by Roxanne Lee
I flicked my eyes to the blonde so quiet beside me, his steps gliding over the gravel that should have crunched beneath his weight. "When are you leaving?"
He stared at the ground as he spoke, "after the funeral...I'll visit the pack first, sort out some things...then leave to find him."
I couldn't imagine the despair he felt at running his own pseudo family to the ground and so I asked the question I'd wondered ever since he'd offered."Why you Lane? You could have just let Charlie go."
He shook his head and smiled a little, "Charlie needs to be here. Think Carver wants to be free...to follow one little redhead."
I rolled my eyes at him and his grin widened, it was almost a real one, the first I'd seen from him all morning.
His eyes lit up for a moment and his grin turned feral. "Besides Duncan’s a hell...of a fighter. Be interesting which...one of us comes back."
I couldn't help the laugh that burst from my lips, even when faced with the prospect of killing the man he called 'brother', the blonde was excited about the challenge.
I saw Carver standing tall on a raised block as we neared the forest my wolf had spent so much time in. Guards were gathered in a circle around him and a hole had been dug in the ground. I liked the position, it was circled by a group of Weeping willows, trees that swept the floor in a graceful arc when the spring came in full bloom. Nature's servants bowing to the man even in death.
I stood in the centre with the dogs sat mournfully beside me as Sam’s body was lowered to the ground. Both Carver and Lane said beautiful words as his body was gently placed, Charlie laying the dirt to cover him in peace. I didn't hear the words they said, I didn't comment when Carver asked if I'd like to add my piece, I was happy just watching in silence, I'd already said my last words and they had been for his ears only.
As the guard bowed to Sam’s grave and filtered off I was eventually left standing with only Carver.
"Have you thought about what you'd like to do from here?" His gravelly voice still thrilled me and I was left wondering if I'd ever tire of that sound.
"Yes I have." I heard his breath catch in his throat as he waited for my thoughts. "Did you fix Sam's cabin after?"
He grunted out a "yes," and I smiled at his wolf forcing itself to the surface. "I'm going to take the dogs home Carver, I want to go back to that place, I miss it."
I caught him nodding sadly out of the corner of my eye, I suppose he didn't like his lack of inclusion in my future so far. I turned and started walking back to the house to pack, I had no intention of hanging around, I felt a strong urge to return to the place I considered home. I looked back at the giant man staring after me with such sorrow on his face I couldn't keep the smile to myself any longer.
"If you're going to follow me you might want to be quick about it...I won't wait around for long."
I caught his grin as I turned and walked quickly to the house, urging the dogs to pick up the pace as excitement filled me.
A little bit of anticipation.
A game of chase between mates who needed to forget the real world for a moment and begin again.
Chapter 44. -Epilogue
There was perhaps one time in my entire life that I remember feeling like this. It was maybe ten years ago, when I'd walked into the kitchen of the family home to see my parents in an embrace of what could only be considered unending love, the kind where you're considered the intruder to someone else's blissful moment. A watcher to something you neither understood nor could imagine for yourself.
Sam’s rusty old cabin had been given quite the spit polish. All that hard wood that had been so prevalent had been replaced by a mixture of materials. The floor had remained solid oak yet the planks had been waxed and shined to a glossy finish. The walls had panels of cream and grey sandstone tiles and it gave the previously rustic cabin a rather modern look. I had wondered for a moment if Sam had picked this out himself. It just hadn't seemed to mesh with the idea I'd had of him. He had always been more of the rugged and rough type, kind of like the trees that stood proudly in the surrounding wood, ones that had stood the test of time and stoically weathered wars and famine like wizened old men. This....well it just hadn't matched the Sam I'd known.
I'd dropped my bags on that polished floor two months ago. I'd taken Sam's bedroom, I felt the need to sleep surrounded by his scent, it was a familiar blanket of comfort. The dogs had latched onto me and refused to let go, as if they were afraid I'd disappear too. Luce was a particular surprise, not only was he never a foot away from me, he had also taken to sleeping beside Remy...that of course meant I was consistently sandwiched between two overgrown animals who snored like grumpy old men.
