Chapter Fifteen
Sarah
Amassive russet wolf stares at me, his tawny fur streaked with crimson. White socks accent his powerful legs and a blaze marks his broad forehead. He’s bigger than any wolf I’ve ever seen–even standing on his hind legs, he’d tower over my five-and-a-half-foot frame.
Thick ropes of muscle ripple beneath his pelt with every subtle movement. His jaws are easily large enough to crush bones to splinters. But it’s his eyes that transfix me most–molten pools of yellow fire that bore straight through to my soul.
I shrink back against the rough tree trunk. Sheer, visceral terror has me trembling from head to toe. This...this beast just brutally slaughtered the wolf that dragged me out here. I watched in mute horror as he ripped out the other’s throat with dagger-like fangs.
And now those same razor-edged jaws are stained crimson, the beast’s muzzle dripping gore. Will he turn those weapons on me next, now that I’m alone and utterly defenseless?
To my shock, the wolf does the complete opposite. He drops to his belly on the ground, laying his massive body out in an unmistakable posture of submission. A pitiful whine slips through his bloodied jaws as he regards me with those eerie yellow eyes.
Slowly, carefully, he stretches out his front legs and begins crawling toward me with his ears flattened against his skull. The move is so disarmingly domestic, so at odds with the brutality I’ve just witnessed, that it roots me to the spot in sheer incredulity.
When he’s no more than six feet away the wolf bounces his tail against the ground in a distinctly canine gesture. He’s...he’s wagging his tail at me, as if trying to make friends and convey he means no harm.
I gape at the bizarre scene, not knowing whether to scream or whimper in fear. Even as this act tugs at some primitive place in my soul that finds it endearing, alarm bells blare through my mind. This is no domesticated pet. This is a wild, bloodthirsty beast who just took a life without remorse or mercy.
And yet...there’s something almost painfully familiar about those soulful yellow eyes. Something I can’t be scared about no matter how hard I try.
My breath stutters in my lungs. I know those eyes. I’ve gotten hopelessly lost in their warm, molten depths while making love to...
I reach out. Brush my fingers over the white blaze of fur on his forehead. The wolf stays still, letting me pet him. His fur is…soft. So soft.
The wolf startles me by releasing a strange, churring sound, almost like a content chuff. Before I can process what’s happening, the massive beast shifts.
What was once a hulking animal rapidly distorts and elongates, rearranging into thick, sinewy human limbs. Fur melts away and bronze skin ripples, sculpting into dense cords of bulging muscle and stark plains.
It takes my addled brain long, agonizing seconds to understand what I’m witnessing. Where the wolf once crouched, now a powerfully-built man is rising in a deep crouch before me.
A very naked, incredibly masculine man with tousled chestnut hair and those same soulful, achingly-familiar eyes, once yellow and now brown. Streaks of gore paint stark lines across his sculpted torso and down one thick arm in a macabre abstract. My eyes stray helplessly to the thick jut of his engorged cock nestled in a bed of wiry curls before flicking back up to see his face twisted with remorse.
“Mitch?” I croak in a strangled whisper, unable to tear my gaze from his nude, thickly-muscled form.
I should scream. I should run. By all accounts, this man–this thing–is a dangerous monster who just coldly murdered another living creature in the most savage way imaginable. My brain knows I should be fleeing in blind panic.
Yet my body refuses to obey. My muscles are frozen in place while rapid, panicked breaths scorch my lungs in ragged bursts. All I can do is stare at the man I’ve just made love to and try to make sense of this insanity.
“Sarah.” Mitch’s voice is a low, gravelly rumble utterly at odds with the tender baritone I’m used to. His eyes plead with me, begging for understanding or absolution. I can’t tell which. “I know you’re afraid. I know this is...this is a shock. But you have to know I would never harm you. You’re my mate. I’d die before letting anything hurt you.”
The word ‘mate’ echoes through my mind like a silk caress, raising goosebumps and making my pulse thunder in my ears. My arms come over my chest, trying to cover my nudity before I realize I’m shaking my head in reflexive denial.
This isn’t happening.
It can’t be.
I’m hallucinating or dreaming or something because men can’t just shape-shift into towering wolves. They can’t rip out another being’s throat and bathe themselves in its blood. Every panicked instinct is screaming at me to get away but my feet remain rooted to the ground.
