Adriana
She had lived in the city for years, and the nonstop sound of traffic and sirens was background noise to which she was completely immune.
She could pick out the long, sonorous call of a hook and ladder, the more piercing wail of an ambulance, the sirens coming in an endless wave.
Stations Two and Twelve. Battalion Two. Medic Forty-three.
She’d never understood why civilians had police scanners, but now .
. . She would’ve given anything to have known what units had been called in for whatever calamity was happening.
All of them. You already know it’s all of them.
She paced around her townhouse, down one staircase, down the next, peering out her front door, walking all the way back up to the very top, deciding at length that she could not stay indoors for another second.
The air already carried the smell of smoke, and she hunched against it, twisting in agony. She had spent fifteen years hating Trapp Hemming, and only realized in the past several months that hatred was just love on a discordant frequency. And now, the thought of him in peril made her frantic.
She was a fool, she told herself as she slid behind the wheel of her small SUV.
Foolish, but she knew herself. There was no way she could do anything but twist in agony until she knew he was safe.
As she drove to the firehouse that night, she wondered if his mother was pacing the floors of her giant house at that moment, wondering the same.
It felt as though hours had passed before the vehicles began returning, one by one, in a silent, dark line.
She was parked across the street from the station, in the same angled spot she’d parked in during their shift together.
Her eyes scanned the ambulances, picking Oleg out almost immediately, but Trapp was not with him.
He wasn’t in the next rig that pulled in, nor was he part of the crew piling out of the water tanker.
She swung around, facing the big garage where the two fire trucks had pulled in. Her feet were carrying her across the street before she could make the conscious decision to do so.
“Trapp?”
Her lungs were tight, unable to draw breath, and then — there he was. Already shrugged out of his heavy turnout coat, blue station T-shirt tight across his pectorals, his face smudged in black, hair sticking up haphazardly. Safe.
He did a double take upon seeing her, walking out of the garage with his hands up questioningly.
“Adi?” His eyes slid down her body, and Adriana realized she was still wearing her pajama shorts and a thin tank top, with nothing over it but her ancient waffle-print robe, her feet stuffed into her rubber clogs.
“What the hell are you doing here? It’s the middle of the night! ”
“The sirens woke me up, and I just, I just had to know.” Her voice broke, and her mouth kept moving, sound already drying up, her breath hitching, heat rushing to her face.
I was anxious about going to the cabin tomorrow, and I was spiraling, and I thought I had invited karma to do something terrible.
“I just had to know that you were okay.”
His smile was blindingly white through the grime and sweat on his face. “Oh, baby, I can fight fires all day. This shit is easy compared to the box.”
She choked out a laugh, realizing that she was crying. “I just had to know.”
“I would pick you up and do some sort of sexy fireman carry like in the movies, but I’m literally contaminated right now, so, you know. BSI. You look adorable, though.”
She was still laughing, still crying, hugging herself as she nodded. “BSI. Copy that. I’ll see you at home.”
“I love you,” he called out, laughing.
He was safe. He was fine. “I love you too.” And tomorrow night, you’re going to turn with someone for the very first time, but it’ll be fine. You’ll be with him.
* * *
The forest, at night, was a revelation.
The smell was intoxicating. Wet loamy soil on the bank of the lapping water, the aromatic stickiness of pine pitch, and then the lake itself, tickling her nose.
Her sharp, amber eyes could pick out so many tiny details that were lost to her eyes in her upright bones.
She could see movement in the brush, the scurrying of tiny rodents.
Heard the flapping of wings above her head — bats and owls and fluttering moths, a nocturnal symphony caught in the branches of the trees.
She hadn’t wanted to be here. She could not remember the conversation that had taken place earlier that day in her other skin, when they’d arrived, but she could still taste the fear she’d felt, the trepidation and self-consciousness.
The cabin was larger than she’d expected, set back from a beautiful, private lake. There was a boat dock, several canoes in a little shed, peaceful and secluded, deep in the woods. Sunlight dappled through sugar maples and towering pines, making the water glitter on the lake’s placid surface.
Her heart was thumping in her slender, white throat as she took it all in. It looked like the set of a horror movie. And you’re the final girl.
“Seriously?” Trapp had given her a sour look when she voiced her opinion. “If you’re the final girl, what does that make me?”
