Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 64392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
This is the problem with fate assigning our mates based on instinct and karmic influences beyond our understanding. We don’t get to choose someone who shares our temperament or traits we value. Human compatibility doesn’t come into it, and neither does choice. Kira and I might never have come together sexually under any other circumstances, but we are bonded now.
The traditional wisdom of our pack says that an alpha must take responsibility for his mate by shaping her behavior and ensuring she is pleasing. That’s an old-fashioned take, but I understand it even more now than I used to. I know it is up to me to bend where I need to bend in order to be a compatible partner, and to help her to become compatible with me. In the short term, that means chasing her up this never-ending flight of stairs and spanking her ass red once I catch her.
If I’d had a week or two with her first, we would have had the chance to get more in sync. We could have discovered and worked through some of our differences. We could at least have reached a point where she didn’t cause absolute bedlam. Fucking Abel calling the conclave immediately has given me no chance whatsoever to do any of that necessary training.
I find Kira at the door of our bedroom, which is still locked tight. She is pressed up against the wall, looking at me with big, pleading eyes and whining in a manner that suggests she doesn’t want to be in trouble.
It’s too late for that.
I unlock the door and point to the interior of the room that should have been more than secure. I thought, for a brief moment, that I might have forgotten to lock it properly, but it turns out she decided to jump out the fucking window. This realization makes me even more displeased than I was.
“Get in the shower,” I order, striding across to the ensuite.
She hesitates to follow me. On top of the rest of her insubordination, this is too much.
I go back to her and grip her by the scruff of the neck. Yes, she is a wolf, but it does not matter what form I am in, I am her alpha. I am her master. I own her. And we will never have another repeat of this evening’s behavior. I intend to see to that.
“Bad girl!”
I give her a little shake by the scruff. It barely moves her, but I know she senses how displeased I am, and that is what matters.
“I told you to stay in the room, and the next thing I know, you are turning my ancestral home into an organic water feature. Don’t you laugh at that. That was not a joke. You have behaved incredibly badly.”
She slinks and cringes under my lecturing.
“Bathroom. Now.”
This time, she does as she is told.
She can stay in her wolf form for the moment. Cleaning her off is going to be easier before she shifts than after. The last thing I want is for all the filth she’s managed to embed in her fur to end up on her naked body.
She pads across the floor, leaving a trail of mess in her wake, and proceeds to fill the shower with mud, algae, God-knows-what, and fur. I do not say anything as I wash her off with the shower head, rubbing shifter safe shampoo into her thick undercoat which has absorbed so much of the pond filth. It takes a good half an hour to get her clean enough that when she takes her human form again, she won’t immediately be covered in potentially infectious garbage.
“Alright, my girl,” I growl when I am satisfied she is sufficiently clean. “Shift out of that wolf form. I want to hear what you have to say for yourself.”
Kira
I come back to myself naked and almost immediately shivering in the shower. Every time I take my wolf form, it feels like I’ve run a marathon, but this time, I doubt Cain cares. I’ve really caused a scene and a problem, and I know he is not happy with me.
His shirt is soaked from the shower, his hair slicked back from where he has run his hand through it in frustration several times. He looks as handsome as I have ever seen him look. I just wish it wasn’t because I just made him so mad.
“I’m sorry,” I whimper. “Things got out of hand. I went into the moonlight, and then there was fur on my arm, and then before I knew it…”
“You had shifted.”
“Yes.”
“That explains you being in your wolf form. What it doesn’t explain is you being underneath a table in the hall, covered from head to toe in filth.”
I think for a second. I could just tell him I don’t know. That it was like last time, that I panicked and ran on instinct. But that would be a lie, and the idea of telling him a lie suffuses me in guilt.