Of Wings and Wolves

fourteen


Night fell quickly in the forest. The trees were dense enough in some places that she had to backtrack to find her way around them, and it became dark for hours before the sun disappeared completely.

At first, she tracked time by the passage of the archer constellation through the gaps in the trees, just as she always did. But eventually, the branches grew too thick for that, too, and all she could do was run.

She reached the ravine where she had found the bear with Abram and raced along the edge. It was a deep gash in the earth that only grew deeper as she moved away from the territory she recognized. There was no way across but through.

Summer jumped carefully down the rocks, and she kept alert for the scent of wildlife as she lapped at a trickle of water dribbling into the gorge. The animals around her cottage knew better than to mess with her, but this was unfamiliar territory. She knew nothing here.

Climbing out of the other side was much harder, and by the time she hit the hills, night turned into day.

She ran and ran.

The sun moved across the sky. Morning, noon, evening. Clouds gathered. Rain began to fall again. The hills were endless.

She found Wildwood—a bigger city than Hazel Cove, and totally foreign to her. She could barely make out its skyline through the rain, but there was one tower that stood above the others. She had seen pictures of Adamson Tower on his website. The tower was real. Wildwood was real.

Summer ran again with new energy.

When the second night arrived, Summer stopped in the mountains for a nap. It was brief and restless, no more than an hour, and tormented by nightmares. As soon as she woke up, she was running again, cutting through a valley and splashing along a river.

The slopes were steep going down the other side of the mountains. There was more forest waiting for her when she reached the foothills. Unfamiliar trees. Summer had to be getting somewhere.

But when she stumbled out of the forest into civilization again, she was standing near The Cracked Teacup—the coffee shop in Hazel Cove.

Summer froze in the shadows of the alley, caught between forest and town.

No way.

People stood outside the shop to talk about their classes at MU. She even spotted Yolanda, the teacher’s assistant.

How was it possible? Had she gotten turned around?

She must have gone the wrong way.

Summer whirled and ran back into the trees before someone spotted her.

She didn’t take any shortcuts through the mountains this time. She climbed the steepest trails she could find, and when those vanished, she scrambled up the cliffs.

The rocks crumbled beneath her paws, slipping and sliding and holding her back. But she dug her claws in. She wouldn’t stop until she reached the top.

And then Summer hit the highest peak.

Her lungs heaved for breath as she studied the world around her. Wildwood was on one side, a distant line of sparkling buildings. Hazel Cove was on the other, nestled against the side of Lake Ast’s shining waters. Everything was bathed in warm, golden light from the setting sun. There was curve to the ground—almost as though her mountain range was nothing more than a ridge on a small sphere.

The exhaustion of running for two days caught up with her, and Summer collapsed.

“Do you have your answers?”

Nash stood nearby, arms folded and features composed. He wore a charcoal gray suit without a jacket. His hair fluttered in the wind.

Summer was tempted to remain in her wolf skin. She didn’t have to talk to him as long as she didn’t have lips. But her emotions were too big and too human for her to remain a beast, and her skin rippled as she changed.

When her muzzle vanished into her face and her hair grew back, there were tears on her cheeks. Summer couldn’t even find the energy to be humiliated by her nudity.

“Gran never told me,” she said.

“That’s because she wanted you to be happy.” Nash offered a bundle of clothes to her. It was a tank top the color of fresh spring grass, denim shorts, and even a pair of underwear. “Margaret sends her regards.”

Summer gave a weak smile and pulled the shirt over her head. She didn’t look at Nash as she stepped into the panties, but she could feel him watching her. His gaze was so hot that she thought it might burn permanent scars onto her skin. “What about the sun? The stars?” she asked.

“They are illusions meant to comfort the mortals that dwell here,” Nash said. “I can show you.”

He took a step toward Summer, but she held her hands up to stop him. “Don’t touch me. How can you expect me to be okay with this? You’re saying that everything I’ve always known is a lie! This is supposed to be my home.”

But the words fell flat. He was right. It wasn’t a home—it was a prison.

A tear streaked down her cheek. “I can’t escape this forest, can I? I will never escape this forest.”

