“You are beautiful,” Wolfie corrected me again, just as he had when we first spoke in human form. “There is no you and she,” he elaborated. “There’s just us, the wolf.”
“Maybe for a bloodling,” I countered. “But it’s not that easy. Female werewolves change uncontrollably, you know that. When I left Haven, I had to take control of my shifts to protect all of the humans around me. Unfortunately, I seem to have done too good of a job of taking control.”
He tilted his head to the side, considering, and then understanding slowly dawned in the alpha’s eyes. “You’re the opposite of a bloodling,” Wolfie suggested. “You’ve let the human take over. You don’t even realize the wolf is no more animal than the rest of you is.” He paused, then added playfully, “It’s not like you’re going to eat small children.”
I flushed, thinking of Wolfie walking through the city on a tiny leash that wouldn’t have held him back if he’d taken a notion to bite the hand off that kindergartner … and of my own wolf’s reaction to an earlier child. “But your wolf is different,” I countered. Never mind that bloodling wolves were supposed to be less able to handle life around humans, not more able.
“How so?” the alpha asked, cocking his head to the side again in honest question.
Which is precisely when I realized that I’d been having this entire conversation with the wolf, not the man. To my chagrin, I couldn’t quite figure out whether that underlined my point, or belied it.
***
Before I could answer, my attention was drawn back to Keith, and to the trio of males who were stripping in the middle of the living room. There was only one reason Keith’s newfound friends would be getting naked in tandem, and despite my confusion about other issues, I was 100% sure I didn’t want my nephew to change for the first time right now.
“They’re not going to shift?” I asked frantically. “I don’t think Keith’s ready to experience his wolf yet … .” Whether or not Keith was ready, I sure wasn’t, but it appeared that my nephew’s first shift was only seconds away.
Taking deep calming breaths, I struggled to pull up my own wolf in preparation. Ever since Wolfie had met us on the mountaintop, my wolf had been hovering in the background, but now she appeared to be sound asleep and refused to answer my call. This was precisely why we needed to wait on Keith’s first shift, but I obviously didn’t have any say in the matter. I could see the gleam in my nephew’s eye as he reached up to unbutton his shirt, putting a hand on one werewolf’s shoulder as he kicked off a shoe. We were fast approaching liftoff, no matter how not ready I was.
“Stop,” Wolfie said, barely raising his voice. But despite its quietness, the single word cut through the crowd and froze everyone in their tracks. I realized I’d been holding my breath, and let it out in a sudden gust of air. “Ten steps away,” the alpha continued in a more normal tone of voice, and the young werewolf males rolled their eyes, but backed up.
“He’s ready, Wolfie,” one complained, but Wolfie just watched silently before turning back to me.
“They’ll give him an example today,” the alpha told me, his words loud enough to carry across the room. “Then we’ll work on you and let Keith shift another day.”
I felt like an over-protective mother when the guys shifted in tandem and my nephew’s only response was a crowing “Wicked cool!” But I didn’t have much time to obsess over the issue, because Wolfie was already changing gears.
“So, about that date …” he began. Then, before I could argue, Wolfie continued. “Keith will be just fine here for a few hours.” And despite my mother-hen instincts, I knew the alpha was right.
Chapter 11
I had assumed a date would mean dinner and perhaps a movie, but I should have realized that nothing was conventional around Wolfie. Instead, he herded me out into the atrium, where bushy fig trees and ceiling-high tomato vines were thriving despite the autumnal chill.
“Hey, boss,” called a tanned beauty about my age from the other side of a garden bed, and I was embarrassed to feel my wolf wake up and growl nearly audibly. I thought I had smothered the sound, but Wolfie’s cheek quirked up into a lop-sided smile.
“Galena,” he called back. “This is Terra from across the mountain.” The woman waved a welcome, and then another female werewolf popped up in front of us, surprising a gasp out of me. Just as beautiful as Galena, but with a buzz haircut that showed off her slender neck, this second werewolf swooped in to give Wolfie a deep kiss on the mouth, and this time I wasn’t able to stifle my wolf’s complaint.