Page 36 of Claimed By the Wolf Heir

I pin her hips and drive into her because my wolf doesn't know how to do this any other way, and the truth is I don't want to. Not tonight. Not when every stroke strips another layer of composure and what I find beneath it is the woman who crossed the room and chose this. She's pinned beneath me on the floor of her own infirmary with the omega pouring off her skin and my name breaking apart in her mouth.

She comes the second time with her face pressed against my shoulder and her teeth in the muscle. The bite is the omega's answer to the alpha inside her, the biological imperative to mark and be marked that no compound can suppress.

The pain of her teeth is sharp and specific and exactly what my wolf wants. I follow her over the edge with my hands locked on her hips hard enough to bruise and my mouth against her throat. My vision narrows to the patch of skin just left of the hollow, the diagonal where her pulse is hammering against my lips, and every alpha instinct I have is collapsing to a single point: bite, bond, make this permanent. That line holds even now, even with every cell in my body demanding that I close my teeth.

I don't bite. The not-biting costs me more than anything I've ever held back.

Afterward, we lie on the infirmary floor because neither of us has the sense or the energy to move somewhere that isn't cold stone. My back is against the wall. Her spine is against my chest. Her breathing has slowed to the deep, even rhythm of a wolf coming down from a fight, and the comparison is more accurate than she'd appreciate.

The infirmary smells like both of us. The suppressant is gone from her scent, stripped by exertion and proximity and the simple biological reality that no dose holds against sustained alpha contact at this range. What's left is the omega, clean and bright and carrying a specificity that my wolf has been tracking since the first bandage change in the cottage.

I don't say anything. For once in my life, I don't fill the silence. I let it sit between us, and this silence doesn't weigh anything. This silence is the absence of pretending.

Her left hand lifts in the dark. I watch it move, know where it's going before her fingers arrive. She presses flat against the bonding site. Unmarked.

I've watched her cover this spot every time the suppressant thins, every time my wolf gets too close, every time the omega pushes through. The gesture is older than me. I don't need to know its history to recognize what it guards.

I watch her fingers press against skin that belongs to no one.

My left fist closes at my side. Her hand presses flat against unmarked skin.

The not-touching is louder than anything my hands could say.

11

SIGNE

The suppressant I take at dawn doesn't settle, and the reason is still on my skin. I stand at the basin with the formula dissolving under my tongue and count the seconds the way I count suture intervals, precise and unforgiving, and the wall that should rebuild between the omega and the world stays thin. The compound absorbs. The binding sites engage.

The scent dampens to the neutral baseline I've been maintaining since I was old enough to understand what the alternative would cost, but the dampening is shallow, a skim of frost over water that's still moving underneath. Underneath is where Eirik's scent has settled into my skin like a stain I can't scrub out.

I slept without dreaming for the first time in years. The clinical version is post-coital oxytocin flooding the limbic system and suppressing the cortisol spikes that produce disrupted sleep cycles. The honest version is that a packless alpha held me against his body until my nervous system forgot to keep watch, and my nervous system hasn't remembered since.

The intimacy accelerated the degradation. I expected this. Prolonged skin-to-skin contact with a compatible alpha compromises the formula's receptor coverage, and what happened last night involved sustained contact that my dosage calculations didn't account for. My dosage calculations assumed I wouldn't be stupid enough to let it happen twice.

The adjustment range is narrowing. I can increase the alpine bloodroot concentration, but the margin between therapeutic dose and toxicity is already thin. Pushing past it carries risks I'm not willing to take with my own liver function.

I rinse my face. The water is cold. My reflection breaks apart in the basin and reassembles as the surface calms, and the face that looks back at me is wearing an expression I didn't put there. The muscles around my mouth are set differently than they were yesterday. Softer.

The clinical term would be reduced tonic tension in the orbicularis oris and the zygomaticus major, the muscle groups responsible for the composed, neutral presentation I've maintained for years. The non-clinical term is that I look like a woman who's been thoroughly fucked by someone who knew exactly what he was doing, and the evidence is on my face for anyone with functional pattern recognition to read.

I tighten the braid. I correct the expression. The correction hesitates.

Rounds. The ankle sprain from last week has improved. I check the range of motion, adjust the wrap, clear him for light duty. One of the cooks burned her forearm on the bread oven, and I clean and dress the wound while she talks about the morning's flour shortage and the state of the root cellar stores. I nod in the right places. My hands do what they've always done: steady, competent, precise.

I catch myself humming while I organize the burn dressings.

The sound stops me cold. My hands suspend above the gauze, and I listen to the silence where the humming was, the same tuneless fragment I suppressed in the cottage weeks ago. It's back. The suppressant is supposed to mute these impulses alongside the scent and the designation, and the fact that it isn't tells me the degradation has reached the behavioral pathways, not just the glandular ones.

I note the symptom. I file it alongside the other data points: the settling that takes longer each morning, the scent coverage that thins under stress, the narrowing margin. All consistent with a compound in decline. That's all this is.

The cook is watching me with mild curiosity. I give her the look that has been ending unnecessary conversations in this infirmary for longer than she's been alive.

"The wrap needs to stay dry for two days," I tell her. "Come back if the redness spreads beyond the margin."

She leaves quickly. Good.

The next patient is a young wolf from the patrol rotation, a dislocated finger from a training exercise. Standard reduction. I stabilize the joint, tape the splint, and explain the recovery timeline while he grimaces through the pressure.