Calla

The sleepy town of Durid sat silent as I propped my elbows on the windowsill. My eyes lingered on one spot—that interruption in the houses, that ashen scar on the earth. Illuminated by the swollen moon, I could see the blackened mark where the mill once stood, the final burial ground for the two Wolves who chased Grae and me inside. If running away from Highwick was the spark, killing members of the Silver Wolf pack was the blaze.

In some twisted ways I understood Nero’s anger, but his retaliation against the humans was unfathomable. Grae and I alone should bear his wrath. It didn’t matter those Silver Wolves were trying to capture us, didn’t matter that returning with them would’ve been tantamount to a death sentence. In the mind of a Wolf, we betrayed our pack and we deserved everything that came next. But the humans hadn’t betrayed Nero, and he should thus be treating them as an alpha would: as members of the pack that needed his protection.

Not his teeth.

I smelled Grae’s scent a split second before his arms wrapped around me and his chin dropped onto my shoulder. He let out a long, slow sigh and pulled me from over the window ledge and tighter against his chest, anchoring me from my storming emotions.

“You need to stop leaning out open windows, love,”

he murmured, “before you make my heart explode.”

“It’s a two-story drop,”

I said with a whisper of a laugh. I waggled my hand at him, displaying the heavy amber ring on my finger. “Besides, I am protected.”

He toyed with the ring, centering the protection stone that consumed my left hand. It had once been a necklace that Grae had gifted me when we were young. Now, it was my wedding band, a reminder of his love and protection.

Grae let out a frustrated sigh, but it had no bite to it. “A few blows might miss, a few arrows stray, a few assailants more easily felled,”

he said. “But it’s not a miracle. And toppling out a window is a cruel thing to do to your mate, protection stone or no.”

I felt his smile against my shoulder and my cheeks mindlessly lifted in mirror to his own. “How careless of me to not be thinking of your delicate heart.”

I stretched my hands across the window again, and Grae’s grip on me tightened, keeping me from breeching the sill into open air.

The entire top floor of the inn was dedicated to me, my court, and my guards. I was probably the first queen who’d ever stayed there, but without our transportation, we decided to rest in the border town before riding out to the Taigosi capital in the morning once the carriages returned. It would be a long day, normally broken up even further, but after what I had seen, I knew I needed to speak to Queen Ingrid straightaway. The sight of that human’s burned face flashed through my mind again, spiking my panic anew.

“Your pulse is racing.”

Grae dropped a kiss to my neck. “I only have one guess why.”

I swallowed, sticky guilt clinging to my skin, unable to be scrubbed away no matter how I tried. “If I hadn’t—”

Grae’s arms tightened. “No,”

he murmured, his bottom lip skimming my pulse. “This was not your fault, little fox.”

“I brought this upon them,”

I said, my voice shaking with horror. “People died because of me. If I hadn’t fled—”

“If you hadn’t fled, Maez would still be trapped in that tower, Briar would still be under a sleeping curse, and your court, your people, would still be ruled by an evil sorceress.”

Grae brushed a featherlight kiss to my temple, his hands splaying across my rib cage and down to my belly. “This is what my father does. He punishes you by hurting others.” His voice trailed off and I knew he was thinking of his mother. “He is using you as a reason to solidify the control and power he’s always craved. He’d take the entire continent if he thought he could get away with it.”

“Surely Ingrid will join us in rising up to fight him, right? She knows how it feels to defy controlling men,”

I whispered. “Gods, I pray that Valta will rally to our cause, too.”

“Sadie and Maez will convince King Luo of it,”

Grae said, but his reassurance lacked the conviction I needed.

“I don’t know,”

I hedged. “Luo seems nearly as backward as your father. He will take whichever side stands to benefit him the most.”

“We have mines filled with gold.”

“That will never be mined again,”

I reminded him. I was never sending another soul below the Sevelde Forest.

“Luo doesn’t need to know that,”

Grae countered. “You forget I was schooled in Rikesh. I know Luo well, and he is more strategic than purely malevolent.”

“Not exactly a rousing vote of confidence.”

Grae chuckled. “We offer him power, gold, and prestige, and he will align with us,”

Grae said. “Besides, he always liked me better than my father.”

“Maybe we should’ve sent you.”

Grae shook his head and skimmed his lips back down my neck. “You are needed here,”

he murmured, his hot breath making my skin prickle with gooseflesh. His hand drifted lower from my hip to my thigh. “And I am needed wherever you are.”

I let out a little delicious hum as his hands fisted in my nightdress and he began slowly, tortuously lifting up the hem. When his hand delved under the fabric, his calloused fingers trailed up my inner thigh again, moving higher and higher in taunting circles.

“My mind should be in a thousand other places right now,”

I panted, dropping my head back onto his shoulder.

