“He does. But it’s been two years now. Even at that, he has trouble during the night that the moon is at its fullest and some days after.”
“Two years? Ohmigod. I will never last two years at this.”
Allan rubbed her arm. “Yeah, you will. You’ll learn to cope with it and be just fine.”
She couldn’t believe being with him like this felt so natural, but she figured it would have gotten to this if they’d continued to make love like they had at her place. Something about her playing with him as a wolf and then napping…she didn’t know. But she was already feeling like she was closer to him than she’d ever been to a man she had been interested in being with.
Had turning her into a wolf made that happen? She didn’t think so. She’d been fascinated with him from the beginning. Maybe he was right in saying that somehow they saw in each other what they needed to feel complete. Even before he should have thought that way, because he was a wolf shifter.
If they continued to get naked like this and ended up in bed together every time? She figured he wouldn’t need to date her. She’d be all marshmallows and agree to a mating before she was ready. Until she turned into a wolf again.
*
Later that afternoon, Franny agreed to come and talk with them to see if she could aid them in discovering Otis’s whereabouts and how he came to be here and caused her accident. She hadn’t known him by that name, but when Lori had showed her the picture of Otis, Franny said he was the same man who had dated her and then stalked her.
It was sunny and a bit warmer when she arrived. Lori’s grandmother was taking care of her baby while Franny’s husband was busy with his chef duties at the Italian restaurant.
Franny sat across from Allan and Debbie, who was sitting on the couch in her wolf form, annoyed that she couldn’t hold her human form for an hour or so while Franny talked to them.
“Debbie was concerned you would feel uncomfortable with her listening in on the conversation as a wolf,” Allan said, not wanting to mention it because he knew Franny wouldn’t mind at all. Like everyone else in the pack, Franny wanted Debbie to feel at ease around them in any form she was in. But Debbie had insisted he mention it, right before she had to shift.
Franny shook her head, looking tense.
“Okay, what we’re trying to put together is when you were seeing Otis and then stopped seeing him. He killed Sarah around the day of your accident, maybe the night before, according to the autopsy reports. From what we understand, he was in a LARP group and Sarah became his best friend’s lover.”
“Lloyd.”
“Right. So then she turned Lloyd. Had she then convinced him to come up here with her to join our pack instead of joining Devlyn’s in Colorado? I assume she knew Devlyn wouldn’t have approved of her turning Lloyd when he wanted to be a werewolf hunter. And he was best friends with Otis, also a werewolf hunter, who was ready to kill any werewolf he could locate and genuine wolves too. Because of her desire to come out as a werewolf, Devlyn wouldn’t accept her in the pack.
“What if she and Lloyd were together still and she told him to come here? Then he told Otis? We never found any evidence she had a car anywhere in the area. Then Otis murdered Lloyd because he was also a werewolf. Lloyd had no defensive wounds on him, making it appear as though he didn’t believe his friend Otis was going to kill him.”
“Otis must not have had any of your names, or he would have tried hunting you down, don’t you think?” Franny asked.
“I believe that’s why he just shot wolves that were checking out the blood left at the site. But it seems like too much of a coincidence that he ran you off the road, that he knew you were here, when he was most likely trying to learn who else was a werewolf in the pack Sarah planned to join.”
“He must not have seen Rose and Lori arrive,” Franny agreed.
“Yeah, we got damn lucky on that.”
Allan sensed Franny knew more than she was letting on. Suddenly, Debbie bolted from the couch, sending decorator pillows flying as she raced to the bedroom. He suspected she was shifting again, but it was the first time she was able to do so that soon after the last shift.
He and Franny waited for Debbie to rejoin them, not wanting her to miss out on the talk.
When she stalked back in the room, she was wearing a pale blue sweater, jeans, and fluffy blue slippers. She curled up with him on the couch and he wrapped his arm around her, glad she was happy to be back to her human form.
“Did you know Sarah?” Debbie asked.
Allan had never considered such a thing. As far as he knew, Sarah was a stranger to the pack and somehow had heard they were looking for wolves—courtesy of Lori’s grandma and his mother.
Franny hesitated, looking a little panicked.