“What?” Cord jerks awake.
I pinch his side to keep him in place. “Be still. There.” I look toward the forest beyond the pool over Coyote Falls, and the eyes that watch us back.
Just watch, nothing else.
And suddenly I know why I haven’t been able to sleep. Cord puts my thoughts into words first.
“Jesus, fuck. That’s huge.”
“It’s—” My brain jams. “It’s real.” All the rumors. All the hints.
What I saw that day when Cord took me on our walk up Valiant Peak. The day we saw Jenkins’s house of mutilated horrors. The con artist and his tricks.
But this is no trick.
The wolf steps out of the forest, resplendent and silver beneath the dappled moonlight, twice the size of anything I’ve ever seen or studied. He lowers his head to lap at the pool of water, stillwatching us. Neither Cord nor I move. We don’t breathe. I don’t think either of us can.
The dire wolf is real.
“Christ. Jenkins wasn’t full of shit for once. You need to wish for smaller things,” Cord mutters, sliding his arm around me. He pulls me backward, rising slowly. A pained sound comes from him and the enormous creature’s head rises.
“Don’t move,” I breathe, watching the dire wolf.
He watches me.
And I’m… not afraid.
“Move, Lanie,” Cord mutters through his teeth.
“It isn’t going to hurt us. I think it’s been here for a long time.”
Cord stiffens as green-and-gold eyes survey us with the distant gaze one might use to watch something of minor interest. The beast lowers his head, continues to drink, observing us curiously all the while, and then turns and lopes back into the forest, blending with the shadows like he’s one of them.
“Are you going to draw all sorts of mythical creatures out of my mountains, Lanie?” Cord murmurs in my ear. “I think you’ve been screwing with me this whole time.” He strokes my stomach gently beneath my stretchy top as I pull the wolf blanket around my shoulders. “Let me take you home in case he gets snackish.”
I smile and lean my head back onto his shoulder. “Didn’t you say you used to sleep out here alone before you built the house? I’m pretty sure he’s been here all that time, Cord. You were never alone. He’s seen you.”
“That’s… comforting.”
“It should be.” I finally sink into his arms as he holds me to him.
And I don’t object when Cord presses kisses along my shoulder, sliding my pajama bottoms down and pushing his knee between mine. He slides inside me, moving gently until I bury my face in the wolf blanket to muffle my cries.
Scarred hands lace around mine as he leans his weightover my body, driving deeper into me, moving with a primal grace I can’t deny. Pleasure shoots through me as I raise my head and his mouth claims mine, stifling my soft scream edged with brilliant bliss.
Cord fills me as his arms around me tight. I welcome the pressure of him pressed hard against me as he calls out my name even as the falling water washes it away.
Another secret this place steals. A part of us.
TWENTY-SEVEN
CORD
Getting It Right
I’d been wrong that night at the Falls about snow, yet right about so many other things. The weather set in the next day, covering the homestead and the golden grasslands around us in an early blanket of pure white crystals.
Lanie worked magic in my life over the following weeks at Coyote Falls. West disappeared from the property with a promise he might bunk back at the homestead, but only if there was company in the main house when he returned. I laughed my ass off at the not-so-subtle hint, making a note to tell Lanie that the worst gossips around are cowboys, especially ones with crushes on single-mom paramedics from out of town.
