Chapter Four
Samhain Night
The air was cold. It always was.
The forest felt tight, coiled like a held breath. A thin fog drifted low to the ground, curling through the trees like smoke off a dying fire. A light wind stirred the leaves and with them, whispers. Faint voices that usually didn’t belong to this world. They would tonight.
Above, the moon was rising, full and tinged with copper.
A Hunter’s Moon. It lit the sky and the forest alike in that eerie, amber glow that never looked quite real.
Callie didn’t need its light, whatever color it was.
She could’ve found this place with a blindfold because her heart was tethered to it.
Every year, she came here.
Every year, she tried.
And every year, she cried when Owen twisted in agony and was torn from her again, their precious few hours collapsing into nothing but pain, silence, and her, crying in the memory of his arms.
Not this freaking year.
She dropped to her knees and got to work.
She’d blamed those first failed attempts on the fact that she had no magic, but she’d learned better. Rituals weren’t just about power. They were about structure, intention, and precision and Mr. Fraser, the most magical authority ever, had given her everything she needed to make tonight work.
She wouldn’t be casting, she’d be executing–a lot like a technician. Definitely not a witch. The magic would come from Samhain itself, from a night when the veil thinned and the line between life and death and magic blurred.
She unshouldered the supply bag and set it near the marble slab Rex had hauled out here earlier.
Mr. Fraser said marble was a spirit stone, something about purity, transition, passage.
Whatever. It felt cold as bone and heavy as grief, and that was good enough.
She laid a clean white, unstitched cloth across it, the purest she owned.
On that, she placed the silver blade she’d cleaned until it gleamed, the shirt she’d stitched with thread soaked in her own blood, and a small lantern, flickering with soft yellow fire, to guide his soul home.
She’d marked the clearing with a circle of smooth river stones, each one topped with a sewing needle. Strands of silver ribbons looped like threads of moonlight between them.
It was simple, she was aware of that, but Mr. Fraser had said it would be enough—as long as she laid the circle right, remembered every word of the counterspell, and didn’t speak it too early. Or too late.
No pressure or anything.
When everything was done, she stepped back, breath fogging in the chill, heart beating far too loud. She checked the time.
Still a couple of hours before midnight, when the veil thinned to nearly nothing and the spirits slipped through. Midnight was when Owen always came back.
She left the circle and walked to the edge of the clearing where she’d laid out a cluster of blankets over the frozen ground. She slipped into the heavy sleeping bag, threw more layers over herself, and curled in tight.
Then she pulled out her phone and started reading. Because reading was easier than crying and there was still time to hope.
Owen appeared like the night couldn’t bear to be without him anymore.
It started as a shimmer, moonlight trying to form a shape. The air rippled, folded in on itself, and then—
He stepped out of the dark. Or maybe he was the dark, given shape and breath and body.
First came the outline. Then the details.
The corded arms. The curve of his shoulders.
The wild mop of dark curls, damp with fog.
She pressed her palm to her mouth when she saw his lips, the same stubborn mouth that had always tilted into a smirk when he was about to tease her senseless.
Then the nose he nuzzled her with. And then the eyes.
She saved them for last.
Brown. Warm. Sweet. And locked on hers like they’d been searching through another year of darkness just to find her again.
Callie couldn’t move. Or breathe. Or do any other thing other than watching while her heart slammed so hard against her ribs it hurt. Her eyes burned, flooded. She wiped at them, but the tears just kept coming.
Because God, he was real.
That broke her.
She ran. Full tilt, stumbling over her own sob, through the last wisps of magic still curled around him like smoke reluctant to let him go. She slammed into him with enough force to knock the breath from her lungs, and he caught her—he always did.
He was solid. He was warm. And he smelled like the woods after rain, wild, earthy, sweet in that way only he ever smelled.
His arms wrapped around her like they’d never forgotten the shape of her body. And just like that, the bond exploded. It was a song screaming through her bones and blood and soul, singing his love, his grief, his joy so fierce it was almost violent.
He was here. He was back. And he loved her so much it hurt.
