by R. Lee Smith
She’d never been anyone’s beautiful before.
She was far from High Pack today, further than she ought to be. She hadn’t meant to come all this way and certainly didn’t need to. The trees around High Rock were filled with tumbili, freshly risen from their winter burrows after long months of hibernation. Nona could have knocked down a thousand of the chattering little bastards without ever leaving Heather’s side…but Heather could knock them down herself these days, and chasing after an increasingly adventurous little cub made it hard for Nona to even stand at her side for any great length of time.
So she’d left. Hunting, ostensibly, although she hadn’t once drawn her slingshot and hadn’t even brought her spear. She’d walked under branches drooping with the weight of small prey, past the tracks of blackneck and treehorn, even a steaming pile of tusker dung, and she’d kept right on walking. No, she wasn’t hunting. She was just…walking. Keeping the wind at her back and the sun out of her eyes, but otherwise aimless.
This was probably not the furthest she’d ever been from High Rock, but it was the first time she’d seen the Ashen Stretch and she stayed, idly scanning the sky in the offhand hope of catching sight of the Great Dragon. She wondered if she’d recognize him, if she saw him. Real manticores sure didn’t look the way she’d imagined. No scorpion tails, no human faces…and they looked more like maned bears than lions. The first time she’d seen a wyvern, she’d thought it was a dragon, but Nakaroth assured her she’d only think so until she saw the real one.
But if he was stretching his scaly wings out there somewhere today, it wasn’t here. And still Nona stayed, gazing into the west at the distant mountains where the sun turned their snowy caps to molten gold.
Tempting. It would be an easy climb down from this outcrop, an easy journey across that flattened land, an easy escape from this one. There was plenty of light left in the day. She could keep walking.
What kind of game lived in the Dragon’s Mountains? Were there trails drummed into the ground by hundreds of hooves? Or were there roads paved for people’s shoes? And did one wind up and around the tallest peak of those gilded mountains to end in glory at a temple full of pillars and a magical door that would lead her back home?
Something stirred her senses. Not a sound, not a sight, but something. She even knew what, and she had to smile.
“Come out where I can see you,” she said, but did not look around.
There was no answer, no sound, but in seconds, fur brushed her wrist as Nakaroth hunkered comfortably at her side. He gazed at the mountains as sunlight turned the shine in his pelt to Halloween colors, black and orange.
She shifted to bump her hip against his shoulder. “Come to take me back?”
“No.” He scratched lazily at the white mark on his neck. “Why do you ask? Are you lost?”
“Are you?” she retorted. “Come on. Why else would you be clear out here if not to keep an eye on me?”
“I just like to look at you.”
She posed for him: hand on hip, chest out, chin up, tossing her hair for the wind to catch.
His eyes narrowed, gleamed. “I very much like to look at you.”
“Thanks,” she said, laughing. “I like to look at you, too.”
His ears swept forward. “Do you?”
His evident surprise and pleasure gave her a moment’s pause. Was that the first time she’d ever said so? “Very much,” she assured him. “Stand up.”
He did, showing her a confident grin while his ears broadcast a shadow of uncertainty. He did not pose, but he didn’t need to. His body was, even in this relaxed stance, a sight to behold. Her gaze moved over him, tracing hard muscle beneath his midnight pelt. She admired him in all his unrehearsed magnificence and when she came at last to his eyes, she found him already staring into hers.
She realized she could smell him. Not the smell of lycan, but him, that earthy, smoky, animal musk that meant Nakaroth and only Nakaroth. In that moment, she was unreasonably convinced that she could be blindfolded and still know him out of all the pack by his scent alone.
His nose twitched. He breathed in, not the way he did when he was hunting, sifting through the thousand scents of the forest for one to follow, but slowly, savoring it. He had her scent, Nona thought. Not just smoke and sweat, but her. And if his nose was twitching, that meant her scent was changing. She could guess how. She’d never had any secrets from him.
On impulse, Nona sank both hands into his thick fur and pulled him closer, playfully mimicking a lycan’s coarse courtship. He responded at once, sweeping her hair back over her shoulders to bare her throat to his kind of kiss and tipping his chin up afterwards so she could retaliate to the best of her human ability.
