Otto shot her a startled look. Seeing her nervousness, he cursed in his native tongue. Leaning over the stew pot hanging on a crude cast iron hook between them, he pressed a fierce kiss to her forehead. “No, you are perfect,kone.I am just bitter I must share you still. Bears don’t do that well.”
Truthfully, she wasn’t certain she was cut out for pack life either. As much as she had come to shyly enjoy the company of the battalion, she also found the constant chatter, clashing personalities, and attention deeply unsettling.
Circling the fire, she tucked herself against Otto’s side and pretended the stew needed stirring. Speaking very quietly, she said, “I would rather not share myself, either.”
His deep, rhythmic purr rattled his chest. Speaking against her ear, he whispered, “Good. After this journey is done, you are all mine.”
Josephine did her best to tamp down her bubbling impatience.Soon,she promised the beast.Soon he’ll be all mine.
ChapterThirty-Three
Zig-zaggingaround scorched battlefields and pockets of violence with limited success, they made their slow way to Minneapolis. It was the northernmost capital of the Packlands, which she’d begun to hear the men callAlliance territory.Her father had called the idea that the packs could ever truly form an alliance a fairy tale, but the more time she spent with the eclectic group of shifters, the more she believed it was possible.
Surely if hawks, wolves, bears, foxes, moose, and elk shifters could fight and live together in a single battalion, the packs could form a true, stable alliance. The only thing standing in their way, as far as she could tell, was the ego of the alphas involved.
That opinion crystallized when she and her mate were escorted to a meeting with not only the commanders of the Packlands — split into north, south, and east — but several of the territory’s most powerful alphas. Lee, being the commander of the north as well as Otto’s friend, spearheaded the meeting.
Though it was somewhat of a relief to be back in the familiar setting of a big city, Josephine dreaded the meeting. She’d already given Lee all the information she knew about her father’s work and helped him sift through the charred remains of the notes and records his men were able to salvage from their burning home during the journey.
Still, he insisted that she and her mate meet with the alphas in the capital. This was necessary because most of them still could not accept that lyssa had been weaponized.
The only person less happy than her was Otto.
She got the sense that he was generally an even-tempered, easygoing man, and had heard many funny stories about him from his battalion, but it was obvious that he was suffering under increasing strain.
As the days crawled by, he became even more anxious about exposing her to others. Whenever someone got too near, he would step in front of her, teeth bared, and at night he spent restless hours standing guard over her, half-feral with the fear that she might be snatched from him while he slept.
Josephine might have found his behavior alarming if he didn’t normally look abashed immediately afterward. It also helped that most of the men appeared to expect it. “It’s difficult,” he explained to her one night as they retired to the room Lee had provided them. “Not marking you has— it puts me on edge. The fact that you’re a submissive makes the protective urge even worse. There is a reason shifters don’t drag out courtship. We tend to lose our heads.”
When she asked him why he didn’t simply bite her, as she had bitten him, he gave her a desperate, heart-wrenching look. “Because,kone,I promised you a den first. A place where you feel safe. Don’t you want that?”
More than his bite? No. The beast howled for it every time he touched her. It grew ever-more desperate as the days passed and he continued to refuse her even as he kissed her, taught her how to use her mouth on his cock, and then made her come on his tongue again and again. Several times she felt his teeth on her neck, and every instance saw him pulling back at the last second as he came on her skin with guttural growl.
In fact, she’d gotten quite mulish about it. It was an attitude her father never would have tolerated, but paradoxically, the more temper she displayed, the more at ease her mate seemed to become.
This was made all the more vexing by the fact that Otto appeared more dashing every day. Given access to bathing facilities, hearty meals, a shaving kit, clean clothing that fit his magnificent frame, and a hairbrush, he tested Josephine’s patience constantly. In the light of day, his scars made him seem roguish, his mismatched eyes arresting, and his wavy blond hair akin to spun gold. The insufferable bear had even caught on to how much she liked the tickle of his beard and had decided to keep it trimmed close to his hard jaw and framing that boyish grin perfectly.
It was all monumentally unfair and she let him know it with increasing regularity.
“Ah, sweetkone,”he breathed, grinning from ear to ear, “I love when you show me your claws.”
He took it as a matter of pride that she trusted him enough to show her temper. Unfortunately, that same pride was tied up in delivering his promises.
After their nightly exertions, they spent hours whispering together, telling stories, getting to know one another without the weight of threats pressing down on them. She’d come to understand that her mate was a gentle, patient man of good humor — but he was also intensely proud and stubborn. In most things he happily indulged her, but there were rare subjects on which he had a will of iron.
His bite was one of those subjects.
As frustrating as it was, Josephine begrudgingly respected him more for it. It was not so great a flaw, she thought, to believe firmly in right and wrong, nor to stake your pride on promises kept.
Unfortunately, that didn’t make their week in Minneapolis, nor their tense meeting with the commanders, any easier.
Otto held perfectly still as the alphas gathered around a table in Lee’s dining room. Each one made her beast recoil. By the time all the men and women had their seats, she was gripping Otto’s hand beneath the table so hard she feared she might break his bones.
Out of respect for her, most of the alphas did not stare at her for too long and were notably relaxed, their body language open, non-threatening. Not all of them cared enough to go to the effort, though. Some stared at her shamelessly, as if amazed to see a submissive across the table at all.
Even if they had all gone out of their way to make her comfortable, Josephine feared it was useless. There were too many scents, too much restless, aggressive energy. Too many eyes. Too much judgment.
It took everything in her not to turn into Otto’s chest and hide away from them all.
