Wolf Claim (Wolves of Willow Bend Book 3) (20 page)

Brett’s irritated scowl was worth enduring Gillian’s embrace of the other wolf. “You are a pain in the ass, little wolf.” A smile eased his disgruntled expression. “I grant you safe passage in Hudson River. Come visit us again whenever you wish. You may even bring
him
.”

With the last, he ran his hand over her hair before stretching a hand out to grasp Owen’s. The burns marks along his right arm which feathered up his neck to his face were far less angry. He’d shifted a handful of times, but not enough according to Gillian. Owen wondered if Brett planned to keep the scars as a reminder of a lesson hard learned. His sweet natured mate might not understand it, but Owen did.

Soon, they were in the truck and on their way. Once they cleared the last mile marker for Hudson River and entered the buffer land between the two territories, he let himself relax.

“You look happy.” Her drowsy voice invited him to pull her into his lap and hold her. Pity he had to drive.

Contenting himself with taking her hand, he stroked his thumb across her palm. “I thought you were sleeping.”

“Not for a while now. It feels like ages since we were really alone. I missed you.”

They’d shared their bed, but his injuries, her exhaustion and his need to see her rested curtailed all their activities. “We’ll be home soon.”
Home.
Surely Mason would give him a few weeks before Owen would have to hit the borders. Mating was a precious time, and they’d spent so much of theirs on others.

“You need rest.”

She didn’t answer right away, stretching first, then snuggling his hand. Lifting it to her lips, she brushed kisses to his knuckles one at a time. “Rather spend the time with you. We’ll be inundated when we get home.”

His heart fisted at the reminder. “I will visit you often, I promise.” It would stretch him thin at times, but he would find a way to make it work. One of his jobs for Mason was managing the schedules of the other Hunters. He could make adjustments.

“What?” Gillian’s question pushed into his thoughts.

“We will both be very busy, I know. We will find a way to make this work, I promise you won’t regret mating me.” It would be cutting off an arm to walk away from being a Hunter, but he would do it. Thomas devoted his life to his mate, and seemed satisfied. Could Owen do any less?

She scrubbed a hand over her face, pushing the golden curls away from her face. Tiredness had blanched the coppery color of her skin, but her topaz eyes glistened. “I’m going to assume I’m too tired to follow your line of thinking.” She yawned then rubbed her cheek to his hand. The ease of her affection teased loose one knot of worry locking up his spine.

“You should
sleep
.”

“I don’t want to.” Petulant, almost verging on a whine, she made him laugh and her answering smile was worth any amount of complaint. “I’m having a hard time not seeing Marco’s head fly off his body.”

The admission cut his humor in half. “I am glad he’s dead.” He only wished the bastard died sooner, before he could inflict so much harm. Before Owen had seen his mate kneel to the prick and the gun steady as he aimed at her beautiful forehead.

“Stop growling.” The reminder silenced him and he sighed.

“I will never get the image of you before him out of my mind. Had he been a split-second faster…”

“But he wasn’t, and I think the struggle to kill a healer was far more than even his maddened wolf expected.” Another comforting kiss. “I wish I’d realized sooner.”

“I’m sure Brett does, too. Even I didn’t see it, not at first. He was very adept at hiding in plain sight.”

She sighed. “I know. Brett and I talked about it for a while—why he didn’t use the poison again, how he’d disguised what was wrong with him.”

“You survived his poison. It weakened him because you beat him without even realizing it.” Owen had already pieced that part together. His incredibly strong, submissive mate bested the dominant. It also explained why he’d pushed past his need to protect and tried to kill her a second time. The gun had been simple expedience.

“Yes.” Releasing his hand, she reached into the cooler for a bottle of water. Owen took it and unscrewed the cap for her without asking.

Her soft giggle stroked over his senses and his wolf rubbed against his skin, then he felt her—her wolf rubbing against him as well. She echoed his sigh and he shook his head slowly. “I never knew mating could be like this.”

“Me either.” After a long drink, she glanced at him sideways. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Mind?” What the hell was she talking about?

“I can feel you…all the time. So can she. I can feel your wolf, too. I felt you at the vigil. Your strength filled me and kept me anchored.”

