Page 30 of Accidentally Wedded to a Werewolf (Claw Haven #1)

The next morning rolled around surprisingly fast and, thankfully, snow-free.

Oliver told himself he wasn’t disappointed. Luna certainly wasn’t, whooping in celebration as she clipped her bra back on.

“If the forecast was wrong,” Luna said, yanking on her jeans and scanning the cave for her missing shirt, “I’d still drag you up to root around in the snow. I did not spend a night in a cave to come home empty-handed.”

“I don’t know,” Oliver said. “You seemed like you had an alright time.”

“Yeah, back at you,” Luna snickered. She scanned the cave one more time and sighed. “Have you seen my shirt?”

Oliver shook his head. He hadn’t looked, but he wanted to see Luna like this while he still could. Until she started shivering, anyway.

Still shirtless, Luna bent down to scrape her notebook off the ground. She’d been drawing in it when he woke up, hands flying to cover the page when she noticed him looking.

He pointed at it as she tucked the notebook into her back pocket. “You can at least let me see the Musgrove logo. You’ll have to let me see it eventually.”

“They’re just—”

“Concepts. I know.” He held back a smile, remembering how she’d flung herself over the notebook, shrieking loud enough for him to come all the way awake.

“I won’t make fun of you,” he said. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”

Luna scoffed like that was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. Like she didn’t get all weird and self-conscious anytime someone brought up her work.

“I won’t,” he said.

Luna paused. Her eyes narrowed. For a moment, Oliver thought he would get an eye roll and a dismissal; maybe she’d pretend to knock his ankle as she stepped over him. Instead, she reached into her back pocket and took out the notebook, flinging it at him.

It bounced off his chest. Oliver caught it, surprised.

“Wait,” Luna said, dropping to her knees beside him as he flipped through the pages. “Some of them are bad. Give it back and I’ll—”

“These look fine,” Oliver said, holding the book out of reach. Some were more fleshed out than others. A dozen little versions of MUSGROVE INN, another dozen doodles of wolves below it.

He held the notebook out and tapped the page. “I like this one.”

Luna grabbed it off him and paused. “This?”

He nodded. Luna looked quizzically at the paper. It was one of the more detailed logos: a fully-shifted wolf sitting in a cozy armchair with a fire roaring behind him. A mug sat in his hand, steaming contentedly.

Luna hummed. She took out a pencil from her back pocket and drew two thick eyebrows on the wolf.

“There,” she said, satisfied. “Now it’s you.”

He pointed at the mug. “It’s not my mug.”

Luna laughed. “Right! That stupid party-hat mug you insist you hate until someone else tries to use it.” She scribbled a tiny party hat onto the mug and leaned back. “Now it’s really you.”

She giggled. The bond in Oliver’s chest throbbed, making his arms twitch. He wanted to reach out and touch all that bare skin still on display.

As if on cue, Luna shivered.

Oliver laid a hand on her lower back. The bond in his chest kicked up, humming happily.

“Ah,” Luna sighed. “Thank you, werewolf heater.”

She tipped her head back, basking in it. Then she frowned, twisting to look at him, still lying naked in the blankets. “Is your ankle still hurting? You said it was okay to walk on!”

“It is,” he reassured her. He rotated his ankle obligingly. It ached in protest, but it was a dull ache. No agony like yesterday.

She waited. “Well, what’s the holdup? You’re just lying there.”

He had just been lying there, he realized. It hadn’t even occurred to him to move. He’d been having fun watching her get dressed and cheer about the lack of snow. He wanted to watch her while he still could.

The faster they got the flower, the faster they could get back to their lives.

But for some reason, he was liking the idea less and less.

He was still eager to get the bond removed and stop being magically pulled toward a woman he didn’t even know last month.

But he didn’t want Luna to walk out of his life.

She was…good to have around. Even if she annoyed the hell out of him.

Sometimes because she annoyed the hell out of him.

