Page 38 of Forbidden Wolf

His deep chuckle vibrated against my back. “Because wolves only bite each other when they mate, and we tend to only do it once in our lifetime. I may have tried to fuck you out of my system, but I’ve never ever bitten any other female.”

“I still want to gorge their eyes out,” I said.

He laughed, tightening his arms. “You have no need. There is a difference between a mindless fuck in the dark and what happened between us. One uplifts you and the other leaves you feeling dirty afterwards.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I just rested back against him, watching as the sky went from bright to burnt orange to black. A few hours had passed of us resting when I heard the beginning of mutterings in the darkness.

My hand lay on top of Levi’s on my stomach. I squeezed his hand and he stiffened behind me. I cast my awareness out and found glowing red energies on the forest floor.

“I’m sure I picked up their scent back there.” A voice echoed through the trees.

“How could a vampire and a lycan have formed an alliance without us knowing?”

“And how can the vampire walk in the daylight when we haven’t mastered that yet?”

The voices continued below us.

I could barely breathe, expecting them to find us up here at any moment. Goosebumps erupted on my flesh and tingles rippled up and down my spine. Levi’s canines scraped the sensitive skin where my neck met my shoulder.

I linked my fingers through his and brought his hand to my lips. We needed to remain hidden up here with the number of red energy signatures down there.

If they discovered us, we would be dead.

***

Tasha

There was a steady stream of those creatures back and forth under our tree for hours judging by the movement of the moon in the sky. Some of the bigger ones carried huge crates. My body tensed when they dragged a female vampire struggling against their hold, every instinct in me screaming that we should help her.

“No, Tasha,” Levi said against my ear. “We’re barely able to survive ourselves.”

He was right, but it didn’t stop me watching her until they disappeared from sight. Another was dragged along unconscious a while later. What were they collecting female vampires for? Part of me didn’t want to know, but the other part of me needed to find out what these creatures were doing.

My body was stiff from holding my breath and staying still most of the night. The hellspawn kept circling the area and mumbling to each other. I’d finally given into exhaustion and fell asleep in Levi’s arms when all the creatures had passed us. He still held me securely when the sun finally woke me. I may be able to walk in the sun, but my skin didn’t like it and apprehension always lurched inside me for those first few seconds before I didn’t burst into flames.

I allowed myself these few moments of peace, since none of us knew what the day would hold. Even now, trepidation snaked inside my stomach at the thought of what discoveries today could herald.

We decided that at dawn we would move in daylight since these hellspawn were repelled by the light. Levi needed to contact his team, but part of me just wanted to stay hidden far from the world with him. Right now, we were missing in action and technically dead to both our sides. Who would know if we walked away and made a life for ourselves far from the problems of this war the humans knew nothing about?

They thought the fallout of our war were natural disasters and global warming. Most humans didn’t know our kind existed, and those who did wanted to use the beautiful immortals for their own gain. We could find a place in that world—for years I’d been learning their cultures so that when our time of enlistment was up, we could disappear.

“You’re thinking too hard,” Levi’s sleepy voice sounded from behind me.

“What makes you say that?”

His deep chuckle washed over me like silk caressing my skin. “Your shoulder and neck muscles tense when you’re debating with yourself. They always did.”

He pressed a kissed to where my neck met my shoulder, and a shiver of lust rippled all the way down to my stomach.

“Can we not just leave now and never go back?” The words escaped my lips before my brain could censor them.

His arms tugged me closer to him. “I thought about that for hours last night, Tasha. Over the past few years, I signed up for every mission in towns and cities to learn how to blend in. I want to leave with you more than anything else.”

His tone said there was abutcoming.

“But our families are in this war. My brother and sister are out there somewhere waiting to be slaughtered by these creatures. I sat here debating with myself if I could live with my conscience if I did nothing when I could save people like them.”

I dragged in a staggered breath. He was right, but it didn’t stop the well of disappointment from bubbling up inside me. Ten years was a long time to be lost and lonely.

---