8. Milo
— ? —
Milo
The moonlight cuts through my window like an accusation.
I stand in the center of my quarters, the small apartment the university provides for visiting faculty, sparse and functional and nothing like my chambers back in Ashevale, and I can’t stop thinking about her.
I’ve spent thirty years learning to run this body with total control, and now it wants exactly one thing and it wants it constantly, and the only thing keeping the wolf on its chain is that she’s across campus and safe and doesn’t need a feral king clawing at her window.
Being apart is the only thing holding me together. It’s also the thing that makes it worse. The farther she is, the louder the animal gets, howling that I’ve left something unguarded, something mine.
Lindsay Crowe.
Lynn.
My mate.
The word still feels foreign in my mind, still catches in my throat every time I try to speak it aloud.
My whole life, I convinced myself I’d never find her.
That I was meant to rule alone, to die alone, to pass the crown to some distant cousin and let the Draven line continue through branches instead of roots.
And then she walked into my lecture hall.
And my world made sense for the first time in decades. I knew right then. Before she said a word.
Mine, my lycan growled.
And it was right.
“You’re brooding again.”
I don’t turn at the voice. There’s no need, I’d know that particular blend of divine condescension anywhere.
“You’re in my quarters without invitation,” I say flatly. “Again.”
The goddess materializes beside my window, her form shifting between solid and smoke, her smile sharp enough to cut glass. Tonight, she appears as a woman in her middle years, silver-haired and sharp-eyed, wearing what looks like a modern power suit that probably cost more than my monthly salary.
“I watched the fire extinguisher incident,” she says, settling onto my couch like she owns it. “Three times. I may have rewound it.”
“I’m glad my humiliation amuses you.”
“Amuses? Darling, it delights me.” She crosses her legs, studying me with eyes that hold galaxies.
“Three weeks, little wolf. You’ve been extinguished - literally extinguished - by your own mate.
The male who could kill a dozen enemies without breaking a sweat, brought low by a five-pound cylinder of foam. ”
“It was a twelve-pound cylinder, actually.”
“Even better.”
I move to my desk, putting distance between us. The moon is three days past full now, but I can still feel her pull in my blood, the restlessness, the need, the constant awareness of exactly where Lynn is on this campus at every moment.
The thought of her in bed, warm and soft, that dark hair spread across her pillow, pulls something tight and painful behind my ribs.
“I’m going to tell her,” I say. “Everything. This week.”
“Everything?”
“The goddess. The name. The ritual. The month.”
The goddess raises an eyebrow. “And the mate bond? Will you tell her that?”
I don’t answer.
“Milo.” She says my real name like a weapon. “You can explain everything else - the divine meddling, the cosmic absurdity, the thirty days of courtship - but you still can’t say the one word that actually matters?”
“I can say it.”
“Then say it.”
My jaw tightens. I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.
“That’s what I thought.” She sighs, though there’s something almost fond in it. “Growth, though. I’ll take credit. A week ago, you couldn’t even explain the lycan part. Now you’re planning full disclosure. Progress.”
“You’re insufferable.”
“I’m a goddess. It’s part of the job description.” She rises, her form flickering. “Tell her, Milo. All of it. She deserves to know what she’s walking into. And you deserve to stop carrying this alone.”
“Since when do you care about what I deserve?”
Her smile softens, just for a moment. “I’ve always cared. I just have a terrible way of showing it.”
And then she’s gone, leaving nothing but the faint scent of woodsmoke and starlight.
I stand in the silence for a long moment.
Then I pick up the smartphone.
It’s a newer model, the pack council insisted I modernize before taking this assignment, and I’m still learning its functions. The screen glows to life, showing three missed messages.
The first is from the council: Quarterly report on human political developments requested. Alpha Westbrook has proposed a lycan alternative to the current territorial agreements. Discussion scheduled for next moon.
Pack politics. Even here, even now, they follow me.
The second is from my mother: Milo, dearest. Please call when you’re able. Just want to hear your voice. Love always.
Guilt twists in my stomach. I haven’t called her in two weeks.
The third is from Isla: Brother. The council is driving me insane. Call me so I can complain properly. Also: Mother says you sound “lighter” lately. What’s her name?
I stare at that last message for a long time.
What’s her name?
Lindsay. Lynn. The woman with chaos in her blood and poetry in her brain, plus a hamster who would rather die dramatically than acknowledge my existence.
The one I’m falling for in ways I didn’t know were possible.
I set the phone down and move to the window again. The moon is silver overhead, and somewhere across campus, she’s sleeping, and I want-
I want.
The need builds in my blood, hot and urgent, impossible to ignore. I’ve been fighting it since that first night in the library. Lying in this bed every night, surrounded by her scent memory, imagining things I have no right to imagine.
But I’m alone. And the night is long. And sometimes, even kings need release.
I strip off my shirt, already half-undone from the shift earlier, and settle onto the edge of my bed. The sheets are cool against my bare skin. I close my eyes and let myself picture her.
Lynn in my lecture hall, that first day. Flustered and beautiful, with ink on her fingers and chaos in her wake.
Lynn in the library, shelving books while humming along to that pop singer she’s determined to educate me about. The way she moves without realizing I’m watching. The curve of her neck. The swell of her breasts beneath those soft sweaters she favors.
My hand finds my cock, already hard, already aching, and I stroke slowly, savoring the sensation. I imagine her here, in this room, looking at me the way she looked at me through the window. Wide-eyed and wanting. Trying so hard not to stare.
She stared anyway.
I stroke faster.
I imagine her on her knees before me. That smart mouth wrapped around my cock. Those dark eyes looking up at me while she takes me deep, her lips stretched around my thickness, her throat working as she swallows me down.
“Lynn,” I groan, the name tearing out of me.
I imagine her tongue, that sharp, clever tongue that argues with me about Britney Spears and challenges my interpretations and makes me laugh when I haven’t laughed in decades, tracing the vein along my shaft. Swirling around the head. Teasing the slit until I’m leaking for her.
My fist tightens. My hips buck.
I imagine pulling her up, laying her across this bed, spreading her thighs and finally, finally, tasting her the way I’ve wanted to since I first caught her scent.
She’d be wet for me. She was wet for me, tonight, when she saw my cock.
I could smell her arousal through the blanket, through the distance, through my own desperate need.
I stroke myself harder, imagining my tongue on her cunt. Licking her open. Sucking her clit while she writhes beneath me, her hands in my hair, her voice broken with pleasure.
“Please,” I imagine her begging. “Professor - Milo - please-”
My cock throbs.
I imagine sinking into her. Filling her up. That first moment when she’d stretch around me, her body making room, her eyes going hazy with overwhelm.
“Fuck,” I grit out, my hand moving faster now, rough and desperate. “Lynn-”
I imagine the sounds she’d make. The way she’d clutch at my shoulders. The heat of her, the tightness, the way she’d clench around me when she came.
Her face when she fell apart, the exact shape of it.
I imagine saying the words: mine, mate, forever.
The orgasm rips through me, brutal and total, wringing me out in pulses of white-hot pleasure.
When it’s over, I lie back against the pillows, chest heaving, covered in my own release.
The ceiling stares back at me.
“I’m going to tell her,” I say to the empty room. “Everything.”
The moon doesn’t answer.
But somewhere in the distance, I swear I hear a goddess laughing.