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“I took it to the office,” she replies, and I can hear the smile in her voice. “And Cillian ate half a loaf.”
“I’ll have him killed.”
She laughs.
* * *
“Ten minutes, Greene.”
My wolf comes up so fast I’m on my feet before I know it, between her and the door, claws out, a snarl ripping out of my chest.
No. NOT AGAIN. Not taking her. NOT AGAIN.
My spine starts to crack.
A small, warm hand lands in the middle of my chest.
“Hey. Look at me.”
She’s standing in front of me, naked, marked, with my bite fresh on her shoulder. Completely calm. She presses her palm flat over my heart, and a steady pulse of I’m here, I’m here, I’m here comes through our bond.
“I’m coming back,” Zahra says. “Two weeks. And every two weeks after that. And in between, I’m gonna do what I do best.”
I growl, “What’s that?”
“Work on getting you out of here.”
She says it’s already happening. And after four years of appeals where I’ve never believed a lawyer who told me that, I believe her.
My claws go back in. My wolf lies down, growling, but he lies down. I help her dress. My hands looking ridiculous on that little zipper. Then I pick my undershirt up off the floor. It smells like me, my mate, and what we did.
I press it into her hands. “Take it home.”
She holds it to her nose. Her eyes flutter shut. Then she folds it, careful, and puts it in her bag like it’s the most precious treasure.
When the guard opens the door, I’m back in orange with my hands out for the chains. Zahra walks past him with her chin up, her hair a mess, and my bite showing over the neckline of her wedding dress for the world to see. My fucking wife.
Six
Zahra
I stood in the shower when I got home from the prison, cleaned up, and when I got out, I put my nose to my wrist, and there he was. Woodsmoke, rain, and warm male skin sunk deep into me.
I wipe the steam off the mirror and take a look at myself.
My hair’s a wreck. My lips are swollen. There’s beard burn on my neck, across the tops of my chest, and when I drop the towel to check, all down my belly and the insides of my thighs, a hot rasp on my skin that tingles when I touch it. I’m sore in places I forgot I had, or never knew could feel this way. I walked out of a maximum-security prison this afternoon bowlegged, in a wedding dress, past a whole line of correctional officers, and I would do it again!
And right there, where my neck meets my shoulder: my mate’s bite.
Two deep crescents, raised, already going purple at the edges. It throbs with my pulse. When I press my fingers to it, something warm hums in my chest, faint, like music through a wall. Him. Forty miles away, in a cell, and I can feel him. Just barely. But enough.
“Mrs. Greene,” I tell the woman in the mirror.
She looks thoroughly fucked and extremely smug. I think I like her.
* * *
I have never nested. Not once in thirty years. I presented at sixteen, like most, got my prescription, and I’ve been a functional, low-maintenance, fully medicated omega ever since. My heats are mild. I schedule them. I handle them with a long weekend, a good vibrator, hydration, and snacks.
