Page 100 of Wolf's Reckoning
I stepped back. “Don’t.”
The tic in his jaw pulsed. “You’re in heat.”
“No shit, Wolfe.”
His eyes were dark. Torn. Hunger and fury and something that looked a little too much like pain warred across his face.
“I didn’t know this would happen,” he said, his jaw clamped like it was carved from marble. “What do you need?” he asked me, his hands in fists at his side. “Do you have—” He looked ready to kill someone. “Do you have someone who…” He stopped. He looked like he was in physical pain, which would have been funny if I hadn’t been the one inactualpain. “Do you have someone whohelpsyou with…this?”
“You’rein pain?” I laughed, but it cracked halfway out of my throat. That was unnecessary, I scolded myself. He was trying to be helpful. “I need my rooms,” I told him, my hand pressed into my lower abdomen as the heat built. “My old rooms,” I added. “I have—” Fire licked along my veins, and I let out a whimper. “Goddess, please…” I begged softly. “I need to get to my rooms.”
“I can help.”
That did it. “Well, fucking help!”
I shoved past him, but he followed, silent until he was beside me. His steps matched mine, as if we were being dragged by the same current. Which we were. And no matter how fast I ran, his wolf kept pulling back.
I wanted to scream.
Instead, I almost doubled over as another surge swept through me. “Why now?” I asked, not expecting an answer.
His voice was rough. “Because whatever we are, whatever this is—it never died. It waited.”
I couldn’t breathe. What did he mean?
He stepped closer, eyes on mine. “You feel it too. The pull to me?”
I did. Goddess help me, I did. But I wasn’t ready to say it. Not to him. Not when everything between us was raw and broken and laced with too many wounds that hadn’t healed.
“It’s nothing,” I whispered. “It’s nothing,” I repeated frantically, avoiding looking at him.
He stepped closer. I could feel the heat radiating off him.
“It’s not nothing, princess.” His voice was like gravel, but there was no malice in it. Just need. Just restraint wrapped in barbed wire. “You think I like knowing that every cell in my body is screaming to claim you and I can’t fucking move because I know you’ll hate me for it if I do?”
I looked up at him, seeing the tightness around his eyes, the way his nostrils flared, the way his hands kept jerking like he was restraining himself from grabbing me.
Goddess, he looked like he meant it.
Neither of us moved. Neither of us touched. But the throbbing was there, thick as blood and just as dangerous.
When I finally spoke, my voice was barely a breath. “It changes nothing.”
His eyes locked on mine. “It changes everything.”
A fiercer stab of pain, want, and need had me on my knees. “For fuck’s sake, Wolfe,help me. Get me to my rooms.” My head was almost on the gravel as my body curled in on itself. “They can’t see me like this,” I whispered, tears running down my face.
“Who?” he sounded confused, but he inched closer.
“The pack,” I told him, my fists pressed into my belly asif I could punch the need from my body. “They’ve never seen me in heat.”
“Ever?” He sounded surprised.
I didn’t give a damn if he was surprised. I needed to move, but my legs were no longer strong enough to support me.
“Wolfe, I need you to help me,” I told him again. “Get me to my old rooms.”
“I can’t.”
