by Viola Rivard
Taylor never ceased to be captivated by her mates. They were both tall and broad-shouldered, with the sort of heavy muscles that came from protein-rich diets and rigorous physical activity. Taylor could tell them apart at a mere glance, mainly because Hale had picked up several more scars than his brother, including a deep gouge on his shoulder that he’d gotten while hunting a boar during the previous spring.
The snow that had been caked on his fur quickly melted in the heat of the shift, making steam rise from Hale’s golden skin. Though he was never cold immediately after the shift, Taylor still rushed to wrap his fur around his shoulders. His eyes, one light blue, and one golden amber looked at her with naked affection. He hooked an arm around her waist and bent to touch his forehead to hers.
“Do you want me to hunt something fresh?” he asked.
Taylor shook her head. “No. You look tired.”
She meant it. Up close, she could see the lines of fatigue on his otherwise youthful face. They had traveled hard the past few days, and he’d neglected rest many times in favor of keeping watch. Though she knew he wouldn’t admit it, having both her and his pup so far outside of his territory was a constant stressor for him. She hoped that whatever Sarah’s urgent matter was, it was worth all the strain it had put on Hale.
Hale gave her a smile that made her toes curl. “We’ll see.”
As quickly as it had appeared, the sultriness vanished from his face and at once he was all business, ushering Taylor and Shadow into the cave while issuing commands to Holly, Glenn, and Karin.
It was too dark to see inside, and for a while Taylor could only sit with her son in her lap, waiting for Karin to start a fire. Shadow shifted into his human form, hands and mouth instantly seeking out Taylor’s breasts. Just as when he’d nursed alongside his sister, he started on the right breast, draining it in earnest. Taylor hummed softly to him, stroking his hair and rubbing his back as the fire slowly crackled to life.
Shadow looked very much like his fathers, except that his hair was a little darker and his skin, a little paler. He'd inherited a set of beautiful blue eyes and a dimpled chin from them, though he had Taylor’s softly rounded forehead and fine brow. While he was already half as tall as her, he was still lean and lightweight, and his size didn’t prevent him from molding comfortably into her lap.
While she nursed, Hale brought her dried meats from their bags. He made no effort to hide his disapproval, and Taylor paid it no acknowledgment. Ever since Fawn had been weaned, Hale had been quite vocal in his stance that their son should follow suit, though Taylor never gave his arguments any heed. Yes, Shadow was huge and intellectually advanced, but emotionally he was still barely a toddler and she wasn’t going to be shamed into forcing him off the breast before he was ready.
Shadow continued to suckle for a while after draining Taylor’s second breast. His eyes were closed, and she leaned in close to listen to his breathing. Certain he was asleep, she tried carefully extracting him from her nipple. Her efforts were met with a growl and a bite.
Had he been a human child, the bite would have been only a step above an annoyance. Unfortunately, Shadow not only had all of his teeth, but also a set of sharp, pointed fangs. In short, the bite hurt like hell.
Taylor yelped, her hands flying to his face in an instinctive attempt to detach him. She hadn’t needed to. The instant she cried out, Shadow realized what he’d done. He let her go at once, his eyes welling with tears of alarm. Gritting her teeth against the pain, Taylor set to soothing him. She pulled him into a tight hug, murmuring assurances that he hadn’t hurt her, but had only surprised her.
She knew that she wasn’t supposed to have favorites. She absolutely adored Fawn, but she felt a connectedness with Shadow that she’d never felt with another living creature. The love she felt for his fathers was different. It was intense and passionate, but there would always be a divide between her and them that could be touched, but never quite crossed. It was different with Shadow. She was so in tune with him, and it often felt like he was a part of her that had been missing for most of her life.
Once she’d calmed him back to sleep, she reluctantly passed him off to Holly. As standoffish as she could be with adults, the fox shifter turned doting when it came to the pups. She held Shadow close and rested her pointy chin on the top of his head.