I'd spent my days since walking the woods with those dogs, either in human or wolf form. At night I'd light a fire in the newly refurbished grate beneath a solidly built chimney that pulled the smoke out in puffs of dragon's breath.
It was a frost covered winter, one that froze the forest in an eerie stillness, an abandoned town of ghostly bared branches dripping daggers of ice to the barren landscape. It was a simple existence, one that I found sort of wonderful for its undemanding days and quiet nights.
I learned to cook for myself, packages of food were regularly left on the porch and I took full advantage of the gift. After one night, when I'd taken the single bottle I'd found remaining in the kitchen and poured a glass to take to those old rocking chairs that still creaked on the front porch, those packages never failed to contain a bottle of the good stuff. I'd sit in silence, the flickering amber from the fire and lights from the living room casting a faint glow over the tree line, picking out my watcher in the woods as he paced back and fore until I settled in with that glass of gold.
I'd not allowed Carver entry into my new world when he'd followed me to the cabin. We'd spent a day chasing each other, scenting the trails we'd both left, marking the ground and leaving our signature, a map for the hunter to track. His wolf had been victorious, as was his nature, and I'd been caught only minutes from the cabin. Both wolves had rolled in each others scent, begun a dance that would eventually have led to acceptance. The sound of the dogs arriving in Charlie's truck had been the moment I was snapped out of my wolf's playful mind. I'd turned my back on Carver and his wolf and made my escape indoors, hidden away from spontaneous mistakes, avoiding taking things further than I'd meant to. I'd closed the door on him and locked myself away in the privacy of Sam's memory and the feeling that I wasn't ready for him to encroach so completely. I'd still been angry, over the lies and the marking and maybe a little over him trusting Duncan with Sam when he'd promised me nothing would happen to that old man. It may have been unfair to blame him for something out of his control, but me and blame were the best of friends and it was hard to let that go when so much of my original soul had been replaced by censure.
He spent the following week camped out on the porch, an eight and a half foot wolf laying across my doorstep, a ridiculous trip hazard should I have ventured outside. He hunted for food when darkness fell, far away and closer to civilisation, on land already claimed by humans with large holdings, farms that would miss quite a few of their cattle on these wintry nights.
It was one such evening, when I felt the bond tug as he moved further away then was comfortable, that I took Sam's last bottle of whiskey and sat on the porch till he returned. It became a nightly thing; that I would sit and think while he prowled the tree line, and at least it got him off my porch.
Sometimes I'd talk to him, tell him all the things I couldn't have said to his human face, the one that could have responded and strayed my thoughts with that honeyed voice. His wolf was quiet, only rumbling every so often when I said words he didn't like, but he listened and I found the animal easier to talk to then the man. There was only one night I allowed him to creep forward; the night I told him of my fears for the future, that I was unsure how to proceed in a relationship that would involve intimacies I'd been stripped of. How I loathed the thought, not of the actual act of sex,
but the possibility that I'd be unable to do it. I could no longer stand the thought of being weak, I would hate to think Daniel had forever made me into a person that couldn't enjoy something that was supposed to be beautiful. That my fears would override my pleasure was a constant barrier that I could not step over. And this is where I am now, at that point between decisions. I can either force that step and maybe have some understanding of the kind of love my parents had known, that Sam had known, or I can continue to fear, to allow trepidation to swallow my pride.
It was with great surprise that I felt the first stirrings. Christmas was just around the corner, a time of year I'd missed so heavily in the early months of my imprisonment, one that had always seemed a celebration that eclipsed all petty arguments and replaced them with a childish kind of awe. I'd spent so long without my mother, the women that should have passed this information along, that I was nothing but confused for the first day. Of course every child was taught from a young age the basics of what followed the first shift, after all they were curious little beings and would always wonder why humans had different birthdays to them. Like every werewolf, I'd been born in the spring and I remember the first time I'd met a human child whose birthday had fallen in November. The conversation I'd had with my mother had been understood with a child's mind and yet, it served to give me some sort of understanding now.
