Everything Carries Me to You (Axton and Leander Book 3) Read Online Free Page A

ahead, sprinting at a speed that would have seemed impossible even a few minutes before when he'd been weak and stumbling. Axton knew what Dana had meant to do as soon as he saw Dana move, and he did not agree with that positioning.
    The stag saw Axton, and tried to veer away, to run in a better direction, anything but straight ahead--
    Apparently accepting his role in the new configuration, Dana snapped at the stag and kept him in line. The stag made a sharp, scared sound--and in that very instant of distraction, Axton launched his body off the ground, sailing through the air to land hard with his jaws on the stag's neck. The momentum carried them both down--
    Axton made it quick once they were on the ground, heart quick with adrenaline but still aware enough to not want the stag to suffer.
    Without even looking up at Dana, he began to eat.
    Dana padded up slowly, nosing the stag's hindquarters and looking at Axton warily. Uneasily, he ate.
     
    ++
    When their kill was just gnawed bones, Axton busied himself with licking his muzzle clean, pretending to be absorbed in the task. Distractedly, he was weighing the option of fleeing. He wanted to, yet he felt he should not. Without words he had no quick and easy way to explain the concept of duty or promise , but he felt uneasily tied to the hulking wolf next to him, and not just because he wasn't running at full strength. It was not a moral conflict or a rational analysis of his odds of success, but this deep, uneasy feeling in Axton's gut. His muscles tightened to run and then they stilled. No. He was meant to be here.
    Axton looked up sharply, knowing he was being watched. His eyes locked with Dana's and then Axton looked away, making a show of rubbing his paws against his face and then licking them clean--the gesture was almost aggressively nonchalant.
    For a long time, Dana didn't move. When he got up, he waited until Axton followed suit.
    Only then did they trot back to the cabin.
     
    ++
    Though they hunted together, Axton took the next kill, and the one after that. He never let Dana move into position to deal the critical wound. Axton still needed help to harry their prey, but he approached each one with his senses sharper, faster, smarter. But part of him grew more possessive, too, growling Dana away from certain parts of the carcass.
    Still, Axton did not run.
     
    ++
    When Dana tried to come to him as a human, Axton buried his teeth in Dana's arm and didn't let go.
    "Mother of fuck!" Dana shouted. "Son of a bitch!" He tried waving his arm around, but Axton was heavy and latched on tight. Eventually Dana resorted to bashing Axton's jaws against the doorframe to loosen his grip. Axton let go only to splay out and then reposition, leaping up for the throat--
    Dana snarled and shoved his boot in Axton's chest, knocking him away so that he could slam the door.
    "You feral piece of shit !" Dana yelled from the other side of the door. Then, sounding offended as if he'd just discovered it anew, "I'm bleeding!"
    Indeed, he was. There was blood all over Axton's face and he felt no regrets. He did not waste energy by bashing himself against the door, but lay down, satisfied, and listened to the shouting sounds he did not need to understand in order to enjoy.
    "I wouldn't stand for this bullshit!" Dana insisted.
    Axton calmly groomed his paws.
     
    ++
    Hours later, Dana returned in his wolf shape. Axton could smell him on the other side of the door. That made him less angry, somehow--wolf rather than man. At this point, he mostly associated Dana the wolf with food, though this was just barely layered over the wordless hazy hatred Axton did not understand but did not question.
    So what Axton did next wasn't out of anger.
    Dana pushed the door open and trotted into the room. Without waiting for any social cues, Axton launched himself at Dana and buried his teeth in his neck, shoving and holding Dana down. Dana's paws scrambled for purchase and his body thrashed around to get