“And what should we do now?” she asked, pushing her hand back and forth over his shoulder where the fur grew thick and coarse.
“What do you want to do?”
“Maybe I just want to do this.” She moved her hand to his chest, wandering well-traveled paths, but none too far south. It wasn’t smart to tease a werewolf, she supposed, but after all the times he’d made a game out of sex just to let the whole pack hear her lose it, a little payback was in order. Besides, it wasn’t really mean. She’d make it up to him later, when they were wrapped up in furs and not ankle-deep in snow.
But Nakaroth didn’t play, didn’t even seem to realize it was a game. She saw no frustration in his hungry eyes. He wasn’t hiding it, it really wasn’t there.
Nona stepped it up a little, letting her fingers slide down his hard stomach, tickling over the ripples of his abdomen, seeking out the scars she knew were there for a quick caress before moving lower, lower…and back up to his chest.
Nestled in his black fur, the pale nub of his shaft protruded, but his smile remained easy, unchanged.
It was a revelation of a sort, that urgency could be patient. His honest enjoyment of this, just this, as she explored his body went far beyond whatever sensations she stimulated with her inexpert petting. He enjoyed her just…enjoying him.
All at once, Nona didn’t want to play anymore. The game was over and the son of a bitch had won, this time without even knowing he was in it.
“I want you now,” she said, cupping his sheath and feeling him harden beneath his skin. “Right now.”
“I am yours, my mate. Now and always.”
She let go of him just long enough to unlace her breeches and push them down (only as far as she had to, though; It was warmer than it had been, but it was still damned cold), then took him again, torturing herself with the promise in her hand while her eager core cramped with need.
He was ready, but he stopped her when she started to turn around. “I want to see my mate’s face,” he told her.
“You want to lie down in the snow?” she asked archly. “Because I don’t.”
In answer, he lifted her, holding her easily in the cradle of his hands as he pushed her down around him, his hips already twitching, over-eager. She locked her arms around his shaggy neck and he drew back far enough for a quick nuzzle before his grip tightened, his claws dug into her ass, and he surged into her.
Seated like this, it wasn’t sex as much as a ride and so she rode. She couldn’t give back, could only take it, holding onto him as her only anchor while their bodies clapped together. He made her ride until she lost the last tenuous awareness of her naked ass hanging out and how it must look there, juddering with the force of each thrust. He made her ride until she couldn’t keep her jaws locked against the hoarse, indelicate cries and they came howling out. He made her ride until the whole damn world shook around her and fell down and still he made her ride through the wreckage and back out into the blinding light.
“This…This…This has got to be bad for your back!” she groaned.
“You say such romantic things.”
Her knees, bound up in her breeches, slipped from their gripping place on his thighs; she scrambled to recover, shoving her hips into him, grinding, clenching, and suddenly he sna
rled and bent, sweeping her dizzyingly downward until her hair slapped the snow, and now he was riding her, harder and harder until he lost his grip, dropping her into the snow after a short, frantic fumble.
He let out an inarticulate sound of wolfish apology, blended with concern and a desperate need to climax as she bucked her bare ass off the ground and then rolled laughing onto her knees.
“Not even mad,” she assured him, gripping him at the swollen base of his shaft. She licked him, tasting him and her together—a not unpleasant combination—then sucked him deep into her mouth and slowly pulled back, flicking and lashing at him with her tongue.
“Now,” he panted. “Now! Now!”
She hummed and immediately felt the contractions of his climax, followed by the hot splash of his semen across her tongue. This was not her favorite thing, but it gave him such a completely different kind of pleasure and she loved to hear that half-ecstatic, half-amazed tone to his howl when he came, as if every time was the first time and he could not believe such a thing existed. She kept sucking lightly as he retracted, relishing his shivers and blissful whines, and when it was over, she rose up slightly on her knees as he bent down, kissing his strange mouth first and then letting him lick her throat.
He sat beside her in the snow while she pulled her breeches up and fastened them, then pulled her onto his lap and rested his chin on her shoulder.
They watched the clouds roll over the mountains in comfortable silence. The sun lowered, its light deepening toward the jewel tones of sunset. Beautiful…and ominous. The Wyvern’s Wood was no place to travel by night.
