Chapter 27
The morning of the full moon, Robbie woke to a mouthful of Nadja’s hair and the sensation of electricity sparking beneath his skin. Today was the day everything changed. He would shift for the first time. He would join the pack. Maybe they would join the pack.
Nadja was so beautiful in the bleary light that filtered through the curtains.
She was beautiful all the time, but in the blossoming dawn, her hair fanned around her, her lips parted in sleep, she made him wish that he was any kind of photographer or painter, someone who could capture beauty and preserve it forever.
Her hand rested on top of her pillow, just in front of her face.
He’d borrowed that hot pink nail polish from JJ’s nieces to paint his nails, and Nadja had asked him to paint hers to match.
She’d been quiet as they sat at the kitchen table, him holding her hand gently in his as he swept the brush down each nail with care, but she was often quiet.
Thoughtful. He liked that about her. But she’d smiled and teased him, and he’d smiled back.
It had been so nice, so… domestic in a way that he hadn’t experienced in a long time.
He hadn’t realized how much he’d longed for that sort of comfort.
When he’d moved in with Callum, it had almost felt like a home.
Almost. But this, coming home to Nadja every night, painting her nails in the yellow glow of the overhead light, brushing their teeth side by side and then climbing into bed, her wearing socks and one of his T-shirts, had felt homey in a way that nothing had in a very long time. If ever.
He kissed her neck, and she shifted in her sleep. As he dragged his lips softly up the slope of her shoulder, he remembered what JJ had said to him on that second run together, when he’d asked about mates.
“You hope they’re kind to you, that they help, that they don’t go out of the way to make your life harder.
You hope they’re stable and take care of themselves, that they want to take care of you.
You hope they’re good and generous and caring and every other thing a person might be in a perfect world. ”
Nadja hummed a sigh as he sucked gently on the skin at the top of her shoulder.
“But then there’s the kind of mates everyone dreams about.
The kind that exists on a whole different level.
Every single thing about them is meant just for you.
You’re like those puzzle blocks that slot together perfectly.
You shore up each other’s weak spots and shine light on the strong spots.
You are perfect for one another on a cellular level. ”
Nadja’s arm reached behind, and Robbie closed his eyes when her fingers rubbed against the growing hair on the back of his head.
She stretched her body sleepily, pressing her ass into the cradle of his hip before straightening her body, stretching, thrusting her breasts forward and reaching her toes down toward the footboard.
He reached down and pulled her top leg up, her knee bent, opening her to him.
It would have been so easy to thrust into her, to ask her if he could and then to slip into her waiting warmth.
But he didn’t want to skip the good stuff to get to the other good stuff.
He skimmed his fingers along the back of her thigh before trailing them over the crest of her hip and toward her center.
“Good morning,” she said, her voice hoarse from sleep.
“Good morning, precious,” he said, kissing her neck. “Is this okay?”
She nodded her head, and he began to trace the delicate topography of her sex with a single finger.
At Nadja’s sigh, he slipped the tip of his pinkie into her core. She gripped the back of his head.
He withdrew his finger and went back to his lazy tracing, circling around but never quite touching her clit.
“You’re a tease, Robbie,” she said, reaching back between them and taking a firm hold of the erection that tented his boxer briefs.
He gasped at the sensation. Her fingers were warm and strong, and he thrust his hips into her hold, groaning as she squeezed him gently.
“I don’t want to rush this,” he said, kissing her neck and nipping her earlobe. “The next time we do this…”
He trailed off and told himself that she hadn’t just tensed in his arms. She was just shifting, getting more comfortable. She flipped quickly, pushing him onto his back and rising over him, straddling his hips, her knees on either side of his ribs as she rested her palms against his bare chest.
“The next time we do this, you’ll be a genuine wolf.”
She was so much stronger than she’d been.
She practically glowed in the early morning light as she ground her hips down against his, her eyelids fluttering closed as she did.
He wanted to count every single freckle on her arms, to take a ballpoint pen and connect them, to make art out of them.
He wanted to kiss her until her lips were berry red and swollen, to suck on her nipples until they matched, until they were too sensitive to touch.
He wanted to drive her into the mattress so hard and so many times that he left an imprint of her body, an imprint that he’d sleep in until the day he died.
There were too many clothes between them.
She was sleeping in panties and one of his T-shirts, having kicked her socks off in the middle of the night.
He was in boxer briefs, but the two layers of cotton, though thin, were still too much.
Her panties were old, having been washed so many times as to be threadbare in some placed.
He reached for them, pressing his thumbs into one especially thin-looking spot and hooking them, tearing the worn cotton in half.
Nadja gasped and stopped her lazy grinding. Her eyelids flew open.
“I’m sorry, Doc. I—”
But he never got to finish the thought because she pounced, her mouth descending on his hungrily.
She kissed him with an intensity that he’d never experienced before, like she was fueling up to fly to the moon.
He poured his lust, his like, his everything into the kiss, his hips greedily rising up toward hers, grinding against her now-bare cunt.
She reached down, and together they clumsily pulled his boxer briefs down enough that his erection sprung free.
Without preamble, she sat up and took him in her hand, holding him steady as she slid down onto him, taking him to the root in one stroke.
He arched off the bed, the feeling of her tight clasp too much, his body rebelling against the sudden need to come.
He gripped her hips in his hands, his fingers pressing into her skin and he had the sudden urge to tattoo the outline of her hands on his chest, just like this, and to do the same to the outline of his fingers clinging to her body as if she’d fly away if he loosened his hold even a little.
“You’re incredible,” she gasped and she tried to ride him, to buck against his tight hold restraining her pelvis so that it stayed flush with his.
“You’re gonna kill me, Doc,” he said through gritted teeth.
