by Dani René
Afraid of him dying of dehydration, every half hour I encourage him to drink a little water. He knocks the cup out of my fingers or thrashes his head from side to side, and I only succeed in spilling the water over him.
In the morning, Balen’s fever hasn’t broken and his wounds are an alarming shade of red. He won’t respond at all when I shake him and call his name. Through my tears, I get the fire going and make food, but I have no appetite.
In the evening, there’s nothing to do but sit by Balen’s side and hold his hand, silent tears slipping down my face. I think Balen’s dying. A wave of loneliness and despair slams into me so hard that it takes my breath away. I tip forward onto his huge chest and cry in earnest. I cry for everything I’ve lost. Mostly I cry for him, this beautiful, fierce man who I didn’t even get to thank for saving us.
In the small hours of the morning, the fever releases him, but instead of waking, Balen’s temperature plummets. I touch his cheeks, his hands, his chest, and they’re all as cold as ice. He really is dying. The wolves will come back, and there’s nowhere left for me to run.
My tears drip against his cheeks, feeling like my soul is breaking into pieces.
A papery, rasping voice asks, “Carys?”
I sit up, gasping. The color has returned to his face. He feels warm to the touch. “Balen! You’re alive.”
He smiles and cups my cheek with an enormous hand. His eyes are filled with love. “Did you doubt it? Three mangy curs aren’t enough to rip me from my mate.”
“I thought you were going to die.” The tears start falling even faster, but he wipes them away with a finger.
“Don’t cry, kochanie. I could never die and leave my mate all alone.” He sits up with surprising ease.
“You should rest. You were nearly dead just a few minutes ago.”
Balen laughs, a full-bellied laugh that fills my heart with relief. “Rest? I’m not going to lay around recuperating for weeks on end. I did all my healing at once. See?” He tears the bandage from his throat as I yelp in protest, only to see a silvery scar where there was once a deep gash.
I trace the scar, murmuring, “I keep forgetting you’re not human, but you’re not a bear, either, are you?”
Balen’s huge hand cups my cheek, and he dips his head toward mine. The bristles of his beard tickle my cheek. “No. I’m something more. I’m yours.”
I place a finger against his lips, my heart beating wildly. “How do you know I’m your mate? What makes you so sure?”
“I feel it. Right here.” He takes my hand and presses it against his heart. Warmth spreads beneath my fingers and I feel an answering throb in my own chest. Warmth like a miracle.
He’s mine, and I’m his.
Balen’s kiss is so searing that it almost brings on my own fever. “Now, where were we before those mutts interrupted us?”
I was on my back, practically naked, with his huge body hovering above me. Balen wraps his arms around my waist and stands up smoothly. A moment later, my back is against the wall, and he pushes me up, so that my sex is level with his face.
My legs wrap around his big shoulders by instinct and I’m so high up, but Balen holds me securely. He pulls my skirts back until my sex is bare before him and growls his approval.
“I’ve starving, kochanie. And I mean to feast.”
Chapter Six
Balen
I run my tongue over her pussy, and my life feels like it’s beginning. Carys tastes like the sweetest honey in spring and melts around me, he legs melding to my body and her heady scent washing over me.
“You have to no idea how long I’ve waited for you,” I growl between licks, listening to her breathing. “You were worth the wait. Every day. Every month. Every decade.”
“Decade?” she breathes, her eyes closed.
She doesn’t understand everything yet, but there’ll be time later to talk. Right now, I’m focused on doing other things with my tongue.
Thanks to my bear side, it’s muscular and thick, and I delve into her pussy. Carys moans and digs her fingers into my hair as I alternate between running my tongue against her clit and driving it into her pussy.
Her cries grow in pitch as her skin heats. She writhes against me as she comes, her supple body taut with her climax. I carry her over to the bed; breathlessly, she slides down my body and onto the mattress.
As much as I’m aching to be inside her, I should explain what our joining will mean.
