by Sara Summers
His whisper against the side of my neck gave me goosebumps, which made me swear at him.
Cody only gave me an amused expression and disappeared for a second. I heard the fridge open, and he came back with a cold water bottle.
I took it without thanking him and chugged the whole thing, praying the water would do away with both my headache and the warm fuzzies that were drawing me toward my sweet mountain of a man.
“You’re cute when you’re drunk.” He remarked, leaning up against the wall with a slight smile on his face.
I looked at him like he was an alien.
“What are you doing?”
He glanced around the room.
“Sitting, I think.”
I rolled my eyes and reached up to massage my temples. Cody was still smiling at me, I could feel his eyes on me.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Because you’re beautiful and I’m lucky to have you.”
Um, what?
“Did we have sex last night?” I groaned and covered my eyes with my hands. “We did, didn’t we? Great, now I have to deal with an attached cheeseball.”
Though my words didn’t show it, I felt incredibly guilty and a little sad to think that I’d had slept with him for the first time while I was so drunk I wouldn’t remember it.
Cody laughed.
“No, we didn’t have sex. We ate Cheetos and you fell asleep thirty seconds after you finished puking your guts out. Don’t worry, I’m plenty attached without making love to you.”
That revelation was… something. Something that I didn’t quite have words for. Something that I needed to diffuse, quickly.
“So now you’re telling me you don’t want to have sex with me.” I folded my arms. Clearly that wasn’t what he was saying, but maybe he would turn his smile off if I jumped to random conclusions.
“That’s definitely not what I was saying.” He folded his arms, and the smile faded a little.
I’d nearly struck a nerve, so I needed to keep going with that.
“Are you a virgin?”
Cody quirked an eyebrow.
“Are you really asking me that?”
“Yep.” I popped the ‘p’.
“Of course I’m a virgin. I’ve been waiting for you since I was a little kid.”
“Awe, cute. You’re a little virgin club member.” I made a ‘that’s adorable’ face. “Cute little virgin James.”
If I were him, I would’ve slapped me.
Instead, he just put an amused expression on his face. I saw through it, of course, straight to the vulnerable center of him.
“I’m proud to be a virgin, Quinn. It means that I’ve been strong enough to save myself for you, that you’re the only woman I’ll ever be with. You can’t make me feel embarrassed about it because it’s not embarrassing. All of my firsts, all of my everything is yours.”
His words struck me. At first, they struck me in a this-man-is-way-to-good-for-me way. Then, they struck me in a holy-crap-I-love-him kind of way, which I promptly ignored. Finally, they struck me in an I-know-exactly-how-to break-him way.
A pit formed suddenly in my throat.
If I wanted to get him to sign the paper, I was going to have to do something worse than I’d imagined. It would be worse than hoeish, it would be downright cruel.
I would have to let him think I’d come around for a while, and then I would have to distance myself from him slowly, like I wasn’t happy with the relationship. Making him believe it would be a challenge, but I could do it. The only question was if I was willing to.
“I have to go check on my house.” I stood up quickly and smoothed out last night’s clothes, which I was still wearing.
“You might want to change first.” He was half-smiling again.
Dread seeped through me when I realized that if I did what I was planning, it would be a long time before Cody smiled again.
“Right.” I opened my suitcase and grabbed a top and a pair of shorts, and then I stepped out of the room and into the bathroom to change.
“What are you doing? You never leave the room to change.” He called out.
“I’m protecting your virgin eyes.” I called back, my heart still pounding too fast.
“What’s going on, Quinn? Are you okay?”
“I’m hungover and in pain, dummy. Of course I’m not okay.” I lied.
He chuckled, that son of a gun.
Biting back a groan, I finished getting dressed. Was I willing to trade my peace of mind for my dad’s shot at the senate?
Cody
Quinn stepped out the bathroom in a set of clean clothes, and I shamelessly admired the way her shorts clung to her curves.
She was itching her cotie, and noticed the way I was staring at her.
“No one told me that tattoos are supposed to be so itchy.” She muttered an excuse and stepped past me into the room.
“Is it the tattoo, or just the cotie?” I checked.
She paused to think about it.
“Just the cotie.”
“It won’t stop until you shift, then. Your cotie gets tight and uncomfortable when you haven’t spent enough time in wolf form.” I explained. Quinn’s eyebrows lifted.
“So what, if I go wolf then it won’t bother me anymore?”
“Exactly.” I nodded.
Quinn sighed and reached up to tighten the ponytail on top of her head.
“Well then I guess I have to go shifting or wolfing or whatever you guys call it.” Without pausing, she headed down the hallway and toward the front door. With her shorts, tank top, and bare feet instead of her fancy city clothes, she looked like a shifter for the first time since I’d met her.
That fact only made me ache for her even more. I was in it for the long run and I’d wait as long as I needed to prove to Quinn that I wasn’t going anywhere, but I hoped she would come around soon. I didn’t really want to have to keep peeling other men off of my soulmate.
