19. Anouk #2
I want to laugh, but his mouth has moved lower, and the sound that comes out is decidedly not laughter. My fingers find his hair, grip tight, and I feel the low sound of his satisfaction against my skin, and my grip tightens in response.
My magic responds to his attention—not fighting me, not threatening to spiral. Rising to meet him. The air around us warms. On his bedside table, a small herb cutting I hadn’t noticed starts growing, vines reaching toward the ceiling.
“Your magic…” he observes, and there’s wonder in his voice.
“Is your fault.” I drag him back to my mouth. “Don’t stop.”
He doesn’t stop.
Everything I’ve been denying myself, everything I’ve held back behind walls of control and professionalism—he unlocks it all.
His hands are everywhere, his mouth relentless, and somewhere in the middle of it all, I forget to be the coven leader.
Forget to be strong. Forget everything except the sensation of being wanted, being claimed, being his.
My magic answers every touch, every kiss, every whispered word. The herbs growing wild now, spreading across surfaces, filling the room with green life.
“Your magic is organizing my bedroom,” he observes between kisses.
“It’s a nervous habit.”
“You’re nervous?”
“I’m overwhelmed.” Honest. Raw. “In the best possible way.”
His smile is wicked, satisfied. “Then let me overwhelm you more.”
The claiming mark on my shoulder aches with urgency. The one from the public claiming—incomplete, a promise rather than a seal. Now it’s demanding more. Demanding completion.
“Caius.” His name comes out broken. “I need—”
“I know what you need.” His teeth scrape my shoulder, right over the mark. “I’ve always known.”
He bites.
Not gentle. Not careful. A wolf claiming his mate, marking her in the most primal way possible. Pain flares, bright and sharp, and then—
Completion.
The mark burns itself deeply into my flesh, permanent and unbreakable. And with it comes the full awareness of him—not his thoughts, not his emotions, but his presence. His location. The absolute certainty that no matter where I go, I will always know where to find him.
My magic surges in response. Without conscious thought, without intention, power pours from me and into him—searing my own mark into his skin, claiming him as thoroughly as he’s claimed me.
“Anouk—” His voice breaks. His whole body shudders.
“Mine.” The word is fierce, possessive, utterly certain. “You’re mine now, wolf.”
“Always.” He captures my mouth again. “Always yours.”
Afterward, we lie tangled in his sheets.
The cabin around us has been transformed. Herbs grow from every surface—from the bedside table, from cracks in the floorboards, from the windowsill where moonlight pools.
My magic, at peace at last. Anchored. Complete.
“Your magic did that.” Caius traces the claiming mark on my shoulder, fresh and sensitive. “All of it.”
“I couldn’t control it.”
“You didn’t need to.” He gathers me against his chest, and I let him—let myself be held, be comforted, be small in a way I haven’t allowed in years. “It knew what it wanted. So did I.”
“What did you want?”
“You.” Simple. Certain. “Just you. Always you.”
He holds me tighter still, until my head rests on his chest and his heartbeat echoes in my ear. “We’ve always filled silence with cleverness. Tonight, we can just… be.”
“Being is surprisingly difficult.”
“Only because you’re not used to it.” His fingers trace lazy patterns on my back. “Give it time. You’ll learn to stop thinking so much.”
“I never stop thinking. It’s a curse.”
“It’s a gift.” He kisses the top of my head. “Your mind is one of the things I love most about you.”
Love. The word lands differently now. Weighted with meaning.
“I should have done this sooner.”
“We weren’t ready before.” He presses a kiss to my hair. “Neither of us. We had too much to prove, too many responsibilities to hide behind. We needed to become the people we are now before we could choose each other properly.”
“That’s very philosophical for a wolf.”
“I’m a deep thinker. Ask anyone.”
“Your pack probably thinks you just brood attractively.”
“That too.” His smile is warm against my temple. “But mostly I’ve been thinking about you. What our life could look like. What I’d do if I ever got the chance to show you how I feel.”
“And what does it look like? Our life?”
“Like this.” His arm tightens around me. “Like waking up with you. Like having you in my space, your herbs growing wild, your elegant coat over my chair. Like building a life that’s ours, not just mine.”
“That sounds terrifyingly romantic.”
“I’ve had years to plan romantic statements. You’re going to hear a lot of them.”
The laugh catches me by surprise—genuine, unguarded. A sound I barely recognize as mine. It feels strange in my chest. Strange and wonderful.
“I love you.”
The words slip out before I can stop them. Unplanned. Uncontrolled.
Caius goes very still.
I should take it back. Qualify it. Explain that I meant it in a general sense, not a—
“I love you too.” His voice is rough, thick with emotion. “I’ve needed to say that for longer than you can imagine.”
“How long?”
“Since the first time you argued with me in a council meeting. You were defending some procedural point that no one else cared about, and you were so fierce about it, so absolutely certain you were right—” He laughs, soft and wondering. “I knew then.”
“And you never said anything.”
“You weren’t ready to hear it. You would have run, and I would have lost any chance of…” He gestures at the room, at us, at everything. “This. I’d rather have you in my life as a colleague than not at all.”
“That’s incredibly patient.”
“I’m a wolf. We wait for what we want.”
“And now?”
“Now I don’t have to wait anymore.” He tilts my face up, kisses me slow and sweet.
“Now I get to tell you every day. I love you. I love your terrible coffee preferences and your terrifying competence and your secret romance novel weakness. I love that you pretend to be cold when you feel everything so deeply. I love that you let me see the real you, even when it scares you.”
“It terrifies me.”
“I know.” Another kiss. “I love that too.”
We lie there in silence, the moon rising outside the window, his heartbeat steady beneath my ear. For the first time in years—maybe the first time ever—I feel completely at peace. No responsibilities pressing. No walls to maintain. Just this. Just us.
“Say it again,” I whisper.
“I love you.”
“Again.”
He laughs and rolls me beneath him, and then he’s saying it against my mouth, my throat, my shoulder, my claiming mark—saying it in words and touches and the way he looks at me, like I’m everything he’s ever wanted.
Dawn breaks over the mountains before either of us stops.