She pushed him in ways he needed to be pushed.

And she fit in great with the family, even if she was trying to drag them all into creating a tourist trap.

She was fun. And there were times when she was more than fun. When she finally dropped that spoiled, airy personality and let something real seep through.

Luna raised her eyebrows expectantly. She smelled like old sweat and bug cream, and Oliver wanted to lick her until she smelled like him.

Not that it mattered. She had a life to get back to, and he couldn’t lie here forever.

“Nothing,” Oliver said finally. “I’m getting up.”

Luna blinked. For a second, he thought he caught disappointment flashing over her face. Then it was gone, and Luna let out a triumphant cry, pointing at a far corner of the cave.

“My shirt!”

* * *

Hiking went a lot faster when you didn’t have a broken foot.

Oliver expected they’d keep walking to find a higher point where flowers were more common and easier to get. But Luna stopped at the edge of the cliff, staring at the flower growing across the gap.

“Hear me out,” she said as Oliver headed back to her. “You put me on your shoulders and I, like, lean.”

He made a face.

“Come on!” She pouted, holding up her boots. “I don’t want to walk another two hours up, and then, what—five hours down? I want to get this over with already! Put me on your shoulders and don’t drop me. What is your superstrength even for if not to lift hot women?”

Oliver thought about bringing up that time he’d fucked her up against a wall. Then he knelt expectantly.

“Fine,” he said. “Hop on.”

For a second, there was nothing. He heard her breath hitch.

He started to look up, but she was already behind him, hooking a leg over one of his shoulders. Then the other.

He stood slowly. Luna let out a tiny trill, arms out.

“Tense your core,” he reminded her.

“No shit,” she told him. She giggled. “I think this can actually work. Let’s do this!”

He stepped up to the edge of the cliff and bent over, keeping an eye on her as she stretched into the empty space he’d fallen into. He eyed the steep drop. He’d gotten off lucky with just a broken ankle. What would happen to her if she fell?

His hands tightened on her legs. They’d never find out.

“Little more,” she said, strained. “Little…bit…yes!”

He looked up to find her wagging a flower in his face. Before yesterday, he’d only seen them in wedding photos and the occasional sketch in Grandmother’s dusty old books: a cluster of white petals with a blood-red center.

He walked them away from the edge and dropped to his knees. She climbed off him and jumped triumphantly.

“We did it! Divorce flower, you’re beautiful!” She smacked a kiss to its many petals, shaking it in victory.

“Careful,” he reminded her.

“Oh. Right.” She stilled, holding the flower out expectantly.

He took it. For a moment, he felt a strange swooping sensation, like all his younger years were tunneling into this one: He hadn’t expected to hold one of these for a long time.

Maybe on his wedding day. More likely when he was an elder and it was his responsibility to make the sacred nectar for his pack.

Grandmother Musgrove was still yet to teach him.

Then the feeling was gone. He tucked the flower carefully into the side pocket of his backpack, next to the water bottle.

“Mission accomplished,” Luna said. She looked oddly flustered, a blush breaking out over her tanned face. “So…homeward bound?”

“Homeward bound,” he agreed.

He waited for her to start down the path. But she just stood there, staring at him. If she were anyone else, he would say she looked shy.

“Unless you want to stay here and let my family send a search party,” he continued.

“What? Right!” She let out a high-pitched laugh and started down the path.

He followed, trying not to notice how heavily she smelled of him.

If he focused on it, he’d want to obey the bond swirling in his chest and move closer, tuck her against him as they walked.

This wasn’t the time. From here, they would only get further away from each other.

* * *

Luna made it a heroic forty-five minutes before she declared that her feet were too sore and they had to stop.

“Not all of us have werewolf endurance,” she complained as she sat down on a hefty rock, squeezing her feet through her boots. She looked up at him hopefully. “Snack break?”

