His body stopped its movement, he came alert and his massive head swung to face her.
This was a dream, she knew.
Her father told her that wounded or sick animals often disappeared in order to die with dignity.
Her puppy had been filled with dignity.
And she’d known, the moment he looked in her eyes that night, if he didn’t have to, he’d never leave her.
But he’d been bleeding.
So when Gregor gently shook her awake that Christmas morning after her parents died and she found her puppy gone, she knew he’d stolen away in order to die.
Even if he hadn’t, that was over thirty years ago. He’d been a full grown wolf then. He couldn’t have survived thirty years.
Therefore, this was definitely a dream.
Sleepily, her arm fell toward him and she whispered, “Come here, handsome.”
More than half asleep, her eyelids slowly lowered but she felt the thick, soft fur of his muzzle glide almost lovingly along her fingertips. It was cold and damp, as if he’d just come in from a run in the snow.
“My puppy,” she sighed drowsily and moved her fingers over his muzzle to his head in a loving caress.
Eyes still closed, she finished her stroke before she tucked her hand under her cheek.
“I wish you’d bring me my handsome wolf. I miss him,” she murmured as slumber started to invade.
She did wish that. Her dream Callum loved her, her. He didn’t simply feel a duty to his queen and if she couldn’t have him in the real world, she’d take what she could get in her dreams.
She felt the bed depress on either side of her just as she smelled an attractive, musky scent the likes of which she’d never smelled. She fought the permeating sleep and her eyes fluttered open.
Callum was there, not King Callum, her handsome wolf. He was leaned over, hands in the bed on either side of her. She knew this Callum was hers because his beautiful face in the twinkling lights showed a mixture of tenderness and desire, a look he’d given her many times before.
“There you are,” she whispered, her hand drifting to his sinewy forearm, finding his skin cold under her light touch.
“Sonia,” he murmured.
Still closer to asleep than awake, she shifted the covers off her body and invited, “Let’s get you warm.”
Her eyes drifted closed again as he hesitated then she felt him move into the bed. She fell to her back as he put a knee to her opposite side, shifted over her body and settled mostly along her length, flicking the covers back over them when he was done.
She turned into him, wrapping her arms around him and hooking her thigh over his hip.
“You’re so cold,” she muttered, snuggling into his body which was so cool it felt almost moist.
“Sonia.”
She nuzzled closer, seduced at the same time calmed by that beautiful aroma and she muttered a drowsy, “Mm?”
His arms slid around her as he said, “Baby doll, I’m not your dream.”
Sonia didn’t answer because that was silly.
This was her dream. Even if it was in the cabin, it started with her puppy visiting her, always.
She burrowed deeper into his big body.
“Honey,” he called as she drifted back to sleep. “I want to make sure you know we’re not in one of your dreams.”