8. Epilogue – five months later #3
Or maybe the feeling across our bond of Lee in mid-shift made the difference.
Even in the depths of my transformation, when the rest of the world had become a blur of half-human half-wolf senses and a painful stretch of bone and sinew, I was aware of Lee.
I was surrounded by his scent as the wolf in him grew stronger.
In my most lost moments, I knew he was shifting at my side.
When I’d settled in my fur, I kept my eyes closed, waiting, trying to figure out what I felt. Would I open my eyes to a desire to bow head to Lee as my Alpha? He’d finished his shift faster, sometimes a sign of a more dominant wolf. His bigger size was more notable in fur…
Lee chuffed and nudged me with his nose.
Over our bond, I didn’t feel anger or disdain or a lust for power.
A little impatience, maybe. I blinked and looked up.
With a soft yip, Lee rose on his hind legs, placed a big paw on the lever knob, and popped the bedroom door open.
We ducked through the main room to the kitchen, moving silently.
With the blinds drawn, no one could look inside to see two wolves in a human house.
The moment of risk was when we left and when we got back home.
Zipper’s cat door was far too small for us.
I’d known wolves who used a dog door, but Lee hadn’t included one.
He had, however, put a lever handle in place of a round one on the kitchen door as well.
Lee flipped the latch with his nose and pawed the handle open, only to come face to face with Zipper on the back step.
The weasel scolded him with a shrill whistle, then scurried past us, giving me a sharp-toothed nip on the paw in welcome, and leaped up to the kitchen counter to scavenge.
Lee shook his head, shouldered the door wider for me, and then closed it behind us with a nudge.
Crouching low, we skulked between the bushes and the woodpile, following the overgrown path away from Lee’s back door.
The sun had not yet set, and there were houses on either side of his, although the nearest was two hundred yards off.
Lee had deliberately let a lot of brush grow around his perimeter as cover, but we still crept in silence, our bellies low to the ground.
Once we got past the creek that ran behind his property, the forest became wilder and less traveled.
Lee left the path and hurdled a fallen log, then circled a boulder and began working his way uphill.
I stuck to his shoulder. That position felt natural, comfortable, my wolf-instincts reveling in the fall of four paws on the ground, the stretch of muscles, and the bulk of the packmate at my side.
In skin, I’d been worried over submitting to Lee’s Alpha, but out here in the wild in fur, that fear melted away.
Lee would never hurt me. I was as certain of that as I was of breathing.
Wouldn’t hurt me, wouldn’t compel me. Despite his size and strength, I felt no instinct to defer to him.
I nipped his neck, half in fun, half testing, pulling out a tuft of hair.
Over the bond I felt the sting, and Lee whirled, catching me off balance and bearing me to the ground, but all I caught was amusement and exhilaration from him. No sense that I’d overstepped my rank.
Maybe it is a mate bond. Joy filled me as I wriggled out from under Lee and leaped forward.
He ran back at my shoulder now, and that position felt no less right.
No less natural. We wound between trees and boulders, leaving the human-traveled parts of the forest behind, climbing higher.
My mate and I, seeking our future, together and free.
***
Lee
Running with Micah had always been a pleasure, but this was something more.
I left the mate bond between us open wide, and I could feel him there in my head.
I knew when his front paw landed on a sharper rock, the small pain and momentary hitch in his stride matched in my head and in my ears.
I felt the comfort growing in him as he began to trust this connection we shared.
Many, many years ago, I’d had a dream like this, of following Micah through the forest, knowing he was mine. I’d awakened thinking I was a lovesick fool, pining for the impossible. A lot of life had come between that moment and this one, but now the impossible was true.
Pack. Mate. Bonded. Love. My wolf had thought those words when we were in skin, even when I decided I was fine with bowing head to Micah as my Alpha, if that was what had happened. Now the truth resonated through me.
Mate. Equals. He’d followed me, now I followed him. And neither one felt even slightly wrong.
Micah led us to a place we’d stopped a few times earlier in the summer.
Above a steep drop, an outcropping of dark granite caught the sun and held its warmth after sunset.
We’d lounged here, panting gently from hunting down a mule deer, enjoying the wolf life.
Now, the sun was still up, but the air held an October chill.
The first snows of the season had melted, but they’d return with a vengeance soon.
So despite the warm rocks, I hesitated when Micah gave the bark that meant he was going to shift.
Still, I wasn’t his Alpha or his mother, so I nodded and stood guard as he lay down well back from the cliff edge and began to change.
His shift flowed over him, ungraceful but not ugly, achy and tight over the bond, but not too painful.
