Page 57 of Cold Sacrifice

“You’re making perfect sense. Those parts of you that were separate are now one.”

“One,” I murmured. “Yes. They’re one. But I’m still a wolf and a woman and a…medium, I suppose. I’m still those things, and they’re still separate.”

“None of what makes you you is separate, Kait. You just have many gifts, many talents, and many powers.”

He removed his clothes quickly and then began to undress me when I yawned hugely and swayed on my feet. His fingers and lips touched everything he bared, but when I reached for him, he caught my hands. He lifted my fingers to his lips and kissed my knuckles, then released them and stepped back. “You’re too tired for what I want to do to you,” he murmured. “Shift and run, little wolf.”

“But afterward,” I said.

He smiled, his eyes sparkling in the darkness. “Yes.”

Then he backed up and burst into his shift, and I could not resist his wolf. I followed his lead, moaning slightly at the surprising pain of my shift. It was almost like the demon had wanted to overtake the wolf and had managed to suppress her slightly. I felt rusty, and I wished for the full moon. She would have easily pulled my shift from me without any effort or pain at all.

But I did shift, and my wolf came to life. I grew stronger with each moment that passed, and after only a few minutes, I was fully awake and energetic. I raced through the familiar woods, my muscles gathering and bunching and stretching, and I began to feel the difference even in my wolf. I was stronger.

Jared turned to look at me, and for one brief moment, I got the sense that he believed he was seeing a strange wolf. But I rushed him playfully and rubbed myself against his big wolf’s body, and the moment passed.

I would ask him later what had changed about my wolf’s body, because something had. I’d seen it in his hesitation.

We ran, and I felt Gray Shadow wolves throughout the woods, guarding their alpha and their alpha’s mate.

The peace of the woods and running through them as my wolf did restore me. I lost the grim darkness of death and worry and demons and let the wolf play. The shift healed me when I didn’t even realize I needed healing.

And afterward…oh yes, there was afterward. Once we reached the house I fell upon the food Jared pulled from the fridge, my appetite huge. I was hungry for everything. Jared watched me, the sternness of his face sweetened by the softness in his eyes.

I pushed back my chair and stood, finally. “I’m finished with the food,” I told him, “but I am so hungry for you.”

He smiled, and the softness in his stare fled. It was replaced with fierceness and heat, and I lost my breath at the promise in his eyes.

Rick was right. My alpha was everything to me. It had been a long, winding road to Jared’s arms, and I was never going to get tired of being there.

Sometimes after a shift, we climbed into his big bathtub and lazily washed and played and then things would get serious and we dried off and went to his bed, making love in a tangle of sheets and arms and legs and tongues.

But this was not that kind of night, and he took me to his shower.

He slammed me against the shower wall and put his fingers around my throat to hold me there while he gave my wolf what she needed. What I needed. There was nothing gentle or easy when he touched me then. Nothing tender.

But it was overwhelming. It was life. And it was love.

The water streamed over us, shutting out everything but that moment. I looked up into the savageness of his face as his wolf peeked out at me, and my entire body responded to him.

Chills raced over my skin, my legs weakened, my breath came in pants, and my heart beat so hard it hurt. The wolf in me wanted to submit, and the rest of me wanted to fight, to slam him against the wall, to take the lead.

My wolf won.

And it didn’t matter that he was stronger than me, that he was dominant to my wolf. It didn’t matter that I was alpha, that I was as intense and fierce and savage as him.

Nothing mattered but the way he made me feel, and the way I needed to be at that moment. He was fully in control, and I was glad.

What began in the shower continued to his bed, and long into what remained of the night. In the end, when my body was worn out and sore and heavy with the effects of unimaginable pleasure, he kissed my lips, soothed my body, and murmured meaningless words just so I could hear the sound of his voice until I drifted into sleep.

He took care of me, as he would always take care of me. My alpha loved every part of me.

No matter what I was, and no matter what I might become.

Chapter Twenty-One

Bastien was so guarded in his sleep that even if he’d wanted to, he would not have been able to kill himself. The necromancer’s influence was not stronger than the wolves who watched over him, so I could relax on that front.