Page 14 of Blood Magic

“Yes,” I whispered. It was just so hard. I didn’t know why. When the full moon came, it would help me shift. In a few nights, a spectacular hunter’s moon—and a blue moon—would rule the skies. With all that power, I thought it might have killed me if I’d still been hobbled when it arrived. But even though Jared had freed me, without the full moon, I needed his help. For now. “Bizarre. Fucking bizarre.”

“When I was a kid,” he told me, “my father’s warriors stuffed one of their own into a tiny metal box. The box was layered with silver, and that made him weak and sick.” He stopped talking for a few seconds, remembering, and there was something in his voice that made me want to go to him and wrap my arms around him.

“They left him folded up in that little box for three days before I finally got up the nerve to break him out. When I did, I pulled him out…” He shook his head. “He couldn’t move. Couldn’t straighten his limbs or stand or even shift. I told my father if he didn’t bring that man’s shift so he could heal, I was leaving. I was done with a pack where our own people were treated so very badly. Everyone was afraid of him and his warriors. By me, even, simply because I was the alpha’s son. It was a pack ruled by fear and the day I took over, I swore I would be a different alpha. A better one.”

I had only ever known alphas to rule by fear. My ex-alpha, Jared’s father…

“You’re different,” I said. “It’s obvious.”

He blew out a breath. “Sometimes I wonder. Anyway, my point was, you are like that man in the box. It’s going to be a while before you can figure out how to shift. You were hobbled for twelve fucking years. It’ll come, Kait, and I’ll help you until it does.”

“Why didn’t you help me then?” I didn’t mean to say the words, honestly, I didn’t. It wasn’t the time, and I didn’t want to sound like I cared. But there it was, out in the open, and I know he heard the rawness in my voice.

“When my father refused to take you and your mother in? I was young. But even I knew that if we’d accepted you into the pack, you and your mother would have been tormented constantly. It was better for you to leave.”

I nodded. He wasn’t lying. I understood when I’d been harassed, disrespected, and even abused by his warriors in the last few weeks how it would have gone if my mother and I had stayed in the pack when I was a child.

“The twelve years after,” I said. “Why didn’t you offer to free my wolf?”

“I told you before,” he said. “I didn’t know I could. When an alpha hobbles his wolf, only he can break those chains, Kait. You know that.”

“And yet,” I said, “you broke mine.”

“I did. I don’t know how or why.”

I sniffed, then nodded, and finally, I reached out to squeeze his bare, muscular arm. “Thank you, Alpha.”

He smiled. “Are you ready?”

“Soready.”

He yanked my wolf out of me so quickly it was both excruciatingly painful and insanely pleasurable, and more than a little disorienting. The last time he’d helped me shift, my wolf had been half mad and had carried all the rage, grief, and pain I’d shoved inside her over the years. She’d gone after her alpha and had torn him up.

Ihad. I’d gone after my alpha. I’d lost control, as my wolf. I wouldn’t do that again. I could control my wolf because the wolf wasn’t stronger mentally than the woman. I was aware, and when her feral rage erupted, I redirected it to something else.

I ran and explored, and I was a wolf. Free, wild, and filled with joy. Surely there was nothing better than this. I could stay as my wolf forever. The alpha was in a playful mood and he chased me, mock attacked me, hunted with me.

I couldn’t help but howl, pointing my nose into the night sky, paying homage to the beautiful silver moon that decorated that velvety dark vastness. Then I sprinted across the littered floor of my woods, acknowledging and discarding scents as I sifted through the chaos of overwhelming smells to investigate the ones that interested me.

I was ravenously hungry. I caught a small animal’s scent before I saw it, and there was nothing more important than catching the meal that had been put before me. I leaped, catching it between my teeth, and even as part of me watched in horrified silence, I ate. I devoured. It wasn’t enough to satisfy me, and with my alpha at my side, I hunted and ate until I was satisfied, and I ran until I was happily exhausted, and then I plopped down on the ground to rest.

Such a simple, beautiful life.

My alpha stretched out a few yards from me, his face turned away as he quietly listened and watched for danger. I didn’t remember a time when I’d ever felt so safe. But I remembered hurting him, and that dimmed my joy.

I climbed to my feet and trotted to him, and when he gave a tiny grunt I lay beside him, my body touching his, and shoved my face against his side, and I slept. The wolf was content.

When I woke up, the first thing I realized was that I had shifted back in my sleep, and I was no longer my wolf. My naked body was pressed against the alpha’s, his arms were around me, and my lips were pressed against his warm throat.

He wasn’t asleep. I felt the tenseness in his body, and something else. His erection pressed against me, hot and hard. It was completely normal, of course. He was naked, I was naked…

Lust flooded me and I stiffened, but I suddenly realized something I hadn’t thought about before. We wouldn’t have sex. I was his wolf, and the only way he’d screw one of his wolves was if he had the intention of making her his mate. To do otherwise would cause too many complications. He would see it as disrespecting me, hurting me…

Because he would choose a mate—my mother had told me one had been chosen for him when he was a baby. I didn’t know her name. But if we had sex, grew close, and then he took another as his mate, how painful that would be.

For both of us.

But If I were his mate, I would be alpha of the pack right alongside him.