Free Web NovelChapter 121: Chapter 121 The moment between them
_Alaric’s POV_
“Run,” my wolf suddenly said.
He didn’t say it urgently. More like a suggestion from someone who had been patient for a long time and was checking whether the window was finally open.
I thought about it.
“It’s been a long time.”
He was right that it had been too long. Months of politics and offices and managed appearances had kept him contained in a way that wasn’t sustainable indefinitely. Wolves needed the ground under their paws eventually. It wasn’t optional.
“There’s space behind the hotel,” he said. It’s a private place, right?. I can smell the tree line from here.”
“Yeah.” I agreed.
“There’s a private bush area behind the hotel,” I said to Rowena. “For shifting. I checked when we arrived.” I paused. “When did you last run?”
She looked at me. freēwebnovel.com
Something moved across her face that was honest in a way she hadn’t intended it to be.
“Three years ago.” she replied.
I nodded. “Come, then.”
She was quiet for a second. Then she picked up her room key from the chair behind us.
The bush area was exactly as I had assessed it earlier. Dense enough for real privacy, large enough to actually move in, and the ground was damp from the afternoon rain which would make it soft and good underfoot.
I turned my back while she got undressed and shifted.
I heard the sounds of it, the breath catching, the adjustment of bone and form that never became entirely comfortable to listen to even when you had done it yourself a thousand times.
With Rowena it took longer than it should have, and I understood from the sounds of it that three years was a significant absence, that her wolf was relearning the mechanics of the transition in a body that had been holding her at a distance. Her transformation would also hurt.
Then it went quiet.
I slowly turned around.
Her white wolf was standing in the space between the trees.
She was beautiful. I registered it simply and without embellishment.
White clean fur that caught what little light reached through the trees, smaller than most wolves but compact in a way that suggested the size was deceptive, and those eyes, pale and clear and completely Rowena in the way that wolves always carried something essential of their person.
She looked at me and then at the trees and then back at me with impatience.
I nodded and moved to shift too.
My wolf came forward easily. I was larger than her, significantly, the kind of size that came with the bloodline and the position, dark grey and built for distance.
He looked at Rowena’s wolf immediately.
The connection was instant and complete, not like anything I had a name for in human terms, just a recognition that went bone-deep, that said something without using language, that my wolf understood entirely even if I was still working out the edges of it.
She looked at him steadily.
Then she moved.
We ran together.
She was fast, faster than I expected and I had expected fast. She moved through the trees effortlessly.
It felt so perfect.
I stayed close to her.
Not crowding, just present for her. My wolf wanted to be in the same space she was moving through and I let him have that because there was nothing threatening about it and he had been patient for long enough.
Rowena’s wolf ran beside him without pulling away.
Through my wolf’s eyes I kept watching her. The way she moved, the confidence coming back into it as the minutes passed, the increasing ease of a body remembering something it had always known. By the time we had circled the full area twice she was running like she had never stopped.
Something about watching that happen did something to the feeling I had been managing for years.
It didn’t make it larger exactly. It made it more settled and certain. Like a thing that had been asking a question had received an answer without the question needing to be fully spoken.
I loved her. With everything in me. I knew then and there that I would do anything for this woman. I loved her dearly.
I already knew that.
We came back to the starting point when she slowed and I slowed with her and we both shifted back, which was its own process and took the time it took.
I had my back to her while she dressed.
“Could you,” she suddenly said.
I turned around to face her....
She was holding the back of her dress together with one hand, looking over her shoulder at me.
The zip.
I crossed the space between us and she turned her back to me and I reached for the zip pull at the bottom of the opening.
But suddenly, my hands which had held rooms full of Alphas to order and signed documents that moved territories and performed every kind of function under pressure without issue, were suddenly not entirely reliable.
I was aware of her skin. Fair flawless skin that made a part of me act abnormal.
It wasn’t the first time I’ve seen a woman’s back, or be this close to one, but Rowena made me nervous. She was just different.
The fact that her hair was slightly damp from the run and had fallen over one shoulder and I could see the back of her neck clearly made me adjust my pants shamefully.
Slowly, as if sensing my unease, she turned around.
She was close, the space between us was the same space it had been a few times before, but it felt more charged now.
She looked up at me and I also looked at her.
I contemplated for a while, but My wolf did not wait for me to decide.
He pushed forward instantly, and my hand found her waist.
I pulled her in gently.
And then I kissed her.
