5 years later
I can see the end of patrol in front of me, it's just a few more minutes and I'm finally free to go home. All four of my paws speed up and soon I'm taking Clarissa over. However, two steps later I'm tripping over my own paws and falling face first. I skid a few meters, then topple tail over head before finally crashing into a tree, which stops my awkward and embarrassing show.
Clarissa is right next to me, rolling her giant wolf self around in the dirt, barking like a dog, which essentially means she's laughing at me. I mentally scoff and playfully hit her snout with my back paw. She doesn't even mind me, just keeps going laughing. Can't even blame her either. It must have looked hilarious.
She shifts back and is still laughing. I don't, mainly because otherwise she would no doubt see my blush.
'Can't wait to get to hubby, huh?' She finally gets out after a few minutes. I give her an excited yip in answer. Of course I can't. Today three years ago we held our wedding, since we could never finish our mate bond completely. The Alpha never did make us part of the pack, instead granting us indefinite refuge. It was good enough, still is, it just meant that by completing the mating, our old pack would know, since we are technically still part of it. We may be exiled, but nothing more than that. They would know and they would hunt us down. While that wouldn't change by being part of the pack, it would provide us with safety and therefore allow us to complete our mating. So marriage was the only way we could think of, wanting to connect in some way.
Clarissa patted my head, sighing. 'I'm so envious of the both of you. You're so great together.'
I can feel my chest swelling a bit at the compliment.
'Thanks' I say, once I shift to my human body myself. She just smiles and then grins mischievously, proceeding to slap my naked butt.
'Go on then, I'll finish the last mile on my own. Give Raphael my best. My door's always open if he needs a change.'
With a wink, she shifts into her light grey wolf and bounds towards the change over point of our patrol. I shake my head at hear behaviour and head in the direction of our home. The closer I get the more my excitement builds. We don't get to see much of each other at all, only when we get home late at night and before we leave early in the morning. In exchange of letting us stay on his lands, the Alpha makes us work for the pack every day. We get some of the food provisions as well, but we work more than anyone in the pack. I'm joining all the hunts, doing constant patrols and have been roped into cooking more often that I would call healthy. Raph has been put on constant pup duty, being responsible of all unshifted, as well as newly shifted pups. He's assisted in so many births with Randy that he can handle one on his own now. He's also responsible for part of the pack's training too. Save to say, neither of us has much spare time. More often than I'd like, one of us doesn't even get home at night, but it's alright like this. When we left the pack, I never thought I'd get to be as happy as I am now.
When I get to the familiar patch of giant trees, I slow down to a comfortable trot and weave my way through the dense forest until I get to the space where I'd hidden out with Raph all those years ago. The Alpha allowed us to make a home on the outskirts of his lands, a lot closer to the border than any sane wolf would usually live, but we decided to make these roots our home. We've added some of our own addition to it, using some wood the Alpha provided us with to build out the cave. The cave itself is now our bedroom.
I chuckle remembering us building it and trying to figure out how to make all of that work as a place to live. It took us forever to finish, since the Alpha made us work from the moment we were feeling better. He'd given us a few days to sort our heads out, after making us tell him everything that had led up to us being here.
I slip into our house, expecting to see Raph working out, like he does so often. Says he doesn't want to be out of shape even when he doesn't get to work out as much as I do throughout the day.
However, I'm met with an empty house, so he must still be with the pups.
I turn around, howl once to let him know I'm on my way and then head straight for the pack house. While the Alpha made us live all the way out here, he doesn't mind us interacting with the pack at all. In fact, Elif is pretty much a regular at our dinner table whenever we actually manage to eat together.
Just when I think of her, I can hear an excited squeal that can only be Elif's. The girl is already ten, but is still the very easily excitable girl that had saved us that day.
When she comes into view, she wastes no time shifting, running at me with no fear of getting hurt. I slow down significantly and let her hit my chest, pretending to fall over because of it. Her tiny teeth nip at my neck playfully and I can't help but hug her to me as best I can with my wolf paws. Giving up, I shift back and set her down, knowing she will probably want to tell me something.