When the evening came I sat on the porch as usual, only this time I saw the ravenous hunger in Carver's wolf as soon as I locked eyes with him after the draw his scent had become. I felt drugged on the very smell of him, drunk on alcohol that produced an after-burn of the exquisite taste of cinnamon. It took a moment for me to realise what was happening, that the itching need for something I'd felt all day was not restlessness, but a craving for something only he could provide.
There was a reason female wolves shifted a lot later than males; puberty and adulthood needed to happen to both halves of the soul before they could handle such intensity. With late December came the animal's breeding season, a period for females to tease and lure unsuspecting males into their wicked webs. An un-mated female would simply smell like sex to any male, an attempt to attract her mate. A mated one however, a wolf like me, would smell fertile; an unavoidable draw for the male, like blood to a starving vampire and an oasis in the Sahara to the Desert's victim.
He stalked his way across the frozen ground, his wolf on hands and knees crawling towards his sighted prey. I didn't even think to stop him at that moment, so caught in his smell, my own wolf reacting to the male that grew only more appealing with each second that passed. I could not take my eyes off the beast that prowled, my heart pounding it's agreement, my stomach fluttering as his heavy arms pulled his solid frame ever forward.
I ached. In a way I'd never before felt, something utterly new and enticing. I knew what I wanted, but in my ignorance I wasn't sure how to get it. My wolf had an idea though...she pranced around inside me, turned her back to the male stalking her and lifted her butt in the air, waving it around in a clumsy attempt to seduce. I rolled my eyes at her, she was as inept in this situation as I was.
Carver's wolf reached the porch steps, hands displaying claws that dug gouges into the newly painted wood. Rumbles of satisfaction left his chest and his nose tipped high as he took great pulling breaths of the air around me, scenting the glorious, heavy aroma that only increased as he neared. I panted in my seat, not quite sure of what I should be doing right now. Sweat beaded and broke, running lines of need down heated skin. I saw a flicker in his eyes, a little bit of charcoal on ebony, a subtle difference that was only highlighted in shimmers from the glow of fire.
The wolf shook his head back and fore, as if trying to rid himself of the smell that called a sirens song to both the man and the animal. In the second it took to flick my eyes from his face to the member engorged and unsheathed at his groin, he was gone.
As if hell hounds were on his tail, he leaped and sprinted for the woods, frost spraying in his wake like smoke from flaming footsteps. I sat stupefied for several minutes, my wolf staring at the empty space before her with her jaw hanging down, aghast at the male who'd denied her. I'd gained some previously lacking control in these months, working daily to push the beast forward only to pull her back again. I was rather grateful for my foresight right now. She quickly became vengeful, pushing and clawing at me to change so she could chase after him, knock the giant beast down and drag him back to her den.
I was somewhat unnerved by her ferocious libido.
I sat still for moments longer, denying the animal her freedom, frowning at the steps he'd vacated. I pondered for almost half an hour, a stillness invading my body as I came to the conclusion that the man had forced the wolf away. Maybe he wasn't sure of my decision, perhaps he hadn't wanted to push for something I'd only regret in the morning.
He was wrong.
Once I'd realised exactly what was happening I was infinitely happier then what I'd started this day as. Not only would this first season push me passed that barrier that stood blocking my way, I was also so much more confident with the changes in my reactions. This heat would take over my body completely until it was fully satisfied. I could do this. While in the throes of this take over, I wouldn't be worrying about what he was doing, I wouldn't be thinking about my previous life. The only thing that would matter is satisfying the craving. I was so incredibly happy I had a permanent smile that replaced the normal frown.
