Page 34 of The Howling (Monsters of the Yeavering #2)

I am mated and mating is incredible .

The feeling of being sheathed in my Wynter is something I want to experience over and over, along with her taste and scent and everything about her.

I want my mate comfortable, secure, and filled with pups. I want to make my castle a place to live again.

The Duegar have surpassed themselves as I reach the table in the great hall. I call out my thanks as I fill a platter with all the things I think Wynter might like and a few things I would like myself before returning to the bedroom.

To find it empty of her.

Her scent hangs heavy in the air, delicious, perfect, intoxicating. But she is missing.

My heart contracts unpleasantly in my chest. Where can she be? There are no Reivers nearby. I can sense the foul demons like I’m joined with them.

Which I am in a way, but it doesn’t stop me from destroying them.

The castle is empty save for the Duegar.

It’s with some relief I pick up the smallest of sounds down the passage, near the place I took her so she could urinate. I refuse to use the word she used.

I thump down the corridor until I reach the door, where I hear more than one voice. As I burst in, there is only Wynter.

“Oh, hi, Reavely.” She smiles at me. She’s wearing one of my shirts and instantly I have my head between her legs.

“Wait, woah!” She laughs, grabbing at my head. “What is going on?”

“You look good enough to eat. I want to eat you.” I nose at her folds, drinking down her scent before lapping at her once again, her gorgeous body shivering and shuddering against my lips, her nectar rushing into my mouth.

“And”—I pull back a little, my eyes darting around the room—“I want to be sure no one is bothering you.”

She moans a little.

“There was only the female Barghest. I thought you said there were none.”

“Female Barghest?” I query. “There are none. There is your friend the Hedley Kow, or at least I presume she is still here?”

Wynter shakes her head and shrugs.

“Lilburn does whatever she wants. She’s not here today anyway.”

“Then the only creatures are you, me, and the Duegar. There is no one else,” I say with conviction.

“But she seemed so real,” Wynter says quietly. “Does the Yeavering have ghosts?”

“Ghosts?”

“Spirits, spectres, things which go bump in the night…save for Barghests, of course.”

I swallow. “I thought I was the only one who could see them,” I respond. “I thought it was part of my curse.”

“See who?”

“My family.”

“This place is haunted by your family…and you can see them?” Wynter says. “They can see us?” she adds with a gasp.

“I don’t know how much they can see…”

“Well, the ghost I was speaking to was very interested in where I spent the night,” Wynter says, her teeth gritted. “You should have told me.”

“If I knew you could see them”—I lift my head from between her thighs—“I would have told you.”

Wynter grabs at my shoulders and heaves me up. “So, you’re telling me your entire family have been watching what we’ve been up to for the last…however long I’ve been here?” she says in a loud whisper.

“Barghest have always mated publicly. It is what they would have expected,” I point out.

“But it’s not what I’d expect, Reavely,” she says. “Whether or not they are ghosts, I’d like to have known before we…you know.”

Her face is a gorgeous shade of pink, similar to the delicious lips of her cunt. Thinking about her cunt makes me want to put my nose back there, so I do, my prick achingly hard for her.

Wynter calls my name, once, twice, until I’m flooded with her moisture and I get to eat it all up. She needs mating, that much is clear, but I don’t know if she will allow it.

When she grasps my prick in both hands, I know she will allow it.

My ancestors make themselves scarce because while public mating is normal for Barghest, some matings need to be in private, and this is one of them.

It will be me and Wynter. My mate, my heart, my whole.