“Better this time,” he murmured inside her head.
Was he talking about her or him? Or all of it? She didn’t know and didn’t have enough energy to ask as she faded off to sleep.
18
“Bio from Halle Parkswolf.”
Nago woke with a start. His cock no longer embedded within Halle, but his bioware bleating with a message from her.
Which made no sense since she was sleeping peacefully next to him. Also, Halle had mentioned before that the house’s system didn’t extend all the way to the cabin.
A dream? If so, it was a weird dream, he decided, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He tried to blink the message out of his head, but the message indicator on his mind screen remained. Flashing blue to indicate one of his VIP contacts had left a message.
He’d never taken her off his VIP list, he remembered now. Never stopped hoping. And now here he was, mating her ten years later.
“Play message,” he subvocalized to his chip.
“Okay.”
And Nago frowned because this had been the last bio he’d gotten from Halle after nearly a year of not returning her communications.
He’d missed a lot of bios that year. From his family, from Halle.
Except in the case of his family, those calls hadn’t been missed. More like immediately deleted if they were from Rafes, one-word answers back if they were from his parents. And as for the dozens of calls he’d gotten from Halle?
He’d listened to or read every single one of her bios before putting them in a special folder marked for the “save” pile. Kept them safe, even when the system cleared his cache. Which was why he remembered her last message so clearly. “Okay.”
One word, which he’d immediately understood as a final goodbye. Okay, I’ll leave you alone. Okay, I won’t bio you anymore. Okay, I’ll forget you as you deserve.
Which from what he could see, she had. Dating other guys. A few of the relationships had gotten serious, but petered out. This Eric guy had been different, though.
Wily. Knew what he was doing with Halle from the start. How to handle her. And then the Chivaree…
Nago looked back over his shoulder at Halle. And her sleeping innocence pierced his heart. He could feel the wolf, pacing back and forth inside him. Watching her, too. Wanting her. Nago fucking hated the thing. It had taken everything from him. Okay, not everything. His father and Rafes had seen to that. But Halle. It had taken Halle. And that felt like everything.
She was the only thing, Nago thought to himself. The last piece. The only panacea that would ever fix what happened in Alarus. All of it.
But he still didn’t feel ready. He wished he’d had more time before the Chivaree forced his hand.
But fuck if this could have gone any different. From the moment he received that first alert, what he’d do next was set in stone even if he hadn’t gotten that nudge from Knud or the no from Rafes.
He was always going to be with her. It was just a matter of when. And how.
A wail suddenly split the air. A baby was crying. Right outside the door.
Nago stopped. Looked around. Then thought, no…this can’t be happening.
But it was. The wails were getting louder and louder. The baby screaming for its mother.
His gut burned with punches.
Something was bleeding inside him now. And somebody…
Somebody had to help that baby. Somebody had to help it. It was calling out…
“Halle,” he said in a choked breath. But when he looked to the bed, she was gone. The bed was empty.
No, wait. Someone was there. But it was a small someone.
He went over to the bed and looked down at it. Its hands and legs sliced the air, the little body helpless to do anything else in its furious upset.
A baby. It was a baby. And its little body was splattered with blood.
“What did you do?”
Nago turned. Rafes and Knud were behind him. In fatigues. They held their guns out, at the ready for any hostile threat. As they’d been trained.
All of them. Even Nago, just in case. Though technically Knud and Rafes were the bad asses. Nago was just the guy they sent in to install surveillance tech where the government thought the possible bad guys might live and/or work.
“What the fuck did you do?” Knud asked again; his eyes flared as he looked around the room.
Nago’s gut hurt so bad. And the baby was squalling. By the Fenrir Wolf, where was its mother. Why wouldn’t she feed it?
And where was Halle?
“Halle?” he yelled. “Halle? Where are you?!”
“Nago,” a voice cut through all the squalling and the pain. “Nago, I’m right here. Wake up.”
“Halle! Halle!” he called her name. Trying to find her, but not seeing her in the room. Covered in blood. Why was there so much blood?
And bodies. Where had all the bodies come from?
“Fuck! Fuck!” Knud was cursing. Taking pulses. And yelling, “FUCK,” over and over again.
Hands shook him. “Nago, wake up. Please, Gummi Bear, wake up!”
He did. His eyes popping open to daylight.
Daylight. But how? He hadn’t stayed in bed past sunrise in over ten years. He always got up before the sun to start his routine. It was the only way to keep the wolf at bay.
“Nago…”
Halle’s voice again. Along with the smell of her heat.
He blinked, turned. And there she was. Sitting next to him in bed. Concern writ plain across her beautiful face.
“Nago,” she whispered again, and she reached out to touch him—
“DON’T TOUCH ME!!!” he roared, leaping out of bed. “DON’T FUCKING TOUCH ME!”
Something was growling in the background. And only after a long beat did Nago realize it was him.
“It’s okay, Nago, it’s okay,” she said. Her heavy breasts swung as she rose up on her knees to face him. “You’re awake now. Whatever happened in the nightmare…it’s done. It’s over now.”
