling wallpaper, holding a "defect" like me.
I stumbled out of bed and rushed to the window, pulling the curtain back so hard the rod groaned. The garden was empty, bathed in the pale, misty light of a mountain morning. But then, my eyes snagged on the porch steps.
There, sitting exactly where I had left the "little wolf" the night before, was the wooden wolf toy Dante had lost days ago.