Harper used flint to light a small fire in Shan's den. It wasn't to keep warm, though it was starting to get chilly out. Somewhere in the craziness of the previous day, she'd cracked the screen of her cell phone and lost her lighter. Once she managed to get the tiniest flame, she lit her joint.

It wasn't an ideal time to smoke. She knew she should have waited until after she spoke with Shan, but she'd tried talking to Shan when she wasn't high, and she decided that maybe she'd have better luck. Aside from keeping her nightmares at bay, smoking also tended to take the edge off of her personality.

While she smoked, she absently stoked the fire to a lively crackle. After her poor showing earlier, she was anxious about talking to Shan again so soon. She could usually prepare for any social interaction in advance, playing out all possible scenarios in her head. Her mind worked quickly. She was good at anticipating how people would react and the things she could say to elicit her desired responses. When she tried to do that with Shan, every route she took led to her either pissing him off or them sleeping together.

When she stood up from the fire, her steps felt light and airy, and she knew that the weed had worked its magic. She floated outside, doing a little twirl as she stepped into cool night air. When she came to a stop, she found herself looking up at the great oak tree above the den. It looked ancient, with long, thick branches curving upward like a many-fingered hand reaching for the night sky.

Harper whistled. “Wow. You are one sexy tree. How did I not notice you before?” She started up the loamy hill. “Probably the whole being captive and fearing for my life thing. Kinda distracted me last night.”

She stopped at the tree trunk, craning her neck all the way back, and then took another hit of her joint.

“Mind if I climb you?” she asked. She waved her hand. “Nah. You don't mind. Here I come!”

Her brother had taught her how to climb trees. He hadn't wanted to, but Harper had been insistent on following him. If she took a snapshot of the first decade of her life, there was a fair chance her brother's retreating form would be in it. It had been thirteen years since she'd lost him, but whenever she climbed, Harper did so without fear. Even after all of the time that had passed, she still imagined that if she slipped, he would somehow to transcend time and space to catch her.

She had reached the topmost branch that could hold her weight when thunder rumbled in the distance.

“Oh, screw you,” she said to the sky. “Can't you see I'm trying to brood?”

She settled onto the branch, silently taunting the sky to strike her down. Fat raindrops began falling on her face.

Ignoring the rain, she took a final hit on her joint, and then put it out. There would be barely enough left for tomorrow night, but for tonight, at least, she would be okay.

She slipped the roach in her back pocket and then raised her hand up to regard her palm. It was clean now, but she could clearly picture the pool of blood from that morning.

In her mind, she pulled up the Google search she'd performed eight months ago, the last time she'd had the nightmares. Occasionally, she stopped smoking, just to see if the nightmares came back. She hadn't told Jo about the last time. Every time the topic of the nightmares came up, Jo would start in about seeing a psychiatrist or a counsellor, and that was not a conversation she wanted to repeat.

Hemophystis—the medical term for coughing up blood. Beneath the blue header text was a bullet point list of possible causes. Though she was sure that each cause had been displayed in the same clean font, her memory distorted certain ones. “Congestive heart failure” was written in a neon red block font. “Embolism” was dark red and dripping, its ink running down over the cursive “Tuberculosis” and a list of syndromes she couldn't pronounce.

“Trauma” had been one cause on the list, and the most likely of the bunch. Certainly, there had been trauma in her dream. But why would only the damage to her chest cavity manifest itself? Why not the mauling of her limbs or the breaking of her bones? It had to be something else.

Only when she was high, was Harper able to consider any of this. Being high gave her a level of detachment that was crucial when contemplating the possibility that her brain was broken beyond repair, and she would either spend the rest of her life reliant on a drug or she would die from the inside out.

Her thoughts cam careening to a halt as Shan finally arrived. She knew it was Shan, even though he was in his wolf form.

She might have fallen from the tree, had she not been so stoned. Her hands snaked out to grip the branches around her as she stared in open-mouthed astonishment. Her first coherent thought was that she hadn't found one of her own joints, but one that belonged to someone else and had been laced with PCP, or some other hallucinogenic compound.

As tall as an oak tree. That was what some of those unreliable accounts had claimed. He wasn't as tall as the tree she was in, but he was damn close. He approached her with a casual swagger, disturbing nary a leaf as he walked.

She watched with bated breath as he circled the tree, analyzing her from every angle. If the move was meant to intimidate, it was lost on Harper. The sense of unreality was so intense that everything around her took on a dreamlike quality. It should have been frightening, given her nightmares, but there was no pervading sense of terror, banging like a drum all around her. She felt excited, jubilant, even.

