18. Cas #3
I haven’t seen his wolf before. He’s fucking magnificent.
Every inch the alpha, his dominance emanating from him in heady waves.
His fur is a rusty ginger, his coat thick and healthy.
However, it’s his eyes that capture my attention most of all—shining emerald green and utterly arresting, pinning me in place.
At first, I hold my head high, meeting his gaze, before submitting to his alpha energy, lowering to the ground and flipping onto my back, exposing my soft, vulnerable belly and the line of my throat.
Nathan doesn’t loom. The space he occupies is solely his own, stance tall and proud. I whimper, bereft he’s not yet gifted me with his touch.
He leans down and buries his nose in my neck—right over his mating mark. My eyes slip shut as he nuzzles me there, imbuing his scent into my skin. My body goes lax, my heart slowing for the first time since Declan marched me out of the bedroom.
It feels like days ago, not hours. Safe in Nathan’s company, my fear seems so far away.
No one can touch us here—not Declan, not Bash, not anyone.
Nathan towers over me as his wolf, but he’s not intimidating, not to me.
The way he climbs over me, crowding me with his big body, isn’t suffocating, either—it’s protective.
I can feel his desire to protect me pouring off him, thick and blanketing, like being wrapped in my cosiest jumper.
We snuggle together like that for a while.
Bodies pressed close, limbs tangled, hearts thudding steadily in our chests.
Suddenly, there’s movement, and it’s no longer a wolf lying there, but a man.
His eyes take longer to switch back to the brown of his human, the searing green fading slowly as his wolf recedes.
“Shift back,” he urges, his voice low, almost indistinguishable from a growl.
A second later and I, too, am lying there in human form, blinking up at him. The evening has arrived, and with it an orange sunset that bathes Nathan in flame-like colours. He looks lit up from the inside, a phoenix rising from the ashes, ready to set the world ablaze.
He traces a finger down the side of my face and tucks an errant lock of hair behind my ear. “You’re beautiful,” he murmurs. “Both as your wolf and as a man. Never seen anyone with a coat like yours before.”
I wonder if he would have found me so appealing had he seen my natural brown hair.
Nathan’s brow creases. “I said something wrong, didn’t I?”
I swallow around the lump in my throat. “It wasn’t always white,” I croak.
His head tilts, lips pursing slightly. “Before the…?” He doesn’t finish his question. He doesn’t need to. We both know what he’s referring to.
I nod, and before I can do or say anything else, I’m being pulled into Nathan’s arms. He positions us so I’m seated in his lap, and I bury my face in his chest and finally let myself fall apart. This time my emotions aren’t fuelled by my heat or our mating. This time, they’re all mine.
I feel everything from the past few months, few weeks, few damn days.
Every violation done to me and my body. The abduction, the imprisonment, the experiments, the forced designation change.
My escape into this fucked-up pack. My first heat.
Being hunted down like prey. Mated by two alphas out of their minds in rut, and then being separated from them before I could even get used to the idea of being bonded.
It crashes down on me all at once, like Declan really had pushed me off that cliff and I’d sunk to the bottom of the sea, the immense weight of it immovable atop me.
Nathan cradles me through my wracking sobs, rubbing my back, sharing the burden of my pain through our budding bond. He absorbs it, the way his poor T-shirt does my tears. He doesn’t speak, just rocks me gently, occasionally making soothing sounds that help my ratcheting sobs fade to sniffles.
My eyes are still blurry when I finally look up at Nathan.
His gaze is soft as it meets mine. “Better?”
I rub at my nose. “Yeah. No. Shit. I don’t know.” I muster a wobbly smile.
He wipes a remaining tear from under my eye. “Good to let it all out, I think.”
“Do you ever? Cry?” I ask.
His lips press into a tight line. “Not for a while. I shed a lot of them as a youngster. Guess by now they’ve all dried up.”
“I don’t believe it works like that. If so, I doubt I’d have any tears left.”
He leans down and presses a kiss to my temple. “Cry on me whenever you like.”
“You’ll run out of clean shirts.”
He chuffs a laugh. “Maybe have some solo crying sessions in the shower, then. Save me having to do so much washing.”
I rear back, feigning offence. “Nathan!”
His cheeks redden a little. “Too soon?”
I shake my head. “I just didn’t know you were capable of making a joke.”
“I’m funny,” he defends, chin jutting out.
I hum disbelievingly. “Sure you are—ah!” I yelp as Nathan suddenly stands, my legs twining around his waist and my arms looping around his neck so I don’t fall.
“We should get to the cabin,” he says casually, as though I’m not hanging off him like a stubborn koala.
“Are you walking us there?”
He grunts. “Easier to run. We can be there before it’s fully dark.”
I slither down his body until my feet touch the grass, though I don’t let go of him. “Race you?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.
Nathan smirks, and before I know it he’s a wolf again, still grinning at me with his sharp teeth bared. I shift too, the change easier this time around.
Together we run towards the cabin, no longer the fractured pieces we were. Not quite whole, though. Not yet.
Not without Kato.