My destiny. My mate.
At his side, the one place I forever wanted to be, I finally gave in to exhaustion.
“Come with me.”
Aroused from the best sleep of my entire life, I awoke to find Abernathy standing before the window, his naked silhouette limned in silver.
“I thought I already had.” Dreamy and slack-limbed, I dropped back down to my pillow like a shot bird.
“Come with me outside,” he said.
“But we’re naked,” I answered, my eyes still closed.
“That’s kind of the point.” I felt the bed depress as he sat down next to me, his fingers dancing up my spine.
Shivering, I sat up. “But what if the neighbors see?”
“They won’t,” he said. “Promise.”
So it was like that, wearing not one stitch of clothing, I followed Abernathy down the shared hallway of the old Victorian home that had once been my mental ward after a terrible divorce.
“Are you ready?” he asked, holding out his hand.
“Ready for what?” With one arm across my breasts, the other covering my lady-bits, and my eyes everywhere at once, the only thing I was ready for was to crawl back into bed.
“To run.” In that light, with that expression on his face, Abernathy didn’t look like a 431 year-old werewolf. He looked like a ten year-old little boy.
“You want me to hold your hand and run naked down the street.”
“That’s what I want.” He grinned at me, teeth white in the moonlight.
“But my feet—”
“Trust me,” Abernathy said.
I did.
Pulling in a deep breath of sweet night air, I realized for the first time that I could smell the pollen, the bird feathers and twigs in their nests, the sleeping flowers, the sprinkler wet pavement and chlorophyll rich grass.
Fueled by this olfactory revelation, I relinquished my modesty and gave Abernathy my hand.
Before I even knew what I was feeling, the world became a blur around me. An impressionistic painting punctuated with lights and sounds and smells, flashes of detail too small to see with the naked eye.
I glanced downward, perplexed not to feel pavement biting into my feet.
Because I no longer had feet.
Delicate russet paws flashed out before me, the elegant forelegs attached to them swift and sure.
I was a wolf.
As I had when it came to mating with Abernathy, I had envisioned in great detail what my first transformation would be like. The B-movie low budget version of bulging pockets of skin and cracking bones, sweating, swearing, and screaming.
There was only bliss.
Bliss and terrific speed, my mate a dark blur beside me as we raced past the edge of town and into the foothills. Into a whole new world of scents. Pine, and beetles and moss and dead leaves.
Joy as I had never known suffused my entire being as we broke into a clearing. We loped to a stop, padding through soft grass to find the edge of the cliff overlooking the city. Lights scattered like glowing confetti on the stretch of land below.
Then there was only Abernathy.
Abernathy against the obsidian shards of the mountain, the sky, and the moon.
THE END
Also by Cynthia St. Aubin
Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery
Love Bites
Love Sucks
Love Lies
The Witches of Port Townsend
Which Witch Is Which?
Which Witch Is Wicked?
Which Witch is Wild?
Which Witch is Willing?
The Case Files of Dr. Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist
Unlovable
Unlucky
Unhoppy
Unbearable
Unassailable
Undeadly
Unexpecting
From Hell to Breakfast
Unraveled
Also available as Box Sets…
Disordered
Dysfunctional
&
The Complete Case Files of Dr. Matilda Schmidt
Volume I
Volume II
Volume III
Jane Avery Mysteries
Private Lies
Lying Low
About the Author
Cynthia St. Aubin wrote her first play at age eight and made her brothers perform it for the admission price of gum wrappers. A steal, considering she provided the wrappers in advance. Though her early work debuted to mixed reviews, she never quite gave up on the writing thing, even while earning a mostly useless master's degree in art history and taking her turn as a cube monkey in the corporate warren.
Because the voices in her head kept talking to her, and they discourage drinking at work, she kept writing instead. When she's not standing in front of the fridge eating cheese, she's hard at work figuring out which mythological, art historical, or paranormal friends to play with next. She lives in Texas with the love of her life and a surly cat named Patches.
Cynthia loves to hear from her readers. You can find her here:
Visit me: http://www.cynthiastaubin.com/
Email me: [email protected]
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Subliminally message me: You were thinking of cheese just now, right?
And here:
Love Lies (Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery Book 3) Page 28