I closed the front door behind me and followed her down the stairs. Sebastian and I had chosen our apartment for the cheap rent, but also because it backed to the forest and was only a few minutes from Emma and Logan’s.
Quinn only marched a few feet into the forest before she tugged her top off, and dropped her shorts next to it. Pride filled me when she shifted without hesitating a second, and then bolted into the forest.
I was going to enjoy every second of being together as wolves, because there was no way the wolf in her would be trying to get rid of me with as much dedication as the human.
Quinn
Shifting felt like taking a breath of fresh air. My mind relaxed and my hangover headache vanished as I ran through the forest, dodging trees and clearing rocks. I pushed myself hard, harder than I had since I’d tried to go back to gymnastics after my injury.
Adrenaline pumped through my veins, along with something else that I didn’t have a name for. It was something raw and good and real, more real than anything in my life besides Beth.
It was almost the feeling I’d associate with truth or freedom, but not quite that.
Whatever it was, it was incredible.
The longer I ran the better I felt, and the more I understood what I needed to do.
I’d spent my whole life trying to win my father’s love. I’d never been good enough for him, and I could live the rest of my life trying but I would still never be good enough.
If that was true, which I was certain it was, what was I doing? Why was I trying to get rid of Cody and distance myself from his family? Why was I sacrificing the only person who had ever loved me unconditionally and wanted me for the ones who never had?
When I was a wolf, things were simple. Answers were clear.
My father was the one I should be getting rid of, not my soulmate.
Even though I knew that, it wasn’t an easy thing to accept. Family had always been important to me. My parents had always been there, at every competition and surgery and doctor’s appointment. They’d never le
t me face anything difficult on my own.
My mom wasn’t the mom that would spend four days cleaning and painting a dump of a home with me, nor was she the mom that you took shopping with you for your prom dress, but she was the only mom I’d ever had and she was important to me.
We’d bonded in our own way, and though our relationship was filled with unhealthy amounts of guilt on my end, I couldn’t just walk away from her.
And my dad—he was a hard man to understand. He had standards so high that I’d never measure up, but that wasn’t always a bad thing. Because of those standards, I’d been an incredible gymnast. I’d never done anything halfway because my dad had taught me that it was pointless. Because of him, I knew that I could be whatever I wanted to be and do it well.
The problem that had arisen was that after my failed gymnastics career and attempt at college, I didn’t know what I wanted to be. I’d built my parents’ law firm the best social media pages they could have, but they didn’t need that to succeed. They already had the biggest clients with the most money.
I was a social media figure of my own, thanks to my effort at keeping up with the pages throughout my injury and recovery, but what did that matter? Social media didn’t mean anything, and it wasn’t exactly difficult for someone who had almost made it to the Olympics to have a lot of followers.
As I ran, I started to think that maybe the solution to my problems was the chocolate-brown wolf running beside me. Maybe what I wanted to be was his soulmate.
Maybe what I wanted to be was a shifter.
I’d had the thought before, after I shifted for the first time. Everything about my world felt right when I was in wolf form. I hadn’t ever thought about wanting to be a shifter, because people were either born one or they weren’t.
Shifters having human soulmates was still new, so hardly any humans would turn into shifters. I’d never even considered that maybe I would be one of those few.
But since I was, did I want it? Did I want the wolf that had become a part of me?
The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that I did want the wolf. I wanted her, and I wanted everything that came with her. The peace, the purpose. The family, and the pack.
The soulmate.
I wanted to be a wolf, to embrace the missing pieces of me that the animal had started to fill.
When I decided that, when I was sure of it, I ran harder and faster. My lungs filled and emptied as I sprinted through the forest, my heart pounded in my chest, and my feet—my paws—connected with the ground again and again.
I was so alive. Breathing in fresh air, kicking up dirt, pushing myself to the limit, it was so real compared to the life I’d been living.
I understood then why most shifters didn’t drink alcohol—why would they? Alcohol was numbing, and being a wolf was the opposite. It both calmed me and woke me up to the reality of who I was and what I wanted.
We’d been gone for hours when I caught the scent of other wolves and changed course, heading straight for them. I didn’t know why I did, but I wanted to be near them.
As I got closer, I heard teenage boys laughing and the sound of a football rushing through the air. If I’d been human, I would’ve smiled. Somehow I knew that they were my pack, my family.
I noticed the loose articles of clothing on the dirt floor of the forest as we approached the house and the boys running around outside it. There were basketball shorts and t-shirts and boxers strewn throughout the half-mile just outside the house.
Cody slowed and then stopped running, and as soon as I realized that he had, I did the same. He’d put on a pair of shorts but hadn’t bothered with a t-shirt.
Looking at him in human form for the first time since I’d made up my mind that I didn’t want to get rid of him was almost overwhelming. He was massive, his face was scruffy in a not-artistic way, and he was pretty much coated in dirt. He wasn’t clean or clean-cut, the way I’d always thought I liked my men.
Cody was rough around the edges, he was growly and strong and a little possessive, and I absolutely loved it.
He wasn’t perfect, and maybe that meant I didn’t have to be either.
