AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I blink, unlock my phone, and open a picture folder filled with tiny dogs before turning it to face him. “I’m so prepared. You have no idea.”
His brows rise. “Is that…a single wolf amidst an ocean of chew toys?”
I look back at the screen and tap the image he’s referring to, letting the artist’s rendition fill my screen. “It’s a dire wolf.” I show him. “Cute, right? I want to try it.”
He blinks. “Perhaps your strength joined with mine will make miracles happen.”
I laugh, turn my screen back toward me, and scroll a bit more. “If you want miracles, this is what I really want to try.” I shove the new picture in Ollie’s face.
He swears. “How big is that thing?”
I point at the background of the image. “See this mountain?”
He nods, hesitant.
“See how the wolf is bigger than it?”
He swears again.
Excitement sparks in my chest, and I ramble, “It’s a Norse god, I think, the Son of Loki and a giant or something. Representative of the forces of evil and chaos. The great Fenrir wolf. Super cute.” I beam. “I know I’m mixing mythologies a bit, but as a Fenrir, you could totally Kronus to Poseidon your brothers.”
An amount of disturb crosses sweet Ollie’s face. “You’re not…surely you aren’t.”
“Might be worse than dog food and hotel complimentary breakfasts. Also, yes, I said Poseidon because I like Hades.”
“Willoughby would love this conversation,” Ollie mutters, closing his eyes. “I don’t know exactly how to say this. I don’t…want? To eat my brothers?”
I wiggle my phone in his face again. “But you definitely want to become a Fenrir. Right?”
He sighs. “If such a thing were possible, very little would prompt me into it. I have no idea how large someone’s pack would need to be in order to maintain such a form.”
If a pack really is just a family, I sense issues in my future if I don’t get over this lunatic desire. “Pity. Returning my expectations to dire wolf then. Once we have a handful of little pups.”
Ollie’s face blisters, and he pushes my phone down between us. “I don’t even think that Markov can become a dire wolf, and his pack encapsulates several generations of families.”
“Ollie.” I meet his eyes. “You don’t have to compare yourself to your brothers. We can try and fail as much as we want without so much as thinking about them.”
He goes still for what feels like half an eternity, then—very gently—he lifts my face in his hands, moves in, and kisses me. My fingers tighten robotically around my phone, for fear I’ll drop it, forget I’m holding it, lose it in the pond and…and not even care for a second because…
Wow.
This is different than both our first kiss, filled with restrained terror, and the brief ones that came speckled after. This one is warm, desperately careful, consuming and raw. It tastes like commitment to whatever we are now and whatever we may become.
“You are the brightest light in my life,” he says as he pulls back, seemingly oblivious to the daze he’s put me under. He guides me to a rock and lets me sit. Taking my phone, he sets it safely in the brush. A firefly lands on my screen, and I watch it gleam up at me for a moment while Ollie kneels, my hands in his. “Let’s get you in fur, beautiful.”
My heart rampages, fighting for a place to escape the cage of my ribs. Sitting here, with him, bathed in moonlight, it feels like I’m finally—finally—on the cusp of the freedom I’ve been searching for all my life.
This is it.
It’s happening.
The biggest change I will ever make is about to take place.
And I am, inexplicably, at perfect peace.
Ollie’s thumbs swipe over my fingers. “This might hurt. I’m not human-born, so I don’t know what to tell you to expect.”
“You have to bite me, right?”
