by Kari Gregg
Words were the oldest magic.
As was touch.
Wherever Jamie pressed against Ian tingled as senses dormant within Jamie awakened to greet his mate. His blood seemed to flow hotter but oddly thicker in his veins. The tickle of Ian’s chest hair beaded Jamie’s nipples. Even the blending of their sweat was an enchanting bouquet to him. “Ian?”
Chest heaving, Ian scraped his cheek across Jamie’s, nuzzling him in dazed but affectionate awe. “I feel it too.”
A trill of fear sprinted through Jamie the fraction of a second his heartbeat took to synchronize with Ian’s, with his mate’s. Then it was done. He sensed Ian’s joy as readily as his own, shared his astonishment. The love that had unfurled in Jamie as he’d ripened for his mate flowed into Ian and returned, carrying the promise of Ian’s love for him as well. The vow hadn’t lied. Together, they were stronger and steadier.
Their mating hadn’t required the loss of virginity and spilling semen, nor the exchange of bites. Jamie craved Ian inside him more than ever, longed for his mate’s teeth in his shoulder or mayhap his nape. That wasn’t strictly necessary, though. Their vow alone had united them. They were one.
Because Ian was as intimate in his heart and mind as Jamie’s own soul, burning wet gathered in Jamie’s eyes. His horror, anticipatory pain, and grief strengthened his grip on Ian who was and had always been the center of his world. “What are we going to do?” Jamie asked when he could breathe again.
The fire crackled quietly behind Ian. The distant birds twittered, as though already joining in their future sorrow.
Ian pushed Jamie down to the worn blanket of their mating bed, settling his hips between Jamie’s spread thighs. He braced on his elbows above Jamie and smiled at him. “What will we do? Love each other.” Ian bent down. His kiss rocked Jamie, the chaotic tumult of what Ian had guessed drowning in the beauty of what they created together. Ian’s devotion, his ardor and adoration of Jamie was a balm to Jamie’s wounded heart, but Ian also inflamed him. The silky hardness of Ian’s cock settling against Jamie’s groin stirred him, reigniting the passion that terrified grief could not tear asunder, not when Ian was warm and alive in Jamie’s arms, not while Ian was still Jamie’s to treasure. “Love me,” Ian said, grinding his hips into Jamie’s. Their cocks brushed and Jamie gritted his teeth, though he could not smother his moan. “Just love me.”
“Forever,” Jamie swore and arched his back to thrust his hips too, pleased when Ian groaned out his pleasure and need.
“Today,” Ian corrected on a harsh pant. “I may not have tomorrow. Love me today.”
“For as long as I can.”
Even as they writhed together, Ian pulling Jamie’s orgasm from him—the first of many—and spilling across Jamie’s stomach, before either of them had the presence of mind to exchange bites marking them as mates, and later, after Ian had thrust inside Jamie and Ian had accepted Jamie into his body too, even then, Jamie knew it wouldn’t be enough.
They’d mated with an intensity that could never be denied as anything less than fate, no matter the doomed foolishness of their families and the pack that had struggled to keep them apart.
For Ian, though, the clock ticked.
Chapter Two
BODIES IN A SWEATY TANGLE, Ian mouthed Jamie’s nape and then laughed when Jamie shuddered beneath him. Jamie angled his jaw to glare over his shoulder. “What?” he panted.
“You.” Ian snickered, dark eyes sparkling. “Us.” His heart beat a ragged staccato against Jamie’s spine. Their hands still clasped, Ian bent to aim a kiss at the thin line of Jamie’s mouth and missed. “Every time is still like our first.”
“Goddess, I hope not.” Jamie collapsed into the dubious comfort of the bedding with a snort. He wriggled his ass, with Ian’s spent cock lodged within him. “You definitely lasted longer.”
Ian squeezed Jamie’s hands in his grasp. “That isn’t what I meant.”
“I know.” He sighed. “Sorry I jumped you as soon as you returned home. You smelled like them again.”
“Them?” Ian chuckled, rubbed Jamie’s flanks. “You mean our pack.”
Anger flared in his chest. “They aren’t mine.”
