Chapter 23 Kendra
KENDRA
Ipull the SUV in front of the cabin and cut the engine, my hands staying on the wheel for a second longer than they need to, fingers loosening one at a time as the quiet of the clearing settles around me.
The trees are thick on every side, pines so tall they blur into the gray sky, and the last of the daylight is turning everything gold at the edges.
I unbuckle my seatbelt, climb out, and look for him.
He was behind me the whole drive, his bare feet striking the wet road in a rhythm that never faltered, generating enough heat that steam rose off his shoulders in the cold air, and I watched him in the mirror every fifteen seconds.
But somewhere in the last stretch, between the curve past the spa and the turnoff to the community lands, he disappeared into the treeline.
I didn’t panic. He promised to stay close, and the pull behind my ribs is pointing east toward the trees, telling me he’s right there.
“Kojo?” I call out, turning a full circle in front of the cabin. The clearing is empty and the wind moves through the pines and carries nothing back to me. “Kojo, where are you?”
Then I hear it, a low sound from the treeline that is not quite a laugh and not quite a growl, something between the two that vibrates at a frequency I feel in my teeth before my ears fully register it.
My body locks up, my feet planting into the dirt, everything firing at once, not in fear but in recognition.
He steps out of the trees one paw at a time, and my breath leaves me in a rush that fogs white in front of my face.
He is enormous, broader than I imagined, his body built for a kind of power that his human form only hints at. His fur is tawny brown-gray, lighter along his shoulders and back, darker across his face and muzzle where the markings deepen into something almost black. His ears are rounded.
The ridge runs his full back, every spike pressed flat, and I understand the gesture instinctively — I’ve watched his human ridge long enough to read it. He is making himself small for me.
He lowers himself into a sitting position on the wet earth and looks at me with amber eyes I already know. They watched me sleep. They studied my face while I talked about my mother. They softened every time I said his name. Different body, but nothing about those eyes has changed.
I step forward with my palm extended, trembling, fingers reaching for his snout and stopping just short — the enormity of what I am looking at finally registers in my body and my arm doesn’t know how to close the last inch.
He lets out another sound, softer this time, a low cackle tuned to something I feel in my chest rather than hear with my ears, and my feet carry me the rest of the distance without my permission.
My fingertips brush the bridge of his snout and the contact sends a current through my hand. I drop to my knees on the cold damp ground and I do not care about the mud or the temperature. The thing looking back at me is real.
“You’re beautiful,” I whisper, and he presses closer and drags his tongue across my chin and the laugh that comes out of me is wet and broken and wonderful. I wrap my arms around his neck and bury my face in his fur, breathing him in, and he smells like Kojo but wilder, like the earth after a fire.
“I can’t believe you’re mine,” I say into his fur, and he rumbles beneath my arms.
I pull back and plant a kiss on his snout, right between those amber eyes. When I run my fingers over his head his eyes half-close and a sound escapes him that is pure contentment.
“Now I get to thank you in person.” I cradle his massive face in both hands, and he tilts his head, one ear rotating forward like he’s trying to figure out what I mean. I stroke the short fur along his jaw while I find the words.
“For keeping Kojo alive. Running with him, fighting for him, refusing to let him give up when he lost everything.” My voice cracks on the last word. “And I’m sorry for all that you lost. Your queen, your village, your family. I wish I’d found you both sooner.”
A whine rises from his throat, high and thin, and he pushes forward, pressing his massive head into my chest until I have to brace my feet to keep from falling backward.
I hold him and let him press into me, my fingers working through his fur, scratching behind his ears, and I start laughing — kneeling in the mud at dusk scratching the ears of a supernatural hyena the size of a small horse on a piece of land I didn’t know existed two weeks ago.
But the laughter collapses into something else, something that starts in the base of my throat and climbs upward until my vision blurs and my chest seizes and the sound coming out of me isn’t laughing anymore.
I’m crying. Not gracefully, either — features crumpled, shoulders shaking, my body finally catching up to what my mind has been holding off for days.
The pizza deliveries in the blizzard, the apartment with the mildew smell, the HR offices where someone younger than me explains that my position has been eliminated.
