“Are you hungry?”
Her voice was hoarse. “I could eat a whole muskox.”
Zane smiled as he passed her water canister to her, and then his attention returned to the fish, which he turned, so that an uncooked side faced the flames.
“Did you catch this yourself?” she asked, before she could think better of the question. She ran a hand through his hair. “Look at you, you’re all wet. You’ll get sick.”
His response was to pull her into his lap, and she let him, wincing a bit as her nether regions smarted. Once she was settled, his head went to her neck, where he nuzzled his mark. It still hurt—not nearly as much as it had hurt last night—but it was quite sore. Even still, there was something about the way he touched her there that made a shiver run through her and desire flicker in her core.
“Is it going to heal before we reach Siluit?”
“No,” he said, sounding almost amused.
She pursed her lips. “You didn’t want it to, did you?”
“I couldn’t have stopped myself last night,” he said, his voice turning sultry with memory. “Even if I had been in control, I probably still would have bitten you. Just not as hard.”
Ginnifer sighed deeply, and then leaned into his embrace. “We’ll hide it.”
“They’ll know.”
“How?”
“Even if you could hide the mark and somehow get my scent from under your skin, they’ll know because I won’t be the same.” He pressed his lips to the mark, murmuring his words against her skin. “It was already difficult to have you around other males, but now it’ll be even harder. I won’t be able to stand them touching you, smelling you, looking at you.”
Her throat tightened. “Zane, that’s crazy… You’ve been with other women before. Why is it any different now?”
“I’ve never been with a female I wanted as my mate.”
Everything began to sink in, and she wasn’t sure which aspect of that statement she wanted to deal with first.
She squirmed in his lap. “We had sex, great sex, but that isn’t a binding commitment. You know I don’t plan on staying here, and besides, what about Coral and Sedna?”
He nipped at the mark, making her twitch. “We’ll talk about this later. It’s still snowing, and I don’t feel like leaving just yet. I’m going to feed you, and then I’m going to spend the rest of the day inside of you.”
***
It had stopped snowing in the late afternoon, but night fell without Zane feeling any inclination to leave. He lay beside her under his pelt, his finger tracing the curves of her sweat-slick body.
Ginnifer stared up at him through drowsy eyes, a contented smile on her swollen lips. For the first time all day, Zane was content as well, his desire thoroughly sated for the time being. He knew that after they had both slept, he would wake wanting her again. Now that he’d marked her, he would never be truly satisfied until she was properly his mate.
His hand came to a stop on her belly, his thumb rubbing small circles in the soft skin. Ginnifer pressed her lips together.
“I’m on birth control,” she said. “In case you’re plotting to trap me here with your puppies.”
She yelped as Zane pinched her belly. “I know.”
“How?”
“Indigo’s mother used something similar. It alters your scent, subtly, but noticeably.”
It was the only reason he’d been able to justify bringing her back to his den. With as attracted as he’d been to her, there would have been no way he could have resisted mating with her when she became fertile. Perhaps, if his attraction to her had remained entirely physical, they wouldn’t be in their current position.
She sat up on her elbows. “Indigo’s mom…she didn’t want any more children because she was sick?”
Zane nodded. “The year after Indigo was born, Jill took in Breeze and Ky. She enjoyed raising pups, but she did not want to have any more of her own. She knew she wouldn’t live to see Indigo grow up, and it bothered her every day.”
He rested his hand on her belly again, gently stroking over where he’d pinched her. It had occurred to him that if Ginnifer were carrying his pup, she wouldn’t be able to leave him. The night before, his wolf had been poised to stay holed up in a cave with her until she was pregnant. Later, he’d come to his senses, and tempting as it was, he knew that it would be a violation of her trust, one that they might never recover from.
“When we decide to have pups, it will be a mutual decision.” Zane punctuated it with a teasing smile, but he wasn’t even half joking.
“Oh?” she drawled.
Zane made an affirmative sound as he rubbed his lips over his mark. He couldn’t get enough of seeing it there.
“Our pups will be tall,” he told her.
She snorted. “And stubborn.”
He licked her neck. “And beautiful.”
She shivered.
Zane put a leg over hers and ran his hand through her hair.
“Stay with me.” She opened her mouth, but he put a finger to her lips. “I will take you to Port Trent as often as you want, so that you can contact your family. And I won’t pressure you to have pups until you’re ready.”
He had no idea how his wolf would hand the last part, but at the moment he did not care. All he wanted was to make the smallest crack in her resolve, even if it meant that he would be at odds with his baser instincts.
Ginnifer put a warm hand on his face to stroke his face. The muscles in her face were slack, and her eyes appeared big and glassy.
“I do want children. Two of them, actually. Daughters, I hope.” A wan smile tugged at her lips. “And when I have them, I want it to be in a hospital, with lots of drugs at the ready. Then I’ll bring them home, to my climate-controlled house in the suburbs. And when they’re old enough, they’ll go to school, and then college if they want to…”
Zane exhaled slowly as he looked away. Any daughters he gave her would have the soul of a wolf, and as such, be bound to the wilderness. Even his sister, the most human of any shifter he’d ever known, would have balked at the idea of going to college.
