Total pages in book: 24
Estimated words: 23591 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 118(@200wpm)___ 94(@250wpm)___ 79(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 23591 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 118(@200wpm)___ 94(@250wpm)___ 79(@300wpm)
I always had a piece or two in my pocket since I spent some of my free time digging for different gemstones. What can I say, when you spent almost all of your time in nature, you find new hobbies to keep you busy.
I hadn’t meant to be creepy.
I’d just wanted to make sure she got home safely at first. And then I told myself that I just want to check to make sure that she wasn’t crying again.
It couldn’t be easy. Living all alone. I’d grown up with the pack. I’d never really known much solitude except when I was out in the woods.
People—and animals—were very rarely meant to live alone. It was unnatural. Community was important not only to survival, but morale.
Maribelle’s breakdown on the porch was proof of that.
I just wanted to make sure she was okay. It wasn’t really even much of a choice. The urge was somewhere deep inside, somewhere primal, somewhere decidedly wolf in nature.
I hadn’t expected to look in and find her on the bed with her hand between her thighs, her back arching off the mattress, her breasts rising and falling with her labored breathing and her soft whimpers that grew to loud moans.
I couldn’t seem to look away, to force myself to give her the privacy she had a right to.
Hell, I couldn’t even stop my own fucking hand from slipping into my pants and grabbing my cock, from bringing myself to a leg-weakening orgasms just as she found her own.
I was left with my face pressed to the wood of the cabin, trying to catch my breath afterward.
Inside, Maribelle seemed equally afflicted.
Eventually, I pulled out the moonstone, leaving it there as a little keepsake, as proof that I’d been there, as a present for her to have, to keep with her.
Since I couldn’t be.
At least not yet.
My plan was to weasel my way in, to start finding ways to be near her, to get to know her, to feel her out and see if she was like her grandmother, or if she was someone I could truly trust.
My pack was probably going to have questions. Which was why I was concocting a lie as I made my way through the woods and back to our campsite.
“What kind of retreat?” Garrick asked.
He was closest in age to me, with a little bit of silver streaking its way into his medium-brown hair. He had some crinkles next to his green eyes. I had ones just like it.
The old guys, that was what we were.
The bad example.
The cautionary tale.
About not finding your True Mate. About not securing a future for us, for our bloodlines, for our pack.
“It’s just a wellness retreat, of sorts. I’ve been feeling pretty distracted, lost in my head lately. I think I just need a week alone in nature to get grounded.”
“It can get loud here,” Garrick agreed, looking around at the other guys milling around. “I’ll miss you, brother,” he said. “But I understand. Make sure you bring extra of everything.”
With that, I did.
I packed a tent full of the essentials—clothes, cooking supplies, personal hygiene, some blankets—and then I made my way into the woods, heading back toward the cabin, but setting up deep and high enough that she would not see me, but I could see her cabin, keep an eye on her.
And, slowly but surely, become a part of her world, someone she could trust, someone to open up to.
Then I could get to know her.
I could see if my future was her.
I had to admit as I set up camp, that I wanted it to be.
Not just because I was desperate to fine my True Mate or because I wanted my own children. Though both those things were true.
But I was also just intrigued by her. By her beauty. By her decision to move out into the woods.
I wanted to know why.
I wanted to know what her life was like before.
She seemed both familiar with the mountains and the woods, and also out of her depths with them.
Getting lost alone in the woods at night was not great. Sure, predators were few and far between in the area because our pack kept them away, but she didn’t know that.
My mind was on those things the following morning as I watched a pathetic puff of smoke start out of the chimney then die out. Not a couple minutes later, the door opened, and there was Maribelle dressed in a baggy sweater with a scarf wrapped around her head, walking over to the side of the house where a firewood storage box was located.
She lifted up the tarp, and must have found it empty, because her shoulders sagged.
It wasn’t that cool yet, but living using fireplaces instead of forced hot air probably took a bit of getting used to. There were just nooks and crannies in a home where the heat simply didn’t get to. Sometimes the chill could creep in between the fabrics of your clothes, leaving you chilled.