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“What?” he said, grinning.
“Nothing. You just look like a king to me, that's all.”
She wrapped her arms around his waist, pinning her head to his chest. He hugged her tightly, the sound of his heartbeat syncing with her own.
“And you are now my queen.”
They all shifted together and roamed through the glittering hillside. Mason ran next to Ash, barking and howling.
Her oasis had finally arrived.
TWENTY
MASON
The sun just crested the mountains, painting the sky in vivid pinks and blues. The trees beyond Mason’s deck exploded in greens that seemed brighter than they should.
It was the golden hour, those first rays of the sun that photographers adored. Mason couldn’t recall where he’d heard that, but he had eyes. Now, they turned from admiring the beauty outside his window toward his bed and the beauty lying there.
A beam of that golden sunlight lit a trail up Ash’s leg, interrupted by the sheet draped over her hip before it reappeared on her arm. She moved in her sleep. The sunlight crossed her closed eye, her face scrunched. She blinked against the sun before she blocked it with her hand.
“The only thing I hate about your bedroom is the damn morning sun. How am I supposed to sleep in?” Ash held her hand above her eyes like a visor and grimaced. “No complaints about the view, though.”
Mason stood taller, stretching his shoulders. “It isn’t my bedroom anymore. It isourbedroom,” he said.
His words brought a goofy smile to Ash’s face. They had found each other during such a trying time that only now that they’d gone past it could he take a moment and just enjoy it.
“Well, my first order of business today is getting some better curtains forourbedroom,” Ash said, falling back against the bed, “I can’t remember the last time I got to sleep in.”
“Now that it’s over, are you going to turn lazy on me?” Mason teased.
A pillow launched at his head so quickly that he barely had a chance to dodge. It thudded against the glass door to the deck. Ash grinned up from the bed, a second pillow at the ready.
“Now that it’s over?” She shook her head.
“I know, I know,” Mason replied, hand up. “The pack is still a work in progress, but the changes I’ve made … we’ve made … are working. Less secrecy and more transparency in leadership will snuff out any traitors before they have a chance to do any damage.”
“Taking out your mutineers was the best first step,” Ash added. “Those fools would have become the new definition of pyrrhic victory if they won. The Interspecies Council would have ended them before they could have rallied to the old ways.”
“The fact that the pack accepted a council agent as their female alpha is a good sign, too.” Mason stalked closer to the bed. “I know that worried you. Of course, it helped that I was quite a fan myself.”
Ash chuckled, and her smile warmed. Mason himself had worried about the pack accepting her and her connection to the Interspecies Council, given that they seemed to care more about keeping shifters secret than the shifters themselves.
In the end, without her involvement in the Interspecies Council investigation of him and his pack, the traitors would have likely succeeded. He’d have been killed, either by the traitors or by the council, once they bought the frame job.
“With what the traitors had planned, turning the pack to carve a bloody path through the human population, it isn’t hard to get them behind a better alternative.” Ash tilted her head and then shrugged. “Still, a couple of the teens have called me a narc in passing. They thought they were being clever by coughing the word.”
“Who?” Mason punctuated the question with a growl.
“You want me to really narc them out?” Ash fell into a bout of giggles. “I can think of so many better uses for my time.”
Stretching, she inched the sheet up, exposing more of her thighs. Mason jumped on the bed, tearing the sheet away from her. Ash wrapped her legs around his back as their lips met. For all his thoughts of savoring the moment now that the crisis had passed, they were still frantic in bed like it was their first time together.
Even so, before they could get any further than the kiss, a knock sounded on the outer door. That hardly stopped Mason. His hand slid down to Ash’s breast as their tongues dueled. By the third knock, Ash pulled away and tilted her head toward the door.
“Whatever it is, it can wait,” Mason whispered, leaning in to capture her lips.
“Unfortunately, so can we.” Ash pressed the palm of her hand against Mason’s lips. “They wouldn’t be bothering their Alpha this early in the morning unless it was important, right?”