“Good.”
As it should be
. He would hold nothing back from her, not when she gave and gave and gave. He knew exactly why he was alive. Did she? “I felt you, too. Keeping me here, holding me firm and lashing me to life.” Even with the world bleeding away from him, she’d been his sunlight, warding off the dark. “I shifted because of you. I couldn’t die, not as long as you needed me.” The realization had come to his wolf first, but Owen and he merged in one single thought—
save Gillian
. When she’d disarmed Marco, he’d just completed the change and gone for the other wolf. Brett had the same idea, and between them they’d finished off the bastard.

“But you can be such a loner.” The worry stinging the words dragged him from the past, and he concentrated on what she wasn’t saying. “You—you didn’t want to mate me. I kind of forced your hand, and now…”

“And now, what?” He growled, anger raking along his insides. “You didn’t force me to do anything I didn’t want to do.”
Desperately.
He’d wanted her and he never wanted to let her go. Never share her. Never let her out of his sight. Yet he had to do all of those things, because she was a healer, an incredible one, and needed by many.

He would fucking adapt.

Head tilted, she studied him and, while he could feel her all the way to his soul, he couldn’t fathom the thoughts traveling through her brilliant mind. “You walked away. The night I offered myself to you, the first time...”

Grimacing, he cupped her cheek. “I was an idiot. I didn’t want to tie you to someone who would never be around, who is needed on the fringes. I run patrols, Gillian. I am gone nearly as much as I am in Willow Bend proper. I’ve spent months away before.”

“Oh, I know. I’ve counted the seconds of every single absence.” Her admission thudded against him. “But it doesn’t change how much I love you. I missed you because I love you, not just because you were gone.”

Regret lanced him. “I will talk to Mason.”

“About what?” She took another long drink, then offered him the bottle.

“About relinquishing my circuits and moving back to Willow Bend.” He’d considered other options—asking his father to look in on her, trimming his time back—but he didn’t want to be away. “I never want you to feel abandoned like my parents.”

Only after he’d taken a long drink under the steady weight of her regard did she say anything. “Owen Chase, you really are an idiot.”

Those were not the words he’d expected. Eyebrows raised, he handed her back the bottle. “What?”

“First, I love you. I love your stubbornness, I love your strength, and God knows, I love your loyalty. I don’t know a more honorable wolf, and I don’t want anyone else, but you are an idiot.”

“Somehow, I’m not feeling the compliment.” Still puzzled and a little wounded by her statement, he waited for her to clarify.

She didn’t keep him waiting long. “First, you’re a Hunter. It’s not just what you do, and if you go to Mason and ask him to release you from your circuits for any reason other than you truly wish to do something else, I will be vexed with you.”

Vexed didn’t sound good. “I don’t want to be away from you. If I have to choose—”

“That’s my point, you don’t have to choose. I planned to talk to Mason about joining you on your circuits when we got home. Emma doesn’t need me and I was already thinking I wanted to roam the pack. Meet everyone, see them, and get to know them. After what happened in Hudson River, I think we need that in Willow Bend more than ever. Some of our wolves are distant, as distant as they are there. They need the feel of pack, of caring, and we need to know about problems before they get out of control.”

All sound ideas, but he focused on the part that mattered. “You are not roaming on your own.”

“No, I’ll be with you.” Her laugh sobered too quickly. “Owen, you keep thinking your parents are miserable because your father maintained his circuits and your mother stayed in Willow Bend. You think something is wrong with their mating, or that it hurt them somehow.”

He grimaced and said nothing. All his life he’d traversed the lonely route between them, and he’d had a front row seat to their sadness.

“Owen, I’ve
met
them. If they were truly disturbed or upset, don’t you think I would have noticed? Or Emma? I get that Toman wasn’t the best of alphas, but Mason is. He’s a
good
Alpha, with the potential to be great. I didn’t realize how much until I saw the damage in Hudson River. Mason held us all together after Toman, and he’s keeping us together still. He would have done something for your parents, too, if they’d needed it.”

