by Chant, Zoe
“So I'm her heir and I should just stop dwelling. It's stupid, anyway.”
“If I'm your mate, that's like your life partner, right?” Adam asked.
“Yeah,” she muttered.
“So you should tell me and we'll work it out together. Even if it's stupid.”
“It's – this is a whole new exciting world to you, but that's because you already had the rest of the world. I had – my family, about a hundred acres of wilderness, and the public library the next county over on weekend trips. I love the Catskills, but they're not the whole world. And I love my wolf, but I don't want my wolf to be my whole life.
“Going to college would be good for the pack if I came back. That was my excuse to leave. But I kind of wish I hadn't, because now I don't just suspect there's a whole other world out there, with billions of people and so many places and things and smells, I know, and I can't have it.
“My job is to stay in the Catskills and mate you and run the family finances and have wolf pups to carry on the family line, who will also have to stay here and do the same thing when they grow up. I have to do those things.
“And it's the stupid stuff, too, not just the big things. I have to dress to show off that I'm an alpha. I have to wear the tacky jewelry and the clothes my mother picks out for now, and then I have to use the same standards when it's up to me. I have to treat people the right way, to show that I'm the alpha and they're my responsibility and my subordinates. I have to be friends with the right people, depending on what my pack thinks of theirs. Humans, not a chance. But it's all for reasons. It's not like this is some torment for the fun of it. It's because I have power and I have to show I'm worthy of it.
“So it's stupid. I'm just a child who sees her responsibilities and says no, no, no, I don't wanna,” she finished, dropping her head to the mattress and letting her hair fall across her face to hide the frustrated tears welling. “I feel so selfish.”
The bed springs creaked, and at first she thought Adam was leaving her to sulk alone, but instead, she felt his fingers on her face, drawing back her hair. She felt the warmth of him bending over her, and then he kissed her cheeks, lapping at the tears lightly.
“It's not selfish,” he said, softly, eventually. “We all want things, you know? And...” he hesitated. “It feels like you're complaining that your family brought you up to be, you know...”
“Barefoot in the kitchen and pregnant?” The thought wasn't like her; she wondered if she was catching his. “It's not like that. I mean, it's not just because I'm a woman, for one thing. I'm supposed to run the pack, too, with my mate, that's the reason for most of it. And I want children, is the thing, the same way I want the Catskills and I want my wolf.”
“You just don't want them to be all you have?” Adam finished wryly. He ran his fingers down the other side of her face, pulling her hair back; she lifted her head slightly, and he moved it all behind her shoulders and went back to petting it.
“Yeah.” She looked away. “I love you, I can't help it, but at the same time – you know, when I heard you were a park ranger with your undergrad in earth science, I was scared for a minute you'd be offended I'm more educated than you, in the same field? That's not like me, if I had a date who got mad about that in New York – and I've had them – I'd throw them over the fucking table. But just because my wolf wants you, it becomes this whole head game of, can you really say no, if you say no you're being selfish, you'd better change yourself to fit him if he says no.”
“Do you want to say no?” Adam asked.
“No.” She reached up to where she thought he was, pulled him down and kissed him. “I like you, you've been nothing but sweet and respectful and sexy as hell. Assuming you're not secretly a serial killer or something. But if you hadn't been, I'd have been stuck either way.”
“Okay, good. Then what I want to say is – you're not selfish. And maybe I'm missing something, but you've been gone ten years so I think I can say that – it seems like things are a little more open than you're used to. Like, a few of the wolves in the Fannon pack live in New York or Toronto and drive over and spend the weekends here, and I haven't seen any big dramatic productions over it.”
“That is new,” she agreed, trying to guess which wolves he was talking about, and unable to.
“So. I think, if we're going to be in charge of the pack, then maybe it's our job to change things so being a wolf isn't choosing between that and the rest of the world. So our children aren't just carrying things on, and they get to choose.”
“Maybe you're right,” she said, slowly.
“And Nicole? Were you happy in New York? I was going crazy before I had a pack, and I wasn't without it for anything close to ten years.”
“It's not as bad if you're just separated,” she said. “But... not really.” She remembered waking in the night, terrified and alone and muffling tears that sounded like canine whining into her pillow to avoid scaring her roommate, and huddled against her mate. “You can be in a crowd, you can have a hundred friends, all the lovers you could dream of, too, and there's still this part of you that thinks it's been locked in a cell away from humanity for years.”
“So we'll find a way to give you both. I promise.”
“You're confident, newcomer,” she murmured dangerously, opening her eyes, but smiling. “If you promise, I accept.”
“Good.” He kissed her, one hand on her hip. “Back to where we were?”
“One thing, first.” Nicole wanted to melt into him. It was amazing how much better he had made her feel about the things she'd been tossing around in her mind for years in one conversation. Just saying it out loud felt like an immense burden lifted.
