by Amy Pennza
Remy hunkered down beside her and flicked a strand of dark hair off her shoulder. “You deserved time to yourself, away from this place. Besides, you couldn’t have done anything anyway, so why worry you?”
“How many?”
His bare shoulders rose and fell in a sigh. He looked across the gorge to the Lodge, its windows sparkling in the late September sun. “We haven’t had a latent make the Turn in at least three years.”
She felt the blood drain from her face. “What does Max say about this?”
“He doesn’t.” Remy swiped at a thatch of grass near his feet. “He won’t talk about it.”
Lizette followed his gaze to the Lodge. Max’s territory had become sort of famous for Turning latent wolves—something desirable in a species with low birth rates. As Alpha, it was his job to protect his people, which meant appearing strong and capable at all times. Did he feel threatened now that latents weren’t Turning anymore? Maybe that explained his weird behavior toward her in his study.
She got stressed out during Finals Week. She couldn’t imagine what it was like being Alpha.
If word got out that his wolves were failing to make the Turn, other Alphas might see it as a weakness and make a bid to invade his territory. No Alpha had been overthrown in her lifetime, but it had happened twice in recent history—once around the time of the American Revolution, and again during her parents’ generation. Two Alphas in the western states had fought a long and bitter war, resulting in a merger when one finally triumphed over the other—and “triumph” was a euphemism for “death.” The North American continent was stable now, but the territories maintained an uneasy truce. Like Remy had said, wolves lived long lives…and had long memories.
He tore up a chunk of grass and tossed it over the edge of the gorge.
“Is it a problem in other territories?” she asked. “Or just here?”
“Our numbers aren’t down, exactly. They’ve just fallen back in line with other places.”
“Well…that’s good for Max, I guess.”
“Yeah. Not so good if you’re a latent wolf, though.”
Lizette stared at the Lodge. She had to give Max credit—he didn’t discriminate against latents. Her experience with wolves in other territories was limited, but she knew most of her kind regarded those who couldn’t Turn as genetically inferior. Parents never considered latents suitable mates for their pureblood children. In most territories, latents were second-class citizens. With no Gifts and no ability to Turn, they were undesirable and unwanted.
But Max had never been anything but kind and welcoming to the latents in New York.
At least until he saw Nathan with her in that clearing.
Cool air drifted over her skin, raising goose bumps on her arms. She tore her gaze away from the Lodge. The sun hugged the horizon, so they needed to get going if they were going to make it back before nightfall. The last thing she needed was Max looking for her.
She bumped her shoulder against Remy’s, knocking him off balance. “We gonna do this, or what?”
His eyes lightened to sky blue. “It’s on like Donkey Kong.”
She pushed to her feet and booked it toward the tree line. Most wolves weren’t shy about nudity, but her conservative human foster parents had been strict about separating the boys from the girls. No matter how much time she spent in the wolf pack, she could never quite shrug off the morality still clinging to her like a blanket.
There was also the issue of her recent weight loss. Her handful of human girlfriends might roll their eyes and joke about the “hardships” of being skinny, but they didn’t see her eating five, six, sometimes seven meals a day. She’d tried protein shakes. She’d bought supplements at a health food store. Nothing helped. The scale continued to creep downward, her headaches got worse, and fatigue was like a weight dragging her under.
She stopped a few feet inside the forest and stripped off her sweater, toed off her Chucks, and skimmed her jeans down her legs. Barefoot, she stood shivering in her bra and panties.
Remy’s voice drifted toward her. “Almost done, slowpoke?”
She raised her voice. “Go on ahead. I’ll catch up.”
The sound of crashing brush and crackling leaves filled the air. “Graceful as a swan,” she muttered as she unhooked her bra and slid out of her panties. She looked over her shoulder. The Lodge was just visible through the trees, its big windows still winking in the sun. She dropped to all fours and closed her eyes.
