Finley struggled to remember, to think through everything. He could only remember two sun-moon cycles, though. Two nights since the full moon. There was no way Tanner had gotten to Oregon, shifted, and caught up to him in two days unless he’d gotten on an airplane and flown to Oregon from Pennsylvania. Because despite how fast Finley had run, he was sure he hadn’t gone far enough for Tanner to meet him in between.
Tanner had flown to him. Finley couldn’t believe that act showed anything other than that his mate cared for him a lot, maybe even loved him. Had he been wrong? Did Tanner love him? Want him after all?
Jamie’s face flashed into his mind then and guilt stabbed through him. What had he done? Maybe he hadn’t exactly done much—little more than a kiss and some naked grinding—but he’d tried. He’d wanted, at the time, to do more.
Finley reminded himself he’d warned Tanner. He’d given Tanner every opportunity under the sun to claim him. He’d shown, over and over, that he needed Tanner to claim him. And Tanner had had more than a week to get in a car or on a train and get to Oregon.
He hadn’t. He hadn’t so much as hinted that he would come to claim Finley. He hadn’t even called to say he was on his way.
Still, Tanner was there, and Finley couldn’t argue that said something about how Tanner felt about him. And he still felt guilty that he’d even tried to be with Jamie. Maybe he shouldn’t, but he did. However he felt, though, it didn’t leave Tanner off the hook.
He felt movement behind him, then heard the wonderful, deep human voice of his mate. “You’re thinking awfully hard. Even without our link, I can feel it.”
Finley chuffed, moving to roll, but his ankle still hurt like hell, and he whined as he did so.
“Don’t do that. You’ll hurt yourself.”
Finley looked up and gave a wolf version of an eye roll.
Tanner laughed. “Think you can shift?”
Finley thought it through, checking his energy and prodding at his wolf. Reluctantly, his wolf receded, and in relief, Finley focused on his human form. A moment later, he looked up and absorbed the beautiful, full-color vision of Tanner. His mate. Lying there next to him, naked and gorgeous. “Hi.”
“Hi yourself,” Tanner replied, smile nearly blinding.
Before Finley could say more, the rock in his ribs dug harder and he winced. He tried to move, only to find what had to be a million more of them under him. “Fuck,” he grunted, trying to clear them out from under him.
“Might be easier to shift back and go find something… soft to sit on.”
Finley laughed and nodded. “Yeah, okay.”
“Before we do,” Tanner said, and Finley looked up just in time to have his mouth caught in the deepest, most thorough, most amazing kiss Tanner had ever given him.
Rocks forgotten, he cupped Tanner’s face in his palms and opened his mouth to welcome Tanner’s tongue inside. Finley moaned, pouring himself into the kiss, thrilling when Tanner not only didn’t hesitate or pull back, but returned it. The emotion he felt wasn’t just from the kiss. Relief nearly blasted him, and he realized it came through their bond.
He moved, wanting, needing more contact when another sharp rock dug into his hip. He pulled back, grunting.
“Let’s get somewhere more comfortable. This is not the place for it,” Tanner murmured.
Finley didn’t have a chance to ask what “it” was, because a few seconds later, his hands were buried in red fur instead of holding Tanner’s skin. He grinned at the feel of the fur in his palms, burying his face in Tanner’s neck for a brief moment, inhaling the scent deeply. Something spicy, like sandalwood mixed with cool breezes and a sweetness that had always struck Finley at odds with his mate’s alpha strength. But it was Tanner’s scent, the one that simultaneously soothed and aroused Finley. He gave himself one more inhale before letting go and tugging his own wolf forward yet again.
Once back in his fur, he got to his paws, testing his ankle. It was a little sore—he wouldn’t be doing any full-on running for a bit—but he’d be okay soon. With a bit more rest and another few shifts, he’d be good as new.
He gave himself a good shake, then moved in and nuzzled Tanner, who curled around him a little, laying that great red head over Finley’s neck. Finley curled his own around in the closest proximity to a hug he could do as a wolf. Tanner gave a soft, comforting growl, then pulled back. After giving Finley a lick, he turned and picked his way along the bottom of the tiny valley they were in.
