by Dani René
Balen lays me down on the bed. My eyes open and meet his, and he’s breathing hard like he’s been running. I look past him and see Finley asleep in the cradle a few feet away.
“What brought you to me? How did you know?” His voice is more growl than words.
“Know what?” I stare at him in silence for several minutes. His fingers clench on the sheets on either side of my body. Tension crackles between us. “What’s wrong? Did the wolves come back?”
“You don’t need to worry about the wolfskins. I’m not letting them have you.”
His lips graze my forehead in the darkness.
Wolfskins. I’ve never heard that word before. I wonder about this strange man living all alone. In all the fairy stories I was told, only monsters live in the woods.
Balen kisses down my temple to my cheek. I can barely see him in the darkness, but I can feel him. Warm and strong and inviting. His lips sear across my jaw. My mouth parts with a gasp as heat ripples up my body.
“You’re mine, kochanie. I’ve found you at last.”
Chapter Four
Balen
Carys arches against me and moans, as if she loves to hear me say mine. The white-hot fire that has erupted in my chest burns even hotter.
My mate.
My life.
The bear roars in triumph within me. He was right all along. My mouth crashes over hers and takes the kiss that I crave. Her lips open beneath mine, and my tongue plunges into her mouth, tasting the sweetness that calls out to my blood.
Her dress laces down the front, and I unthread it. I spread the fabric wide, exposing her breasts, full and heavy, the dusky tips reddened and sensitive. I kiss and nuzzle them gently, and then scoop them together with my hands, so I can run my tongue over them. Carys moans beneath me, her thighs squeezing one of my own.
The straining of my cock in my pants is painful. I reach down and unbuckle my belt as Carys’ hands smooth up my chest, testing my muscles with her fingers. I grasp my shirt and pull it over my head. Her eyes grow wide as she looks at me. She touches the dark hair at the center of my chest and trails her fingers over the muscles of my stomach. They close around my shaft through my pants as I pull her skirts up to her hips. She gasps in shock as she explores my girth. I spread her open and reach to unbutton my pants. Her pussy is sweet and inviting in the dim light, and her heavenly scent overwhelms the last of my sanity.
I have to be inside her. Fill her with my seed. Claim my mate.
“Wait. Stop. I don’t understand what’s happening.” She sits up, her blonde hair tumbling around her. She pulls her dress closed over her breasts and down her legs. Her lips are reddened and swollen. Her cheeks and throat are flushed and I can smell her arousal. I don’t wait to wait, but I grit my teeth and curl my hands into fists.
“We’ve barely spoken since I’ve been here. I’ve seen how you’ve tried to ignore me. What’s changed?”
“Everything,” I breathe, cupping her cheek. The bear inside me recognized her the moment she stepped onto my mountain. He woke me and pulled me from my bed, and made me tramp through the snow to find her, even before I heard the baying of the wolfskins. It took the rest of me days to catch up, but now that I’ve held her in my arms, I’ll never let her go again.
I dip my head to claim her mouth once more, but her small hands push me away again.
“I’m stronger now. Finley and I will leave in the morning.”
My eyes narrow. The wolfskins will be waiting for her to step one foot outside my territory before they snatch her. Carys and the baby need me to protect them, and I need my mate.
“Thank you for everything you’ve done for us,” she says quickly. “I’m sure you’ll be glad to be rid of us.” She scoots up the bed away from me and turns to lift Finley from his cradle.
“Stop,” I growl. Her strange scent is stronger than ever and I sense a crackle in her aura that no human woman should have. I should have recognized her for what she is: a woman so rare that skinchangers will fight to the death to be her mate. “You won’t leave; you can’t.”
Carys inhales a frightened breath. “Why not?”
Because I crave you more than life itself and I can’t let you go. I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth before I lose you. “The wolfskins will hunt you down.”
Her voice becomes shrill. “What’s a wolfskin? Just say wolves like a normal person, can’t you? And I don’t care. I’ll take my chances with them.”
