by Claire Ryann
She put on her coat and wrapped the quilt from the sofa around her shoulders and ventured out through roofless tunnel that Daelan had carved out of the ice earlier.
It was a narrow passage that cut across the back deck to the wood pile. The wood pile had a roof over it to keep it dry and there was enough space under the overhang that she could easily follow it to the edge of the deck.
She hopped off the deck, landing in the snow below it and immediately sinking in up to her knees. Snow caved in around the tops of her waterproof boots and began filling in the space around her ankles as she tromped through the white powder.
Daelan's truck was a large shape under the snow. It looked untouched, but she couldn't see the driver's side from where was standing so she assumed he must have accessed a spare set of clothes from that side.
Her socks were soaked through and her feet were numb with cold for the second time in 2 days. She scanned the forest around the cabin for signs of Daelan but all she could see were tracks of some wild animal leading out through the trees.
She idly wondered what had happened to her friendly neighborhood wolf. Probably went home to his wife and kids, she thought, get out of the storms and curl up to watch a movie.
She had no idea what wolves did when they weren't out terrorizing city girls alone in the woods.
Where ever Daelan was, she hoped he would be back before the next storm got underway. Only 24 hours cooped up with him in the cabin and she was head over heels.
Amazing sex will do that to you, she grinned as she teased herself. She knew she was just setting herself up for heartbreak later, but she let her imagination paint a cozy picture of her and Daelan spending more than just a few snowy days together.
She still didn't know where he lived or what he did for a living, but she couldn't help herself. Not only was he extremely easy on the eyes and had done delicious things to her that afternoon, but he had been devoted to her from their very first encounter in a way that no other man had come close to.
Movement out in the woods caught her eye.
She was busy comparing Daelan to Rod. No contest, Daelan won on every level. Haley congratulated herself on being able to think of Rod without feeling the slightest bit of hurt or anger. That was a first.
The movement out past the first row of trees was an off white blur. She tried to focus on it but it was almost invisible against the snow, only the fact that it was moving allowed to keep her eyes trained on it but it was pretty obvious it was coming toward her.
The sky overhead went dark as the clouds blocked the winter sun's light, a few fluffy flakes began to whirl in the air as her old friend the wolf materialized from the shapeless movement.
Just when Haley recognized the wolf and decided it was time to get back inside, the wolf reached the last row of trees at the edge of the wide clearing in front of the cabin and then--
Haley was still sitting where she'd fallen in the snow when Daelan reached her.
He was naked. He looked perfectly at ease in the frigid temperatures, the curls of his hair filling with snowflakes. His skin looked flushed and even slightly wet with perspiration as though he'd been running for some time. His breath formed a cloud of condensation in the air as he made his way toward her.
Under normal circumstances that would have seemed weird enough. Any normal person would have been shivering out here, Haley certainly was, and she was wearing a coat and wrapped in a blanket. If he'd been naked the whole time, he should have frost bite now and be suffering from severe hypothermia.
But if what she just saw wasn't an illusion, Daelan wasn't any normal person at all.
She'd been watching the wolf crossing the clearing when all of a sudden the wolf had turned into Daelan. Like, one minute it was this big, fluffy, cream colored wolf and then it just lifted its front paws off the ground and sort of melted into Daelan while it was still walking.
She felt herself falling. Her knees buckling and then her ass hitting the snow and sinking in while her eyes were locked on the man moving toward her.
She saw the look on his face as he noticed her there. She felt herself go down. She saw him pick up his speed on the two feet that had been hind haunches just seconds before. Now he was kneeling in the snow in front of her. He was talking to her and waving his hand in front of her face.
Haley saw everything that was happening, she just couldn't process it. It didn't make sense. So she just sat there and watched his lips moving while he gathered her in his arms and carried her back into the cabin.
She heard his voice. It sounded wonderful, all velvet soft and warm, but she couldn't understand the words. She wasn't sure she remembered any words at the moment.
Everything she knew was being rewritten.
14
Daelan knew she'd seen him immediately after he shifted. He'd been distracted. He'd been eager to get back to her. He'd been careless. How he'd missed her standing there wasn't important. What mattered was getting her out of this catatonic state.
The hollow look in Haley's eyes as they followed his movements had him worried.
After he found his clothes carefully folded and set on the foot of the bed, he set about getting her warm and comfortable. New socks, new pajamas, new quilt to wrap around her.
He let her sit on the sofa and watch him with that vacant disinterest as he built the fire up and then started water heating on the stove.
"Haley?" he asked quietly as he sat beside her and pulled her into his arms, "You OK?"
At least she's not panicking, he thought.
Her body was pliant against him and she easily fell into his arms, resting her head against his chest as his hands rubbed her back.
Maybe panic would be better.
He kissed the top of her head and settled in.
"I wish I'd had a chance to warn you before you saw that," he mumbled, his chin resting on top of her head as he watched the fire, "I know it's gotta be freaking you out."
