Page 29 of Fated to the Warrior Wolf

“I know, but I’m going to fix it. Five months. Give me until you’re five months along, and if this isn’t fixed, we’ll… we’ll talk to Karissma about your plan.”

I could tell the words cost him, but as he held me close and stroked my hair back from my face, I knew he meant them. He was a man of his word, and my estimation of him went up a hundredfold in that moment.

It might have been killing him, but he was willing to go along with what I needed. To compromise.

“Okay.”

“Okay, then.” He pressed a tender kiss to my forehead, and then he scooped me up like I weighed nothing.

“What are you doing?” I asked, gripping the neck of his shirt for dear life at my sudden upending.

“Taking you somewhere quiet.”

“A libraryisquiet, you goof.” I understood the urge, though. In times of stress, a wolf wanted to den up, return to their safe space. He was probably going to deposit me in my room and pull the curtains to make it feel safer, more sheltered.

But when he got to the hallway where our rooms were, he didn’t stop at my door. He kicked his own roughly open, and as soon as we stepped inside, I was enveloped in his scent. He was all woodsy pine, with that delicious male musk that made me want to keep my nose buried in his neck forever. Every now and then, I thought I got a hint of something sweet, but I couldn’t pin it down.

His room was tidy, if devoid of personality. Unlike my room, there were no ancient portraits on the walls, and the frilly comforter had been replaced with a simple, flat quilt in dark gray. But in my emotional state, I loved everything about it. He carried me all the way to the bed, not putting me down as he used his knee to shove back the blankets, then carefully tucking me under them.

As I suspected, he went straight to the curtains and tugged them shut, enveloping us in a welcome darkness.

My residual tears leaked onto his pillows, but he didn’t complain as he climbed in next to me. Gael just wrapped me up like a burrito, tucking my head under his chin and stroking my hair.

His eyes glowed with his wolf, the usual whiskey hue growing brighter, like sunlight shining through a full glass.

“Thank you,” I whispered against the bare skin exposed by the neck of his T-shirt, my lips just barely brushing the skin.

“I’ve got you, Leigh. I’ve got you.”

When he started to rumble, my eyes slid closed.

SIXTEEN

Gael

Five months wasn’t a lot of time to unpack centuries of hatred and species profiling, but it was a chance. I couldn’t bear it if she basically signed her own death warrant.

Why did I feel this much if we weren’t mates? It made no sense. But my wolf was absolutely losing it, and I’d given in to the urge to den up with her. It was that or bite her, and I couldn’t do that.

If she had stayed mad at me as long as she did for knotting her, Leigh wasn’t going to ever forgive me for biting her. Not that I would do that without her consent.

She was sleeping now, peaceful and serene in a way I’d never seen her before. I gently thumbed a piece of hair out of her face, having no trouble seeing her with my wolf’s night vision.

Leigh was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, but it wasn’t the beauty that entranced me. It was her fire, her spunk. She stood up to me. She pushed back when I was overbearing.

Most people kept their distance, and those who dared to come close to the high alpha’s second certainly didn’t mouth off the way she did.

Goddess, that mouth.

It was going to be the death of me. But the vision of her sucking me off with those cherry-red lips—even though I immediately shut that thought down—had me sporting a halfie.

Shit.

Luckily, there were plenty of nonsexual thoughts to occupy my mind. Like how the fuck was I going to protect our daughter, when every species in the world was going to be gunning for her while she was a defenseless infant?

Not defenseless. She had me. I picked my phone up from the nightstand where I’d dropped it and sent off a few texts to my local contacts. With a bit more hesitation, I also fired off a text to my father’s head of security and interpack liaison. It wasn’t much, but every protection gig started somewhere.

Then I closed my eyes and let myself—and my wolf, the smug bastard—revel in the closeness, breathing her in like I could hold on to that scent forever. But even then, I knew we didn’t have forever.

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