The short hairs on the back of my neck rise, and the bones in my spine give a faint pop. I can’t let them take her. The wolfskins will raise the child in fury and turn him into something cold and cruel like them. They’ll force her to have more pups for them and punish her if she refuses. I know that pack of old.
“That’s what they are. Wolfskins.”
“Will you let us leave?”
In answer, I reach out and close my hand around her bare, slender ankle.
Tears fill her eyes. She picks Finley up and holds the baby tight to her chest as tears fill her eyes. “Why are you doing this? You’ve been so kind to us.”
“You don’t know what you are, do you?”
“I’m no one. I was abandoned as a baby and grew up in the village. I was raised by the preacher and his wife, and when I disappointed them, they let the villagers throw me out.”
I can’t fathom how a skinchanger could have abandoned their daughter, except if they were sick and injured and had no choice. “You’re a skinbearer, a human woman with skinchanger blood somewhere in her family tree. You can’t shift, but you can become a skinchanger’s lifemate.”
Carys takes a shuddering breath, and whispers, “You’re crazy.”
“Those wolfskins will keep coming after you. You’re more precious than silver and gold.”
“No, I’m not. Everyone in my village is afraid of me. They cast me out because I’m dangerous, and I brought the wolves.”
“I told you, those aren’t wolves. Who fathered your child? Think, Carys. He wasn’t normal, was he?”
Carys gazes down at the baby and says in a small voice, “There was a man at the harvest festival last year. A stranger. I don’t remember much… I think I had too much to drink. A few weeks later, I discovered I was pregnant.”
I clasp her shoulders. “That wasn’t a man. Did you not notice the bitemarks on your body?”
“I had some scratches,” she whispers. “But it was still just a man. Please don’t say I’m a witch, too. I can’t bear it.”
Wolfskins are notorious for cruelly marking up the human women they lie with. She’s lucky she strayed into the path of only one, and he can’t have realized what she is. Not until recently. If she was thrown out of her village for drawing the wolfskins closer, then they must have scented the pup in the wind.
I look down at the sleeping baby in her arms. I realized what he was when I looked into his eyes and saw the moon reflected back at me.
Outside, a long, high howl sounds through the night. Carys’ eyes widen. There’s snuffling, snarling and scratching from outside. They’ll keep coming until they take her, or I do something to them.
I get up off the bed. They can have one warning, which I shout through the door. “Get off my mountain before I come out there and rip your mangy hides from your backs.”
There’s an answering snarl, which goes on and on, elongating strangely. A crunching noise, a groan, and then the snarl becomes a laugh. A human laugh.
“Come out, come out, pretty girl,” taunts a voice. “You and the pup. We don’t want to hurt you.” This statement is followed by a snigger from what sounds like two other wolfskins.
I grip the door handle. “Last chance. If I come out there, none of you are walking off this mountain.”
“She’s not yours, bearskin,” yaps a different voice. “She’s ours. We claimed her first.”
All over my body, hairs shoot through my pores like needles, and my canines bulge and ache. The muscles in my back bunch and ripple. Behind me,
I hear Carys gasp at the first signs of the change.
They think she’s theirs. They’re claiming my mate.
I tear the front door open. Outside in the snow, there are wolfskins in their human forms, dirty and ragged, their black hair in greasy tangles. Frozen air whips against my bare chest, and I bare my teeth at them. “You dare step paws in my territory and hound my mate?”
I hear a sharp intake of breath behind me. Carys needs to understand what I am, what she is, and why I’ll fight every last wolfskin, mountain lionskin and bearskin in the land to protect her and the baby.
The biggest wolfskin has a scar over one eye and the iris is milky white. “That’s my mate, and my cub, you dozy fuck.”
As he whines, I size them up. I can fight three at once. Wolfskins are fast and vicious, but I can crush their skulls in one blow. I come down the steps toward them, and their backs arch and they bare their teeth at me.
“She ran to me. Now leave, before I make you bleed.”
Their eyes snap to something behind me. Carys is framed in the doorway, Finley clutched to her chest as she stares, face paper-white, at the one-eyed wolfskin.
