Chapter 36
SIX MONTHS LATER
Nadja wound her way up the well-worn path from their cabin to the rec hall. Robbie had been there since just after dawn, prepping food for dinner before the full moon run. It was just as well, since she’d had clients all day and he couldn’t have been in the cabin anyway.
Internet had been a game changer for the Dismal Falls pack.
Nadja needed it for her virtual therapy sessions, but as they’d laid on the floor of her office together that first night he’d found her in World’s End, Robbie had told her about his latest audio erotica project.
He had finished Sleepless in St. Giles and was on chapter seven of a new book: Must Love Dukes.
She wasn’t on Voyours anymore but was helping Robbie with his narration.
Dual POV was in high demand, he insisted, and since she brought her voice to his female characters, his subscriptions had never been higher.
She kept her house in World’s End, since they spent one week each month there.
Those were the weeks when she could get all of her admin done and see patients in person while Robbie helped Jory do inventory and wreaked havoc with Esther.
They went to Jory and Callum’s for dinner and sat around Hank and Esther’s fire pit.
Notably, she’d become good friends with Niamh, an old friend of Nat’s, who was an old friend of Hank’s.
Last week, when they’d been helping Esther paint the living room, Niamh had run out of the house like she was being chased, stifling what sounded like a scream or a cry.
It had alarmed Nadja, but Magda, who was not helping paint other than to sit in Hank’s recliner and offer what she called “helpful direction,” had snorted an unconcerned laugh and cryptically said, “Don’t worry, girlie pop.
You’ll get to help her sooner than later. ”
Nadja had opened her mouth to protest that she couldn’t be Niamh’s friend and her therapist, but Magda had waved her away and said, “Therapy isn’t the only helpful thing a person can do.”
Sometimes she missed the convenience of being able to run to the diner for a meal or coffee, or having a small grocery store within walking distance.
But pack life was worth the lack of such conveniences.
Robbie was officially the pack cook and had to make a freezer full of meals for the weeks they were gone or, as Rose said, “Nobody knew what the hell to do with themselves come dinner time.”
She was still finding her way, but loved being in the kitchen with Robbie when her appointments were done.
The sight of him cooking was as sexy as it was impressive.
She loved her daily walks with Rose and sitting on Agatha’s porch while the girls played.
She loved sitting on the big rock by the lake on full moons, listening to the pack running and howling all around her as they circled the lake.
She loved it even more when Robbie returned and dropped to his haunches right in front of her, tongue hanging out the side of his mouth, tail wagging so hard his ass wiggled, so excited to see her.
She always climbed down from the rock and rubbed his belly until his back leg twitched.
Then they’d walk back to the cabin, him leaning his furry shoulder against her thigh while she scratched behind his ears.
But always, just as the cabin came into view and the pack was long behind them, he’d shift, crouched naked as the day he was born on the path beside her, before scooping her up, throwing her over his shoulder, and racing back to the cabin.
She bit her lip thinking about the last full moon, when Robbie had been so keyed up that he’d taken her against the inside of the front door.
Everyone was out, the excitement for the full moon run palpable. The pups were racing all over, shrieking and laughing. People were out and visiting. She waved at them as she passed, dodging pups racing in front of her, and saluting Agatha, who was tending to some rather sad-looking tomato plants.
As she neared the rec hall, she saw that the back door to the kitchen was open. Robbie’s divas playlist was blasting through the screen door, and she couldn’t help but smile.
When she pushed into the kitchen, she saw Robbie in his usual cooking uniform of gym shorts and a T-shirt with an apron slung over his neck and tied around his waist. His back was to her, and he was stirring something on the stove. It smelled heavenly.
She was certain she hadn’t made a sound, but he looked over his shoulder when she came in, so in tune to her always.
“I smelled you coming almost as soon as you left the cabin,” he said with a grin. “How was your last session?”
“Fine,” she said, coming up behind him and wrapping her arms around his waist, resting her cheek between his shoulder blades.
“You hungry?”
“I wasn’t, but now I am. That smells amazing.”
He spun in her arms and hugged her rightly, rubbing his cheek against the top of her head.
“It’s molé,” he said. “I read an article about it the other day and wanted to try it.”
“Fancy,” she said, closing her eyes and nuzzling into his chest. He smelled like funnel cake always, because he always wanted her, but also clean sweat and chocolate and chilies and onions.
He lifted her up and put her on the counter next to the stove. He opened a drawer and took out a spoon, which he dipped into the molé before blowing on it. Once it was cool enough for his liking, he lifted it to her lips.
“Try it.”
It tasted as delicious as it smelled. She smiled. “Well, now I’m starving.”
He stepped in between her knees and reached over, turning the knob on the stove down to a simmer.
“Starving, you say. We can’t have that. Least of all me. What would people say if it got out that my mate was starving? I’d get kicked out of the pack.”
She snorted. His grin was bright.
“Come here,” he said. “I’ve got an idea for the next Must Love Dukes scene, but I want to make sure the logistics are right.”
“The logistics?”
“You know. The limbs and all. Can’t have too many legs in a scene.”
“What are you talking about—Robbie!” she shrieked as he lifted her off the counter and carried her across the kitchen to a back prep table in the corner.
“Stay,” he said, pointing his finger at her. He went to the back door, closed and locked it. Then he went to the door that led from the kitchen to the rec hall and dropped his apron over the exterior knob before closing that, too.
“Good girl,” he said when he returned to stand between her knees. “Staying where I told you to. You deserve a treat.”