Finley followed, torn between amusement at having to stare at his mate’s butt and annoyance with his wolf, who wanted to find it interesting. Human butt, wolf, not wolf butt. His wolf didn’t seem to agree. Finley ignored it.
They came out on the bank of the river, a ways down from where he’d seen the bear. He paused at the sound echoing off the valley walls. When he realized it was human voices along the river banks to the south, he nudged Tanner, then tossed his head that direction.
Tanner tilted his head to listen, then nodded and turned to the north. They followed the river for a good long while—always at a slow pace in deference to Finley’s ankle—and the farther they went, the more Finley began to wonder. Just how far had he gone? Nothing looked or smelled even remotely familiar to him.
Annoyingly, they couldn’t seem to find any decent ground that wasn’t covered in rocks. They continued along the river, though, and Finley could see why they were staying near the water: nothing off the river looked any more comfortable or inviting than the banks. Steep inclines rose up on both sides, with thin evergreen trees and lots of rocks, both big and small. The only other vegetation Finley could see was made up of small shrubs and thin grass—both of which were liberally sprinkled with more sharp rocks.
They passed one tiny beach, and Tanner paused, obviously to consider it. But Finley found human footprints all over one end, and neither of them wanted to risk that kind of contact. At some point, of course, they’d go back to civilization, but Finley rather hoped they’d have something other than fur to cover them when they saw other humans again.
Finally, when the sun was quite a bit hotter, Finley spotted a small area back off the river a short distance, behind some trees. He nudged Tanner and they went to check it out. It turned out to actually have grass instead of rocks and brush. Finley shifted, then sat gratefully in the shade a tree.
Tanner came up to him and shifted, looking at him with an expression Finley couldn’t decipher. “Is the leg bothering you?”
Finley shook his head. “Not too much. A couple more shifts and I should be fine. But if I shift now, I’ll need to hunt.”
“I can get you something,” Tanner offered, settling in next to him.
“It’s okay. Later,” Finley said, looking up at his mate. “Do you have any idea where we are?”
Tanner untied the bandana he had around his neck. He unwrapped it, then pulled out his cell phone.
“Brilliant idea,” Finley said, staring.
Tanner flashed him a smile. “I have a good idea now and again.” He tossed the bandana aside. “Let’s see if we can find out where we are. I’m pretty sure we’re in Idaho somewhere.”
“Shit, Idaho? I got that far?”
Tanner grinned and nodded. “A motivated mate can do a lot. A motivated Finley even more.”
Finley blushed at the praise. He stayed silent as Tanner waited for the phone to turn on, then touched a few things. “Well, no signal here, but I didn’t expect one. GPS is working, though. Looks like this is….” He did something to the screen. “The Salmon River. Let me see what I can….” He touched the screen a few more times. “Mercury help us, we’re more than a hundred miles from La Grande.”
“Holy shit!” Finley stared, wide-eyed. “That’s a long way home.”
Tanner shook his head. “We’ll find a cell signal and call your grammy and grandpaw. They’re waiting for it. We’ll figure out where we are and they’ll pick us up.”
“Oh good.” Finley breathed a sigh of relief. “I
wasn’t looking forward to that trip home.”
Tanner laughed. “Believe me, as in shape as I am, I wasn’t either. We’ll have some travel before we can get to a decent cell signal, but we won’t have to run all the way back.” He touched a few things on the phone. “Let me set up a text message to go as soon as we hit a signal. Then—”
“We need to talk.”
Tanner let out a breath, looked up, and nodded. “Yeah, we do.”
Finley waited a little impatiently for Tanner to type in the message, then put the phone back in the bandana. Finally, he turned his attention once more to Finley and looked thoughtful.
“I fucked up.”
That wasn’t exactly what Finley had been expecting. He had to admit, he appreciated it, though. “So did I,” he murmured.
Tanner turned, leaning against the tree, and held his arms out. Finley settled in against him, closing his eyes briefly and savoring the feel of being against his mate. Of being naked against his mate. The skin to skin felt better than anything he’d ever felt before, including—maybe especially—Jamie. “Gods, this feels good,” he whispered.
“Fuck yes it does.” Tanner leaned in and kissed Finley’s temple. “I love having you in my arms. Don’t tempt me to forget our conversation.” Finley chuckled and nodded. “Okay. Now, uh, I’m pretty sure I hold the bigger stack of fuckups.”