He told himself he wasn’t charmed by her big eyes and sighed, pulling his backpack off. They had enough trail mix to last them several more days, but they were down to their last strip of jerky. More fool him for eating so much of it last night.

He snapped the strip in half and handed the bigger half over.

“Thanks,” she said distractedly. She placed it on her knee, carefully shimmying out of her boots.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing. Snack break.” She pulled off her socks next, grimacing at the stale sock smell. Then she started massaging her feet, fingers moving with the clumsiness of someone who had never given a foot massage before.

Oliver swallowed his half of the jerky and sighed audibly.

Luna frowned up at him. “What? Sorry for not having super--speedy regenerating foot muscles.”

Oliver climbed down on his knees silently, taking her foot out of her grip.

Luna resisted, grimacing. “Ew, quit it! My feet are gross!”

“I licked your sweaty neck an hour ago,” he reminded her. “Get over yourself.”

Luna grumbled but stopped trying to pull her foot away. After a moment, she even relaxed into him, letting out a breath of relief as he dug his thumbs into the tender muscles, careful of the blister forming near her big toe.

“You should offer this at the inn,” she said. She picked up the jerky strip off her knee and paused. “Wait, was that all the jerky you’re eating?”

He nodded at the half strip in her hand. “That’s the last of it. I have trail mix if I get hungry.”

“Trail mix doesn’t hit the spot like jerky,” Luna said with the confidence of someone who had been forced to sit through too many of Uncle Roy’s speeches about the importance of werewolves eating protein.

She nudged the jerky into Oliver’s cheek. “Here you go. Come on.”

“I’m fine,” he insisted, still working his thumbs against the ball of her foot. “Wasn’t the jerky the only thing you didn’t complain about last night? You even said the oranges were ‘chalky.’”

“They were chalky,” Luna said. She nudged the jerky more insistently into his cheek. “Open up.”

“We’re almost home,” he pointed out.

She just kept nudging the jerky harder into his cheek. It did smell good. And he was hungry. He turned his head, and Luna whooped as he let her slot it into his mouth.

“Good boy,” she praised, ruffling his hair.

He rolled his eyes, pretending like the praise didn’t do anything to him. The bond in his chest rejoiced, throwing sparks. But there was also a heat in his stomach that kicked in whenever anyone told him he’d done a good job.

Luna went suspiciously silent. He took her other foot, still chewing. When she still didn’t say anything, sarcastic or otherwise, he looked up.

She had her chin in her hands, looking down at him with a pleased little smile.

He swallowed his jerky, fighting back self-consciousness. “What?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. I just think you’re going to make a really good alpha.”

He ducked his head. If he kept looking at her, he might do something stupid, like blush.

“I bet you say that to every werewolf who massages your feet,” he said.

She kicked him gently. “Seriously. You’re good at taking care of people.”

“When I get out of my own way,” he prompted.

She beamed at him. “Exactly!”

He slid her socks back on, rolling his eyes again at the face she made at putting on dirty socks. Then he pulled her boots on for her, even doing up the laces.

“A very good boy,” she cooed.

“Shut up,” he told her, cheeks burning. “I just want this over with. I saw how long it took you to do these up before.” He finished the second boot and stood. “Ready?”

She straightened, easing her weight from one foot to the other. She was smiling, but he could see the wince. She was spoiled, sure. But it did hurt.

He sighed. “Alright.”

He slung the backpack around to his chest.

“What are you doing?” Luna asked. “What’s—”

Her question cut off with a yelp as he hoisted her onto his back. Her flailing arms locked around his neck, legs coming up to circle his waist.

“Oh!” she said. “This is—this is happening. Okay.”

“You could say thanks. You whined about this for an hour yesterday.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t think you’d actually…” She trailed off in a mumble. “How’s your ankle? Is this too much weight?”

“It’s like lifting a bag of chocolates,” he assured her.

She made a strange noise behind him. Half laugh, half stammer, hands squeezing together over his heart.