Authors: Sylvia Frost
B
el didn’t believe it
.
Even as she saw the wolf twist and turn, its bones lengthening like they were made of Silly Putty, skin replacing fur. Even after there was no denying that the beautifully muscled, feral-looking man in front of her was Samson.
“This,” Bel said, pointing at Samson so hard she wondered if she might accidentally trigger some kind of magic spell, “isn’t happening.”
“Isabella,” he said, reaching out, pleading.
Bel kept herself from looking down. “No. You’re extinct.”
His hand fell to his waist and he tried to smile at her, but she could see fear in his eyes. “Now you understand why I didn’t want you writing my biography.”
“But werewolves can’t… werewolves have…“ Why were words, the one tool she was most comfortable with, failing her when she needed them the most?
“Mates,” he said softly.
Oh, God
. Bel’s hand flew to the small of her back. The patch of fur there was hot and pulsing, even through her coat. “So that’s my — “
“Your mate mark, yes.”
It should’ve been a relief. But it wasn’t. Bel wrote stories; she didn’t participate in them! In fact, the whole reason she wrote, the whole reason anybody wrote, was to take the monster and make it manageable. To play pretend. It wasn’t supposed to be real.
This isn’t what I wanted.
“Christ Almighty.” Bel’s hand flew away from her back, as if it had burned her. “I know the stories. But what does it mean?”
“It means that I’ll do anything to protect you. That I love you. And that one day, I hope you’ll bear my children.”
Bel gasped. Samson had said his declaration so plainly, like his love for her was just a fact. Her mate mark burned even hotter, her blood singing with desire. But her heart felt cold.
Samson must’ve noticed, because he didn’t move any closer. “It will take time for you to process your own feelings, I know.”
“My feelings? You lied to me for three months! You just told me you’re a werewolf,” Bel mumbled through her teeth. They would start to chatter soon. While she had thrown on a coat, her pants were too thin for the weather. “I need to go home.”
Mud squelched underneath Samson’s feet as he stepped toward her. “Then let’s take you home. You can ride me.”
“R-ride you?”
“There are some upsides to being a werewolf,” he said. Bel got the sense it was supposed to be a joke, but he wasn’t smiling, and she was a million miles away from laughing.
“There’s no way—”
He ignored her worries, and instead brought one of his calloused hands to her chin, tilting it upwards. By the time she realized what he was doing it was too late; she was caught in his orbit.
“Bel,” he whispered. It was the first time he had ever called her by her nickname.
Bel just stared, decoding the secrets of the face she only now recognized. The slight slant of his gold-flecked eyes, the wideness of his mouth, the wiriness of his beard. She could see the beast in him. His monster had a name. Werewolf.
But it was more than that. As his right hand slipped away from her chin down to the side of her arm, sending a warm flip of pleasure rippling through her, she realized he was holding her like she was a snowflake melting too quickly. Like he knew he had to let her go. Like he had always known.
“Please, let me take you home,” he said.
His breath was warm against her cheek, and smelled like firewood, whiskey and high summer. She knew which home he meant, and she knew that if she went back to his glorious mansion in the woods, she might never be able to leave again. Their bond would ensure it.
She managed to shake her head and say, “I can’t, Samson.”
He didn’t ask why, but his grip did stiffen. “It’s not safe out here, and with the cold -- ”
“No, I mean I can’t go home with you. I need time to think.”
Her heart clenched as she waited for his response, for him to say too bad, she was his now. She knew how mating worked; being apart would be physically painful for both of them.
But, eventually, he simply nodded and turned away.
B
el had started walking back
to her father’s house when a fancy black car pulled up. It was his brother, Rex. He said nothing as he drove her home, but she got the sense that he was far from happy. Unhappiness was soon a feeling Bel became well acquainted with.
With every mile farther away from Samson, the pain in her chest increased. Even after her father had welcomed her back with open arms, she couldn’t muster a smile. As days turned into weeks, it only got worse. But how could she go back to Samson after everything that had happened?
All that considered, it was no surprise that she hadn’t noticed Christmas had arrived until her father was putting up the tree. She watched him work from her position on the couch, staring at the grilled cheese sandwich he had made her.
“You going to come help?” he asked as he threaded a string of popcorn through the branches.
“No,” Bel said listlessly.
“No?” her father asked. “You’ve been sitting there for an awful long time.”
Bel ignored him.
“Bel?” Her father stepped down from the footstool – he was too short to reach the top branches without it – and faced her.
“Mm?”
“I’m worried about you,” he said, holding up the string of popcorn like a peace offering.
“I’m fine.” Bel took a bite of the grilled cheese. It tasted papery in her mouth. She swallowed without smiling. “Delicious.”
His bushy eyebrows furrowed, and he waddled over to sit on the arm of the couch. “You haven’t talked much about your publishing contract, and I haven’t seen you do any writing. Is everything okay with that?”
Bel scowled. “Just as okay as your lawsuit issues, Dad.”
His pockmarked face went suddenly white. “Oh, no.”
Bel put down her grilled cheese. “Yeah, I know about that.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I’ve already taken care of it.” Bel held up a hand.
His face contorted with nervousness. “You didn’t pay him?”
Bel barked a laugh. “God, no. There’s no way that rose was really worth a million and a half dollars, anyway.”
Her dad frowned. “So he was scamming me?”
His mentioning scamming and Samson in the same sentence made Bel’s heart twist. Had it been a scam? Her feelings? Was it all just some sick magic trick? But no it was real. Maybe that was worse. She shook her head. “I don’t know, Dad.”
“Well, I suppose I should say thank you, honey.” Her father moved to kiss the top of her head, but Bel withdrew.