Nash finally wrapped his arms around her, and she sank into his embrace, shutting her eyes to savor the warmth of his body. Even his comforting gestures stirred a reaction deep within her, as if his hands had strayed much lower than her back.

“You will escape,” he said.

“But I ran all day, Nash. It just loops back around.”

“There is still a place beyond this world. We only have to find the way there.” He tipped her head back with a knuckle under her chin. His face blurred in her teary vision. “Would you like to see more?”

Summer could only nod.

Nash removed his shirt. The fading sunlight lit the ridges and valleys of his muscles with a warm glow, and she had the mental image of that broad chest pressed against hers, her fingers digging into his arms. Even when it felt like her life was over, Nash made her blood burn.

He rolled his shoulders out and breathed a sigh. The wings didn’t seem to appear so much as blossom, like flower petals opening to the sun. The tips appeared over his shoulder blades and stretched wider and wider. Fully extended, his wings dwarfed them both, and the light was more brilliant than the sun.

She had seen dozens of hawks in her life and been awed by their grace. Shirtless and winged, Nash was far more impressive. His pectorals were covered in a fine brush of brown hair, almost like down.

“Are they…real?” Summer asked, wanting to touch the feathers, but too afraid to ask.

“They are indeed part of my physical form, if that’s what you’re asking.”

With a flex of the muscles in his chest, the light dimmed until she could see real feathers. Some were as big as her forearm, and the smallest were the size of her thumb. Some were white shot through with gray, but where they grew dense near his shoulders, they turned a darker shade of gold. She walked around him so that she could see where they attached to his back. They were definitely as much of a part of his body as one of his arms.

She reached out to place a hand between his shoulder blades. Summer wanted to bury her face in his back and breathe his musky, masculine scent. But she forced herself to circle around him again.

“Where do they go when they’re hiding?” Summer asked.

“They’re always there,” Nash said.

“But you can wear shirts.”

He smirked. “They hide well.” He pulled her against his chest, and she melted into him, locking her hands at the back of his neck.

“I think you have a sense of humor, Nash,” Summer said. “A very well-hidden one.”

He dipped his head and his lips were just centimeters away from hers. His breath smelled like s’mores and campfires, like chocolate rolling down her throat. “If you tell anyone, you’re fired. Now hold tight.”

Nash’s wings pumped, and he lifted them both into the sky.

A tiny shriek escaped her before she caught herself. She was a wolf, a beast of the earth, and it felt wrong to watch the ground falling away. Her every instinct cried out for her to get back to the safety of the forest.

Her arms tightened around him, fingers digging into his shoulders. The muscles tensed and released as his wings moved. “It’s okay,” he murmured into her ear. “I won’t drop you.”

Summer couldn’t look. She buried her face in his neck, expecting to fall at any moment.

But the fall never came.

She felt weightless, as though drifting in the shallows of Lake Ast. Water sprinkled against her skin in gusts, cool and pleasant. And Nash’s arms remained secure around her body. After a few minutes of hiding her face without anything happening, Summer peeked.

Hazel Cove was far below them, and the clouds just above. Nash held her vertically, their legs tangled together, and it seemed to take no effort to remain aloft. His knee slipped between her thighs. The way his slacks rubbed against her bare skin almost made her forget that they were flying.

“More magic?” she asked, forehead pressed against his cheek.

“A unique kind of physics,” he said. “I won’t let you fall.”

He folded his wings behind him, and they drifted toward the lake, slowly at first. Their speed increased as the waters grew in her vision. All of the breath rushed out of her lungs as they plummeted.

At the last moment, Nash snapped his wings wide, catching the air and stopping their descent. They skimmed just a few feet above the surface of the lake, and Summer’s gasp turned to a giggle as a cresting wave splashed her bare legs.

They soared over the lake, looped around the beach, and climbed again.

Summer did trust that he wouldn’t drop her. There was no fear in her. No fear of being seen, no fear of injury, no fear of death. Only pure joy. It bubbled out of her chest in a laugh.

She closed her eyes and faced the wind as they flew.

It was like being free.

“It gets better,” Nash said.

They rushed toward the clouds.

She knew what would come once they reached too high of an elevation: the atmosphere would thin, the air would grow cold, and the curve of the earth would become more pronounced beneath them. She had learned these things in her science classes, and knew it had to be true.

