Chapter 6 - Rowan

Chapter 6

Rowan

No!

I struggled inside the prison of my own mind, trying to pull my wolf from the brink of insanity. He'd gone feral plenty of times before, and my wolf and I had always been perfectly aligned when in a feral state of being. But this time, he'd gone too far, taking over completely. He didn't even recognize our own packmates.

If he turned on Freya…

There was nothing I could do.

I'd always let him have too much control. As a teen, I'd been cast from my original pack at the age of fifteen for being unable to shift, despite the fact that everyone knew some wolves didn't shift for the first time until age nineteen. My pack considered late bloomers a weakness that needed to be purged.

Not long after they'd banished me, my wolf appeared. I'd been so overjoyed that I'd spent an entire moon in wolf form, only switching back to human form briefly when the sky was empty on the night of the new moon. Then I spent another moon in wolf form, and another.

It was safer that way, out in the wildlands. My dominance warned off other shifters, and I killed the ones who were stupid enough to challenge me. I'd been truly feral back then, with both sides of me focused on surviving.

But this time… My wolf's ferocity came on so strong, it threatened my humanity. I felt myself slipping away, giving in to the wolf's primal instincts.

And those instincts made one thing clear to me: My wolf had no intention of hurting Freya. His attention centered on her, but it wasn't to attack.

Must protect mate.

With that reassurance, I allowed him to take the lead again. With so many enemies around, I couldn't afford to let my human side slow me down. My humanity slipped away, and I became the wolf.

Two interlopers. Alphas. They definitely posed a threat. If they harmed my mate, they would die like the rest. But they were both close enough to my size that the fight wouldn't be easy, even with their injuries. It didn't help that one of them outranked me in dominance.

Growling, I lunged at the one with the moonmark on his forehead, warning him back. The blessing of the moon goddess herself meant nothing when it came to my mate's safety.

My snarl warned both injured alphas away from my mate. I prepared to lunge at their throats if need be, but it was a stalemate. Engaging one would leave an opening for the other.

If only my mate would get to safety… but she stood stubbornly alongside me, not even behind me. And she remained in her vulnerable two-legged form.

Then more enemies arrived, and the two alpha wolves turned to engage them. My mate stepped into my line of sight, getting my full attention.

"Rowan."

The smell of her fear and her voice calling my name did something powerful to me. It was enough for my humanity to resurface, allowing me to take back a shred of control.

With my big head against her side, I pushed her away from the approaching Ironwood wolves.

"Rowan, we can't leave our packmates! They wouldn't—"

I nudged her again with my muzzle. Staying here wasn't safe. Even I couldn't fight the entirety of the Ironwood pack alone, no matter how much my wolf wanted to. If Freya would shift, I could communicate with her. As it was, I needed to remain in this form to save her.

As soon as I pushed Freya safely around the corner of the alpha estate, Heath let out a howl. My human side knew that meant he and Flint were keeping the Ironwood wolves distracted. But Freya darted around me, trying to go back into the fray.

Brave mate.

My wolf didn't consider her reckless now that he'd separated her from all the potential threats — including Heath and Flint in that assessment. He admired her willpower and fearlessness.

But I didn't have to convince him to block her way. Her safety mattered more than anything else. He would risk angering his mate if it meant keeping her alive. And so he raced in front of her, pushing her bodily against the outer wall of the alpha estate.

With a soft warning growl, my wolf stared her in the eyes. Smart shifter that she was, she averted her gaze, refusing to provoke me by challenging my dominance. My wolf took a moment to scent her, picking out two complex emotions… one like fear but not fear — perhaps wariness? — and one that almost seemed like… arousal. My head cocked to the side as I considered that puzzle before Freya huffed a frustrated sigh.

"Fine, I'll go with you, Rowan." The resignation and sadness in her voice physically hurt me.

I should show her she had nothing to fear from me. Bowing down before my mate, I lowered my belly to the ground.

"You want me to… ride you?" she asked incredulously.

I chuffed out a laugh. That hadn't been my intention, but now that she mentioned it… That was one way of getting her out of here. I still didn't understand why she wouldn't — no, couldn't — shift, but human speed and endurance couldn't match that of my wolf.

She sighed, then swung one leg over my haunches. Even with my belly on the ground, she had to throw herself up on my back.

And not a moment too soon, as four wolves rounded the corner of the alpha estate at a full run. When they saw the strange sight of a massive, dark-furred alpha with a tiny, white-haired woman on his back, they all came to a surprised halt. Then one of them barked, and they charged me.

My wolf let out a howl of pure fury, and two subordinate wolves pulled up short, whimpering and falling to their bellies before my dominance display. The other two turned, letting out fierce growls but falling back, their eyes on a new threat.

The pack bond told me who it was before I even turned my head. Heath and Flint came to stand alongside me, growling as they advanced on the four Ironwood wolves.

"Rowan, you can help them," Freya cried, but for the first time in my life, I turned away from a fight.

"Go," Heath and Flint's words echoed in my mind.