Wordlessly, Hale stood and offered Taylor a hand to help her up. She accepted and tried to play it cool as he led her away from the others. He knew better than to pounce on her as soon as they were out of sight. Everyone knew what they’d be doing, but she certainly didn’t want them to hear it.
Unlike the Halcyon den, the cavern was small and just one long tunnel that ended abruptly with no webbing passageways. While she’d been nursing, Hale had come down to lay down furs and light a small fire. The air was still cold enough that she wanted to stuff her hands into her pockets, but instead, she buried them in her mate’s hair.
Hale’s mouth came down on hers, his hands gripping her hips to grind their bodies together. Even through all the layers of clothes, she could feel his stiff length jutting against her belly. Her insides flared with awareness, her skin heating, and the space between her thighs beginning to throb.
He broke away from her lips long enough to say, “I’m so fucking hard for you.”
As if she didn’t know. She laughed and tried kissing him again, but Hale wasn’t finished talking.
“It drives me insane, having you straddling my back all day.” As he spoke, he removed her bulky coat and ran his hands up the sides of her body. “I wanted to toss you off my back and take you up against a tree. Or on the ground. I would have if the pup wasn’t there.”
“What about the others?” she asked, already knowing what his response would be.
“Like I give a damn.”
Hale was forever vowing to claim her in front of the rest of the pack, but as of yet, had not made good on the promise. Taylor wouldn’t have let him—that was too weird, even for her—and she didn’t think he would actually do it. He was too possessive to let other males see her while she was bathing, never mind making love.
He was in the process of saying something about how he could have her anytime that he pleased when his hand reached up to squeeze her left breast. It was a measure of how distracted he was because Hale seldom bothered with her breasts anymore. Previously accustomed to manhandling them, he had quickly fallen out of the habit once she’d started nursing, back when her breasts had been sore and constantly leaking.
“Ow!” she yelped, jerking back from him on reflex.
At once, Hale appeared alarmed and apologetic, his expression identical to the one his son had given her not long before. But then, his eyes narrowed and his jaw took on a stubborn set. He pulled open her shirt to expose her breast, emitting a low growl when he saw the state of her nipple.
“I thought I smelled blood,” he grunted. “He bit you. Again.”
Taylor hastily moved to fix her shirt.
“It was an accident,” she said. “It was my fault. He had just nodded off, and I startled him.”
He rolled his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter. At least now you’re finished nursing him.”
There were two ways Taylor could take that statement. She wanted to convince herself that he meant “finished for the day”. If she did, they could continue what they were doing, and then argue later. Trouble was, she was already way too pissed to let him off the hook.
“Excuse me?” she said.
She saw the same indecision flash over his face and knew that his next words would be a toss-up. Either he’d take back what he’d said in order to get in her good graces, or he’d be too stubborn to correct himself.
He opted to double down.
“You heard me,” he said. He tended to get more authoritative when his twin wasn’t around, not that anything ever came of it. “I told you the last time he bit you. I said the next time he bit you that was it. This is the next time. You’re done.”
; Taylor vaguely remembered him saying something to that effect, but it was nothing new. He was always trying to set a deadline for Shadow’s nursing. It would have driven her crazy if it weren’t for Alder always having her back.
“And before you say anything, Alder agreed with me. That’s two to one, so you’re done.”
She wanted to believe that he was lying, but Hale had long-since learned better than to claim that Alder said something he hadn’t. Even so, it wasn’t like Alder to go behind her back and make such a big decision without consulting her. She opened her mouth to voice this, but once again, Hale was a step ahead of her.
“Alder agreed to it the night we left. He wanted me to be the one to tell you because he knew you’d get emotional about it. He’s wanted you to stop nursing for months now, but every time someone brings it up, you start crying. And don’t bother doing it now. You know it won’t work on me.”
Taylor could have smacked him.
“My body, my decision,” she said, jabbing a finger at his chest.
