Chapter 38: [R-18+] I Woke Up Next To My Wolf And The Girls Thought We Just Fought A Boss

The dark swallowed the room the second Soren kissed her back.

Yara pulled harder on his hair and dragged him down with her.

Her back hit the floor and she did not wait.

She shoved at his clothes.

Hers followed in quick pulls.

Soren got his hands on her waist and flipped their positions without breaking contact.

He put her on top where she wanted to be and her knees settled on either side of his hips.

Wolf ears flicked once.

Red eyes stayed on him.

Yara reached down and guided him in.

She sank all the way in one motion and let out a low sound from her chest then she started to move.

Soren let her ride for a few seconds and watched the way her body took him.

Then he reached up, grabbed a fistful of her white hair, and pulled her head back just enough to expose her throat. He leaned up and spoke right against her ear.

"Take every inch, I won’t stop until I fill you."

Yara’s rhythm faltered for half a second then she obeyed.

She rode him harder, hips snapping down with purpose.

Her tail wrapped tight around his thigh.

Every time she dropped she made that same small sound.

Soren kept his grip on her hair.

He used it to control the angle, to pull her down when he wanted her closer.

"Good," he said against her ear. "Just like that."

The bond pulled tight between them.

System notifications stacked in the corner of his vision but the words blurred together.

Soul integrity ticked upward in small jumps every time she came down.

The drain pulled at him at the same time.

Yara leaned forward and bit his shoulder again.

Soren let go of her hair and put both hands on her hips.

He met her movements, driving up when she came down.

The sound of skin on skin filled the dark room.

She finished first this time. Her whole body locked up and she ground down hard, shaking through it.

Soren followed right after.

His vision went white at the edges then black.

Yara collapsed forward onto his chest, still breathing hard, still whispering "mine" into his neck.

Soren tried to answer.

His mouth moved but nothing useful came out.

◆◆◆◆

Soren opened his eyes to a different light.

The six-hour timer sat at zero in his vision.

The bond felt different, the way a radio signal sounded when you moved the dial from almost-right to exactly-right.

Grimm was curled against his ribs.

Her tail thumped once when she felt him shift.

Yara had pulled back into the bonded shape at some point during the night.

Soren sat up on his elbows and ran a hand over his face.

His system feed had stacked while he was out. He scrolled past the noise and stopped on the one that mattered.

[DING! — Bond Recalibration complete. Trust Event: [MUTUAL SURRENDER]. Soul integrity: 58% (previously 47%). Grimm — Tier 3 consolidation achieved. Pack Sense range: expanded. New passive: Shadow Tether (bonded entities within Pack Sense range can be recalled to tamer’s position via shadow contact).]

The bond had given him back eleven points of soul integrity, which meant whatever happened had fed something back into him instead of just draining it.

He checked the Fracture timer next.

It was wrong.

The number sitting at the bottom of his vision read four days, nine hours.

Almost two full days, gone.

Burned off in one night.

The energy spike from the recalibration had accelerated the Fracture’s approach.

The soul’s integrity went up but the timer went down, which meant the system was pulling from both sides of the same resource and he had just traded margin for strength without realizing it.

Grimm pushed her head under his palm.

You came back, she said through the bond.

"Yeah," he said. "I came back."

The door handle rattled.

Three fast knocks, then Selah’s voice through the wood. "Soren! open the door or I’m freezing the lock out."

He looked down at himself.

His shirt was half off and the marks on his shoulder and collarbone were visible.

He pulled the collar up, buttoned the top two, and checked that Grimm was in wolf form before he stood.

He opened the door.

Selah stepped in first. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

The frost on her knuckles was the new color, the not-quite-blue-not-quite-green she’d had since their bond deepened, but it was spread past her fingers and halfway up her forearms.

That only happened when she was running hot underneath the cold.

Maren came right behind her.

Ears forward, tail low, heat coming off her skin in visible waves that warped the air.

They had been waiting in the hall.

Selah stopped when she saw him upright.

"Thank god," she said. "We thought the bond drained you too far. You went completely dark on our end."

Maren nodded fast. "Yeah. No signal or nothing for six hours. Selah was ready to tear the hinges off two hours ago but I told her to wait because sometimes the recalibration needs..."

She trailed off, looked at Grimm pressed against his side, and looked at the state of the room.

"What happened here?"

The bed was shoved against the wall at an angle that didn’t match where it started.

The blankets were on the floor.

The pillow was across the room.

Selah’s frost did not spread further.

Maren’s tail stayed low.

They had decided the danger was the power side.

They were looking at the displaced furniture and reading combat aftermath, not what had actually happened.

"Bond recalibration," Soren said. "Grimm hit a consolidation threshold, It was... intense."

Selah studied his face for a second too long. "Your soul numbers?"

"Fifty-eight. Up from forty-seven."

Maren’s ears twitched forward. "Up? That’s good. Why do you look like that’s not good?"

"Because the Fracture timer dropped for almost two days."

Neither of them said anything for a beat.

Selah’s frost crept down to her wrists. "How much time do we have?"

"Four days. Nine hours, give or take."

"That’s..." Maren started.

"Not enough," Selah finished.

Grimm’s tail thumped once against the floor. She didn’t move from Soren’s side.

Footsteps echoed in the hallway outside the open door.

Selah turned toward the door. The frost on her arms went white.

Maren’s heat at her shoulders spiked enough that Soren could feel it from three feet away.

Soren looked at the Fracture timer one more time.

Four days, nine hours then he looked at the doorway and waited to see who was walking toward them with that kind of weight in their step.

The footsteps stopped right outside.