by A. J. Downey
The silence stretched between us, well, almost.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
“How long was I out?” I asked softly.
Tick.
Tick.
“It’s been nearly five days,” he answered and smoothed more of my hair behind my ear.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
“What is that ticking!?” I demanded, growing upset.
His generous lips split into a wide grin and he laughed, “The clock at the end of the hall.” I felt my brows crush down into a further frown and struggled to push myself into a sitting position.
“Easy, Baby. Don’t try to do too much yet.”
Voices overtook the ticking and it sounded like they were right outside the door, but it still took them time to get around to opening it. William was the first one through it and he had a plate of food in each hand. My stomach growled.
“Thought we heard you up.” He passed the plate to me and I dug in.
“Thanks for cutting it up for me,” I said between mouthfuls. I wasn’t typically a fan of such rare meat but this was good.
“Easy, slow down, Pup.” Markus remarked, he’d come through the door behind William, Chloe leaned against the door frame and I snarled at him.
“Shut it, Snoopy.”
“Well, if I’m Snoopy that makes you Lassie, little girl.” I stared at him, swallowed my food and started laughing.
Everyone smiled and I looked down into my lap, covering my face with shaking hands.
“Everyone out,” William ordered quietly and Markus and Chloe slipped out the door. Remus made to slip out of the bed and I shot out a hand, wrapping fingers around his wrist. He looked to William who nodded. I stared at Remus, confused.
“William is basically your father now, for all intents and purposes, and you’re considered a minor. A parent tells you to get away from their seven year old, you do it.”
I blinked stupidly, and looked from one to the both of them, “I’m a grown ass adult,” I started to argue.
“To a certain extent, but you’re a newly Moon Forged wolf-kind now. We don’t know what kind of level of control, or what kind of relationship you’ll have with your wolf, not until after your first full moon. Until then, you’re my child, and even after, you may still be considered my child. It all depends on your level of control and if your wolf and you can cooperate with each other.”
“Is that what you’re in here to talk to me about?” I asked, my plate of steak and potatoes nearly forgotten in my lap with the reality of the changes I’d blithely volunteered to undergo.
Remus slid a comforting hand up my back and I looked over at him. No, not blithely anything. I sighed out and closed my eyes.
With him is where I belonged. Partners, but there was more to it than that. I don’t know. Maybe it was because we were both twin-less twins. Maybe it was because we could be so intimately familiar with one another’s pain. Or maybe it was that we both understood loneliness the way two people were never meant to, and in each other, we found we didn’t have to. All I knew, was that somewhere down the line on the crazy train we’d been riding, I’d fallen more than a little in love with him and didn’t want to imagine a life without his partnership.
“Eat,” William said, “Get cleaned up, I’ll leave you to take care of it.” He told Remus and Remus nodded.
“Thanks, Little Brother.”
“Just make sure she eats, you know how important that is. There’s more in the kitchen if she needs it.”
He left and I quietly, and a little less voraciously tucked into my food. Remus sat with the other plate in his lap and watched me.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” I asked.
“Did already, this one is for you too.”
“I don’t think I could possibly eat any more than this.” I scoffed, but before too long my first plate was clear, and with a shit eating grin, Remus passed me the second one.
“Asshole,” I muttered and he laughed.
“Yeah, but I’m your asshole.”
I froze and looked him in the eye, “I’m scared,” I whispered and he nodded, hooking a hand around the back of my head and drawing me forward, he pressed a kiss to my forehead.
“You think you kicked a lot of ass before, wait until you get used to this new body,” he reassured me. I swallowed hard and nodded silently.
“I both do and don’t feel any different.”
“Senses are heightened, but you feel like you?” I nodded, “That’s the way I understand it goes.”
“What, you don’t know?”
“I was Blood Born, Baby. I’ve been this way since my mamma popped both me and Romulus out. I’ve never known any other way.”
I nodded mutely, and tried to process through all these new and wild feelings while I dutifully cleaned the second plate. I had no idea where it was all going, but about two thirds of the way through it, I was finally full. Still, I finished it off anyways. Remus set the plates aside and I took in the room.
We weren’t in the medical suite anymore. This room was pretty sparse when it came to furniture, a bed, two nightstands and a battered but serviceable dresser.
I looked down at myself, dressed in an oversized tee and pulled the sheet pooling in my lap away, raising the shirt so I could see.
A scar, shaped like a perfectly arcing comet graced my lower belly, off to one side. I touched it with my fingers, a pale, shiny, pink, flat scar but there were no straight cutting scars like from surgery.
“It’s like nothing really happened.” I twitched my feet and legs just to be sure, and everything moved and felt completely normal, except for being stiff from lack of motion for what? Five days.
“Take a shower with me.”
I looked up at Remus and nodded. I felt gross, and probably looked like hell to match. A shower sounded divine.
“Easy,” he reached out to steady me, having gotten out of the bed first and I grasped onto his forearms.
“Thought I was supposed to be better, stronger, faster, and all of that bullshit.”
