Chapter - Lola

My heat rages for two full days. I lose track of the number of times we make love; I just know I've never been so blissed out and wrung dry by pleasure. Richard's energy never flags, never fails. As many times as I demand he fill my need, he does it. And not just that—he forces us to pause every few hours to drink water and eat fruit. He's a machine, in the best way.

By morning the third day, I'm exhausted all the way to my bones. Every inch of my body aches. He's not much better. Even our wolves are tired, snoozing in a pile in the back of my mind to give Richard a break from their antics.

I can scarcely wrap my brain around this new normal. What I am painfully aware of is how filthy I am. Richard kept warm, wet rags handy for cleanup because I couldn't bear to leave him long enough to shower. He even gave me an extraordinarily sexy tongue bath in wolf form, but all that led to was more sex. Goddess, really, really incredible sex.

Even now, I clamp my thighs together remembering how fun it was to play while he was shifted.

"Sweetheart, my dick is gonna fall off if I don't get a day to recover," Richard says with a laugh from somewhere in the kitchen.

"I know," I murmur, reaching up to pull at my curls. They're an absolute disaster, like a bird nested on my head and came back several years in a row to redo that same nest. And the result is the mass of insanity matted to one side of my scalp. When one of the pieces I grab is crunchy, my nose scrunches.

Richard laughs from across the room, piling sandwiches on a tray. He rounds the island, fully nude, and stalks gracefully across the living room.

"There's jizz in my hair," I mutter. "And on pretty much every inch of me."

He sets the sandwiches next to me and hands me a bottle of water. "I'm tapped out, sweetheart, or I'd offer you more."

I snort out a laugh and down the water under his watchful gaze.

His eyes wrinkle in the corners as he eyes the absolute disaster of my curls. "Will you teach me how to do your hair?"

I cock my head to the side. "It's a forty-step process, and it takes ages. I will, if you want to, but it's a marathon, not a sprint."

He stretches one arm over his chest and rubs at a muscle on the back of it; he must be sore. "I'm done sprinting for a day or two. Why don't we shower, and then you can show me what to do with that glorious mop on the side of your head?"

Laughing, I sit up and slap his stomach playfully. He manages to grab one wrist and do some insane maneuver that flips me up onto his shoulder, face close to his bitable ass while he holds on to my thighs and turns for the shower. His fingers stroke lazily over my skin as I prop myself up with both hands on his lower back.

"Honestly, this is just making me want to tackle you, Alpha," I admit into our bond.

"Same," he murmurs aloud. "Fuck taking a break. Let's sort your hair, and then I wanna wrap it in my hand and use it as leverage to fuck your ass."

"Goddess." I grin as he sets me down in the dark stone shower. This room is so sensual—every surface is dark stone, and moss is growing in nearly all the corners. It's like he brought the outside into the treehouse.

"I did," he whispers into the side of my head. "And I hoped one day I'd share this with someone. That we'd laugh and love and maybe build a family in this home. What do you think, Luna?"

"I think we've got some details to sort out," I admit, "but that sounds perfect."

The wolves roll upright and disappear from my mind. Richard jerks when they appear in his, roughhousing in a tired heap. Their play is half-hearted, and after two tumbles, they flop together and start snoring.

Richard grins at me. "This is so unusual, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. What a blessing, Lola, to have this with you."

I gasp as he stares at me. "Goddess, Richard, your eyes…"

His smile drops. "What's wrong?" He whips around to the mirror, but I join him so we can stare together.

"They used to be green when Big Daddy was focused," I murmur. "Now they're a swirl of our colors. Amber and green together."

He stares hard. "Do you think that's just because they're with me right now?"

"I hadn't noticed," I admit. "But when they come back to me, we can check." Something occurs to me, and I stroke his chest softly. "Do you think we'll ever have our wolves back by themselves, or will they always go together? And if they go together, would you still be able to shift?"

He laughs and reaches around me to turn the water on. "If you had to pick between going with me or going by yourself, which would you choose?"

"Point taken," I say with a chuckle, stepping into the cold water. "I wish we could read the book Vikand gave you. I'd love to know more about what to expect. I guess we'll figure it out as we go."

Richard gives me a wry look. "According to Big Daddy, we can now. At least, he seems to think we'll be able to. Not sure if that's true, but if it is, we'll document it in case this happens to anyone else."

I pick my jaw up off the ground as Richard eyes the hot water handle.

"Cold shower sort of girl? That surprises me."

I grimace. "Cold water is good for curls."

His expression matches mine, but he steps into the chilly water and grabs the shampoo. "This first, I assume?"

