18 Avaline
The cold porcelain tub vanished, replaced by an infinite, starlit sky that arched over rolling fields of shimmering silver grass.
The Goddess Moon’s Threshold.
The air here tasted of pure night dew, honeysuckle, and starlight.
I looked down at my hands. My astral body radiated with a blinding, incandescent white light.
The chemical numbness of the Frost-Lock was gone.
My senses were dialed to an absolute, unshielded maximum.
Every blade of silver grass brushing my bare calves sent ripples of sharp pleasure across my skin.
Beside me, the air split with a crack of thunder.
Reed materialized. His astral form was massive, towering over the grass, his skin glowing.
A low, earth-shaking rumble tore from his chest. Before my eyes, his human shape blurred, giving way to the colossal Obsidian Wolf. His fur was black as volcanic glass, his gold eyes blazing with centuries of primal hunger.
From deep within my own astral soul, my White Wolf answered.
The shift was instantaneous and effortless. I wasn’t shedding skin. I was simply stepping into my full, true self. My paws hit the silver turf, white fur rippling like liquid snow under the twin moons, and I threw my head back and let out a long, ringing howl that echoed across the Threshold.
Run, the Obsidian Wolf projected straight into my mind, his voice a deep, gravelly vibration that rattled my ribs. Run from me, Avaline. Let me hunt you.
I turned and bolted.
The silver grass whipped against my flanks as I tore across the starlit meadow. My muscles were fluid, powerful, drunk on freedom. Behind me, the heavy, thunderous gallop of the Obsidian Wolf closed the distance with terrifying speed. He wasn’t hunting to kill. He was hunting to claim.
We crested the wide ridge overlooking what had once been the Drowned Canyon.
Below us, where the foul, toxic river of chemical gold had choked the spirit realm for centuries, the ground was now whole. We had sealed the chasm shut into a vast, unbroken expanse of warm earth and silver grass—the healed plain.
I swept my gaze across the horizon. The dormant wolf spirits that had once paced the far bank in trapped desperation were gone. The plains were quiet, open, and clear.
They’ve crossed, I realized, a wave of hope washing through my wolf. Their wolves are searching for their other half.
The dormants wouldn’t all wake immediately—but the path home was truly open.
I wheeled around on the warm granite crest, baring my white fangs in a playful, defiant snarl.
The Obsidian Wolf didn’t slow. He hit me at a dead sprint.
Our bodies collided in a tangle of fur, fangs, and blinding kinetic heat. We tumbled through the silver grass, snapping at each other’s muzzles, rolling down the gentle slope of the bluff until he pinned my shoulders to the bedrock with his massive black paws.
He hovered over me, panting hot breath into my face, his gold eyes burning down into mine.
The animal gave way to the man. The wolf melted back into his towering human form, his heavy thighs straddling my hips, pinning me to the starlit stone.
“Found you,” Reed rasped.
My white wolf dissolved back into my human skin, leaving me arched beneath him, naked and luminous under the stars.
“You didn’t catch me,” I teased, breathless, my hands reaching up to grip his broad shoulders. “I let you win.”
“Is that right?” A dangerous, possessive smirk curled his mouth.
He didn’t rush. He sat back on his heels, his dark eyes roaming over every exposed inch of my astral body with a reverent, starving intensity that made my breath catch in my throat.
His gaze traced the swell of my breasts, the curve of my waist, the pale flare of my hips, and the slick glistening along the pale skin of my inner thighs.
“Twenty years of looking at an empty bed,” he murmured, his voice thick with raw devotion. “Look at you, Avaline. Pure light. Pure goddess.”
He reached out. His large, calloused palms cupped my cheeks, his thumbs gently smoothing over my cheekbones, down the line of my jaw, to the rapid flutter of the pulse at my throat. His touch was an electric spark on the astral plane, sending ripples of heat straight to the pit of my belly.
“Reed,” I breathed, arching into his hands.
“It’s okay. Here—it’s okay. We can bleed off some of your Heat here. I’m going to worship every inch they tried to freeze,” he promised.
He leaned down, pressing soft, lingering kisses along the curve of my collarbone, his hot breath raising goosebumps across my chest. His lips moved to the swell of my left breast, his tongue tracing a slow, wet circle around the aureole until my nipple hardened into a tight, aching peak.
A gasp tore from my throat as his mouth closed over the tip, drawing it deep, suckling with a slow, rhythmic pull that sent a hot jolt of pleasure shooting straight between my thighs.
“Reed... oh Goddess,” I cried out, my fingers tangling in his dark hair, pressing his head harder against my breast.
He moved to my right breast, giving it the same devastating attention, his tongue swirling and laving the sensitized peak while his other hand slid down the curve of my ribs.
His fingers were broad and sure, kneading the soft flesh of my waist, mapping the dip of my navel, tracing the flare of my hip bones with agonizing slowness.
He kissed his way down the flat plane of my stomach, his stubbled chin grazing my skin, leaving trails of fire in his wake. When his mouth reached the soft indentation just above my pubic bone, his hands moved to my knees, gently nudging them apart.
“Reed,” I whimpered, trembling with unbearable anticipation as the cool astral breeze touched the slick between my thighs. “Look at what you’re doing to me. I’m drowning in it.”
“Good,” he growled against my lower belly. “Let me drown with you.”
He slid his hands beneath my thighs, his calloused palms lifting my legs, hooking my knees securely over his massive shoulders. I was completely open to him, arched on the silver bedrock under the starlight.
Reed stared at my center, his obsidian eyes burning with feral hunger. “You’re so wet for me, sweetheart. Smells like rain and sweet clove.”
“Please,” My hips lifted off the stone in a desperate plea for contact. “Don’t make me wait. Touch me.”
“I’m not just going to touch you,” he rasped, leaning forward until his hot breath brushed my stomach, making me shiver with pleasure. “I’m going to drink you dry.”
His mouth came down on my center.
A shattered, high-pitched scream tore out of my throat, echoing across the silver pastures.
His tongue was broad, hot, and merciless, sweeping over my swollen folds with devastating precision. He laved the sensitive seam from my entrance to the throbbing hood of my clit, drinking every drop of my slick as if it were the only water in a burning desert.
My back bowed off the bedrock, my hands clutching the silver grass on either side of my head as blinding white electricity ripped through my pelvis.
“Reed! Please... oh Goddess, Reed!”
He didn’t relent. He slid two thick fingers deep inside me, stretching my tight channel wide, curling them upward against my front wall while his mouth sealed over me, suckling hard.
The double assault was unbearable. The pleasure was a physical tempest, tearing away a lifetime of loneliness, until there was nothing left in the universe except his mouth, his hands, and the roaring furnace between my legs.
My orgasm detonated with tectonic force.
My inner walls clamped down violently around his fingers, pulsing and milking him as a shockwave of brilliant White Fire burst from my core, lighting the starlit sky in blinding ribbons of aurora.
Reed drank every drop of my release, his throat working as he swallowed my climax, his hands holding my quivering hips securely against his face until the last tremor subsided.
I lay on the stone, sobbing with relief, my chest heaving with sweat and light.
Reed rose above me, his dark eyes ablaze with unbridled, feral desire. The magma in his veins was pulsing at the surface of his skin, and the colossal length of his cock was heavy and flushed.
“That was just the kindling, sweetheart,” he whispered, his voice shaking the ground beneath us. “Now we light the back-burn.”