Hale let out a huff of frustration. “He’s almost as big as you, Taylor. He should have stopped nursing a year ago like Fawn did. If he had, you’d already have another pup at your breast, one without fangs.”
Taylor threw her hands up. “And there it is. That’s what this is really about. How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not ready.”
“Of course, you’re not,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. “You’re still nursing.”
“It’s not about the nursing,” she ground out. “And you know that. I don’t want to get pregnant again. The last time was terrible. I was a wreck for almost the entire time—not that you would have known. You were checked out for over half of it. And when the twins were born…” She paused, trying to keep her voice from cracking. “…when the twins were born, Fawn almost died. I still have nightmares about that. I don’t want to go through it again.”
Bringing up Fawn’s birth was a surefire way to get Hale to back down on the subject of having more pups. It wasn’t something Taylor did to manipulate him, but rather the inevitable course of the argument. If it had been up to her, she would have never mentioned the experience again.
After a pregnancy fraught with frequent bleeding, the birth of the twins had been abrupt. They had come early, and although the birth had been quick, it had been excruciating. Shadow had come first, and Fawn not long after. Taylor had been delirious with pain by the time her daughter was born, ostensibly lifeless. Though they’d managed to get her breathing, it had been weeks before Fawn had been out of the woods, and they’d had many scares along the way. More than once, she’d stopped breathing in the night, and one of her mates had had to resuscitate her while Taylor sat by, gripped with terror.
Hale’s voice softened, but his stance was resolute. “You keep saying that you’re not ready. I’m starting to wonder if you’ll ever be ready.”
Taylor looked away. It was cowardly, but what she really wanted to do was walk away, so she figured it was the bravest she could manage to be.
“I don’t think I will be, Hale. I…”
She had rehearsed the words in her head, preparing a logical and eloquent speech, detailing every reason she had for not wanting more pups. Now, her mind was too muddled to draw upon the words in their entirety, and all she could do was offer an apology.
“I’m sorry, I just won’t. I don’t want to. Please, stop asking me.”
The moment that followed was quiet and tense. Taylor felt torn between guilt and indignation. She had become Alder and Hale’s mate because she was in love with them. She had wanted to stay with them and have a place in their pack. But Alder and Hale, while they had loved her, had also wanted children. Shifter females were nearly all infertile, which made it necessary for them to take a human mate in order to procreate. Giving them children had always been part of the deal. Since the twins had been born, she'd had many fluffy, hormone-driven moments where she thought for sure she could do it all again, that it wouldn't be so difficult the next time around, that she'd have her pack and her mates to support her. But in the end, her mind would always come back to the same dark places it had been on the night of Fawn's birth, and the awful nights that had followed.
Alpha's mate or not, it was her body. Taylor hadn’t spent her formative years in a wolf pack. Where she had grown up, having only one or two kids was the norm, and a woman was certainly not obligated to have more. She wanted to rail against Hale’s chauvinist assumption that he could dictate when it was time for her to get pregnant.
“Fine,” Hale said.
She knew Hale too well to be relieved, and she braced herself for him to say something stupid that he didn’t mean.
He didn't disappoint.
“If you’re done having my pups, then I’m done being your mate.”
Taylor had not anticipated such a bold declaration and was momentarily speechless.
“You were my brother’s mate first. You can stay my brother’s mate,” he said, driving the nail deeper into her chest. “I’ll have no trouble finding a female that’s willing to do what you won't.”
“Why do you do this?” she burst out, not caring if her voice carried. “Why do you say such fucked up things when you’re mad? Do you think that after you apologize, I’ll just forget? That you aren’t hurting me?”
Hale’s upper lip curled. “Is that what you think? That this is just another petty fight and I’ll come around? Fuck that. I’ve been upfront with you since the twins were born. I’ve told you countless times that I’ve wanted more pups and you’ve dismissed me at every turn as if it’s just some sort of whim that I can be distracted from. When are you going to realize that I have things that I want, too? That I don’t just exist to serve you?”