She lifted her hand, at first to wave, but then stretched it in his direction. She blurted the first words to come to mind, spoken with all of the earnestness and wonderment of a child.

“Can I pet you?”

* * *

The rain blotted out her scent, but The Wolf remembered it. He had already internalized it, in the same way that Shan remembered her name.

The Wolf had no use for names.

Names were labels of the spoken word. His life existed in sight, scent, tones, and touch. He had not even known Mother's name. Shan's was the only one he knew, and even that was more of a collection of sounds than a whole thing. His name was the sound of leaves, dry, but not yet fallen, being tossed on an autumn breeze.

In the night before this one, Shan had lain across from this human. She had been in his bed and her scent had managed to penetrate The Emptiness. He had been drawn by the musky tendrils. They had wrapped around him, pulling him towards the surface, where he had tried to impress upon Shan the need to mate with her.

Earlier in that night, Shan had sat near to her, watching her as she watched him. He had smelled her arousal, yet hadn't claimed her when he'd taken her to bed.

Shan confused The Wolf. Whenever he glimpsed into the man's mind, he was left with a headache. It was nothing but jumbled emotions, clashing with motivations that made no sense to The Wolf. He was content to eat, sleep, and mate. He did not even have great care for the pack, though he did recognize that it was his and as such he had to sometimes fight to protect it. He couldn't have others thinking that they could take what was his.

They were lesser beings—all of them. Their wolves were small, malformed beasts that had forgotten their greatness, allowing their human blood to subjugate them. He really could have done without them, but as soon as Shan reclaimed his form, he would inevitably return to preside over the wretched beasts.

He circled the human, taking her in for himself. He had only yet seen her through Shan's eyes, which was like trying to hear a bird's song from the bottom of a lake.

The Wolf, did not find any human form to be of particular interest, but from Shan, he knew what it was like to be inside of one of those warm, wet bodies—at least, to an extent. He knew that for Shan, the pleasure of pouring himself into a female was incomparable, but all The Wolf had ever felt were the rippling aftershocks. It was all he would ever feel.

Though he could not see it himself, he knew that the female was exceptionally beautiful. Shan thought she was the most beautiful female he had ever seen, and that if she became his mate, all other males would envy him. The Wolf liked the idea of that, almost as much as he loathed the idea of her going to another male. If another male took her as his mate, then it would be Shan who was envying that male. The Wolf could not abide by that.

Shan whispered in the back of his mind, creating a tug that would soon be a pull. He was ready to reclaim his human form.

The wolf ignored him.

It wasn't fair. Shan had had all night to regard her. He could spare The Wolf a few minutes.

He sometimes ignored the tugs, if only to remind Shan that their relationship was symbiotic. If he tried hard enough, The Wolf could resist for quite a while. He'd once resisted for a full week before Mother and Father had forced him to release Shan. After that, Shan had locked him out for two weeks, just to spite him.

They had stopped that dance long ago. They had learned to respect the tugs, and especially the pulls. Without that respect, the bond would have broken down, and that would have been very bad for the both of them.

The Wolf came to a stop as the human reached out for him.

She spoke. He recognized the questioning lilt, and nothing else.

Though he didn't understand her words, he paused to familiarize himself with the sound of her voice. Like most females, she sounded soft and imploring. He especially liked the sound of her voice, but that was probably because she was his, or at least, she would be soon enough.

Curious to know what she'd said, he passed her words through the filter of Shan's mind. It required The Emptiness to be bridged and would make it easier for Shan to pull, if he was so inclined. The Wolf prepared his resistances. He wouldn't cede to Shan, not until he was ready.

The Wolf hated Shan's translations. Shan could never send him anything plainly, it had to come weighed down with Shan's own feelings and impressions, and Shan's own opinion on how The Wolf should react.

The human wanted to touch him.

Shan thought this was funny and he felt affection for the human. Instead of trying to pull, he encouraged The Wolf to allow the contact.

The Wolf did not need Shan's encouragement. No human had ever asked to touch him before.

He lifted his nose to her, allowing her to reach out and press her hand to it. She stroked his snout. It was like being tickled by a feather, but he liked it immensely.

Her scent accentuated the touch. He did not need the bridge to feel arousal for her. That was strange. Usually, when he felt arousal for humans, it was because Shan was too close to the surface. But this was his own. He knew the sensation well, as he sometimes felt it for the females in his pack, malformed as they were. As always, he could do nothing about it. Even the largest among them was much too small for him and could accommodate him no more than this little scrap of a human could.

