2. Chapter 2 #2
“I should’ve given you gloves.” Lee brushed a fingertip around my biggest sore at the base of my thumb. “You should take the afternoon off.”
“They’ll heal when I shift.”
“Even so, they must hurt. Why make things worse?”
I shrugged, unable to say how I was finding myself more and more settled in my skin, the longer we worked side by side.
I’d always figured I was that rare wolf for whom going alone really was the best choice.
Now I had to admit it’d been practical, not perfect.
Very few Alphas were good with a pack member constantly travelling— especially far enough for their bonds to stretch thin— for anything less than a war.
I hadn’t searched out a new pack because it would’ve meant giving up my profession, or at least curtailing the most interesting parts.
But inside, I’d clearly yearned for wolf company more than I realized.
Every move Lee made sang of his wolf to me, in the smoothness of his steps and the shift of powerful muscles under his sweat-slicked skin.
He’d hauled off his T-shirt and tucked it into the back of his Levis.
The damp scent of sweat and wolf came to my nostrils and settled down in my core.
Even the way we both alerted and turned in unison at the sound of a rabbit in the hedge made my wolf happy.
We finished the job halfway through the afternoon.
Lee toweled off and put his shirt back on before bringing the mayor’s wife out to look things over.
He introduced me as his hired help, but I stayed back, avoiding her sideways looks and attempts to pry out my origins.
The faster we were done, the sooner we’d head back to privacy at his place.
We could eat, and maybe we wouldn’t even have to wait for dark to shift and run.
I was twitchy with need, despite all the time I’d spent in fur recently.
Alone in fur. That was the difference.
At Lee’s house, we wolfed down a meal of venison stew, thawed from his freezer. I helped wash the plates, then paced by the window, staring out at the forest dappled by late-afternoon sunshine.
“We could drive up into the mountains,” Lee said. “Somewhere private.”
“Yes!”
He laughed at my eagerness, but I caught the shine of gold in his eyes and the quickness of his movements. He wasn’t fooling me.
We both dressed in loose shorts and soft T-shirts— easy to remove, possible to shift in— and Lee stuffed his big feet into canvas gym shoes. I only had my boots, due to the limits of my pack, but I left the laces loose. Clothes felt confining. The chill of oncoming dusk meant nothing to us.
Side by side in his truck, we drove up the curving mountain road.
A few miles past his place, a narrow logging road branched off and Lee took that route, climbing more steeply up a rutted single lane, overgrown branches brushing the roof of the pickup.
When we reached a high clearing twenty minutes later, he turned off the truck.
Other than the tick of the cooling engine, the sounds of civilization had fallen away.
The scent of crushed greenery and disturbed earth wafted on the breeze.
Birds called in the trees. A squirrel chittered overhead, hurling rodent curses at us for frightening him.
The sun had dropped below the treetops, and the forest around us lay in shadow, deep and inviting.
“Oh, yes.” I swung out of the truck and turned to Lee. “Are we safe to shift here?”
“Let’s hike farther in. I’ve never seen anyone else on that road, but twice there were tire tracks that were not my own.”
“I don’t mind a hike. You lead.” The living scent of my long-lost packmate on the air made my heart leap.
Lee set off between the trees keeping a steady pace, which suited me with my boots still loose.
One rubbed my ankle, but I didn’t care about that any more than the sting in my hands.
I’d be shifting and healing soon enough.
He took us along a deer track to a small clearing where the stone of the mountain rose through the underbrush, its granite surface cool in the shadows.
“Here. You go first.”
I kicked off my boots and yanked my T-shirt over my head. Lee whirled away, and I tensed for a moment, wondering if he’d heard something, but he just scanned the woods around us, gesturing for me to continue with a handwave.
The stone pressed hard against my hip when I lay down naked, but bare rock meant avoiding annoyingly sticky pine needles.
I closed my eyes and opened my mind, seeking out the shift energy of the universe.
Under that open sky, power came to me freely, sweet and golden, sinking into my body, coiling under my skin. My wolf stirred, blinked, and rose up.
Shift, I urged myself. Paws and nose, speed and sound, strength and healing. Be wolf. Be wild, fast, powerful, dangerous…
Shift energy rippled through me, lightly at first, then deeper.
My wolf enveloped me, our bones shaping, muscles stretching, my very breath changing as my chest flattened and thinned.
I groaned and heard the sound with wolf-sharp ears.
The feel of rock under me changed as my thick wolf coat rushed over my skin.
Everything ached and pulled and hurt, but in a good way, a growing-and-becoming way. Be wolf.
Blurred minutes later, I blinked open my eyes, pushed up to my chest, and shook my head, my wolf ears flapping.
The world was brighter yet faded, colors muted, the distance blurry.
By compensation, a gallery of sounds and smells filled my senses, keys to a universe my human self only dimly knew.
And over all of them, thick and dominant and welcome, was the scent of Lee’s skin with the essence of his wolf underneath.
Pack. Home. Him. My wolf stretched toward that scent as if we could roll in every nuance and work that perfection into our fur.
I coughed. My fur. When I was in human form, my wolf felt like a second self, locked down deep.
In fur, we became one, and we wanted nothing more than to run shoulder-to-shoulder with Lee.
I stood and yipped at him, a command. Shift, you laggard.