“Babycakes, you are, and you will be, but you got shot; with silver might I add, then turned within the span of like two hours. You shouldn’t even be here.” The raw emotion in his voice had me looking up, quickly. I blinked.
“You didn’t think I would make it?”
The raw pain in his eyes was answer enough. I sighed out, and pulled myself in against his chest. I snorted a laugh and he asked me, “What’s so funny?”
“Never pictured myself having to comfort the Big Bad Wolf,” I murmured.
“Never thought the Big Bad Wolf would love the Hunter as much as I do. Not sure I was going to make it myself if I’d lost you, Ava.”
“Well you didn’t, I’m here, and I could really use that hot shower.”
Remus chuckled slightly, “As my lady wishes.”
I snorted, “Since when have I ever been a fucking lady?” He bent, and lifted me easily in his arms.
“Not a lady, Ava, my lady. My woman. You understand me?” I looked up into his deep, dark, and lovely gaze and nodded slowly.
“I… I think I do,” I stammered. I wasn’t used to these intense exchanges. I didn’t do these mushy, deep, emotionally charged professing of feelings out in the light and open air. Where I’d come from, that was a good way to get yourself manipulated, and the ones you loved, killed. Where I’d come from the word ‘love’ was synonymous with the word ‘slave’ and I shook, deep down inside with fear, over how easily he spoke these things aloud.
It’d been one thing when I lay dying, if I’d gone, and there had never been another chance… well I didn’t want to leave him with that, but now that I’d lived, I felt like these things needed to be put away. For our own safety.
“Talk to me, Baby,” he murmured, carrying me out the bedroom door and down a rather unremarkable cement corridor to wh
at looked like a small, tiled locker room with a bank of three open showers on one end.
“I don’t know who might be listening.”
“Doesn’t matter, just talk to me.”
I touched the side of his handsome face, trailing light fingertips along the line of white scar I’d left with a bullet graze, what seemed like forever ago in Chicago. His eyes closed and he lowered us both gently onto one of the benches in front of the shower area, situating me so I sat in his lap.
Despite how my muscles moaned about it in protestation, I pulled myself up so I could press my lips gently to his. He sighed out, his breath warm against my face, as he held me tightly against him. I couldn’t speak the words, not knowing who might be listening, but I could show him.
“Ava…” he moaned out and I loved the sound of my name coming from his mouth.
“Let me get cleaned up,” I whispered and he nodded. He helped me get stiffly to my feet and once there, lifted the tee over my head, letting it fall to the floor. He shoved the pair of basketball shorts he’d been wearing to the floor after them and led me into the broad shower enclosure.
He started the water on the far left one and turned me into the hot spray. I gasped, the warmth and heavily beating water wringing the tension from my muscles. I tipped my head back and let the water soak my long, dark hair; slicking it back from my face.
Remus didn’t waste any time or opportunity; he covered my mouth with his own and pulled me in tightly to his chest, letting his hands slide over my wet skin in a tantalizing touch that left me damn near swooning. I’d like to blame the whole feeling weak thing, but what it really was, was relief. Relief that I had survived, that I could be here, kissing him, touching him back, that I hadn’t left him alone like so many before him and that I wasn’t alone either.
I didn’t believe that when we died, we got to see our loved ones again. For me, it was just it. No more. We just blinked out of existence like the screen on a television set going dark after you’d switched it off.
There just was no more. Your life, your time on this rock was just done, and the ones you left behind, they were left in agony for it. Like I had been when Mathias had taken James, utilizing the wolf-kind as his method of disposal, for my brother. The only person in this world I had ever loved, until this man right here, in my arms, pressing my back against the cool tile of the locker room showers.
He bent, hands slipping along my hips and down the outside of my thighs. Despite my still-protesting muscles, I gave a little jump. He did the rest of the work, hauling me up his body, pinning me to the wall while I twined my legs around his lean hips. I let my arms go around his shoulders, pressing my mouth to his with an urgency that was only matched by the aching desperation I felt in my pussy, which throbbed with a want to have him inside of me.
I buried my fingers into the back of his hair and he groaned, sliding inside of me after a few gentle, seeking thrusts. He swallowed my cry and I quivered in his grasp, the angle, like this, sharper; deeper somehow.
We kissed languorously before he started to move, sliding his hips back before surging forward. There was nothing rushed, nothing frantic about how he took me, there against the shower wall.
He attacked the side of my neck with his lips and tongue and I tipped my head back against the wall, moaning as sparks fizzled down the entire side of my body, shimmering over my skin in a light dew of sensation.
“Oh, god, Remus,” I half gasped, half moaned and he growled, deep in his chest, an impassioned and at once possessive sound that tripped my triggers in all the right ways.
He buried himself to the hilt inside of me and I felt like it opened me up, made me come alive, and I was just dying for more, but he was being so careful of me. I tightened my hands in his hair and used it to drag his head back. I met his eyes with mine and growled, “I’m not a delicate fucking flower, anymore. Fuck me.”
He grinned, a wicked curve of lips, and lunged forward, biting my bottom lip and surging into me until I cried out. He drove into me, over and over again with powerful strokes, and I could swear I heard the tile crack at my back between the sharp impassioned moans that were spilling from my lips.