'Raphael heard you. He's busy with Fin, he got hurt trying to play with Simon, but Simon's already shifted and Fin isn't, so Fin got hurt and Raphael had to stay with him until Dad can have a look. Also, dad said to tell you to go away because he doesn't want to deal with an idiot. Ignore him though, you know he secretly likes you.'
I laugh at her summary of what seems to have been a very adventurous afternoon. Since she shifted some three or four years ago, Elif kind of stopped playing with other pups. She still does sometimes, but most of her time is spent with Randy, learning. She's a little prodigy apparently.
'That sounds exciting.' I grin, taking her hand as she babbles about all the things she's learnt since I saw her last, which was yesterday. She's leading me to the pack house and then straight upstairs to the first floor, where the infirmary is located.
'Did I not tell you to tell him to get lost?' Randy welcomes us as soon as we step inside, 'On second thought, while you're here, can you take your idiot of a husband and get lost with him? He's annoying me and I'm pretty sure I can handle Fin on my own.', which means you're free to leave and enjoy your anniversary. With a dismissive hand gesture he vanishes into one of the many rooms. I sigh. The amount of sass this guy possesses is ridiculous. The only time that he lays off is when he's with the Alpha and thinks no one is watching them. And even then I have a feeling it's a rarity for him to be straight up nice to people.
'He's in the second to last room. I'll be nice today and leave you alone, I'll be back tomorrow for dinner though.' With a gesture way too similar to Randy's Elif follows her other father into the room, while I'm left to shake my head. That little girl is taking on a lot of things her fathers say and do and I'm not sure it's a good mixture.
But I am now definitely starved for husband, so I run into the room Elif indicated and throw myself at Raph the second I see him. His body is smashed against the wall and my lips against his before he even gets a word out. I didn't even see him yesterday, instead having Elif to keep me company for dinner, so my behaviour is entirely justified.
'Calm it, Fin's here.' he manages to say between kisses.
'Fin's sleeping, I checked.'
'No you didn't. You just hoped.'
'Or that.' I grin as I rest my forehead against his, 'I missed you.'
'Hmm, me too.' He hums as he closes his eyes. He once told me that he's doing that to concentrate on me being close to him, so I leave him alone until his eyes open again.
'Well, good for you you hoped right, because otherwise I'd have smacked you out that door quick.' he says before entwining our fingers and leading me out of the room and the pack house.
'I heard Randy. How about we take this home?'
I don't answer him, instead I shift, letting him sit on my back before I take off running. The good thing about being on patrol constantly is that you just kinda never wear clothes and can always change. Raph on the other hand can't really run around naked while taking care of kids all day, and he hates having to take all his clothes off to change so he usually just rides on my back when I pick him up.
Once we reach home, my plan is to take him straight to the bedroom, but my step falters the second I step into the house. The kitchen is the first room you walk into when entering and right now, I'm kind of speechless. There's fairy lights everywhere on the roots, giving it a pretty glow in the darkness of the night and there's two plates of MacDonald's sitting on the simple table we've built together. It's the simplest thing ever but it means so unbelievably much.
'God I love you.' I whisper. To be honest, I don't even look at him, still too caught up in the sight in front of me. I can't believe he remembered that.
'Me too. I love you.' he whispers back as he hugs me from behind.
When he lets me go, he actually has to take my hand and pull me to the table. I just sit there, staring at him this time.
'Seriously. Just eat, okay?' he laughs at me and he's probably got every right to.
'I don't even know how I deserve you, but I am so glad I'm here right now.' I say with full sincerity. Then, I begin eating. It's kind of surreal to think that we've come so far together. It's the most beautiful thing I can think of.
We finish eating and then just snuggle up on the mountain of pillows piled into a little space we call our living room. All sexual energy from earlier has just vanished and the only thing I want right now is to just keep lying here like this with him.
But right as I'm about to fall asleep, I hear Clarissa's howl from a distance. It's a howl warning against rogues by the border and I don't have a choice, neither of us do really. In case of an emergency, both Raph and I need to be present and so we leave our small little save haven and head to where we heard the howl.