Callie was crying and laughing at the same time as he cupped her face in those hands she’d missed like breaths. His thumbs wiped her tears like he couldn’t bear the sight of them. Like he’d been starving for her face, and now that it was real again, he couldn’t waste a second.
Then he kissed her. And when she kissed him back, he growled, low and rough in his chest like his wolf was waking inside him, remembering her.
She broke the kiss, forehead pressed to his, then lips raining kisses on his face. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” Owen took her face in his hands again, holding her there like she might vanish again if he blinked.
His eyes burned with need, love, rage, flashing bright and unfiltered.
“My soul feels you,” he said, voice rough as gravel, “every instant of every damn day that I’m kept from you. And it weeps with need.”
Then his mouth crushed hers, his tongue stroking against hers with the desperation of years of longing. She moaned into the kiss, drunk on the taste of him, wild and warm.
Hunger detonated between them.
She yanked him down with her, hands running over the body that belonged to her only in dreams for 364 days a year.
Every line. Every shiver. Every muscle she knew by heart.
Hers, he had always been hers, would always be hers.
He was in her heart, in her soul. Now she needed him in her body more than she needed the next breath.
She started peeling off her clothes, trembling and frantic, but laughing through it too, because holy hell, this was real. He was real.
“It’s freezing,” he growled, but his hands were already on her ass, grinding her against the thick length of his cock.
She bit his stubbled chin. “Then make sure you keep me warm.”
The sound he made wasn’t all human. It was a growl straight from the beast inside him. The wolf was closer now, rising, almost breaking through. She saw it in his eyes, the way gold started eating away the brown, wild and feral.
She stepped back just an inch, just long enough to see his face. Her hands never left him. Couldn’t bear to. “Do you want to let him run?” she asked, breathless.
She couldn’t know what it would feel like, how maddening it must have been to keep the wolf caged in fog for so long. But before she could say more, he yanked her back in, hard and fast, eyes blazing. “You,” he snarled. “We only need you.”
And then they were down, tangled in each other on the earth that wasn’t cold or hard anymore. Not to her. Not with him.
His mouth was on hers, on her neck, her shoulder, his hands rough and loving all at once. He pulled at her, gripped her thighs, dragged her down until he was inside her, filling her, completing her.
She gasped, her back arched, her nails clawing into his back.
He moved like a tide pulled too long by the moon was finally released.
It crashed into her with a rhythm drenched with aching want and threadbare restrain.
And she matched him, met him, pulled him deeper.
There was no time for teasing, for a soft seduction, for a slow burn.
It was fire, violent and impossible to contain.
There were growls and teeth and desperation. A loving that was feral, that left no space between them.
She felt him swelling inside her, that pressure brutal and beautiful and too much.
Her orgasm broke from her like a scream into the void, and he followed with a savage snarl, burying his face in her neck as he came, shaking with the force of it.
They stayed there, a tangle of limb and heavy breath, while the scent of earth, sex, and lingering magic thickened the air.
But reality, the cruel shifty son of a goose, snuck in fast.
She was naked. On the hard, cold forest floor. And dang it, it was cold. So, so cold.
Owen totally saw it, chuckled, then stood with that sinfully powerful grace of his and scooped her up. “Show-off,” she muttered, shivering against his chest. His warm, warm, naked chest.
He carried her a few feet away to the heap of blankets and sleeping bag she’d hauled out earlier, sat her down gently, and wrapped her up like a precious thing. Then he retrieved her clothes, dropping them beside her with a wink.
“Go,” she told him, her voice soft but sure. “Run. I’ll be here when you get back.”
Letting him go always cost her. It was the only one night they had together, after all. But she would never take that from him. He was wolf as much as he was man, and he needed this as much as he needed her. She felt it in the bond, saw in on his face.
He took her hand, kissed her knuckles like she was made of stars and moonlight “Only a few minutes,” he growled, his voice rough. “I can’t stand to be away from you.”
“I’ll be here.” Her throat burned, but she kept her smile. “Go, Owen.”
The kiss he gave her then was soft, sweet, and it shattered her heart a little. She couldn’t think about what she’d do if this plan didn’t work tonight. Couldn’t bear it.
No. She wasn’t going to contemplate failure. Not tonight.