“They didn’t exile us.” Ian lapped at Jamie’s skin, tasting the salty flavor his sweat. “They could have, but they didn’t.”
“No, they drove us out and forced us to build our den Between.” Jamie swallowed down a knot of familiar hurt. “They rejected us and that’s enough for me. I won’t claim those people as mine.”
“They’re our parents. My brother. Your sister.” Ian sighed.
“I don’t trust them. Nor should you.” He elbowed Ian’s gut. “I wish you’d stop talking to them.”
“Even for trade?” Ian lifted off of Jamie, his cock sliding from Jamie’s sensitive hole. With a hiss, Jamie turned on his side and watched his mate scramble to the door of the cabin where he’d dropped his game bag when Jamie had pounced on him upon his return home. Ian bent, uncinching the sack. He withdrew a bundle wrapped in ragged cloth. He fumbled with the fabric, unwinding it until he revealed an equally tattered book, worn and cracked leather cover held together with twine. “Your mother bartered for this with a collector in the city.”
Jamie frowned. His fingers curled into the furs and rough blankets that comprised their bed, but he didn’t reach for the precious book as he yearned to do. “What did you give her for it?”
“A deer.” Ian grinned. “And a promise of your next ceremonial knife.” He nudged the still-stuffed bag with his naked foot. “She let me have the antlers, though. You can use them to carve hilts like the one from your last bunch of trade goods.” Ian walked back to their bed, the rare book cradled in his spread palms as though the gift were some kind of pagan sacrifice. He settled next to Jamie. “Your father has been coveting your knives and your momma said you would need the book for training the pack’s whelps. Everybody wins.”
Except Ian. His mate hadn’t won in this bargain. “How long did it take you to track the deer? To bring it down alone?” Jamie grimaced. He didn’t often belabor the hardships they endured to be together, but he and Ian were at a grave disadvantage when hunting. The pack could take larger prey as a group. Ian couldn’t. “How did you manage that anyway?”
“I’m sneakier than you are, which you should be glad of else I would’ve never caught you otherwise.” Ian lifted one of Jamie’s hands and smoothing out Jamie’s clenched fingers, he placed the book in Jamie’s grasp. “Don’t be angry.”
“I’m not mad.”
Ian, who knew him too well, sniffed his disbelief.
“I think it’s safer to limit trading to the Bitter Creek pack. That’s all.”
“Bitter Creek doesn’t care about the books you need to best fulfill your role as pack trainer after Mack passed away.” Ian blew out a frustrated breath. “Will you look at the book? Moons, you’re stubborn.”
“For which you should be glad else I would’ve never caught you otherwise,” Jamie said right back, but he heeded his mate. The cover of the book was a disaster, unreadable. He opened it and gaped at the close tight handwriting filling the yellowed pages. He squinted at a date in the upper right corner. “It’s a journal?”
Laughing, Ian edged closer to examine the treasure he’d bartered for too. “Of an elder, at least two generations past.” He tapped a fingertip on the fragile pages. “Your momma says he wrote about a shifter like you in a neighboring pack.”
“Like me?” Jamie arched an eyebrow. “You mean irresistible and devilishly charming?”
Ian shoved him with a shoulder. “A shifter with two fated mates.”
Jamie’s heart stopped. “I have only one mate. You.” He pushed the rare book away, toward Ian.
Who scowled at him and shoved the journal back. “It could help you handle…things. When I’m gone.”
Dropping Ian’s trade to the bedding, Jamie sat up. Muscles stiff with hurt betrayal, he fled their mating bed and marched to the hearth.
Fury and its cousin fear roiled his gut as he snatched kindling from the pile and used it to restart the banked embers for their supper.
His mate was nothing if not relentless. He crept up behind Jamie and looped his arms around Jamie’s bare stomach. “Jamie—”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He didn’t know a lot, hadn’t since the night they’d mated, but he knew that much. He would not consider losing Ian, not for one moment.
“The prophecy will be fulfilled whether you ignore it or not.” Ian squeezed Jamie, resting his cheek on Jamie’s shoulder. “I need you to be okay.”