Resting on my fists, I loom over her. “If you bear my cub and pledge your heart to me, you’ll fulfil your destiny as a skinbearer and the last mortal part of you will be burned away.”
Carys smooths her hair back from her face, still coming down from her climax. With that flush in her cheeks and her eyes dark and shining, it takes all my strength to hold myself back from her.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you won’t become a skinchanger, but you’ll live as long as I will. You will have decades with your sons and daughters, and with me.”
She gazes up me, her brow pinched. “If we mate, we can be together, always?”
Not Can it be undone? or Are you sure you want me? My heart swells for the woman in my arms. “Always.”
A smile breaks over her face, but then dims again. “There’s something else. It’s not my first time, obviously.” She glances at Finley asleep in his cradle. “But I don’t remember my first time.”
Anger burns through me as I think of what she must have been through, picked up and discarded by a wolfskin. She takes my face between her small hands and draws me down for a kiss. The skinchanger and skinbearer blood is pounding through us, drawing us closer and driving our desire higher.
“Are you sure?” I ask, nuzzling her throat.
“I want you as much as you want me. Please, Balen.”
Her soft begging undoes me. I slide my hand between her legs, and she opens beneath me. My cock drags up her thigh as I reposition myself, and she strokes my length, guiding me closer.
I wet the tip of my cock in the folds of her pussy, enjoying the way we look together, my smooth, blunt head against her shining entrance. I capture her mouth with mine as I delve into her, feeling her give around me as her inner muscles massage every inch of my cock.
I pull back and gaze at her as I begin to thrust, watching the sensations play across her face. She’s trusting and sweet, but quickly starts to writhe and pant, her fingers clenching my muscles.
My bear instincts have me turning her over and hugging her hips to my body with one arm as I sheathe myself inside her again. I listen to her cries as I thrust fast and deep.
“Balen, you feel like you’re getting thicker,” she moans, her cheek pressed against the mattress. There’s exquisite pleasure on her face, her eyes closed and her panting mouth open.
The arm holding her has suddenly sprouted fur. I can feel ripples down my spine as my body begs to change, and swelling in my cock. This has never happened before. I have to grit hard against it to stop myself from changing all the way, but there’s nothing I can do about the rest of me.
“I can’t stop it. Tell me if it gets too much,” I growl, pounding into her faster. Carys pushes back to meet me, her cries growing feral.
We climax together, my growl and her cries filling the cabin. I look down and see my thickened cock wedged impossibly tight inside her. I lift her up against my body and hold her against me.
“My Carys. My kochanie. My heart.” I can only say these words, over and over, as I marvel that she’s in my arms. That I’m deep inside her. That she’s full of my seed. Finally, I ease myself out of her and we lay down together. She strokes her hands down my arms, smiling, as all the fine, dark hairs retract.
“I didn’t frighten you, I hope.”
“You felt amazing,” she purrs, snuggling into me. “I could feel you bulging and pulsing inside of me and it drove me wild.”
“The urge to change was so powerful I almost couldn’t hold it back.” I squeeze
her firm ass with my retracting claws. I’ve never felt anything like it.
My mate rests peacefully in my arms, her head against my shoulder and her knees tucked against my belly.
Around us, the wood crackles in the stove and Finley’s sleepy breathing is soft and steady.
Carys opens her eyes. “That wolfskin knows where we are. He’ll be back with others, won’t he?”
I clench my teeth, hating the thought that talk of Carys is probably on their filthy tongues right now. “Undoubtedly.”
She sits up. “Then we have to leave. They’ll want to fight you, and if there are more than three, what if they hurt you permanently, or kill you? I can’t let that happen.”
I shake my head and draw her back into my arms. “We’re staying. I’ve lost too much over the years, and I’m not giving up this hard-won territory because of a pack of mangy mutts. Out there,” I say, nodding toward the door, “every mountain slope, every meadow, every valley is spoken for by some beast or skinchanger. I’ll have to fight no matter where we go, and I’d rather fight for my territory than throw someone else off theirs.”
