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Chapter Twenty-One
Although every muscle in his body begged him to stop, Ivo kept running until the dainty pitter-patter of fucking ram hooves didn’t echo across the landscape. With Alani clinging to his back, he wove through forests and thundered across the barren mountainside, stopping in neutral territory to eventually catch his breath. In the middle of the range, just past the ski slopes and before the smallest mountain of the four, sat a little valley nestled between the peaks. In the summers, the adventure tourists who didn’t want to brave the actual rugged parts of the range used it for camping, making good on its gentle sloping grassy plains that had enough of a decline in them so that the rainwater wouldn’t pool. Sometimes high schoolers scaled it for trips; it was the safest place within the Angel Fire range for inexperienced climbers to get to while still feeling like they were in the mountains.
As of today, the ground was still slippery with the recently departed snow, but the grass was lush and green, and the sun cast it in a favorable light. The perfect place to stop and check on Alani.
His black bear form hobbled over to a small cluster of trees, taking advantage of the cool breeze beneath the shady canopy to catch his breath. As soon as he stopped moving, Alani slid off his back and crumpled to the ground, head hanging low. Although the hasty shift pained him, Ivo changed from bear to man in a second to be by her side, drawing her into his arms and cradling the back of her head as she pressed her face to his chest.
“Mmm,” she murmured. “You’re really warm.”
“Running across a mountain and a half will do that to you,” Ivo replied with a chuckle, all the while taking deep, even breaths in an effort to catch his. “Are you okay?”
“How did you find me?” She tipped her head back to look at him, brow furrowed. “I-I went looking for you. I thought you said the farthest mountain, so…”
“That was my mistake,” he said, seeing that she was still in a bit of shock. This was all his fault. He should have called her the second he got to the cave. He should have known she’d worry about him. “Alani, I’m so sorry.”
“It isn’t your fault,” she told him. Her voice sounded firmer by the minute, surer of herself. “I should have waited to hear from you, but I was so worried that I took things into my own hands. I’m sorry you got hurt because you had to rescue me.”
He scoffed and finally let himself fall back on the grass, needing the rest. “That’s bullshit. You’re in all this because of me. Don’t apologize.”
He gathered her hands in his, hating to see the small slits of red marring her otherwise perfect skin. Her knees looked skinned too, and he wished he had just killed Vince right then and there when he had him pinned. Ivo had raced across the range, following Alani’s scent intermingled with the stench of ram, and when he saw what the pig was doing to do her—he went into a blind rage.
The whole way there, Ivo had coached himself. Proceed with caution. Find the best way to get Alani to safety without hurting her in the process. But when he saw Vince on top of her, naked, looking at her like he wanted to eat her, Ivo had just lost it. He wanted to slaughter everyone there, and his rage had blinded him to Alani in the process. He had trampled over her in bear form. She could have been seriously hurt.
Ivo would have never forgiven himself if that happened. Never. He would take that guilt to his grave.
“Tell me what hurts,” he insisted, checking her over with tender, cautious hands. She tried to squirm away, but her efforts were futile—Ivo refused to let her go without first searching for something serious.
“It all kind of hurts,” she said with a little half-shrug, “but I’ve had worse.”
He scoffed again. What could possibly be worse than this?
“You forget I gave birth to twins,” Alani stressed, as though she’d read his mind. When Ivo’s eyes darted up to hers, she gave a soft, almost carefree chuckle. “I wasn’t going to go down without a fight back there. Anything that doesn’t heal fully is a battle scar I’ll wear with pride.”
Ivo had never loved a person more in his life than he did right that second. Here she was, a woman who was only in Angel Fire by chance, suddenly finding herself thrust into this strange world where people could turn into animals, and her soulmate was involved in a shitstorm of territory issues.
She could run. She could hate him. Of all the things Alani could do, Ivo never thought she would take it all in stride, wearing a small, sweet smile in the process, and comparing the cuts and scrapes to battle scars.
She really was his fated mate, through and through, right down to the core.
And Ivo couldn’t think of anything better to do at that moment than kiss her. Fingers threading through her mussed hair, he dragged her mouth to his and claimed it forcefully. Her plump lips, the kind of lips he fantasized about, parted with a gasp.
She felt so small and fragile in his arms, but Ivo knew he held the spirit of a warrior to him. Alani was the kind of woman who could survive this life. She was fearless and brave. Soft and beautiful. A mother. A lover. Everything. The woman in his arms was the total package, and he still wasn’t sure what he had done in a past life to be lucky enough to be her fated mate.
Maybe he would never know, but as Ivo lifted her onto his lap and deepened the kiss, their tongues sliding over one another, coiling and caressing and encouraging, he knew he would work each and every day of his life to show her that she was a goddess to him. He would make himself worthy, one way or another.
Even with the fear of the rams at the back of his mind, he couldn’t stop touching her. Ivo was careful of her injuries, nuzzling her sore hands and brushing away the dirt and grit from her wounds.
He hadn’t meant to take it that far—all he wanted to do was hold her and never let go—but the way she responded to his stiffening cock spurred him on. Her breathy moans. The way she kissed him back—fiercely, like she too was staking her claim—it all drove him wild. Ivo dragged her torn shirt off over her head, ridding her of anything Vince might have touched, as she bucked against him and tugged at his hair.
“My ferocious love,” he purred against her skin, his lips nibbling their way down her neck. Her head fell back with a hoarse sigh, hands tentatively dropping to grip his shoulders.
Her pants and underwear were a little trickier to remove than the shirt, and the process broke the heated, lusty moment with a bit of genuine laughter as Alani eased onto her back and wriggled out of the damp, dirty material. Ivo dragged her back onto his lap, his rock-hard shaft nudging against her sex—her very wet, very hot sex.
In the past, Ivo had never been one for much foreplay. Just enough so that it wouldn’t hurt the woman, but he had more important things to focus on—namely his pleasure. But with Alani, he wanted to spend hours worshipping her body, planting soft and firm kisses across every inch of her flesh before delving between her thighs to lap at her sweet juices. He wanted to make her come over and over again, to make her scream in ecstasy—because that was the kind of lover Alani deserved.
As he tried to shower her in devotion—as much devotion as he could under the given circumstances—Alani bypassed the whole thing by lifting herself up, using her shoulders to anchor herself, and lowering her body onto his cock. His eyes all but rolled back in his head when she reached down to grip it, pumping slightly as her channel opened slowly to accept him.
“Fuck,” he hissed, which earned him a giggle and a kiss.
