Heartsong (Green Creek 3)

“You think so?”

“I do.”

He looked down at the pages sitting on the bed. “I wish….” He shook his head. “I wish for many things. That I was a wolf again. That nothing bad would ever happen to any of us ever again. That you were….” He sucked in a sharp breath. “But I’m not a wolf. And I can’t stop whatever the future has in store for us. And you are as you are. And I don’t know if I can change any of that. But it doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No,” he said. “Because even though I’m not a wolf, and even though shit is always flung at us, and even though you don’t remember everything we had, you’re still here.” He smiled, and it trembled. “You said we.”

I looked down at my hand on his knee. “What do you mean?”

“I asked you if I was dying. And you said no, and that I wouldn’t until we were very, very old.”

My face grew warm. “Oh. Um. Well. That’s….”

“Good. That

’s good.”

“It is?”

“Yes.”

You are loved.

He burned so bright. It was all grass and lake water and sunshine, and I wanted nothing more than to have it for my own.

I said, “Kelly?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I kiss you?”

He gaped at me.

I waited nervously, forcing myself not to fidget or take the words back.

He grimaced. “Oh Christ. You’re serious. What the hell is wrong with you? Do you not hear what I sound like? Something must be wrong with your eyes too, because I’m leaking from almost every opening I have. And I can’t even begin to imagine what I must smell like to you—”

I kissed him.

Again.

For the first time.

His eyes were open, and my eyes were open, and I was drowning in him, drowning in this, and I didn’t want to be saved. I wanted it to close over my head and pull me down until all there was in this world was him.

It was chaste, this kiss. I saw a tear trickle from his right eye before I closed my own. I was about to pull away, sure I’d gone too far, when he wrapped his hand around the back of my neck, holding me in place. He sighed against my lips, and I wondered if this was happiness, if this clawing in my chest was how I felt when we’d done this before. Because if it was, then I understood why Gordo had said I must have fought like hell. If someone had tried to take this away from me, the memory of him and the way he felt against me, I would have done everything in my power to fight back.

Even as I felt consumed by him, a low, fiery hatred burned in the pit of my stomach at the thought that it had been taken from me.

My pack.

My home.

My mate.

Eventually he pulled away, eyes wide. “Wow,” he whispered.