“Alder did not hunt before he left. We have nothing to eat.” She paused, and then added, “I would like venison.”
“Then go kill a deer,” Cain said patiently.
“By myself?”
He shook his head at her, his lips twitching. Despite his irritation, there was a familiarity in her obnoxiousness that he found oddly comforting. With everything that had happened in the past few weeks, it was a relief to know that some things did not change.
A pang of longing tightened his gut as Cain caught the scent of his mate. Although he had not yet told her as much, his wolf already considered her to be his and he could not see her any other way.
“I tried to wake her up, but she threw a pillow at me,” Meadow said as they entered her room. Sounding deeply affronted, she said, “Are you laughing?”
Cain raised a hand, signaling for her to lower her voice. Smirking at her, he said, “Go rest in my room for the morning. I will send someone to fetch you when I get back from hunting.”
This seemed to please her, but she didn’t leave right away. She looked back to the bed, frowning. “You said that you would not take another mate.”
“Go get some rest, Meadow.”
When she was gone, Cain walked over to the bed, drawing back the canopy to gaze down at Sarah. She was curled up beneath the blankets, her shapely lips slightly parted as she took in the even breaths of a shallow sleep.
In the large, blended pack that he had grown up in, there had been no shortage of females for a fledgling alpha to partner with. He had never been the type to readily form attachments with any of them, or anyone aside from his family. Six years ago, when he had decided to take Caim’s mother as his mate, he had assumed that the feelings of attachment would come naturally once she was carrying his pup.
They never had.
While he had felt a sense of duty and obligation towards Dawn, he had felt little desire for her beyond the throes of the mating thrall, and they had never come close to anything resembling love.
With Sarah, the physical attraction had been almost immediate. He had tried to deny it for all of a day, and then he had thought of little else but claiming her. Now that the thrall was over, he should have been less affected by her, but where the rampant lust had been, there was now a different desire, one that was wholly new to Cain.
Against his better judgment, Cain lowered himself onto the bed beside her. He placed a hand on her cool skin, running his thumb over her the curve of her cheekbone. It had not been his intention to wake her, and he felt a twinge of guilty pleasure as her eyelids fluttered open.
Chapter 6
“Welcome back,” Sarah said, gazing at him through tired eyes. The warm, affectionate look on his face was startling enough to keep her awake.
“You are the first person to say that to me all morning,” he said wryly.
She smiled at him. “I think I was dreaming about you,” she said, sleepiness making her candid.
He seemed amused by this. “Was it a good dream?”
“They always are.”
“You have had more than one?” he asked, his eyes gleaming.
Sarah was proud of herself for not blushing. She scooted closer to him, placing her head in his lap. “They can’t compare to the real thing.”
She saw him rub the back of his neck, and thought, with no small amount of self-satisfaction, that she had embarrassed the alpha.
“How is Snow?” he asked, fingering a lock of her hair.
Sarah watched him, trying to gauge his expression. “Haven’t you gone to see her?”
“I wanted to check on you first,” he said, bringing the lock up to his nose. “You smell clean.”
She blurted, “Is she your daughter?”
Cain glanced at her face, looking surprised. “No.” She relaxed a little, though she wasn’t sure why. Cain added, “But I do have a son.”
Now he was watching her, and she didn’t have to feign acceptance. She had expected him to be a father, not just from the conversations they’d had surrounding the subject, but also because there was something about his patient, mature demeanor that had given it away.
“Is he the one you went looking for?”
Cain nodded. “Caim has the tendency to go off on his own.”
“You must have been really worried about him while you were gone,” she said sincerely.
“He is very brave and independent,” he said, his eyes softening. “But he is too young to understand how dangerous our world is.”
It was unexpectedly intimate, hearing him talk about his son. While they were traveling together, there had been too many immediate concerns for either of them to really open up to the other about their personal lives. Sarah decided that she liked this side of him.