To Share You (manxman)

Chapter 30

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.