He smiled and held out a massive t-shirt, and I shifted back into human form. My entire body pounded with longing to feel him close, to be in the arms of the man that I loved and knew loved me even after everything I’d done to him.
I yanked the shirt on and then threw my arms around his neck and kissed him. The action surprised him, but he seemed more than willing to kiss me back.
The feelings of being alive and whole that I’d had the first time we kissed were nothing compared to what I was feeling then. The knowledge that Cody was mine and that he would always be mine was so incredibly intense that I couldn’t have described it if I tried.
But he pulled away after a few minutes, his hands gripping my waist tightly. I was about to pull his mouth back to mine when Cody shook his head a little.
“They can all hear us.” He murmured, glancing in the direction of the teenage boys before meeting my gaze again.
“So what?” I challenged.
A slow smile curled his lips upward.
“So come on.” He took my hand and tugged me toward the noise. His fingers laced with mine as we walked, and some kind of unidentifiable warmth filled me. Holding hands was so small and sweet, so innocent and intimate.
I never wanted to let go.
Cody
When Quinn and I stepped out of the trees and into view, the guys playing football paused long enough to cheer. I lifted our intertwined hands in the air and shot Quinn a quick grin. She rolled her eyes in response, but her cheeks flushed and she couldn’t hide her smile.
I pulled her toward the group, and they paused their game long enough for an introduction.
“Hey guys, this is Quinn.” I lifted our linked hands again. There were about twenty five teenage boys playing, and they all wanted to introduce themselves. With ages ranging from 12-22, they hadn’t had much exposure to female humans turned shifter other than Hallie.
They all took a second to tell Quinn their names, and by the end, she had an apologetic smile on her face.
“I’m sorry, but it’s going to take me a while to remember all of that.”
“They understand.” I leaned over and pressed a kiss to her cheek, figuring that I might as well enjoy my time with her until she went back to trying to convince me to leave her.
“Tanner and Hallie are inside with Emma and Logan.” One of the older guys told me, as they all resumed positions in their football game.
“Where are all the girls?” Quinn looked around like maybe they were all in a different group somewhere.
“There aren’t any.” I led her toward the house. “There haven’t been any female shifters born in almost twenty years. Emma is one of the youngest ones.”
“What the crap? Why?”
“We figure it’s to force the humans to accept us into society. It’s harder for humans to disown their daughters than their sons when they become shifters.” I explained our theory. There was no way to prove it right or wrong, considering that the Creator was the only one with the answers, but it was our best guess.
Quinn rolled her eyes.
“Please. It’s more likely that women are more able to adapt to a life change as big as becoming a shifter.”
We entered Emma’s and Logan’s house then, ending the conversation.
“Hey, guys.” Emma waved from the kitchen, where she was sitting on the counter while Hallie added flour to the stand-mixer next to Emma.
Hallie saw us and hurried over to give Quinn a quick hug.
“Me and Emma have a box of clothes over there.” Hallie gestured toward the door. “There should be something that fits you.” She smiled before going back to her cookie dough.
“Thanks.” Quinn returned her smile and headed over to the box, and then Hallie pointed her in the direction of the bathroom. Though I liked the way she looked in that t-shirt, everyone
else would be more comfortable with her fully-dressed.
“Logan and Tanner are playing some shooting game.” Emma gestured to the living room. I could hear the noise coming from the TV so she didn’t have to tell me that, but I figured it was a courtesy thing so I’d feel more welcome in her house. With the history between our soulmates, things had been a little shaky between us.
“Thanks.” I nodded and started toward the living room, and Emma slipped off the counter in time to follow me.
She glanced toward the bathroom, where my soulmate would be changing. I couldn’t hear Quinn thanks to the stand-mixer and the TV, so I figured she couldn’t hear us either.
“Are we good, Cody?” Emma checked.
“Why wouldn’t we be good?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Let’s not pretend there wasn’t a few minutes where we wanted to kill each other’s soulmates.”
“I never wanted to kill you.” I offered. When she smiled, I grinned. “We’re good, Em. I’m over it.”
“Me too.” She wrapped her arms around me. “I’m happy for you.”
“Thanks.”
I let go of her and headed into the living room, where Tanner and Logan were hyper-focused on the game on the TV. I grabbed an extra controller and took a seat on the couch neither of them were occupying, then waited for the match to be over.
The door to the bathroom opened while I was waiting, and I eavesdropped on Quinn’s conversation with my sisters.
“Dang, girl. Those are some nice legs.” Emma whistled. She was right, my soulmate had fantastic legs.
“Oh, I was a gymnast.” Quinn brushed it off. She didn’t sound as defensive about it as I assumed she’d be, since we’d never talked about it. “What are you making?”
“Snickerdoodles. It’s Ty’s birthday tomorrow, and Emma says they’re his favorite. I figure we can always use another baked peace offering.”
Crap, I’d forgotten it was my dad’s birthday. I’d have to run over to his house and give him a hug or something. What was I supposed to do for the dad whose pack and family Tanner and I had ripped in half?