The Turn was slow and painful. She wasn’t surprised. Surrounded by humans for so long, she’d learned to conceal her other form. It was sort of like biting her tongue to keep from swearing—hard at first, but it got easier as time went on, until one day it was second nature.
When she lived at the Lodge as a teen, her transition from human to wolf had been seamless. There was no gruesome rearrangement of limbs, no skin bubbling on the surface, no bones popping in and out of place. Those things were invented by Hollywood. When she was well-practiced, she could Turn in a blur of flesh-colored movement from one breath to the next.
But she wasn’t well-practiced now.
It started in her mouth, as an unbearable pressure in her teeth. She’d never worn braces, but Haley had, and she said that getting an adjustment felt just like the beginning of the Turn. Lizette’s mouth filled with saliva until she opened it and let the drool escape. The pressure built and built, and her mouth filled with the sharp, metallic taste of pennies. Twin popping noises sounded like gunshots in her head. She ran her tongue along her teeth, feeling the elongated points of her fangs.
On the ground, her fingers swelled to three times their normal size while tiny hairs emerged from the skin. Her joints turned an angry red, and her fingernails darkened to black. She groaned—a long, low sound that became a growl. Her pelvis ached. Her whole skeleton throbbed.
Werewolves didn’t get human illnesses, but she’d seen commercials for human medicines. Every winter, drugstores were filled with over-the-counter medications for the flu. Body aches. That’s what she had. Everything hurt. The individual vertebrae in her spine expanded and contracted like she was being pulled apart on a medieval rack. Zings of electric shocks shot across her rib cage while her chest opened to accommodate her other form’s larger shape.
She snarled and shook her head while thousands of tiny needles prickled the skin all over her face. Hair rippled across what had been smooth human skin seconds before.
Her vision was the last to change. Scientists liked to argue about whether wolves saw in black and white or variations of gray. Lizette couldn’t speak for her wild brethren, but werewolf vision spanned the full color spectrum. Every leaf was a crisp, clear green—every pine needle on the ground a miniature work of art. Lizette looked around the forest in awe, savoring her heightened senses. She could taste scents. Somewhere deep in the trees an acorn plopped to the ground. She heard a tiny creature, a squirrel maybe, burrowing into the dirt.
About a mile ahead, a wolf let out a playful yip. She huffed a canine laugh and lumbered to her feet, although it took her a couple of minutes to root through her clothes and find her cell phone. She picked it up, careful not to crush it with her canines, and took off after Remy.
Lizette caught up with Remy about two miles away from the Lodge, near the northernmost edge of the private forest surrounding Max’s property. Remy sat propped against a tree in a small clearing, one arm draped across his midsection.
She was embarrassed for him to see her unglamorous Turn, so she hid in the trees behind him while she Turned back, gritting her teeth through the worst of it. When she was steady enough to stand, she shook the lingering aches out of her hands.
“You should be able to get a signal from here,” he yelled over his shoulder.
She examined her normal, human fingers in the weak sunlight. “Are you sure we’ll be back before dark?” The memory of Max pulling her against him made her breasts tingle.
“Why? You need to paint your nails or something?
”
“Smart-ass,” she whispered.
“I heard that.”
She arranged her hair over her breasts, picked up her phone, and walked over. He shuffled sideways, and she plopped next to him with a grunt.
“Rough Turn?” he asked.
“That’s an understatement.” She slid her thumb over the screen and sighed with relief when she got a signal.
He watched while she sent a few emails. “Why do you care so much about that job, anyway?”
“This may come as a surprise to you, Remy, but I actually enjoy my life just the way it is. I also don’t need any of my friends filing a missing persons report.” Besides the last-minute note she’d scribbled to Tommy, she hadn’t told anyone she was leaving. There hadn’t been an opportunity. Abduction and all.
“What friends?”
She looked up. “I have friends.”
“Dom says you work all the time.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve chosen a very demanding career path—one that has been derailed, by the way.”