Yet as they rose, the air grew thicker, warmer, denser, like slipping into a bath. Moist wind splashed over her cheeks as they entered the haze of clouds.

They erupted into clear night on the other side.

The stars were clustered above them like shimmering gems, and as Nash lifted them higher, she was shocked to see that the stars were almost within reach. They glowed with internal light as they blanketed the sky. Their diamond shimmer was cyan, navy, pink—a vibrating rainbow.

Part of her wanted to tell Nash to stop. Take her back down and let her keep believing that the world was real. But she couldn’t find the strength to speak.

Another pump of his wings, and they were among the stars.

Each one was smaller than her fist, almost like the colorful river rocks she had found in the brook near her cottage. The nearest of them seemed to sing in a low hum.

Nash’s arms relaxed around her, and she turned in his grip so that her back was to his chest. His hips pressed against her. Normally, her brain would have prioritized that sensation above everything else, but she had found one thing even more distracting than his body. “This isn’t possible,” she whispered.

“No?” he asked as they drifted closer.

Summer tapped a finger against a star. It chimed softly, and waves of light spilled through the air like ripples on a pond. It stroked over her hand, her arm, and dissipated in smoky lines.

She tapped another, and another. The second made a sharp sound that almost hurt to hear. The third was deep and melancholy. And then they floated toward a cluster, and she realized that it was the archer that she always used to track the time as a wolf.

Summer ran her fingers over each star. The music that spilled forth vibrated up her fingertips, into her shoulders, knotted in her heart. The tones were in perfect harmony.

“It’s so beautiful,” she whispered.

Nash’s arms tightened around her as he buried his face in her hair. She could feel the warmth of his breath as he smelled her. “Everything angels craft is beautiful, in a way. But even though these look like stars from a distance, they are just another part of the bars that contain Leliel’s prison. We can go no further than this.”

She dropped her hand. “Where’s the sun?”

“It hides at night,” Nash said. “Magic.”

“Magic,” Summer repeated.

She didn’t want to play with the stars anymore. Not when Nash sounded so sad. She turned and wrapped her arms around his neck again.

They swayed gently in the darkness for several long minutes, bathed in the soft hum of the stars and the warmth of the air.

And then they began to fall slowly, so slowly, and sank into the clouds.



Everything felt different when Summer and Nash landed on the mountain again. The world was tiny and insignificant. Hazel Cove was nothing more than dots of light in the darkness. The surrounding forest wasn’t her home—it was no more than a dream.

But for now, it wasn’t a dream she was willing to leave.

She spilled to the grass, unable to stand. The view from the mountain was amazing, but she didn’t care about the valley spreading beneath her, the swaying trees, the silver river snaking through the foothills, or even the clouds above and the stars that peered through. Summer only had eyes for Nash.

He rested on his elbow beside her, and she traced the line of his rippling arms up to his shoulders, his throat, his square jaw, the dimpled chin. Summer was convinced that there was no way she would ever get used to Nash’s beauty. Even the five o’clock shadow on his cheekbones and the tiny scar on his forehead only seemed to exist to accentuate his perfection.

“Am I dreaming?” she whispered.

“Can you feel this?” One of his fingers stroked between two of hers, drawing a seductive pattern from fingertip to fingertip. “And this?” He brushed his lips over the pulse point on the inside of her wrist.

She couldn’t nod this time, so she responded by reaching back to tangle her hand in his hair. His hand trailed down her elbow to her side. Nash stroked her from shoulder blade to hip, detouring with a swirl over every rib, and letting a finger dip briefly into her navel before it finally stopped at the hem of her shorts.

“Could you feel that? Was that real, or a dream?” Nash murmured.

Summer used her grip on his hair to pull him down. “I don’t know what’s real anymore. Everything I’ve known is a lie.”

“Not everything…” His warm breaths puffed over the juncture of her shoulder and neck. Summer’s eyes fell closed. “I know dreams, Summer. I’ve lived for such a very long time, but it’s as though I walked through a dark dream. But now…I’m awake.” He kissed the inside of her wrist again. His lips tickled against the soft skin. “You have woken me.”

“But I’m nothing special,” Summer said.

