Chapter 2 Dakota
Dakota
Something was definitely wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on what, but whatever it was, it felt like my skin was trying to crawl right off my body.
Maybe it was the extended stay in Japan, which was lovely, but not home.
It was a little odd. I’d spent all of college majoring in Japanese, trying to connect with a home I’d never known.
My parents had never treated me like family, which I now knew was because they’d been paid to take care of me, rather than actually wanting a child.
In the end, the result had been disconnection.
No family, no home, no one and nothing that had ever wanted me.
Part of me had studied Japanese, the language and culture, hoping to find somewhere to belong, someone to belong with.
But I’d already found that with the Crescent pack. None of them looked like me. None of them spoke Japanese—that was why they’d hired me, after all. But they’d taken me without question or hesitation. Without the stilted awkwardness I dealt with from most members of the Igarashi family.
Igarashi Kosuke.
The name I’d been born with, that the parents I didn’t remember had given me.
My cousin, Igarashi Jiro, was dead now. Privately executed by his own family for killing my parents.
Apparently that was how mages worked, and they’d all seemed confused when I’d been horrified by the lack of due process.
He’d killed my parents, after all. He’d confessed to it.
Didn’t I want justice?
I was too soft for them. They didn’t know it, didn’t understand just how much of an outsider I was, because I kept my mouth shut as they taught me how the laws of mages worked. Because no, I didn’t want someone murdered on my behalf, even if he was a monster.
I wasn’t a monster.
Every day I spent in Japan, I felt more distant from Igarashi Kosuke. He’d died with his parents, in a way. The very idea of a Kosuke who could be the heir they needed was long dead.
I was Dakota Morris, and someday, if I married Jax, I’d be Dakota Fyse, because I had no love of my adopted parents or name. Sure, it was a pain to change your name, but it was the right choice for me anyway.
All that mess circling in my head was why when Jax took me aside, our bags already packed, and we left the family’s enormous Kyoto estate, I didn’t hesitate a moment. Every day with the Igarashi family was like trying to wear the skin of a dead man. Alone with Jax, I was myself again.
With Jax, I would go anywhere.
The drive through the Japanese countryside was beautiful. Japan was beautiful. I fit well with the average people I ran into at markets and restaurants. If it hadn’t been for the Igarashi element, I suspected I’d have felt almost at home there.
Funny, that the people I was genetically related to made me feel less at home.
I had no idea where we were going, but even as the scenery got greener and greener, I didn’t have the slightest urge to ask. I squeezed Jax’s hand tight in mine, and that was enough.
Jax was always enough.
By the time we pulled up to the end of a long driveway, I was curled up in his arms, content to spend the rest of the day in the car if that was his plan.
But no. We were at a huge house that looked like a postcard version of what people expected Japan to be.
The family house in Kyoto was enormous and luxurious, but it had felt American in style, right down to the overstuffed sectional sofa.
This place was like a picture of traditional Edo architecture.
Long elegant lines, a gently sloped roof, and everything made of wood, not a speck of concrete or stone in sight.
The feeling of stepping into history was magnified when the driver brought us inside to find a traditional genkan, and automatically stooped to remove his shoes before taking the bags any farther into the building.
Jax followed suit, because my boyfriend and alpha was nothing if not savvy to local culture.
It was like he was made to be a diplomat.
Me? I was a bulldozer.
Okay, fine, I stopped to take my shoes off too. I wasn’t a barbarian. I just wasn’t as good as him at following social cues. I’d learned these ones in school though, so I already knew them.
Almost the whole house was low tech. No outlets, no ceiling fans, not even electric lights.
Just tatami-covered wooden flooring, sliding fusuma for all the doors, and shoji windows, which were .
. . well, beautiful. I didn’t think I’d survive long without an internet connection, but I couldn’t question the sheer stunning elegance of the place.
It was less than an hour, though, before the driver was leaving, saying he’d be back in three days—three days?—and taking his leave.