His arms tightened around her shoulders.
"I have so much to tell you, Baby. It's gonna get a lot more complicated than just the wolf."
Daelan kissed her head again and leaned his cheek against her hair.
"I needed to let my pack know, to warn them that I'd met you. None of the younger ones can remember anyone taking a human mate and I don't know how the pack is going to react.
I wanted to get back to you as soon as I could. I wanted to enjoy some more time together before I had to face the elder council. I wanted to make love to you again before--" Daelan's voice failed him, his breath turning to stone in his chest.
He dipped his head to look down at her. She was curled in his lap, her knees bent up to her chest, her head against his. He had his arms around her and she was still staring blankly into the distance. He didn't know if she was listening to him or not but he felt compelled to keep talking. He needed her to hear his voice, even if she couldn't understand his words.
Or maybe he needed to keep talking for his own sake, he wasn't sure at this point.
"I don't know if I'm still going to be Alpha when they find out that my mate is human."
There. He got that part out. That wasn't so hard. After all, he hadn't asked to be named Alpha, he would manage if he lost the position.
He did care about being exiled from the pack. His home. His family.
He cared even more about Haley's fate though. If it were just a matter of him being asked to give up his leadership to allow him to live with his mate in peace it would be a simple matter.
"I'm just not sure how they're going to react," he whispered. He wasn't talking to Haley anymore so much as he was facing his worst fears by giving them voice, "The pack has not taken well to humans in the past."
He winced as memories flashed in his mind.
The pack had dispatched with more than one curious trespasser. Even since his father had made the controversial call to begin integrating. Sending the younger generations into the human world to get educations, job skills, to liv
e and work in the human world so that they became familiar with the world as it was changing around them.
It had been a wise decision on his father's part, in spite of the old timers' worries. It had strengthened the pack, giving them new ways to earn money and improve the den. They had electricity and Internet now.
Many of them had identities now. Drivers’ licenses and credit cards, college degrees. Skills with new technology and old, from computer programming to carpentry.
There was less fear. Less hatred and prejudice. His peers didn't see humans as the enemy the way so many of the elders did.
But then, he and his friends didn't remember when weres roamed the land freely. They didn't remember their people being hunted for no other reason than because they were shifters.
His father had barely remembered, his father's father had been killed in those hunts. Deemed a demon and tortured for his sins before finally being allowed to die.
Daelan shuddered and clenched his jaw.
The pack's numbers had dwindled to very few during those times. His people went from being revered by the humans they shared the land with as demi-gods who had been given special gifts to being feared and hunted as evil.
"So we learned to hide," he was telling Haley, "we just disappeared. Some of the shifters disappeared into plain site, assuming human lives and human ways. Some of us retreated into the nooks and crannies of the planet. Places where humans couldn't-- or wouldn't-- claim for themselves.
The pack found these mountains. We've been here for several hundred years now. Some of our elders are over a thousand years old. I might be the alpha, but I answer to my pack. To do otherwise would make a poor leader.
I will give it all up, Haley," his voice tightened with his grip on her, "I will give it all up to stay by your side and," he took a pained breath, "I will fight to my death to keep you safe. I will burn the den to the ground if they try to harm you."
The thought was unbearable but it was his worst fear.
What if the pack overthrew him? What if they rioted against him and declared Haley the enemy? He'd seen it before. He'd seen the pack chase human intruders into the woods and hunt them as prey.
Wolves were not merciful killers.
15
Haley listened to everything he said. She heard him tell her about the men who made up his closest friends and fiercest hunters. She heard his stories about growing up in the den, his stories about moving away to attend college in the city and his experiences living among humans.
She liked this Ken guy who seemed to be the clown, and this Rek who helped him rule the pack. She could swear she had laughed out loud at his stories and she thought he could feel her hand squeeze against his side when he told her about his parents' death.
It took a while before she realized that the choked emotion in his voice was partially because he worried about her remaining silent and still in his arms.
She took in all the information that he was spilling out while the scene of the wolf shifting into Daelan ran on instant replay in her brain.
"What does mate mean?"
Her voice was shaky and timid. She was surprised by how far away it sounded to her own ears.
Daelan hauled her up so that he was looking directly into her eyes, "You're back, you were beginning to worry me. His voice flooded with relief.
She blinked a few times and nodded.
He folded her in his arms tightly and then began kissing her. Kissing the side of her face, the top of her head, her forehead and, finally, his lips landed on hers.
It started as the same grateful peck as the others had been but she met him half way on this one, raising her face to his and parting her lips as his landed lightly on them. He kissed her simply once and then again, and then his mouth was hungry on hers, his hands framing her face, his tongue slid along the inside of her lips and his teeth caught her upper lips between them before his mouth sealed to hers in a serious attempt to steal her breath.
When she finally had to come up for air, his mouth refused to completely let her go. He nibbled against her lower lip, and nipped at her chin while she caught her breath.
