chapter 9 Sealed

Odessa

The Northern Alpha didn't look at Grayson when he spoke. He looked at me.

It was the kind of look you give a thing you've already decided to own. His eyes were pale gold, and I felt them move over me from my hair to my shoes, and my wolf, who had been all fire and howling an hour ago, went completely still.

"Draven Hale," Grayson said, and he stood, which cost him. "You are on my land without permission."

"I am on the Goddess's land." The silver-haired man smiled, and the scar on his face pulled tight. "And you, old friend, have been hiding a Lunara in your son's bed for six years. The North has been waiting four hundred. By the treaty of the First Moon, she is ours to claim."

"I'm not anyone's to claim," I said.

It came out louder than I meant it to. The windows hummed. Twelve Alphas shifted behind him, and one of them actually took a step back.

Draven's smile widened. "There she is."

Evan's arm was around my waist before I realized he'd moved. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. The heat coming off him was enough, and under my fingers I felt his heartbeat, too fast, too uneven. Every word he didn't say was costing him.

"The old law is clear," Draven said. "A moon-blooded wolf belongs to whichever Alpha stands before the packs and names her. Unless."

"Unless what?" Josh asked from the doorway. It was the first thing he'd said in ten minutes.

Draven's gaze slid to him, amused. "Unless she is already sealed. Mated, married, and marked by her fated one before the third dawn. After that, no Alpha alive can touch her. He tilted his head. "I'll give you until then, Sorrel. I'm a generous man. Three days. Then I name her in front of every pack in the territory, and your boy dies at the full moon, and she comes north with me."

He turned. His Alphas turned with him. The doors closed behind them like the end of a song.

Nobody spoke.

Three days, Mia said hollowly.

It's a trap,Josh said. He wants us to rush it.

"It's still the truth,Grayson said, and he sounded a hundred years old. "The bond saves Evan. The seal protects Odessa. It's the only way both of them live.

I looked at Evan. He was staring at the floor, and his jaw was tight, and I knew exactly what he was about to say.

Don't," I said.

Odessa...

Don't you dare say 'you don't have to.'" My voice shook. "Don't make this noble. I'm so tired of you being noble.

His head came up, and his eyes were so blue it hurt to look at them.

"Then what do you want? he asked quietly.

I want you to ask me like you mean it. Not like a duty. Not like a rescue.

Behind us, someone quietly pulled the others out of the hall. I heard Josh's footsteps pause by the door. Then, after a long moment, they left, and I knew what it cost my brother to leave without a word.

Evan turned to face me completely.

I've loved you since you were seventeen and you laughed at my father's bad joke, he said. I didn't know it was love. I thought it was a mistake. For six years, I thought I was protecting you from myself. He swallowed. I don't want you to seal this because you have to. I want you to do it because you're sure.

I'm not sure, I said. I'm terrified.

Then we don't.

Evan. I put both my hands on his face. I've been terrified of you since I was a kid. It's never once stopped me from wanting you.

His breath caught. It sounded like the first honest thing in the room.

Ask me, I whispered.

Odessa Kade. His voice cracked. Will you be mine?

Yes, I said. And you're mine. So we're clear."

He kissed me.

Evan

I had imagined this a thousand times. In the dark, in my head, in the worst hours when I told myself it was only imagination.

None of it came close.

Her mouth was warm and certain, and when she pulled me down by the collar of my shirt, I forgot how to be careful. Her hands slid into my hair. A sound came out of her, small and surprised, and it went through me like lightning.

We made it up the stairs somehow. I don't remember the hall. I remember the door closing, and her back against it, and the way she looked up at me in the dark with her lips swollen and her chest rising fast.

Tell me to stop, I said. My voice was a wreck. Any time. You say it, and I stop.

I know. She smiled, the crooked one, the one she used to give me when she thought I couldn't see. You can't lie to me, remember? If you didn't mean it, you'd be coughing up blood."

I laughed against her throat, and she shivered.Evan.

Yes.

Take your shirt off.

I did.

Her fingers traced my ribs, slow, wondering, and I stood completely still and let her. She found the scar on my shoulder from the border war and pressed her lips to it. She found every other mark I'd earned and kissed those too. By the time her hands reached my belt, my whole body was shaking.

"Your turn, I managed.

Mm. She stepped back. Her fingers found the zipper of her dress, and she held my gaze while she slid it down. The fabric pooled at her feet, and the moonlight through my window turned her skin silver, and for a long moment I couldn't breathe.

"You're staringI am memorizing.

Color rose in her cheeks, and she pulled me to the bed.

I won't pretend I was graceful after that. I was desperate and reverent, and she was brave in ways I'd never seen. She guided my hands. She said my name like it was something holy. When I asked if she was okay, she laughed breathlessly and said, Evan, shut up and pulled me closer. The bond between us, which had been a wound for six years, opened like a door, and everything she felt poured into me. Her nerves, her joy, her want. And she felt mine. I heard her gasp when she did.

"You've been this," she whispered against my mouth, "this whole time?"

"Every day."

"Idiot."

"Yours," I said.

I stopped counting time. There was only the heat, and the dark, and her fingers tight in my hair, and the slow, perfect certainty of being exactly where I belonged. When the wave finally broke over both of us, her wolf and mine rose together and howled somewhere deep, and I felt the whole world narrow to her face above me, flushed and wet-eyed and beautiful.

Now, she breathed. Evan, now.

I lowered my head to the curve of her neck, where the pulse beat, and I marked her.

She cried out. Pain, then light, white and silver, flooding both of us. Somewhere far off, glass rattled in every window of the estate. I felt her teeth find my shoulder in answer, and my own mark bloom there, and the bond slammed shut around us like a lock turning.

Then it was quiet.

We lay tangled in the sheets, breathing hard. Her head was on my chest, and my heartbeat under her ear was steady, strong, completely mine. No pain. No blood. The sickness I'd carried for days was just gone.

Evan Odessa said sleepily.Yes, little wolf.

Say something you wouldn't have been able to say a week ago.

I thought about it. Then I smiled into her hair.

"I'm not afraid anymore

Liar, she murmured, and kissed my chest. And I didn't cough, because it wasn't.

Outside, a single wolf howled in the north, long and low and furious.

Draven Hale had heard it too.