I like it. It makes my wolf happy.
I press my lips to his skin, and he gathers me closer. I pull in a deep breath and then let it out in a satisfied sigh as I rest against his huge chest, his skin hot against my cheek. I stroke idly over the thick slabs of muscle of his pecs.
God, he’s gorgeous.
I’ve known it from the start, but being pursued by ruthless killers has a way of distracting you from noticing how hot your rescuer is. I let my eyes wander over him now, taking in the expanse of him.
“Does it still hurt?” I ask. I’m tracing the furrows the dragon’s claws tore down his ribs, three lines still knitting closed.
“No.” He traps my wrist gently, brings my palm to his mouth, and presses his lips there. When I look up, the look in his eyes is raw and fierce, and so open it tightens my throat. No walls. No distance. Just him.
He pulls the hide over my shoulder and fits himself behind me, his chest at my back, one arm loose across me. His heartbeat slows. Mine follows. My wolf stays quiet.
Outside the boulder, all of it is still out there. The file with my name on it, still standing. The search for Serenity running quietly. The Syndicate on the roads. Days, he said. Maybe weeks. The burner on the shelf that will ring every second day, whether there’s news or not.
In here, there’s stone and lantern light and his warmth at my back.
I can feel it—his beast. Close under his skin the way the bear is always close.
His breathing is too even for sleep. He’s awake and thinking about something. And I wish I knew what it was. But I’m too boneless to ask him right now. And I don’t want to ruin a moment that feels like it should be precious.
So I close my eyes, and sleep.
Chapter 24
Decker
Her breathing changes a little before midnight. I’ve been waiting for it—the slide from dozing into the deep, even pull that means the wolf has taken the night shift. She fought sleep for a while first, waiting in the low light like I might answer something. I didn’t. Now I ease my arm out from under her head, and she murmurs and burrows into the warmth I leave behind.
I dress in the dark and let myself out. The boulder grinds home behind me, and the cold comes in clean after hours of shared heat.
The last time I left her locked in this cave, she pried her way out through my wall. She’s not that prisoner anymore. She’s not a prisoner at all, and we both know she’ll be there when I get back.
The bear has been shoving at me since sundown. Not toward her, for once. Out. There’s work on this mountain I’ve left toolong, and at the top of the list is a dead dragon lying in open grass less than an hour from where she sleeps. Every moment it lies there, it marks the spot for anyone hunting a missing tracker. I should have dealt with it the first night. I had a bleeding woman in my arms instead. Then Viktor. There hasn’t been a window until now.
The site is forty minutes at a walk. I make it in less.
The grass still shows signs of the fight. The scorch line where he breathed at me. The long gouge where he came down. The dark stain spread wide where he bled out.
The dragon is gone.
Not scavenged—gone. Scavengers strip a kill where it lies and leave the mess to prove it. What’s here is a wide, even drag path running off the stain to the flat below, and on the flat, tire tracks. Deep tread, doubled up, pressed in hard where a vehicle stood under a heavy load.
The Syndicate recovers its dead. Nothing left behind, nothing to find. If this was their crew, they know exactly where their dragon died, and every ridge within a day’s walk of this grass is inside their search ring now.
The den is inside it too.
I have the burner out before I’ve finished the thought, and I call the only number it holds.
Viktor picks up on the second ring. If I woke him, his voice doesn’t show it.
“The dragon’s gone,” I say.
“I know. My people lifted it out.”
I stand there with the phone at my ear and the empty grass in front of me.
“You knew where it died.”
