7 Reed #4
“Get the hell out of my way!” I roared, the Founding Alpha in my blood flaring hot enough to push Nadia and Maren two steps back into the dust. “All of you—back off! Debrief the crew, count the dormants, lock the blast doors, and let Maren set her wards. I’m saving my mate.”
Brann caught Nadia’s arm, pulling the doctor back, his eyes dark with understanding and fierce respect. “Go, Reed. We’ve got the line. Go.”
I shoved through the heavy steel door of the bunker and bolted down the hall.
The room they’d prepared was small, dim, and blessedly warm, a heavy wood-frame bed against the far wall and the window blacked out with insulated storm shutters. I kicked the door shut behind me, threw the deadbolt, and laid Avaline down on the thick wool blankets.
My hands were shaking as I stripped off the rest of my gear. All of it hit the floor in a heap until I was stripped down to my skin, running my Founding furnace at the disciplined simmer Maren had ordered.
Then I leaned over the bed and gently peeled away the stiff, blood-stained prisoner scrubs from Avaline’s body.
When the last layer of cloth fell away, the breath seized in my throat.
She lay completely naked in the amber lamplight, and the devastating beauty of her hit me like a physical blow.
The pale, perfect swell of her breasts rose and fell with every shallow breath, the dark rose of her nipples hardened by the frost. Below the soft curve of her ribs, her waist tapered into the generous, feminine flare of her hips and the smooth thighs that had haunted my dreams. Between her legs, the dark mound of hair at her pelvis glistened with the unmistakable, slick musk of her rising Heat—honeysuckle, rain, and female arousal pouring off her bare skin, thick enough to drown in.
My cock surged to an agonizing, rock-hard ache against my belly, throbbing with years of starving Alpha need.
Ours. My wolf was thrashing wildly against my ribs, claws out, jaws dripping, screaming to climb between those bare thighs, to drive myself deep into her wet, scorching heat until the bed shook and the bond was sealed in seed and blood.
The hunger was a monster in my throat.
No. I clamped down on the urge with iron discipline, my knuckles white against the bedpost.
She was helpless. Paralyzed. Entrusted to my care while her soul fought for breath.
She hadn’t forgiven me for abandoning her, and even if my beast was roaring for its mate, I would never touch her without her permission.
I would never take advantage of her vulnerability.
Twenty years ago my arrogance had acted without her consent.
I would die in this bed before I crossed that line again.
I would do only what was strictly necessary to keep her alive, no matter how much my aching flesh burned for more.
And Maren’s warning rang through my skull like a siren: if I touched her to claim her—if I slipped a hand between her legs or let my cock bring her to orgasm in this physical bed—the consummation would shatter the Frost-Lock in her marrow and explode her heart.
The desire that could heal any other dormant wolf would murder Avaline where she lay.
I had to be her shield. I had to protect her from the Order, from the cold, and most of all, from my own starving beast.
I climbed into the bed with agonizing gentleness, sliding beneath the blankets and pulling her freezing, naked body flush against mine.
Every inch. I curled my burning frame around her, chest to her back, my arms crossed tightly over her trembling ribs, my thighs bracketing hers, pinning her hips an agonizing fraction of an inch from the hard ridge of my cock.
The contrast was searing agony—her icy skin drinking the surface heat of my Founding furnace, while her Heat scent invaded my lungs, driving my pulse into a frenzy.
I pressed my lips into the hollow beneath her ear, breathing her in. Fever against frost.
“I’ve got you,” I whispered into the dark, into the sweet tangle of her hair. “I’m holding the line out here, Avaline. No one touches you. Not them. Not me. Not until you’re whole.”
She shuddered against my chest, a thin plume of cold breath ghosting from her blue lips.
“I’ll burn for you as long as it takes,” I promised, feeling the golden tether humming deep beneath our ribs, vibrating in sync with the equinox moon blazing outside. “And while this body keeps you warm... I’m going back in for your wolf.”
I locked my arms around her, and closed my eyes.
Tuning out the pain in my shoulder, tuning out the throbbing ache in my groin, I forced my consciousness to sink down through the fever, down through the blood, plunging straight back into the silver mist of the Dreamscape—racing the sinking moon to build the bridge across the poisoned river to bring her wolf home.
The heater ticked. And somewhere far down in her, beneath the glacier, beneath the still water, on the far end of a tether that ran back to a summer that would never end—
—her frozen fingers moved, and found mine, and held.