Hunted by the Shadow Division

Chapter 3

Ryan POV

We continue to make out as she straddles me. She's wearing her silk pyjama dress that I love. Her naturally curly hair falls around us creating a type of kaleidoscope that is purely Cass. My hands can't get enough of her and I can feel Rhy fighting me for control.

"We can't," I tell him, pushing him back. "It's too dangerous."

He concedes but remains close, feeding his own love for Cass through me. Cass sits up and takes me with her, holding her hands behind my head and pressing her lips to mine. I can smell her warmth, her need, and it pushes me to provide. I can hear Rhy softly growling with his own need to take care of her.

As a werewolf the urge to mark your mate is meant to be overpowering, but since Cass is human I have been able to hold this off. Rhy still fights me on it though, every chance he gets. It is not that I don't want to. We are just so scared of hurting her. She is our beautiful wife, our amazing partner, perfect in every way, making our need to protect her formidable. There are days when that fear is a quiet thing, sitting politely in the background while life gets on with itself. And there are days like this one, with her this close and Rhy this present, when it is anything but quiet.

"Ryan," she petitions, bringing my thoughts back to her.

Leaning forward I lower her onto her back. She begins to kiss me everywhere she can, her hands roaming my body trying to hold me closer. Her touch creates a myriad of tingles all over my body, but I want this to last much longer than that. I push myself forward, staring into her bright brown eyes and whispering, "Let me love you" into her ear.

Instantly she shakes her head yes.

Our lovemaking has always been like this between us. An entire language built from touch and breath and the quiet certainty of belonging to each other. Rhy is never far when we are together and I have learned to let him be present without letting him take over. It is a balance we have negotiated over years. He loves her as fiercely as I do, perhaps more purely because he is uncomplicated by the human parts of me that overthink and second-guess and worry.

Rhy simply loves.

That is all he knows how to do when it comes to Cass.

Eventually our climax comes and goes, leaving us both quiet and warm and tangled together in the sheets. I roll her onto her side and pull her toward me. Outside the rain continues its conversation with the window. Inside, everything is still.

This is the life I built. This is what I came through that night in the woods for. Every hard thing. Every cold night. Every morning Nat and I woke up and chose to keep going because the alternative was unthinkable. I came through all of it for exactly this. A rainy Saturday morning. A warm house. A woman who laughs at Rhy's howls instead of running from them.

I hold onto her a little tighter than I need to.

Rhy does not complain.

…

We lay spooning, listening to the rain. Cass with her back to my front while I trail my fingers along her hips. Thoughts of my childhood and coffee forgotten. Just then I hear Rhy whining in my head.

"You never let me make love to her," he complains. "You're always so selfish with her." I could almost picture him sulking somewhere in the back of my mind, arms crossed, wearing the expression of someone who has a genuinely strong case and knows it.

Before I could even answer, Cass turns over in my arms and cups my face.

"What is it?" she asks, while lines of concern wrinkle her brow.

"How do you do that?" I ask in amazement. "How do you always know when Rhy speaks to me?"

"Well," she begins, "simply put, it's because Rhy and I share a bond too."

Immediately I growl in reaction, not liking the sound of that. My growl makes Cass giggle. She has always found my possessiveness more amusing than anything else, which is both endearing and occasionally maddening.

"Silly husband, your wolf is just as important to me as you are," she says while still cupping my face. "The two of you are my husband, so when my husband complains I guess I can feel it."

"I don't think that's normal," I say with a point, making her keel over with laughter, which causes me to laugh in turn.

"Don't make me laugh, babe," she says with tears streaming down her face. Immediately she rolls over and places her legs up against the headboard, leaving her body at a ninety-degree angle.

"What on earth are you doing?"

Laughing further she explains, "I am trying to hold on to what you gave me. Are we not actively trying to have a baby? I read somewhere that after we make love I should lift my legs to hold onto as much of your 'deposit' as possible." She wiggles her eyebrows.

"Surely the fact that I am a werewolf should help?" I ask, smiling from ear to ear.

"Yes, but I want to do my part too," she says determinedly.

I look at her — upside down, earnest, completely unbothered by the absurdity of the position she has put herself in — and feel something so enormous that I do not have a proper word for it. Love is too small. Love is what you feel for a sunset or a good song. What I feel for Cassandra Rogers is a different category of thing entirely. It is the thing Rhy felt the moment he smelled her on that balcony. The thing that made him go still and say "that's her" with a certainty that needed no explanation.

She chose us too. That is the part that still gets me, even now. She chose a man with a wolf inside him, with a past made of loss and a future that could never be entirely ordinary, and she chose him with both eyes open and no hesitation worth mentioning.

"Hey Ryan, let me kiss her," Rhy asks as his laughter simmers. "Let me kiss our love."

Almost immediately Cass breaks out in a huge smile and leans in toward me while still upside down. I still don't quite understand how she does that, but she has always known just what Rhy was up to.

She watches as my eyes go dark and rim with gold. My face begins to transform and fur begins to grow. Cass looks at me, fascinated. The same look she has every time I let part of Rhy out.

Like I said before, I hadn't turned fully in a long time, but this doesn't mean I haven't let Rhy out. At least partially.

As my face elongates, Cassandra's eyes grow with fondness. Since she doesn't get to see Rhy that often her look is always the same, filled with wonder and love. I feel a pinch of jealousy at the thought. Not real jealousy. The kind you feel when someone you love looks at something precious and you are glad they can see it the way you do.

Rhy lets out a low growl, which only makes Cass giggle. Not once has she been afraid of my wolf.

"Hello, other husband," she purrs in affection, cupping Rhy's face as she had mine.

While the rest of me remains human, Rhy now has control and inside us I can feel the amount of love he has for Cassandra. It is not a smaller love than mine or a simpler one. It is the same love, felt without the complicated overlay of human anxiety and human doubt. Pure. Steady. Absolute.

"Hello, Sunshine," he responds with the nickname he had given her so long ago. He leans in and nuzzles her neck, taking in her scent and rubbing against her. If Cass were a werewolf, that would be where her marking spot would be. The mark that would show other werewolves that she was mine. However since she was not, Rhy and I had not marked her.

It had been a long argument between us about whether to mark her or not, the natural urge coming over us on the night of our wedding. Rhy was convinced that we could and that she would be fine, but my fear of hurting her won out in the end. It has always been like that with us, ever since Rhy woke up. I hold the line. He pushes at it. And somewhere in the negotiation between the two of us, we usually find the right answer.

Usually.