Page 10

CREVEN

One of the many things that I loved about my mate was his intelligence. He knew a lot about the world, especially that of humans. He’d never quite been part of it, but he’d always been human adjacent, and that gave him insight I didn’t have.

When I told him that I really wanted to be doing work that wasn’t looking around for scraps and having to deal with assholes like those jackholes again, he asked me what I liked to do.

When I told him how taking a hot mess of paperwork or files and turning it into something neat and organized that was also usable was my super power, he listened like it was the most fascinating job in the world.

When he asked why I wasn’t pursuing it and I explained that I needed internet, he said, “I got you.” And he did, hooking me up with satellite internet, something I hadn’t realized was a possibility. It took some money and a whole lot of skill, but he managed to get it set up and ready to go.

Now that we had full access to the internet, so many new doors were open. I managed to pick up some gig work and had my name in for a few remote positions. It wasn’t big money.

While I worked during the day, finding new leads, completing gigs, submitting proposals, my mate was outside, creating something from nothing.

Obviously, he wasn’t actually creating something from nothing, but that’s how I always felt about gardens.

One day you had this patch of dirt, and then a month later there were plants growing out of it, sometimes with flowers, sometimes with food, but it was always filled with magic.

Scientifically, I understood the process… you planted a seed or bulb, and you watered it and it grew, but learning the basics of plant growth never took the wonder away from me.

And my sexy wolf? He had a green thumb or maybe a green hand. Was that a thing?

I sent the completion notice for my latest project and got up to stretch, looking out the window to see what my mate was up to and hoping he might be in a good spot to take a break, too.

I found him quickly, bent over the new patch of garden that he’d just tilled.

I wasn’t exactly sure what he was doing, not because I didn’t understand the process, but because I was too distracted by his ass in the air, calling to me.

No one had a right to look that sexy covered in dirt. No one..

“Guess it’s time for a break.” I could hardly ignore him looking so yum.

I shut my laptop. Part of working for yourself meant you worked on your own time, and right now, it was mate time.

I quietly walked out, down the steps, and over to him, putting both my hands on his hips.

He froze, then relaxed in my touch, sitting upright and leaning against me, his eyes to the sun, angled so he could see me as well.

“Are you done with work already?” He asked.

“Well, somebody was out here distracting me.” I kissed the top of his head and then went to kneel beside him. “Show me what you’re doing?”

He did, explaining that it was the perfect time of year to plant the particular beans he was sowing, and then taking me over and giving me an update on the other things he’d planted.

We’d been living a pretty good life here.

Hours turned to days, turned to weeks, and now to months.

This had become our home. It wasn’t easy—I’d be lying if I said it was.

Having my mate here and not being able to mark him kept my fox on edge all of the time, and his wolf was no better.

But it was what had to be. We might not have made the rules, nor did we agree to them, but that didn’t mean we could break them.

“I think these will be ready to pick soon.” He pointed to some kind of squash I didn’t recognize.

They were small, and he said we could just cook them whole, which was definitely different than any squash I’d had.

My dad had always been a squash-in-the-fall, bake-it-in-the-oven-with-maple-syrup-or-brown-sugar kind of guy.

That had me thinking about this land and if we, too, could tap some trees. “How many maple trees do you think we have?”

“I never really counted them, but a bunch.” He tilted his head as if trying to figure out where I was possibly going with this.

“I like maple syrup, is all. Maybe we could make some syrup come season.”

“I’ve never done that. Could be fun.”

“Mr.?Green?Thumb has never tapped a tree?” That surprised me. I thought he was the Dr. Doolittle of plants.

“I just know how to grow a garden. It’s not that?—”

I pressed against him, wanting my scent all over his and then kissed him deeply.

As interesting as this conversation had been, and I was enjoying it, being this close to him without tasting him wasn’t going to happen.

He kissed me back and it wasn’t until his stomach rumbled that we broke apart, both hard and needy.

“What do you say we have some lunch?” I wasn’t really asking. If my mate needed to eat, I was making sure he ate.

“I can do lunch.”