Nadja rolled her eyes. “What’s with the apron on the door?”
“It’s code.”
“Code?”
“Yeah. Like a sock on the door. If the apron’s on the door, chef’s busy.”
“Isn’t chef always busy?” She asked, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him closer.
“Okay, correction. Chef’s getting busy,” he said, waggling his eyebrows up and down.
“You’re ridiculous,” she said, but then he kissed her and she couldn’t say anything else.
Later, they lay next to each other on the stainless steel prep table, a white cotton tablecloth draped over their nakedness as they caught their breath. When Robbie had said she deserved a “treat,” he’d apparently meant edging her until she nearly cried before making her come three times.
“That was great,” he said, smiling at the ceiling, one arm behind his head and the other holding her close to him.
“It was,” she said sleepily against his chest.
“I am gonna have to sanitize this table though. Again.”
She looked up at him and booped his nose. “Worth it?”
“I’d quit every job but sanitizing this table if it meant I got to do that to you, Doc.”
He kissed the top of her head while his fingers drew lazy circles on her back, tracing their way upward until they landed on the slope where her throat met her shoulder.
He followed the raised scar of his claiming bite, long since healed, but still very visible.
She smiled and walked her own fingers up his chest to his own throat, where he’d insisted she bite him, too.
She’d wanted hers to be fairly easily hidden so she didn’t alarm her therapy patients but Robbie had had no such concerns, demanding that she bite him on the side of his neck, high enough to be seen over his collars.
Her human teeth hadn’t been sharp enough so she’d had to summon Halphas to get special dispensation to let her shift back to her demon body just long enough to get the job done, as those teeth were much sharper.
And if Halphas had turned the other way while Robbie had explored what else that body could do, well, nobody had been the wiser.
As she traced her own claiming mark on his throat, Robbie shuddered.
His body was so sensitive. The fated mates thing was different for her than him, she mused.
She never wanted to be with anyone else, but he felt that on a much more cellular level.
He was keyed into her scent, could smell the change in her moods, her emotions, her needs.
And whenever she touched that claiming mark, he nearly came apart.
Once, she’d made him come just by sucking on it. That had been a fun afternoon.
She lay on his chest, smelling the molé on the stove and hearing the distant sounds of the pack moving around outside.
She had never been as happy in her entire existence as she’d been the past six months.
But as she drew hearts on his chest, she felt a rising, awful panic that it was temporary.
Werewolves lived longer than humans, certainly, but she was immortal. He wasn’t.
“You’re thinking awfully hard down there, Doc,” he said. He always knew.
Nadja squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to cry as her brain conjured up image after image of her life without him.
“Doc?” He asked, canting his head to the side to look at her.
She sighed, knowing that he wouldn’t let it go. “I was just thinking about how I’m immortal and you’re not. It made me sad. But we don’t have to worry about that for a long time.”
She would live for the right now. She would bottle this joy for all the decades they did have together and it would sustain her when it was over.
He dropped his head back onto the table. “Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ve already got that figured out.”
She pushed up and looked down at him. He brought the arm that had been holding her behind his head, looking more relaxed than anyone had the right to be during a conversation like this.
“What does that mean?”
“Okay, so here’s my plan. I’m gonna wait until I go all silver fox. Like, can you imagine? I’m gonna be a silver wolf daddy, and you’re going to be feral for me.”
She laughed, because what else could one do when Robbie turned his whole personality on?
“And then, I’m gonna have Callum bite me. But like bite me, bite me. Turn me. Problem solved. Easy-peasy. You’ll live forever and you’ll be stuck with me, your silver fox wolf daddy of a mate for all eternity.”
She stared at him. “So… your plan is to become a vampire werewolf? That’s a lot.”
“Baby, I’ve always been a lot,” he said with a wink, pulling her back down to his chest.
She rested there, her tears evaporated, biting a smile back as she listened to the steady tempo of his heart beneath her ear.
“You’ve got it all figured out,” she said.
“Leave it to me, Doc. You’ll never be alone again.”
They laid there a while longer, until JJ pounded on the interior door and shouted that someone should prioritize feeding their pack over “getting their rocks off” while he was “holding back a raging, starving horde of animals.”
They dressed, and Robbie pulled the enchiladas out of the oven while Nadja sanitized the table. He ladled the molé over the pans while she carried them out to the long buffet table. They ate, sitting at a table with Agatha and JJ and Rose.
After dinner, they walked hand in hand to the lake, and she followed Robbie into the thicket so that he could strip out of his clothes and hand them to her before he shifted. She rubbed his belly and scratched his ears, and he ran circles around her, yipping excitedly.
And then she sat on the rock as the moon rose high overhead, listening to the wolves, to her pack, run around the lake.
They yipped and barked and played and, when they returned, sat on the shore and howled together, their voices casting high above the trees together, bathing her and the woods around them in sound.
Robbie shifted at the lake this time, taking his clothes from her in his mouth and disappearing behind the boulder.
He emerged fully clothed and on two legs and held his hand out for her.
She took it and slid off the rock and into his arms. He hugged her close, smelling like the woods and sweat and, faintly, fur.
They walked back toward the cabin hand in hand, taking their time and picking their way along the moonlit path while the pack howled again behind them.
He squeezed her hand and she looked up to see him looking down at her.
“You still with me, Doc?”
Her smile was almost painfully wide as she squeezed his hand back.
“Always,” she said, just before he threw her over his shoulder and ran home.
The End.