“How are you feeling, Grace?” she asked, stepping into the room. Caleb retreated back to the chair, giving Anna space to examine me.
“Alright. My neck hurts.”
“I would expect so,” Anna said, pressing a stethoscope to my chest. She checked my breathing and my pulse and my blood pressure. She checked my eyes and ears and nose. At last, she removed the IV and declared me fit to leave. “You’ve had quite a few transfusions of wolf blood. Don’t be alarmed if your injuries heal much faster than you’re used to.”
I touched my neck, wondering.
Anna seemed to read my thoughts. She smiled, her eyes crinkling. “I doubt you’ll be able to shift—but do let me know if it happens. Interesting medical implications, that.” She seemed to consider it for a moment. “Anyways, take it easy for a few days. No strenuous activity.” She raised her eyebrows, looking at us both significantly.
It took me a moment to catch on. When I did, I felt my face heat. “Right. Got it.”
Anna chuckled at my embarrassment.
“What about Daniel?” I asked. “Is he going to be okay?”
“He’ll be fine. I expect he’ll be on his feet by dinner tonight, if not by lunch.”
Caleb helped me out of bed and bent down to put my boots on for me. “I’m fine, Caleb,” I said with a smile.
Caleb simply growled and laced the boots.
Anna smiled at us both and turned to look out the window. She let out a happy sigh. “The days are going to get long now,” she said thoughtfully. “Today’s the first day of Spring.”
Chapter Thirty-One
A few days later…
Waiting for me to heal well enough for “strenuous activity” was killing us both. Just as Anna had predicted, my throat healed much more rapidly than I ever would have expected. Within a week, the skin was completely knit back together. Faint pink marks were the only indication that I’d been injured, and Anna assured me that those would vanish within a week or so.
The sexual hiatus gave us time to take care of other things, though. I had to get caught back up with my classes. Julie Angwin, a retired history teacher, had taken over my classes while I was away. She’d done a great job, in that fun-substitute kind of way. She’d kept the kids on track with my reading list, but she hadn’t assigned too much homework. Which wasn’t that far off from my own methods, so there wasn’t an overwhelming amount of work that needed to be done.
While I was getting settled back into classes, Caleb met with George Prouse and bought the house he’d mentioned a few weeks ago. It was just a bit outside of Longtooth, a few minutes north. It was a fairly small two-bedroom house, but it felt like a mansion after living in a single room for so many months.
Caleb had assured me that there was no rush to move in—I could stay at The Spruce as long as I wanted. But I didn’t want to stay at The Spruce. I wanted to stay with Caleb. So within a single day, all my meagre possessions were moved to the house—our house. It took a few more days to get it furnished. We managed to fill most of the space with hand-me-downs from other pack members. Caleb bought a new mattress on one of his supply runs in Fairbanks.
On our official move-in day, I woke up next to Caleb in my bed at The Spruce—a bed that had been totally chaste since we’d gotten back from the ranger station. But after school was over, I drove to our new house. Caleb was already there, working on something with one of the lights, wearing the blue sweater I’d knitted for him.
He was in human form, but I swear his ears pricked when I walked inside. “Gracie,” he greeted me in that low growl that seemed to resonate beneath my skin.
“Nice house you got here,” I said, hanging my coat on the hook beside the door. “Looking for a roommate?”
He abandoned the light fixture, bare wires and all, to come pull me into his arms.
“How’s your neck?”
“Good as new.”
“What do you say to a new mark on it? One that won’t go away.”
Arousal and something sweeter rolled through me. Our mouths met in a crashing kiss, and we stumbled to the bedroom, peeling clothes off of each other. Our style of lovemaking was a little combative, but I loved that. I loved how he growled when I pulled his hair. I loved how he pinned me when I tried to twist out of his hold. I loved how he became an obedient lapdog when I pet him just the right way, and I loved how he could do the same to me.
