Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Aster
The dreams begin almost the moment I lay my head on the pillow.
Visions that come in splintering speed, too fast to interpret.
Not that I want to analyze and predict right now.
I just want to sleep. My body is bone-tired.
My nerves are beyond frayed. The steak will help me recover by tomorrow morning, but right now, it’s just making me sleepy.
Noah insisted I leave the bedroom door open. Maybe he thinks I’ll climb out the window and run.
I probably should be planning my escape. The rain and darkness would help cover my scent and footprints, and it would be hard to track me. But right now, I’m too depleted to even contemplate it.
After I crawled in bed, I listened to Noah wash the dishes and clean up then heard him standing in the doorway, like he was watching me. The visions quieted while he stood there, but my body heated as thoughts of what I would do if he came in and pulled down the covers bombarded my brain.
My body seemed to think I wanted that to happen, which is new.
I’ve noticed attractive males before, but it was always from an intellectual point of view.
I admired tall men. Men with perfect physiques.
Men with symmetrical facial features. Noah’s handsomeness hits every time I glance his way.
My knees go weak. A flutter starts in my belly.
I have the strangest urge to giggle–and I almost never laugh.
So would I fight him if he tried to climb in bed with me?
Yes. I’d have to. Protecting my Sight is far more important than indulging my body’s sudden whimsical interest in a male. But I know it’s a moot point. Noah is a gentleman. He’s not going to force himself on me tonight.
I surrender to the visions and let them carry me into sleep.
Oma startles me awake. I’m in the prison tower. Her wrinkled face is right in front of mine.
“What are you doing, child? You can’t be with a man!” She points a gnarled, bony finger at me.
“I’m not with a man! I’m his prisoner.” It’s not like me to talk back to Oma. This dream self sounds shrill and defensive.
She slaps my face. “Don’t lie to me. You walked out of the tower!” Her voice is a screech. “You’re going to ruin everything I worked three generations to achieve. Get back to your confinement. Now!” She puts her fingertips on my temples and sends searing pain into my head.
I scream as the visions return, so fast they turn into a blinding white light that makes my head explode with too much coded information.
I need to throw up. I pray I’ll pass out.
My body feels like it’s falling through the air–like Oma threw me out the tower window, and I’m tumbling to my death, except I don’t hit the ground.
Someone catches me.
Noah.
His amber and cedarwood scent curls into my nostrils. His warmth seeps into my body against my back. One of his strong warm hands cups my nape, the other curves around me to press against my sternum. He’s rocking me.
I’ve got you. His words enter my head the way my clairaudience does.
The blinding white light begins to fade. I hear the murmurings of the Grandmothers, but it’s as if someone turns the volume down until their chatter disappears.
Is this a vision?
No. I feel Noah’s breath feather across my shoulder. He climbed in the bed with me after all–not to force himself on me but to hold me.
To comfort me.
When I was young–before I was sent to the Adalwulf manse to train under Oma–I was cared for by the mothers, the group of Moonborn female wolves who live in the simplicity and oneness of nature at Moonhollow.
In my earliest years, I was loved. I was cuddled and held and guided, even as I was taught the importance of my future role as an acolyte to Oma.
But the moments of comfort since I left Moonhollow have been few. Perhaps it’s just from my exhaustion from everything I’ve been through since the day I went to New York, but I suddenly feel so safe.
I feel so safe, and it releases a dam of emotion I didn’t know I carried. A sob rockets from my throat. My stomach twists up, and tears stream from my eyes onto the pillow.
Noah shifts his fingers from my nape to my temple, where he lightly strokes me with his thumb.
Don’t cry, starlight. His projected words reach me. I won’t hurt you.
“I know.” I answer out loud then remember he can’t read my lips when he’s behind me. I try again but speak the words in my head to him.
His body jerks in surprise.
He heard me. This isn’t a vision. Or is it? A waking one?
Noah tugs me toward him, rolling me onto my back and peering down at me with concern. He brushes my hair back from my face. “What did they do to you?”
A lump forms in my throat, and fresh tears spill uncontrollably from the corners of my eyes. “Please.” I shake my head. “Don’t.”
I don’t want him to uncover how vulnerable I am. Don’t want him to know or understand my pain. I don’t even want to explore this sudden ocean of grief welling out of me. I can’t trust that he won’t use it against me and my pack.
My body starts to tremble, a violent shaking like I’m going into shock.