He exhaled his frustration, the air blowing her wet hair. She laughed and smiled and said something else.

Shan told him she liked him.

Growing excited, The Wolf wondered what else he could do to make her like him even more. He thought he should go hunt for her, but he didn't want to leave her presence. Perhaps he could get her to ride on his back and he could take her on the hunt. She would see what a good hunter he was, and then she would be more receptive when Shan was finally ready to claim her.

Tug.

The Wolf resisted. He considered closing the bridge, but she was talking again and he wanted badly to know everything she was saying. He tried getting Shan to translate, but he refused. That angered him.

The Wolf was entitled to know what she was saying. She was going to be their mate, after all. He knew it, and Shan knew it, too. This time was different. The Wolf didn't know how, but he could feel it. This time, Shan wouldn't deny the impulse.

This female would be their mate.

As the realization crystallized in his mind, The Wolf was wrested back by a strangling pull and sent careening back across The Emptiness.

* * *

Shan came into his form, his body brimming with tension and indignation.

It was not unusual for his wolf to decide that he wanted to mate with a female. Over the years, the wolf's standards had declined dramatically. He now wanted to mate with just about any human that came along, and was quick to express his disappointment when the female passed to another male. Shan sometimes toyed with the idea of taking a mate, if only to shut him up, but that would be like gouging his eyes so as not to be bothered by the sun.

He did not have time for a mate.

There was too much to do. He had alliances to manage, trade routes to establish, a pack to lead, and if he took a mate, it would all go to shit. He was already up against the limits of what he could delegate, and it left him constantly moving from task to task. Unless he was sacrificing sleep, he seldom had more than a single free hour each night.

And then, there were the circuits. The one year Shan had attempted to delegate the circuits, they'd managed to fuck up two critical alliances and he'd had to execute his head enforcer after he'd killed a group of humans. He needed to be there to keep order, which made it impossible to take a mate. The pace of the circuits was grueling. A human female couldn't be expected to cover thousands of miles in a few short months, even if she wasn't breeding. On the same turn of the coin, a wolf could not be separated from his mate for months on end. His wolf—stubborn asshole that he was—would pose a particular problem, as he was liable to lock Shan out and return home the moment Shan ceded control to him.

For a moment, Shan was so consumed by his anger that he forgot that he wasn't alone. Then a small branch struck his head.

He looked up to see Harper dangling on a too-high tree limb, her legs swinging back and forth. She had one hand over her mouth, stifling a laugh.

Of course he wanted to mate with her.

He hated that the wolf knew this, because it was going to piss him off all the more when Shan didn't mate with her.

Harper was beautiful and he liked—loved her scent. She was also intelligent and somewhat clever. But those factors did not override his reasons for not taking a mate. Not to mention, she had not come seeking a mate, and Shan did not trust her.

Within moments of talking to someone, he knew if they were trustworthy. With Harper, he'd been somewhat distracted by her other qualities, and so it had taken him a whole of an hour to determine that he could spit farther than he could take anything she said at face value.

“How do you feed that thing?” she called down.

At first, he didn't know what she was talking about, and then he remembered the wolf.

It was impressive enough that she hadn't been frightened, but she had asked to pet him.

“You're bigger than an elephant,” she said, punctuating the statement with a snicker.

She began to climb down, and Shan felt a prickle of anxiety over how she hopped down, two slippery branches at a time. He positioned himself beneath her, prepared to catch her if she fell.

“Just what every man wants to hear,” he said as she reached the final branch. He extended his hand to her, but she ignored it and jumped to land in front of him.

“Everyone said you were big. I thought they were exaggerating. I mean, you really don't expect anything to be that big, 'cept for maybe a whale. Not that you're that big. How does it work? Does it hurt? You must expend so much energy. Aren't you exhausted?”

At first, he couldn't reconcile the female standing in front of him with the one who had stormed away from him less than an hour ago. He leaned in, taking in her dilated pupils and the faint, earthy scent on her breath.

“You're high.”

“Oh, yeah!” she said, reaching into her back pocket. “I found this.”

She held up a tiny scrap of burnt paper, presumably containing her drug. A grin stretched across her face.

“No bad dreams tonight!” she declared. “I'm gonna sleep like a kitten.”

Shan plucked the paper from her fingers, examining it with a frown.

She asked, “Have you ever tried it?”

