pressed to the top of my head, his thumb caressing my shoulder. “I know you can’t kill him, so let me. Then you won’t have to—”
“We do not betray the spirit of our laws by circumventing the letter of them. He has not threatened the Pack, and we do not need him for food. But he will be watched and that will have to do.”
When I caught Constantine watching me at Evening Meat, I pressed my palms together, lips to fingers. He responded by drawing a thumb across his lower lip.
Then Tara asked why I was smiling.
The Pack cannot suspect that their Alpha is giving in to her most selfish instincts and fucking a Shifter, so I told her that I’d been remembering Sigegeat’s joke about how the 12 pointer bucked up his face.
It was a lie. Tara nodded. Sigegeat preened—the Alpha has recognized his comic genius, after all. Constantine walked stiffly toward the door and I tried hard not to watch him go.
When I get back to my cabin, he’s ready, tall and broad and naked.
“You have to stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?” he asks.
“Like you are now.”
As the Alpha, I pretend that I don’t see him, the hunger on his face, his eyes following me, his mouth opening like he needs to close the space between us with words or his tongue.
As Evie, I am already half-naked by the time the door closes. We struggle awkwardly, our bodies pressed against each other as he slides his hands under my waistband and slides my pants down, not letting them fall but guiding them with his rough carpenter’s hands, tracing a path down my ass and my thighs until he is on his knees in front of me.
“Open for me,” he says, fingers opening up my thighs. It is a shock that leaves me speechless and breathless, the feeling of his tongue cool and broad and firm against my seam.
He says I taste like salt and earth and sweetgrass.
And after I come, my legs trembling like aspen leaves in summer, he lifts me and settles me down on the mattress in the middle of the floor that I put there because the pups like to jump down from the sleeping loft and I knew I would not be fucking anyone again for a long time.
I thought.
He enters me, my Green Man, smelling of life and water. I taste myself on his mouth while he moves slowly, each thrust a spark against tinder until I start to squirm again, my legs tight around his hips. His back curves and he slams in deeper, then he groans my name, quietly so that no wolves will hear.
Evie.
In the bathroom, I scrub hard, removing every last trace of him. Then I help him, removing the last trace of myself. He doesn’t like it, but what can I do? Humans see power as a license for self-indulgence. For wolves, power means responsibility. I am expected to do what the Pack needs me to do, and sadly, the Pack does not need me to be fucked limp by Constantine.
He scrubs his hair dry with the towel, then he stares bleakly into the mirror, feeling the stubble at his chin.
“You should let it grow out.” I curl my arms over his shoulders, looking at him in the reflection. “For winter.”
For whatever reason—beard, snow, or future—he smiles and turns to me, his lips to my cheek. “Tomorrow?” he whispers.
“Tomorrow is the Iron Moon. Tomorrow if I do this”—I bite lightly on his lip—“it will hurt. Tomorrow if I do this”—I run the tips of my fingers across his upright cock—“you will bleed.”
He cranes his head out of the bathroom, looking toward the path of light on Home Pond. His smile burns away, leaving nothing but the bitter scent of anger.
“What happened when you changed?”
He shakes his head, his jaw clamped shut. With the toe of one foot, he scratches absently at the ankle of the other. I’ve kissed those old ligature marks that ring the gold of his skin in dark and mangled mauve.
“Whatever August did to you, Constantine, it will not be like last time.”
Chapter 26
Constantine
It will not be like last time.
Even in broad daylight, I knew the Iron Moon was coming, I felt it in Evie, a kind of dangerous edge. In the Pack’s increasing industry as they sealed everything up and turned it off. Mostly it was in a kind of electric anticipation. The inability to sit still, constantly checking the sky, scratching