Carys catches her lower lip between her teeth, nibbling on it as she regards me. She says quietly, “I understand that, but it was so frightening to see you dying.”
“I wasn’t dying. I was healing as fast as I could to come back to you.”
She puts her arms around my neck and lays her head on my shoulder.
I stroke her hair, murmuring softly. “I’ve been alive a long, long time. I buried my first wife. I buried all my children. They were human, and I couldn’t hold the years back from them. But I can protect you and my territory, the place we will live together for years to come. I’m not going anywhere.”
I cup her belly, where she’ll bear my cubs in the years to come, and I feel a throb of energy course through me. I’ll fight. I’ll do whatever it takes, for them, and for Carys.
She must see the determination in my eyes because she smiles and says, “All right. But what are we going to do?”
I settle my arms around her, thinking. My pretty young bride isn’t going to do any of the fighting, but I wonder if she can help. “Will you come down the mountain with me? I’ve always believed the best form of defense is to go on the offensive and attack.”
Chapter Seven
Carys
The winter wind whips my hair around my face as we lope down the mountain. My thighs squeeze Balen’s back and I grip handfuls of his dark brown fur. Inside my cloak and wrapped securely against my chest is Finley, fast asleep.
Down in the valley, Balen stops by a tree and paws at the ground. The snow is thinner here, and I drop one of Finley’s swaddling cloths, weighted with a stone, onto the frosty ground. Balen sets off again, and several hundred feet later, he paws the ground, and I drop another cloth. We do this five times altogether, and then Balen runs back up the mountain.
In sight of the cabin, I slide from his back, tears in my eyes, partly from the stinging wind, but mostly from the thought that I have to watch him leave and head into danger without me.
I take his huge, furry face between my hands and rest my cheek against his. “I don’t want to say goodbye.”
Balen noses me, forcing me back a few steps.
“I know, I know. I have to go. I’m just so afraid that I’ll never see you again.”
He nuzzles me gently, and the baby sleeping against my chest, and I sense rather than see his worry for us. I wish there was any other way, but if we sit in the cabin and do nothing, the one-eyed man will return with more wolfskins and tear him apart and take Finley and me by force. The thought of my son turning into a slavering, evil hound, like his father, makes my blood turn to ice.
“I love you,” I whisper into Balen’s fur as I wrap my arms around his huge, shaggy neck. “Please come back to us.”
Reluctantly, I let go of my mate and begin to walk toward the cabin. Each time I turn back, Balen’s standing there, watching us, as still as a statue as flakes of snow settle onto his broad back.
Finally, I reach the cabin door, wave one last time and go inside. “It’s just you and me now, Finley,” I say in a shaky whisper, cupping my son’s head. “But not for long. Papa will be back very soon.”
Papa. It’s the first time I’ve talked about Balen like he really is Finley’s father. His blood might not run in Finley’s veins, but Balen’s shown more love and protectiveness toward him than the man who sired him. He’s earned the titles of father and mate with the sweat and blood he’s shed for us.
I lift the curtain and look out at the snow, but there’s no sign of the huge bear. “Come back to us soon, Balen. Please.”
I can’t sit still, and notice that the wood by the stove is getting low. Still with Finley against my chest, I head outside to the wood pile and gather an armful.
I turn around and start to crunch back to the cabin. With the front door just a few steps away, a shadow suddenly falls across the snow. I look up, into the eye of a tall, rangy man with stringy black hair.
Just one eye. One cold, feral eye.
The firewood slithers from my arms onto the ground.
His face splits into a sharp, toothy smile. “Hello, Carys. Are you and the little one all alone?”
I look left and right. I can’t see any other wolfskins, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there, hiding among the trees. I take a step back, but the wolfskin clicks his tongue.
“Why don’t you introduce me to my son?” He says the words slowly, savoring them like a favorite dish, and grins again.