Adriana shrugged as if it were obvious. “Clearly the terrifying werewolf, intent on devouring me. And I’m the fool who came out here to the middle of nowhere with no pepper spray.”
That was a lie. She never went anywhere without her little pepper-spray keychain.
“And you’re sure there are no other wolves around? What if they wander in? There’s no fence in the forest.”
Trapp put a single finger beneath her chin, raising her face to meet his. “You’ll be safe with me. I beat the shit out of someone for you in this form. What do you think I’ll do to someone as a wolf? No one will hurt you.”
But she did not remember that conversation now, nor the way her heart had thumped.
All that lingered were the emotional remains, and as she stepped into the wild for the first time, making no sound beneath the moonlight, she only wondered how she’d gone so long without experiencing it.
It was beautiful. She was beautiful, she thought, looking at her reflection in the surface of the wavering water.
Small and lithe, with quick eyes and glinting white fangs.
It didn’t take long for him to find her.
She did not know where the black wolf was when she changed.
She only knew that she’d gone a few yards into the clearing beyond the water before he was there.
He was massive between the trees. His paws left craters in the wet soil, and the width of his chest seemed as broad as the front of the truck on the gravel drive.
The coyote instinctively lowered her head, her ears pinned back.
She waited for the beast to strike, but he never did.
He didn’t snap; he didn’t circle. Instead, he let out a low, rumbling chuff, closing the distance between them.
She bared her teeth at his approach, her belly pressed to the earth, head low, ready to snap.
But then he leaned into her, hot muzzle pressed into the side of her neck, his thick tail thumping.
She knew him, and he knew her. She curled into his warm flanks, remembering.
He had found her on a different moon, had protected her from that cold rain, curled around her again the following month, but it wasn’t raining now.
If she had been afraid of this forest in her other skin, she was so no longer.
She would be safe with him, and she wanted to play.
Adriana slipped out from beneath him, her nimble paws making no sound on the carpet of pine needles.
She crouched low to the ground, growling, her belly flat to the ground, grey tail swishing.
Before the black wolf could process the shift in her behavior, she pounced with a yip, sinking her teeth into his foreleg before darting away, dropping low once she was out of striking distance.
His ears pinned back, teeth bared, a snarl building in his throat.
She didn’t give him the chance to attack.
Darting forward, she pounced again, nipping at his other leg before ducking around him.
Leaping gracefully onto a stump, she threw her head back with a yipping trill.
Catch me if you can. The little coyote didn’t wait for him to accept her challenge, bolting into the brush.
He was huge and strong, but she was faster, disappearing like a silver streak.
She didn’t know why she’d ever been afraid of the moon.
The wind whistled in her ears as she ran, the ground soft and spongy underfoot, and when she saw a clearing ahead, fully illuminated in bright, white light, she couldn’t help herself.
The lack of cover was her undoing. She was fast, but he was canny, reminding her that they’d always been in step, regardless of their bones.
He knew this forest better than she did, and when he went skidding into the clearing, knocking her off her feet, she knew she had been caught.
But she wouldn’t give up that easily. Down on her belly, using her low center of gravity as an advantage, she snapped up, lunging for his hocks, the soft fur of his underbelly, anything she could bite.
She would never submit. He had to work for it.
The black werewolf lunged, but she feinted to the side, evading him. He lunged again, and this time he caught her. Her jaws snapped, but he held her down, pinned in the dirt, the bright red of his cock exciting her blood as she bit him again.
The rumble in his chest ripped free as a snarl. Are you finished?
She snapped again. Never. She yipped again when she wriggled free, circling him triumphantly.
She didn’t know who they were in their other skins.
Didn’t know if they were lovers or enemies, for they smelled like both.
All she knew was that she loved fighting him beneath the moon, making him fight for her.
Almost as much as she enjoyed letting him win.
When he flattened her to the dirt, filling her, the breath left her body.
He rutted her into the ground, hard and driving, teeth at her neck.
She yelped when his knot pushed into her, tying them, his huge paws on either side of her head, claws raking the soil.
His teeth held her by the throat until her body slackened, melting to the forest floor, where he curled around her.
She did not share the memories of her other skin, but here he was her mate, and she was safe.
Safe and secure and utterly free.