Fur receded, limbs lengthened, his chest rounded, his body writhing and reforming.
After a couple of minutes, he lay there naked on the granite, breathing hard.
“Dang, that’s rough on the skin.” He sat up and patted a reddened spot on his hip where he’d grazed it. “Your turn.”
In human form, I might’ve joked about him wanting me to get scraped up to match.
In wolf form, all I could do was seek out a hollow with a few dead leaves, colder but less like sandpaper.
I was happy and well fed and my mate was waiting for me.
The shift flowed through me faster than it ever had before.
When my eyes were human-sharp, and my nose human-dull, I flexed my fingers and toes a few times and then sat up.
“And you thought I was silly to have my shirt off chopping wood in the cold? This is ridiculous. My balls want to climb up inside me.”
I was exaggerating. Even in skin, we wolves ran warm, and I could tolerate this temperature naked well enough, but Micah laughed like I’d hoped.
“My poor sensitive werewolf. Come here.”
He led me over to sit side by side, looking out across the valley. The rock under my ass held some warmth, Micah’s arm across my shoulders held way more, and the valleys and mountains of Wyoming stretched out below us.
“How long are you home for?” I asked.
Micah chuckled, a hint of surprise over the bond, and I wondered if he’d expected some kind of poetry to go with this moment. If so, he still needed to get to know me better.
“Depends,” he replied. “The current assignment is black-and-white shots for a newspaper serial, so I can do my developing in Lindy’s darkroom, in exchange for fresh venison. Assuming you can get off your furry butt and help me hunt some.”
“It’ll be my pleasure,” I said, meaning every word of that.
“I gave your phone number to a nice editor from the Audubon Magazine, so they might call for me. They were asking for shots of the White-Tailed Ptarmigan in winter. I wrote that I didn’t have any in stock but could make a trip into the mountains to get some, if they liked. Depends on who else submits what.”
“That’d be a feather in your cap.” I’d learned a lot about which wildlife magazines were prestigious over the last five months. Audubon was a good one.
“A feather. Ha ha.” Micah hugged my shoulder. “Either way, I expect you’ll see a lot of me for a while.”
“Maybe for Christmas?” I asked. We wolves were rarely religious, given we bent knee to our Alphas before any god. But we lived among humans, and my childhood memories of Christmas before Mom died still held a warm place in my heart.
“Probably can be arranged. Is that important?”
“Just a thought. I haven’t spent the holiday with anyone else in decades.”
Micah kissed me on the temple. “Then we will.”
“Your darkroom is kind of a Christmas gift,” I said, spilling the beans. I wouldn’t be able to keep something like that a secret anyhow. “Although I may not get the electric heat put in till spring.”
“You’re building me a darkroom?” He grinned widely.
“I might be. If you’re staying.”
“Hey, we’re bonded now. Wherever I go, you know I’ll come back to you. Was true before. Doubly true now.”
“So you agree it is a mate bond,” I grumbled, to hide how full my heart felt to hear those words.
“Seems to be.” Micah ran his hand down my chest, shoulder to nipple to stomach, and I felt that touch inside and out.
“I’ve heard the bond fades some after the first day.
We should take advantage. Imagine what sex will be like with you in my head and me in yours.
” He kissed me, the wildness of his wolf close under his skin, heavy in my nose.
I kissed him back, chasing the taste of his mouth that I loved, relishing the echo of his-mouth my-mouth that made the kiss resonate.
When we separated, I said, “We have a big bed at home. Or some hard rock that’s abrading my tender bits in the freezing air right here.”
“Both good options.”
“I vote bed. Where we can take our time.”
“Seconded.”
But neither of us leaped up to shift and run back to the house.
Instead, we sat there, side by side, arms around each other.
I leaned my head on Micah’s dark hair. Every place where we touched lit up like a small sun, me-and-Micah, in each other’s heads and hearts.
The glory of the world spun around us. Someday, Micah would go out and chase that beauty again, but for the first time, I truly felt, down in my soul, that he’d always come home to me.
Mate, my wolf said impatiently, and then run, hunt. Together.
Micah shuffled closer to me, letting my bulk shield him from the wind, and I had no problem with that.
A bald eagle launched from a tree behind us and circled the sky, climbing on a thermal toward the clouds.
The river far below sparkled in reflections of gold from the setting sun.
Micah breathed against my skin and his heart beat next to mine.
The sweetness of the moment and the grandeur of the view might’ve invited poetry, but Micah would have to settle for a man of fewer words.
“I love you,” I told my long-lost mate, and the glory of being found sang through us both. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
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