Page 3 of Forbidden Moon

She nodded. “I’m the second in our den. Isaac is getting on and he’s training me to take over for him.”

She paused, biting her lip, not sure if she should say anything else. Garrett might work for the Council right now, but at heart he was a member of the Saranac pack, one of Dirigo’s enemies. Any information she shared could inadvertently be leverage against her own pack, no matter how innocent the information might sound.

As if interpreting her thoughts, he gave a rueful grin. “I won’t report anything we say back to anyone. You’ll just have to trust me on that. Like you once did.”

She sobered, remembering a time when they would meet and sit by the stream and talk for hours. Granted, they were kids, but they were some of the happiest days of her childhood until they were ripped away.

“What happened, Garrett? That day in the woods?”

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. He turned and walked to the iron railing that bordered the stone patio from the flower garden beyond them.

“We were never meant to be friends. You know that. You’re from Dirigo and I’m from Saranac. Our packs were in an uneasy truce. It was a few years before the war with the Tri-State pack and relations were tense. The last thing anyone wanted was for wolves from either side to be friendly.”

“You’d think they’d want us to build connections to help reduce tensions,” Maya said, though even back then she knew that a friendship between two wolves across pack lines would never have eased the tensions that were building, not with the war that erupted a couple of years later.

A shadow remained in his eyes as he stared into the night, and she sensed he wasn’t telling her everything. “Garrett, did something else happen?”

He shook himself, then turned back to her, a bright smile on his face. “It doesn’t matter. I just felt bad that I never saw you again until now. Who would have thought we would have to come out to Chicago and Council headquarters to meet again?”

She narrowed her gaze and studied him for a moment, wondering what he wasn’t telling her. Then she decided to let it go, since they had only just reconnected. Besides, this pressure in her chest demanded that she move beyond the past and look to the future, to what she had not expected this evening. Their possible mating bond.

“You feel it, don’t you?” she asked, the words quiet in the cool night air but seemed to carry a heavy importance. She held her breath, waiting for his response, feeling as if everything was about to change.

“The mating bond? I think I always have. The question is, what do we want to do about it?”

* * *

Garrett prayed Maya forgot all about the last time they were together, and how their friendship was shattered by their families. He remembered the day too well, most of it at least. He and Maya had been by the stream, as usual, and he was talking about his training for his upcoming shift. He was a couple years older than Maya and he was on the verge of shifting, so his pack was preparing him, and others, for the transformation. She was utterly transfixed by the discussion, and a little terrified. Saranac didn’t suffer weakness and their training was harsh at times, mostly to weed out weakness. One minute he was explaining how to feel the connection with the inner wolf and the next, chaos ensued.

He was old enough to suspect the connection he felt to her was more than friendship. When he left her every day, he felt an emptiness inside and a yearning to return. His mother had noticed him sneaking away and asked him about it, and he asked her about the mating bond. She had paled and told him to say nothing to anyone.

But somehow, his father had found out and tracked him. What followed was a lot of yelling and then a beating that rendered Garrett without a memory for a few days. Then he was shipped off to his uncle on the western border, where he learned a new meaning to the word pain. But he toughened up. Then he was sent to the Council to finish his education, but now he wondered if they wanted more distance from Maya and a wolf from an enemy pack, especially since they fought on opposite sides in the Tri-State war a few years later.

But the mating bond he had sensed when they were young was stronger now. True bonds were rare, something to be treasured. He never expected to find one, especially after spending the last several years roaming the country for the Council, meeting all kinds of available she-wolves and having his own pack trot out prospective mates to him. His uncle, the pack Beta, didn’t have any children and their Alpha only had a daughter. She wasn’t his mate and Garrett was the next highest in strength, or he was the last time he was home. So his pack was very interested in his mating prospects.

How would they feel about him mating a Dirigo wolf?

Yeah, he wasn’t looking forward to that conversation.

But his wolf didn’t give a damn about what his father, his uncle, or anyone in his pack thought. All his wolf cared about was that Maya was his mate and he needed to claim her before any other male stole her. He could scent another male on her and it was driving him wild, making him crazy with the need to stake his claim.

He knew only one thing. He couldn’t remain this close to her without acting on it, seeing if the connection was as powerful as he felt.

He turned to find her standing right next to him on the small patio. He moved their positions to cage her against the iron railing, crowding her so he could feel her long frame against his. He cupped her cheek in one hand, and rubbed his thumb over her full lower lip while she stared at him, her eyes wide and uncertain.

Slowly, carefully, his gaze never leaving hers, he slowly stepped closer to her, his heart pounding in his chest. Her breath caught in her throat, a slight hitch he heard, but she didn’t back away. When he was close enough to Maya that he could almost feel the warmth of her skin, he leaned in and kissed her. It was as if time had stopped.

The kiss was like a firework, need exploding in him, lighting up the darkness inside, warming the cold places he hadn’t known were dormant. He drew her closer, as if making her a part of him, and deepened the kiss. Maya met him as an equal, a fierce she-wolf claiming her mate, her tongue tangling with his, her arms twining around his neck and pulling him to her.

He slid a hand over her back and down over the curve of her ass, settling her on the top of the railing. He moved between her legs, the folds of the dress giving him just enough room to wedge himself between her thighs, pulling her up against the firm ridge of his painful erection. Her hands slipped to his shoulders and kept him close even as he broke the kiss, trailing kisses down her neck to the throbbing pulse point at the base of her throat, where he sucked hard, then nipped her lightly, not a mating bite but enough to show her his wolf.

Her nails scored his neck, reminding him that she was a she-wolf, not content to remain passive for long, and his wolf howled inside, eager to see who was more dominant, eager to explore their mate more fully.

He nipped that soft place between her neck and shoulder where one day he would place a mating mark, provided she’d allow it, and she moaned, her head falling to the side, exposing more of her neck. The display of submission and trust only inflamed his wolf higher, and he captured her lips again, eager for another taste of her.

A throat clearing behind them made Maya jump and stiffen. He snarled and glared over his shoulder, blocking her from the view of the other male wolf he had scented. Caleb stood on the patio with them, the door closed behind him. How had he snuck out there without Garrett hearing?

“You might want to take this somewhere more private, Garrett. The Council would frown on public fucking on their patio. Also, I just saw your Alpha arrive and I really don’t think you’d want him to see this.”

---