Finley laughed, he couldn’t help it, then what he had to tell Tanner sobered him, and he swallowed. “I kissed Jamie.”
“I know,” Tanner said.
Finley’s gaze flew up to Tanner’s face and he blinked. “You do?”
Tanner nodded. “Yeah. I met Jamie.”
“Oh, uh… you… didn’t get into a fight, did you?”
Tanner flashed a bigger grin. “My wolf was distinctly unhappy that I resisted.”
Finley breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh good. Not that you or Jamie couldn’t handle yourselves, but… well, you’d kick his ass without trying too hard. He’s a good guy and I’m sure he could fight, but….”
“I’m glad to hear you assume I’d win.”
Finley rolled his eyes at the smug tone, making Tanner chuckle.
“Anyway, I don’t plan to. Unless you’re leaving me for him.”
Finley looked up at Tanner, not willing to answer that comment yet. There was too much to discuss first. Not that he wanted to. He didn’t, but he wasn’t sure Tanner would still want him once all that had happened came out. “I did more than kiss him.”
Tanner’s eyebrows went up. “You did?”
Finley nodded.
“Do you want to tell me?”
“Do you want to hear it?”
Tanner studied him for a moment. “I don’t need to. But if it’ll make you feel better, then tell me.”
Finley took a deep breath and looked back down at his hands where they rested on Tanner’s arms. He briefly wondered if those arms would still be there when he finished talking. He swallowed around his dry throat, forcing the fear back, and dove in to speak.
“I, uh, I was going to…. Do more. I wanted to. I don’t know what, I mean… I didn’t have a plan or anything. It just happened. We’d stripped to shift, were going to just run together for a while. And there he was, naked and… and looking at me like….” He hesitated, then took a breath. “He was looking at me like he wanted me. And I thought, you know, I thought you didn’t want me, and there he was, looking at me like he wanted everything.” He paused, collecting his emotions and trying to figure out how to say it. “I, uh, I touched him. Just his chest mostly, his back. I didn’t even touch his dick. We were up against each other and kind of just… grinding.”
He paused again, swallowing, and he realized Tanner hadn’t let go. In fact, if anything, Tanner’s arms tightened. He managed to keep going.
“My wolf didn’t like it. At all. He was kind of pissed, actually,” Finley said and Tanner chuckled. “Yeah. Well, I tried to kiss Jamie then. I was so… gods, I don’t know. It just… I was so frustrated and angry and hurting and… lost.” His voice cracked and his hold on his emotions wavered when Tanner kissed his temple. “I couldn’t do it.” He looked up at Tanner, feeling like the worst shit on the planet, on the verge of tears. “I… not just because of my wolf either, Tanner. I wanted you. I couldn’t…. And… I’m sorry.” He shook his head, trying a little desperately to hold back tears.
“Hey, baby, hey. It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere because you kissed a guy.”
“But….” Finley swallowed, staring up at his mate. “It wasn’t just a kiss.”
“Yes, I heard what you said.”
“And…. Uh, well, we didn’t, like, touch each other more. But we didn’t just shift and go either.” He screwed up his courage and blurted, “We jacked off together.” He struggled to keep his emotions in check, but the fear flared brightly that after everything else they’d been through, despite what he’d said to Tanner, he’d fucked things up. That it was just too much. He squeezed his eyes closed and fought to simply breathe.
But Tanner just kissed his temple again. “It’s okay,” Tanner said, making Finley look up fast.
“It’s… it is?”
Tanner nodded. “First, that’s not to say I want you kissing any more guys, nor do I want you kissing Jamie again. At least… not like that. And second… I kind of deserved it.”
Finley frowned. “I don’t think of it like that.” However, he had warned Tanner, hadn’t he? He pushed the thought away.
“Well, I do. I had reasons for holding off with you.” Finley opened his mouth, but Tanner put a finger on his lips, keeping him silent. “And I’ll tell you in a moment. Hear me out. It’s more than I’ve said before. But, yes… I realize, I could have been your first everything. I should have. I let my fears get in the way of that. So, yeah, I deserve it.” He took a deep breath. “But… I did have fears. Give me a chance to explain?”
