Page 51 of Shifters Reckoning

I let him. God, I let him.

His forehead dropped to mine, our breath the same breath, the bond now so open between us there was no telling where I ended and he began. The manor creaked, and the earth groaned. Harder and harder. The bed shook. Somewhere far off, I was distantly aware that the window glass had frosted over and a thin line traversed it. Fucked so hard we broke a window.

When I finally shattered, I felt him release with me, both of us at once. I screamed his name, and he bellowed mine. Our current had finally found the ground it had been looking for—each other—and the whole room went white at the edges in a way that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with him.

After, I lay boneless and steaming across his chest while his heart thundered under my ear and slowly, slowly returned to normal. His fingers traced idle circles on my spine, the same absent hypnotic motion he always fell into, a wordless there-you-are, we’re-both-still-here.

“I required soothing,” he informed the ceiling, his voice hoarse. “I said I’d be a terrible loser. I stand by it.”

“You lost the race and won everything after. That’s not losing. That’s just being obnoxious about it.”

“Alpha’s privilege.” He tugged a strand of my hair, wound it around his finger. Then the teasing disappeared. “Don’t do that to me again. A week. You didn’t even let me come to the conclave.”

“I had a job.”

“I know.” He pressed his mouth to the top of my head. “I know you did. Doesn’t mean I have to like the bond going muffled while you were in Bear Trees, except for your nightmares.” His arm tightened around me, all that easy strength gathering me in close like he refused to let go. “Next time you go, you take me, or you leave the door open, or you don’t go. Those are the terms. I am the alpha, and I get to make four little words, too.”

“That was more than four.”

“Sue me.”

I laughed into his skin, and the sound came out more strangled than I meant it to. Under the joke was the gray hole in the southern map, and Jace’s two dead drones, and Marcus’s blind face tipped toward a dark he swore was digging in and feeding. We had this. We had right now, the cracked window, the warm bedsheets, and the whole ridiculous, fragile miracle of a camp full of clans who’d stopped trying to kill each other. We had us for tonight and maybe for a few more.

I decided, lying there in the dark with my mate’s heartbeat under my ear, that I was going to take every hour that the war would let me steal. Starting with the next one.

Tonight, there was only this room, this stubborn man, and the two of us stealing back every single thing the coming war meant to take.

Tomorrow, we’d count what we could lose.

Tonight, we were everything.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

emma

Six-Mile Manor

One Week Later

From the low rise at the northern edge of the property, Six-Mile spread out below me like a model train set somebody had built out of my life. We had a new gate. A high fence now surrounded our main complex, and guard towers graced the corners. Our territory had become a fortified compound.

Two new rows of tiny homes rested along the western fence; their white siding had gone gold in the late-afternoon light. The mess hall breathed woodsmoke from the chimneys at either end of the building.

Logan’s crews had gotten the covered walkway framed before this last cold snap, and shifters moved beneath its skeleton in twos and threes, wolves beside raccoons, cats beside ravens, bears beside them all.

Thanksgiving was seven days out. So was the Beaver Moon. We had the camp below me, over one hundred and fifty from every clan in Louisiana, plus the shifters in Six-Mile. More clans sent their warriors around the time the feast invitations went out, and we were the only thing standing between the universe and the gray hole in the southern map where a monster and his minions were.

My heart sat heavy behind my ribs, the way it did every evening when I climbed up here to count what I could lose. My stomach churned.

We didn’t mirror an army yet, but we resembled a fragile miracle. The ravens and the raccoons had opened their acquaintance with a brawl over a gravel-filled bathtub, but ran a joint operation from that same bathtub, some kind of filtration arrangement I’d been strongly advised not to ask about. They sold cleaned pecans out of it on the honor system.

Marcus’s cats sparred with Six-Mile wolves in the training ring by choice now. Two weeks ago, a treaty would have been required. On the mess hall wall, Olivia had chalked a tournament bracket for banner drills. Torbin’s quilted banner had become the most fought-over strip of cloth in the shifter world, and I didn’t have to see the odds column to know Levi was running book.

The raven contingent bunked at the far edge and posted their own watch, trusting nobody’s eyes but their own. It rankled, but I was unwilling to demand they fraternize more. The two wolf packs from up north ate at their own table, their backs to the wall.

Half my miracle was mingling, and half of it was maintaining a polite blast radius, and it was all held together tenuously by delicious food, drills, and the four little words I spent like a paycheck: I am the multimorph.

The truce would hold… or it wouldn’t.