All of it is finished, and the woman who lived it is kneeling in the dirt in Wintermoon with her arms around a creature that should not exist, becoming someone she doesn’t know how to be yet.
His reaction is immediate, the whine turning into a yelp as he jerks backward, his ridge shooting upright along his back in a full spike before pressing flat again just as fast, cycling between alarm states because he can’t decide whether to fight the thing making me cry or run from it.
He starts pacing, circling me in tight loops, his paws churning the wet ground, then stops and presses his nose to my cheek and whimpers when my tears don’t stop.
“No, no, I’m sorry.” I reach for him, my fingers finding his cheek, sniffling hard and trying to steady my voice. “I’m okay, I’m just overwhelmed, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
But what I see makes me gasp and drop my hand. His body is changing before I can finish the sentence, the fur receding, pulling back like a tide going out, revealing skin.
His bones shift and crack, his frame expanding upward, his paws splitting into fingers that dig into the earth as his limbs lengthen and straighten.
The ridge compresses, spikes softening into the thick coarse strip of hair that runs down his human back, and his jaw reforms last, the muzzle shortening, his features assembling themselves into the face I know.
And then Kojo is standing in front of me, naked, steam rising off his skin in the cold air, his chest heaving from the shift.
He crosses the distance in two strides with his hands finding my face before I can blink, cupping my jaw in both palms and tilting my head up, his amber eyes scanning every inch of me.
“Kendra, did I hurt you?” His voice is wrecked, raw from the shift. “Did my Bouda harm you?”
I shake my head and try to speak but nothing comes out because the tears are still running and he is so close and so worried and the steam coming off his bare skin wraps around both of us and I can’t form words.
Something close to panic crosses his face and he scoops me off the ground, one arm under my knees and one behind my back, lifting me like I weigh nothing.
He takes the cabin stairs two at a time, nudges the door open with his shoulder, carries me through the front room and up the staircase, and sets me on the bed so gently that it makes me cry even harder.
He pulls off my shoes one at a time, peels my coat from my arms, and when I’m down to my shirt and pants and my cheeks are still a mess he drops to his knees at the edge of the bed.
“I will do anything, Kendra.” His hands find my legs and he rubs them in slow steady strokes from my knee to my ankle, his furnace heat seeping through my pants and into my muscles.
“Say what to do and I will do it. Say what is wrong and I will fix it. I will hunt whatever made you cry and I will bring you its teeth.”
That one gets a laugh out of me, wet and ragged, and I watch him kneeling naked on the floor with his ridge shifting frantically, every spike cycling between flat and half-erect — his body trying to process twelve emotions at once and failing at all of them.
He lays his head on my lap and I feel his exhale shudder through him, a long unsteady breath that tells me he was more afraid than he showed. I take a moment to breathe, to wipe my face with my palms, and then I look down at this impossible man.
I run my fingers over his head and his ridge responds instantly, every spike softening beneath my touch, flattening. My hand is the off switch for every alarm his body knows how to sound.
“I’m sorry for breaking down like that.” I sniffle and smooth my thumb along his cheek. “I just got overwhelmed. Seeing your Bouda, it made everything real for me. My old life is done and this is my life now and I don’t know all the rules yet.”
He lifts his chin and his amber eyes are wet.
“I don’t know the first thing about being a Bouda queen.
” My voice steadies as I say it — the admission feels less like a confession and more like a door opening.
“Even when you and Zaki explain things to me, half of it doesn’t stick.
The customs, the rituals, how the clan is supposed to work. I’m trying, but I’m so far behind.”
I take a breath and push through. “But I want to be the woman you need. I’ll try, Alema...” I stumble on it, my tongue tripping over the syllables I haven’t said enough times to own. “Alemayehu.”
Something flashes in his gaze and his grip stops moving on my legs, and for a breath, he is completely still while I watch a wall come down behind his eyes.
Before I can process the change, his head lifts from my lap and his grip finds my waist and I’m on my back with the mattress catching me. He climbs onto the bed, and his mouth crashes into mine.