Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
NELL
Iwas running again. My body moved through the dark of the dream with an ease and speed I had never had in waking life.
My feet barely touched the ground. The air was warm and dry.
Iron-rich and sun-drenched with the smell of that incense resin my grandmother used to burn. The scent was dark and slightly sweet.
Beside me, the wolf ran.
I had seen Magnus's wolf twice: in the park the night everything changed, and in the garden when he had shifted back and stood in the moonlight. I knew the color of him. Gray, almost silver, enormous, with those amber eyes that held too much intelligence for an animal.
But… this wolf was black.
Not dark gray. Not the gray of storm clouds or old pewter. Black, the way the sky between stars was black. A deep, complete, absolute darkness that absorbed the surrounding light rather than reflected it.
Its eyes were different, too. Not amber. They were a gold so deep it was almost bronze. But familiar.
The face was different from Magnus's wolf. The shape of the skull, the line of the jaw, the way it moved. It was not the rectangular power of a wolf. It was something longer, more fluid, the kind of grace that came from a body built for climbing as much as for running.
I had dreamed of this wolf before. Not once. Many times. So many times that the dream had the worn quality of a path used so often it had become a road. I knew the feel of it before I was fully in it, the way you knew the layout of your childhood home in the dark.
The black wolf slowed and turned its head to look at me. My hand reached out. My fingers were small. The size of a child's, but I knew the hand was mine.
The animal licked my palm. The tongue was warm and rough. And again, familiar.
The wolf lowered itself to the red soil. I understood without being told what I was meant to do. I climbed onto its back, my hands in the dense black fur. It rose beneath me and ran.
The landscape moved around us. Palm trees at the edges, their silhouettes loose and certain against the night sky. Red earth beneath paws. Somewhere close, a river smelling of warm silt and green things growing at its banks. The air was thick and alive and warm against my face.
And I was laughing — helplessly, freely.
The wolf stopped. It turned its great black head and looked at me over its shoulder. The bronze-gold eyes held mine. I felt something in my chest unlock. This was love. Pure, unconditional love.
I slid off the wolf's back. He picked me up by the back of my neck — with the precise, practiced gentleness of an animal that knew exactly how much pressure to apply on a cub. I dangled in the wolf's mouth in the dark and felt completely safe.
Something touched my neck. Not the dream-wolf's mouth. Something else. The warm pressure of a hand. Unlike the wolf's hold, this hand radiated anger.
Danger.
I surfaced.
The dream dissolved like smoke.
I was in my bedroom, in my own bed. I was warm and deeply, pleasantly sore. Any thoughts of danger dissipated at the throb between my thighs that Magnus’s knot left behind.
I felt the prick of something at my back. Something touched my neck. Magnus's warmth was solid behind me. His chest against my back. His legs behind mine. His hand moved over my neck in a slow, repeated stroke. Then his fingers closed and squeezed.
I tried to turn my head. He wouldn't let me budge.
"Magnus?"
"Who the fuck bit you?" His words were quiet. Careful. Controlled. They held the shape of menace that warned me he was close to fucking someone up.
Over a bite? Had a bug bitten me? But why would that piss him off?
I lay in the dark with his hand on my neck.
This man was dangerous to love. He was the heir to a wolf pack in the middle of a war.
He had locked me in a cabin, locked me in my own apartment, cut off my phone and my internet, put his claws through my clothing, and declared a permanent biological bond without asking my permission first.
Stockholm, I am in you. Because he was also the man who had made me eggs. Who had driven across the city when I'd taken a fall. Who had an arranged marriage he was breaking, which meant enemies he was making. Because he was in love with me.
I was in love with Magnus Blackwood.
I had no idea how that had happened. I honestly hadn't known I was capable of it. But here I was. Didn't mean I wanted marriage or children, or to be the First Lady of the shady side of the Blackwood family.
But I wanted to be with him. That much I was sure of. I was also sure that though he planned to murder whatever bug had bitten me, he would never hurt a hair on my head.
I reached up and touched his hand. "Oh, that's not a bug bite. That's my birthmark."
My fingers slipped under his to feel the raised skin at the base of my neck. It was usually hidden by my hair, regardless of whether I wore it up or down. It was a curved mark, in the shape of a crescent moon.
"That is a wolf's claiming mark."
I turned to look at him. He let me go. I was nearly blinded by the amber light in his eyes when I met his gaze. "Magnus, I didn't know wolves existed until two weeks ago."
He looked at me for a long moment. His hand was still on my neck, his thumb still against the mark. The stillness in him had a pressure behind it that warned me not to make any sudden moves. Especially not a move that could be construed as moving away from him.
I tried to swallow, but the pressure of his fingers around my throat made it difficult. He didn't ease up. I narrowed my gaze at him. Again, I knew he wouldn't hurt me. But he had proven he would be high-handed.
Slowly the pressure he exerted on my throat eased. He moved off the bed. The man was gloriously naked. His ass flexed as he stepped into his pants, and I forgot the plot.
"Get dressed," he said.
I sat up. "Magnus. What is—"
"Nell." He looked at me over his shoulder. The amber blazed, the heat making me wince. "Get. Dressed."