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Nell shuddered beneath me. Her whole body undulated; a long, involuntary wave that moved through her from her hips upward. The sensation of it pulled a curse from somewhere low in my chest. The knot was not just mine. It was hers too, pressing against nerves that would keep the pleasure rolling through her as my seed took hold.

I can't get you pregnant. I had believed that. Or I had been lying to myself, knowing — just as I knew she could be my fated mate — that it was possible.

She was shaking. The fine tremor of a body running on overload. Every nerve lit up from what had come before, and now this added overwhelming thickness spreading outward from where we were joined. Her hands found my arms and held on.

She made a whimpering sound. Small and frightened, nothing like the sounds she had been making for the last hour as I fucked all propriety out of her. Was she scared? Of me?

She hadn't been afraid in the cabin, or in my house surrounded by wolves, or when I told her that she had a target on her back. But now, with me locked inside her, she fucking whimpered.

I moved immediately — not away. I could not move away. The knot held me as firmly as it held her. Shifting my weight, I gathered her up, cradling her face in my hands until she was looking at me and not at the ceiling and not at the dark behind her own eyes where the fear was living.

"Look at me."

She did as she was told. Her eyes were wide, the hazel bright, the fear sitting in them alongside residual heat and confusion.

"Don't be afraid. I will never let anything hurt you. Not here. Not anywhere."

Some of the tension in her shoulders released. "Is it a wolf thing?"

I smiled. I couldn't help it. The directness of her, even now, even shaking in my arms trying to process something her entire framework had no category for, was classic Nell. She went straight to taxonomy. She wanted to understand which box to put it in.

"Yeah, baby. It's a wolf thing."

"What does it—" She shifted slightly. Her breath caught as the pressure shifted with her. "What does it do?"

"Wolves knot females after sex so they can't escape." It was a small part of the truth. I doubted she could handle the whole truth. Didn't matter. She'd have a lifetime to accept it.

Nell absorbed this. Another small undulation moved through her — the knot against those nerves — and her eyes went briefly unfocused before she pulled herself back. "I wasn't going anywhere."

There was a trace of her usual edge coming back into her voice. I took the edge to mean she was recovering. That she was reassembling herself from the inside out when an unexpected detail came up in a meeting.

I pressed my lips to the center of her forehead. Then her temple. Her cheek. "My wolf really likes you. This is how he shows it."

The trembling was slowing down. Her body beginning to understand that this was not a threat, that the warmth spreading through her was not damage or danger. Her hands had loosened on my arms.

"It feels—" She stopped. Started again, with the reluctant honesty of a woman not used to admitting she was inexperienced about something. "It feels really good."

"Good, baby. I'm glad you like it."

"Does it happen every time?"

I considered this. I considered the full truth of it; that it happened when there was the possibility of a cub, that my wolf had made a declaration tonight that went beyond desire or fidelity, that Nell might already be carrying something that would make the Lobo wedding not just politically complicated but biologically impossible.

"Not every time."

She nodded, accepting this.

I was going to have to tell her. Not tonight. Tonight she was still shaking in my arms. The knot was still warm and new. It was our first time between the sheets. We had our entire lives ahead of us. I had to get her on board with that first.

No, first I was going to have to tell my family I had bonded. With a human. A human who had nothing to bring to the table in the eyes of the pack. I was going to have to go back on my word. I was going to have to look at Sorsha Lobo and my father and the signed agreement and tell them that the arrangement was null because of my Nell. That I had found my fated mate, and the wolf did not negotiate with pack politics on this one point. There was no political solution to a knot. There was no alliance valuable enough to override what had just happened in this bed.

The Lobos were going to be furious.

My father was not going to be disappointed.

I would deal with all of it.

Later.