Page 138

He touches the pale fur at the top of his shoulder, where the band starts. “Here. Press hard. My hide’s thick.”

It’s where he bit me, and it’s going to be under a shirt for the rest of his life. I don’t want mine under anything. I want it where every wolf who looks at him sees it before they see him.

“No.” I put two fingers on the side of his neck, where the fur goes soft. “Here.”

He doesn’t ask why. He just tips his head over and gives me his throat, and I know what that is from a wolf. So does he.

I set the point against his neck. I’ve chopped herbs with this. I push, and nothing happens. He wasn’t joking about the hide. His hand closes over mine, and I lean on it with his weight bearing down over my knuckles until the skin gives, and we drag it across. Blood comes up through the short fur and runs down his neck. He doesn’t make a sound.

Damn, I yelled for mine.

“Drink.”

I drop the knife in the furs and put my mouth to the cut.

It’s hot, and it tastes of iron and salt and him, and I suck until I’ve got a proper mouthful and swallow it down. That part’s easy. Then I bite him as well, as hard as my jaw allows, right over the cut. The knife did the hard part, and I want some of this mark to be mine. He growls, his hips jerk up under me, and I feel him come again, a few hot weak pulses with nothing much left behind them.

I lift my head. “Was that because I bit you?”

His ears go back. “Yes.”

I laugh at him with his blood still in my mouth. “I’ll remember that.”

I lick his blood off my teeth. He watches me do it, and then he licks the rest off my chin himself.

“The rest,” I tell him. “Show me.”

He puts his hand around the back of my head, claws spread wide in my hair, and lowers his brow to mine. The mask fur is softer than the rest of him. He rubs it across my forehead, slow and firm, then along one temple, up into my hairline and down the other side. It’s nicer than it sounded when he explained it. He’s breathing me in the whole time. I push back and work my own brow into the pale fur, from one end to the other. I can’t smell what I’m leaving there, but he can, and his eyes have closed.

He does my shoulders next. He rubs the pale band on one side against my bitten shoulder, which stings, and I press back into it anyway. He’s gentler with the other. He only lays the band against the dressing and holds it there, and I turn my face into his neck fur and rub my cheek on him, because nobody’s told me I can’t.

I’ve got my face in his fur with my eyes shut when it happens.

It comes on quietly. I know where he is. I’d know it with my ears stopped and a wall between us. He’s right in front of me, alive, and I can feel it in the place that’s been empty since the river.

I go still. I’ve reached for the pack so many times since that night and closed on nothing. I reach now, out of habit, and this time somebody’s there.

Oh.

It’s only him. My wolf’s still gone, and Keer and the others are as quiet as they were this morning. None of what he’s feeling comes with it, either. He’s alive and he’s here, and that’s all it tells me. My back still hurts, so that’s one thing it doesn’t fix.

Rauk’s stopped breathing.

I lift my head. His eyes are open and fixed on me, and his ears are standing straight up, shaking at the tips. Then his arms come around me, and he pulls me in against his chest hard enough that I yelp.

“Back.”

He eases off at once, but he doesn’t let go. He puts his face down in my hair and breathes in, long and unsteady, and I feel him shaking. He’s had two hundred years of nobody. I hold on to him by the fur and let him breathe.

“Rauk.”

He doesn’t answer, so I shut my eyes again and point. My finger ends up in chest fur.

“You’re there.”

Chapter 32

I ease my arm out from under Kestria’s head, and she follows it across the fur.