“I don’t...I don’t understand,” I stammer, wishing my voice sounded braver and stronger instead of on the verge of hysteria. “What are you? What...what just happened?”
Mitch rises slowly from his crouch, movements cautious and palms raised in a gesture of peace. His expression is more tender than I’ve ever seen it, as if trying to gentle a wild animal.
“I’m a wolf shifter, Sarah,” he murmurs in that same low rumble. “A human with the ability to transform into an animal. And you...you are my mate. My fated partner chosen by the Wolf Shifter Goddess herself.”
I gape at him, at a loss for words. Part of me wants to dissolve into hysterical laughter or burst into terrified tears. Instead, I hear myself whispering in a trance-like daze.
“Your...mate?”
A look of such profound yearning flashes across his face that it makes my already erratic heart skip a beat.
“Yes,” he breathes, taking a half-step closer. I flinch and he stops like I’m a cornered rabbit about to bolt. “You are the other half of my soul, Sarah. The missing piece without which I will never be whole. I know you must feel the beginnings of our bond, even if you don’t recognize it yet for what it is.”
I swallow hard, my throat clicking dryly. Part of me desperately wants to deny his words, to insist he’s utterly insane.
But how can I, when an ember of something molten yet ineffable flares inside me? When a place inside me clicks into alignment, something spiritual that’s never felt quite right until this very moment?
Subconsciously, my fingers drift to the streaks of blood splashed over my throat as images of his powerful, furred body ripping out another wolf’s life blaze through my mind. My chest seizes with the beginnings of hyperventilation.
“I...I feel nothing,” I force out in a thin whisper, hoping it will make this madness stop and knowing with sick certainty that I’m lying. “I think you’ve got the wrong person. I’m not…not your mate.”
The devastated look that washes over Mitch’s expression makes my heart lurch in a way I can’t begin to describe. “No,” he rasps hoarsely, agony coating the single word. “No, fate never gets it wrong, Sarah. You are...were destined to be my mate the moment you were born. Nothing can change that. Not even denial.”
A frantic giggle bubbles up my throat at his words, quickly spiraling into a panted wheeze. Everything in me screams that the universe has made some catastrophic mistake.
Yet that newly-awakened part of my soul resonates with the ringing truth in his statement. It knows without doubt that he speaks only fact, no matter how insane it seems on the surface.
I clutch my head in my hands, hysteria bubbling up and threatening to overwhelm me. “No,” I choke, rocking on my heels like a broken thing. “No, no, no. This isn’t real. This isn’t happening...”
Because the alternative–the alternative is too huge for my fragile human mind to accept.
I’m distantly aware of Mitch trying to speak again, to offer reassurance or explanations that will never make sense. All I can do is struggle to breathe past the crushing weight in my chest.
When I finally pry my eyes open again, there’s a look of such profound desolation on his face that it pierces me to my core. It’s the anguish of a mate rejected, an agony I can see mirrored in his devastated eyes.
I can’t stay here. I can’t face this impossible reality and the rapidly-splintering shards of my old life. Choking on a sob, I whirl on shaking legs and stumble in the direction of the cabin. Of home and safety and anything resembling normalcy.
“Sarah, wait!” Mitch’s anguished shout follows on my heels as I half-run, half-stumble my way through the shadowed trees. He moves to catch up, and then seems to think better of it when I flinch away from his reaching hand.
I shove through the door of the cabin and up the stairs, bile rising in my throat when I see the rumpled sheets of the bed where we made love not even an hour ago.
My entire world has been turned inside-out in the span of a day. The man I thought I knew has been revealed as some kind of supernatural being. Something not human, and therefore something I should be afraid of.
Yet all I feel is a yawning ache of confusion and denial when I remember the word “mate” and that fleeting sense of absolute rightness that came with it. Like a part of me that was always out of kilter clicked into place.
I whirl at the sound of Mitch’s tread on the stairs, his expression utterly heartbroken. “Sarah,” he pleads hoarsely. “Please, let me explain...”
“Explain what?” I snatch up my clothes, shoving my legs into my jeans and wrapping my shirt around me when my shaking fingers refuse to do up the buttons. “That you’re...you’re some kind of monster? That you just slaughtered another wolf?”
