“Serenity knows it better than I do.” The words feel strange coming out here, in the warm dark, with his arm across me. “She memorized the whole family history when we were girls. Could recite bloodlines going back eight generations, who carried the witch-line and who ran wolf-pure.” Something shifts in my chest. “She was always the one who kept track of what mattered. I was the…protector.”
His arm tightens. Just that.
I press my face against the side of his wrist and close my eyes. He smells like us now. It should feel strange. It doesn’t. I heave a small sigh; soft, contented.
God, be careful, Grace.
I barely know him. This is dangerous territory. But I can’t help myself. Maybe it’s the release of stress after being terrified for so long.
Or maybe his magnificent cock has scrambled my brain. Maybe both.
After a while, he shifts. Sits up. The absence of him feels sharper than I expected.
“I’ll check outside. Walk the slope, make sure nothing’s moved in.”
He dresses in the dark, knows every piece by feel—jacket, pants, boots. The boulder opens. The cold mountain air cuts sharp against my overheated skin. Stone grinds shut behind him.
I stay under the covers. His warmth lingers on me, the bear’s heat slower to fade. For a while I can pretend the space beside me isn’t empty yet.
Walk the slope.
He said it the way he says everything, level and finished. But he doesn’t waste motion, and he doesn’t check ground he already trusts. Something out there is worth his attention, and he isn’t telling me what.
I should be doing what I’ve always done. Working the angles, counting what stands between me and the door. Instead I slept the whole night with my back to a man and never once woke to check where he was or what he was doing.
Serenity would laugh at me.You, trusting a bear?Then she’d want every detail, and she’d braid my hair while I talked, and she’d tell me I deserved it. She’s been in a room I can’t picture for months, and I’m lying on a fur with her whole share of the luck.
Is that what this is, Grace?
He built this cave into something that felt safe. Safe things end. I’ve had good things before. I’ve held them. I’ve watched them go.
This is the part where I know better.
Nothing this good is allowed to last.
I’ve been right about that every single time.
Chapter 26
Decker
We’re falling into a rhythm. Yesterday gave me nothing to worry about. The slope was clean when I walked it—my marks holding at every approach, no new scent on the ground, no wings over the ridge. I brought up provisions and the day closed in quiet around the two of us.
I’m no longer arguing about what this is or even surprised about it. Rutting is normal for my kind. Just not for me. Yet the urge drove all night, and most of the morning after it. I can’t keep my hands off her.
Grace is crossing the cave.
She moves unhurried, bare to the cold, like a woman with nowhere to be. My scent’s on her skin. I can track it from the cot without trying. She reaches the shelf and tilts the lantern to check the fuel the way I showed her two days ago, then sets it back where it was. She runs one palm along the stone lip, not looking for anything. Just moving.
The bear comes up the same second I do.
He doesn’t need a reason. The drive runs constant and low. It doesn’t much care that we’ve been at this since first light. Four times, and the rut doesn’t track numbers. It registers her. She’s five feet away. It sharpens the way it always does when she’s close.
I get up.
She hears me before I’ve crossed half the stone. Her shoulders don’t lift—she’s past flinching at my movements. Just a small tilt of her chin. Tracking me by sound.
I come up behind her and put my hands at the small of her back. Warm there under my palms, the wolf’s heat running just below the surface. I slide both hands down over the curve of her ass and pull her back against me, then stroke my fingertips between her thighs.