His eyes flashed. “You will never say that again. Understand?”

She bit her bottom lip and nodded.

“It should not be so shocking for us to go to the other side,” he went on, laying a soft kiss on her shoulder. “Though it has been twenty years since you and your brother came to this Haven, time flows differently on Earth. Only a week has passed as far as your parents are concerned. It will be the same world your grandmother left behind.”

“You mean, they’re still young,” Summer said.

“Indeed. Furthermore, this Haven was born of Earth, and they are closely tied in many ways. The culture and technology bleed over. When we explore Earth, I suspect you will be pleasantly surprised to find it is very similar to the town in which you grew up.”

“When we explore Earth?”

“Of course, you will come with me.” His gaze heated as he traced the line of her jaw with his thumb. “There is an entire world for us to discover. Vast cities and wildernesses. An ocean that you cannot imagine. And perhaps together we can chase the moon.” A flash of doubt crossed his features, but only a flash. “If you would want to come with me.”

“You’re not going to threaten to fire me if I don’t go?” she asked, her hand creeping to the back of his neck.

“Not this time. I want to have you, Summer, but only if you wish to have me, too.”

Did he have any clue how hard it was to breathe when he talked like that? Her heart beat like a trapped animal. The blood coursing through her veins was hot. And she felt like she was falling into the expanse of his eyes, vast and eternal.

Did she want to have him? It felt silly that he even had to ask.

“Of course,” she said, pulling him to her.

Summer had only kissed a couple of guys before, aside from Sir Lumpy’s persistent attempts to love on her face, and the experiences hadn’t been remarkable.

This kiss left all others in the dust.

Lips and tongue tangled, drawing Summer’s breath away. She clung to him, struggling to close whatever minute gaps were left between their bodies. He was cool in comparison, and far from frantic. Like he had all the time in the world.

When they finally broke away, Summer had to struggle to remember to breathe on her own. His face filled her vision. She could see herself reflected in his eyes, and she thought that there was nowhere else she would rather be.

Summer could no longer resist the allure of his wings. She ran her fingers through his feathers, savoring the way that the soft tufts felt against her skin. They were thicker toward his back, but softer, too, almost more like fur. Her fingers found their way to the outer edges of his wing, where the feathers were longer and the ribs were firm.

“They’re amazing,” she whispered.

The wings circled around her like a veil, walling them off from the rest of the world until there was nothing but their bodies and the space between them.

He stroked her body as he kissed her again, tongues warring gently with one another. His hand slipped down her midriff. It tickled her abs, and she had to pull away to giggle. She couldn’t help it.

Amusement sparked in Nash’s eyes. “Ticklish?” he asked.

“No.” It was a lie, of course, but Summer had a brother, and she knew better than to admit such a vulnerability. But his fingers only skimmed higher, trailing to the side of her breast, and that tickled, too. She pulled her arm to her side. “Hey!”

“I like it when you writhe,” he said, lips dropping to her jaw. He nibbled gently at the soft skin of her neck. The hard edge of teeth made her head swim. His hand pushed the hem of her shirt over her breast, exposing her to the cool night air.

“There are better ways to do that,” Summer said.

“Yes,” Nash said, “there are.” And then he sucked her nipple into his mouth, hot and wet, and she felt him gently bite the flesh.

His cool fingers slipped underneath her shorts, skimming the soft, smooth skin below her belly button. He was careful and slow, and Summer hated it. She grabbed his wrist and pushed him lower. His hand slipped between her legs.

Nash’s index finger drew patterns on the outside of her panties, drawing moans from Summer’s throat. Her hand seized against the back of his head. “Better ways indeed,” he said. That smirk was all devil, even when his face was framed with the arch of his wings.

She lifted her hips, allowing him to push the shorts down. She wasn’t embarrassed anymore. The way he looked at her flooded every inch of her body with heat.

When she locked her leg around his hip and pulled his weight on top of her, she was rewarded with a satisfying groan, a sound that was much more man than angel. Summer wanted to find all the ways she could get him to make noises like that. She wasn’t going to stop until she found them.

His wings shielded them from the rest of the world, forming a canopy of feathers. The night was dark, and they were alone, but all Summer knew was light.