body lifting from the seat as we rode over bumpy ground. I could feel the pressure inside of me building and building, but I was no longer in control of my desire.
“Alekk,” I moaned, feeling the wave rise up inside of me. He said nothing, only sucked hard at the side of my neck, his tongue moving against my skin as his fingers slid over and into me faster, faster. Then I was shaking against him, my back arched back, and I could feel it—
—oh God, no, don’t shift—
My wolf was coming out, and I couldn’t control it. As my body slipped and began to shift, I felt the explosion come through me and I rode the wave of my orgasm as it crashed though me. I cried aloud, my body shivering and trembling as his fingers filled me and I clenched around him tightly in spasm after spasm.
“Kinaya .”
I opened my eyes and snapped back to human form. I hadn’t shifted. I wouldn’t. But the flash had come through me, the flash that could only mean one thing.
The Calling.
“Prince! Sir!”
Alekk’s head snapped to the side, and I looked over to see a large wolf running alongside the sled.
“Yes?” Alekk called to him.
“A strange scent. Did you smell that?”
“A scent?” he asked casually.
“Yes. A wolf. Not our pack.”
Alekk sniffed the air. I pulled myself back into pure human form, pulling every single bit of me back inside. It wasn’t easy. My body was still jumping with the spasms of my orgasm, and I could barely control myself. But I had to.
“I don’t smell anything.”
“It’s gone now. It was there, just a flash of it.”
“I think you’re smelling our farts back there. Stay to the side of us.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, wrinkling his snout and trying to smell my scent again. I drew back into myself, pulling Alekk’s robes around me.
“Easy, Princess,” he said, withdrawing his hand. I felt him retying the leather straps around my waist, pulling down the pelts and covering my waist.
I gulped. I’d almost given myself away. I didn’t know what the result would be if I did, but I knew that Alekk wanted me to stay his secret.
There was another secret.
I felt it, I knew I felt it. Even though I had no idea how to describe it, it could only be one thing. The Calling. When he’d touched me, I’d known that I was his.
But then, did Alekk feel it? It seemed like he didn’t, and as he resettled in his seat, I worried that it was what Dee had called one-sided. Maybe he didn’t care about me in the same way that I cared about him.
“Faster!” he called out. “Let’s get to the next range before sundown!”
Maybe he was only teasing me. Playing with me, the way a cat plays with a mouse that it will soon kill. Was that what he was doing? I didn’t know. He hadn’t killed me yet. And despite his army, his reputation… there was something about him that drew me indelibly toward him. I did not know what to do with my desire for him yet. But we still had two days at least before reaching the territory. I hoped to learn more before we reached my pack.
My pack. Guilt flooded me as I thought about them. Here I was, indulging my stupid desires, when they were all on the run. I bent my head and said a prayer for Dee, and for my parents, and even for Blaise too. I hoped that wherever they were, they were safer than I was.
Chapter Seven
We rode for a few more hours before Alekk rose and called for a break. He gave me water and bread to eat, and did not speak to me. When we started again, he left me in the sled alone and threw his robes up into the sled with me.
“What about you?” I asked.
“I need a run,” Alekk said.
He tore off his clothes, and I could not help but watch, fascinated, as he stripped bare.
I’d known that he was huge, but as he took off his clothes, I saw his bare muscles. They pulled his skin taut, and his skin—
Oh, my God.
His back was crisscrossed with scars. Deep ones that pulled the skin together in a knitted healing pucker. Shallow scars that ran