“What, talking to humans about why they can’t lose weight? Giving them boner pills?”
She laughed out loud. “Your mouth’s moving, but Dom’s opinions are coming out of it. You’re also confusing psychology with psychiatry and a lot of other things.”
“They’re all shrinks to me, and werewolves don’t need that stuff. We pound our problems out of other people.”
She felt her smile fade. “I’m not a shrink—at least not yet.” She still had years of schooling before she could be licensed, and she couldn’t finish the classes if she was stuck at the Lodge—
—which was bullshit. She’d worked her butt off in undergrad, and was one of a dozen students accepted into an accelerated Master’s program. What good was an extended lifespan if she did nothing with it? The fact that Max could simply swoop into her life and yank all her plans out from under her made her want to punch something.
“Whoa,” Remy murmured. “You’re throwing off enough adrenaline to scare off the wildlife.”
“Sorry.” She leaned her head back against the tree. It was no use rehashing the subject with Remy. He was firmly on Team Max. “I guess I’m just not used to the Turn. I’m jittery.”
“It happens.” He scratched at his jaw. “Not to be indelicate, but I gotta take a leak.”
“You did drink about a gallon of Gatorade.”
“You’ll be okay here?”
“Of course. I lived in Albany, Rem, not Manhattan.”
He grinned and stood. “Just stay put. If you go back to the Lodge with so much as a splinter, Max will castrate me.”
“Thank you for the enticing image.”
He took off at a run and Turned mid-stride. A mix of jealousy and longing rippled through her at the effortless way he slipped between one form and the next. One minute he was a tall, muscled man in his prime; the next minute he was a sleek, buff, timberwolf with a black tail.
“Show-off,” she muttered. She picked up her phone and thumbed through a few apps, busying herself by catching up on social media and reading the latest celebrity antics. The trees sighed and shifted in a gentle breeze.
The human world was never truly quiet or still, the artificial noises of industrial life constant, unwelcome intruders. The forest had its own sounds, but they were part of the landscape. Slowly, tension she’d carried from Albany eased from her shoulders.
The fading sun dipped below the horizon. Almost instantly, the temperature dropped while twilight descended on the clearing.
She shivered and looked up from the phone. A strong breeze rustled the leaves. She stood and turned in a slow semicircle, scanning the trees. It was almost too quiet. She inhaled, testing the air for scents. Suddenly, she knew what was wrong.
There were no animals anywhere nearby—not even a squirrel or a bird.
The wind shifted, carrying the scent of an unfamiliar male to her nose. Her pulse leaped in her neck. She opened her mouth to call for Remy just as a large hand clamped over it.
8
“Not a sound,” the male growled in Lizette’s ear.
She jerked against him, trying to break his hold. Warm, hard skin pressed against her from her shoulders to the backs of her thighs.
Wait. Skin? He was naked—and aroused. She stopped struggling. Bile burned her throat.
He dug his fingers into her cheek. She winced. “You’re not going to yell and you’re not going to move,” he said into the hair at her temple. “Got it?”
She nodded—or attempted to nod. His grip on her jaw was so tight the inside of her cheek grated against her molars. He pulled her head back until her neck ached. She scanned the trees for a sign of Remy. What if this male had hurt him?
Her stomach dropped. Remy would have scented him, and would have never let a strange male get close to her like this. He had to be hurt…or worse.
She closed her eyes and focused on staying calm. Her wolf stirred, eager to defend them from the hostile male. Lizette’s jaw throbbed with the first stages of the Turn, but she fought it. She was still too slow at Turning, so she had a better chance of besting him in human form. He could probably Turn and rip out her throat before she managed to sprout fur.
Her canines lengthened and then receded to normal. In her mind, her wolf paced, angry at being denied a fight. Frustrated—the feeling rose to the surface of her mind before sinking down again.
The male shifted his weight, which shoved his hips against her ass. Lizette’s skin crawled at the feel of his erection nudging between her butt cheeks.