But she had to be sure he knew what he was getting into. “You know – once we have sex, I mean penetrative, or at least mutual orgasm, we're married according to the pack. The ceremony and party is just for fun and public record.”
“Would've been nice to know that.” Adam blinked. “Thanks for telling me.”
“If you want to wait until you know me better...” Her wolf was less than pleased. Nicole told herself firmly that she owned a vibrator. They could both wait.
“Magic says we're mated for life, magic says we're mated for life,” Adam said wryly. “I can't say married is more of a commitment than that.” He leaned in to kiss her again, and whispered against her lips, “I do.”
Nicole was suddenly grateful for all of those chick flicks her roommate had dragged her to. She'd have been totally lost here otherwise. “I do,” she said. “Now take your damn shirt off.”
He hadn't so much as unfastened his pants earlier. Now, he pulled his shirt off, grinning at her stare, and shucked out of his pants in about two seconds flat before returning to the bed. “Please tell me you have a condom,” he said.
“I'm on birth control, have you been tested?” Nicole asked.
“Right before I came here, and I haven't really had sex with anyone to catch something. You're clean if you're asking?”
“Yeah.” Nicole leaned over to kiss him.
He bit at her lips and slid his hands into his hair. The wandering fingers turned into a surprisingly harsh grip as she moaned. “Nothing else to worry about?” he said into her ear.
“Nothing.”
“Good.” He rolled them down onto the bed, holding her hair with one hand and her back with the other, and sank to lick and suck at her neck.
Nicole went willingly, letting her legs slide open when his other hand moved down. He pulled one knee up sharply and groped, sliding two fingers between her lower lips and teasing at her clit with his thumb nail, making her gasp and whine.
“You like that?” he asked, fluttering his fingers against her.
“Mm, harder? I like a little pain.”
“So do I,” he murmured, digging his nails in. Her hips bucked and she tried to toss her head, but found it trapped by his hand still in her hair. She pulled anyway, shivering at the sting.
“Especially when it's mine
?” she murmured, feeling his fingers questing for her entrance. She rolled her hips upward to make it easier, and was rewarded with the feeling of him sliding two fingers into her.
“Oh, yeah. You're really fucking wet.” He slid his fingers in and out.
“You did just go down on me ten minutes ago,” she mumbled, curling her toes at the sensation of him hooking and twisting his fingers inside her. “What did you -- ah! -- expect?”
“Good point.” He scissored his fingers open, stretching her entrance, and she groaned at the feeling of herself being pulled open and the cool air against her. “Then you don't need more foreplay?”
“Take me,” she said, smirking. “Take me now – are you my prince or more of a scoundrel?”
“As you command,” he joked, “My wife,” and with that he thrust his erection into her.
She gasped and closed her eyes, trying to concentrate on the sensation. She had had sex before, of course – the automatic marriage was only among other wolves, and her dates while away had been human – but this time it felt subtly different. More real, more intense, more everything.
Adam thrust into her, filling her again and again, pinning her hips down with his weight and her head down with his hand in her hair, and she shivered, feeling anchored as she had never been. The sensation of his cock inside her, filling her, matched the sensation of his mind against hers, the mate bond intensifying with every touch. She would never be alone again, never be lonely again. His mind took hers as his body did.
It was intense, and wonderful, and frightening, and she was going to think about it later. With a groan, she forced her eyes open. The sun had set, and the only light in the room came from the glowing constellations on the ceiling, but her wolf's eyes focused easily for all it lost some of the color she had in more light. She saw Adam's face. His eyes were closed, eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he slid his hand down between them and wriggled his fingers to rest against her clit as he fucked her.
Nicole shuddered hard at the touch, then rocked frantically against him when he started to take his hand away. “Dammit, don't stop--” she cursed, then broke out into high pitched whining as another orgasm took her.
Adam's eyes opened as she groaned and yelped, and he watched her intently. Something in his eyes touched her deep inside, some quality that seemed like – reverence. Too much, far too much. Nicole leaned forward to kiss him, to take away that look before it drowned her, and rode out the aftershocks of the orgasm on his cock.
He pulled her up by the hair and wrapped his other arm around her shoulders to pull her against his chest. “You're tight,” he groaned, “And you keep jerking when you come – it's so amazing.”
“You – like to talk, don't you?” she asked, trying to control the whines emitting from her throat.
“Yes.” His hands tightened, and she wondered if she'd have bruises on her right shoulder. She kind of hoped so. “You twitched when I did, should I keep talking? Should I tell you that you're fucking – amazing?” He didn't wait for a reply. “You're beautiful, and you're smart and sexy as hell. I love the way you're whining at me, and I love that you made me chase you out a goddamn window, and I love how tight you are around me right now.”
