“Lukyan, are you okay? Is something happening?” She turned on her knees and put an eye to the keyhole. He was still sitting with his back to the door. She sat back on her feet and breathed deeply. He was still a man.For now.
Long seconds passed before he answered. “I’m okay. The wolf wants out. He wants you, Norah. He will never be happy until you take your wolf form. He wants you to come out so he can force your transition.”
“Force my transition?” She held her hands out and looked at them. Could her human hands really transform into a wolf’s paws?
“He wants to bite you, to put his magic in your body so that you can shift, too.”
“Does it hurt?”
Lukyan paused and Norah could almost see him working through all the possible answers before he told her the right one. “Yes. It will hurt the first time.”
“And then what?”
“Then you become my mate. We will live for hundreds of years as a mated pair. I will protect you until the day I die and no one will come before you in my life.”
“What about children? Do wolf shifters have babies?”
“Yes. That’s what’s pushing the beast right now. Cate has gone into heat. She’s the pack’s alpha which means her heat will cause all the other pack females to go into heat too. If you transition now, you will go into heat very soon, which means we will have a baby. That’s why I wanted you to lock yourself in the room. I want you to choose. Eventually, we will be together. You are mine and I am yours. It’s fate and you can’t fight fate. If you transition now, not only will you get me for the rest of your life, you’ll also get a new baby. You may not be able to resist me, not for long anyway, but I want you to have a say in whether or not we start our lives together with a child.”
Tears pricked Norah’s eyes. She had joked with Jessie that she was going to have sex with Lukyan just to get a baby, but that’s all it had been. A joke. She wanted a baby, but she wasn’t willing to be devious to get one. And now Lukyan sat on the other side of the door telling her that in one weekend she could achieve almost everything that she ever wanted. She would get a man that would cherish her until the end of her days, and a sweet little baby to love and protect. Step oneandstep two. But was step one worth it if she didn’t have love?
Lukyan said that the Goddess had chosen her for him and him for her. He said he was fated to cherish her, but was that the same as love? Was this connection due to some animal attraction that she didn’t understand, or was it deeper? Norah wanted him to love her. She wanted that more than anything. She hadn’t been lying when she told Jessie she was done with men, but that was before she met Lukyan. He wasn’t other men. It wasn’t rational, but after only a few hours she loved him wholly and completely and she wanted him to love her in return. Jessie was wrong. This was special, at least it was to Norah. But was it special to Lukyan? Was she more than just a vessel for his child, and did it even matter?
Norah wiped a stray tear from her eye. She could not imagine a single day without Lukyan in it. It would be better to have him in her life, even without love, than to spend a moment without him. Mind made up, she stood and opened the door.
Her mate, as he called himself, still sat with his back to the wall. Naked, his body looked bigger and even more intimidating than it had when he was clothed, yet when he looked up to her face she saw vulnerability in his green eyes. Feeling powerful, she crouched before him. “Make me your mate, Lukyan. I want you and I want the baby.”
His bright green eyes darkened with desire. “You won’t regret this. I promise to be good to you, Norah.”
Norah would have preferred a promise of love, but she would take what she could get.For now.
Lukyan took Norah’s hand and led her to the front door. His wolf’s incessant howling and yips quieted as soon as she opened the door to him. “Usually the entire pack would gather for our mating ceremony, but given the circumstances, it will just be us.”
“I don’t mind, Lukyan. The two of us is enough for me.”
Lukyan kissed her hand. “You are a gift, Norah, but I want to do this right. When all of this is over and I have more control over my wolf, I will make this up to you. We’ll redo the ceremony in front of the entire pack the way it was meant to be.” He pulled open the door and picked her up.
“We’re going outside?” He smiled at her shriek of protest. “It’s freezing out there!”
“Don’t worry, sweet Norah. You will not feel the cold after my wolf bites.”
She sputtered her protest. “B-but i-its fre-eezing.”