“You’ve no cause for worry.” A bitter laugh tore from Jamie’s chest. “If the seer’s prophecy is true, I’ll be so okay I’ll invite another man into our bed.”
Ian grunted. “Don’t be a dick.”
Jamie used the discarded length of pipe that served as their fireplace poker to stoke the fire. “You’re here now. Today. Right this moment. We two have been one for almost as many years as the pack you insist on bargaining with invested in raising us. Why should I worry about the dark tomorrow a seer promised me when too many of our todays have been full of such happiness?”
Lips soft, Ian kissed his shoulder. “Because someday, that tomorrow will come.”
“They would have robbed us of all these years together.” He pushed to his feet, disentangling himself from the affectionate comfort of his mate’s embrace. He strode to the flat rock covering their root cellar and heaved it aside. This late in the evening, little natural light shone through the twin maws of their den’s windows because Ian and Jamie hadn’t known to build their home facing west to best capture the fading sun and of course, there was never any coin for lamp oil. Not for them. He bent and reached into the dark hole, identifying the last of the fat rabbits his snares had yielded for them by touch. He flinched when Ian’s hand covered the mating bite on Jamie’s nape.
“When will you forgive them?”
Never.
“They were scared for you, frightened for us both.” When the bunch of Jamie’s muscle did not relax, Ian blew out a choppy breath. “They regret what they did, what they tried to do, all of it, or they would have never sent their children to you for training.”
“The kids just showed up.” One by one, a few here, another the next day, pups from the pack—the offspring of shifters Jamie would not treat with—had streamed into the Between, to the clearing he and Ian had made their home after they’d lost everything and everyone who had mattered to them except each other. “Kids do stupid things every day that their parents never know about.” He tried for a grin. “None should be more aware of that than us two.”
He let Ian turn him and pull him against Ian’s chest. “Nothing is valued more than a pack’s children. No, listen,” he said in a low voice when Jamie failed to choke back a grief-stricken sob. “They are sorry. Your dad, mine, our mothers, the whole pack wishes they could erase what they did and make it right. They can’t. You won’t let them, but they can send their sons and daughters to learn from you, to ensure their wrong will never be repeated.”
Tears Jamie would not shed burned his eyes, though he’d sworn years ago that he’d never cry for the family he’d lost again. “Stop.”
“You’re going to need them someday. We both know it.” Ian pushed the book into Jamie’s stomach. “And this.”
“We’ve had more than ten beautiful summers together and still, you keep dragging up the damned prophecy.” Jamie’s breath hitched, but he finally accepted the journal. “Why can’t you just be with me?”
“I’m here. I’ve always been here and for you, I always will be.”
Jamie shuddered. “You can’t promise me that.”
“I can.” The arms Ian had threaded around Jamie’s neck tightened. “Fuck what the seer saw. I’m yours. No matter what, I will forever be yours. Nothing, not even death, will change that.” He tunneled his fingers into Jamie’s hair and held on. “Whenever you need me, go to the mountains. You know the place. Our place.”
His throat tightened. Jamie couldn’t speak so he nodded instead.
“Talk to me there. Be with me there and when you can face them again, you come back to our den. Do you hear me? You have to come back. To our home Between at first, but one day, you’ll tolerate Burnt Fork again…and them.”
“I can’t.” Jamie wildly shook his head. “I don’t want to—”
“I don’t either. I want to grow old and gray with you.” Ian bent his head until their foreheads kissed and he became Jamie’s world. “And I will…in the mountains. Swear to me that you’ll remember. No matter what happens, I’ll never leave you. When you think you can’t take one more breath without breaking, go to the mountains. I’ll be waiting.”
Jamie’s fingers curled around the journal. “I can’t make it without you. Stop asking me to.”
Unblinking, Ian stared at Jamie. “I’m not asking.”
The woods surrounding the small clearing in which Jamie and Ian had built their den resounded with high-pitched barks and the playful yips of the pack’s pups—the kids old enough to learn shifter craft, at any rate. Emerging from the tree line, Jamie snatched his shorts and a homespun shirt from a convenient tree branch upon which he’d hung his clothes before taking restless kids into the forest to chase rabbits. “All right, guys. You’ve had your fun.” He pulled his shorts up his hips and over his bare ass. “Back into your human skins to finish today’s lessons or be gone with you.”
