I stand on the patio in front of our double front door, panting as I stare at it, my heart pounding a steady rhythm in my chest from my long hard run. Giving myself a moment to catch my breath, I take in the massive, modern cabin.
The doors before me are twice as tall as normal doors and covered in raised rectangular wooden panels. I lift my paw and press the panel near the base. It slides over and a camera lens appears, scanning my face. Thank fuck facial recognition software can be programmed to work on wolves. I stand perfectly still and seconds later, I hear the slide of the bolt and the snick of the latch as the lock disengages. I use my forehead to nudge it open and walk inside.
All the smells of home accost me as I make my way up to my room. I would normally find the combined scents of my denmates and the things we love to do inside the walls of our space comforting, almost like an embrace every time I walk through the door. The kitchen always has some lingering scent from Ruger’s concoctions. Perth’s plants under the living room windows and in the dining room always smell like a friendly hello. Ellery is always tracking in different scents from the cars and toys he tinkers with in the garage. Those are the smells of home. The smells of my den.
On another day, I’d enjoy them. Today, everything feels suffocating. It’s all gone wrong so fast. and I’m reeling, trying to determine what this means for us.
After I bound up the stairs and through my doorway, I pass the hunter green comforter on my bed, noting that some of my dresser drawers are haphazardly cracked open, a pair of sweatpants spilling halfway out of one. My nose twitches, not liking things to be out of order, but I realize quickly what happened. Noah had on my favorite pair of sweats.
Well, this is just great. I’ll probably never see those again.
My eyes close for a second against that painful reality and open again, staring at the dresser my denmates felt comfortable enough to rifle through.
We’re so fucked. Losing Noah is going to destroy everything. And we are going to lose her. The ice-cold fear and revulsion in her eyes told me everything I need to know.
Shifting back into my skin, I try not to think about how Noah’s face would look if she were here to watch the transformation from monster to man. I try to clear away the scent of her anxiety, the tang of which still burns my nose, as I head for my shower. I need to scrub her alarm and torment from my skin, banish the despair that flooded her gaze from my mind.
I’m halfway through my shower when Perth and Ruger push through the door.
Shit. I forgot I was supposed to update them.
Perth’s freckled fist pounds on the glass shower door, and I don’t react other than to roll my eyes at the redhead as I continue soaping up my legs.
Perth pays absolutely zero mind to his invasion of my privacy as he yanks open the door and rubs his beard in a distressed manner while he asks, “What the hell’s going on? I thought you were meeting Ellery? Is Noah okay?” Though he’s asking questions, they come out as barked demands as I step under the spray and wash soap from my hair and body.
“What’s going on is our mate is a naif. She has no fucking clue about shifters or eeries or anything.”
“Yeah, we kind of gathered that,” Ruger snarks, and I shoot him a glare.
“She tried to shift but couldn’t,” I tell them, and I watch their frustration bleed into dismay. “She has a magical block on her somehow. Which means there’s more going on than any of us knows. But none of that probably matters because Noah is freaked the fuck out and she’s going to bolt the first chance she gets.”
“You don’t know that,” Perth argues.
“I do, and if you had seen what I did in Ellery’s office you would too.”
Ruger leans against my countertop, the mirror fogging up behind him, his face ghost pale. “Do you think it was the Bianchi den that put a block on her? That’s who was after her when we stepped in and claimed her.”
“I don’t know,” I admit, smacking the dial and turning the water all the way to scalding. “Did you two scent any other dens nearby? Anyone else hunting her?”
“No,” they both answer in tandem, their gazes now far away as they wrack their brains for any detail that might help all of this make sense.
“Like I said, it doesn’t matter though. Noah is a naif. She can barely accept what she is, let alone accept a mate claim by the next full moon. And we all know what that means.”
Silence billows and swells like the steam from my shower.
I shouldn’t have come home. I should have kept running until my legs collapsed under me from exhaustion, leaving me too tired to think.
“She’s just in shock. Once she accepts things—”
I shove my face out of the spray and wipe my eyes clear so that I can glower at Ruger. His posture might be defensive as he leans against the counter—ankles and arms crossed—but his expression is hopeful, because that’s who he is.
I need to strip him of those delusions quickly, or he’s going to end up more broken than any of us knows how to fix.
“It’s not going to happen,” I tell him outright. It’s up to me to rip off the bandage, because apparently I’m the designated asshole around here. “When she saw me shift…” I trail off as the phantom scent of her fear hits me once again. “She’s not just terrified of all this, she’s disgusted.”
“But you know what that’s like,” Perth states, standing off to the right and blocking my access to the towel rack. “You can help her.”
Fuck me. He sounds just as optimistically blinded by Noah as Ruger is. “It’s not the same,” I counter as I smash my hand into the knob and roughly twist it until the water turns off. So much for the shower easing some of my tension; my denmates have just brought it all raging back. “For me, the shifting was the biggest issue. But she has the shifting to contend with, our claim, pack dynamics—”
“You had to deal with pack dynamics.”
“Not at first. By the time I got to Pack Arcan, I was fucking grateful to deal with them,” I burst out, frustration leaching out of every pore as I stomp out of the shower and roughly gesture for Perth to move aside. He does, his lips pursed and his eyes defiant as he goes. I whip a towel off the rack and start vigorously drying off, not even bothering to be careful of the scar on my right knee or the way the joint stings. “Joining this pack was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
They don’t get it, even though I’ve told them that, more or less, for years. How could they get it? It’s like trying to describe debits and credits to someone who’s never even seen money. Im-fucking-possible.
I wrap the towel around my waist as I turn to deliver the worst part of the news to them. I lay it out point-blank. “What I saw in that room today was the polar opposite of excitement. She almost wolfed out twice despite Alpha trying to shut it down.”