CHAPTER ONE
Caim wanted her again.
He had wanted her again as soon as he had come, but he had held back, telling himself that the strange impulse would pass.
It had not.
He found himself in a baffling position. He was stiff and he wanted to rut, but the human was asleep.
As soft as she was when she was awake, she became completely malleable in her sleep. Flesh like heated satin melded to his own, rough exterior as she curled into him.
It had been at least an hour since she had turned to burrow into his chest. His human form was very hard, and he did not understand the appeal . He held her close all the same, turning his nose into her hair to breathe in her scent.
The sugary and floral fragrances of her world were already fading. She absorbed everything around her, the autumn air, the supple doe pelt she slept beneath, and him. Beneath the smell of his seed and the musk of their sweats mingling together, Caim could already smell himself imprinted within her flesh.
It drove his wolf insane.
The baffling position he found himself in was not the fact that he could not rut. Any other time, there would have been an easy solution to that. Lotus and Sable, his favorites, were away from the den, but he could have settled for any female when he was in need of a quick release.
It was his right as their alpha. That was not to say that he simply took his pleasures where he pleased. They were always more than willing to accommodate him, even the ones who—for whatever reason—favored Asch.
Many wolves did not live in packs. They scraped out meager existences on the boundaries of pack territories, either alone or in pairs. Those with more self-control, such as Asch’s father, would sometimes try to live among humans. That always ended badly.
The wolves that chose to live in packs were the most sensible to him. Like most packs, Caim’s was nearly entirely female. The females chose to join his pack because he was powerful and capable. He could defend their hunting grounds and their den. In return for this security, they submitted to him in all things. That was the natural order of it.
And so, while it was his right to take any one of the females in his pack, while he could take them as hard and as savagely as suited him, he just did not want to.
He wanted the human again.
He wanted to be inside of her again more than he had wanted to be inside of her the first time. He would have woken her up, but he knew that she would be sore and would likely not enjoy it. He wanted her to enjoy it when he took her. He liked the sounds she made for him and the way she bucked her hips against him.
The thought of another male giving her pleasure, even Asch, made him see red. Caim was perfectly capable of providing for a human all on his own. He would protect her and any pups that she bore him, and in time she would come to see that he was all that she needed.
~~~
Mila woke up feeling like she’d been hit by a truck. Her head was pounding, her back ached, and her entire pelvic region felt like it would be out of commission for at least a month.
She sat up on the pallet of pelts, fully prepared to give Caim a piece of her mind, but he was gone and the space beside her was cold. She wasn’t going to let that disappoint her. Either that or she’d do a very good job of pretending that it didn’t.
Pushing the fur blanke t aside, she moved to stand up—and immediately fell back down.
“Shit,” she cursed. Her legs felt like jello. She looked down to examine them, squinting to see in the moonlit chamber. Dark bruises had taken shape all over her hips. Fingerprints.
“ Your body is small and frail. It is not built for the type of aggressive rutting I enjoy.”
She sighed. It wasn’t as if Caim hadn’t warned her. What the hell had she been thinking? Well, that was easy, she hadn’t been thinking. Caim had gone from pokerfaced, to vulnerable, to swelteringly sexy in a matter of minutes. He was kryptonite to her biggest flaw: the