Were we supposed to live three days with no internet and minimal electricity?
Jax didn’t pay any mind at all, just marched over to the huge building’s one nod to modern style and technology—a full kitchen with huge restaurant-size fridge.
When he swung the doors open, it was literally full of food.
A whole fish in a pan on one shelf. Wrapped meat, with listings of the cuts and weights on the paper they were wrapped in—steaks and chops and pounds of fish and squid and .
. . it was incredible, and I wanted to dive into it.
I hadn’t even realized before . . . was I hungry?
My stomach grumbled as though to answer just as Jax turned back to me, a wide smile on his face. “Your grandmother is a heck of a lady.”
“She . . . what?”
His face turned serious and he crossed back to me, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me in. “You know this is the full moon, right?”
But it wasn’t. It was days till the full moon. Or at least . . . a day. Wasn’t it? Had I completely lost track of time? I’d been trying to track it, since I knew it was supposed to be important to me now, but things had gotten a little muddled over the course of the trip.
“You’re reacting to the waxing moon,” he said, stroking a hand down my back, his voice soft and touch soothing. “You haven’t been a wolf for long, and your body isn’t fully attuned yet. It’s like werewolf puberty, sort of.”
Fuck me. Puberty? That had been bad enough the first time. I did not need to deal with that crap again. “You’re joking,” I demanded.
The sympathetic wince he gave said that no, he was not, in fact, kidding.
He was deadly serious. I was going through werewolf puberty.
The way I’d been wanting to scratch myself all over, and the creepy-crawly feeling of my own skin on my body came back to me.
The way I’d been entirely unable to get comfortable for the last week.
I’d thought it had just been the discomfort of dealing with the Igarashi family and their presumptions that I was one of them and thought like they did.
“So . . . they sent us out to the woods?”
“I asked her for some privacy.”
“With no internet?” Yes, my voice did have a distinct whine to it when I asked that. I freaking liked the internet, okay?
His answer to that was an even bigger smile. “Oh, I think I can distract you from that.”
And then, he unbuttoned his suit jacket.
Okay, that . . . might work. Jax stripping was officially the sexiest thing ever, and it’d make me think about something other than the lack of the internet for at least a while.
He stripped, right there in the kitchen, tossing his jacket onto the marble countertop, then reaching for the fly of his wool slacks.
And that? Okay, it was too much for me to stand there when this could be an interactive display.
So I reached for the tiny white buttons on his shirt and started helping him out.
The way his grin turned predatory could only be described, punnily enough, as wolfish.
I was so distracted by uncovering his warm, strong, golden chest that I almost missed him dropping his pants. Fuck my life—or not, since that man was all fucking mine. Every tanned inch of perfect skin, every firm muscle, every soft look as he gazed at me—me!—all of it was mine.
“As great as this is,” he said, reaching up to grab my hands running over his pecs, “it’s not exactly why I brought you here. Well, not only that.”
His wink was underwear-melting, but then a moment later, he was shifting.
Holy shit, he was . . . how was it even possible for a wolf to be gorgeous?
Yes, they were beautiful creatures, but I’d never been the kind of person who was sexually attracted to non-human beings .
. . except that I was also not human anymore. Or . . . maybe I’d never been human.
Whatever. The point was that I was also a wolf, or at least I had one inside me.
When he backed away a step and looked at me, waiting, I realized that was the point of this. He wanted me to do the same thing. Wanted me to become a wolf and . . . well, I didn’t know what came next.
It didn’t matter, though. There wasn’t any hesitation in me. I’d go anywhere Jax asked me to, do whatever he needed me to. He was my alpha, and the man I was definitely in love with.
With the pull of that on my psyche, it took less than a minute before my clothes joined his on the counter and floor, and I was shivering my way through the strangest sensation I’d ever felt in my life.
Then Jax was nosing a door open in the back of the kitchen, and both of us were streaking off through the woods behind the house.