CHAPTER 15
Ifixed my gaze on the trail ahead, feeling itchy.
Michael and I had a ways to go, and at this rate, it would take us another hour to get there.
Silver shafts of moonlight flitted through the forest canopy.
I was drawn to the light like a moth to a flame.
It made me want to drop to all fours and chase Her path through the night sky.
The need to shift was driving me to distraction.
How did Michael stand this all the time?
“Wanna run?” I asked.
“If you think it necessary,” he answered.
“It’s not necessary. It’s fun.” I moved closer to him as we walked, butting my shoulder against his. “You do know what fun is, right?”
He arched a brow at me. “Contrary to popular belief, I do.”
What did someone like Michael do for fun? All I could picture was him in a library with a glass of good scotch and a book open on his lap.
“Let’s go then,” I said.
I broke into a jog. He pulled even with me a moment later, our strides the same, our hearts beating as one.
I smiled toothily at him, but he wasn’t looking at me.
He was staring down, picking out his path with care.
Oh, right. This trail was new to him, and with his senses suppressed, he might not be able to see it as clearly as I could.
Thankfully, I knew a way to fix that. I loosened the cage on my power and it swelled to engulf him.
He shuddered, toe catching on an exposed tree root, and nearly faceplanted.
I grabbed his arm. “My bad. I should have warned you.”
“Please do in the future.”
“I will,” I said, letting him go. “I just meant to give you a little boost so you didn’t trip.”
He gave me a very Michael look. “And how did that turn out?”
I laughed. “Shots fired.”
“I was merely teasing.”
I bumped my shoulder into his again. “I know.”
We fell quiet for a moment, running together through the night-drenched forest like two creatures born beneath its boughs.
“What do you do for fun?” I asked, because I couldn’t help myself.
“I practice martial arts. Among other things.”
“What other things?”
“I ski in the winter. I travel when I have the time. Two years ago, I became certified in solo skydiving.”
It was my turn to stumble, and Michael’s turn to steady me.
“Caught you off guard with that last one?” he asked, amused.
“Uh… yeah.” In my mind, he sailed through the air in a three-piece suit like something out of a Bond movie.
“What do you do for fun?” he asked. He sounded like he really wanted to know.
“Less expensive things. I hang out with friends. Run with the pack. Normal shifter stuff.”
He glanced at me.
“Not to say that you’re abnormal.”
“That was awfully close to an apology,” he said.
“Honestly, I feel like I should apologize. I keep making assumptions about you.”
“It’s only natural.”
“Doesn’t make it fair.”
He nodded. “True.”
“How long have you trained in martial arts?”
“Since I was a child.”
“You’re fast.”
He was quiet for a minute, and I glanced over to see him frowning.
“What?” I asked.
“I believe I’ve grown faster.”
The way he said it gave me pause. “You don’t mean since we were bonded, do you?”
“I do,” he said. “And I’ve found that even while suppressing I’m… aware of things in a way I wasn’t before. I assumed that awareness came from my hyperfixation on you, but even in those brief moments we’ve been apart, my heightened senses have remained.”
“Seriously?”
He nodded. “Did you not anticipate this? Is sharing power through the bond abnormal?”
I racked my memory, searching for even the slightest hint of something like this, and came up empty. “I honestly don’t know. Hang on a second.”
We slowed to a walk, and I reached into my pocket for my phone. I dialed Mom. When she didn’t answer, I called Dad. It went to voicemail.
“They must have already shifted,” I said. “Don’t let me forget to ask them about this before we leave.”
“I won’t.”
“Are you stronger, too?”
“I’m not entirely sure. I haven’t had time to test it. Why?”
“Just wondering.”
“Layla?”
I sighed and started jogging again, waiting for him to join me before I answered. “I’m a little worried that if you freak out when we shift, it might not be as easy to manhandle you into submission as I thought.”
He craned his head around to stare at me. The sheer affront on his face was priceless. “Manhandle me into submission?”
“You’d rather I let you slaughter everything in the forest?”
He sniffed and faced forward again, his scent prickly. “I’m unpredictable, not rabid.”
The fact that he said he was unpredictable and not the wolf felt like a huge step in the right direction.
“Where exactly are we going?” he asked.