He flinches at the venom in my words, eyes reflecting a soulful agony that guts me. “I’m not a monster. At least...I never wanted to be seen as one in your eyes. That wolf was feral. He didn’t know what he was doing. He would have taken you out into the forest and…”
“And what, Mitch?”
“He would have torn you limb from limb.” He scrapes his fingers through his hair. “I was going to tell you the truth tonight after we...” He swallows thickly. “After we celebrated finding one another. But then I felt the wards on our territory shatter. As Alpha, I had to go make sure none of our people were harmed.”
My eyes widen in shock at the plural use and make a massive connection. “You mean...everyone in this town is...”
The pained look he gives me is confirmation enough. Dear God...Sally and Cindi...all those friendly neighbors I’ve come to regard as human...
Suddenly it all makes sense – why this remote little town seems so insulated from the world. Why there was never any mention of people leaving or newcomers arriving, besides myself. Why everyone looked at me with the same mixture of wariness and speculation when I first arrived.
I’m an outsider. The only one here without this...this secret, uncanny existence.
“You’re all...?” My voice cracks like glass shattering on the last word. I can’t bring myself to say it out loud. To put that label on the people I’ve come to care about so quickly.
Mitch takes a half-step toward me but I instinctively cringe back, shaking my head in denial. His face twists with naked pain at the automatic rejection. “We’re wolf shifters, yes,” he says in a toneless rasp. “Both human...and something more. I never lied to you, Sarah. I just...hadn’t gotten to that part of the truth yet.”
A hysterical, breathless giggle bubbles up my throat. I clamp a hand over my mouth to stifle the slightly mad sound, tears burning tracks down my cheeks.
“This is all...completely insane. I can’t...I can’t do this.” I won’t look at Mitch, can’t look at him and see the inhuman secret roiling behind his handsome face.
“Sarah...” His voice is strands from cracking, wrapping around my name like a physical caress. I flinch away from the tenderness, from the sense of rightness it invokes.
“I have to leave,” I force out, choking on the hot knot of tears lodged in my throat. “I have to...to think. To understand...”
Except I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand this madness. To accept that the world–my world–is not what it seems, and never has been.
“Please.” Mitch tries again, reaching for me like a man grasping at air. I shake my head mutely, shrinking away from the naked yearning in his eyes. From the part of me that wants nothing more than to let myself be soothed and gathered into the shelter of his embrace.
“I’m sorry,” I force out in a choked rasp, dashing away tears with the back of one hand. “I’m so sorry, but I can’t. I can’t...”
I turn and flee before I can shatter into a million pieces. Mitch doesn’t try to stop me, doesn’t call out again as I bolt down the stairs and out the cabin door with the crisp night air clawing at my face.
Wolves watch me with glowing eyes as I stumble down the gravel driveway in blind instinct. Shadowy, silent forms that make my pulse thunder with fear and incredulity. Except what did I have to fear when the most dangerous creature I know is the one I’ve just left behind?
Up ahead, I see two dark forms detach from the tree line. One a sleek, petite wolf and the other broader, more solidly-built. My breath catches in my throat as the two figures shift in a rapid, organic flow. One moment, they’re wolves. The next, they’re Sally and Cindi emerging from the shapeshifting transition as easily as pulling off a coat.
I pull up short, staring at them in dazed disbelief as they approach with expressions of heartbreaking sadness and regret.
“Sarah,” Sally begins, her normally cheerful tone subdued. She holds up both hands in a placating gesture, as if trying not to startle a spooked animal. “We know this is...a lot to take in right now. But please, don’t go. At least let Mitch explain...”
A dry, rasping sound that might be a laugh hitches in my throat. “Explain?” I echo, my voice dull and lifeless. “How can he possibly explain being...being...” I can’t bring myself to say the words out loud.
“A shifter,” Cindi supplies in her usual blunt manner, but her tone holds a wealth of compassion. “Just like the rest of us in Willowbrook. I know it’s a shock, but this ability has been in our blood for generations, Sarah. We were born this way, just as you were born human.”
“Human...” The word falls from my lips with more bitterness than I intend. Because suddenly, that label feels more like a weakness–a lack.