He did just what I’d asked. He fucked me, primal, sharp and alive, teeth leaving perfect, neat little prints in my flesh, though he was careful not to break the skin. I loved it, I loved every minute of having Remus Reese inside of me and I couldn’t get enough, as if there would ever be enough. I was drunk on him, on my desire and love for him, and it was a high I never, ever wanted to give up.
Chapter 27
Remus
I couldn’t actually remember the last time I was with a woman that I didn’t have to be careful with. I didn’t try too hard to think of one either as I buried myself inside Ava. The tile at her back cracked under the pressure as our voices grew louder with each passing second. The feeling of her body writhing in my arms, legs wrapped around me as we came together over and over; after the fear of nearly losing her it was even more incredible than I could have possibly imagined.
I had come within a hairsbreadth of losing her forever. The enormity of that hit me as I pushed her over the edge and she clamped down on me so tightly that it very nearly hurt. I moaned loudly as she came around me and I joined her, both of us shaking violently and clinging to each other as the world fell away and then rose back up to meet us.
“I love you,” I muttered against her neck as she held onto me.
She laughed, a quiet, throaty sound and wrapped her arms tightly around me. “I love you too, Fido.”
“Hey!” I swatted her ass with one hand and she laughed again, a little louder. It was with a great deal of regret that I slowly slid out of her and we rinsed off under the cooling spray of water, quickly exiting the shower.
She winced occasionally still, but I could see that she was moving a little better than she had even half an hour before as she worked out the stiffness in her muscles. I dried her as gently as I could, but quickly since it was cold in the cement room, and got her into some fresh clothing before leading her back down the hall to her room.
“Where the fuck are we, anyway?” she demanded after I’d coaxed her back into her bed. In the end she’d only agreed to lay back down if I joined her, so I slid into the bed with her and pulled her against me so her head was lying on my chest, one leg thrown over mine. She started idly tapping on my chest with her fingers again in time to my heart beat.
“Neutral territory. After you got through the first day we figured you were going to make it and it would be safe to move you, so we loaded you and the whole bed up into the back of a truck and hit the road.”
“So where’d we end up, and what’s ‘neutral territory,’ what’s that mean?”
“You mean you don’t know?” I was honestly surprised by that. It was the kind of information I would have thought the Hunters would have had. “In most states; not all of them, but most, there are halfway houses. Places built and operated by the larger wolf-kind community for the loners.”
She lifted her head, giving me a strange look. “I thought wolf-kind were pack animals by nature.”
“We are, but there are occasions when someone loses their pack. Accident, death, Hunters, or even being branded Omega. A lone wolf-kind can’t just wander into any territory they want, it’d be suicide soon enough. So places like this were set up, dotted all around the country. They’re safe havens for wolves without a pack or without a territory of their own.”
“Youth Hostels for wolf-kind,” she muttered. “Huh, who’d have thought?”
“Close enough. So Craig’s family apparently operates this one. We’re in Wyoming right now, but we’re ready to move at a moment’s notice if need be.”
“Why the rush to leave Colorado?”
“Our presence was a strain and a danger to the Alpha Wolves. O’Toole let us stay long enough to make sure that you were going to pull through, but then he started making some not so subtle hints suggesting that we get the hell out of their
territory before he decided to just kill the lot of us and be done with it.” She arched an eyebrow at me and I laughed quietly. “I told you he wasn’t exactly subtle about it.”
She chuckled again and settled against me. “So why Wyoming?”
“Closest neutral house we knew of. Again, Craig’s family operates this one and it’s sort of off season, fewer loners passing through the area than usual. That, and it’s fortified to a certain extent. It basically originated as a bunker for American militiamen.”
“So what else has been going on? I’m feeling out of the loop after sleeping for nearly a week.”
“Well that couple we found at the facility are still hanging around. Though that’s an ugly situation. The guy, Evan, woke up a day or so ago and he’s been having a bit of trouble adjusting to things.”
“He wasn’t turned voluntarily, I imagine?”
“Not by a long shot,” I scoffed. “Army vet, he’s been homeless for a while now. His leg was messed up apparently while he was on duty so they gave him a medical discharge. He’s got some serious burn and shrapnel scars and who knows what else. Apparently some of the Hunters scooped him up off the street and dragged him into that facility a few weeks ago. They had one of those electric collars on the girl, Macy, and it turned into a situation of bite the human and turn him or we’ll see how long it takes for your head to explode from the current we run through your cranium.” I was frowning. I had long hated the Hunters, and Mathias in particular. But these experiments... a large portion of the Hunters were misled, lied to, being manipulated and tricked into hating something they just didn’t understand. Some of them were starting to remind me of that German doctor that supposedly did experiments on Jewish prisoners back in World War II. He was just plain evil, and he was gathering his own supporters, separate from the actual Hunters’ organization.
“You think Mathias is trying to build his own little private army?” I asked suddenly and Ava’s fingers stilled for a moment in their tapping on my chest before resuming the steady beat.