“You,” she whispers.
He calls to her, “He’ll dash that pup’s head on the rocks as soon as we leave. A bearskin won’t protect a wolf brat. It’s not in his blood.”
“You’d call your own child a brat?” I growl through my teeth.
The milky iris and the golden eye swing back to me. “I’ll call it what I want. Stand down, bearskin, before we make you.”
“Leave me alone!” Carys’ voice is ragged and tear-streaked. “Just go away and leave me alone.”
“Shut your face. I’ll deal with you in a minute,” the wolfskin snarls.
I’m still wearing pants and boots, but that has never mattered. The beast within envelops every human thing about me including my clothes as it bursts forth, roaring and snarling.
Behind me, Carys screams.
My front paws hit the ground and snow flies into the air. I open my mouth and roar. Full-throated. Deep-bellied. A roar so powerful that it could knock a human off their feet. The wolfskins are changing, their snouts lengthening and fur bubbling over their skin. Before the closest wolfskin can open its yellow eyes, I pull back my paw and strike, putting the full weight of my nearly half-ton body into the blow. A fifth of my size, the wolf doesn’t stand a chance. His head snaps to one side with a crunch of bones. He crumples to the snow and lays there, without moving, tongue lolling out.
The other two snarl, teeth bared and fully changed.
I run and shoulder charge them aside, then turn as fast as I can. Not fast enough, though. A wolfskin leaps onto my back and starts snapping at my eyes with his teeth. The other makes repeated lunges at my face and throat. There’s blood in my eyes and growling fills my ears. I rise up onto my back legs and slam down, over and over, trying to dislodge the wolf from my back and crush the other beneath me.
Behind me, I can hear Carys screaming and Finley crying.
My face and neck are on fire and fur is flying all around me. I can barely see.
My paws land on something solid and I attack it with my jaws. The wolf screams in pain. The other gets his teeth over my snout and tears at my face. The wolf thrashes out of my grip. I swipe at it, but it’s already out of reach.
Frantic paws recede down the mountain. The other wolf releases me from its jaws, and it flees as well.
I bury my face against the snow, grunting in relief as the cold soothes the pain.
When I raise my head, Carys is standing in front of me. She’s white-faced and bare-legged, and her hair and dress are being whipped around her by the frozen wind. She doesn’t seem to notice as she gazes up at me, the bear towering over her. The bear that just fought three wolfskins for her.
The bear that declared she belongs to him.
Slowly, painfully, I turn back into my human form. The tears and bites in my flesh sting with blinding pain as they’re stretched and pulled. Finally, I kneel on all fours, gasping in the snow, blood dripping down my face and chest.
With the last of my strength, I haul myself to my feet.
“What are you?” she whispers, as I swipe the back of my hand over my bloodied mouth. My woman hasn’t run screaming at the sight of me. She’s brave, as well as beautiful.
I pick her up in my arms, my hands leaving bloody marks on her dress. “I already told you what I am. I’m your mate.”
Chapter Five
Carys
Balen carries me back to the cabin, and I gaze at the man who holds me so securely in his arms. His face is scratched and his chest is wet with blood, and my body flutters and heats at the sight. In that fight, he was magnificent. I’ve never seen so much power.
He pauses to turn the dead wolf over with his foot. “Not the one-eyed wolf,” he mutters, and curses.
The one-eyed wolf, the man I remember from the harvest festival. I thought he was a field worker from the next village over. He gave me something to drink, and after that, my memory’s blurry. If my eyes are to be believed, he’s a wolf shifter, what Balen calls a wolfskin. And the man carrying me is a bear.
I raise my eyes to Balen’s face once more. My mate. The word rings strangely in my heart. If he’s to be believed, then I’m not human, like I always thought I was. And I was made for him. A warm feeling spreads through me as I remember his words.
More precious than silver and gold.
As Balen crosses the threshold with me in his arms, he crumples onto one knee, head bowed.
“Quickly, come and sit on the bed.” I take one of his massive hands in mine and tug him toward it. I could never hope to carry him as he carried me.
