The Wolves of Midwinter (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 2)

Laura had waited for him. Laura was running beside him. He saw her paws flying out before her, like two front feet, saw her powerful shoulders churning under the dark gray wolf coat.

Round the cauldron they ran and then made the mad dash once more, springing high into the licking flames.

When next they approached the cauldron, the company was gathered together, on hind legs forming the circle again. At once, they fell in.

What was happening? Why had the music slowed, why had it fallen into an ominous syncopated rhythm?

The goading song of the flutes was slowed in time with it, every fourth beat stronger than the three before. And the others were rocking back and forth, back and forth, and Margon was singing something in that ancient tongue, to which Felix added his voice, and then came the thundering bass of Sergei. Thibault was humming; the unmistakable figure of Hockan Crost, the nearest thing to a white wolf in the group, was also humming as he was rocking—and a kind of moaning hum rose from the other females.

Suddenly Hockan rushed past Felix and Reuben, grabbing with both paws for Laura.

Before Reuben could come to her defense, Laura hurled Hockan backwards right into the cauldron which almost went over, the hot liquid splashing upwards like molten metal.

Fierce growls had broken out from the Sergei, Felix, and Margon, all of whom surrounded Hockan. Hockan threw up his paws, claws extended, snarling at them as he backed away. And said in his deep brutal wolf voice, “It’s Modranicht.” He let out a threatening growl.

Margon shook his head, and gave the lowest most menacing and guttural response Reuben had ever heard from a Morphenkind.

One of the females broke through the press and shoved Hockan playfully but powerfully with both paws, and as he lunged at her, she took off, racing around the fire with him close behind her.

The tension went out of the protective males.

Another female came pounding Frank with her paws, and Frank, accepting the challenge, went after her.

It was happening now all around them, Felix going after the third of the women, and Thibault after the fourth. Even Stuart was suddenly courted and seduced and had gone tearing away in hot pursuit of his female.

Laura moved to Reuben, her powerful br**sts pumping against his chest, her teeth grazing his throat, her growls filling his ears. He tried to pick her up off the ground but she threw him over and they wrestled, rolling into the shadows against the boulders.

He was on fire for her, opening his mouth on her throat, and licking at her ears, at the silken fur of her face, at the soft black flesh of her mouth, his tongue sliding in over her tongue.

At once, he was inside her, pumping into a tight, wet sheath that was deeper and more muscular than her human sex had been, closing against him so hard that it almost, almost but not quite, hurt him. His brain was gone, gone down into the beast, into the loins of the beast, and this thing, this thing that so resembled him, this powerful and menacing thing that had been Laura was his as surely as he was hers. Her muscular body shook with spasms beneath him, her jaws opening, the hoarse roar issuing out of her as if she had no control of it. He let loose in a torrent of thrusts that blinded him.

Stillness. The thin silver rain came down without a sound. Not so much as a hiss from the great fire with its dark slowly collapsing logs, its high flaming towers of timber.

The music was low, furtive, patient, like the breath of a beast who was dozing, and dozing they were, Laura and Reuben. Wrapped in the shadows and against the rocks, they lay in one another’s arms, heart pounding against heart. There was no nakedness in the wolf coat; only total freedom.

Reuben was groggy and drunken and half dreaming. Words floated to the surface of his mind—love you, love you, love you, love the inexhaustible beast in you, in myself, in us, love you—as he felt the weight of Laura against his chest, his claws dug deep into the tangled mane of her head, her br**sts hot against him, hot as they’d been when she was a woman, hotter than the rest of her, and he felt the heat of her sex in that same old way against his leg. Her soft clean scent, which wasn’t a scent at all, filled his nostrils and his brain. And this moment seemed more intoxicating than the dance, the hunt, the kill, the lovemaking, this strange suspension of all time and all worry, with the beast yielding so effortlessly to this fearless drowsiness, this half sleep of mingled sensation and perplexing contentment. Forever, like this, with the spitting and crackling of the giant Yule fire, with the sharp cold air so close, the soft wet rain little more than a mist, so close, yes, not really rain, and all things revealed, all things sealed between him and Laura.

And will she love me tomorrow?

His eyes opened.

The music had quickened; it was a dance again, and the tambourines were playing, and as he let his head roll to one side, he saw between him and the immense blaze the leaping, dancing figures of the Forest Gentry. Silhouetted against the flames, they danced arm in arm, and swinging in circles like old peasant people have always danced, their lithe and graceful bodies beautiful in silhouette against the fire as they ran on around it, then stopped to make their fancy circling steps again, laughing, whooping, calling to one another. Their song was rising, falling, in time with their steps, a blending of glorious soprano voices and deeper tenor and baritone. For one moment, it seemed they shimmered, became transparent as if they would dissolve, and then were solid once more, with the thud of their feet on the earth beneath them.

He was laughing with delight as he watched them, their hair flying, the women’s skirts flying, the little children forming chains to circle the elders.

And here came the Morphenkinder with them.

There was Sergei marching, leaping, turning, with them, and here came the familiar figure of Thibault.

Slowly, he rose, rousing Laura with nuzzling and wet kisses.

They climbed to their feet and joined the others. How ancient and Celtic the music sounded now, joined again with violins and stringed instruments far deeper and darker than violins, and the clear metallic notes of the dulcimer.

He was drunk now. He was terribly drunk. Drunk from the mead, drunk from making love, drunk from gorging on the living flesh of boar—drunk on the night and on the sizzling, hissing flames against his eyelids. An icy wind gusted into the clearing, raking the fire into a new fury, and tantalizing him with the very light fistfuls of rain.

Hmmm. Scent on the wind, scent mingled with the rain. Scent of a human? Not possible. Worry not. This is Modranicht.

He kept dancing. Turning, twisting, moving along, and the music bubbled and boiled and pushed and hurried him along, the drums pounding faster and faster, one rolling riff crashing into another.