“Gillian, I understand you mean well…” His mate did something as unexpected as disarming an insane wolf. She slapped him his arm.

“Stop. I’m talking now, not you.” The lack of rancor or heat in her order didn’t make it any less stern. His wolf roused and they both focused on her, even as he kept his attention on the road. “Mates don’t have to love each other, we both know it, but they do have to choose. Your parents chose each other and discovered a way to make their relationship work. You have three younger siblings, all born
after
your parents worked out their arrangement.”

So they were compatible? He didn’t want to discuss his parents’ sex life.

“Like I said, they aren’t unhappy or miserable. The one who was hurt by their choices, the one who was
un
happy, was you.”

Scowling, he opened his mouth to dispute the charge, but she stroked the same spot she’d slapped. “Owen, you didn’t want to mate me because you were worried we might spend time apart. You didn’t like feeling as though you had to choose between your parents, dividing your time between them made you feel like you had to value one over the other, and that’s simply not true. You were a child, and they were the adults, so for that, I find fault with them.”

His wolf kept silent as they digested her words.

“But beyond all of that, I don’t want to be away from you. I want to roam. I want to be with you and, yes, we’ll have responsibilities and things we must do. I may even have to go back to Hudson River, or spend time in Willow Bend, and that’s fine. We have my house. We can use it when we’re there, and I will sleep in a tent when you’re roaming. Whatever, as long as we’re together.

“I choose you, Owen Chase. I choose the Hunter. I will
always
choose you. Our mating, our life, no one else’s.”

Still chewing over the possibilities, he let the sunshine in her creep into the dark worried place in his soul. The spot where he kept his fears locked away. He had only one true fear left.

Losing her would cut his heart out.

“Can you choose me? Trust in me? In us?” She should never have had to ask the question.

“Yes,” he answered without hesitation. “I choose you for everything.” She was a healer, she would be needed. They would answer that need. Lashing his life to hers was the best decision he’d ever made. He regretted nothing, except for the time he’d wasted in fighting the need to make her his.

“Enough of that.” She squeezed his hand and smiled. “Or you’ll piss me off all over again.”

He laughed, the release easing the ache of anticipated loneliness like the last of an infection passing from a wound. “I never want you to feel abandoned.”

“How can I?” She pressed his hand to her chest, over the steady beat of her heart. “You’re here. Always with me. Always a part of me.”

Yes, as she was in him. “How soon did you tell Mason we would be in Willow Bend?”

“When we got there.”

Oh God, he loved her. “Want to run away with me?”

“Yes.” She grinned.

“Text Mason. Let him know. We’ll turn our phones off.”

She reached for her cell phone, typed in a message, hit send, then shut it off without waiting for a reply.

Owen quirked an eyebrow at her speed. “What did you tell him?”

“I said Hudson River problem solved. On our way home. Going to spend time with my mate, healer’s orders. We’ll call you.”

Laughing, he wrapped a hand around her nape and she came closer willingly for a kiss. “Yes, healer. How many days of time with my mate do you prescribe?”

“At least a lifetime.” Her declaration humbled him.

“Done.”

“That was easy.”

He felt her smile all the way to his soul. “I know when I am well and truly caught, Mate. Never will I make the mistake of trying to walk away from you again.”

“Good.” She nuzzled his jaw. “Chasing you was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do…and the most worthwhile.”

On that point, they were agreed. He’d run until she’d caught him, claimed his heart, and leashed him to her side. He would never budge. It was their time now.

Everything—and everyone else—could wait.

Coming next in the Wolves of Willow Bend
 

Rogue Wolf
 

Salvatore Esposito’s arrival in Willow Bend starts more than a few tongues wagging. The Italian Alpha’s presence is unheralded in pack history, even more so because he shows no signs of challenging their current Alpha. The unrest plays on the pack, though, since Salvatore is definitely on the hunt for something…or is it some
one
?
 

Hunting missing wolves from one pack, Margo Montgomery’s return to pack lands threatens the fragile peace. An Enforcer, she monitors Lone Wolves, but her presence heralds a new danger—a Lone Wolf gone rogue. Worse, it seems the rogue has also taken Salvatore’s sister as his mate.