Leaning heavily on my shoulders, he makes his way across the room and collapses onto the bed, sitting upright. I get to work cleaning up all the blood covering him. It was a vicious fight, and there’s so much of it, trickling down his face and chest from his scalp and cascading from a gash on his throat. There’s a bad tear on his upper back, too, but I’m most concerned about the one on his neck.
I wad up one of the clean cloths Balen prepared for Finley and put it into his hands. “Press here,” I say, guiding Balen’s hand to the spot on his neck. I work quickly, almost frantically. His flowing blood is making my chest feel tight, and the more he bleeds, the more despair expands within me.
I clean up the rest of his cuts and scratches, bandaging them where I can to staunch the flow of blood. After a few minutes, he starts looking more like himself, though there’s a pallor to his skin and circles under his eyes I don’t like as well as a pool of blood at our feet.
“You’re helping me,” he rasps.
My eyes meet his deep brown ones. “You nearly died to protect us.”
One of his brows quirk as if to ask, Is that the only reason?
I open my mouth to answer. Before the wolfskins interrupted us, I was feeling things I’d never felt before as his body moved against me and his lips tasted mine. Now, some long-dormant part of me has erupted into life, and with every touch, I can feel it growing stronger.
I want Balen.
Hesitantly, I lean forward and press my lips to his. The tang of blood and the musky scent of the bear within Balen calls out to me. My own blood sings in answer.
Balen scoops me onto his lap and his lips descend on mine. If my kiss was tentative, his is all-consuming. With my arms around his shoulders, he feels as big as a tree.
“I won’t let them take you away from me. You or the baby.”
I stroke his face, gazing up at him, happiness bursting through me. “You would protect Finley even though he isn’t yours?”
He catches my hand and presses his lips against my palm. “I already did, didn’t I? Now, I want my woman.”
His eyes are feral, and I see the echo of the bear within them. I open my mouth beneath his as he kisses me again, and his tongue plunges into my mouth. But I feel something warm and sticky running down his chest. “Balen, you’re blee
ding again.”
“It will stop.”
But as he pulls me closer, his eyes flutter, and he slithers from the bed onto the floor, nearly taking me with him.
“Balen!”
I try for several minutes to get him back onto the bed, but I can barely lift one of his arms. Instead, I rebandage his wound and wash the blood from his skin and under his nails, and from the floor. I lay blankets down and roll him onto them. At least he’ll be more comfortable like that than on the bare floor.
While I’ve been working, the sun has come up. Finley is unbothered by the night’s events, chewing on the handle of the rattle that Balen made for him. Laying in the cradle that Balen made for him. I sit and nurse my baby, watching Balen sleep, and my eyes fill with tears. This huge man, this bearskin, fought himself into unconsciousness for us tonight. What if he never wakes up?
As Finley feeds, I search my baby’s face for signs of what Balen says he is. His skin is smooth and hairless and his eyes a clear blue. I push back his top lip, wondering if I’ll see pointed canines poking through his gums, but there are only blunt, ordinary human teeth. My heart aches at the thought that he has that monster for a father. No matter what happens, that one-eyed wolf is not taking my baby and raising him to be like him.
I put Finley down for a sleep and feel like collapsing myself, but there’s no one else to keep the fire in the stove going and make sure we’re all warm and fed. Balen seems to be a naturally tidy and organized man, and it’s the work of just a few minutes to add logs to the stove and get it roaring again. I bring in buckets of snow to melt for drinking water and check on the food stores. There are some sacks of grain and dried vegetables, so I make a version of the pottage that he’s been making for us.
Staying busy with smalls tasks makes the silence less frightening.
By the afternoon, Balen is feverish. All his wounds are raised and burning hot to the touch, as if the wolfskins’ teeth were filled with poison. He thrashes restlessly on the blankets, sweat pouring off him. I scoop up more buckets of snow from outside and lay slushy, half-frozen cloths over his brow. He burns through them in minutes. I’ve never seen a fever as powerful as the one that’s gripping his body.
