He shrugged. “It is what it is.”
“Can the rest of this pack fully shape-shift? Become a wolf that looks like a real wolf?”
Michael shook his head. “In this pack, only me.”
“Why?”
“It’s not in their genetics. At least that’s the way it’s explained to those of us who can.”
She tilted her head, examining the moon beyond the treetops. “Since your blood saved me from death at the hand of one of those monsters, will that change the outcome of my own transformation, if and when it starts?”
“No. Hot blood wins out over cold. Because you didn’t die at the hands of that vampire, your human side will have a say in what happens.”
“Will I change? For sure?”
“Yes.”
“How long until I do?”
“During the next full moon would be my guess.”
“You don’t know?”
“Everyone is different. Sometimes it takes longer for the wolf to catch up.”
She went over his statement in her mind before speaking again. “The next full moon comes the day after tomorrow.”
Michael nodded. “Not much time left.”
She bit her lip hard to keep from shouting. “Are you you when you shift?” she managed to ask.
Michael obviously knew what she meant. “Weres don’t lose our minds, like in horror movies. We are aware of everything we do. The wolf isn’t another entity taking up space inside us, it is us. The mind still functions properly and remains in charge while in either shape.”
“That’s something,” she muttered.
Michael was close enough to further boost her pulse. Cade’s dark blue shirt was a size too large, but suited Michael perfectly. Then again, so would a towel.
Michael was a werewolf, and she knew next to nothing about the reality of that yet, except that Weres were real. They were also brave, bold, exceptional fighters that seemed to be on the right side of the battle against creatures exemplifying the dark side. At least Michael’s pack fit that description.
“You scare me a little,” she confessed.
“Only a little? I must be losing my touch.”
Michael was smiling when she turned back. After reducing vampires to dust, he appeared to have regained his calm. But mind reading went both ways tonight. Kaitlin also knew he wanted more private, personal time with her in spite of his inner protests against that very thing. His hunger for her was an added pressure that topped the winded sensation she already felt by being in the presence of a werewolf.
Michael wasn’t only fighting vampires tonight. He was fighting his hunger for her.
The kiss in her apartment proved that Michael wanted her to be more to him than a responsibility. The way he looked at her now proved it.
Michael’s undivided attention was hot and untamable. Like his wolf, his needs rode close to the surface of his skin. If he gave in to that hunger, she supposed he’d never stop seeking it. That’s what his expression told her, though he wasn’t easily giving in. Maybe the big bad wolf was a little bit afraid of her, too.
There might also be other reasons he had to maintain a distance. Possibly Lycans were elitist snobs, due to the strict adherence of his species’s undiluted, pure-blood doctrine that Michael had mentioned. No Romeo and Juliet scenario with a half human would be acceptable.
Being off-limits suits me just fine. If I don’t have to see you, I won’t have to live wholeheartedly in another world.
“Good luck with that,” Michael said, the parts of his tattoos that were visible beneath his collarbone rolling with the motion of a gathering storm system.
“You can read my thoughts?” she asked.
“Some of them,” he replied.
“The ones that pertain to you?”
He nodded, refusing to explain in more depth. “It’s safe now. We can walk.”
Possibly it was safe, but her feet wouldn’t move. Besides, Kaitlin figured that she had every right to be wary. Michael assumed she was worried about vampires, but with the ability to read her mind, he would know it was both Michael and the moon she feared most at the moment. Michael, because he was Michael. The moon because of all the predictions and insinuations about how that big silver orb was going to affect her in just two days’ time.
Michael’s eyes were disarmingly wide and green. Being on the receiving end of his intense observation made her dizzy. There was a chance Michael rescued people often with a dose of Lycan blood, and therefore had her reactions mapped out. He wasn’t coughing up any useful information about that, though, and only dropping nebulous hints here and there about the murkiness of her future.
“Can’t move my legs,” she confessed, holding up a hand to ward Michael off in case he had ideas about helping her. “I just need another minute.”
She was in turmoil. Could the moon cause that, too, or was this emotional upheaval due to the fact that she had never met a man like Michael in her old world, and didn’t trust herself to be in his world now?
“It’s okay.” His tone was like a brush of silk over her jangling nerves. “A minute more in this place is maybe all we have, though.”
His warning was another reminder that there was no use pretending this was a normal meet-and-greet between a man and a woman interested in each other, and that being so close to Michael smacked of danger. That sense of danger charged up her arms like streams of electricity, and tasted like pepper. Her hormones might have been singing, yet not so loudly that she’d let herself lose control, even when Michael didn’t take his eyes off her.
She was holding him back. He was needed elsewhere.
A growl of distress rose from deep inside her, and that was as frightening as everything else. In a show of defiance that mocked her lack of moral fortitude, Kaitlin again met Michael’s brilliant, forthright gaze.
“You’re wrong, you know,” she said. “You might be an angel. Having done your good deed in helping me, I hereby release you from any responsibilities you might assume to have over me and my life. You can safely get back to yours, and I’ll do the same.”
On legs like putty, Kaitlin turned from him and began to walk, still scared out of her mind about what might be hiding in the dark, and needing to lose the moon and that moon’s secrets for a while longer.
