Page 96 of Broken Wolf Heart
His breathing is deep, steady. I can tell from the way his chest moves against my back that he’s still asleep. I wonder if he’s getting the same restful sleep I did. There’s something about this house. About the way we are with each other here. It’s like magic. The good kind.
Last night, after I’d had about three hundred orgasms, we shifted and ran together. It was what my first shift should have been. No blood or gore coating my fur. No violence in my wake. Just me and Grey, mated and running side by side.
It grounded my wolf in a way nothing else has. By the time we returned and fell into bed, I started feeling like she and I might finally be on the same page.
Comforted by that thought, I keep my eyes closed a few more seconds, savoring the stillness. The illusion of safety. Because I know, the second I open them, it’ll all come rushing back.
And it does.
Vincenzo’s press conference. The video footage of me at the lab. The claims he made about me being something worse than Franco.
Then me, walking into that reporter’s office with my chin up and my past on my sleeve.
Telling the truth.
About the foster homes. About Franco. About being alone.
About Indigo Hills.
About me and Grey.
I squeeze my eyes shut again, this time against the flood of memories. And the way my voice almost cracked when I said the city had become my home. When I looked into that camera and told them I wasn’t just a science project. That I was a wolf like them.
That I would use the strength those experiments gave me to protect the people they tried to turn me against.
I hope I can keep that promise.
I hope I get to keep this life.
Grey stirs behind me, his fingers twitching against my stomach before settling again. I tilt my head back just enough to feel the weight of his breath in my hair.
The air in the room smells like us. Like sex and salt and sweat and something sweeter I can’t name.
Whatever it is, it’s real.
Just like him.
Just like this.
I roll onto my back carefully, trying not to fully wake him, but his arm tightens instinctively, his eyes cracking open as I settle again.
“Hey,” he says, voice raspy with sleep and something deeper. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I nod, though the word feels too small.
His hand lifts to brush a strand of hair from my face. “You were amazing yesterday.”
“Do you mean the live interview or the sex?”
He grins. “Both.”
“Thanks,” I tell him, sobering as emotions hit me with a force that feels unfair for so early in the morning.
“For which part?” he shoots back.
I swallow hard. “You were there. When I needed you. At the end.”
He smiles faintly. “I always will be.”
