44 – Forever

The sun was setting and Reed couldn’t help but watch the orange and pink streaks of clouds in the sky. She was in the back of a police truck with Troy, with her mate, snuggling into him as much as her seatbelt would allow. His arm encircled her shoulder, and he whispered things to her that she couldn’t quite hear, but she could feel their sentiment. He loved her. She was beautiful. He would be hers forever.

Rogue was driving them home. Mac and all the other officers were still at the bluff. They’d found the wolf they were missing, and would be there all night, until they could dynamite that crack shut. Troy had been reassigned to the crew watching the babies, and that team was headed back to this “VF” that everyone kept talking about, but Troy and Reed would beat everyone there. She hoped they had the place to themselves for a while. She wanted to snuggle her man. Her mate. They had so much to talk about.

Rogue turned onto a farm road, then into a driveway. Reed was all eyes, looking every way at once.

“That’s where I live,” Troy said, “But it’s Trevor’s home. I’ve been thinking about moving into one of the cabins.”

Reed didn’t see any cabins.

Troy pointed at the house. “Behind, I’ll show you.” He said show, like he always did, like sho, with no closing W. She could help him with that. She would, tonight, in bed… after.

Rogue stopped, but didn’t put the truck in gear. “Everybody out,” she said.

Troy opened the door and helped Reed down. Rogue drove away without a word.

“I get the feeling she didn’t like me,” Reed said, watching the truck head back down the long driveway.

Troy laughed, a sexy noise that had some growl in it. “She loved you,” he said. “She’s never that nice.”

Reed wasn’t sure how he’d gotten nice out of the zero words Rogue had said on the drive, but she took his word for it and followed him up the porch steps. He opened the door and stuck his nose in the house before he would let her inside. He took her straight through the house to a sliding glass door facing out the back. Behind, she saw the cabins.

“Oh,” she said. “Those cabins,” she said, wondering if she was really going to move in to one of those cabins with Troy, and if she could ever feel at home here. Troy seemed to think so.

Troy grinned and she grinned back. Man, he was sexy when he grinned like that. She would never get enough of seeing him smile. “Those cabins,” he repeated, his voice excited. He opened the sliding glass door and held her elbow while she walked down the step into the backyard.

More sunlight had leaked out of the sky in only those few minutes. Crickets droned in the yard and birds called to each other from the tops of the trees on both sides. Two rows of adorable cabins, just big enough to live in, lined the back yard. She counted them, noting each had its own porch and stoop and faux mailbox out front.

“There’s a few empties in the back,” he said, pulling her down the cobbled path someone had spent a lot of time creating. “And one I like a lot.”

Troy bounced on the balls of his feet, like a child, then pulled away from her, circling around her. “Wanna see me shift, Reed?” he said. “I know you do.”

She smiled at him, still wondering how long it would take her to feel like she belonged here. She glimpsed another cabin in the woods, and it just seemed like one more secret she didn’t yet know.

Troy shifted, becoming the black wolf so quickly her eyes couldn’t track it, then he ran around her like an oversized dog, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. It didn’t frighten her at all, the shift, and it didn’t make her think of the bad wolf, the one named Grey. It almost seemed normal.

“Troy, your clothes,” she said, thinking she should go back and grab them.

Troy shifted to a man, fully naked, fully sexy, not hard yet, but she better get him into a building quick. In her experience, it didn’t take long.

She turned to run back and snatch up his clothes.

“Leave them,” Troy said, and she could tell he was about to shift again. “Someone will pick them up.”

“Yeah, me,” Reed said, bending to get them.

“Come on, Rrrrreeeeed,” he called, rolling the R and drawing out the middle. “It’s your honeymoon. Come be wild with me.”

Reed laughed and shook her head. “We didn’t get married.”

“We kicked bad guy ass together. That's totally the same thing.”

Reed laughed again and threw his shirt at him while they walked. “Put it on.” The pants were next.

Troy snatched it out of the air, then pointed to the last cabin in the row on the right that they were coming up to. It was painted a pretty mint green, with white and purple flowers blazing from every window box. Adorable.

On the porch railing there was a cat.

Reed couldn’t see the cat well, only its silhouette, because the sun had dropped low enough in the sky to backlight it.

“Hey, Grizz,” Troy called, sounding genuinely pleased. “Good to see you. You terrorizing Mac?”

Reed’s heart stuttered in her chest. She got closer, until she could see a hint of a two-tone, calico face. The cat meowed at her, that grinding noise it made when it was happy. Reed could barely see him past the sudden tears that had sprung up, but she would recognize that sick meow anywhere.

Wiz.

Reed reached the porch. She stopped and stood there, smiling at the cat, happy tears flowing. She reached out her hand to touch one soft ear.

Troy came up next to her on the porch, his shirt on but that was it. He didn’t care. He took her free hand gently, peering into her face.

“Hey, are you ok?”

Reed could only nod and pet the cat for many minutes, swallowing a lump in her throat. Finally, she felt like she could speak. She turned to Troy and patted his face. “How did you know?” she asked.

“Know what?” he said, his tone curious, maybe a little baffled.

Reed laughed softly. She petted the cat. She melted into her mate. “Never mind,” she whispered.

It didn’t matter how it had come to be, because she finally felt it. It dropped in on her with finality: This was where she was supposed to be, this cozy little cabin, on this little plot of land, with all these crazy people, and all these things she couldn’t explain. She was with her… mate, and with her family, most of whom she hadn’t even met yet. It was a mess in her mind, and yet it all made perfect sense, at the same time. It felt right.

Troy hugged her hard. He sniffed her hair. He took a deep breath like he was trying to breathe her into his body.

She heard the sounds of a car in the driveway on the other side of the big farmhouse. “You’re naked,” she whispered to Troy.

“That’s because you had to see me shift,” he whispered back.

She laughed and let her mate take her hand and pull her into the house, all the way to a cute little bedroom in the very back. She let him undress her in the moonlight filtering in through the sheer-draped window. She let him have her body, to do with as he would. She let him worship her, because that was what it felt like he did.

And before she dropped off to sleep, she whispered a little prayer of thanks to… someone.