She thought back to her years of training at the Lodge. Max insisted that all females learn to fight, even though women rarely participated in the dominance contests common among the younger males. At the time, she’d hated the pull-ups and early morning runs. Now she sent up a prayer of thanks. She had never needed to defend herself in the pack, and she had never needed to use any self-defense skills in Albany, but the rigorous drills were still there in the back of her mind. Whoever he was, the male knew it, too, because he grabbed her neck, immobilizing her head and preventing her from slamming it into his nose.
Shit.
She slid her right foot back, prepared to hook her leg around his. If she could disrupt his balance, she had a chance to break away and run.
“Uh-uh,” he said. He shoved her forward. She stumbled. He caught her arm and pushed her to the ground. Her shoulder hit a rock. Pain streaked up her arm, and she cried out.
He put a knee in her back and leaned over her. “I said no yelling.”
She tried to push up. He shoved her shoulders down. She turned her head just in time to avoid getting a face full of dirt. He moved her hair to the side and brushed his fingers along her nape, lingering over the skin at the top of her spine.
“You’re the one,” he murmured.
What?
A deep growl filled the clearing. His weight left her, and cool air hit her back. She scrambled to her feet.
Remy stood in wolf form on the edge of the clearing, murder in his light blue eyes. From a distance, werewolves were almost indistinguishable from the common gray wolves in the upper part of North America. The main difference was size. Wolves in the wild tended to hover around eighty to one hundred pounds. The average werewolf was about twice that in wolf form. The typical gray wolf was about waist-high on a human, but a fully grown male werewolf was likely to hit just below a man’s shoulder. Humans who spotted a werewolf from a distance might confuse it with a gray wolf, but no human seeing one up close would ever make that mistake.
A human seeing Remy would probably have had a heart attack. The fierce intelligence burning in those icy blue eyes—a color that didn’t exist among regular wolves—was unmistakably human.
The male backed away, his hands raised, palms out. His full attention was on Remy, which was smart. Remy was by far the deadliest thing in the forest. “I-I meant no harm.”
Remy’s growl spanned a full octave. The eerie soun
d echoed around the clearing.
Lizette studied the male. There was something about him... A nagging awareness tugged at her. Like most werewolves, he was tall and muscled. His muddy brown hair was a shade or two darker than his eyes. His features were even but unremarkable. His was the kind of face a person saw and immediately forgot. Was that why he seemed familiar? Because he looked so average?
“Lizette, go back to the Lodge.” Remy’s telepathic voice bounced around the inside of her skull. She staggered and glared at him. Hell, no. No way was she leaving. She thought it as hard as she could, then remembered he told her he could only receive from another telepath. She shook her head.
Across the clearing, the male didn’t seem to notice their exchange. He continued staring at Remy, the stink of fear rolling off him like corroded battery acid.
“I’m ordering you back to the Lodge. NOW.”
Lizette cringed as Remy’s telepathic voice boomed in her skull. She gave her head another hard shake.
Movement on the other side of the clearing drew Lizette’s attention. With the wolf’s superior vision, Remy must have seen it before she did, because he was already moving before she turned her head. He tackled the new male to the dirt.
“I just wanted to talk to her,” the man said. “She’s unclaimed—”
Remy smacked the side of his head with one massive paw.
Lizette screamed and rushed across the clearing. “No!”
Remy snapped his teeth at her.
She skidded to a stop. “Take it easy, Remy!”
The man groaned. He blinked up at Remy, his eyes bleary and unfocused. Blood saturated the ground beneath him, the sharp, wet scent of it filling the air.
The breeze shifted, carrying the smell to Lizette, and memories exploded. She staggered. Echoes of the past shot from the depths of her mind to the front of her consciousness. Secrets she’d buried in this very forest five long years ago blasted to the surface of her mind in a rush of pain and anger and regret. The back of her neck burned. She gasped. She knew why he looked so familiar.