The straining of my cock in my pants is painful. I reach down and unbuckle my belt as Carys’ hands smooth up my chest, testing my muscles with her fingers. I grasp my shirt and pull it over my head. Her eyes grow wide as she looks at me. She touches the dark hair at the center of my chest and trails her fingers over the muscles of my stomach. They close around my shaft through my pants as I pull her skirts up to her hips. She gasps in shock as she explores my girth. I spread her open and reach to unbutton my pants. Her pussy is sweet and inviting in the dim light, and her heavenly scent overwhelms the last of my sanity.
I have to be inside her. Fill her with my seed. Claim my mate.
“Wait. Stop. I don’t understand what’s happening.” She sits up, her blonde hair tumbling around her. She pulls her dress closed over her breasts and down her legs. Her lips are reddened and swollen. Her cheeks and throat are flushed and I can smell her arousal. I don’t wait to wait, but I grit my teeth and curl my hands into fists.
“We’ve barely spoken since I’ve been here. I’ve seen how you’ve tried to ignore me. What’s changed?”
“Everything,” I breathe, cupping her cheek. The bear inside me recognized her the moment she stepped onto my mountain. He woke me and pulled me from my bed, and made me tramp through the snow to find her, even before I heard the baying of the wolfskins. It took the rest of me days to catch up, but now that I’ve held her in my arms, I’ll never let her go again.
I dip my head to claim her mouth once more, but her small hands push me away again.
“I’m stronger now. Finley and I will leave in the morning.”
My eyes narrow. The wolfskins will be waiting for her to step one foot outside my territory before they snatch her. Carys and the baby need me to protect them, and I need my mate.
“Thank you for everything you’ve done for us,” she says quickly. “I’m sure you’ll be glad to be rid of us.” She scoots up the bed away from me and turns to lift Finley from his cradle.
“Stop,” I growl. Her strange scent is stronger than ever and I sense a crackle in her aura that no human woman should have. I should have recognized her for what she is: a woman so rare that skinchangers will fight to the death to be her mate. “You won’t leave; you can’t.”
Carys inhales a frightened breath. “Why not?”
Because I crave you more than life itself and I can’t let you go. I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth before I lose you. “The wolfskins will hunt you down.”
Her voice becomes shrill. “What’s a wolfskin? Just say wolves like a normal person, can’t you? And I don’t care. I’ll take my chances with them.”
The short hairs on the back of my neck rise, and the bones in my spine give a faint pop. I can’t let them take her. The wolfskins will raise the child in fury and turn him into something cold and cruel like them. They’ll force her to have more pups for them and punish her if she refuses. I know that pack of old.
“That’s what they are. Wolfskins.”
“Will you let us leave?”
In answer, I reach out and close my hand around her bare, slender ankle.
Tears fill her eyes. She picks Finley up and holds the baby tight to her chest as tears fill her eyes. “Why are you doing this? You’ve been so kind to us.”
“You don’t know what you are, do you?”
“I’m no one. I was abandoned as a baby and grew up in the village. I was raised by the preacher and his wife, and when I disappointed them, they let the villagers throw me out.”
I can’t fathom how a skinchanger could have abandoned their daughter, except if they were sick and injured and had no choice. “You’re a skinbearer, a human woman with skinchanger blood somewhere in her family tree. You can’t shift, but you can become a skinchanger’s lifemate.”
Carys takes a shuddering breath, and whispers, “You’re crazy.”
“Those wolfskins will keep coming after you. You’re more precious than silver and gold.”
“No, I’m not. Everyone in my village is afraid of me. They cast me out because I’m dangerous, and I brought the wolves.”
“I told you, those aren’t wolves. Who fathered your child? Think, Carys. He wasn’t normal, was he?”
Carys gazes down at the baby and says in a small voice, “There was a man at the harvest festival last year. A stranger. I don’t remember much… I think I had too much to drink. A few weeks later, I discovered I was pregnant.”
I clasp her shoulders. “That wasn’t a man. Did you not notice the bitemarks on your body?”
“I had some scratches,” she whispers. “But it was still just a man. Please don’t say I’m a witch, too. I can’t bear it.”
Wolfskins are notorious for cruelly marking up the human women they lie with. She’s lucky she strayed into the path of only one, and he can’t have realized what she is. Not until recently. If she was thrown out of her village for drawing the wolfskins closer, then they must have scented the pup in the wind.
I look down at the sleeping baby in her arms. I realized what he was when I looked into his eyes and saw the moon reflected back at me.
Outside, a long, high howl sounds through the night. Carys’ eyes widen. There’s snuffling, snarling and scratching from outside. They’ll keep coming until they take her, or I do something to them.
I get up off the bed. They can have one warning, which I shout through the door. “Get off my mountain before I come out there and rip your mangy hides from your backs.”
There’s an answering snarl, which goes on and on, elongating strangely. A crunching noise, a groan, and then the snarl becomes a laugh. A human laugh.
“Come out, come out, pretty girl,” taunts a voice. “You and the pup. We don’t want to hurt you.” This statement is followed by a snigger from what sounds like two other wolfskins.
I grip the door handle. “Last chance. If I come out there, none of you are walking off this mountain.”
“She’s not yours, bearskin,” yaps a different voice. “She’s ours. We claimed her first.”
All over my body, hairs shoot through my pores like needles, and my canines bulge and ache. The muscles in my back bunch and ripple. Behind me, I hear Carys gasp at the first signs of the change.
They think she’s theirs. They’re claiming my mate.
I tear the front door open. Outside in the snow, there are wolfskins in their human forms, dirty and ragged, their black hair in greasy tangles. Frozen air whips against my bare chest, and I bare my teeth at them. “You dare step paws in my territory and hound my mate?”
I hear a sharp intake of breath behind me. Carys needs to understand what I am, what she is, and why I’ll fight every last wolfskin, mountain lionskin and bearskin in the land to protect her and the baby.
The biggest wolfskin has a scar over one eye and the iris is milky white. “That’s my mate, and my cub, you dozy fuck.”
As he whines, I size them up. I can fight three at once. Wolfskins are fast and vicious, but I can crush their skulls in one blow. I come down the steps toward them, and their backs arch and they bare their teeth at me.
“She ran to me. Now leave, before I make you bleed.”