I can’t help but feel like we may have lost Noah before we ever even had her.
I walked in here so worried, worried but hopeful. Now, it’s all slipping through my claws, and there isn’t anything I can do about it. I shove aside the wistfulness tightening my throat to ask myself the more important question.
How is Noah going to accept a mate claim when she’s a naif?
“How? How is this happening?” Noah asks, the anger in her voice leaking out like a sieve and leaving a hollow ring to her tone, one I feel in my gut.
I drop my head, hoping to communicate that she’s safe, that I’m still me whether I’m wearing fur or skin. But I don’t miss the way she tenses at my movement instead of relaxing and sensing my intention.
Logically, I know her instincts are going haywire. I remember all too well the war that went on inside me as my new wolf battled with every human urge and impulse I had. Terrifying was an understatement.
I try to picture last night from her perspective. Running, screaming through the woods, from wolves snapping at her heels. It must have been her worst nightmare. I must have been her worst nightmare.
I bit her.
Shit.
No wonder she punched me.
Like a fucking fool, I didn’t stop to question anything. I simply gave in to the driving need to claim her as ours because that’s what she was supposed to be. I knew it from the first second I inhaled her scent, familiar and yet foreign.
That moment—for me—was victorious. I felt everything click perfectly into place when I sank my teeth into her calf. It was everything, knowing I was the first to mark her. We were destined to be connected from that moment on—god, that sounds stupid, and it turns out it was stupid. I thought I was making all our dreams come true.
Instead, I’ve ruined her life.
A dark, burning taste creeps up the back of my throat as I realize what I’ve done. I’ve pulled her into a world she knows nothing about and hung a timer around her neck that’s counting down to something even worse than the beast I’ve just shown her.
“One of your parents must be an eerie,” Morgan explains to Noah, our alpha’s voice low and steady, trying to push serenity on all of us, not only with his cadence but with an alpha’s magical ability to affect mood. “It’s the only way to pass the ability on. Some of us can access our eerie faculties naturally, while others require a propellant. Like for witches, there’s a ceremony. For shifters, it’s a bite.”
For me, it was a goddamned feral neighborhood dog who turned out not to be a dog.
“A bite? You mean an attack,” she challenges.
“No, just a bite. What wild animal do you know that would stop after a single bite?” Alpha Morgan counters.
Noah’s lips twist and her eyes glance away because she doesn’t like the truth of his point.
“If your eerie blood is strong enough, a propellant bite unlocks your true power. That’s what’s happening to you,” Ellery expounds, building on his father’s words.
They don’t explain further even though there’s a hell of a lot of difference between a propellant bite and a mate claim bite. Maybe they think it’s too much for Noah to handle. Maybe it is.
Noah stares at the cup in her hands and shakes her head as though she wants to argue, to disagree, to cling to human reality instead of accepting this strange new world. Who could blame her?
The seconds tick by with painful slowness.
Each moment makes me more certain she’s powerful. She’s holding off her shift and resisting what I’m certain are mental commands from Ellery and Alpha Morgan to drink the potion in her hand. Plus, I’ve never heard of a wolf recovering this quickly from a bite, whether it came from a mate claim Hunt or not. It took me eight days to recover from mine. Whatever bloodline she has, it must be strong.
I’m about to mindspeak that tidbit to Alpha Morgan when the door behind me opens right into my tail.
Dammit!
The smack makes a sting crawl all the way up my spine as I scurry to one side to make space for the newcomer.
I notice Noah sliding farther behind Ellery, using his body as a physical shield to avoid me. She doesn’t trust me, but clearly—on some level—she trusts him.
A bitter feeling crashes into me, the kind I thought I’d set aside a long time ago. Jealousy makes my lip curl and reveal a fang, though as soon as I realize what I’m doing, I tamp down on the instinctive wolf response. I don’t want to scare Noah any further. But screw Ellery for making me the monster in her eyes.
Fuck. I need to leave.
She’s scared and I can tell I’m only making it worse.
Fife pokes his head in and looks at Ellery. “Sheriff, the rest of your den is blowing up our phones.”
“On it,” I mindspeak to Ellery before he can say anything. It’s the perfect excuse to get the hell out of here.
I turn and nose past Fife, who steps aside to let me out. The scents of the hallway come flooding in, a million different little strings of scent that pull at my wolf senses. But all I really smell is relief.
I don’t want to be in there.
I don’t want to see what happens next.
I know exactly what Noah is going to do—tell them all to go to hell—and I don’t need to witness it.
Stepping out into the hall, I weigh my options. I could shift back to my skin. There’s a locker room on the other side of the precinct where I grabbed a T-shirt and jeans when I first got here. There are always extra uniforms and back-up clothes available, but I don’t head there. I don’t want to have to put on a calm face and fake smile at Ellery’s deputies as I pass. And Bucky would try to talk my ear off. The urge to punch him might be too strong to resist.
So, instead, I run down the hallway, skirting around people. I bolt past Karen’s office and the sharp scent of nail polish. The break room smells like a microwaved lunch and regret.
And damn if I don’t have some fucking regrets right now too.
My nails scrape against the polished cement floor, clicking as I speed toward the massive flap cut into the door at the end of the hall for deputies who return to work in shifted form. I crash through it.
The breeze outside slaps against my fur, ruffling it, clearing away all the muddled scents from indoors and quelling some of the jumbled feelings in my gut. I smell the electric buzz of an incoming storm in the air, the refreshing scent of the clouds building up their arsenal of water droplets, crisp grass, the whiff of clay from the earth.
I start to run.
All my worries and fears stream out behind me and fall away as I put on a burst of speed. I get into a rhythm, where the tightening of my muscles is the only thing I concentrate on. I avoid people and head deeper into the forest, letting the run wipe away my confusion and concerns. The faster I go, the deeper into the woods, the better I feel. But I should’ve known where I’d end up.