Page 11 of Scarlett's Wicked Wolf
Reid
The couch is long because I built it that way—extra timber, extra patience, not nearly enough sleep. It’s still shorter than I am. The wool itches through my shirt; a spring prods my ribs; the fire snaps and paints the rafters in restless orange. I deserve worse. Maybe nothing. I’ve taken Scarlett’s life in my hands and rearranged it without asking if she wanted different.
Or maybe I saved it.
I won’t know until she survives the change.
A log collapses in the hearth, sending sparks spiraling. Cold slicks the windows in a silver skin, and the dark heart of the forest leans close to listen. I gave her the bed—my bed—because the fever burns a little easier with the fire’s heat, and because the mattress is softer.
Like me, Scarlett wasn’t born for this. I remember my first change—the Frankenpunch fever chewing through me while bones cracked and re-knit, skin trying to hold two lives at once. Born wolves are built for it—two souls sharing the same skin. She isn’t. Her body has to be remade from the inside out, sinewby sinew, nerve by screaming nerve. Fever is the price of re-forging.
So I watch. I wait, suffering with her because I would never have chosen this for her. I’ve made her as comfortable as she can be while her DNA is being rewritten inside her bones.
And there’s the other thing—the bond tightening between us, a thread humming brighter each hour. I haven’t told her all of it. Not yet. She deserves the whole truth when she can actually hold on to it. Right now, the bond would make “yes” sound like a reflex, not a choice.
I won’t touch her unless she asks.Afterthe change.
At some point, the flames go soft at the edges. I don’t mean to sleep.
When the dream hits, it detonates.
She’s under me—heat and soft gasps, her breath breaking against my mouth. My hands fill with the perfect weight of her breasts; my tongue finds an aching, rosy peak, and her moans are both prayer and sin. I drag my mouth lower, hungry for the taste of her… and the dream turns.
Her skin slicks red. Copper floods my mouth. The noise in my ears isn’t pleasure; it’s screaming.
“Scarlett!”
I’m already moving, my gaze raking corners, windows, shadows for an external threat. But it’s only us. Scarlett sits bolt upright in the bed, the blankets twisted around her legs, fear in her wide eyes.
“What is it?” My voice comes out rougher than I intended.
She pushes sweat-damp hair off her face. “Bad dream. Vision. I saw him. The wolf that attacked me. I don’t—” She swallows, searching the air for a word that doesn’t exist. “Thorns in his fur,” she whispers. “And bones.”
The scent of her fear hits me like a blade, and every protective instinct inside me rises to soothe it. I sit on the edge of the bed, and she doesn’t flinch. This new, fragile trust feels like a glass bird that could shatter at any moment.
“It was a dream,” I murmur, easing an arm around her shoulders. “Just a dream.”
Her fingers flatten over my chest as if the steady thump can anchor her. Heat knifes down my spine at the contact as desire coils insistently. I shift my hips away and breathe past it. She shakes against me, small and fierce.
“I’m sorry I woke you,” she mutters against my chest, dragging the sleeve of the shirt she borrowed over her eyes.
“Don’t be.” I stroke her hair. “I’m here.”
Because I am. Because I will be.
“You’re not a born wolf,” she says quietly. “Does the—our—bond work the same as natural shifters?”
There it is—the part that needs daylight.
“I don’t know.” And the not-knowing sits under my ribs like a stone. “I’ve researched, but there’s no handbook for men turned monsters by a drunken dare. Born shifters talk about timelines, the pull, how the bond eases once mated.” I shrug. “I never expected to find a mate, so for me, it’s guesswork and gut. Maybe our thread will be weaker. Maybe it’ll be stronger. Maybe thecompulsion is different, more human, and less lore. What Idoknow is you get a choice. I won’t use the bond to take it.”
She studies me for a long moment. “You thought I was going to die.”
“Yes.” No way to soften it. “You were.”
“And you believed the bite would save me.”
“I did. It did.”