“I guess we should go back,” she said, plucking at Nakaroth’s hands laced over her stomach but making no real effort to move them.
“If you wish.”
“And if I don’t wish?” she teased.
“We won’t.”
She twisted around to look at him.
His ears said he was serious.
“You’re joking, right?” she prompted, smiling so he’d know that even if Earth was a sore subject with her, it was okay and she could laugh along with him. “You don’t mean it.”
“Do I not?” he replied, still serious. “There are packs beyond this one, lands of challenge and reward…perhaps even Roads to lead us back to your Earth. Say we shall walk on and we will.”
“You’re joking,” she said again, with even less certainty. “You’d never leave High Rock.”
“Ha! And you? Would you leave Heather?”
“She’ll be fine,” Nona said automatically and frowned. Heather would be fine—she and Burgash and Ararro and Basharo had already formed one family, a bond that left no room for Nona—but this was the first time she’d ever said so out loud. In the night, in the quiet of her sleepless thoughts, sure, but not out loud and never like this, like it was something that had already happened and hardly needed saying at all.
“So will Kruin,” Nakaroth said. He nudged her onto her feet and stood beside her, watching her, waiting.
The Dragon’s mountains glimmered gold, beckoning. Nona stared at them, but didn’t move.
Nakaroth’s arm slipped around her waist. He pulled her against his side and she let him. It was a good feeling, more than just his warmth in the early spring chill. At times like this, she often wondered if she loved him. She was beginning to think she might, although she wasn’t just when it had happened. Like the changing of the seasons, it wasn’t found in one moment or even one day, but once you realized winter was over, you realized spring had been there for some time.
“Then come home, my mate,” he murmured, and licked her bare throat. “Come home for now, for another day.”
She twined her arm around his waist, mirroring him. The sun traveled on without her, slowly, slowly. The mountains darkened, the way before her slipping into shadow right before her eyes. The sinking sun passed behind a flat-topped cloud, seeming to hover there, huge and round, before slipping into grey and hiding its light like a secret.
Staring at it, Nona felt her own secret swell—a secret already grown huge and possibly round over days and weeks and months—until, with a shudder that was almost orgasmic in itself, she blurted, “I think I’m pregnant.”
“Ha.” He nuzzled her again, rewarding her bravery with pride and pleasure. “I know.”
“You know?”
“Your scent is changed.”
She considered asking how long he’d been holding on to that golden nugget of information, but did she really need to know? Maybe it had been that first time…maybe not. They hadn’t always been as careful as they could have been. In the heat of the moment, risks had a way of seeming smaller and consequences less severe. Now here she was, caught.
Funny, she couldn’t even say she was that upset. This thing she had dreaded, that had seemed like the literal end of her life, now provoked only a stirring of rueful amusement. “I’m going to be a mother,” she said, trying on the word like a shirt. It didn’t fit perfectly, but it went on. She guessed she’d grow into it.
“And I, a father. To think I will see my first cub’s face by leaf-fall…” Nakaroth rested his chin on the crown of her head briefly, letting her feel his pulse running through his unprotected throat, then dipped to look at her again. “Shall you be happy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ah.”
“I want to be. I’ll try.”
“I’ll help.” One last embrace and he released her. “Come home, my mate. Lie down with me in our den. Wrap those wandering legs around me and let me hunt your fierce howls.”
“Why?” she asked, still watching the sun until it peeked out at her again. “You can’t make any more cubs until this one shows up.”
“I’ll want to stay in practice.”
“You could use it.”
“Ha!” He nipped at her chin, tail wagging broadly, then suddenly swept her up and entirely off her feet, holding her against his chest. She was surprised into flinging her arms around his neck, but then she kept them there, so what did that say? “My fierce Nona. My huntress. My half.”
He turned around.
She looked back just once, but the mountains of the Aerie Domain were now black silhouettes, two-dimensional and out of reach. When he carried her away, she did not try to keep looking. She leaned her head against his shoulder and shut her eyes. Come home, he said, and sure, why not?
This was High Pack.
She was home.
THE END
November 2012 – February 2018