Page 71 of Broken Moon

I wasn’t strong enough.

I would never be stronger thana demon—unless I shifted. If I shifted, Lucy would see my wolf. If I shifted,there was a chance the detective would see my wolf, though I wasn’t sure if hewere still unconscious or not.

And if I shifted, I would bevulnerable through a process that would take at least sixty seconds, maybemore, and the demon would take the blade. He would leave this world, and hewould take me with him.

I absolutely could not losecontrol and shift.

Deep down, I hadn’t beenconfident Icouldshift. I didn’t know how. Without the full moon, andwithout the alpha, I was too new, surely. My wolf was too warped. I didn’t feelthe knowledge. Funny how yesterday I would have given anything to shift, andright now, I was fighting with everything inside me not to.

“Fuck,” I cried.

My wolf was chaos, and she wasmad. She fed on my extreme stress and emotions and she took control.

And I began to shift.

ChapterThirty-Two

Worrying about the detectiveand Lucy learning my secret was the least of my problems. My wolf didn’t careat all what they thought, and though the human part of me did, it wasn’tforemost on my mind now.

I had more important things tothink about. To marvel over.

Like the fact that my shift wasas seamless as fast as any alpha’s, though it certainly shouldn’t have been. Itdidn’t take me an excruciating sixty seconds of bone-cracking mess to shift. Isimply…shifted.

One second I was fighting notto shift, and the next second, I was a wolf. Part of me stood back in amazementand awe, but just as I hadn’t had time to really dwell on my huge freedom, Icouldn’t really think about what had just happened—or why I’d been able toshift the way I had.

When I was my wolf, I was alsomy human, with my human thoughts. I still knew what had to be done and though Icouldn’t hold my spirit snare or try to trap the demon, I could concentrate ongetting him out of Lucy, holding on to my blade, and keeping myself out of thedemon’s world.

I clamped down on the handlewith my strong teeth, and I sliced it over Lucy’s ribs. Overly hard and quitedeep, but the situation was too urgent and hurried for finesse. I cut her, andthat was the important thing. Even in my wolf form, I cut her.

Her screams merged with thedemon’s screams, and she fell back against the wall, mouth open, eyes staring,getting, perhaps, too much of the demon’s mind and certainly too much of hispain. He shot from her mouth as a black, thick smoke, smelling horribly ofsulfur and death and other things unrecognizable to my wolf’s sensitive nose. Withouta body, he could not grab the blade, so I let it drop, shifted back to my humanform, and scrambled for the snare. It was too late, though, to catch him.

The demon was gone, but I knewwithout a single doubt that he would return to try again. He had no choice,really, did he? He wanted more than anything to get back to his world and to abody that no longer existed in this world.

But I also knew that he wasweakened further not just because the longer he spent here, the weaker he wouldbecome—eventually he would simply be another spirit—but because he’d beeninjured once again by his own blade. A blade that held my blood.

Could he cause more death andmayhem before he was rendered ineffectual and harmless?

Oh yes. Absolutely he could.

And I would handle it when hedid. Right now, he would go off to lick his wounds, and I—and my blade—wouldremain in my own world.

Energy like I’d never feltcoursed through my body. I vibrated with it. I felt, for a little while,invincible. I shivered as pleasure touched every part of my body and mind, andI wanted to run through the night, high on my wolf.

I turned in a circle, almostdrunk, and then my stare landed on the detective. In my strange andoverwhelming pleasure, I’d nearly forgotten him.

He sat against the wall,watching me.

“No,” I cried, as the realityof life slammed back into my mind. I fell to the floor, scrambling for myclothes, my weapons, my sanity, and my shield.

He never said a word.

Lucy was motionless and paleand bloody, her eyes closed and her breathing so slow and soft I couldn’t tellif she were alive or dead. But then I saw her chest rise, and I could havecried with relief.

My clothes were ruined, rippedto shreds by my large, muscular wolf and the shift that had exploded throughthem. I held the rags to my chest, trying not to whimper, and risked anotherlook at the detective.

Once again, his eyes wereclosed, and he appeared to be unconscious. Maybe he would remember nothing.Maybe he would think it was a dream.

I could hope.