She didn’t get far.
Michael’s whisper came in a warm puff of exhaled air on the back of her neck. “It doesn’t matter what you say, or how much you protest. I’m here to see this through.”
Michael was behind her, close. In spite of his heat, Kaitlin’s chill was due to the memory of having his warm breath in her mouth and lungs as it sparked her narrowing life back into existence. Did she owe Michael for that? Did she owe him her blind trust and her future?
“You don’t owe me anything,” he said. “On the other hand, you do have to trust me.”
“Why should I trust you?”
She wasn’t going to turn around. That would be a big mistake. Seeing Michael up close made her senses go haywire.
“You’ve seen me, and what I am. You cannot discredit that or pretend it isn’t real, Kaitlin.”
“I believe you are what you are, Michael, and that you like it. That doesn’t mean I’m going to like it, or accept it as my future lifestyle.”
Something sharp scraped along her shoulder blade without tearing her shirt, and Kaitlin knew what that was. Claws. Michael’s wolfish claws.
Her muscles shivered in response. Molten balls of fire gathered in her stomach before hurtling toward her throat, burning tissue as they traveled and setting fire to everything in their path. She had to clench her hands to make sure she didn’t have claws, too. She felt the tips of her fingers swell.
Hell. Was this reaction caused by lust for Michael, or by a wolf being born inside her?
Kaitlin remained upright by leaning forward on the balls of her feet. Frustration made her groan, and that sound made Michael move.
He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her c
lose, so that she felt every inch of him from his chest to his thighs. His heat scored her back through the loose weave of her sweater. Her breath was as ragged as his was.
“Kaitlin,” he said, the word like a further caress. “After I left you this morning, what was your day like?”
“I…” She couldn’t get a stream of words out. Heat behind her eyes made her shut them.
She knew what lay beneath Michael’s borrowed clothes. She had seen that lovely picture before, just as she had felt the buzz of the nearness of his incredibly honed body.
Would wolf hormones, when added to girl hormones, push her over the edge?
“Your day,” he repeated. “What happened? Learn anything you’d care to share? Anything out of the ordinary?”
Michael’s tone, and the force behind it, compelled her to answer.
“Yes.” She struggled to go on. “I learned that a person can be maimed and nearly murdered, and the world still turns. Vampires and werewolves roam the park around my college, and yet two plus two still equals four. Somehow that just doesn’t seem right.”
Though she now wanted to look at him, Michael held her tightly. Go on, she thought she heard him silently urge.
“I…” she began, again failing to finish the thought.
“Relax,” Michael said. “Tensing makes things worse. Listen to me, Kaitlin. Relax. Swallow the fire and put the wolf back in its place. You can do that because it’s not time for that wolf’s appearance.”
“How do you know about the fire?”
“I can feel it roaring through you.”
“You said the wolf isn’t a separate thing. So how would I put it back in its place? God, Michael, I’d prefer to forget about all of this. Maybe wanting to forget is enough. You also said that being near another wolf might bring out mine. So, what if I don’t get near any of you? I’ve already said thank-you, and meant that sincerely. I owe you my life and won’t forget that, but…”
“But what, Kate?”
“You need to tell me everything and get it over with. Tell me now, so I don’t have to imagine I’m going nuts, and so that I can prepare.”
The night seemed to press in around her. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever be able to walk alone on any path through it again.
“You’ll feel the fire first,” he began. “That’s the way the wolf comes into existence, the way the wolf is born. The fire is a sign of internal changes taking place at the cellular level.”
She struggled in his arms, but not very hard.
“Once that’s finalized, and if you make it through the next phase, your wolf simply is part of you. Just another piece of Kaitlin Davies, as if it had always been there. It’s almost like an emotion rising to the surface at times—a new emotion that rallies and then radicalizes all the other ones.”
He had obliged, had told her something, as she’d asked, and now she was sick again.
“If I make it?” she said.
“You’ve already assimilated some of your wolf. I’m not sure how that was accomplished so quickly and your doing so was quite unique. As I said earlier, though, there will be more trials to come.”
“I don’t want to think about that,” Kaitlin argued.
“Unfortunately, that won’t stop the progress of what has already begun. It’s time to face the facts, Kaitlin. It’s time to move on.”
Her voice was faint. “I know.”
Kaitlin felt her next few questions tank, though she hadn’t yet asked one of them. Looking up, wincing with the strain that movement put on her throat, she said, “The damn moon in getting brighter.”
Reaching for the collar of her sweater with an action derived from self-preservation, Kaitlin felt for the raw-skinned pucker she’d first found that morning in her room. She ran her fingers over her throat uncertainly, finding that the injury wasn’t nearly as sore as it had been.
She almost sat down in the dirt.
Michael tightened his hold on her. “It would be safer for you indoors tonight. You’ve had enough. You’re healing on the outside. The inside takes longer.”
Kaitlin teetered again and pointed a finger upward. “Does it burn you? That moon?”