Sally steps closer, her expression softening further. “Mitch will be an amazing mate for you, Sarah. He’s a good alpha who will love you with everything he has. You two are fated–the first new mating pair we’ve had in Willowbrook in over twenty years.”
“Mating,” I mumble numbly, uncomprehending. My gaze skates over Sally’s shoulder to where Mitch has appeared in the open doorway, his eyes reflecting twin wells of naked hope and longing.
The sight lances straight through me, rousing that same profound sense of rightness–of meant-to-be. I tear my gaze away, jaw clenched against the disorienting vertigo of having my entire reality upended in the span of a few earth-shattering moments.
“You’re a blessing to us, Sarah. A savior for our pack’s bloodlines,” Cindi continues, her tone taking on a wistful edge.
I flinch at the weight of expectation in her words. “I’m no one’s savior,” I retort, the words tasting like ash and iron on my tongue. “I’m not even sure I can save myself most days.”
Tears blur my vision, hot and stinging as they streak down my cheeks in runnels. I swipe them away with trembling fingers, blinking against the torrent as my heart shatters into a million fragments inside my rib cage.
“I can’t...I can’t do this,” I force out in a whisper choked with despair. “I’m sorry, but I have to leave. I have to go and try to make sense of...of whatever this madness is.”
A muscle cords along Mitch’s jaw, but he gives me a jerky nod of acceptance. “If that’s what you need. Then I understand. I don’t want to imprison you here, Sarah. Not when your freedom is what I cherish most about you.”
The words twist like a dagger in my heart. I curl my arms around my midsection, feeling like I might shatter into fractals.
When Mitch moves toward me, I retreat a stumbling step. He freezes, hurt and resignation flickering across his striking features. In silence, he turns and retrieves a set of keys from the pocket of his jeans I notice he has donned, extending the keys in my direction.
“Take my truck. Drive it to the Wolf’s Bite tavern and get your car. I’ll pick up the truck later. And when you go and find your new home...” A look of such profound pride flashes across his expression that it rocks me even further off-kilter. “Send me a copy of whatever best-selling book you write. I’ll be the first to celebrate it.”
A harsh, gulping sob escapes my constricted throat as I snatch the keys, tears pouring down my face in heated streams. I turn on wobbling legs and flee toward the truck, every ragged footfall leaving a piece of my shattered heart and soul behind on the packed earth.
I don’t look back at the murmurs of comfort Sally and Cindi offer Mitch, or the resonant howls that swell from the surrounding forest.
All I can do is climb into the truck and let the roar of the engine drown out the dissonant keening of my fracturing soul. The drive to the Wolf’s Bite passes in a blur of unshed tears and disorientation.
I pull up to the darkened hotel, staring sightlessly at my lonely little Honda Civic parked all by itself, bruised and battered and looking so lonely.
Just like me.
With numb detachment, I park the cruiser and reclaim my own vehicle. I sit gripping the steering wheel and finally allow the dam to burst. Hot, racking sobs claw their way free, tearing past my lips in ragged gasps as the events of the past hour blaze in vivid, kaleidoscopic bursts.
Mitch’s gentle lovemaking, the first to unwind me from years of self-repression. The frantic urgency as he raced off to investigate a threat to his...pack. My terror at being dragged into the forest by that feral wolf, certain I would be torn to shreds.
Only to be saved by...by Mitch revealing his more primal, monstrous aspect. He’d killed an insane creature that would have killed me. He hadn’t done it lightly. He’d only sprung once the wolf had gone for me with a killing lunge.
I squeeze my eyes shut, hunching over the wheel as another wave of sobs shudders through me. How can I reconcile Mitch with the massive wolf? How can I accept that the most tender lover I’ve ever known is the same creature capable of such violence to defend me?
How can I even begin to believe that we are fated? Destined by some mythical, cosmic force to be soul-bound as “mates” in a way far more profound and permanent than any human marriage?
I slam the heel of my palm against the steering wheel in a childish tantrum fueled by disbelief and frustration. My entire understanding of the world has been warped beyond recognition. The rules of reality no longer apply, if they ever truly did.
I don’t know what’s true anymore–what’s real and what’s madness. All I know is I can’t stay in this insular little pocket where the supernatural reigns. Where the line between human and animal is hopelessly blurred.
Even if it means leaving behind the only man who ever truly saw me and cherished me for exactly who I am.