“Are you trying to convince me?”

“Actually, I'd rather just have it back. There's not really enough to share.”

He handed it to her. “You have nightmares?”

Her eyes widened. She had the look of someone who had inadvertently revealed the secret of a close friend.

“I didn't say that.” She paused, putting a hand to the side of her face and sighing. “Well, I guess I kind of did. Okay, yeah, I do. But let's not talk about that.”

He recalled her asking about her “medicinal marijuana” the night before, though she had only said that she needed it to sleep. When he'd left in the morning, she'd been in the midst of a bad dream. He'd assumed it had been because of him, but perhaps it was a chronic condition.

Still, there had to be better ways to manage it.

Not that it was his concern.

“What do you want to talk about, then? Your friend, I take it?”

With everything else that had happened, the human male had slipped Shan's mind. He'd already planned on having Gareth relinquish him to West's camp, but now Harper had complicated the matter. She had insulted him in front of his pack while making a bid for the male, and now he could not order Gareth to turn him over without seeming as if he was being strong-armed by a human.

Harper gave him a conspiratorial look. “Actually, my plan is to engage you in several unrelated topics, gradually greasing the wheels, and then asking you about Ian.”

He smiled despite himself. “And you're telling me this, why?”

She shrugged. “I reckon you'll deduce as much, so why pretend? Hey, can we get out of the rain?”

There was a fire burning in the den. It was the last of the dry wood, and it would die out long before the night was over. It would be a cold night.

Harper crouched beside the fire, putting her hands up to it and turning them back and forth. Then, she started removing her clothes.

Shan did not pay much attention when she removed her jacket. He might have noticed the way her wet blouse clung to the swell of her breasts. If he did, it was quickly forgotten as her shirt came off. His attention was then seized, first by her bare belly and then moving upwards to her breasts, which were encased in a lacy, cream-colored bra. The cups were just large enough to cover her nipples, leaving a generous view of her lush breasts.

“Is this part of your plan to manipulate me?” he asked, finding it difficult to be annoyed.

She looked surprised, but it could have been feigned.

“It's cold and my clothes are wet. I thought shifters didn't have any hangups about nudity.”

“I thought humans had more modesty,” he countered.

She shrugged. “I think most humans are just insecure about their bodies.”

He could have looked away as she removed her pants, but he didn't. Her legs were long and coltish, with shapely calves and thick thighs. He noted a birthmark on the side of her leg that was shaped like a star. Her underwear matched her bra.

She kept her underclothes on, something that Shan was ambivalent about. She was so close to being naked, so near to revealing every part of herself to him, that the little scraps of cloth seemed silly and unnecessary.

“I didn't see you around today. Were you busy?”

“I'm always busy.”

He wondered if she'd been looking for him. Had he been on her mind all day, as she had been on his?

“What sorts of things do you do?”

She was angling, but her interest seemed genuine, and Shan found that he wanted to tell her. Only Kalla ever asked how his day was, and he hadn't seen her since he'd left for the annual circuit.

Against his better judgement, he told her about his day. Specifically, he told her about the troublesome pack, how he was working to arrange a meeting with its alpha before heading home for the winter. As he delved deeper into the topic, he mentioned his frustration with the alpha, who had been evading him for some time and was now pressing against the borders of one of his allies.

“So, his is the big pack I saw beneath yours, on the map?” she deduced.

Shan had not realized she'd had more than a passing glance at the map, and he resolved himself to invest in a lock.

She asked, “How did that pack come by so much territory? Did they take over all of the ones that were crossed out?”

“They drove out any pack that stood in their way. Packs that refused to move were overtaken, their leadership executed. Most of the packs were nuisances. Groups I had pushed out of my own lands when I claimed them.”

“Why push them out, instead of making alliances? That seems like your modus operandi.”

She had gotten more comfortable as they spoke, drawing her legs up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. Her chin rested in the small dip between her knees.

“I tried, but they refused to abide by my laws.”

A corner of her mouth lifted, though he wasn't sure what he'd said to make her smile. He tried searching her eyes, but she looked away, turning her attention to the dying fire.

“So what's this alpha like?” she asked. “You've never met him, even in passing?”

“No. I only know what others have told me about him. Their accounts and descriptions vary greatly. At times, he seems like a shrewd diplomat, and at others, a senseless warmonger.”

“Like Jekyll and Hyde, huh?”

She nibbled her lip, and Shan felt the urge to close the distance between them and cover his mouth with hers.

