The Last Lycan

Chapter 7 - The Gamma

Heather held her hand out to me, balancing the roll of tape, scissors and comb in the clutch of her other hand. I could barely look her in the eye after what had happened in her bedroom. The heat of her palm against my wrist triggered every ghostly sensation of her fingers tracing my chest, my abdomen and lower.

I snatched my arm backwards, not that it did much good against her fierce grip. My frustrations were more with myself, that my heart fawned at her every affection, than the fire-haired she-wolf herself.

(“Is this seriously going to be a fight as well?”) She raised her brow, staring me down and challenging me to wrestle out of her clutches.

‘I do like it when she challenges us.’ Kirill’s sour mood lifted with the return of Heather’s full attention. ‘When are you going to fight her? I want to see how we fair against her strength.’

‘Stop trying to get me to fight my mate!’

What was it with my wolf and this particular fixation?

He chuckled, sounding mighty smug in himself. ‘At least you’re addressing her as your mate now.’

Any mental quip I could have formed died in the same breath, and I wasn’t entirely sure if my actual mouth was hanging open.

I called her ‘my mate’ and did it with such natural ease that I would never have realised without Kirill’s teasing. He tossed the word around at every given opportunity, overcoming his misgivings within minutes of being in Heather’s presence. And while I acknowledged there was a bond connecting us, I had never once called her ‘my mate’, not to myself. Trust was a luxury I hadn’t been able to afford for six years, and time without it hadn’t made me forget its price or that the cost only ever rose.

But each time Heather’s skin brushed against mine, or she explored where no other had touched, the cost blurred into the background, leaving only her.

‘Careful, loaf. She’s coming for you with those dangerous implements again.’

Between the distraction of my wolf’s teasing glee and a sudden tingling caress of my knuckles, I flinched, jolting out of my internal admission. The scissors and comb were now on the table, and instead of grasping my wrist in a vice hold, her grip had softened, feathering the back of my hand with her fingertips. A force drew my gaze to hers, to the endless golden honey pools of her eyes, the first time I had been able to hold them without flushing in embarrassed heat since our kiss had led to other things.

(“Your head back out of the clouds?”) Her wide smile lit up every contour of her face as she kept my gaze and gently tugged me to stand. (“My wolf drives me to distraction too, especially about you.”) She looped the thin tape over my shoulders and under my arms, gliding around my chest and raising my pulse to the heavens once again. (“Hellebore is tied between calling you an asshole and wanting to b***h slap your face, or still calling you an asshole and wanting to ride your face. She’s always been a little aggressive, but you seem to bring out a special kind of aggressive.”)

The white strip she used was akin to the one my mother used to use to make my clothing when I was a boy. Was she making me clothes?

Great. Another reason for me to be in debt to her kindness.

If I thought my pulse rate soared when she measured my chest, it damn near stopped when she lowered herself to her knees and slid the tape around my waist, purposely taking more time than necessary.

Her cheek brushed my bare stomach, igniting a tingling heat that rapidly diverted my blood flow elsewhere. The only facet I could focus on was the pounding in my ears as my body wound itself tighter and more rigid than a knot.

‘It’s not the only thing rigid.’ Kirill was beside himself with laughter.

It didn’t help that he flashed me a plethora of lewd fantasies he wanted ‘if only he could control my dumb human form’, as he put it. I was forever thankful he couldn’t, and I willed my mind to think about anything else…

… And not Heather playing with the waistband of my shorts.

A calm ocean current lapping around me…

… Just like her hands, which I would grasp by the wrist and hold above her head.

Plain dirt under my feet…

… Or her soft neck, cushioned under my palms, sliding to cup her jaw, and my thumbs running over her full cheeks.

Glazed-over dead fish eyes…

‘These personal mantras don’t seem to be distracting you very much.’

‘No thanks to you!’ I yelled back.

Kirill was most amused by the inner ramblings I was repeating to divert my thoughts to literally anything other than the basal desires he was forcing upon me.

I jerked out of my head yet again at the sensation of a caress along the entire length of my leg, right to my groin. Any mantra I had chanted was rendered pointless, and the loud pounding in my ears was back with a vengeance, among other things.

(“You’re so jumpy,”) Heather chuckled, holding my gaze as she rose to her full height and walked her fingers up my chest to flick the tip of my nose. (“Especially after I’ve already seen and fondled all of you. It’s not as though he was hanging in the way.”)

Her palm skimmed to the middle of my stomach and gently pushed me backwards, colliding me with the chair she had pulled me from. She took the scissors and comb, pecking my lips out of nowhere when she caught the agitation written across my face.

(“You can fight it all you want, but you clearly need someone to look after you a little.”) She leaned over me, dragging the comb through the bushy whiskers on my jaw. (“I’m not going to take much off the beard because I love the whole Kurt Cobain look you have going, but it’s getting kinda hoboish.”)

