Charmed Wolf

paused, then added. “Oh, and you’ll bring me a sample of glitter to test.”
I kept my spine, but I wanted to crumple from sheer relief. “It’s a date,” I promised.
“It had better be.”
She stopped walking. We’d reached her car. And, to my relief, the air between us felt warm again rather than tense with motherly rage.
Still, I was surprised when my friend let Rune pluck the baby out of her arms and install it in the car seat. Natalie’s eyes were a bit distant, actually, as if she was already considering ways to determine fae effects on glitter.
Kale, in contrast, sidled up to me with palm extended. I was grateful Lupe had the foresight to return Rune’s and my clothing because it meant I had my wallet on hand.
I removed a fifty. Then, thinking about Kale’s day, I pulled out another. Folding them both in half, I counted on the darkness to shield the motion as I slipped the paper between Kale’s waiting fingers.
Natalie noticed, though. Of course she noticed. “Do I want to know?”
Kale giggled. The baby chirruped and Rune clucked something that seemed to soothe it.
“No,” I told Natalie. “You really don’t.”
“YOUR FRIEND IS DELIGHTFUL,” Rune murmured as we stood there together, watching taillights slide away down the pack driveway.
“Natalie?” I raised my eyebrows. Willa had often growled at me spending so much time with a human. Plus—“Most people consider her an acquired taste.”
Rune’s response was simple. “The best tastes take time to be acquired.”
As he spoke, his fingers found mine in the darkness. He hadn’t looked. Hadn’t fumbled. As if the same electricity that sparked at our touch had guided him unerringly to me.
I tried and failed to ignore the sensation. Finally, I cleared my throat. “You requested information about the role of the Consort.”
“That isn’t exactly what I asked for.” He was so close that his persimmon curled warm around me. It stroked the skin atop my cheekbones, my neck, my collarbone. “But it will do.”
Somewhere behind us, a shifter laughed and I jolted. She wasn’t laughing at us. Every pack mate was too far away to see us. But if the party was breaking up, I didn’t want to hold an intimate conversation out in the open.
Not intimate. I shook my head at the slip. Intense.
Still, word choice aside, motion was necessary. “Come with me,” I told Rune, tugging lightly on his fingers. Unlike Natalie, he didn’t require any coaxing. Instead, he stalked in my wake like a persimmon-scented shadow as I led him into the mansion and up three flights of stairs.
The Alpha’s quarters were a tower that loomed above the rest of the edifice. Isolated by distance and top-notch insulation, even wolf ears couldn’t hear conversations held here. Usually, the silence felt lonely. Now, the open space was strangely close and warm.
Warm because a pack mate had started a fire in my wood stove. When I wasn’t present, the tower was usually unlocked—I had nothing to hide from my pack mates, after all, and little time to clean. So I wasn’t surprised by the glow reddening the floor in front of the glass viewing pane. I wasn’t surprised...but wasn’t quite ready for the firelit mood either.
Still, my finger hovered over the light switch without flicking it. “I’d rather the pack not know you’re here,” I told Rune by way of explanation.
The fingers twining through mine tensed very slightly, but he didn’t say anything. Or, at least, not with words. Instead, his free hand cupped my neck, tilting my chin upward. Persimmon licked closer. The barest millimeter of air lay between us.
He was arranging our faces for a kiss.
Yes! my wolf crowed. My human instincts were similarly jubilant.
Swallowing down all need, both human and lupine, I pushed off his chest and took one long step backward. I was Alpha. I couldn’t forget that.
“No,” I told Rune. “Keep back.”

Chapter 24
My words were harsh. His reply was mild.
“I can leave if I’m making you uncomfortable.”
No, mild was the wrong descriptor. Rune’s shoulders had hunched in, as if he was trying to appear smaller. But that was patently impossible given the magnificence of his form.
The hunching was cute...and gut-wrenching. “I’m not afraid of you,” I corrected. My hands itched to soothe away his uncertainty. Instead, I reached behind my back and twisted shut the lock.
In response to my gesture, his shoulders straightened. His mouth quirked ever so slightly. “You’re not, are you? Even though I’m half fae.”
I shook my head, stepping closer. Into his persimmon. Almost into his arms. “Doesn’t matter if you’re wolf, fae, or human. I want you.”
The moment my words emerged, they felt too bold. So I mitigated them. “As Consort. When I’m fertile. In a week.”
There. That was spoken like an Alpha.
Rune’s fingers skimming hair out of my face made me feel more like a woman. “I’d like to give you more than that,” he rumbled. “But I can’t.”
If I leaned forward, those fingers would make contact with my skin. I wanted that so badly I quaked with wanting it.
But I was Alpha. Squashing the impulse, I asked, “Can’t?”
Despite my restraint, Rune’s fingers touched me anyway. Heat with just a hint of roughness traced the line of my chin as he explained what he’d formerly told me was need-to-know.
“The Queen—my mother—didn’t release me from her service when I left a decade ago. I would have become a Betweener if I’d been fully fae. I expected that. Was willing to be stuck Between to be away from Faery. But even though the Queen had conceived me during a very temporary dalliance and I’d never set foot in the human realm, I ended up here on earth.”
His fingers curled around my ear, released it and slid into my hairline. “When I came here, I was running away. I didn’t think ahead. Didn’t realize someone like you existed.” His breath was hot on my skin, then it was absent as he turned his face away from mine. “I don’t have