“Can I claim you?" she asked.
“You already have.” His voice was low, raspy. It made her want to press her face into his neck again. “Your scent is all over me. It’ll stay there.”
“What if you shower?”
“Still there.”
“What if—” she thought about it hard. “Ah! What if you get third-degree burns all over your body and grow entirely new skin?”
He looked at her, disbelieving, and chuckled. “Still there. You’re part of me now, Moonbeam.”
“Oh.” The tears that threatened were completely unreasonable, and she was choosing not to acknowledge them. “Oh, I likethat.”
He rolled onto his back then, taking her with him, settling her against his side. She went without protest, because she was boneless and he was strong and hers, and some decisions made themselves.
And also, where else would she want to go, honestly?
She lay in the warmth of him, in the quiet of the clearing, under the moon beginning its slow descent and the trees standing patiently at the edges, and she heard it. Faint, like a word spoken in another room.
Perfect.
Yeah, okay. She lifted her head. “Rex.”
“Yes.”
“Please don’t freak out, but I think I can hear your thoughts.”
He looked at her. Blinked once. A small frown formed between his brows. Not alarm, more like a man doing quick mental arithmetic. “There’s a resonance between mates,” he said. “It gets stronger the stronger the wolves are.”
“You’re the Alpha, hence the strongest, so it checks.” She frowned. “But I’m human.”
“Strength means very many things. You’re plenty strong, Zoe.”
“So we can speak to each other’s minds?”
“Not exactly. But we get—” He searched for the word.
“Close,” she supplied.
“Very close.”
“Can you hear me?”
“I can.” He looked at her, and what was in his face was so open and unguarded that she had to look away for a second, at the sky and the stars, which were politely minding their own business. “Does it bother you?”
She thought about it honestly. “Ask me again when I’ve slept.” She settled back against him. “Right now, I don’t think anything could bother me.”
He pressed his lips to her hair; she felt him smile against it. And the forest held them, and the moon moved on, and the clearing was very quiet and very content, which was, she thought, plenty nice of all of it.
Chapter 8
She woke up wrapped in both him and the blanket. Correction: wrapped in the blanket, entirely hogged, cocooned in it like a particularly satisfied burrito, while Rex lay on the grass beside her with one arm behind his head and absolutely none of said blanket. She had migrated on him in her sleep, and now lay tucked on his side, head on the flat of his shoulder, his arm keeping her close. And yet, his warmth seeped through the blanket and into her.
The morning was indecently perfect. The first real day of summer, ripe and gold in the warming morning light—a light coming through the tree line in long, soft angles. She could hear birds. She could hear her own heartbeat, easy and slow. What she could not do was remember the last time she’d woken up and didn’t immediately think of fourteen things she needed to do.
Can’t really complain about how it started,she thought on a sigh, settling her head back on his arm.
She felt a clear echo ofneither can Ibefore he’d made a sound.
