by Carol Davis
It would be very odd indeed if a babe didn’t arrive within a year.
“Abby would like a separate bedroom,” Aaron explained. “Right now, there’s only the one room, and the bed takes up a lot of space. It’s not very private, either, she says. She’d like a separate room.”
“With a door,” Abby put in.
Jed looked past them at the cabin, parts of which were visible through the trees. “If you’re going to do that much, maybe two rooms would be better. If you want some privacy now, when it’s just the two of you there, you’ll want it even more later on.” He paused, but he couldn’t help teasing them. “When the house starts to fill up with young ones.”
Abby made a squeaking sound and blushed as red as the healer’s tomatoes.
“If you can break away from that”—Jed nodded at their garden—“we can have a look. See which end of the cabin would be best to build on to. We’ve got some lumber in storage from the house we pulled down last year. That should be more than enough. No need to cut down another tree.”
“A window—” Abby started.
“No glass left,” Jed said. “But we’ll get more. Before the winter comes. We can give you at least a small window.”
“I thought—”
She wanted a big one, Jed could see. Something that would give her a view of a big swath of the island. “The new room won’t have heat,” he reminded her. “All the heat comes from the fireplace. The more glass you have, the more the heat will escape. You’ll realize that during the winter. I suspect you’ll find that you enjoy being warm more than you enjoy staring at the trees.”
He’d been careful not to chide her. She was young, after all, and human. Accustomed to life the way it was on the mainland, where houses had many rooms, all of them quite warm in the winter.
“Come,” he said, gesturing toward the house. “Let’s see how things look.”
It was mid-afternoon by the time he returned to the settlement. Aaron and Abby had insisted on providing him with his midday meal, and the three of them had gone over every possible detail of building the new rooms, down to how many nails Jed thought they would need.
He hoped they wouldn’t be that closely involved with the actual construction, supervising every swing of the hammer.
But he could forgive them their enthusiasm. A young couple, putting together their first home and preparing for the arrival of their first babe—he couldn’t help but be charmed by that, even if it meant having to hold back his frustration and impatience. They simply wanted the best they could provide for their family.
Speaking of which…
There was Gregory, blocking the road up ahead, puffing himself up as if he thought he could become ten times his normal size. He was even angrier than he’d been that morning, more desperate to fight, to assert himself, even though by most measures he was still a child.
“I’m going to the storehouse,” Jed told him. “Come along if you like.”
He tried to skirt around the boy, but Gregory was having no part of that. He moved quickly to stand in Jed’s way, fire burning in his eyes.
How in the world did his mother manage to deal with this every day?
Rather than try again to get around the boy, Jed held his ground and let the wolf straighten him up a bit, make him a few inches taller. He didn’t avoid meeting the boy’s gaze, but he did make a point of blinking, and breathed slowly and evenly.
The boy would find nothing in his scent that said Jed was eager to fight, to assert his dominance over a younger, smaller wolf.
Gregory seemed at a loss for a minute, unsure of how he ought to transform this into a battle.
One he’d surely imagined himself winning.
He settled for words. “You have no business pursuing my mother,” he growled. “My mother is still bonded to my father.”
Jed dipped his head a little. It wasn’t quite a nod.
“You need to stay away,” Gregory insisted.
Jed held his silence for a while, then said calmly, “I am not pursuing your mother. I try to assist when I can, as does everyone else in the pack. Deborah is our healer—a fine one, I might add—and we owe her much gratitude. I carried some vegetables for her because she had other things to see to. Any other wolf would have done the same. If you had been there at the gardens, you would have done the same.”
There was a very small rebuke in there, a reminder that Gregory had been nowhere around when his mother needed him.
“I see the way you look at her,” the boy announced.
“She’s beautiful. I wasn’t aware that it’s a crime to appreciate something beautiful, whether it’s a fine sunset or a fine female.”
The boy’s limbs twitched.
He’d gone through his first change almost a year ago, Jed remembered. He wasn’t one of the older males who had assisted the boy with that initial transformation, but he’d heard from others that it had been very difficult and painful.
The boy had done a lot of blustering about being ready to take his place in the pack, insisting that he was ready to become an adult, but despite all of that, he’d desperately resisted allowing the wolf to break through. In fact, he had acted as if he was sure he was going to die.
Such things happened now and then, even though all the young ones were well-prepared for the change. It was one thing to understand that there was a wolf inside you, one that was ready to break free, and another thing entirely to allow it to happen, to accept that your body would not be under your control until you could learn to control the wolf.
“You should run,” Jed told the boy. “Let the wolf take over for a while and run through the woods. It helps.”
“This isn’t the wolf’s problem.”
It’s not yours, either, Jed thought. Though that wasn’t true. This boy, troubled as he was, was the only male in Deborah’s household. He had responsibilities that included taking care of his mother.
Defending her from danger.
