the same colour as my mate.
Glowing.
Burning.
Alive.
Just like her.
I straightened slowly, my attention drawn back to the bed. She moved as if half-dreaming, touching and inhaling each piece of my clothing with reverence. Building. Nesting.
Pride swelled in my chest.
I pulled off my coat and scarf, letting them fall where they may, then set my fingers to the buttons of my shirt as I stalked closer to her.
We watched her together—the wolf and I—as she wove, tucked, and claimed us with instinct older than reason.
Wulfric was calm.
Everything was right in his world now that she was here.
Uninterrupted time for our union to flourish.
For our mate to take our seed and knot.
To be bound by blood and fate.
I prowled the space around the bed, pacing with barely contained impatience.
Waiting for her invitation.
When I paused to hand her my shirt, she snatched it from my grasp.
So close, Wulfric murmured.
I didn’t know much about our kind, but I knew—from the ache of his yearning—that he was utterly besotted by her.
Not in the way poets wrote of love.
This was survival.
This was instinct etched into our bones.
She was part of us.
? ? ?
The fire’s warmth spread steadily through the room. Fresh water waited in a pitcher nearby. A basin and clean linen rested at the foot of the bed—prepared, deliberate, untouched.
The nest was ready.
But I waited.
I waited until the heat took hold of her completely. Until it left her restless and aching for us. Until her fingers curled at the neckline of her dress as though the fabric itself were an offence. Until the silence finally broke—fractured by soft, desperate sounds she could no longer hold back.
I waited until restraint became agony.
Until patience felt like punishment.