Nicole panted against his chest. He pounded into her, rocking her body to her core, and she couldn't find the words to answer. She couldn't tell him that he was every bit as amazing as she was, that she loved the way he'd jumped out after her unhesitatingly, that she loved his dirty talk, that she loved his hands in his hair and his cock inside her. Instead, she tried to tell her with her body, wrapping her legs around his hips and digging her heels in his back, and pulling against his hands to rock harder against him.
At last, he came with a final curse, dropping her to the bed and fucking her hard into the mattress as he shuddered himself. “God, yes, please, you're amazing,” he whispered into her hair, coming to a final rest over her, with his face against her neck.
She'd bite most people for coming anywhere near her throat with a hand, let alone teeth . She hoped when he bit it earlier, he had left a mark. “I love you,” she said, knowing it was true despite how short their time had been. Even as he pulled out of her, leaving her sore body to recover, his mind was still all around her – that taking would never be over.
“I love you too,” he said, and kissed her one last time before he unwound his fingers from her hair.
They fell asleep curled together in her bed like puppies, the moon's glow shining on them as it rose in the dusk.
Epilogue
Nicole turned the radio up before hitting the last stretch of road up the mountain. She pressed down on the gas pedal, feeling the thrill of momentum and the knowledge that a little slowness in her response time might kill her.
It was nothing on the hunt. She was cut off from the wind by glass and steel, and alone. But it was enough to get her heart rate up and her breath fast from joy.
She slowed again nearing the drive, and turned into it at a normal speed. Halfway up, she sensed her mate's presence – a flickering warmth in her mind. It intensified as he became aware of hers, and he sent out a message that was half thought, half emotion – come play with me?
Without a second thought, she pulled over and parked the car. She left the keys in the engine and slammed the door. She could get her bag later.
For now, she shucked off her shoes and tossed them into the truck bed, then stripped out of her shirt and jeans before walking out naked across the hill.
It was the same one that had been devastated in the slide earlier that spring, but spring had come regardless. New leaves poked up through the soil, plants that might have been suffocated by the lack of light in the under story. Here and there there were older saplings, planted by the pack in their efforts to speed the return to normalcy.
Normalcy. What was that again? She was returning to the pack, degree complete. The last month had been crazy, trying to catch up on the work she'd missed in the family emergency and complete the last steps to her degree. Now, however, it was all over.
Well, not everything. She hadn't seen Adam in a month, and they hadn't had a lot of time to talk. There had been a few video chats, text messages, that kind of thing.
She reached the edge of the cleared area and found him already in wolf form, curled up at the foot of a tree and waiting for her. He stood as she approached and shook himself, and Nicole realized she hadn't seen him in wolf form before.
He was darker than her, his fur dipping out of its mottle grays into true black in places. His eyes were a glistening golden brown unlike his human ones. A swirl of black was centered over his forehead, making his face distinctive.
She was standing and staring when she should be joining him. With that thought, Nicole closed her eyes and reached for her wolf.
The change was as it always was, wonderful and terrible and ecstatic. Pain folded Nicole as her essence warped, cracking and breaking her mind and then her body to reform it. Her bones shortened and and lengthened, skin shrunk and grew fur, nails became dense and blunt. All the while, her senses changed, intensified. She was not just aware of the earth, she was a part of it. She heard the birds and squirrels and mice and insects, smelled dirt and growing things and water and somewhere off in the distance, deer.
Much closer was Adam. She remembered her own words to him when they first met, that the mate bond in human form was nothing like in wolf form, and stepped towards him, apprehensive.
He extended his head towards hers. She sniffed at his nose, registering things she already knew about him – male, young, healthy – and a few she didn't. It smelled like he'd had chicken for lunch, and had been practicing hunting on mice.
Then their skin brushed, and oh, it was electric. The world seemed to blur, then double. For an instant she was not Nicole or Nicole's wolf, but Adam, waiting for his mate to come home. She saw herself as if for the first time; pale gray fur mixed with fawn, and glowing eyes like the beaten gold of the jewelry she had inherited. She
smelled her own femaleness, and the exhaustion from the long drive, and above it in traces, the water from the fountain she'd sipped from at a road stop two hours ago and its truck stop combination of chlorine and staleness.
Then the world snapped back like a rubber band. She was Nicole again, greeting her mate after a long trip. Still, the bond was there in her mind, and the other world, like a deep, reflective pool she could choose to gaze into at any time.
That could come later, though. Nicole shoved her nose against Adam's face, snuffling him in a second greeting, then took off into the woods at a run. She sent her own thought back, bubbling through the pool to the other side: I bet you can't catch me!
***
A note from Zoe Chant
Thank you for buying my book! I hope you enjoyed it. If you’d like to be alerted by email when I release my next book, please click here to be added to my mailing list. You can also visit my website at ZoeChant.com. I love hearing from my readers.
Please consider reviewing Wolf Home, even if you only write a line or two. I appreciate all reviews, whether positive or negative.
Cover by Layla Lawlor. Cover art (c) Can Stock Photo.
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