“Hey, have you considered that there might be two alphas? Aside from the conflicting descriptions, it just makes sense, right? I mean, a territory that large, controlled by just one guy?”

“I control a territory that large,” Shan said, though he recognized that her idea had serious merit. It had not occurred to him before now, as alphas rarely shared territories. In all of his travels, he had met only one pack that had two alphas, and they had been brothers—twins, even.

“Yeah, but you're...” she waved her hand, as if to indicate some ineffable quality. “What are you, anyway? Was your dad like you?”

Shan almost answered, but decided against it. It was one thing to talk to her about a minor conflict with a neighboring pack, another thing entirely to divulge details of his background. She was still an outsider; an unknown that could not be trusted.

“Okay, I get it,” she said. “Too close to home. My bad.”

She stood as she spoke, and Shan thought she was coming to him. An image flitted across his mind of her lowering herself into his lap, her arms going around his neck, her fingers burrowing to his hair, and her lips connecting with his.

She walked past him.

He watched her bend down at the foot of the bed and pick up a fur. A second later, his view of her body vanished, swallowed up by the fur she'd wrapped around herself. Seeing her wrapped in his bed fur was a different sort of arousing, the sort that was harder to dismiss.

Sitting nearer to him than before, she picked up the food tray he'd left her that morning. The meat was gone, replaced by overripe berries that were out of season. There was nothing overly erotic in the way she ate them, yet as he watched her, was soon fully erect.

“Where did you find those?” he asked, knowing he wouldn't like the answer.

“Cade gave them to me.”

Shan reasoned that they were only berries. He was sure several people, possibly males, had fed her throughout the day. Knowing that didn't quell his urge to snatch the berries from her. He refrained, as it would have been juvenile. Instead, he plucked one of the berries for himself.

“You shouldn't accept things from males,” he found himself saying. “It will give them the wrong impression.”

Harper popped another berry in her mouth and peered up at him through her thick lashes. “Wrong by whose measure? Yours? Maybe I wanted to give him a particular impression.”

“You want him as your mate?”

She let out a bark of laughter, the half-chewed berry flying from her mouth and sticking to Shan's chest.

“Mate?” she repeated. “No way. Humans and shifters can sleep with each other without having to be mates, you know. The mating bond only happens after conception.”

“I know how the mating bond works,” he said, flicking the berry from her chest. It hit her in the nose. It was juvenile, but quite satisfying. “So you want to sleep with him? I take it you mean that in the euphemistic sense.”

She sucked a tooth. “What if I did? Would that be a problem?”

“Yes. It is forbidden. Cade would be reprimanded and likely stripped of his position.”

“Just because of a little sex? Wow, you guys really are Victorian.”

Shan wiped a speck of berry juice from her nose with his thumb. “Because you're human. It's forbidden for males to have intercourse with human females, not without first having my consent to take them as their mate.”

His touch had not seemed to bother her. He thought he saw her relax a little.

“How come?”

He said, “Because, if they are not fit to provide for offspring, then the burden will fall on the pack and myself.”

Back before the law had been enacted, he'd had to dedicate an entire subdivision of his pack to supporting the pups of low-ranking males. Now, that subdivision had been reduced considerably, and focused primarily on aiding pups that had lost their fathers, or placing orphaned pups with capable mothers.

“So, I guess birth control isn't a thing here?” She made a gesture with her fingers, like a gun shooting into her arm. She must have noted his creased brow, because she said, “Mine's an injection. I get it every three months. Jo, too. So you don't have to worry about us throwing your pack into a tizzy while we're here.”

“How does it work?”

Contraception was a gap in his knowledge. Shifter females were infertile. Many of the males were as well, though which percentage was a topic of debate. It wasn't as significant to their kind, as the sort of males that had the instinct to mate were typically fertile, whereas the males that had little drive to do so seldom conceived if they tried. For the females, it was accepted as a matter of course that they would never carry children, though few of them were ever settled in the knowledge.

Among the human females in his pack, some would, from time to time, abstain from producing children. Twins were common among their kind, and their healers would often suggest that the females waited a year before conceiving again. How they prevented pregnancy, Shan hadn't the faintest idea. That had seemed to him to be a matter best left between a man and his human.

“It's a hormonal shot,” Harper said. “I don't remember exactly how it works—I never read pamphlets. All I know is that it stops us from ovulating for a few months. We got ours before we left.”

“Huh.”