“Getting tired? I can slow down for you.”
He gave me a long-suffering look. Teasing him was way too much fun.
“We’re headed deep into packland,” I said. “There’s a ridgeline that looks out over a valley. It’s one of my favorite places to howl, and it’s so far away that we shouldn’t run into anyone else out there.”
“If we do,” he said, hesitating a moment before continuing, “please don’t let me hurt anyone.”
“Don’t worry, I got you.”
A small flush of warmth came through the bond in response, paired with relief.
We fell silent and settled into the long, loping stride that our kind could maintain for hours.
In wolf form, we ran down prey, overcoming them after their exhaustion took hold.
That endurance extended to our human forms. Our breaths were deep and even.
Our pulses thrummed. Around us, the forest came alive with the sounds of its nocturnal residents.
I grabbed Michael’s shoulder and slowed him, pointing up.
A soft sigh, almost like velvet, came from overhead, and an owl appeared out of the gloom, gliding past us as it searched for prey among the underbrush.
Michael stared up at it with intense focus, moonlight sheering across eyes that had visibly lightened.
We ran on. A few minutes later, he turned his head to the right and took a deep pull through his nose. “Deer.”
The farther into the wilderness we ran, the more relaxed I became.
It was hard to think about megalithic skyscrapers and the stink of sewers when trees towered overhead and the smell of my mate filled my nose.
As I relaxed, so did Michael, and the tension we’d been carrying around with us eased from our shoulders and limbs.
Our movements became lithe. We glided through the trees like ghosts.
I could barely hear our footfalls on the path below.
We reached a familiar clearing not long after, and I slowed to a stop. Michael stopped just past me, head turning as he took in our surroundings. His chest rose and fell in an even rhythm, and not a drop of perspiration marked his forehead.
“Is this it?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
He faced north and breathed deeply. “I smell water.”
“There’s a river in the valley,” I told him. His senses really were heightened. Not even Gia could smell it from here.
“I’d like to see that,” he said.
A shiver ran down my spine, the need to shift taking hold. I pulled my long-sleeved shirt overhead and tossed it to the ground. My skin prickled in goose bumps, the night air cool without any fur to shield me.
Michael froze at the sight of me shucking off my sneakers and jeans. I faced him in my bra and underwear. His eyes widened a fraction, and I felt a swell of surprise and awareness come through the bond.
Be a damn adult, Layla, I reminded myself.
“I think I should shift first,” I said. “That way we can see how you respond. Also, I’m big enough in wolf form that if you start to get snippy, I can just sit on you.”
He shook his head, a small smile playing about his lips. “I’m not sure I can stomach the embarrassment of that.”
I grinned back at him. “Then you better behave.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Not sure why hearing him say that was a turn-on, but then again nothing made sense anymore, so who the hell really cared?
This close to the shift, I was having trouble suppressing my mounting attraction to him.
I needed to get into wolf form, now. Everything was simplified in it.
Complex emotions and human thought required focus.
Hunt, kill, howl—those were the things that drove me in wolf form, my instincts coming to the forefront.
I reached behind my back and unsnapped my bra. Michael turned away, giving me privacy. There was a hesitancy to him that froze my teasing comment on my tongue. He was already on edge. From here on out, I needed to work on keeping him calm, not rile him up.
I kicked my underwear off next and set my clothes in a pile. Hopefully they were still here when we came back. I’d had animals take off with them before, and the Goddess knew the last thing we needed tonight was to have to walk back naked.
“How you doing?” I asked.
“Fine,” Michael said.
“Let me know if you need me to stop from here on out.”
“I will.”
I dropped to my knees and started to shift, much slower than I wanted to.
I was so keyed up that my wolf form threatened to burst out of me, but Michael might not handle that well.
Instead I let fur flow over my body to guard myself from the cold.
Claws pushed through my fingers and toes.
Power licked over me, warm and electric, and my muscles swelled with the influx, adding mass to my body. The threat of shivering abated.
“You still with me?” I asked.
He nodded, but I could feel a battle raging beneath the surface. He felt close to panic.
“Michael?”
“Continue, please,” he ground out. “You were right. We need to do this. It would be unfair for you not to assume wolf form just because of my discomfort.”