Annabella
Chapter twenty-five
The Shift back to human hurt more. Not because anything went wrong—my bones knew the way home now, remembered the sequence even after all these years—but because leaving wolf form felt like stepping out of a warm house into freezing rain.
Everything dulled. Scent collapsed from a symphony to a whisper.
The forest went from speaking a language I could read in my blood to being just… trees.
Sam gave me privacy as I dressed, turning his back to face the trees. The spring air raised goosebumps on my still-flushed skin, cooling the sweat that came with Shifting. I pulled my shirt over my head, the fabric catching on my hair, and turned to find Sam still shirtless.
Oh, wow.
Every line of muscle across his chest and shoulders was defined. Not bulky. Lean and lethal; strength that came from actual use, from years of fighting and running and surviving things that wanted to kill him.
My eyes traced down almost against my will, following the definition of his hips where they disappeared into his jeans. Heat flooded through me, sudden and so fierce it nearly knocked me sideways.
Want.
Yeah. I wanted. My hands itched to touch him, to find out if he was as solid as he looked, if those muscles would tense under my fingers. To hear what sounds he’d make if I scraped my nails down his back. If I kissed the hollow of his throat. If I—
His nostrils flared. His shoulders went rigid.
Right. Werewolf. Enhanced senses. He could smell exactly what I was thinking.
Hexing hells.
I should have been embarrassed. Should have looked away, cracked a joke, pretended I hadn’t just been mentally climbing him like a tree. But he wasn’t moving away. He was watching me, his eyes gone dark, his chest rising and falling too fast.
He wanted me too.
The certainty of it hit me.
“Annabella—”
I crossed the distance between us before I could talk myself out of it and kissed him. His surprise lasted maybe half a second before his arms came around me. One hand found my waist, pulling me flush against him. The other tangled in my hair.
He made a sound against my mouth—low, rough—and it shot through me like lightning, igniting something desperate and consuming. Heat sparked everywhere skin met skin. His tongue swept against mine, and I gasped into his mouth, pressing closer, wanting to dissolve the space between us entirely.
Witch’s fangs, the things I wanted from him.
Things I’d never let myself want. Things I’d convinced myself I didn’t deserve.
Whatever lived between us—was this the mate bond?
—thrummed like a wire pulled tight. His emotions bled through the connection, mixing with mine until I couldn’t tell where his desire ended and mine began.
Just want, pure and uncomplicated and devastating.
His hand at my waist tightened, pulling me impossibly closer.
I could feel the hard planes of his chest against mine, the rapid drum of his heart matching my own frantic rhythm.
My hands slid from his jaw to his shoulders, nails dragging lightly against bare skin.
He shuddered under my touch and broke the kiss, breathing hard. “Annabella—”
But I didn’t want words. Didn’t want to think about what this meant or where we were going or anything beyond the sensation of his skin under my hands. I kissed along his jaw, down to the hollow of his throat where his pulse hammered.
“Fuck,” he breathed, his hands flexing against my waist. “You’re killing me, Moonbeam.”
The nickname made me smile against his skin. I scraped my teeth lightly against his collarbone and felt him tense, felt the wave of desire crash through the bond.
His control snapped.
Suddenly I was moving backward, his mouth claiming mine again, fierce and thorough.
My back hit the rough bark of a tree and he pressed against me—all of him, the hard length of him unmistakable through his jeans—one hand braced by my head, the other sliding under the hem of my shirt to find bare skin.
The touch of his palm against my ribs made me gasp. His hand was warm, slightly rough, and the way he touched me—like I was something extraordinary and he was starving for me—made heat coil tight and low in my core.
“Tell me to stop,” he said against my mouth, even as his thumb traced slow circles on my skin that made thinking almost impossible. “Tell me if this is too much.”
“Don’t stop.” I pulled him closer. “Don’t you dare stop.”
He groaned and kissed me deeper, his hand sliding higher. I pushed into his touch, wanting more, wanting everything he was willing to give. My own hands explored the planes of his back, feeling muscles shift under warm skin, memorizing the shape of him.
When his fingers traced the edge of my bra, I made a sound that was barely human. Through the bond, I felt his satisfaction at my response, his own need spiraling higher.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he murmured against my neck, his lips trailing down to my shoulder. “Been wanting to touch you like this since—”
“Since when?” I asked breathlessly.
“Since the first moment I saw you in that street in Kansas, fighting the ripper addicts.”
The confession undid something in me. I pulled his mouth back to mine, kissing him with everything I had—all the want and fear and desperate hope churning inside me.
His hand slid further up, cupping my breast through the thin fabric of my bra. I gasped against his mouth, and he swallowed the sound, his thumb brushing over my nipple until I was shaking.
