She blinked. Nodded. “Okay. Thank you.”
“Is there anything you need? Anything you’d like to do, to spend the day?”
She stared down at the clothes she’d driven in all night, sweated in all day, and heat rose in her cheeks. If only she could shower, but…no. She shuddered. Removing her clothes felt too dangerous. Too vulnerable.
“If you’d like to shower, I’ll leave the cabin.” The alpha’s rasping voice was quiet.
She lifted her head to stare at him. How had he known her thoughts? Well, by now she was rank enough a wolf’s sense of smell couldn’t miss her need for hygiene. But her reluctance… He had not only smelled that too but also understood it. And he was choosing to respect it.
“Yes. Please,” she whispered, and he nodded. “I, um, I don’t have a bag with me, so I’ll have to wear this again. Later I’ll go into town.”
“Not alone,” he said. “Not as long as you’re hunted.”
Hunted. The word sent a shiver down her back. “I wouldn’t go at all, but I need, well, everything—clothes and various and sundry.”
His mouth curved. “You read.”
It was no great deduction after that glaringly bookish phrase. She found herself smiling for the first time in what felt like months. Might have been months. “Daily. Eclectically. Fervently. You?”
“Indeed,” he said, and his eyes glinted with humor. Then they seemed to soften, though she was fairly sure they couldn’t do that. “My library is at your disposal.”
Not his bookshelves. His library. He was an actual beast with a library, a living breathing fairytale character, and he held her life in his hands. But a few minutes later, as he stepped out onto the porch and shut the door behind him, those hands seemed a safe place for her. For the moment anyway.
Four
Itwasagoodthing he’d left the house.
After showing her to the master bathroom, Malachi had thought he could step out onto the porch and be all right. But the sound of the water, of her soft humming…the scent of her…and the awareness of what she was doing right now, the awareness ofApril. The longing that seemed to set him on fire, the images he couldn’t halt—they weren’t honoring to his mate. So he took off running down the slope of his backyard, sprinted the acres in a few seconds, and plunged into his forest. Then he paced at the edge of the trees. If enemies approached the cabin from any direction, he could smell them and intercept them easily from this distance. If April needed anything, she could call out. He no longer heard the shower, but he would hear her raised voice.
How he yearned to claim her before his pack. Announce the joy that kept coming in waves, robbing his breath, so deep it was almost painful. Declare his intent to protect her. Always, always protect her. This too kept coming, sharp and insistent, demanding to be vocalized in a long howl.
He tugged his phone from the pocket of his jeans. Problem-solving, meeting his mate’s need in one small way, would distract him from the waves that crashed and rolled in his wolf heart. He dialed and waited hardly a moment.
“Hi, Mal!”
“Hello, Kelsey. Do you by chance have time for a favor?”
“Sure. I’m just over at Arlo and Rebecca’s, getting some afternoon-light shots of their foothills. What do you need?”
Arlo and Rebecca. Yet another feeling drenched his heart. They would be thrilled to know the pup they’d raised, the pup they’d taught how to trust for the first time, had found his mate. Rebecca would hug him, and Arlo would rumble with his creaky old wolf voice.
“Malachi?”
“A human woman came to the Lane today. She’s asked for sanctuary, and I’ve granted it.”
“Oh!” Kelsey must be holding her phone; if it were on speaker, she’d clap her hands. “Of course we’ll have her. We’ve got that great recliner-sofa-bed-thingy Trevor made. It’s so comfortable. But what’s happened; is she in trouble somehow? And who does she know in the pack? Obviously somebody, since you said yes—”
“She has no ties to our pack.” Other than one.My mate!His throat burned with the need to roar into the phone, but he controlled himself. “And she’s staying with me.”
The pause on the other end of the phone stretched to dramatic length. “Sorry, did you say she’s staying with you?”
“I did.”
“In your cabin? For days at a time? In your cabin with you?”
“Correct.”
“Right, okay, great!” she chirped. “And how can I help?”