It was all he could think to say, or at least, all he was willing to say. Her contraception may have made it so that she couldn't be mated to a male, but she could still establish a courtship bond, which caused almost as many problems. Once a male got it into his head that a female was going to be his mate, then little, short of violence, could stand between him and his intended.

“Don't worry.” She held up the last berry. “I only took these because I felt bad about turning him down. I wouldn't actually sleep with Cade, or any male in your pack. It would compromise the integrity of my work.”

“I don't recall giving you permission to study my pack.”

“I'm still here.” Her eyes lit with challenge. “So, either you're keeping me here because you're going to let me study your pack, or you're keeping me here because you're inexplicably attracted to me.”

“Inexplicably?” Shan scoffed. “When has a male ever been 'inexplicably' attracted to you?”

“'Inexplicably' because you're not usually distracted by women. Yet, here you are, the oh-so-busy alpha wolf, lazing beside me, telling me about your day, discussing my birth control, pretending you're not jealous about some berries a kid gave me.”

Not since his youth had anyone cut through his facade so quickly and confidently. Somehow, it wasn't alarming. As if she were a mystic, telling his fate by the lines in his hands, Shan wanted to know everything she saw in him.

“And are you indulging me just so that you can seduce me into returning your friend, or have you already forgotten that was your intent?”

Her tongue flicked across her bottom lip. It could have been to wipe away berry juice, but to Shan, it looked like an invitation.

“Well, now that you mention it, I do need you to return my friend.”

“And your plan is to seduce me?”

She shook her head. “Actually, I was hoping I could just ask nicely. You're not the type to grant wishes in exchange for sex.”

“And how did you reach that conclusion?”

She was right, of course. If anything, he had the tendency to draw a harder line with the few females that shared his bed. Had Harper asked for her friend back after having sex—assuming he would even allow things to get that far—he might have rejected her on principle.

“Rosa confirmed it, though I'd already figured you weren't the type.”

“And you know what type of male I am after only two nights?”

She chuckled and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Only two nights? If you were any other man, I'd already know everything from your favorite color to your mother's maiden name.”

Her blue eyes lingered on him, waiting for his response. After a few seconds, she glanced away to watch the dying fire.

“Slate gray, and my mother had no maiden name.”

What could it hurt, to tell her such trivial things?

Her eyes widened. “Gray? No way. No one likes gray. It is quite literally the color of unhappiness.”

Shan gave an indignant sniff. Gray was a fine color. It was strong and had no need to impress anyone.

“What is your favorite color, then?”

“Chartreuse,” she said.

“Bullshit. You just like saying chartreuse.”

Her laughter was robust and delighted as she bobbed her head up and down. “You're right, you got me! My favorite color is silver.”

“Silver?” he repeated. “As in, metallic gray?”

“Pfft! Silver is in a whole different league than gray. Silver used to be more valuable than gold, you know? Not only is it valuable, it's pretty, it can kill monsters and demons, and—”

“Your argument is flawed. You're ascribing the merits of an element to its corresponding color.”

She stuck her tongue out at him.

“Not my fault there's no element for slate gray.”

She yawned, and Shan knew that the sound signaled the end of their conversation. He couldn't remember the last time he'd derived so much pleasure from a conversation, particularly one so aimless and peppered with whimsy. He wanted to keep talking to her, almost as much as he wanted to kiss her.

She wouldn't deny him. He knew that. But Shan knew the way his mind worked. He would swear to himself that he would only kiss her, all the way up until his cock was poised to enter her. Then, he would reason that they'd come that far, and had passed the point where either of them could be expected to stop.

Harper looked longingly at the bed. “Okay if I sleep here again?”

He couldn't very well send her down the mountain in the rain. Besides, he was tired enough to actually sleep. Between the last, sleepless night and two shifts into his wolf form, he was eager to be resting.

“Tonight, only,” he told her. “Tomorrow, you will find a place in West's camp to sleep.”

She was in bed and under the furs before he'd finished speaking, her arms and legs stretched out.

“You're not going to tie me up tonight, right?” she asked, her voice muffled by the bed furs.

“I will if you take up that much of my bed.”

He climbed into the bed and lay down beside her. The fire finally died to embers, leaving so little light that even his nocturnal eyes had trouble taking anything in. He could see her staring at him, or at least, in his direction.

“Shan.”

His name on her lips made his skin tingle.

“Hm?”

“Ian is my friend. I have issues with people taking things that are mine.”

“Don't we all?”

“I need him back.”

Shan rolled onto his back, stretching his arms above his head. “I'll take your request under consideration.”