Isabel's Choice

Chapter 38 - Isabel

It's almost midnight when I arrive at the Southern River Border. The pack house is bathed in darkness and it's eerily quiet as I walk from the car to the front door. I'm wearing the jacket Ayn gave me and I inhale its comforting scent one more time. I have been sniffing at it excessively on the ride here and I am already mourning the moment I'll have to return it to its owner.

But when I enter our house the icy spice fragrance gets stronger, filling my senses and jumbling them together. It swirls around in delicate blue waves, it rumbles low in my ears with the sound of a narrow mountain stream, and I feel it - sweet silk protectively wrapping my shoulders, pulling me towards its source.

Mine.

Floating on its clouds, I find myself in front of the Alpha's quarters - rooms that I haven't entered since he moved here. A tiny flicker of reason claims that I should knock and wait to be invited in, but a singular hungry thought overtakes my mind, triggering something to tighten in my belly. Something needy, a pleasant ache that needs his touch to be soothed.

Mine.

The lamp is still on in the living room, throwing golden shades over the few pieces of furniture that Lars brought here - a raspberry pink sofa, a coffee table, an old desk.

My eye is caught by the sketches pinned on the walls. Several outlines of neighborhoods, of sleek houses with rooftop gardens ...and bridges. So many bridges, massive ones with intricate suspension elements, rising above the blue waves of the River. Some are fully built and carefully decorated, and some are a work in progress with the resistance structure still visible. There is even one burning, bricks tumbling incandescent in the waters below.

The concept of physically connecting the Mountains of the Wolves with the Witches' Plains has a blasphemous vibe to it. After all, the Split Agreement is still in place and we are not supposed to dream about mingling freely.

But these drawings are too breathtakingly beautiful. They might be a subversive political statement, but they mostly have the emotional charge of self-portraits. Snapshots of one who needs to transcend the Split every day because he's blessed - or cursed - to have both a magic core and a wolf.

Mine. Both - all - mine, my mind hums as I push open his bedroom door.

Lars is lying in an awkward position with his shoes still on - as if someone would have dropped him already asleep on the bed.

And I see him, by the Goddess, I do see him. My mate is the most handsome male that walked in this Land - rope-like muscles that stretch the shabby t-shirt he's wearing, wild curls that are now long enough to wrap once around my finger like ebony rings, full lips that mine yearn to latch on.

Mine, my soul keeps singing as I sit next to him and let my finger run the whole length of his stubble-covered jaw. I didn't really think this gesture through, drunk as I am on his scent. The Alpha wakes up with fangs and claws which I manage to avoid only narrowly with a large jump that brings me a foot away from his range.

He is quick to join me, crouching on the floor with a disoriented look that morphs into a guilty frown.

"What...what are you doing here, Isa?" he stutters, rubbing his temples with one hand and resting the other one on my shaky fingers.

Every one of my skin cells starts glowing with happiness, they vibrate gently under his touch and it's so deliciously comfortable that I have a hard time coming up with a coherent answer to his question.

"I came back because...you promised me we'll fix everything that needs fixing together," I whisper, "...and Lars, you are my mate."

These last words that echo between us are not exactly the ones I have rehearsed in the car and the male is as stunned as I am at hearing them.