I stood quickly from the rocking chair and spun into the cabin. The night was almost freezing in its intensity but my skin was radiating it's own warmth. I stripped the clothes I wore down to my underwear and threw them in a pile on the sofa. I returned to the rocking chair to wait, the frost clean and cooling on my skin. I wouldn't have to wait all night, that wolf would not leave me alone for long.
He managed around an hour before he was forced to return, if only to see that I was still perfectly well in his absence. He came through the tree line as human, perhaps hoping he would be less affected in this form. He stopped walking maybe six feet from where I sat, a groan leaving his lips as he took in my under-dressed state. He remained shirtless though he'd pulled on trousers from the stash he kept somewhere within the forest.
"What are you doing cherry?" His voice was deep and husky, a little from the months of not using it and mostly from the smell that still emanated from me.
I smiled at him, one that truly meant to convey my feelings. "I made a choice."
His eyes impossibly darkened and I shivered, a reaction that had nothing to do with the freezing temperatures.
"You're in heat." He replied as if he was trying to make sure I understood the reason I felt this way.
"I know that Carver, I'm glad."
He frowned at me and it only made my smile grow. "I want to move forward..." I doubt he could have stopped the smile that spread across his face. "...this is a good thing, I can stop thinking about what might go wrong and just go with it."
He took a giant step forward before halting yet again as if he couldn't convince himself that I knew what I was doing."Are you sure? I don't want you to regret this in the morning."
I laughed at his words, how alike my own conclusions they were. I stood from the chair and made my way across frozen wooden planks to even more frozen steps. The cold numbed my feet, the only part of me it seemed not on fire. I think he noticed rather quickly that my feet were starting to turn blue and soon flew across the remaining land to pull me into his arms, a new warmth that seemed even hotter than my own.
He carried me back into the cabin, a look on his face I could now understand, one that projected only pure thoughts of love and appreciation. It was something I'd seen so often on his features but my vision had been too clouded to see clearly.
"I love you cherry."
I smiled happily back at him, content in the knowledge that this wolf was mine and he wasn't going anywhere. I wasn't quite on the same page as him, not yet, but I knew one thing for sure...
I wa
s certainly getting there.
*********************
If there was one thing considered more divine than heaven...it could only be this moment. A fusion of body and soul that came in sweat slicked surfaces and glorious flames that ignited and burned, only to explode in a such shimmering sparks that they glistened and floated, laying an ethereal covering over writhing skin and heavy limbs.
I'd thought shifting into my wolf would be the only thing I'd never tire of, I quickly came to the realisation that this could definitely become a close second. He kissed me softly at first, lips encased in velvet, a stark contrast to all that roughness he surrounded himself in. I fell quickly into the taste of him, sweet spice that lingered and flourished, an addiction that fed my desire with a pure kind of substance. The animal inside voiced her contentment, a rolling sound that vibrated and tingled, only adding to the goosebumps his hands on my skin had started. Those calloused fingers running a scratching kind of tickle up and down my back, such contrast to the wet slickness of his tongue invading my mouth.
I slipped my own hands from their tangled position in his soft hair, gliding over his shoulders and running across the large expanse of chest covered in hard, heated skin that burned beneath my fingertips. Deep rumbles escaped his ribs, the wolf's appreciation of my touch. The ache that had started low and constant flared to new life, a pulsing, pounding kind of enthusiasm that refused to be ignored. His lips left mine as it became a struggle to breathe, my lungs working overtime as my overexcited heart matched that pounding with its own beat.
Even while Carver continued to stroke his fingers over my skin, even with that desire building to new heights, I could not keep the smile off my face, it was truly amazing to feel nothing but normal lust as he touched me. Those large hands drifted to cup my ass and I felt a moment of weightlessness as I was lifted to wrap my legs around his abdomen, his face buried in my neck causing shivers in my spine as he rained kisses on every piece of flesh available. He walked us backwards towards the bedroom, we'd made it two steps into the cabin before his mouth had captured mine.