"You're back," he breathed against her throat. A dark sound come from his chest as his teeth grazed against her neck just below her ear.
"Dae lan," she split his name into separate words in order to breathe between syllables, "you were telling me something," she moaned as his tongue seared across her collarbone, "important."
"Mmm," he mumbled as his kisses became hotter as his mouth traveled over her body, "I was." His hands pulled away the blanket that was wrapped around her shoulders and then slid under her pajama shirt and up her body.
"I was saying how beautiful you are."
Haley arched her back, letting his broad palms work their way under her shirt and cover her breasts. It felt delicious. His hands were so warm.
"No, about your mate. About your," her eyes opened and she pulled his hands away from her, holding them in hers as she suddenly sobered, "about your pack."
Daelan stilled under her gaze and folded his fingers around hers with a small nod, "You're right, I was saying something important," he whispered.
"Are you OK with this?" He gestured toward himself, "with what you saw?"
Haley bit her lip and squeezed against his fingers with barely a movement of her head.
"You understand what I am?"
Haley bobbed her head once in silence.
The look on his face said he wasn't sure he believed her, but he continued, "A mate is exactly what it sounds like. It's the person who completes you. The person who you are meant to be spend your life with."
Haley swallowed hard, "I'm yours?"
This time Daelan nodded wordlessly.
"How do you know? It's been less than 2 days."
A slow smile moved across his face, "Weres have an advantage there. At least, wolves do," he whispered softly, "because we can detect the scent markers that identify one individual from another.
"I was drawn to you before but I thought you were just a human woman that I wanted to bed, as soon as I had you in my arms, I knew." His fingers tightened over her hands, pulling them to his heart, "I knew it was you," he leaned forward and touched his lips to hers softly before moving to kiss the ticklish spot just in front of her ear.
She heard him inhale long and slow, drawing her scent into his lungs, "You smell like sex, and spice, and honey, mixed with the breeze off the ocean and fresh-felled pine." His nose nuzzled along the side of her face, "you smell like my future and I never knew what that smelled like until I met you."
Haley's heart was beating a mile a minute. She'd never heard anything so sappy in her life, and it sounded amazing.
"But," she hated reminding him.
One more deep sniff and Daelan returned to his position, facing her with her hands still held firmly in his.
"But." He agreed. "But I am the Alpha of a very old pack that has only recently begun to explore the possibility that a relationship with humans could be beneficial to us."
His eyes were filled with sadness.
"But you're the Alpha?" She asked, her voice filled with the expectation that that meant he had more power than he really did.
"We are weres. Shapeshifters. We share a good many traits with the animals we shift into, just as our animals share many traits with the humans they shift to. But we are not wolves, and we're not really humans either." Daelan chose his words carefully, "Being the Alpha makes me our leader, not our dictator."
A flash of fear crossed his face, "And I am heavily outnumbered. If the pack chooses not to accept my mate, it won't matter that that the choice was out of my control."
A shiver ran through Haley. She didn't need clarification.
"So what happens now?" She asked.
"For now, we enjoy the time we have together."
Daelan pulled her into his arms again, kissing her passionately as he carefully moved to the floor in front of the roaring fire. He brought her with him
, laying her down on the blanket that he'd pushed aside earlier.
He pulled her shirt over her head and slid the cotton pajama pants over her round hips, taking time to enjoy her body as it was revealed.
Her breasts were large and heavy, adding inviting contours to her body in the firelight. He ran his hands over them and felt her nipples pucker at his touch. He traced his fingertip lightly around the border of deep rose tinted skin that marked the tips of each breast.
Haley moaned at the sensation.
Then his fingers moved down the slopes and over her ribs, drawing along the center of her stomach and taking time to memorize the feel of the soft mound of flesh that moved so enticingly as her breathing became heavier.
"I always hoped that my mate would be beautiful," he breathed, "I never dreamed I'd get this lucky."
Haley almost laughed, she wasn't sure any man had ever called her beautiful while he was looking at her naked. At least, not with the breathless reverence that Daelan said it with.
His hand flattened over her stomach, filling his palm with its soft rise, "I can't wait to see you pregnant," he said softly and Haley's breath hitched.
"You want to have babies?" she asked.
Daelan looked down at her as his hand continued to caress her, "Of course I want babies," he laughed softly, "with you," he added as he let his hand wander lower, over the curve of her belly and down to the soft hair that covered her mound.
Haley closed her eyes and let the feel of his exploration raise little goosebumps along her skin.
His fingertip dipped farther, sinking between the cleft of her lower lips and sliding down her seam.
Haley raised her hips and moaned.
His fingers found her opening and brushed the perimeter. She was so wet, so ready for him, but he was patient this time. He was going to take his time and watch her pleasure consume her body. He dipped his finger into her wetness and felt the tight ring just inside her contract around his fingertip.
Daelan was overcome with the urge to savor her flavor so he moved between her knees and leaned in close.