I nod and stand quietly, thinking about what he shared, hands on his chest as he lathers up my hair with shampoo and gently caresses my scalp. His big fingers force a tightening in my body, nipples pebbling against his chest as I close my eyes and let my head fall into his hands.

"Lola," he huffs, "I never would have thought washing hair would be sexy, but if you keep making those noises, I'm not gonna make it past step one."

I open my eyes long enough to see Big Daddy and my wolf's colors shine brightly through his irises. "I'll tone it down, Alpha; it's a promise." My tone is teasing, but Richard places a soapy finger under my chin.

"Never," he growls. "Never tone a single thing down about yourself. Not for me, not for the pack, not for Marco."

My father's name sends a swirl of butterflies through my belly. His challenge is a day away. And my situation with Richard got infinitely more complicated the moment of our claiming bites.

Richard prods me back to the present with a tickly finger to the side. "We'll tackle that later. Let's deal with the hair, more food and water, maybe a nap. And then we can talk through my plan."

I close my eyes as I wave at the conditioner. "That's next. And there's a plan?"

Richard squirts creamy conditioner out of the bottle and brings his hands to my hair, rubbing the conditioner gently in from the tips up close to my scalp. I reach up and run my fingers through the snarls to finger detangle even though they're wet and weighted down.

"I have a plan," Richard says with confidence. "As soon as the challenge has passed, we'll invite him here and talk to him openly. We've done nothing wrong."

I huff out a growl. "You know he won't see it that way."

"He'll have to." Richard's swirling green-and-golden eyes find mine. "There hasn't been a Luna bond in thousands of years, Lola. This is a blessing, a chance to learn directly from the goddess herself. There are words in Vikand's book that I could never translate, but we can both read it now, if Big Daddy is right."

"That's so wild." I grin at him. "I hope it's true."

He nods with a smile, stroking his fingers through my hair. "Big Daddy has been right about everything else. I'm excited to dig in and find out what we can."

I mull that over as we leave the conditioner in while we finish washing our bodies. My hair is still super tangled on one side, but the rest of the steps to fix it start post shower. We manage to make it out with minimal sexual shenanigans. I'm honestly exhausted to a bone-deep level I couldn't have imagined.

We leave the shower, and I snag one of Richard's tees. Moving carefully around my head, I scrunch my curls in the soft shirt.

He grabs a bath towel and hands it to me. "I'm not so much of a bachelor that I don't have towels, Lola."

Huffing out a laugh, I continue scrunching. "Terry cloth is hard on curls, and they'll get frizzy if I dry too roughly. Remember all those steps I mentioned?"

He cocks his head to the side. "I'm beginning to understand why you sleep with your hair wrapped in silk."

"Bingo." I laugh as he steps forward and takes the tee from me.

Big hands come gently to my hair and scrunch from the bottom up. He's learning fast. He moves all the way around my head, sighing when he gets the matted section on one side. "I don't know what to do about this, though. Honestly, it's a bird's nest, mate."

Mate.That singular word is enough to make everything inside me come alive.

"I'll never get tired of hearing that," I whisper.

"And I'll never stop saying it." He brings his forehead to mine, nuzzling the tip of my nose with his.

We stand for a long moment, basking in the connection as our wolves snore somewhere in Richard's mind. Eventually, he sighs.

"Much as I'd like to do this with you forever, we need to take care of this hair."

"And you should check in with Connall," I urge. Being Richard's means this pack is mine in a way that runs deeper than me being a visitor. Leighton's parents drift into my mind. Lou and Iggy follow. I should call her. I bet she's?—

"You've gone into pack omega mode," Richard says with a sensual chuckle. "I can hear you."

I blush, running both hands up his stomach to his chest. "It's hard to turn off, ya know?"

His wry smile tells me he knows precisely what I mean. He points to the kitchen. "Go sit. I asked Connall to bring your guitar over plus all the shower stuff from your place. I've got twenty bottles of hair stuff I have no idea what to do with."

Beaming, I cross the room as the tree house pulls a barstool out for me. I pat the counter as I seat myself. Richard reappears from the entryway with a bag full of hair product bottles and my beloved guitar. When he hands it to me, a deeply innate sense of relief hits me. My fingers itch to play, and so I do.

Richard moves behind me and sets the bottles out on the counter, and for the next hour, I guide him through moisturizer and leave-in conditioner and combing and another round of moisturizer.

And I play. And I sing.

And I've never felt so peaceful or hopeful in my entire life as when my mate learns how to wrap a silk scarf around my drying curls.