Finley blinked but nodded and kept his silence.
“When I was nineteen, my best friend, Eric, chose a mate. Kim was… well, she was one of those women all the guys went after. You know the type.”
Finley nodded.
“There were three female wolves in the pack, roughly the same age. Three females and seven straight males—I was the eighth male with, thankfully, no interest whatsoever in her.” He shuddered, making Finley chuckle.
“I’m glad for it.”
“Me too.” He kissed Finley’s forehead. “But Eric, well, Eric wasn’t immune to her and went after her. I don’t know all of it. I’d begged him to not tell me. I had zero interest in hearing about what he’d do with a female. But the end result was, he convinced her to mate with him, let him claim her as his chosen.”
He sighed and laid his head back against the tree trunk. “Things went well for a little while. They seemed disgustingly happy. But about a year later, he was trying to convince her to have pups. He wanted the whole family thing, you know. Right down to the white picket fence. She… didn’t. They fought for months over it. And one night, she packed a suitcase and left.”
Finley stared, eyes wide. “She left?”
Tanner nodded. “Yeah.”
“I know mates can split, but… that’s really unusual.”
“I know that. Now. That’s something I’ve recently learned, though. Anyway, Eric kept insisting she’d come back, that she’d settle down with him. Except she didn’t. Not only didn’t she, but as we were sitting there, watching the Steelers on Monday Night Football, Eric suddenly shifted and started howling. Luckily we were at my parents’ house and it was all pack there, but I was surprised. Eric had never lost control like that. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Finally my dad came in and pulled alpha rank—you know, used the alpha tone—and got him to shift back. It took a bit, but eventually I got him to tell me what happened.”
But Finley knew. “She’d broken their bond. Let someone else claim her.”
Tanned nodded. “Yes. She’d been claimed by someone else. And I thou
ght Eric was… I don’t know, it sounds ridiculously dramatic, but I really thought he was going to die of a broken heart. Right there on our living room floor, with the Steelers scoring a touchdown and all of us watching him. He looked up at me, said he was sorry in this broken voice, then shifted again and bolted for the door. He took off into the forest and, as far as I know, never looked back. I’ve seen him a few times when I’ve gone into the upper parts of the mountain. He’s never come back as a human, though.”
Finley didn’t know what to say at first. He let that absorb for a minute. “You were afraid that if we mated, I’d do that. I’d feel trapped, then break our bond.”
Tanner nodded, and the look on his face, the fear and regret, tempered the immediate hurt at the thought. “But…. Mom and Dad have recently got me to see I wasn’t being fair to you with this. I’d never told you about Eric.” He took a deep breath. “I’d never given you the chance to prove our bond was different. I didn’t trust you like I should have.”
Finley could accept that. As much as he didn’t like it, what Tanner had seen must have been really hard to deal with. It hurt that after two years together, two years of dating and spending time together, his mate still didn’t trust him. But at the same time, Finley could understand a fear like that.
Tanner pulled him out of his thoughts. “I also never told you that I was a little freaked out about how I’d have to claim you.”
“In front of the pack.” Finley’s forehead scrunched as he puzzled that out, which only got worse when Tanner laughed. “Why are you laughing? And why does that freak you out?”
“I’m laughing because I should have known my brilliant mate would know about it. And I was freaking out because, well…. Okay, part of it was pure jealousy. I didn’t want anyone else seeing you in pleasure like that.”
Finley raised an eyebrow. “You really are possessive of me?”
“Oh hell yeah, baby.”
“What’s the other part?” Finley asked, wanting to get through the rest of this. He was starting to feel hopeful and was afraid it was false.
“Well, unlike a lot of pack members—especially those of our parents’ generation—I spent a lot of my time in human schools. Around humans. I mean, I know you did, but for us, that was unusual. Some of the other guys I grew up with stayed with the pack all through school. Anyway, I went to the human schools. And while the stripping to shift didn’t bother me so much, I hadn’t really accepted the… openness we have with our sexuality. I mean, I’d gotten adept at just not seeing the couples who’d have sex in the clearing or the woods. I’d let the humans’ concepts of modesty get to me. And the thought of someone so young—in the humans’ opinion—being seen like that….” He shrugged a shoulder.
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