Chapters (21)
Lara, her wolf stunning in silhouette against a heavy moon, went motionless for an instant before throwing back her head and joining in. The wild music was the most beautiful harmony he’d ever heard, so alive it made him want to add his own voice, so untamed it stripped away the civilized veneer to leave only the primal heart behind.
Only when the song had ended, the night quiet but with a complex depth to it that told him he didn’t hear everything she did, did he run his hand down the proud line of her back, her fur thick and soft under his palm beneath the protective guard hairs. “Something is wrong, and you need to tell me.”
A cock of her head that he didn’t need to be a wolf to read.
“Yes, it’s an order.” He hated seeing her unhappy. “You asked me not to close up on you. Don’t do it to me.” She could hurt him in ways no one else could on this earth, savage him from the inside out, but the one thing that would hurt worse than any other was being shut out from the loving warmth that had become integral to his existence.
The wolf looked away…and suddenly, the air fractured under his palm, her body dissolving into a million particles of light. He froze, his heart a drum. Her trust in him cut him off at the knees, told him all over again what he was to her. I will never, ever let you down. It was a renewal of the vow he’d made the instant he claimed her.
A heartbeat…an eon later, he was touching night-cooled skin, a woman with eyes of fox brown kneeling in front of him, her hands cupping his face. “It’s not you, not us. You’re my everything.”
He felt something in him break at the fierce honesty of her, didn’t quite understand what it was, his emotions stuck in his throat. “Come here,” he said, his voice a rasp.
Once she was in his lap, he petted her without further demands until she curled into him, her hand on his heart. He knew she had a high tolerance for cold, but he took off the shirt he wore and made her shrug into it.
She did so without argument, then put her head back against his shoulder, her legs silky under his touch. “No one”—a long, appreciative sigh—“will ever convince me that there is a more beautiful place on this earth.”
Walker couldn’t deny her words, the Sierra night a thing of near-painful beauty, but his attention was on his mate, on what might have caused her to snap at him in such an uncharacteristic way. There was only one possible answer.