Her hand continued to stroke his cheek. “You’re going to haunt me for the rest of my life, I know it. But I can’t stay here, no more than you could come and live the life that I want. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us.”
He listened, hearing her, but at the same time staring at her, as if she were a puzzle for solving. There had to be a way, some way for him to convince her to stay with him. He looked at the mark on her neck, deep indentations where his fangs had sunken in as far as they could go.
Not a mark—a brand.
There had to be a way to convince her, because despite his best intentions, his wolf would never willingly let her go.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ginnifer lay awake under Zane’s pelt. She stared at the dying fire, sleep eluding her. The alpha slept beside her, keeping her close in a possessive hold, his hand splayed over her abdomen.
Thoughts, images, and emotions crowded her head, no matter how many times she tried to make her mind go blank. She kept coming back to the same thing over and over. What would it be like to live like this every day? To go to sleep and to wake up next to Zane for the rest of her life…
You’d hate it, she told herself. You would miss your old life, eventually.
It was more than speculation. She knew from her time in Tanzania that however thrilling an adventure was, there was nothing quite like coming home. She’d spent four summers there, and each time had been the experience of a lifetime, but the best moment had come when her plane had touched down in Fort Lauderdale, and then she headed home to her air conditioned apartment to relax with a movie and Chinese takeout. The only reason she wasn’t already missing all of that was the hormonal euphoria of falling in love.
She turned to look at him, and Zane shifted slightly, tilted his head so that his forehead rested against hers.
Can I really give you up?
W
hy couldn’t he be human? Why couldn’t she be a wolf?
His golden eyes cracked open, and she almost apologized for waking him, but his head lifted, looking towards the cavern’s entryway. Ginnifer looked as well, but saw nothing.
“Did you hear that?” he asked, sniffing the air. Alert and focused, he didn’t look like someone who had just woken up.
“No, what did it sound like?”
Zane shook his head. “It’s probably nothing,” he said, getting up to stand. He grabbed his pelt, leaving Ginnifer cold and scrambling to grab her clothes. “Stay here and don’t go anywhere.”
“That’s redundant,” she muttered under her breath.
As she dressed, she reminded herself of yet another reason she would hate being with Zane. He was always trying to order her around, like she was one of his wolves. She had a feeling if she actually did become his mate, this aspect of their dynamic would get worse and not better.
Once she was dressed, she went to the fire to warm her hands. The flame was dwindling, and she tore up the last tree branch and added it on top. They were past the forest now, and she didn’t think Zane would be going back to get more wood, which meant they probably wouldn’t be there another day. It was insane that she even wanted to stay there another day. All either of them did was have sex all day, and yesterday’s marathon had already left her feeling raw.
But going back to Siluit meant drawing a line between herself and Zane. It was going to be hard enough to deal with the fallout of what they’d already done, continuing their affair would only make things worse.
Ginnifer realized that she was fingering her mark, and quickly drew her hand away. She’d contemplated taking a picture of it to see what it looked like, but had yet to work up the nerve. From the feel of it, it was going to scar. It should have pissed her off, but in a bizarre way she liked the idea of carrying a piece of him with her when she left.
She blinked a few times, and then sighed. “I need chocolate.”
Crawling over to her bag on all fours, she began digging for the last chocolate bar. She heard Zane returning just as she found the empty wrapper of the Coffee Crisp bar.
Frowning, she said, “If you’re going to eat my candy, at least give me a heads up, that way I don’t have false hope.”
He grabbed her from behind, a hand going over her mouth and another clamping down on her left arm. His scent told her it wasn’t Zane, as did the meaty hands with dirt-crusted fingernails.
“I don’t want to hurt you. Are there more wolves here?”
The voice was deep, and the man pronounced each syllable slowly, in a similar cadence to Kuva’s voice, except he sounded younger and had no discernable accent.
Ginnifer bit down on his hand. He pulled it back with a sharp grunt, and she immediately twisted away from him, tripping over her bag in the process. The man didn’t let go of her arm as she fell, and before she’d even hit the ground, pain shot through her arm. The pain made Zane’s bite feel like a bee sting by comparison, and she was momentarily stunned. Then, she screamed, hot tears filling her eyes.
The man released her with a curse, and then he was picking her up again, this time with his arm around her middle and a hand over her mouth again. She was dimly aware of him talking to her in a harsh whisper, but everything felt secondary to agony.
“It was an accident,” he said. “I’m sorry, but you have to be quiet. Keep quiet, and I promise we’ll let you go.”
Tears were still pouring down her face, blurring her vision, but she saw Zane appear in the entryway. The man holding her went rigid, and she could feel his chest vibrating with a low growl. Through the haze of pain, her mind made the connection that he was a shifter.
Both males stood staring at one another, and when Ginnifer managed to blink away her tears, she saw that there was a gash across Zane’s chest and blood around his mouth. She expected him to look frightened or angry, but his face was an implacable mask, his eyes blank.
If the shifter’s hand weren’t over her mouth, she would have yelled at him, told him to do something. She was in far too much pain to worry about her pride.