I tighten my arms around Finley. If I scream, it will bring Balen running, but it won’t be in time. “What do you want?”
“What do you want, Kai,” the man corrects me.
Kai. I feel a flicker of recognition at that name.
Where are you taking me, Kai?
Let me go back, Kai. I’m scared.
I start to tremble, and it’s hard to force the words over my bloodless lips. “What did you do to me that night?”
“Oh, nothing. Just put a little mugwort in your drink.” He makes a sprinkling motion with his fingers.
I feel the fear that I felt that night again and see flashes of what happened. I glance down at Finley and hug my arms around him. How could something so sweet and perfect come from a moment so terrible?
“You do remember me, Carys, don’t you?” Kai’s voice becomes a hiss. His features start to ripple and shift. His nose gets longer and turns grey. His teeth elongate and his posture becomes hunched and menacing. He’s changing, but not all the way. Just enough to give him fangs and claws. Just enough to frighten me into doing whatever he wants.
“If you want that cub to live,” he says, with effort now that his tongue is longer and thinner than it was a moment ago, “you’ll do exactly what I say.”
“What do you want?” I whisper, backing away from the twisted, clawed hand that’s reaching for me. Kai grasps my cloak and gown at the back of my neck, so tight he’s almost choking me.
“Just shut up and walk.”
I scream, because there’s no hope for Finley or me if Kai takes us someplace that Balen can’t find us. I barely make a noise before Kai cuts it off with a vicious yank on my dress.
“Do that again and I’ll tear your throat out, and his,” Kai snarls right in my ear. The stench of his breath makes me want to throw up.
He marches us through the woods and around the mountain. We leave deep footprints in the snow, each one a little breadcrumb of hope that Balen will be able to find us. We must be leaving a scent trail, too, though how sensitive is his nose when the snow is falling? The trek is a long, tiring one, and as I slip on the rocky landscape that we’re now walking over, Finley starts to cry.
“Can’t you shut the brat up?” Kai snaps.
“No. He’s hungry and cold.”
“Make him be quiet or I’ll hurl him off this mountain.”
Tears running down my face, I try to comfort Finley as best I can, but a
ll my soothing words and pats do nothing to quell his screams. Kai drags us into an opening in the side of the rocky mountain, and Finley’s cries echo off the walls. Down and down he takes us, and there’s barely any light to see. The air feels stale and damp. The passage opens up into a cave that’s lit with feeble orange lamplight.
Kai chains me up. I submit to it without struggling, which I regret a moment later as he plucks Finley from the folds of my cloak and lays him on his back on a woven mat. I scream for him to give me my son back.
“Stay quiet while I go and deal with that lumbering idiot. Then you and I can get properly reacquainted.” He laughs at the look of horror on my face and disappears back down the tunnel.
I cry out and thrash around, trying to free myself from the chains. It only makes Finley cry harder. Sobbing, I try to soothe him, even though I can’t reach him. “It’s going to be all right, sweetheart. Just hold on a little longer.”
My mind is filled with images of Kai and his wolfskins ambushing Balen, and the snow stained red. I send a prayer up into the dark, frigid air.
Balen, please don’t die. We need you.
Chapter Eight
Balen
Tension mounts in my shoulders as I run over the snow. I’m getting farther and farther away from Carys and there is no sign of the wolfskins. Finley’s scent is all over those cloths, which should have drawn them out of hiding.
Something’s wrong. I wheel around and head back up the mountain, pounding through the snow, my mouth open to catch the scent of wolfskins.
Snarling erupts all around me, and three wolfskins race across the snow and attack. This time I’m ready for them to jump on my back, and instead of trying to dodge, I slam into each one as they leap at me, hearing a sickeningly satisfying crunch of bones. I snap the necks of two fallen wolfskins and run after the third. He’s limping and slow, and after a few hundred feet, I’m able to rear up and slam down on him with my front paws.