“Sam.” I didn’t know if I was begging him to continue or just saying his name because I needed something to hold on to.
“I’ve got you,” he said, and I believed him.
His mouth moved to my neck, kissing and nipping while his hand continued its deliberate exploration.
I could feel him hard against me, could feel exactly how much he wanted this, wanted me.
It should have been overwhelming. Instead, it made me feel powerful.
Like I was the most dangerous thing in this forest, and he knew it and wanted me anyway.
My hands slid to his waistband, fingers tracing the edge where skin met denim. He inhaled sharply.
“Annabella.” His voice was strained. “If you keep doing that, I’m not going to be able to stop.”
“Who said I want you to stop?”
He pulled back enough to look at me, pupils blown wide, breathing ragged. Through the bond, I felt his desire warring with something else. Protectiveness. The infuriating, wonderful stubbornness of a man who wanted me badly enough to shake with it but still put what I needed above what he wanted.
“Our first time isn’t happening against a tree,” he said roughly. “You deserve more than bark in your hair and pine needles in uncomfortable places.”
“What if I don’t care about pine needles?”
“I want to take my time with you,” Sam said, and pressed his forehead against mine.
The promise in his voice sent a shiver through me that had nothing to do with cold.
“Ughh, fine,” I conceded, even though my body was screaming in protest.
He kissed me once more—slow and deep and all-consuming—then stepped back. The loss of his warmth was a physical thing, like having a blanket ripped away while you were outside in winter.
We stood there for a moment, staring at each other, both breathing hard.
My lips felt swollen and tender. My skin buzzed where he’d touched me, and my shirt was twisted halfway up my torso.
Sam didn’t look much better. There were red marks on his neck from my teeth, and his hair was sticking up where I’d been running my hands through it.
I smiled. Despite the mess of feelings spinning through me. Despite knowing that whatever happened next would change things between us permanently.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. And I meant it.
Because I knew, standing there in that sun-dappled clearing with bark imprints on my back and the taste of him still on my lips, that I trusted Sam Shaw.
When had it happened? I couldn’t point to one moment.
It wasn’t the rescue from Adarcan, or the way he’d fought for me.
It wasn’t even today, though today mattered.
It was all of it. Every time he’d given me space instead of pushing.
Every time he’d looked at me—all of me, wolf and witch and fury—and hadn’t flinched.
He was the first person to see the real me and not run.
The first person to want what was best for me, even when I was too stubborn to want it for myself.
He’d been right about Shifting. Right about me needing to stop suppressing half of who I was.
What if he was right about other things?
The thought landed like ice water. What if the doubts I’d been pushing down about Simon—about the missions, about the secrecy, about him leaving me in the Kennel—what if Sam was right about all of it?
What if I’d spent years working for the wrong person?
The forest suddenly felt colder. I pulled back slightly, needing space to think.
“Hey.” Sam’s thumb brushed my cheekbone. “Where’d you go?”
I looked up at him. Saw the patience in his expression. The willingness to wait for me to figure things out on my own. He wasn’t pushing, wasn’t demanding, wasn’t manipulating.
He was just there. Steady. Solid. Safe.
“I need to know the truth,” I said quietly.
“Truth about what?”
I took a breath. Let it out. This was it. The moment where I either kept lying to myself or chose to face whatever reality Sam had been trying to show me.
“Show me what you have on Simon.”
Sam blinked, clearly thrown. “Really? We’re kissing, and that’s what you think of?”
A small smile pulled at my mouth despite the fear coiling in my stomach. “I need to know, Sam.”
And I meant it. Not just that I needed it, but that I was finally ready for it, whatever that truth looked like, however much it destroyed.
It was time I looked at everything with my own eyes and made my own decisions.
Time to stop letting other people—Simon, the coven, even my own desperate need to believe—tell me what was real.
Sam studied my face. Something changed in his expression—from surprise to understanding to a hard, quiet resolve.
“Okay,” he said finally. “When we get back to the house, I’ll call Derek, Gideon, and Waylen.
They have everything we’ve been collecting—documents, recordings, financial trails.
You’ll get the whole truth, Annabella. Every ugly piece of it.
” His thumb brushed my cheekbone again, gentle despite the steel in his voice. “But only if you’re sure.”
Was I sure? To find out if my father had ever loved me at all, or if I’d been a convenient weapon from the start?
No.
But I needed to know anyway.
“I’m sure,” I said.
The words felt like stepping off a cliff. That breathless moment of freefall before you discover whether you can fly or the ground is coming for you.
But I was done hiding. Done letting fear make my decisions.
Whatever truth Sam had to show me, I’d face it.
And then I’d decide what to burn.