I was back to looking anywhere except at Heather, a hard feat due to her closeness and the faint retreating sparks of her taste on my lips. Those lips of hers were so near that there was little more than breath between us, and there was certainly no escape from the fiery scent that swirled around her, exacerbated by the sealed room.

(“There. All done.”) She brushed her fingers along my jaw and chest to wipe the loose-cut hair from me, pausing when our eyes silently met once more. (“Damn, I wish I knew what your scent was made of.”)

The tip of her finger traced the small of my throat, where my neck met my shoulder, and her face lowered, slowing time as I knew it. She was nearing my marking site, where a mate would lay their claim on their intended and seal their wolves’ souls together forever. Not only did she not have my permission – I hadn’t even gifted her my scent – I was nowhere near prepared for another one of these four-legged wolves to leave their permanent scar on me again.

“No!” I spoke in her tongue, yanking my body back and awkwardly stumbling from the chair to put the space I needed between us.

Heather’s figure teetered like a slab of rock, bewildered and caught off guard as the spell cast dissipated.

“Konstantin…” She tried to approach, but stopped when I took two steps back. (“I wasn’t going to mark you. Goddess above, I would never do that without your say-so. It’s just… your scent makes me all weird…”) Her arms flailed in the air, but I stared back at her with a blank face, not understanding a word she was saying except venting frustration. (“f**k it all! The sooner Aurora can get here with that damned Russian phrasebook and some clothes that will fit you, the better.”)

Huffing and folding her arms, she gazed at the round contraption with moving pointers on the wall. (“She mind-linked she’d be a couple of hours. I don’t think she believed your measurements were real; that’ll be a fun surprise for her when she gets here.”) A loud ding punctuated the tense air, ringing from somewhere past the kitchen. (“All right, look. You can be brooding and wary all you want, but I’ve got s**t to do, and I’d appreciate some help.”)

She curled a finger in my direction, holding out her hand in expectation of me taking it.

‘You know what would be a fun change of pace?’ Kirill nudged at the confines of our shared consciousness, his frustrations mirroring our mate’s. ‘If you would stop being a mudak (asshole) and actually enjoy the company of our pretty she-wolf, instead of running away at every display of affection. I’m starting to think it has less to do with four-legged wolves can’t be trusted and more to do with I’m a hopeless virgin and don’t know what to do with a woman.’

‘Oh, and you do?’

‘No. However, I’m enthusiastic to learn.’ He swished his tail. ‘That’s the difference between us, loaf.’

If it would get him to shut up, I would give in, but I wasn’t taking Heather’s hand; the world began to blur when her skin touched mine.

I followed her through the bead curtain, doing my best to ignore the disappointment radiating from her features when her outstretched arm was reluctantly rebuffed. She led me through the kitchen to a small room I hadn’t seen before, containing only a worktop and a pair of large white cubes – more machines to learn the function of.

She opened the round door and pulled out streams of damp fabric, which I recognised. It was all my missing clothing, smelling of soap and mild flowers. Did these machines clean clothes automatically? In my home, they had to be churned by hand and wrung out.

(“You hold the laundry; I’ll hang it to dry. I want to make use of the coastal breeze for today.”) She grabbed a small pouch and pulled me along behind her, my arms filled with my wet garments.

As she pegged the items I held onto along a drying line, I took a closer look at the garden surrounding her home. Raised beds lined most of the area, with tiny sprouts poking up through the fresh soil. A few of the vines around the wicker obelisks were in flower, emitting a sweet aroma – not that it could compete with Heather’s spiced ember scent. The hens were contained in the wire run at the end of the garden, scratching and cooing merrily with what remained of their breakfast, and protected by a fence around the yard. It would have to be a daring wild animal that would approach with the permeating smell of shifters all around.

The cool air didn’t bother me much against my bare torso. I lived through harsher springs than this in Fire Mountain. I continued to follow her as she directed, holding the basket of vegetables as she dug them from the soil or cut their leafy greens from the surface.

A low rumble from a large vehicle sounded, stopping Heather mid-shovel in a crop of potatoes. She waved high in the air at the woman exiting, so I gathered it wasn’t an unwelcome visitor.

(“Aurora! Waqaa (hello)”) Heather called out, dropping the wide fork and dusting her hands free of soil.

(“Waqaa. I got your stuff. Where’s this giant rogue everyone’s talking abo—”)

The woman’s words fell short when I ambled up behind Heather, still carrying the basket of her unearthed crops.

(“This is Konstantin, my mate.”) Heather swept her arm towards me, so I assumed she was making an introduction. (“Konstantin, this is Aurora Moses, the Gamma of Tundra River pack.”)