He carried her a few feet off the porch where a swing had been hung from a tall oak branch. He carefully shifted his weight and wiped away the snow before he sat her gently on the seat. “When I shift, I want you to quickly take off your gown. You’ll get caught up in the material if you shift with it on.” She looked down at the thin piece of material and hunched her back against the brisk wind.
Lukyan was impervious to the weather. On a normal day, his temperature ran hotter than a human’s, but that wouldn’t normally be enough for him to ignore a day as cold as this one. Today he didn’t feel the cold, and it was all because of Norah. She had agreed to be his mate, to have a child with him. He felt nothing but his intense desire to be with her.
He knelt on the ground and scooped up a large ball of snow in his two hands. “I don’t have my friends here to help me with the ceremonial cleansing, but I’ll try my best to honor you with my version of it.”
Raising his hands to the sky he said in a loud clear voice, “Goddess, cleanse me so that I may meet my mate in purity.” He pulled the snow to his body and bathed himself in the cold. Norah gasped and Lukyan snapped his eyes to hers. She was watching him with rapt attention.
He scooped another pile of snow and raised it, again, to the sky. “Goddess, fortify me so that I may protect my mate as she deserves.” Again, he rubbed the cold snow across his body. This time he leaned back and howled, long and deep. He looked at his mate. She seemed to have forgotten the cold. Instead of curving her body to protect against the wind, she was now leaning forward, her attention focused on his every move.
He stood and looked his mate in the eyes. Slowly he urged his body to transition. As was the tradition, he elongated the change, forcing himself to endure the pain of the shift. His mate’s first transition would be painful and long. He worked to mimic that, to show her that he would willingly take the pain for her if he were able.
Gradually his body changed from human to wolf. The pain was extraordinary, but he took it without protest. He would endure anything for his mate. When he had completed his full transition, he walked to the swing. She had stood and was removing her gown. His wolf panted appreciatively at her human form. She was beautiful. He edged closer and, with as much care as he could, bit her forearm.
She stood there for a full minute, lost in what he had been told was the sheer ecstasy of the magic. Eventually, her body began to shift, gradually pulling her human form away to give way to her wolf. Her bones and sinew popped and snapped. He had witnessed many other mating ceremonies but never before had he noticed how loud the human form was when it ripped apart. Then again, it had never been his mate that was being torn apart. She cried out from the pain and his wolf whimpered. He would absolutely take this pain from her if were able.
After what felt like an eternity, his mate stood before him in her beautiful wolf form. Her fur was golden blonde, with a patch of dark across her shoulders. She walked to his wolf and nuzzled him with her muzzle. He nipped her neck, a communication that she was in control in this moment. Her wolf bounced away, jumping high and then landing in a big pile of snow. The white fluff flew up in every direction. His wolf yipped and followed her. The two played and rolled in the snow for many minutes until they tumbled together down a small hill.
Norah’s wolf scrambled to gain her footing in the deep snow, but Lukyan’s was more sure-footed. Getting to his feet, he pounced and knocked her over into the snow again. She opened her mouth, ready to play fight and wrestle with him. Again he jumped on her, covering her in the cold snow. She stood and shook it from her fur before taking off at a dead sprint toward the forest. His wolf gave chase. The two yipped as they dashed from tree to tree. Soon her wolf began to tire. The first transition was hard on a female and the ever deepening snow forced her body to work harder in order to stay afoot. Turning, she caught his eye and two began to make their way back toward the cabin. Halfway through the clearing, her wolf gave in to her exhaustion and laid down in the snow. Lukyan’s wolf watched as his beautiful mate turned from a glossy blonde wolf back into her beautiful human form.
He shifted soon after and picked up his sleeping mate. His cock immediately reacted to having her naked body in his arms but he ignored it. She was exhausted from the trauma of her first shift. She needed rest and plenty of it. He could smell her heat coming, her natural musk had deepened in just the few hours since they had taken wolf form. Soon she would be begging him to fill her slick passage.
Cradling her in his arms, he walked the short distance to the cabin. Once inside he laid her in the bed and covered her with the thick comforter. He crawled under the blanket and held her against his chest.
