“I don’t like the sound of that,” I said.
Daniel dropped his gaze from the moon. “Neither do I.” He pushed off from a branch and jumped from the top of the tree. He landed with barely a sound in the grass in front of me. “I want you to know that when I say I feel the pull of the moon, or the pull of the wolf, I don’t mean it the way you or Jude feel the wolf. It isn’t some terrible voice anymore, trying to drive me to embrace any terrible thoughts. I’m not a danger to you.”
“I understand that. The wolf that’s inside of you isn’t a demon. It’s a pure Hound of Heaven.”
“But at the same time, I still have to fight it constantly. It wants me to shed my human form and embrace my natural state.”
“Are you saying that being the white wolf is your natural state?” I placed my hands on his arms. Heat radiated off his skin, and it reminded me too much of the night he’d spent fighting to stay human. I wrapped my fingers around his elbows, feeling like I needed to hold on to him. Keep him from going away again. “Not this? Not you? Not Daniel?”
“The white wolf seems to think so.” Daniel returned my gesture, wrapping his own hands around my arms. He tapped his ring finger against my skin. “This is helping,” he said about the moonstone ring on his finger. It was same ring Sirhan had worn, and Gabriel had presented it to Daniel after Sirhan’s death—as a token of the grandfather he’d never really known. “And you’re helping, too. Just being near you gives me the drive to stay in my human form. So I can be with you.”
“Then you’d better stay as close as you can.” I pulled him against me, embracing him as tightly as I could, even though he radiated enough heat to make me sweat.
“I’m not going to go wolf at the Challenging Ceremony,” he said. “I’m afraid the draw of the white wolf will be so powerful under the eclipse that I might not be able to fight my way back again.”
I nodded against his chest, knowing that not going wolf when the other challengers did might put him at a disadvantage. “My money is still on you,” I said. “Even human you.”
He let out a short laugh. “All my life I wanted to be normal. Now I’ll just settle for having only two legs, two arms, and a human face.”
“I like your face,” I said, trying to lighten my heart.
“I like yours, too.” He shifted his head close to mine and kissed me with lips that felt like fire. Our lips melted together until his body convulsed with a great shudder, and I knew he was still fighting the wolf. “Will you stay with me again tonight?”
“Yes,” I answered, holding him tight.
“The white wolf is wrong,” he said, and kissed my shoulder. “This right here—you and me together, under this old walnut tree—this is my true natural state.”
“We always do seem to end up back here,” I said. “It’s comforting.”
“It’s home,” he said.
I sighed into his arms, realizing that in a day’s time, I had no idea what home was going to look like anymore. If we failed at the Challenging Ceremony, this family that I’d been fighting so hard and so long to restore—to make whole again—could possibly be torn apart completely. I could lose everyone I loved.
But if we succeeded … If we got James back … If Daniel and I were to become the alphas of a whole new pack, I still had no idea what home would look like then. Would we be forced to leave Rose Crest to lead the Etlus? Leave my finally reunited family behind?
SATURDAY MORNING, FIFTEEN AND A HALF HOURS UNTIL THE CEREMONY