Page 114 of Wolf at the Door

“Be happy,” she said. Then she gave Jack a sharp, fierce grin. “Maybe I’ll find Greer before you do. Be a hero.”

Jack tilted his head back to aim his eye toward the horizon.

“I hope you do,” he said. “I saw him a few days ago, but he’s lost himself to the Wild. I don’t think he knew me.”

Bron hitched the bag up on her shoulder and headed out of town. She didn’t have a coat with her, but wolves didn’t care about the cold.

FENRIR RESTEDhis chin on his paws and let the window out of the Wild seal itself.

His chest ached with a knot of new human emotions that refused to wait their turn. Relief, a bright, pure pop of love, grief, fear—they demanded to be felt all at once and immediately. He stood up and stretched to give himself something to do, snow matted in the hair under his armpits and stomach.

The broken, dead thing that had crawled off the altar was gone. A wolf didn’t think about what he’d been, or what he could be. It was the human who provided that anchor—the perspective to consider change. Now his fur was thick and ruddy, warmed by the pale, distant sun, and his bones fit under his skin again. Last time he’d looked in the stream before he took a drink, his eyes were bright green, the color of new grass.

He didn’t remember what color they’d been before he was chained to wait for Winter. It was possible he never knew.

Fenrir shook himself and pulled the old, consuming hunger up from the pit of his gut. It made him ache too, but it was familiar, and it drowned out everything else. He’d hunt. He’d glut himself. He’d—

A sharp pain in his tail made him jump and spin around in a tight circle. He wrinkled his lips back from his teeth and let a warning growl trickle out of him, but there was nothing there. His ears flattened, and he looked around suspiciously.

The pinch made him jump again and spin around like a dog chasing its tail. Anger wasn’t new. Fenrir hadbastedin anger during his long wait, but the sting of offended pridewasnew.

He grumbled at the empty snow and waited, his head half turned to watch the stretch of rocky hill out of the corner of his eye. There had been a pup he’d seen in the snow, lanky legs and more ears than it knew what to do with. It had scavenged his kill, and he’d turned a blind eye for… some reason the wolf couldn’t pinpoint. Maybe that had been a mistake. A shadow flickered in the edge of his vision, and he spun around as the cheeky bastard pinched his tail. He snarled and snapped at the interloper.

The bird hopped backward, and then it was a man who danced away from Fenrir’s teeth. A long black coat swirled around his legs as he skipped to the side. The man was tall and bony, with a crest of dark hair and a face that had more angles than seemed necessary. He had a wide, mischievous smile, and he was beautiful—so beautiful it hurt—andhere.

“Nick,” Fenrir said as he pulled his skin out from under the wolf. He hadn’t done it before, but it was easy now he needed to do it. The human he’d been—was, part of—glared at the man in the dark coat. “You asshole. We didn’t know what happened to you.”

“And I knew what happened to you?” Nick asked, eyebrows raised. “They all think you’re dead.”

Fenrir scratched the back of his neck. He wanted… hewanted. The memory of Nick under him, salt-sweat flesh and sweet kisses caught in his gut like a stone. He’d never had that. The body the prophet had forced him into had fucked her, but it hadn’t felt like the memory did. It hadn’t mattered, every breath, every featherlight touch of clever fingers hadn’t been something to store away and remember.

Yet….

“I am,” he said. A glance down at himself showed long, tawny limbs and lean hips that were simultaneously new and familiar. His body and one he’d never worked before. “He is.”

“Me too.”

Nick jumped down off the rock and walked into Fenrir’s arms. He cupped Fenrir’s face in both hands, his touch gentle like the lean jaw and stubble was something precious, and leaned close enough to not quite kiss him.

“I found you,” he said. “And I won’t leave again.”

Whatever shred of good intentions Fenrir had scraped together blew away like mist. He dragged Nick closer, until their bodies pressed together, and kissed him with desperate, hopeless hunger. He’d known he missed Nick—it had felt like an essential trait of the man he’d been—but it was only now he realized how deep that crack had run.

It felt like… everything.

He broke the kiss and rested his forehead against Nick’s.

“I love the way you act like that’s a choice,” he growled as he pushed Nick down into the snow. The zippers and buttons of his clothes briefly confused him, but then his fingers remembered how they worked. Nick laughed under him and kissed his throat, his shoulder, and scraped sharp teeth over his collarbone in a bite. “You won’t leave me again.”