It was the stranger who spoke first, a nervous tremor belying his bravado. “Come any closer and I’ll snap her neck.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Zane’s voice was calm, so calm, that it scared her more than the man who was threatening to kill her. “You reek of fear. You would likely do things right now that would surprise even yourself, because you aren’t thinking clearly. If you were, you would take your hands off of my mate and go to your friend, before he bleeds out.”
The shifter took a step back, and she could feel him shaking his head in disbelief. “Zeke is… What did you do to him?”
Zane wiped the blood from his mouth, and then stepped aside, leaving the entryway clear. “Quit stalling and make up your mind. Are you going to leave, or are we going to fight?”
Body trembling, the shifter inched along the wall, bringing Ginnifer with him. When his back was to the entryway, he gave her a sudden shove, and then turned to run. Zane caught Ginnifer, but it was only to buffer her fall because he pushed her aside just as quickly. She fell to the ground, barely managing to brace herself on her uninjured arm.
By the time she was pushing herself up off the floor, the shifter’s body had fallen to the ground across from her. His neck was snapped, and his lifeless eyes stared at nothing. She looked up at Zane. With his back to her, he stared down at the shifter. His entire body was shaking, his fists clenching and unclenching.
“Zane…” His name was a plea on her lips. He turned, and she caught a glimpse of something feral, before his features softened and he strode over to help her up.
“Are you all right?” He tried grabbing her left arm, but she jerked it back, offering the other.
“I’ll be okay,” she said hoarsely. “I think.”
Once she was standing, Zane grabbed their bags and hastily guided her from the cavern. She stepped over the dead shifter, concerned that she didn’t feel any ambivalence over what Zane had done. She realized that she hadn’t felt it before either, when he and the others killed the poachers.
It was us or them, said a new voice, one she didn’t recognize. It came from a deep recess of her mind, someplace old and primordial.
Outside, she did a double take at the sight of a massive brown bear, sprawled out in the snow. It would have looked like it was sleeping, if not for the blood that oozed from its neck.
“You lied to him. His friend was dead before you came down, wasn’t he?”
Smart.
“I could smell two of them, but I didn’t realize the other had gone inside until I heard you scream.” He paused, blinking slowly as the muscle in his throat moved. “He should have stayed with his friend. Unskilled as they were, I would not have been able to kill them both at the same time.”
“What do you think they wanted?”
She gingerly pressed her hand to her upper arm, and then grimaced. Nothing felt out of place, but it hurt in a way that told her something was wrong.
“I didn’t ask,” he said wryly. There was a troubled look on his face. “I’ll have plenty of time to think on it on the way to the den, and this time I’m not stopping until we’re home.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Yup, it’s broken all right. But you look like you already knew that.”
Ginnifer was biting down hard on her lip as Indigo poked and prodded at her arm, tears mixing with beads of sweat as they ran rampant down her flushed cheeks.
Zane told himself that getting Ginnifer back to the den in a day’s time had been a monumental feat, but it didn’t stop him from feeling utterly useless as he sat beside her on the bed, stroking her hair.
It hadn’t been until they reached the inlet that he’d realized she was badly injured. He’d heard her softly crying for most of the day, but he’d assumed that the shock of the encounter with the bears had finally set in. But when they prepared to board the boat, he’d tugged her arm to coa
x her forward, and she’d let out a scream that had startled him so badly that he’d nearly stumbled back and tipped the boat.
Since then, her soft crying had turned to uncontrollable sobbing, and he was sure that he’d made her injury worse than it had been.
He’d never had a broken bone himself, but it wasn’t uncommon for one of the wolves to have one after a careless hunt. He’d seen males twice Ginnifer’s size wail like pups over similar injuries, and knowing that she was in so much pain had his stomach in knots and his temper flaring.
Wolves had gathered around when he’d returned to the den, but they’d quickly cleared a path at the sound of his snarl. He’d taken her straight to his room, allowing only Indigo in and issuing threats that surprised even himself, directed at anyone else who thought to breach his doorway. He could still smell them out there, hovering and trying to hear what was going on, but he was too distracted by Ginnifer to care.
“Give her something for the pain,” he ordered his sister.
Indigo pursed her lips. “It’s a little late for that. This needed to be set yesterday. There’s already so much inflammation. I’m not going to wait another hour for pain meds to kick in when it’ll take two minutes to fix.”
“We’ve already been here an hour,” he said through bared teeth.
“We’ve been here ten minutes, tops,” Indigo said, before resuming her prodding.
Ginnifer let out a whimpering moan and turned her face into Zane’s shoulder. He hadn’t thought he could feel any more helpless.
“You’re hurting her,” he snapped.
Indigo looked ready to argue with him, but it was Ginnifer who spoke, words coming out between sobs. “She’s…trying to see…where the break is.”
“Thank you, Ginnifer,” Indigo said in a pleasant, conversational tone. She pressed her finger down on a place that had Ginnifer’s nails digging in to Zane’s thigh. “Do you know a lot about mending bones?”
“My sister…she’s always coming over…and watching Grey’s Anatomy on my high definition…tele…tele…” The rest of what she was saying became one long sob, and Zane found himself growling.
Capturing the Alpha (Shifters of Nunavut Book 1) Page 17