Page 30 of Claimed

8

Grey

She’s asleep, out entirely, spooned by me and a perfect fit. I lay awake beside her for a long time, caressing her skin, dusting kisses along her shoulder and throat as she sleeps, inhaling the scent of her skin, finger-combing her mass of dark hair back so I can admire the mark I’ve put on her throat while feeling the soft, wavy strands.

I’m feeling a multitude of things including invigoration. Ready. Ready for what? I can’t completely pinpoint it but maybe ready for the rest of our lives, ready to give her everything. I feel strong. I feel like I’ve leveled up somehow in terms of strength and senses.

I’ve mated. This is the female I’ll build a family with. As my breathing begins to sync up with hers and I feel her burrowing into that new space in my chest, I fight the urge to drift off before shifting to wolf. While I’ve undoubtedly tired her out by claiming her, I’m not taking chances, not giving an opening for her to take off again. Because I’ve tired myself out too, I’ll sleep as wolf beside her. She snuggles in closer, burying her face into my coat.

The moment I laid eyes on her in that cell after catching her true scent I knew this was right, knew down to my gut that she was made for me. I also know it’s not uncomplicated. Far from it. In the moments after mating before she fell asleep, I felt a range of her emotions sift through my bones that I was able to decode easily. Wonder. Happiness. Hope. Fear. I need to know why she ran, who she was running to. Obviously, it’s to do withthe actions she took in an effort to harm the pack. I have no doubt she won’t try to further harm us. I feel how pure her heart is. Sensed it before we connected physically and now I know it down to my bones.

I’ll find out who forced her to do those things, I’ll find out why, and I’ll make sure they’re no longer a threat to us.

After. Because as soon as she wakes up, I’ll be knotting her again.

Knotting someone you’ve marked as yours, someone who you feel a connection with? Amazing. Incredible. This was the most profoundly satisfying sex of my life. I already know it’ll be addictive.

My thoughts flit to the pack, to Riley. I never caught his claiming scent in the air last night. I know the village is currently flooded with the scent of my claiming. This means there’s a good chance we’ve mated out of order.

9

Stacy

I wake up beside the beautiful silver wolf who’s on the bed beside me, his head at the foot of the bed. His eyes are closed and he smells incredible. This entire home smells like it’s been infused with that smoky, sugary forest scent of his.

Strange emotions work through me as I look at him and wonder why he’s in his wolf shape. I feel the urge to shift, too, so we can be together in the same form.

Odd how after just hours I know there’s a connection forming. But I guess it’s not odd to him, since he’s anticipated the mating bond his whole life.

I don’t know when I started hearing it wasn’t real. Probably shortly after age six, which was when I moved in with Father and Wyatt and had to relearn life according to their complex rules instead of according to the simple rules my grandparents had. I no longer remember much about my life before six, just that I lived with my dead mother’s parents in a cute, clean little cottage that smelled like cookies and only saw Father when he was on his dais during pack meetings. Wyatt sold the land that cottage was on a few years ago when he severed part of our village.

I know it was the happy part of my childhood – when I lived with them. My mother died when I was a baby. Wyatt told me when we were kids that she tried to run away and he saw her get run over by a car.

I know it was hard, beyond hard, to not have them anymore. Life was very different once I moved in with Father. And thinkingon it now while considering the memory I had when Greyson purred for me, I’m wondering if I eventually blocked out many of those early memories of our pack when it was different because I had to do so in order to come to grips with my new reality without the two people I loved most.

Was my grandfather a retired alpha from another pack? He purred, so he must have been.

I’ve often believed, though never said it aloud, that if not for those first few formative years being cared for by my mother’s parents, people who actually cared, I’d probably be a lot more like Wyatt. Neither of us had our respective mothers for very long after being born. What we come from wasn’t a family, wasn’t healthy. It wasn’t remotely right.

One of my earliest memories of Wyatt is when I moved in with Father and him and wandered outside to see if he wanted to play like I’d always done in my grandparents’ garden. He was using a slingshot to try to ping rocks off old, rusted cans. He kept missing and getting angry about it. He wouldn’t let me have a turn, so I told him I’d go find some flowers to pick for the dining table. He told me flowers don’t grow in a junkyard and when he later found me on my knees in the dirt, sniffing red lilies I’d found growing along a path behind the garage, he stomped on them, repeating that“flowers don’t grow here”.

Yeah, a junkyard was no place for flowers. Or for a little girl to grow up.

I brush away those old thoughts.

Can I make sure the cycle is broken? It’s what I’ve always wanted. And with Greyson it might even be probable rather than just possible. If Wyatt doesn’t ruin it. If Greyson doesn’t decide against it after learning the whole truth about who I am and what I come from. I don’t know if I can bear him children. Andif I could, would they be okay? How would he feel about me and where I come from? How wouldIfeel if he had to cast me aside so that he could have healthy children with someone else? Already this thought is too painful to even ponder. I remember the look in Emma’s eyes when she escorted me to her room to give my virginity to her alpha husband because she couldn’t have children. If I’d become pregnant, that baby would’ve been given to them. I wasn’t able to and as much as Emma was kind to me and I wished she could be a mother like she wanted, I couldn’t help but feel relief that I wasn’t about to have a baby only to have it torn from my breast to be given to someone else.

I shake those old thoughts off.

It’s somewhere near noon and I never sleep this late; usually wake with the sun. Then again, I’ve never had a day like yesterday or a night like I had last night. A morning like I had early this morning soon after dawn broke when Greyson did all those incredible things to my body.

My mind swims with thoughts. A swirl of them including worry about what happened when I didn’t turn up at the motel last night.

But first things first. A toilet.

I swing my legs off the side of the bed feeling a little stiff and sore anda lotin need of the bathroom. I get to my feet and immediately, Greyson shifts to human shape, moving to stand at the foot of the bed. He’s sprung into action as if there’s a problem.

He looks disoriented, but ready to fight. And there’s a strange pulse of anxiety inside me. I think I’m feeling his emotions!

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