Page 428 of Pucking Feral: Part Two

Everything is.

Everything always will be.

I set the duffel down on a flat rock and she tears herself away from the sky long enough to watch me unzip it.

"Blankets," she says, peering in. "More blankets. A thermos. And…" She goes still. "Are those ice skates? Two pairs?" She turns to face me, eyes wide with excitement. And anxiety, too. "But… I don't know how to skate. I never learned."

I know, I sign, tucking a strand of loose hair behind her ear. Let me teach you. Tonight. Before I mark you.

"I'm going to suck. I'm going to fall on my ass."

I won't let you get hurt. Promise.

She bites her lip. "Well…"

Trust me, I add, my eyes crinkling. I'm a professional.

Chapter 90

Ivy

My skates look comically small in Wraith's hands.

Everything looks small in his hands, honestly. He kneels in front of me on the wool blanket he pulled out of the duffel bag—the duffel bag, the very same one he brought supplies in when he found me sick in the tunnels months ago—and holds out his palm, and I push my boot off with my other boot and slip my socked foot into the skate.

His whole hand wraps around my foot.

Ankle, heel, toes, all of it, swallowed easily inside one scarred palm.

"How did you even get my size?" I ask.

P-L-A-G-U-E.

"Of course. He knows everything."

He huffs and starts lacing. I watch the top of his head, the choppy dark hair, the scar cutting through his eyebrow.

I have his coat, so he doesn't have his hood.

The lantern light shines on his exposed teeth and muscle, and there's even more light from the rippling green and blue northern lights dancing and crackling above us, illuminating his warm, steady breath streaming out through his teeth on either side.

And he just… lets me look.

He used to shy away when I looked.

Or worse.

Now he glances up mid-lace and catches me staring, and his eyes crinkle, and he goes back to lacing up my skates.

"You really are a beautiful alpha," I murmur.

His hands stop, the laces going slack in his fingers. He looks up at me through the dark hair falling across his forehead, and there's that old wariness, the instinct to argue, to deflect, to tell me I don't have to say things like that.

"Don't," I warn him, pointing at him. "Don't you dare fight me on this. Omega rules. Remember?"

His jaw shifts. The muscles pull and his eyes narrow with half-hearted suspicion.

Think you just like scary things. I saw how you looked at the fog.