LOGINNoahHe pushes into me slow.Like he's got all night and intends to spend it right here, one endless inch at a time, his chest sealed to my back and his arm under my head and my leg hooked over his, and by the time he's all the way in I've forgotten every other way this has ever been done."Breathe," he says into my shoulder."I am breathing.""You're planning to breathe. Different thing."I breathe.He's everywhere.In me, around me, under me, his heartbeat going hard against my spine, and he still doesn't move."Dax.""Mm.""Any decade now."He laughs, low, and I feel it inside me, which is a level of unfair I didn't know existed, and then he starts to move.If you can call it that.A deep, slow grind, barely pulling back, hitting something on every pass that empties my head out through my ears.No pace to brace against.No fight to win.Just him, taking me apart at a crawl."Turn your head," he murmurs.I turn my head and he kisses me over my shoulder, deep and unhurried, and looks
Dax'Say something,' the wolf demands. 'He's waiting. Open your mouth and be charming, it's the one thing you're good at.'I know he's waiting.I've got a mouth full of nothing.Every true thing I could hand him tonight sits behind a door I either don't own the key to or can't afford to open, and he's standing two feet away having just told me exactly that, politely, with my own heart still thumping under his palm.So I stand in my kitchen, useless, watching the man I want forever with decide what to do about me.He decides.He crosses the two feet and kisses me.Not our usual kind.Not the collision, not the fight over whose kiss it is.Slow. Deliberate.His hand still on my chest, not pushing anymore. Just resting there like it lives on me.I make a sound into his mouth that I'll be hearing about for weeks.He kisses like he's still half arguing with me, and I'd lose this argument daily. Twice on weekends."I said I can't promise forever," he murmurs, barely pulling back, "While the
Noah"That's five."Dax stops with the fridge door open."Five what?""Five questions you've dodged since the rail cut this morning. I've been counting."He takes out two beers like we're having a normal evening.Sets one in front of me on the counter.A peace offering with a twist cap.I don't touch it."Noah.""What happens after you catch one? Dodge. What Maxim wants it for. Dodge. What the term was. Dodge. What your mother meant in the driveway. Dodge. And just now I asked when the watches start and you told me a story about Finn's truck.""It's a good story.""Dax."His phone buzzes on the counter.More corridor logistics, probably, the schedule he won't discuss with me.He silences it without looking, which from him is basically a declaration of war on his own nature."Walk me through it," I say. "If they run tonight.""Reena and Mato are on patrol. If there’s any movement, they call, I go, I take the last wolf in the line."Dax opens his beer."You stay here.""That's not the p
NoahThe head goes on the council table with a sound like a bowling ball wrapped in canvas, because that's roughly what it is.Still frozen.I took it out of Dax's freezer forty minutes ago and it's been sweating through the tarp ever since, fogging up the cooler.Now eleven senior hunters are leaning in to look at a dead woman's face like she's a fishing trophy.She's still beautiful. Even now. Even blue."A penanggalan," I say. "From Malaysia. It’s a good thing I was made to learn about foreign monsters when I was younger or I’d have assumed it was a vampire."I don't look at my father when I say it.I don't have to.I can feel him not reacting from across the room, which from Gavin Hunter is practically a seizure.Then I give them the story, the version we built.It starts out mostly true.The throat marks that were wrong for fangs.The vinegar smell.Then I start veering from the path a little.My magnificent memory handing me the answer immediately.The lair I tracked, the cellar
Dax"Your mother," Noah says, watching the road instead of me. "You said she hasn't left her house in a month."We're four minutes from Vintage and he picks now to ask."She hasn't. She doesn’t leave it often.""Is she sick?""No."He waits.He's good at waiting.It's one of his more annoying professional skills."My dad died when I was seventeen."The wheel is suddenly very interesting to hold."Three years ago. Fast and unexpected. Don’t make me go into the details, because honestly I don't have all of them.""And your mother?""She loved him in a way that didn't leave room for anything else. When he died, most of her died with him."I take the turn onto Caldwell."Including the part that remembers she has a son."Noah doesn't say sorry.He puts his hand on my thigh and leaves it there, which is better, and we drive the last two blocks like that.The ‘stay’ is still sitting between us too.Asked, never answered, interrupted by a vampire with impeccable timing.Neither of us has brou
NoahDax laughs at me.Big, delighted, head thrown back, the laugh of a man who’s sure he’s holding all the cards.So I take them from him.I turn into him, hook his leg, and toss him onto his own bed.He goes down easy because part of him wants to see where this is headed, which is his whole problem and my whole opening."There a plan here, Hunter, or just vandalism?""Shirt off."He peels it away slow, on purpose, watching me watch, and even now, months in, the sight of him gets under my skin with professional efficiency.Miles of him.Golden eyes gone half amber already, and I did that with a shove and two words.I get his pants off with one hand, and he lifts his hips to help, still grinning, hard and flushed against his stomach, no underwear because he's an animal."Enjoying the view?""Not really."My mouth is watering. He can probably smell it.I kneel over him, take his jaw in my hand, and turn his head toward the mirror.The grin dies fast."Watch," I tell him."That's my lin
DaxThe thing's in pieces at our feet and my body's still waiting for round two.I never come down off a kill clean. My blood's still up, ears still straining, every muscle still voting to hit something else.I don’t think it’s a werewolf thing. It’s an adrenaline thing.So when the wolf decides to
NoahThe wolf hits it like a truck, and the thing barely rocks.Wrong.Two hundred pounds of Alpha at a dead run should fold anything with a spine.This rotten thing takes the hit, slides back a boot-length in the dirt, and swings an arm the size of my leg.The wolf has to wrench sideways midair to
DaxThe wolf wants to turn around.He's wanted to turn around since I cleared the fence, and he isn't being quiet about it, because quiet isn't a thing he owns.He just keeps shoving the same word into the back of my skull like a toddler with a doorbell.Ours.Ours, ours, ours."He's a hunter," I t
NoahThree weeks I've been hunting this wolf, and tonight, finally, he does me the courtesy of holding still long enough to kill.Big of him.He's at the tree line where Northgate's fence gives up and the real woods start, and he's shirtless.Obviously. He almost always is.Cold's got nothing to sa







