Page 118 of Moonlit Nights & Northern Lights
“Nothing’s wrong,” I reassured him, forcing brightness into my voice. I reached for that silvery-blue thread between us, instinctively drawing on its warmth to steady my racing heart. The raindrop scent intensified as I did, wrapping around us like a cocoon, and I felt my panic ebbingas calm flowed into me. “In fact, everything is great.” I leaned down and pressed our lips together in a long, languid kiss. “That was so amazing. Because you’re amazing.”
Theo smiled and relaxed—even if he didn’t believe me, he wasn’t going to push it, because apparently he had the patience of a saint. Who knew? Certainly not me.
We lay together, heat gradually ebbing from our skin like the last embers of a dying fire. I rested my head against Theo’s chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. It was strangely hypnotic, the sound of life pulsing beneath my ear. My fingertip wandered through the hair scattered across his chest, charting territories I wanted to memorise.
Theo’s hand drifted across my skin in whisper-light touches, fingers ghosting over my shoulder where Callum had bitten me. Though the wound had fully healed when I shifted earlier, he treated the spot with such tenderness that warmth bloomed inside me.
“I couldn’t keep away from you earlier,” I found myself saying. “Out in the Highlands, when I was a wolf. It was like you were the full moon, pulling me towards my true self.”
Maxwell made a strange sound in his throat, heartbeat quickening beneath my ear. For a while, he said nothing.
Then, “Rory… I—”
Squeak!
The sound cut through the moment, followed by a ball of matted grey fur flying directly at Maxwell’s head. Sharp claws dug into his scalp as Freddy launched his surprise attack.
Maxwell screeched, his hands flailing wildly. “What the—ARGH!”
I lunged forward, scooping Freddy up before he could take proper offence and sink his yellowed teeth into Maxwell’s flesh.
“Fucking hell!” Maxwell muttered, rubbing his scalp where tiny pinpricks of blood were probably forming. I knew this from experience. “That little zombie bastard has it in for me!”
Freddy squirmed in my hands, his tiny body vibrating with unusual intensity. His eerie yellow eyes darted around the room, and he kept making these frantic chittering sounds I’d never heard before.
“Something’s wrong,” I said, frowning as I studied my friend. “He’s never like this.”
Maxwell didn’t look impressed. “What’s wrong is that he hates me and has terrible timing.” He glared at Freddy with such resentment that I almost laughed.
I couldn’t really blame him for being annoyed. Couldn’t Freddy have given us five more minutes of cuddling? Maxwell had been just about to say something…
“No,” I insisted, stroking Freddy’s ear to calm him. “Look at him—this isn’t normal. Something’s spooked him.”
That’s when I heard it—footsteps outside the cottage. Not the casual steps of someone taking a stroll, but cautious, deliberate movements. My wolf senses, heightened with the full moon just two nights away, picked up the sound crystal clear.
I slipped out of bed, placing Freddy on the dresser where he continued his agitated movements, claws clicking against the wood.
“What is it?” Maxwell whispered, staying put, his eyes still fixed mistrustfully on Freddy.
I crept to the window, pulling the curtain back just a crack. It was probably Callum out there trying to spy, the creep, waiting for another chance to assert his dominance or report back to my mother.
The Highland night stretched before me, a canvas of deep blues and blacks. Moonlight silvered the edge of the pines that bordered the cottage property, turning the distant loch into a mirror of liquid mercury. Everything was completely still, the Scottish wilderness holding its breath in that peculiar way it does after sunset.
Except…
There. By the edge of the treeline. A shadow that didn’t belong.
My fingers tightened on the curtain as the shadow moved, revealing itself to be a human figure. Not the bulky silhouette of Callum or anyof the pack members I’d grown up with. This figure was leaner, standing with a familiar cultivated poise—shoulders back, chin lifted just so, the kind of posture that made me automatically straighten my own.
My heart stuttered, then stopped altogether.
The figure stepped into a patch of moonlight, and I could see him clearly now—the dark hair I’d run my fingers through countless times, the sharp jawline I’d traced with my lips, the lanky frame I’d held against mine on cold London nights.
Dev.
He stood there, staring directly at the cottage. And then, as if sensing my presence, he lifted his gaze.
Our eyes met through the glass, across the darkness.