Maybe this could only go one way. It wasn’t a direction Jed wanted to take, but he’d tried everything else—had tried befriending the boy and recommending him for additional chores and duties. He’d tried being stern. He’d tried ignoring him entirely. None of that had worked.
The mere fact that Jed was on the same island as Deborah seemed to be too much for the boy to handle, and Jed certainly was not going to leave the island to accommodate him.
That left only one choice.
“You’re determined to fight,” he said mildly. “Is that it? This can’t be settled between us unless we fight.”
The boy hesitated. He seemed to think that there was a “but” coming, that Jed would move on to some secondary line of reasoning, and when that didn’t happen, Gregory shuddered a little.
Then he recovered himself and said stubbornly, “Yes. I am the eldest male of my family. I challenge you, Jedediah.”
“Have it your way, then,” Jed said. “We’ll fight.”
Five
“What am I supposed to think?” Deborah demanded, jabbing a finger into Jed’s very unflinching—and heavily muscled—chest. “You’re going to battle my son? My son, who’s barely past his first change? What I think is, you’ve lost your mind. That, or everyone I’ve spoken to this afternoon is a liar.”
“They’re not lying,” Jed replied. “At least, I assume they’re not.”
“You’re going to battle a child.”
“It was his idea.”
His unbroken calm was infuriating. Worse than that, he seemed to find the whole thing somewhat amusing.
Amusing!
Yes, the challenge might well have been Gregory’s idea. All right, it had certainly been his idea. The boy had been itching to fight someone for weeks, and if it couldn’t be Jed, he might well have chosen one of his classmates, accusing him of some imagined slight.
Victor would have settled this quickly, she thought.
No; if Victor had been here, this wouldn’t be happening at all. Gregory wouldn’t be
angry at Jed, or anyone else. He’d be growing up strong and smart, with his father’s advice to light his way.
I should be able to give him the same guidance, Deborah thought, but that wasn’t really true. A boy needed his father. He needed the firm, loving hand of the wolf who had sired him, the way Victor had needed to be shaped by his own father. Even a grandfather would have helped, but Victor’s sire and Deborah’s had both been taken early. Victor’s mother and sister had tried to help, but Gregory was as uninterested in their advice as he was in Deborah’s.
And Deborah’s mother’s only advice was that she find another mate. She’d never been fond of Victor, who she said had taken her only daughter from her too soon, leaving her alone and neglected. A new mate, she said, would certainly be more attentive. More concerned with the needs of Deborah’s aging mother and troublesome son.
She liked Jed, she said repeatedly. Jed understood.
And now Jed intended to step into the circle of battle with Deborah’s twelve-year-old son. He intended to fight a child whose only previous battles had been tussles with males close to his own age.
Make-believe battles.
He’d come home bruised and scraped a few times, but nothing worse. Nothing that would prepare him to face an adult wolf’s teeth and claws.
“Gods preserve me, Deborah,” Jed said with a groan. “You can’t believe that I intend to harm your child. That I have so little control over my wolf that there’s even a ghost of a chance that Gregory will be hurt. I’m going to let him fight so he can burn off some of that aggression.”
“And what if you get hurt?”
Jed raised an eyebrow. “Are you joking with me now?”
“He has teeth and claws, you fool. He could—”
“Deborah.”
There was something in the tone of his voice that stopped her, that stole the breath out of her chest. Victor had said her name in just that way, whenever she let her imagination carry her away. Those times had always involved Gregory—the babe who had come into the world a little early, a little small. For several months she’d fretted over him almost to the point of insanity in spite of the reassurances of her mother, and Granny Sara, and a number of the other females.
Deborah. He’ll be fine. If you can’t trust the pack, then trust the gods.
Before she was entirely aware of what he was doing, Jed had gathered her into his arms and was holding her against that rock-like chest that hadn’t surrendered to her jabs. He cupped the back of her head in one big hand and held it so that her ear was pressed over his heart.
“I won’t hurt your boy,” he promised her quietly. “I swear it.”
She thought about struggling out of his grasp—she really ought to, for heaven’s sake—but it felt so good to be held like this. To feel guarded and protected. Just for a moment, to not be responsible for anything.
Then, gently, Jed tipped her head up and looked down into her eyes.
“I won’t hurt your boy,” he whispered. “I promise. I would never do anything to cause you any pain.”
Carefully, tenderly, he pressed his lips to hers.
The touch sent a jolt through her body, from her lips all the way down to her toes. It roused her wolf to attention, and Deborah could feel the animal testing the limits of the walls that held it at bay. It was devoted to Victor, to the mate who had been stolen from them both, but the touch and scent of this new male intrigued it.
It wanted Deborah to feel pleasure, the kind of deep, sensual satisfaction that came only from coupling with a strong, capable male.
No…
The wolf pressed harder against the barrier between them and began to keen and scratch.
The change in Jed’s scent told Deborah that his own wolf was doing the same thing.
She hadn’t moved away from him, she realized. She’d grabbed a fistful of his shirt at the small of his back and was clinging to it as if the powerful winds that had swept through the settlement last night were threatening to carry her away.