He shook his head. But it wasn’t over. It was never over especially if he didn’t get up early like he did yesterday. Get in front of the wolf…
Another wave of her heat scent hit the air.
He nearly shifted right there. Male and female wolves weren’t biologically programmed to shift for a full year after their first mating—nature’s way of giving the species the best shot at a live birth. But Nago’s wolf ignored all the natural rules with its voracious appetite. It wanted her and was jealous of the human who’d been holding it back.
Stay in front of the wolf, N. You must stay in front of the wolf. Somewhere in the recesses of his memories, his Uncle Grady signed to Nago what to do. Reminded him to pull the mental rip cord, like his uncle had taught him to do ten years ago when they delivered him to his home for troubled wolves in a cage. All but frothing at the mouth.
So that was what Nago did. Pulled the rip cord. Because it was the only way to handle the wolf without anyone getting hurt.
“Nago…” he heard her whisper.
And then her face appeared in the distorted distance. At least that’s what it looked like to him. As always when he had to pull this trick, it was as if he were looking out at the world through a fish-eyed lens. Like she was farther away from him than she was.
He watched her reach up to touch his face. But he couldn’t feel her touch when she made contact. He could hear her voice, thin and reedy with fear as she repeated his name. But he couldn’t respond.
She was scared. He was scaring her like he’d promised himself he’d never do again. But there was nothing he could do about it. Because the wolf…
The wolf would only scare her more.
But even in this detached state, he could smell her heat. Smell that she needed him. Needed the man she had chosen. Yet in this state, he was as useless as a fucking statue.
And at that moment, Nago wanted to kill the fucking wolf. Kill it, even though he knew he and the thing were symbiotic. If
you killed the wolf, you killed the man. They were a package deal. But still…
If he’d been given the choice of doing whatever it took to wipe the fear off her face right then, he would have.
“Nago, can you hear me?”
Her voice cut through his self-castigation like a crack of sunshine on the darkest Alaska day.
“I don’t know what’s going on here, but if I’m this scared, I’m thinking you must be, too. So I’m going to tell you a story my mom use to tell me. It’s about the magnolia tree in front of this cabin. Did you notice it outside?“
Yeah, yeah, he had. He’d meditated under it during his morning routine yesterday. Why the hell hadn’t he set an alarm clock for this morning? Why had he trusted his natural cycle just because it had always worked before? Before was before. Now was now, here with Halle. And he fucking knew what happened when he didn’t stay in front of the wolf.
However, he couldn’t risk coming back into his body to tell her that or to apologize.
But she continued speaking after a beat of waiting for an answer that wouldn’t come. “Apparently, living around here before the Civil War was a real nightmare for runaway slaves. Well, life as a slave was a nightmare no matter what. But for runaways… The gulf to the South, the Mississippi River to the West, the Pearl to the East, and the Big Black River blocking the way to the North. As you can probably imagine, those slaves had an awful hard time escaping. Pretty much had to be guided out in groups with access to safe houses. And that took a while to set up…”
She began to undress his body. Slower than before, but it still went faster since all he was wearing was a pair of underwear and a t-shirt.
Don’t undress me! He wanted to scream. Afraid of what the wolf might do to her.
But to Nago’s surprise, instead of going crazy as he thought it would, the wolf only stood there. Panting heavily as it waited to hear the next part of her story.
“So imagine my great-great—like a ton of freakin greats—grandfather’s surprise when he woke after a full moon night to find what looked like a runaway slave in his magnolia tree—”
She broke off when his arms suddenly wrapped around her. “I’m sorry,” he said, holding on to her like she was a buoy in a turbulent sea. “I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?” she asked, her arms wrapping around his waist.
“I yelled at you. Scared you.”
“Oh, Nago. I wasn’t scared for me. I was scared for you,” she answered. Then as if they’d rewound the script to ten years ago, she said, “You all right, Gummi Bear?”
Right on cue, he answered, “I am now.”
And as if in reward for a well-delivered line, her heat scent released into the air. Letting him know how much she wanted him. Still.
Despite seeing him at his worst.
And as if to confirm it, Halle pushed the words into his head without being asked. “You. I choose you. You to be my mate. You to be the father of my children. It’s always been you, Nago. You, and only you.”
Okay.
Okay.
This fucking girl…
And then another voice invaded his head. It was his great-grandfather’s 70s-era Detroit accent telling him, “Fuck your scaredy-ass feelings, boy! Claim your female. Claim that gal right now, I tell ya!”
There was no more back and forth with the wolf after that. This time he didn’t just put it in a chokehold. He commanded it to heel. Pushing it down with a force that brooked no argument.
And then he lowered his woman to the bed with the thought that he would never leave her again. No matter what it took, he’d stay with her. And from this day forward, nothing would come between them. Not even a thousand wolves would tear him away again.
19
Nago was still there when she woke on the third morning of her heat.
Halle couldn’t believe it. She watched him sleep, taking in the lines of his face. Sharply planed and only bearing a passing resemblance to the boy she fell in love with at summer camp. But that boy…she could still see him in there. Could still feel him.
Especially now. When she could watch him without reserve…or heat.
