Page 39 of Redeemed Wolf

That night, we made love. It wasn’t the frantic, desperate tearing of clothes and rough fucking like during his heat. This was softer, slower, and a thousand times more intense.

I knelt in the middle of the bed, cradling Carter in my arms, his legs wrapped tight around my waist. I took my time thrusting into him, watching him slowly fall apart, quivering with need. He was so beautiful like this, his skin glistening with sweat and slick, flushed and whimpering with his impending climax.

“Silas,” he cried, pleading as he clung to me. “I need… more. Faster, harder.”

I kept on with my agonizing pace. It wasn’t meant to torture him—or me, for that matter—but I just didn’t want it to end. Ineverwanted this feeling to end. I paused the roll of my hips, breathing him in. Clenching my eyes tight, I jumped straight off the precipice I found myself on. “Carter, I love you,” I said against his shoulder, allowing myself a taste of his skin.

His gasp was breathy, with the power to change my world. He leaned back in my arms and looked straight into my soul. “I love you too,” he said, before his full lips broke into a beaming smile. He brought his mouth down on mine hard, tongues and teeth clashing.

When I began to rock against him again, I was too lost to worry about delaying the inevitable peak. We werein love. I was his and he was mine, and that was all that mattered. I didn’t need to make this last because we would have a chance to do this again tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.

I tipped forward onto the mattress, pinning Carter beneath me, gliding deep inside his tight channel, finding that sweet spot that would make him see stars. The pitch of his whimpers grew desperate, his pleading mindless strings of curses. My knot began to form at the base of my cock, but clenching my jaw hard, I managed to hold off my orgasm until I felt him release between us.

“Silas,fuck!” he shouted, his legs clamping on my hips as he bowed off the bed with the force of it.

I thrust a final time, shuddering as I unloaded my seed inside him, and just as my knot expanded to fill every single bit of space inside him, I felt his teeth sink into my neck. The skin broke, blood dripping down over my chest. The slither of a half-formed bond snaked through me, searching for its other half and coming up short.

Oh. Fuck.

Mate, Carter, bite, claim. Ours.

My wolf saw this as permission to claim our mate, and for a split second, I considered giving in. I wasn’t thinking about all the reasons why I couldn’t—like how Carter didn’t know about shifters or the permanence of a bite.

But then he seemed to realize what he’d done, and he started to panic. “Oh shit! I’m so sorry! You’re bleeding, oh gods, I made you bleed. Why the hell did I bite you?!” He wiped frantically at the bite mark, smearing blood and making it look worse than it was, but how was he supposed to know that it would heal? When I propped myself above him and looked down, I saw my blood on his lips, and if I weren’t already knotted to him, that would’ve been enough to tip me over the edge. Fuck, it was such an erotic sight.

I growled deep in my chest and kissed him. He was shocked by my reaction, and when he gasped, I took full advantage, invading his mouth to taste my blood on his tongue. He moaned but thencame to his senses and shoved me back. “No! Don’t kiss me. I hurt you!”

“Carter, didn’t I tell you to follow your instincts?”

“Well, yeah…”

“And was that what your instincts told you to do?” He sucked on his lower lip but nodded after a moment. “Then I’m glad you bit me.” I couldn’t help grinning, even though I knew this had just made everything a whole lot more complicated. I secretly loved the thought of him laying claim to me, even as a deep ache of longing and loneliness yawned open inside me.

I held and comforted him until my knot loosened and dislodged from him, my cum dripping from his hole, then I crawled out of bed to wash up, since the sight of my drying blood was clearly causing him some distress. I came back with a warm cloth and cleaned him up carefully.

“You’re not hurt?” he asked again, the corners of his eyes creasing in concern and guilt.

“Nope. The bleeding has already stopped. Barely a scratch. I don’t even need a band-aid.” Of course, he didn’t understand that I’d healed in under a minute.

He was particularly agitated, likely due to the incomplete bond, so I settled in beside him and wrapped my arms around him, whispering promises of love and forever in his ear. I waited until his breathing slowed and then evened out, before I carefully crept out of bed again, grabbing some clothes on my way to the living room. Plans began to take shape in my head, and we couldn’t afford to wait much longer.

Pacey had returned about half an hour ago, and he was lying on the couch, reading a new book. “Watch him,” I commanded, snatching his burner phone from the coffee table. “I’ll be back in ten.”

His dark eyes burned with curiosity, but he didn’t question my order. He set aside his book and sat up, alert and ready. I wassurprised to find that I trusted him not just with my own life, but with my mate’s.

For the second time today, I pulled up my hood and jogged down the sidewalk to the park. The neighborhood was dark and quiet, and I saw no sign of being followed. I headed straight to the same bench I’d sat on hours ago, and I perked my ears, listening for anyone nearby, and when I was certain I was alone, I dialed the one person who could help me and held the phone to my ear.

“Yeah,” a gruff voice said in answer.

“Joe?” I asked.

“Silas, that you?” The older panther shifter sounded instantly ready for action. He knew if I was the one calling instead of my Beta that it was important. “What’s the news?”

“We’re going to need to move soon. Things around here are getting… tense. We’re about to hit a breaking point, and if we don’t act, we could lose it all.”

I could hear him breathing through the phone, and footsteps like he was walking. “Hang on, I’m getting Jesse.”

A moment later, Jesse’s voice came through, panic in the forefront. “What’s wrong? What’s happened to my children?”

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