Taylor had tried for so long not to cry, but she couldn’t take it anymore. She turned her back on him because the last thing she needed was him berating her for crying on top of everything else.
“I can’t keep doing this with you, Hale. If you really want to find yourself a different mate, then fine. It’s not like I can stop you.”
Chapter 2
A distant howl signaled that they had finally reached Shaderunner territory. The sound gave Taylor the first sense of relief that she’d had all evening. She drew in a breath and then exhaled, trying to push out the tension that had taken root within her. Her shoulders sagged a little, but the knots inside of her belly remained firmly in place.
She was exhausted. They all were. Shadow had been the only one to sleep, blissfully unaware of the turmoil between his parents. Everyone else had heard the argument, or at least bits and pieces of it. Hale had left first, storming past the others to go hunt. Taylor had taken a few minutes to collect herself before returning. Glenn and Karin had made awkward attempts at conversation, but their efforts were thwarted by Holly.
“He has a point, you know?” she’d said as she’d passed Shadow off to Taylor. “What good are you if you’re not giving them pups?”
Taylor had shot a scathing look at her but had otherwise kept her mouth shut. She hadn’t wanted to wake Shadow, and she didn’t trust herself not to say something she might later regret.
She couldn’t read Hale’s mood that night. He had remained in his wolf form, barely acknowledging her existence. He might have let her ride his back if she’d asked, but she was too proud and too hurt, so she’d climbed onto Glenn. Despite his recent growth spurt, Glenn was still smaller than Hale and less suited for carrying a grown female, especially over hours of rough terrain. He didn’t complain, but she could tell that he was uncomfortable.
Hale could be petty when he was angry. Sometimes she found herself giving in just to get him out of his funk, but she was tired of always being the first one to apologize. What was more, she didn’t think she was wrong.
Since the very day that Fawn weened herself from the breast, Hale had been pressuring Taylor to ween Shadow so that her monthly cycle would resume. It had been Alder, not Hale, who had wanted to ha
ve pups in the first place, but once the twins had come, Hale had thrown himself into fatherhood with surprising alacrity. He and Fawn had been inseparable from the first, and when he wasn’t with his daughter, he was taking Shadow on hunts or teaching his son how to navigate their territory. She knew that he loved being a father, it was plain for anyone to see. Taylor just wished that he could be satisfied with the pups they already had.
They came to a stop as Hale shifted. He had just finished wrapping himself in his furs as the Shaderunner wolves arrived, emerging from the forest to fill the small, snow-patched clearing. There were four of them, two dark-colored wolves that were slightly smaller than Glenn and two humanoid shifters, one of which Taylor recognized.
Taylor had only met Cain once, during the long winter when her pack had been locked in a standstill with the Whiteriver pack. At the time, she’d found him intimidating and not entirely pleasant to be around, though, in all fairness, he had been grappling with the kidnapping of his foster daughter, Snow. He appeared older than Taylor remembered, with streaks of gray winging the sides of his thick brown hair. The lines on his face appeared more pronounced, though there was an undeniable vitality that sparkled in his amber eyes, and age had not stripped him of his powerful muscles and strong bearing. He was also young enough that Taylor could still find him quite attractive. His features were darker, but otherwise quite similar to those of her mates, and she imagined that Alder and Hale would look a lot like Cain in another decade or two.
The female at his side was not Sarah. Taylor knew for certain that she’d never met the dark-haired, freckled woman, but the fact that she seemed familiar told Taylor that she must have been related to Cain and her mates. Indeed, as Taylor drew closer to her, she recognized a few telltale features, particularly her dimpled chin and the feathered contours of her brow. Like Cain, she wore a fitted buckskin outfit, which told Taylor that the den wasn’t far, or at least close enough that they’d made the trek in human form.
