Page 37 of Big Bad Wolf

Wolf shudders. And though I’m sure he’s still not healed enough to move, he eases back until he’s sitting on the ground and I’ve somehow found my way onto his lap. I snuggle against him, and he lets the tip of his tail fall into my lap.

He reaches up, swiping a claw over my face. Something damp smears on my cheek, and when he shows me the shine on the edge of his claw, I realize that I must have blood on my skin from when I kind of, sort of beheaded the huntsman.

“You are strong. You are brave. You are wild,” he rumbles, nuzzling my jaw with the fur growing on the edge of his. “You are my Charlotte.”

I don’t know what affects me more: the way he uses my name again, or how he says ‘you’ over ‘Red’ and ‘my’ instead of calling himself ‘Wolf’. It’s almost as if he’s still listening, still learning, as though what I say matters…

Shit. It’ll be so, so easy to fall in love with my mate.

And you know what? I think I might be looking forward to it.

Slipping my much smaller hand into his paw, I bring it to my mouth and kiss it. “I am your Red,” I tell him.

His eyes spark with pure affection and undeniable love as he grunts out, “You are my mate.”

I tilt my head up so that he can see my impish grin, both pleased and proud of how he said that. “Yeah. That, too.”

Because I am, and even if it means I never get my wish, that’s okay.

I have Wolf, and that might just be even better.

EPILOGUE

FOUR YEARS LATER

Since choosing to stay with Wolf at his cottage, I’ve learned to pick my battles.

My mate is possessive. He’s protective. He worships me in a way that’s hard to describe to anyone who is used to human men. I’m not just his mate. I’m the second half of his soul, and he’d chase me to the ends of the earth so that we’d always be together.

For someone like me… for someone who never felt wanted… it was a revelation to discover that I’m the most important thing in the world to Wolf. When the day comes and the forest finally blesses us with pups of our own, I might have to share a sliver of his attention, but since the magic won’t provide a new generation until it’s sure that we’re ready for it, I’m not worried about that.

The magic of Blackmoor is a gift. So I sacrificed my wish when I chose to stay behind with Wolf after he was hacked at by the wicked huntsman. What I got instead was a devoted mate, an enchanted cottage that provides everything that Wolf doesn’t, and the ‘ever’ part of happily-ever-after.

It’s been four years. Technically, I’m thirty-two now, but I haven’t changed one bit. And I mean that, too. My nails are the same length. My hair? I took the axe to it once as a test, lopping off a good ten inches of length, and as though it was my turn to play the part of Rapunzel, it was back to its usual growth by the next morning.

It’s the same with my cloak. If I tear it or it gets dirty, all I have to do is place it in the wooden dresser in the cottage and, whether it’s tiny elves with needles and thread or some other explanation, it’s always pristine when I return for it. I can ask for anything I need—my favorite tank top and black jeans from home, plus an endless supply of underclothes that Wolf enjoys shredding off of me with his claws—and it’s there like, well, magic.

Not once have I regretted my decision to form this peaceful forest life with Wolf. If anything, I do wish I could’ve found a way to reach out to the only soul on the outside that might’ve cared that I was gone and let Goldie know that I was okay. Shit. I was more than okay.

I’m happy.

That’s why, when Wolf came home frantic at the end of the autumn season, desperate to make sure I was safe after he ran into an intruder on his—our—territory, I understood his need to lap at me, to mount me, to claim me. The clash between Wolf and the huntsman had left him with a deep-seated fear that someone in Blackmoor might take me from him if he doesn’t have his snout up my ass every minute of every day. His instincts insist that he take patrols around the greenery surrounding the cottage, and he’s content so long as I stay inside and he doesn’t sense any other predators nearby.

It’s only happened once since the huntsman, and after I finally managed to calm my mate down enough to understand his wild reaction, he admitted that he battled a bear. Like Wolf, the bear is a shifter; unlike Wolf, the shifter is either fully grizzly or fully man, not some combination of the two. Wolf attacked and the bear countered, and while both males came out of the challenge in one piece, I’d been in Blackmoor long enough to wonder why a rogue bear would go up against my Wolf.

And that’s when, weeks later, he finally remembered that the bear hadn’t been alone. There had been a human woman with the bear, and I finally understood. Any of the beasts of Blackmoor would go to great lengths to protect their female which was what the bear was doing and Wolf, thinking of me alone in the cottage, had been trying to do. In the end, he retreated because he was worried about me, but the more I thought about the human woman, the more curious I became.

It was probably nothing. Because she wasn’t me, all Wolf noticed about her was that she was small and yellow-haired. And maybe it has everything to do with me and Wolf reenacting a real life Red Riding Hood tale, but I kept thinking yellow hair and bear and, wouldn’t you know, Goldilocks and the Three Bears went off in my head. Then Wolf mentioned that the bear he battled has two brothers and… well… you never know.

Goldie.

What if it was Goldie?

What if my lifelong friend, so close I thought of her as a sister, found her way to Blackmoor, looking for me? What if this was all fated the way that Wolf has always wanted me to believe? Maybe me and Goldie met as kids because, one day, we would live out our own fairytales in Blackmoor?

It’s ridiculous. I know it is. That’s why, through the rest of autumn and half of winter, I did my best to talk myself out of it. Only I couldn’t. Just like how obsessive I became over finding my way to Blackmoor and braving the forest, I had to find out. I had to know.

So I asked Wolf. No surprise, he distracted me from my obsessions in ways only my mate can, but I woke up this morning determined to see for myself. Hours later, I’ve given up on trying to convince Wolf to let me. I’m just going to go and take a look for myself. Even if it isn’t my Goldie, I like the idea that there’s another human woman lurking around the forest. That I’m not the only one. That, maybe, I could have my one true love and a friend who knows exactly what it’s like to be claimed by one of these possessive males.