He dusted his hands off on his jeans and intertwined our fingers together, bringing my hand up to his lips and kissing it. “I will never turn down an opportunity to spend time with my mate.”

Back inside, we had sandwiches made on a flatbread I’d perfected.

Buying bread and bringing it here wasn’t too feasible.

We’d need to go to town way too often because it didn’t last long.

And with limited electricity, we didn’t have a lot of freezer space.

Flatbread took very few ingredients. Cook it on the skillet or on the grill if we wanted to. It’d become our go-to.

We were becoming homesteaders and I wasn’t mad about it. I loved being in our own little world where we could just be ourselves and enjoy each other’s company. But also, I wasn’t sure how much we should do to make this place our own.

It was nice here. I’d never deny that, but even with all the improvements we made, it didn’t quite feel like home.

Larkin felt like home, but this place… something about it didn’t fit.

Maybe it was being surrounded by packs and dens full of shifters who wanted no part of us.

Maybe it was that the people in town were put off by us.

But whatever it was, I didn’t think this was our forever home, and I hated that.

My mate had been working so hard at helping this be the place that we needed it to be.

Between the internet and the garden and all the projects we’d done to fix the cabin, this place had been transformed.

Maybe I was overthinking things. The run-in we’d had with those rogues a while back was still fresh in my memory.

They were supposed to ignore us. They did not. That wasn’t good, and the more I replayed the day, the more I increasingly felt unsafe.

It was illegal to try to extort money from a rogue, but what council member was gonna listen to a rogue about that?

Those laws were put on the books not so much to protect the rogues, but to give a sense of order and control.

That’s what the council had been about from the very beginning: control.

Although I suppose that’s true with any power structure.

My dad was all about controlling our den, and look where that got him…

usurped by someone who wanted the same thing.

There were still days I wondered how I managed to get out of there alive, why Rayne decided to let me go.

In challenges like that, the alpha’s family were often the first casualty.

But even in his cruelty, I sensed that he didn’t want to do that, to slaughter me.

He wanted power, absolutely, all of it, but he was fine with me leaving.

And maybe that’s because he knew I would.

I had no intention of going back there until I, too, had power… enough power to take over. But that desire had waned. Things were different now that I had a mate. Priorities had shifted. My goals now always revolved around him.

“That was a delicious lunch for me.”

He took my plate for me, stood up. “When I come back here, I want you completely naked.”

And into the cabin he went.

He didn’t have to ask me twice. I was stripped down to nothing before he walked back through the door.

I waited for him to step closer, thinking he was wanting to have a little after-lunch dessert, but instead, he stood in front of the door and pulled his shirt off while he kicked his shoes off, and then, far too quickly for me to enjoy the show, he too was naked.

“Ready?”

I looked him up and down. I was ready for anything, but I wasn’t really sure what he thought he was communicating.

“For?”

“Running with my wolf.” He tapped the tip of my nose.

I’d been hoping for something sexier, but at the mention of running my fox perked up. He was all about getting on all fours and romping through the woods with our mate.

“Just to be clear, we are naked to run, not to get knotty?”

He gripped the nape of my neck, pulled me close, and kissed me breathless. “I’m always down for getting a little knotty, but after we shift.”

Another hard kiss later, he jumped off the porch, shifting mid-air. You’d never be able to tell how weak and close to death he’d been when I found him. He was so vibrant, so strong, so powerful. In a lot of ways, he was more like an alpha than an omega. It was so fucking hot.

“Fine, we can shift first.” I stuck out my tongue at his beast. I doubted he cared at all, if he noticed at all. He was ready to run.

I took my fur and waited for him to take off, thinking we were in for a game of chase.

It was one of our favorites. Sometimes he would run after me, and sometimes I’d run after him, and always, in the end, we both won because we were together.

But today his wolf wanted to run side by side with my fox.

We weren’t playfully gallivanting. We were doing a perimeter run, which, as someone who’d lived in a den, was pretty common for me, but he hadn’t had that growing up. This was all instinct to him.

Then, for a split second, I worried there was a reason for this action, that something was wrong. He licked my head and booped me with his nose, and all was forgotten except the two of us running around in this land that we currently called home.