Noah’s eyes glow gold, alarm scrawling across his features, but then his lips crash down on mine. His fingers curl behind my neck, angling my mouth toward him.
I gasp against the kiss, more shocked than I’ve ever been. My hips buck with need, the ache between my legs amplifying to a steady beating pulse. The sobs vanish, every nerve ending electrified by this male’s kiss.
My first kiss.
He pulls away like he’s surprised. Like he didn’t know that he was going to kiss me before it happened. But then he plunges in again, kissing me hard, lips slanting across mine as he blankets me with his body.
I rub against his thigh pressed between my legs. My breasts tingle, nipples tightening to tight buds against the flannel shirt he lent me.
His tongue sweeps into my mouth.
I’m kissing him back now, hungry. Greedy.
Wait…no. Oh, Fate. What am I doing?
I press both hands against his chest and push away. “No! I can’t.”
Noah shakes his head as if to clear it. As if he doesn’t know what just happened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to–”
But then I tug him back down, needing to feel the intense pleasure of our joined lips again.
There’s power to the connection. Every second his lips stroke across mine heals me more.
His free hand strokes across my shoulder then cradles my breast. I’ve never been touched there before. He pinches my nipple beneath the flannel, and I feel the answering tug between my legs.
“Wait. No. Wait…please.” I push at his chest.
A shudder runs through Noah’s body, as if it pains him to stop kissing me, but he sits back and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His eyes still glow gold.
My pulse races. I want to kiss him again, but I know it wouldn’t stop there. I had chastity culture drilled into me from the time I was a toddler. I know you can’t excite a male wolf and then stop him from claiming you. Not without getting badly injured.
“I can’t, Noah.”
I can’t have sex with this gorgeous male.
I’m not even interested. I don’t know why I enjoyed that kiss so much.
“It’s okay.” Noah moves off me and rolls me back to my side, settling behind me in spoon position, the way he was before. “It won’t happen again.”
He wraps a strong arm around my waist and pulls me back against him. For a moment, I wait, breath held, body singing at his closeness. My heart pounds at his audacity. Is he going to stay in this bed with me? All night?
There’s no way I’ll be able to sleep with him here.
Except he starts softly stroking my hair with his free hand, and it feels so good, I forget about my objections. His breath steadies into a slow, deep rhythm, guiding me into relaxation. The rain outside has slowed to a gentle lull.
I keep my eyes open for a few moments, afraid the visions will come back, but when they drift close, there’s nothing but darkness. Nothing but darkness and the feather touch of Noah’s fingertips stroking my hair. Somehow, by some unknown miracle, I fall into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Noah
Aster’s peach magnolia scent rolls over me like a heady drug. I didn’t mean to kiss her. I meant to soothe her. To ask why she was crying and say the right words to make it right. Not that words are my specialty.
The idea that she might be crying because I am holding her here as my prisoner gutted me. But then she projected words right into my head and said she knew I wouldn’t hurt her.
I shouldn’t be so shocked. We’re obviously telepathically connected. That was how we’ve been dreaming the same dream. She’s a powerful Seeress. Somehow, she’s created a connection into my mind.
She was crying because of something else. Maybe the thing that made her meet me in that tunnel. I wanted to make it better, and then suddenly, I was kissing her.
Not tenderly. Not gently. Not with consent.
I kissed her like a male crazed with passion. Like a wolf who’s met his mate.
The idea occurred to me before—that I’ve been seeing her in my dreams because she’s mine.
She belongs to me.
I have to admit that holding her as she sleeps feels like a fucking privilege. I’m telling myself I’m doing it to keep her from escaping. I’m doing it to soothe away her nightmares or the fits she has when she gets her visions. But those are lies.
Holding her, touching her, breathing in her scent feels like home.
Maybe fate didn’t bring Aster to me to help find my mother. Maybe fate wanted me to rescue her from whatever nightmare she’s living out in that prison tower. Or maybe the moon goddess was connecting two mates.
Fuck. Even though the idea brings a kind of chaotic excitement to my cells, I don’t want to examine this possibility.
Mating the Adalwulf Seeress–their most protected asset–isn’t a possibility for me.
I’ve spent my whole life working on this long game to infiltrate them and find where they keep their Moonborn.
To try to talk sense into my mother, and if I can’t, to bring down the entire violent cult that indoctrinated her with their warped ideology.
They bred my mother like a slave. They tried to kill me at birth.
They need to be extinguished.
So yes, I will use Aster to get what I want, but complicating this plan with romance? With mating?
Not a possibility.