“Just tell me one thing. Why did you go there in the first place?”
Her dad blushed, a trademark of the Booksmore family. “Well, it was silly.”
Bel sat up, her pain fading in the face of her curiosity. “What?”
“I was looking for signatures for a wolf hunting petition.”
Bel’s eyes widened. That was why Samson had pressed the lawsuit. Her father had come to his door, asking him to a sign a piece of paper that would allow humans to attack his brother, Luther. But something still didn’t add up.
“But you’re an accountant, Dad, not a farmer,” Bel said.
He smothered his face with his fingers, embarrassed. “There’s this farmer in town, Anabella Gaston. I was having trouble getting up the courage to ask her out. I thought if I did something nice for her, she’d be more likely to say yes.”
“Was she?”
Her father glanced at her ruefully, his big lips pursed. “No. Not a bit. When I told her what I’d done, she told me that she could handle her own animals, thank you very much, and that the hunters would probably accidentally kill even more of her livestock.”
Bel laughed for real this time, glad for the emotion piercing the numbness that had swallowed her heart.
Her dad joined in. “Thankfully, she came around a few weeks later and told me she’d forgive me if I took her out for dinner at Lin’s Wok Grill. She said it’s silly to punish people for the images they have you not matching the way you really are.” His smile split his whole face open, revealing a tender happiness Bel hadn’t seen on him since her mother had died. Since they had first moved to Crystal Creek. He deserved that happiness more than anyone else she could think of, even if he was an idiot.
He looked how she had felt when she’d put on the yellow dress and made dinner for Samson. When she still trusted him.
She wanted that back, she realized. She wanted it to be real. And she knew what she had to do.
S
amson was beyond sadness
, beyond rage, beyond anything but weakness and pain. He was lying on the couch in the living room, trying his best not to move. He only hoped that the symptoms of their mate bond weren’t as physical for her.
“I don’t know why we aren’t tracking her down,” said Rex, his voice drifting in from the kitchen. “It’s not as if he’s in any state to stop us.”
“No,” Samson said weakly. “I said no.”
“He has to figure this stuff out on his own, Rex,” said Luther, who was probably rifling through the refrigerator. Again. He hadn’t stopped eating and doing pushups. Having lost his once extreme muscles, Luther was determined to get them back as soon as possible.
“Not if figuring it out will kill him. I say—“
Before Rex could finish, the doorbell rang.
Samson sat up, fighting through the pain. His muscles loosened and the pounding in his head quieted.
Rex drifted through the kitchen door, walking with that annoying quiet grace of his. Samson was tired of Rex running things as he had in the week since Isabella had left. That alone gave him energy enough to stand up from the couch.
Rex paused and raised an eyebrow his way. “You’re up?”
“I’ll answer the door,” Samson grunted.
“You might want to button your shirt first.”
Samson waved Rex away and stumbled to the door. Blinking at the glare of the winter sun, he opened it blearily and gave a groaning, “Hello.”
“Hi.”
Instantly, all of Samson’s senses were at attention. He didn’t need to see the owner of the voice to know who it was. He was assaulted by her at every turn. The smell of her was strong, like she hadn’t taken a shower in a couple of days, but sweet. He wanted to bury his face in her chest, cradle her to him and never let her go.
His Isabella. His Bel.
He knew he should say something, but he could think of nothing that would express the magnitude of his relief at her appearance.
“So,” Bel began, “Merry Christmas.”
She looked uncomfortable as she tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. There were deep purple bags underneath her eyes, and her normally enticing skin looked sallow. Samson had never seen anything more beautiful in his life. He doubted he ever would again. Even if she stayed with him forever, there would never be anything better than this moment.
When it became clear that he wasn’t yet capable of speech, she continued, “I brought you a present.” From behind her back, she pulled out a book. “You asked me if I would do the ending differently now.”
With shaking hands, Samson took the book from Bel, but he didn’t open it. He was afraid that if he looked away, she’d be gone when he turned back.
Her shoulders almost touched her ears as she shrugged them. “I thought that now that I know a werewolf first hand, I should rewrite it.” She twirled a strand of hair around her thumb. “This won’t be the official version mind you. I still have to extend the series as it’s published if I’m going to get another shot with a publisher. But for us I thought maybe we could have our own special ending.”
Samson didn’t let her finish. He took her in his arms, squeezing her so tightly that she let out a startled yelp. His wolf rejuvenated, finally rising to enough attention to realize that they were wasting valuable seconds. He could’ve been kissing her.
The book fell to the floor, pages ruffling in the coming winter’s breeze. Out of the corner of his eye he caught the last page and saw that the type had been crossed out and replaced with hastily scribbled pencil marks.
“Yes,” he growled into her mouth.
“Yes, what?” Bel mumbled, barely able to speak around the kiss.
“Yes, I’ll keep you.” Again he kept her from completing her thought, this time by pressing a line of kisses down her neck. Before she could protest further, he swept her off her feet and into his arms, cradling her body against his chest.
“What are you doing?” Bel said through her laughter.
He stroked her hair and kicked in the door to his house with a bang. On the other side were Rex and Luther. Luther was midway through a pull-up using the doorframe; he dropped to the floor, landing in a predatory crouch.
Rex was on his cellphone, speaking with some New York investing firm, more than likely, and gave only the fringe of a smile and a knowing nod.
Bel waved at them all tentatively, but Samson wasn’t going to give her time to say hello. She wasn’t there for them. She was his now.
Forever.
W
ow
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Phew! That was a lot. Now that you’ve read all of that, I’ve got one more special treat just for you. On Feb 24th, I’m releasing a sexy shifter
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.
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