Page 44 of A Wolfe in the Woods

I gripped the edge of the counter until my knuckles burned white.

Why her?

Why now?

I didn’t want to need her presence like this. I didn’t want to feel safer when I was near her. I didn’t want to wonder if the beast was drawn to her…or if I was.

I wasn’t safe.

Not for her. Not for anyone.

And if she ever saw me—really saw me, my true nature—I didn’t know what she’d do. What scared me more was not knowing what I’d do.

The first time I’d shifted, I’d been thirteen.

A bully from the western slopes of Juniper Woods, Donovan, had singled out this quiet runt named Mitchell, from a lower-line family. Mitchell hadn’t been a friend, but he’d kept to himself and never bothered anyone. One day,I’d seen Donovan picking on him—knocking him around while the others had stood around laughing. Something in me had snapped. I’d launched at him, latched on, and never let go. By the time I’d returned to myself, Donovan’s face had become almost unrecognizable—broken nose, cracked incisor, blood everywhere.

Of course, all the parents and the council had intervened. Fortunately for me, the elders had dismissed it…said Donovan had provoked the fight and I’d simply ended it. Donovan had invokedRavakar…a spirit debt. Or as humans called it, karma. Translated from our tongue, it meantthe scar that returns.It was how we governed our kind…our version of group therapy, I guess.

Later, my father had spoken to me, stayed with me that entire night as I’d tried to control my first shift. Talking, guiding, trying to educate me on what I was becoming…or rather, what I was but had not understood until that moment.

He’d warned,There’s a fine line between controlling it and becoming it. The longer you pretend you’re only one thing, the harder the other part claws to remind you that you’re not.

I’d grown up my entire life in the shadow of the beast, scared of what I was. I’d thought most kids grew up wanting be something else. I was no different, but for different reasons.

I’d thought I’d never be that scared again. I’d been wrong.

Last night, she’d gotten too close, and I had allowed it.

I didn’t want to hurt her…so I couldn’t let it happen again.

CHAPTER 12

BLANCHETTE

Even the beautiful sheen and shimmer of the lake wasn’t enough to distract me from the endless, maddening loop of my thoughts the next morning.

Is he…?

Or isn’t he…?

I sighed, idly stirring the ice in my coffee, theclinkcomforting. It was already heating up, the condensation rolling water droplets over the back of my palm.

Jonathan Wolfe wasn’t human. I thought that much was clear, especially after last night. But if hewasa shifter, or a Lycan, which I strongly suspected he might be…that posed a different problem entirely.

Then I felt a strum of guilt, coupled with frustration at myself. He might’ve been a Lycan, but that didn’t mean he wasanythinglike Erik or the Lycans I’d had to work with at Skoll all these years. It was preposterous to think so.

But this was also, simply, nature. Lycans shared their soul with a beast, descended from a wolven goddess. The myth was that long ago, a forgotten celestial goddess, Lycana, divine in both moonlight and war and bound to the earth, had breathed life into the first wolven-kind. She’d gifted them strength,cunning, and the fire of ambition. But theyhadbeen beastly, wild and unruly, and they’d twisted their legacy into savage conquest.

Ashamed, she’d wiped them out, then wept.

Her tears had fallen as silver into the soil, birthing a second bloodline…a line who would carry her spirit more purely.

Warriors that were part man and beast.

Flesh and fang.

The new Lycans had been born.