She was pregnant with his baby. She’d figure that out last night when she got up to use the outhouse and hadn’t felt compelled to jump his bones upon her return.
Speaking of the outhouse…
She reluctantly slipped from the bed, and for the first time in days picked up the shift she’d shed when she first came into this cabin. It still smelled of her frantic 20-minute run and her heat. But both scents were stale now. Also, it was the only thing she had. So…
She slipped the shift over her head, not disliking it as much as she had four days ago when she’d run from the boy who’d broken her heart.
That boy was a man now. He’d come back, and whatever had happened ten years ago, they’d talk about it now that her heat was done.
Maybe over breakfast. She scanned the boxes he’d put on the mantle above the hearth. Instant oats—she could heat some water, and they could eat them in the bag for breakfast, just like they’d done at summer camp. There were also a ton of the junk foods she remembered him liking back when they could spend hours on scintillating topics like Doritos vs. Cheetos and whether Coke or Mountain Dew was the greatest soda of all time. She almost grabbed a box of chocolate chip cookies as a morning snack. All that heat sex—she was starving.
But then her eyes spotted something even better…
A pack of Haribo gummi bears.
She froze, the old hesitation coming over her with Pavlovian effect. Then she remembered…it was a new day now. Nago was back. Not only had he finished what he started ten years ago, but when she woke up, he was still there.
She took the pack of gummi bears off the mantle and shoved a handful of them into her mouth. And then inwardly cursed in ecstasy. The gummi bears tasted even more awesome than she remembered. And just like in years past, nearly the entire bag was gone by the time she left out the cabin for her outhouse visit.
But then she stopped dead in her tracks.
Because instead of the usual pastoral nature scene she expected to see in the distance. There was Eric, standing beneath the cabin’s magnolia tree.
“I tried to bio you,” he called out to her. “But then I remembered you can’t receive them this far from the house.”
She looked over her shoulder on instinct, then rushed over to him. “What are you doing here?” she asked, keeping her voice low.
Mississippi wasn’t the most progressive state in the North American territories, and newly mated males had a reputation for being volatile. She doubted Nago would be prosecuted if he came out here and gave Eric another beat down just for daring to show up.
But Eric seemed unconcerned. He just sniffed and said, “You’re fully mated with him. Oh, dear…I’m too late.”
She shook her head. “Yes, it’s too late. I’m sorry about how this went down. But as you can probably smell, I’m no longer in heat now. So whatever you…ah…hoped for, it’s not going to happen.”
“But the Mississippi kingdom was supposed to be mine. Your father promised! And that new mate of yours humiliated me! There are stories and pictures all over WolfNet of him kicking me out of my own mating night.”
Eric sounded like a petulant child who hadn’t gotten the toy he wanted for Christmas. But Halle felt horrible. “Eric, I’m sorry. I know my father promised you the throne, but you know you could have just asked me for my hand in marriage. This Chivaree business opened the door to Nago, and he won. Fair and square, because you hadn’t mated me yet when he got to the cabin.”
But instead of seeing her logic, Eric’s face twisted ugly as he said, “He may have won, but it wasn’t fair or square.”
She shook her head at him. “Are you accusing him of cheating? Because I was there—”
“But that’s just it; you shouldn’t have been there,” Eric said. “I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop with you. Kept telling myself you w
ere too good to be true. Above average looks, smart, and poor…yeah—but that wasn’t anything a rich businessman couldn’t fix. Plus, you were a royal, openly seeking a husband. There was no reason you should have still been available at the age of 29—I knew that. And then I had a little conversation with your mate the night before the Chivaree, and I began to suspect why you hadn’t been mated before I came along.”
She shook her head, a new pool of dread forming in her stomach. “What are you talking about, Eric?”
Eric reached inside his car and grabbed an old-fashioned manila file folder. “I’ve already sent this to five different WolfNet writers. And they started running it this morning, so it’s too late for the Nightwolf family to stop it. Nago Nightwolf will feel the kind of humiliation I’m feeling right now. But I wanted you to see it, too. So here.”
He shoved the folder at her, and she hesitated but in the end took what he offered. “What is this?” she asked.
“The damning evidence that proves Nago Nightwolf isn’t the nice guy everyone thinks he is. In fact, after you read that the only thing you’ll want from him is an annulment.”
Truthfully, it was the best sleep Nago had gotten in ages. Years. Ten to be exact. Free of nightmares. Deep and restorative. As if he’d finally broken the beast within.
Which was why he was so surprised to awaken to the sensation of the wolf pacing around like a thing caged inside his chest.
She’s gone! the wolf informed her as soon as he opened his eyes.
Nago looked around, and indeed there was no sign of Halle in the cabin. But the empty cabin didn’t disturb him nearly as much as the chair. Because her shift—the one that had been hanging on the back of the chair for three days now—was also gone.
“Okay, okay,” he said, trying to keep the thing inside him calm. “She got dressed and left. That’s probably a good thing. It probably means she’s preg—”
She IS pregnant. And now she’s alone out there…with MY pup, without my protection.
NAGO, His Mississippi Queen: 50 Loving States, Mississippi (The Brothers Nightwolf Trilogy, Book 1) Page 10