“Those thoughts can only do so much,”

Grae whispered into my ear. “You cannot save everyone from worry alone. We are heading to Taigoska to take action, but if you are so exhausted and broken down with concern, you won’t be able to help anyone.”

“It feels selfish to take care of myself right now,”

I said, gasping as his finger trailed higher.

“Maybe it is,”

Grae said, parting my flesh and coating his fingers in my wet heat. “Maybe you need to be selfish enough to keep yourself whole. If you chip off a piece of yourself to every moment of suffering, without taking the time to put yourself back together again, there will be none of you left to help fix this broken world. And we will fix this, little fox,” he said, swirling his finger around my throbbing clit and making me moan. His calming words coalesced with the pull of lust, making me melt farther into my body and away from my mind. “We will save Damrienn, just as we have saved Olmdere. We won’t stop fighting until Aotreas knows peace for humans and Wolves alike.”

“I—”

The words fell out of my brain as Grae pushed two fingers inside me. My breath hitched as I relished the feeling of him massaging his rough fingers over my inner walls.

“If it helps, think of it as me being selfish. Let me take your worries away.”

Grae pressed the heel of his hand against my aching bud as his fingers moved in and out. “Let me be the calm in your storm. Please?”

I swallowed, barely able to nod as he kept working me, building me higher and higher. I felt the outline of his erection against my backside, and I ground against him, eliciting a low rumble of pleasure from him. I turned to face Grae, his fingers still inside me. His lips captured my own, his tongue tasting me as his hand moved.

I pulled back and he released me as I commanded, “Take your clothes off.”

He stepped away from me, a smug smile curling his lips, a satisfaction in his eyes that he had won this battle with my fraught doubts. He put his wet fingers into his mouth, smiling as he tasted me, before they moved down to his belt buckle as I sauntered over to the bed, unbuttoning my nightdress. It skimmed down my body and fell to my feet, leaving me bare. Grae’s umber eyes heated as they roved my naked body.

“Do you remember how desperate you were for me to fuck you the last time we were in this town?”

he asked as he hauled his tunic over his head. My eyes feasted on his broad chest and chiseled torso.

“I would’ve had you take me on those rainy ruins if it meant having you,”

I said, my eyes dropping to his cock as it sprang free from his trousers. I inched up on the bed and spread my legs, giving him a full view of my glistening core that I knew would snap any thoughts left in his brain. The snarl that escaped Grae’s lips was pure wolfish desire.

He stepped out of his trousers pooled around his feet and prowled forward. Each inch he crawled up over me filled me with carnal delight, the anticipation making me writhe underneath him as he lowered his mouth to my peaked nipple and sucked.

A deep moan pulled from my lips as he swirled his tongue around one peak and then the other. My hands threaded into his hair, and I yanked, pulling his mouth up to my own. His tongue dipped into my mouth as he guided the head of his cock to my slick entrance.

Grae’s thumb slid under my chin, and he tilted my face so he could stare deep into my eyes as he pushed into me. I’d never get over this. This feeling of free-falling into his endless gaze. Our bodies joining. Our souls colliding.

I saw it all in his hooded stare as he filled me to the hilt—my mate. Every inch of him claimed every inch of me. My fingernails scratched down his back and kneaded into his ass as he rolled his hips in and out. The friction sent lightning through my veins, white-hot desire sizzling out to my very fingertips.

Grae moved faster, dropping his head into my shoulder and testing the flesh of my neck with his teeth. He trailed his love bites up to my earlobe as he thrust into me. I hooked my ankles over the small of his back, angling myself to take him deeper. My chest heaved, everything feeling heavier and lighter in me all at once as I danced higher and higher to the edge of release. Relief and pleasure warred for pride of place in my mind, finally free of the burdens of the day and tumbling into bliss.

As my moans turned breathless, Grae’s movements lost all control as he drove into me in a frantic rhythm.

“Yes.”

The words barely escaped my lips as I clawed up his back. “Make me come.”

Grae’s lips found my own again, a desperate groan on his tongue as it licked back into my mouth. The fingers of one hand rolled my nipple while the others clenched my hip, pinning me to the mattress as he pounded into me harder. My eyes rolled back, my sounds becoming more frenzied. He worked my body with such skill as if he could feel every ounce of my ecstasy he unspooled from me, drawing each pleasure out until I had no choice but to combust.

With one final thrust, I shattered. Grae absorbed my hoarse cries of pleasure with his mouth, battling my clenching core as he spilled over the edge of his climax and rode me through the last echoes of my release.

When our breathing had steadied, he rolled to his side and gathered me into his chest, kissing me deeply. Sleep danced with pleasure as my sated body finally relaxed. I knew the feeling would be fleeting, knew I’d wake to new anxieties, new horrors. But just for a moment I indulged in the feeling of being safe and whole in my mate’s arms.