Her lips were trembling. Her hands were clenched so tightly, her forearms had started to cramp. The scent seeping from her pores now smelled like aluminum, the odor of fear. The peppery taste in her mouth had burned away, replaced by the metallic tang of having sucked on tin foil. She feared she might stop breathing altogether if she and Michael stayed here for much longer. Yet she was afraid to move. She was afraid she would throw herself into his arms if he moved.
Glancing at her wrists beyond the cuff of her sweater, she felt…
She felt a kiss of silvery light on her skin that was like the smile of a treacherous lover’s lips. Soft, yet demanding. Deceptively light, while at the same time completely deceiving.
An unfamiliar sensation, like roving invisible fingers, worked its way up her legs, her thighs, climbing hand over fist along her vertebrae, one bone at a time. Panic returned. She was panting for breath. “What’s happening, Michael?”
“You’re feeling the lure.” Michael’s voice had an edge, as if his explanation merely surrounded a much deeper meaning.
His closeness allowed Kaitlin to keep focus for a while. Michael’s arms were supportive. The way his body braced hers gave her some strength. This closeness also sent her mixed messages; sexual signals radioed to her overworked nervous system. Michael’s touch was seductive, provocative. By liking this and by translating every meeting of their bodies into sexual terms, Kaitlin wondered who the real animal was.
“You have my blood in your veins,” he said. “That’s what dictates the way this will go down. With a single drop, you would change, and you’ve had more than that. You needed more than that.”
Dear Lord. Kaitlin kept repeating those words silently as she rocked back and forth on her feet.
“The changes will be noticeable, Kate. Sight, hearing, sense of smell, are enhanced, enlarged, enlivened. Does this sound familiar? Has some of it happened already today?”
“Yes,” she replied.
Michael was quiet for a short span of time before continuing. “More small things will shake loose. Barely noticeable things. Longer fingernails. Brighter skin. Hunger.”
Hunger.
Inadvertently, Kaitlin again curled and uncurled her hands, already sensing the arrival of more of those changes. The smells at school and the anxiousness over being confined in the library had to be part of the change. The white, haunting reflection in her mirror was part of it, as were the quaking limbs and the sinking sensation in her stomach each time she felt as though the moon was watching her. The treacherous moon that turned humans into wolves.
“Must be hell on clothes,” she said, remembering her dream of running barefoot in the grass beside a half-naked Michael, then having him turn up tonight in the buff. She also remembered that in one of those dreams, she had felt light and joyous and had wanted to jump Michael’s bones.
“Maybe being a werewolf isn’t all bad?” she whispered.
“It can be quite beautiful,” Michael said.
She believed him because Michael was beautiful, and nothing that special could step out of a bad reality.
He was smiling sadly when he finally released her and she was able to look at him.
“How many nights, Michael? How many nights will I be affected?”
“Two or three. You’ll change as fully as your body determines, and only during the full-moon phase when moonlight touches your skin, though you will be vulnerable to moonlight one day before and one day after that.”
There would be a full moon two days from now. Michael said she wouldn’t change until then…so why did she feel moonlight sliding down strands of her tangled hair right that moment? Why did her fingers feel strange, as if claws might appear any second?
“The imagination is a strange beast,” Michael said, reading her. “You will adjust when the real thing happ
ens.”
“I don’t want to do this. Be this.”
The moonlight was stifling. Chilling. She felt so very cold when the wolf was supposed to be hot.
Her knees buckled without warning. Next thing Kaitlin knew, she was on the ground, head hanging forward, sickness roiling through her.
The hands clamped around her waist were Michael’s. With a single heave and the slightest grunt of effort, he had her on her feet, then up in his arms. In a move reminiscent of some distant time when damsels were weak-hearted and repeatedly in distress, he turned, holding her tightly to him, and ran.
Chapter 9
Kaitlin squeezed Michael’s shoulders, silently begging him to stop running. They were heading the wrong way. Her apartment was in the opposite direction. Michael was moving fast, as if he was aware of where he was taking her, which turned out to be the closest cover.
Beneath the protection of the roofed park bench, he set her on her feet and waited while she leaned over to wretch, but although her stomach heaved, nothing came up.
“This, too, will pass,” Michael said gently. “Fear is making you sick. Nothing else.”
Kaitlin wasn’t so sure about that. Her blood, as well as her body, had turned icy. She didn’t know whether to laugh maniacally or cry, and made a Herculean attempt to stand up straight in spite of quivering abdominal muscles.
“Please, Michael. Make this go away. I’m begging you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again, and she recognized his sincerity. He was sorry, and she had to go through this.
“Let’s cover you up, and I’ll take you back to your place.” He was already pulling Cade’s shirt over his head without bothering to use the buttons.
Her eyes went to his chest and the scrolling tattoos that left her feeling dizzier. “You said it wasn’t going to affect me tonight.”
“Hell, Kaitlin. I’m not sure the wolf is doing this. Everything about tonight is strange.”
She said, “I can get home on my own.” I’ll crawl if I have to.
But could she get there? Kaitlin gazed out at the darkness with new eyes that were no longer so innocent, and mindful of the danger. Although clouds partially covered the moon, she could feel threads of silver gathering. She smelled change heading her way on the breeze.
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