We all were. Because we all knew this would be my final claim in estrus. I hadn’t bitten Leif, and Koda didn’t have any bites whatsoever on his body. But my bear was ready and transmitting the message loud enough for everyone to know.
Funny, I’d thought of the animal inside of me as some kind of feral intruder with an agenda that didn’t match mine. But in the end, she was just like me.
She’d withheld her egg and demanded the bite because she’d wanted to feel safe. Cherished. And now she did, andthatwas why she was finally ready to fertilize an egg.
I gasped when Hawk pushed into me. Not because it hurt. I was obscenely slick with two loads and my estrus in its last rage.
I gasped because the intensity of his emotions took me by surprise. I could feel him enter me, not only as myself but also as him, along with Leif’s residual titillation layered on top.
Hawk pumped between my legs. Slowly, so I could feel every thrust, every withdrawal, and every stroke back in. He was making love to me, I realized as his hard hips rolled between my soft thighs. Taking his slow, beautiful time.
Until I cried out with my feelings and his feelings and a few of Leif’s on top. Hawk and I tumbled over the edge. Together in more ways than one. As slow as Hawk had taken it, it was a shockingly intense climax, rushing through us both with a powerful force that felt like a river.
The river of life.
My bear didn’t fill me in on any of the biological details, but yes…yes…Hawk and Koda had been right. I could feel her sparking in my ovaries. Making the bear magic that would ultimately lead to a cub.
Hawk’s forehead pressed against mine as we both trembled, riding the crest of the most powerful thing either of us had ever experienced.
“You feel that?” he asked, his voice raw with wonder.
It was a rhetorical question. I could feel him feeling me feel our cub being made.
“Yes,” I answered nonetheless, tears pricking at the corners of my eyes as something new, something ours, took root within me.
We stayed like that for a long moment, entwined and breathless, before Hawk pulled out and settled me on the side I preferred to sleep on, then spooned me back into his chest.
For once, he was fully spent against my backside, without that insanely fast refractory period I’d come to expect.
“Not for long if you keep thinking thoughts like that,”he warned dryly inside my head.
But then he moved my braids aside to kiss the back of my neck. “Help me help you get some rest.” His voice was softer now, full of a tenderness that made my chest ache.
“Yeah, get some sleep.” Leif lay down on his side in front of me and took my hand, pressing a kiss into my palm. “And when you wake up, I’ll prove it’s not just the estrus. That I’m just as crazy about you as Hawk. I love you, sweetie.”
A serious longing replaced his eager expression. “And I want your bite, too.”
My bear smiled inside of me, already loving him so much back.
“Okay,” I whispered from inside Hawk’s arms. “We’ll talk about it when I wake up.”
“Awesome,” Leif answered, already grinning.
Probably because my black bear was clearly relaying to his blond grizzly that my answer would most definitely be yes.
I sighed contentedly, expecting Koda to slip out as I slept, like he always did.
Instead, the scent of hazelnuts got closer.
When I glanced down our bodies, I found Koda arranging pillows so he could settle at our feet. His shields were still up, but I was learning with Koda that his actions often spoke louder than his words. And sometimes in place of them. He’d spent all week baby-proofing this death trap of a den while I slept. And nowthat my bear had conceived, his actions told me he also wanted to be here when I woke up.
He lay down in a vampire-in-a-coffin pose that didn’t surprise me one bit. Of course, he slept on his back. Stiffly. However, I jolted a few moments later when his voice broke through our shared silence.
“I don’t like coffee. Never drink it. Not even with cream and sugar.”
I blinked, confused, until Hawk clued both Leif and me in through our bond bites.“My brother Ash smells like coffee.”
“I was going to ignore it,” Koda continued, staring at the ceiling. “But… this is better. We…”
