Page 80 of Howl for the Gargoyle

The full moon. It was tomorrow and Rafe was injured, and I was one wrong word away from losing my shit.

"I'll make us dinner," Rafe answered easily. He stroked the side of my thigh, and the silver sheen of the fresh scar on the back of his hand glimmered blue and red with the police lights. "Come on. Let's get home."

This is a mistake, I thought, growling. I shouldn't be here.

I was hunched on my living room floor, moonlight rushing through the bay window to coat my fur, muscles still spasming from my transformation. Downstairs, my neighbors were blaring their TV to cover the sounds of my howls, the noise too sharp for my enhanced hearing. One of my claws was caught on a strand of black yarn, torn loose from my carpet.

And above my head, pacing footsteps.

"Can I come down now?"

I snarled, but I was immediately rising on quivering limbs, darting toward the stairs before forcing myself to stop.

My front door was just to my left. I could leave. I should've left hours ago to stay at the full moon shelter, except—

"Hannah," Rafe called down from my bedroom. "Come on. It's gonna be okay."

"What if—" I flinched at the coarse tenor of my own voice, shaking my head. "What if I'm too—"

"Okay, that's it, I'm coming down."

I skidded toward the door for a moment, and then froze almost immediately. The cool, soft scent of Rafe floating down the stairs drew out a whine. My claws were noisy on the tile of my hall, my feet slipping clumsily, and I raced back to the stairs as fast as I'd tried to run from them.

"You're not going to hurt me. I'm your mate," Rafe said.

I stood, watching his approach with a starving stare. He was whole, aside from the little ragged edges on his wings, which he promised would heal within a few months. He was marked with silver, his blood sealing the wounds Fincher had inflicted, giving his stone time to harden and set. He was mine.

Just the thought drew out a growling purr, and Rafe smirked in answer, pausing three steps above me. I was vibrating with the need to touch him, while trembling with the fear I might hurt him. Also my tail was wagging at a wild, galloping pace, in time with the beat of my heart.

"Even Theo uses chains," I murmured.

"That's because Natalie is kinky," Rafe said, grinning. "I don't want you in chains. You could put me in chains."

"Rafe," I growled, trying very hard not to picture Rafe chained to my bed, helpless and hard and—

He laughed, and I was too distracted by the image in my head to dash out of reach when he descended the last few steps. His arms were around me before I could protest, and then refusing him was impossible, not with him pressed to me, safe and mostly whole, my muzzle tucked against his throat, hands splayed flat on his back to keep from scratching him.

"See? Isn't this better than being stuck in some dismal hotel room?" Rafe asked.

"Don't be smug," I muttered, leaning more heavily into him for a moment before remembering that we needed to be careful.

I thought I'd made up my mind to go to the shelter tonight—it seemed like the obvious choice—and then Rafe had asked the simple, seemingly innocent question of "What if something happens to me while you're gone?"

I'd nearly lost my mind.

So here I was. A werewolf. In my lovely lakeside apartment. Trying very hard not to cause further injury to my gargoyle boyfriend-slash-mate who I desperately wanted to pin to the floor and… That part was less clear at the moment. It wasn't quite sex I wanted, or not simply that. I wanted to press myself into his stone flesh and fuse our entire beings together, to know for certain that there would never be anything else that would ever come between us, that would harm him or me.

I'd always been a cat person, and this was why. Codependency was galling.

"We need to either tell them to turn it down or go upstairs," Rafe said, because the soap opera-like argument playing downstairs was audible word-for-word in our quiet embrace.

"Both," I said, instinct warning me that we were currently too close to other people while my mate was still vulnerable.

Rafe leaned back, and his injured hand dug into my hair and fur, my eyes rolling back gently at the wonderful, warm tingling his touch rushed through me. "Want popcorn?"

I wanted to cry. Mostly because he was perfect and he was right and I did want popcorn and I'd almost lost him the night before.

"You text, I pop," I said. It was Rafe who’d introduced himself to my neighbors anyway, planning ahead for this night even as we arrived home from the crime scene exhausted and, in my case, on edge.

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