With Freya hanging on for dear life, I tore through Ironwood packlands, growling anytime another shifter so much as looked my way, whether wolf or human. My sides heaved with exertion by the time we reached the border, but my paws soon flew over the stony outcroppings of the wildlands.

"Let me down," Freya cried from my back, but I didn't listen. "We should go back and help them."

Eventually, even my endurance gave out, forcing me to slow. My ears perked up when I heard unfamiliar sounds coming from the human on my back. My wolf had calmed down the farther we got from Ironwood packlands, allowing my humanity to bleed back in. Always conscious of his mate's wellbeing, he ceded some control to me so I could figure out what was wrong.

I didn't know how to explain to him that she was crying because we'd left our packmates behind. Heath and Flint would no doubt be recaptured. But their sacrifice had allowed us to accomplish our mission — Freya was free, safe from the pack alpha who'd abused her before.

Unfortunately, while feral, my wolf had chosen to escape into the wildlands on the wrong side of the mountains. Taking her to the Frost Fang packlands to reunite with Gage would prove to be difficult from here. I could either bring us back toward Ironwood to skirt the mountains, which I was loathe to do… Or we could go the other way, which was longer.

She's safe, I sighed, trying to convince my wolf all was well.

My wolf disagreed. We'd left quite a trail in our haste to flee Ironwood, and now were in the wildlands. Freya emitted the most delicious scent my wolf could ever imagine, luring other wolves to us.

That scent… a cold blade of fear knifed me in the gut.

I came to a dead stop in the middle of the wildlands, and Freya called down to me, "You can let me down now, Rowan. We're safe enough."

Lowering my belly to the pine-covered forest floor, I gave Freya the chance to slip off my back. Then I sniffed her without remorse. She laughed through her sniffles, and when her hands combed through the fur around my ears, I was in heaven.

I breathed her in, and my wolf adored the fact that our scents now mingled together after her ride on my back. But my fear in response to her divine scent remained… I understood why my wolf had gone feral now. He'd recognized the scent of her heat at a primal level.

My human side felt completely and totally befuddled. Why was she in heat?

The first time I'd ever dreamed of her, I'd been away from the pack on a separate job. I hadn't understood what it meant. I'd envisioned a woman in the woods who smelled divine… That dream had started a five-day period of insanity where I'd been forced to hole up and pause my entire mission.

Gage had texted me about our newest packmate, and I'd been surprised he'd let a woman join. When he'd texted a warning to me that the rest of the pack would be unavailable while they guarded Freya during her heat, I'd gone insane with need. Even though I'd never met her, I'd been forced back into my two-legged form.

At the time, I hadn't understood why. Now, I recalled how Flint said she couldn't shift. A female shifter picked the form she spent her heat in — two-legged or four — and her mate matched her mood.

That explained why I'd been unable to shift for five days — because somehow, over a great distance and solely from sensing her through the pack bond, my wolf had somehow already identified her as his mate.

But then Gage had claimed her for himself. That should have been enough to convince my wolf she was off-limits.

Not mate, I admonished my wolf. Gage's mate.

Bite. Claim. Mate.

He was still confused. Alone, I'd gone completely moon mad and fallen into rut. It had been five days of hard-ons that no amount of masturbating could satisfy. I'd been completely incapacitated, barely able to find food for myself as I refused to approach any other shifters, given my situation.

Over and over, I replayed that dream of her running from me in the forest, her long, white hair trailing behind her. In the dream, I shifted back just as I caught up to her, pushing her down onto a yellow blanket in the middle of the darkened forest. And then I'd roughly taken her from behind. And she'd loved it.

I'd only been able to shift once the entire five days, and only under the power of the full moon.

Yet as soon as those five days ended, everything returned to normal. My insatiable arousal faded, I could shift again, and I returned to the job for the Elder Forest pack.

Somehow, though, the scent of her heat lingered. It couldn't be a second heat, so close on the heels of the first… could it? A shifter only experienced two heats in one year due to meeting her mate for the first time. Meeting Gage must have triggered her heat, so why another?

When Heath had called me back to the pack, I'd been excited to rejoin them even though it meant leaving my Elder Forest mission incomplete. Now I knew that excitement came from my wolf's foreknowledge that Freya was his mate.

But he had to be wrong.

I'd heard it was possible for a claiming bite to initiate the heat. Since Gage had already claimed her as his mate, that had to be the explanation.

As she stepped back, her dress strap slipped down, calling attention to the evidence of Gage's claim on her shoulder. I would recognize the shape of those fangs anywhere, given that they also decorated my wrist. She, too, carried his pack mark on her wrist, but while that mark reassured me, the mate mark set a different emotion alight within me. An entirely unfamiliar one… jealousy.

Because it wasn't just my wolf she'd enthralled with her scent. She'd bewitched my human side as well with her bravery, loyalty to her packmates, and her fearlessness in the face of danger.

I had to keep my distance. It was the only way to keep my sanity. Because I had a feeling today wasn't going to be the only day my wolf and I went to war with each other.