The more she came to know him, the more she listened to his past, the more she realized just how different their pasts were. His mother brought him up single handedly, much like she does for her pack, but back four hundred years ago that would have taken a very strong woman. She grew up in a home with both parents, her father worked the fields, went to market, and dealt with all the financial aspects of the home. Her mother, on the other hand, stayed home, cooked, cleaned, stayed pregnant, watched the children, and homeschooled. Not that there was anything wrong with the way her parents worked together, it was just that she was brought up to believe women were property men took on to run their household and carry on his name. 

Avina let her wandering eyes drift back to him. “We were raised in two very different environments, but around the same years. Yet the differences between the values we have is very different.” She sighed and looked down at her hands. How was it that they were so different, yet so similar? The thought made her smile. It had been a very long time since she had ever been so comfortable around another person. She may not have realized it yet, but her guard was fully down for the first time since she killed her own alpha. Brice, her closest and dearest friend, never even made her feel so comfortable that her guard slipped through her fingers. What was it about Devin that made her so comfortable? 

Her fingers began to trace his tattoo again as she listened to him tell her that some things were better left forgotten. She was about to disagree when Kiel popped into her mind. Everyday she tried to forget the promise he had made to her when they were human, even while he was trying to continually remind her that they had once been engaged. Reluctantly she nodded her head in agreement. “Yes, somethings are better left in the past.” She agreed. She listened to him talk about others trying to kill his elder and a smile appeared on her face. Elders, alphas, are hard to kill. They have to be to hold their position. Even for werewolves, an alpha dieing is a very rare occurrence. 

Her fingers stopped tracing his tattoo, and before she could comment on killing his elder, he grabbed her wrist and pulled it away from his shoulder. Shortly after she was offering him to bite her. Had she lost her mind? Even still, she bravely held out her wrist to him and watched his eyes turn red. The color in his eyes made her want to back down, withdraw her offer, tuck tail and run. However, her wolf, very much awake and paying attention, kept her rooted in the spot. The lack of fear her wolf was showing in the face of a very present danger was not something Avina wanted to analyze. The meaning was not something she wanted to admit to herself at that moment.

Avina expected his mouth to go to her wrist, his fangs to poke a hole near her veins, and pain to erupt from her arm and spread through her body. Instead he used her wrist to pull her into his lap and cradled her to his chest. She would be lying if she said that it was not comfortable and exciting to be held in such a way. His hand gently tilted her head back, and her eyes closed. Fangs pierced her neck and a gasp of pain sounded in her throat before she could stop it. After just a few moments the pain faded but did not disappear. Every pull of blood leaving her body, she could feel. The skin right around the bite cooled down to a normal human temperature, and that coolness continued to spread from her neck to her shoulders, arms, hands, and torso. 

It was not blissful, but once she got used to feeling her blood pulled at it started becoming relaxing. As a werewolf, she could lose a lot of blood before it would start to affect her. She could give twice as much as a human could. Then she could feel the lack of blood starting to make her body heavy and her head hazy. She reached up and tapped two fingers against his chest, waited for a minute, then slapped his chest. Pain erupted from her neck again as his fangs retracted from her neck, this time to sound escaped to indicate the pain. Just as his second kiss landed on her neck, the bite marks were already healed. Before she could regain her mind, his lips were pressing against hers in a passionate kiss.

The first, and only time, she had ever been kissed was by Kiel when she was still human. So it took her a moment to realize what he was doing and how to respond. Even still within moments, her hand was reaching for his face and her lips were responding to his. All too soon he was pulling away from her. Her eyes opened to see if there was any regret on his face, to see if he wished he had not gotten carried away and kissed her. Seeing none, she used her hand that was resting on his cheek to draw him back down to her. Her lips found his, but instead of a kiss that was carried away with the passion of a stolen moment it was soft. A sweet and exploring kiss. She shifted herself in his lap so that she was sitting up, all the while keeping her mouth attached to his.