She stopped writhing then, resting her full weight on the cradle of his hips, her palms warm against his chest. Nadja leaned down and kissed him gently.
“I’m sorry,” she said against his lips.
His tongue danced with hers.
“If I die inside of you like this, I’ll be the luckiest son of a gun in the world.”
She snorted, that sound that never failed to make him smile.
“You’re a gift, Nadja,” he said, letting go of one hip to thread his fingers through her chin-length hair, cradling the back of her head as he kissed her, feeling like his heart was superheated in his chest.
She shook her head, pulling away, but he tightened his hold on her hair and hip, holding her close, his lips brushing against hers with every word as he said, “You are a gift, Nadja. To the world. To this pack. To me.”
Tears welled in her eyes, and he felt one fall, landing in the space where his cheek met his nose.
It ran down the divot of his nostril, over his top lip, and down to where their lips were joined again.
He didn’t think he was imagining the salty taste of that tear, but he took it, took part of her into himself in the most literal sense, the way she was taking part of him inside of her.
“You’re the gift, Robbie,” she whispered. “And whatever happens, I hope that you never ever forget it.”
There was no more talking after that. She rode him slowly, their kissing constant, the orgasm building with the easy intensity of a wave until it broke over him, but not before he reached between them with his hand and thumbed her clit until she gasped into his mouth, shaking and keening as she came.
Then, and only then, did he let the wave of his own release wash over him, dragging him under as he lost himself in the feeling of having her over him, around him, of being surrounded by her, her tight cunt, her warm body.
Later, he went for a run with JJ. They sprinted around the lake together, stopping at the large boulder when they were done, resting against it while they caught their breath.
“Are you only doing this as a human because I can’t shift yet?” Robbie asked with a laugh, wiping sweat from his forehead.
“Keeps the reflexes sharp,” JJ said, reaching his big arms overhead. “Running as a wolf is easy. I could run all day as a wolf. But as a human, I have to work harder. It’s good for me.”
That made sense to Robbie. He remembered watching a National Geographic documentary about wolves, about their stamina to lope for hours. That would be different. He wondered what else would be different.
“You ready for tonight?” JJ asked.
“I’m anxious,” Robbie admitted.
“Of course you are. You’re about to become a whole different animal. Well, you are that animal, but you’re about to inhabit a whole different body.”
Robbie nodded.
“Is Nadja nervous about tonight?”
If she was, she hadn’t said so. When JJ had come to pick him up for the run, he’d come inside the cabin and explained to Nadja and Robbie that the run would start whenever the moon rose full.
Robbie would shift, and the pack would run around the lake together.
Nadja would meet them right here at the boulder by the lake.
The pack would watch while they performed the mating ceremony.
Because Nadja couldn’t shift, Robbie would do it in his human form.
Bites would be exchanged. The pack would escort Robbie and Nadja back to the cabin before going out to hunt together.
However they chose to celebrate then was their business.
Nadja had looked at her hands, clasped in her lap while JJ had talked.
Robbie had gotten so excited about the prospect of mating her that he’d forgotten that she had only agreed to this to save him, that this was meant to be pretend.
But that had been weeks ago. So much had changed since then.
They were together now. Maybe they hadn’t had an official conversation or put a label on it, but they were together.
They slept tangled together every night and woke the same way every morning.
They ate together, brushed their teeth together, folded laundry together.
They talked and laughed and she smiled at him when he smacked her ass as he walked past.
“I think I love her,” Robbie blurted out to JJ and the birds and the lake, to the universe at large.
“Of course you do,” JJ said matter-of-factly.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that she’s your mate. She’s your fated mate.”
“How do you know that?”
JJ held his arms out, gesturing at the wild world around them.
“You found yourself in her town, out of all the towns in the world. You called her to make an appointment, out of all of the therapists in the world. You were in her office when your shift first started. She knew me. She brought you here. She stayed with you. She cared enough about you, a total stranger, to lie to an entire pack of other strangers and tell them that you’re mates.
And don’t even get me started on the way you two smell together. ”
Robbie’s head was reeling. “Smell? How do we smell?”
“Like a goddamned carnival. You smell like funnel cake, and she smells like fresh squeezed lemonade. The kind they make at those carts with way too much sugar and put on the crushed ice. She never smelled like that before.”
A little piece of Robbie’s brain told him that he should be jealous, but he wasn’t. He was awed. Robbie leaned against the rock, laid backwards until his back touched the cold stone, stared up at the overcast sky.
“She’s my mate,” he said, his heart pounding in his chest.
“Sure is, pup,” JJ said, slapping Robbie on the shoulder.
“But what if she doesn’t want to stay? What if she doesn’t want to be mates?” The panic that Robbie hadn’t felt in weeks, since coming to the pack commune, rose, sharp and sudden. “I don’t want her to be trapped. What if she wants to leave?”
“There’s nothing keeping either of you here, except community maybe. You’re a part of this pack now. But if she doesn’t want to be, there’s nothing holding you here. You could go with her.”
Robbie felt his mind spinning with possibilities. He loved it here. He loved the woods and the pack and the cooking, feeding so many appreciative people. He loved the lake and this rock and the cozy cabin with the bad lightbulbs and no internet or cell service. He loved it all.
But he loved her more.
It became so obvious in that moment. He loved her infinitely, with every single cell in his body.
What that what it meant to find your fated mate? Finding the person that made you feel so much, so big, that your heart threatened to collapse every other organ in your body?
“I have to talk to her. I have to tell her,” Robbie said, already moving away from JJ.
They’d been gone hours, running all over the woods together, but he found that he couldn’t be away from her another second. He needed to talk to her, to tell her that he loved her, to ask her to stay.
And if she didn’t want to stay, to beg her to let him go with her wherever she went.