He didn’t bother waiting for them to slink from the woods toward their own clothes. Yanking his shirt over his head, he marched to the cabin and skirted around the left rear corner, which leaked. Jamie had promised Ian he’d find and fix the weak spot in the roof sometime today, but hadn’t gotten around to that yet. A glance at the sun told him he had a few hours of decent light before his mate returned from the mountains. Not much time with pack kids underfoot. Luckily, he could mentor them through today’s subject atop the cabin as well as he could on the ground. Hiding on a roof might be easier, honestly.
He grabbed the ladder from the other side of the house and muscled it into place while the kids chattered and dressed. “Whatcha doing, Uncle Jamie?” Michael asked. The youngest of the group, the crown of his head barely reached Jamie’s waist. If Michael had been anyone else’s son, Jamie would have sent a pup that small back to his parents, but Michael was the son of Ian’s brother, Devon. Once Jamie had seen Ian’s eyes sparkle when he’d spotted his nephew among the group of kids who streamed to their cabin most afternoons, Jamie hadn’t been able to say no.
“I’m repairing our roof.” He braced the ladder against the cabin wall. “And you should call me Jamie. Just Jamie.”
Already a fine builder like his father, Michael grabbed the ladder to steady it. “Mom and Dad say it’s okay.”
Heart turning over, Jamie mussed the thick crop of chestnut hair at the top of his nephew’s head. “It isn’t up to them.”
“Your dad says it’s okay too.”
Jamie grunted. They’d had the same argument every day for several months. “It isn’t up to him either.”
Michael gaped at him. “He’s the alpha.”
Grimacing, Jamie pointed to the woods leading to the high mountains. “Whose territory is that?”
“Bitter Creek pack.” The pup squared his shoulders. “We aren’t s’posed to go there unless Alpha Frank and Daddy says.”
Pivoting, Jamie waved at the other side of the forest, beyond the creek. “Who does that land belong to?”
“Us.” Michael’s eyes narrowed. “Burnt Fork pack.”
“Do you know what this spot is called?”
Ian’s nephew nodded. “The Between.”
“Why is it called that?”
“A narrow strip of land on the border of two neighboring packs will always be the Between, where members of both packs can trade, explore inter-pack matings, and negotiate treaties without fear of attack or reprisal.” Michael dug hi
s toe into the loamy earth, reciting verbatim a lesson Jamie had guided the pack’s whelps through a few weeks ago, proving Michael was every bit as smart as his Uncle Ian “The Between is also a zone of safety to exiled shifters and rogue wolves.”
Jamie arched an eyebrow, waiting for Michael to connect the dots.
The boy frowned. “You aren’t exiled, Uncle Jamie.”
“No, technically, Ian and I are rogues.” He turned back to the ladder and gave it a shove to test Michael’s grip and check it was securely braced. “We disobeyed our alpha when we mated and rather than accepting his punishment, we left the pack to live Between.”
“You’re fated,” a second voice, a girl’s, chimed in. “No alpha can interfere in a union the Goddess blessed. Punishing you wouldn’t have been proper. You were right to leave.”
Smothering a groan, Jamie glanced at Aria, his sister’s oldest girl. “The point is no one can claim Ian or I as family because Burnt Fork shunned us.”
Aria blinked, the funny blue eyes that marked her as the next pack seer narrowing. “If you aren’t welcome in our pack, why did you become pack trainer when Mack died?”
“I had nothing to do with it.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You guys just started showing up.”
Michael and Aria nodded in unison. “Because you’re pack trainer.”
Jamie glowered at them. “Says who?”
“Nobody told us,” Michael said, voice droll. “We sensed it. Instinct.”
“You just are.” Aria shrugged, then glared at him. “If you aren’t one of us, you can’t be pack trainer, though. Since instinct guided us to you as our trainer, you must be one of us.”
“It’s complicated.” Shoving the roiling frustration down deep, Jamie lifted his foot to the first rung of the ladder. “Hold onto this thing or I’ll defeat the prophecy altogether by falling and breaking my neck.”