In contrast, his touch was light, the barest suggestion of what might come if she let him have his way. When she looked up at him, there was a sweet smile on his face, but she lost track of it when he kissed her again.
She’d confronted him in his own house, had stormed inside and slammed the door behind her, and now they were truly alone. No one was likely to come wandering in without knocking and waiting for permission to enter.
They were alone.
She couldn’t find it in her to argue when he swept her up into his arms and carried her across the room to his bed. He laid her down carefully, placing her head on the pillow so she’d be comfortable.
The pillow and bedcovers were rich with his scent.
She surrendered to taking a deep breath, thinking that it was all right to allow herself that much, trying to hold on to the moment, to how very wonderful this moment was. She’d imagined it many times, for at least a minute or two, telling herself that there was no shame in daydreaming.
But of course there was. Even dreaming of such a thing, when Victor…
“Sshh,” Jed whispered.
He was sitting beside her, stroking her cheek with the back of his hand. There was a need in his eyes that made her insides flush with heat, that made her breasts and her sex tingle.
Was he big? she wondered. Could he fill that empty place inside her that had been neglected for so long?
Could he…
“I’ll step away if you want me to,” he said quietly. “I’ll move away, and you can get up and walk out, and I’ll never speak of this to anyone.” He paused and closed his eyes for a moment. “But if you feel the way I do—if you want this—”
Only Victor, she thought. There had only ever been Victor, from the time she was very young.
For eight years, there had been no one.
She sat up on the bed, but instead of moving away, she held out her arms to Jed and embraced him when he leaned closer.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I’m not sure at all.”
She leaned back just far enough to take hold of the hem of her blouse and lift it up over her head. She tossed it away quickly, then grabbed Jed’s hands and moved them to her breasts. He growled deep in his throat, bent down and captured a nipple between his teeth, biting it just enough to send a thrill zinging down into her core. Still holding on with his teeth, he lapped at her skin with his tongue, tasting and tickling, clearly pleased when she groaned.
It took him only a few seconds to strip off his own clothing and fling it aside. When his pants were gone, she could see how aroused he was—and her question was answered. Yes, he was big. More than capable of filling her to the brim, and all she could think was that she needed him inside her as quickly as possible.
Apparently, he was thinking the same thing.
She could feel the strength in his hands and arms as he laid her back down on the bed and worked her skirt up to her waist. He made short work of her undergarment, then began to caress her, his warm palms sliding up and down her thighs, over her belly, up to her breasts. His finger explored her sex, slipping in and out, and his pleasure in being able to do this was written all over his face.
Finally, he moved into place and slipped inside her.
Yes. Oh gods, yes.
She crossed her ankles underneath his backside and used her heels to press him in farther, as deep as he could possibly go. With much of his weight propped on his elbows, he leaned in to kiss her again, his tongue dipping and exploring now the way his fingers had just a minute ago. At first his beard was scratchy, unpleasant, but then she discovered that she liked the feel of it; it was so very, very male. If her skin was chafed, so be it.
Her hands prowled up and down his back, probing into his flesh, surfing the rippling of his muscles as he thrust and withdrew, thrust and withdrew again.
How had she resisted this for so long?
Deep inside her, the wolf was dancing—the way it might in the
soft silver light of a full moon, she thought. It was nearly bursting with joy and arousal, howling so loudly that Deborah thought the noise must be audible all the way across the settlement.
Maybe they could hear her all the way across the settlement.
Breathing in deep gasps, Jed carried her to places she’d almost forgotten about. She’d tried to forget she was even female, had resigned herself to simply being the healer. A caregiver, in no need of care for herself. But he was skilled at this, and somehow without even asking for guidance—either in words or in motion—he brought her to the brink of her climax and then pushed her over the edge.
Moments later they lay side by side, slick with sweat, both of them gazing up at the ceiling of Jed’s simple home.
“That was very, very good,” Jed murmured.
And that was far from being eloquent, but it made Deborah smile. Her sex was still tingling, and she thought she might tell Jed that he’d neglected to pay attention to her other breast.
But for now, it felt fine simply to lie beside him.
Six
The wolf had never been so happy.
Of course it enjoyed running free through the woods, particularly if there was prey to pursue. On nights when the weather was fine and the rabbit population was high, the wolf could work itself into near-ecstasy loping among the trees and across the rocks. Add a good meal to that, and the animal was content for days.
Even among a small population—sixty wolves wasn’t many, all things considered—there were chances to couple just for fun. The younger females all appreciated what an older male could offer: strength, experience, the possibility that he would become an elder within the next few years. More than a few had told him outright that they’d be glad to commit to him as a lifetime mate, bond or no bond. To convince him of their worth, they all but threw themselves at him sexually.
Sometimes they actually did throw themselves. Off a bluff, across the road, onto his bed.
But this?
This, he’d dreamed about for years.