After several minutes of naked wrestling, I had Caleb on his back while I lay on top of him, every inch of my body plastered to every inch of his. I’d thought I’d gained the upper hand, but he quickly proved me wrong, spreading my thighs and thrusting into me. He was so deep inside me, rocking his hips so that he plunged into me with slow, devastating, languorous strokes. Each one stoked the fire inside of me higher and hotter and brighter. Every nerve ending was aglow. My body was a bowstring being drawn further and further and further.
“Please,” I sobbed, clinging to him, rocking back against him.
“Soon,” he answered, his lips trailing along the curve where my shoulder joined my neck.
Not soon enough. I slid my hand between us until I found my clit. Caleb let out a satisfied growl as he felt the circling motions of me touching myself.
“There you go, sweetheart,” he breathed against my skin. “Make us both come.”
Those words pushed me over the edge—climax seized me, arching my back, making my legs quake. My inner muscles clenched desperately around Caleb’s cock, and within two strokes, he tipped over into his own release.
I couldn’t hold back anymore. I buried my face in the crook of Caleb’s neck and bit down. Hard. Instinct drove me to break his skin, to bite down deep—so deep he’d never, ever, get rid of my mark. I tasted his blood, coppery and hot. I felt his teeth breaking my own skin, sinking deep into my flesh. But it didn’t hurt. It felt nothing like when Alex had bitten me. Instead, Caleb’s bite felt like an extension of sex—it ratcheted the pleasure between us.
Something entirely separate from sex was happening inside of me, too. Something warm and steady and familiar filled my chest, like a second heart, beating beside mine.
I gasped as my climax finally released me and sagged against Caleb. Sweaty, gasping for breath, we lay sprawled together. The new feeling inside of me slowly eased into a less startling awareness, a subtle presence warming my own heart. Just as I’d known the pack was with me when I finally joined, I knew now that it was Caleb’s heart beating in tandem with mine, anchoring me to him in a way that felt safe and sure and perfect.
Bright morning light spilled through the windows, bathing us both in its golden glow. I stroked a finger across the deep bite mark I’d left on him. It should have looked awful—his skin all torn up and smeared with blood—but the sight of if filled with possessive contentment. Mine. The happiness that filled me didn’t seem possible, but I was never going to let it go.
“I love you,” I whispered, kissing his damaged skin.
He tilted my chin up and kissed me on the mouth, sweet and hard and long. When we finally broke apart, he met my gaze with burning intensity. “I love you, Grace.”
THE END
A Note on Language
The Teekkonlit Valley does not exist in real life, nor do the Teekkonlit First People from whom the present-day pack is descended. However, based on the approximate location of the imaginary Teekkonlit Valley, the original inhabitants would have likely been an Athabaskan-speaking people—more precisely, probably a dialect of the Koyukon language.
To create the fictional people and places in the Teekkonlit Valley, I have borrowed heavily from the Koyukon language. Many of the Teekkonlit place names and surnames are taken from the Central Koyukon dialect. “Teekkonlit” itself is borrowed from a Koyukon word meaning “wolfskin.”
My single greatest resource for spellings and word meanings came from The Junior Dictionary for Central Koyukon Athabaskan compiled by Eliza Jones of the Alaska Native Language Center (1978).
However, the spelli
ngs are not totally faithful to Central Koyukon. This is partly because some of the phonetic symbols are just impossible for me to replicate in type. But there are also several narrative reasons. The first is that the fictional Teekkonlit people would have spoken their own dialect, which would have differed from the Central Koyukon. I also wanted to simulate the effect of linguistic drift over time. And finally, related to the phonetic difficulties, I felt it was realistic to represent the influence of colonizer’s languages on spelling and pronunciation of names.
If you’re interested in Koyukon, or other indigenous Alaskan languages, the University of Alaska Fairbanks has a large digital collection of dictionaries.
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Also by Heather Guerre
The Forbidden Mates series:
Star Crossed (Forbidden Mates 1)
Moon Struck (Forbidden Mates 2)
Heart Song (Forbidden Mates 3)
Demon Lover
Cold Hearted: An Alaskan Werewolf Romance Page 25
