palm rough from working with wood on my cheek, his mouth open, but with no breath, there are no words, just the unspoken question.
Would the world end?
The moon rises above the mountains to the east and shines on both the water and on my fingers silhouetted on his shoulders.
I push away from him across the surface of the water. He’s hovering not far away. I feel it in the way the water ripples against my skin. I don’t want to be watched. I need a little time when no one is looking to me for anything so that I can think.
Pulling my legs and arms in tight, I let my body descend into the dark and silent deep where there is no Great North, no forever wolves, no humans, no Shifters, no Constantine, no nothing.
Then it is really and truly just me.
Chapter 24
Constantine
Where is she?
I tried to give her space because it’s what she needs. It’s what I need too. Get away from her. From everything: the twist of the attenuated muscle that leads to the graceful fillip of her collarbone. The way the water clings to her hair like diamantine on velvet. The way she arches her back, trying to push her legs higher, and her perfect ass comes above water dotted with tiny goose bumps.
Every word I said to her—kick, breathe, straighten, bend—was a broken substitute for the words I wanted to say.
Lick, breathe, suck, open, come.
So I put distance between us, checking on her with each pass as I spiral outward. Then at one turn, I look for her and see neither her nor a trace of her on the water’s smooth surface. I watch for seconds and minutes. Don’t be an idiot, I tell myself.
She’s strong. Nothing could happen to her.
The Great North cannot bear the loss of another Alpha.
She’ll be back up soon, I tell myself.
The lake remains huge and dark and smooth, and it makes me panic in a way that no riptide or undertow ever could and I dive deeper and deeper until my lungs are about to burst, not because I give a fuck about the Great North, but because Constantine can’t bear the loss of Evie.
Finally, I see her above me. A silhouette picked out in the moon, legs crooked, arms tight. Only her hair spreading around her in a rough crown. I rush up, dragging her with me to the surface. Twice, I’ve seen people being rescued from rough seas off the Maritimes, and in both cases, they coughed and struggled. Evie doesn’t do either, and I suppose that should have given me a clue. Instead, she leans back, breathing steadily, her hands floating loose on the water, her head against my shoulder, her eyes shining as she watches the sky drift past.
I swim for the shore opposite the dock, both because it is nearest and because it is farthest from any Pack. If they can’t accept the idea that someone might carry her coffee cup, who knows what they would think if they saw her being rescued.
Except she’s not being rescued. As soon as we reach the other side of the lake and her feet touch the bottom, she grabs for a slim tree that bends precipitously over the water, pulling herself onto the shore with a hop. Her arms bent, muscles beside the wings of her shoulder blades form a V angled toward the runnel of her spine that leads to two shadowy dips, one on either side above the perfect curve of her ass. The tear along her ribs.
I turn away. “You’re all right.”
“Of course,” she says, squeezing at one side of her hair. “Wolves run for miles. Our lungs are strong.” Before she can say more, a wolf calls in the faraway forest and Evie is instantly rigid, leaning into the sound, until she hears a clipped response followed by a rah-wup.
She squeezes out more water and shakes her head, her hair coming alive like sea foam.
My legs start to shake and I lower myself to the base of a nearby tree so nobody needs to see. She sits at a tree opposite.
“Do you know why this is called Home Pond?”
“You mean when it’s really a lake?” I sit with my knees up, my arms draped between them, my eyes trained on the water, because she is so naked and I am not wolf and while I’ve gotten used to the nakedness of other wolves, I don’t think I could ever “get used” to seeing her.