Hot Blooded (Wolf Springs Chronicles) - By Nancy Holder Page 0,4
his.”
“Listen to me,” Justin said, leaning forward. “You know about his dementia, that he’s losing touch with reality. He knows it, too, and he’s running scared. He can’t be seen as losing control. He’ll be challenged. He was going to pick Cordelia to succeed him but that’s out the window now.”
Katelyn couldn’t believe Cordelia would have become the new alpha. Cordelia was just seventeen. Cordelia’s two older sisters had bullied Cordelia mercilessly, and she spent half her time apologizing for things that weren’t even her fault. How could Lee Fenner have ever thought she would be able to lead the pack?
“I thought it was odd, too,” Justin said.
She knit her brows. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t need to. I read it. You’ll get better at reading body language, same as us.”
Us. She would have to be doubly, triply careful around him then. Just like with Trick. Justin could read her; Trick somehow just knew her.
“What happened to you happened on his watch,” he continued. “Something so counter to our moral code it’s never happened here in Wolf Springs, ever. You’re proof that he’s not in complete command of his pack. A source of shame. It might be easiest for him just to get rid of you.”
Threatened, she reared back, and he lunged forward and caught her by the shoulder. His head lowered toward hers and she knew he was going to kiss her.
“I’m standing between that decision and your life,” he said huskily. “You need me, Kat.”
And you need me, she thought, fighting not to let him kiss her, ever. I’m the only one immune to silver, and you’re the only one who knows it. He was planning something, and he needed her to pull it off.
His lips were brushing hers when she turned her head.
“Lucy,” she said. “Your girlfriend, remember?”
He grunted. “I’m sorry, Kat,” he muttered, and he let her go.
Katelyn took a sharp breath. Just being around Justin was like being hypnotized. It had to be something chemical, because they were both werewolves. It couldn’t be that she was that weak.
“Hormones,” he muttered.
“What?”
He huffed. “Look, I know you have to be going crazy right now. All the chemicals in your body have been shaken up, changed. The wolf side of you is fighting the human side and it’s like being a little kid again. Everything will feel more extreme for you and when you’re not with someone to remind you how to act, you’re going to have to remember that your life is riding on your behavior. It’s going to take a while to learn to handle it. Right now, the wolf in you is responding to the wolf in me but you don’t even have the impulse control of a two-year-old human.”
“Feeling like a two-year-old is not my current problem,” she snapped. Her problem was that she wanted to kiss him like there was no tomorrow.
“When your body learns to adapt to everything that’s happening to it, you’ll feel fully in control again.” He paused. “Until then . . . be damn careful around me or any other young wolf in the pack.”
“Like being alone out here with you is being damn careful,” she groused.
“Yeah, well, if we are truly alone.”
He was trying to joke, she could tell, but it just fed into her paranoia, her feeling of being watched.
“So not funny.”
He sighed. “Look. It’s not a question of whether you’re a human or an animal. You’re both. And you’re going to have to learn to live with that twenty-four/seven. There will be times when the animal part of you’ll want to act on something and it will be wrong. Same with the other way. So deal with the human issues with human responses and the animal issues with animal responses.”
“And what if the issue is both human and animal?”
His grin was evil. “Like making out?”
She nodded, completely humiliated to be discussing it with him like this. But she thought about Halloween when she’d gone from kissing Trick to kissing Justin while barely missing a beat, then hating herself for it.
“Then tread very, very carefully. You bite a human, draw even just a little blood accidentally, and they’ll change.”
Thinking of Trick, she swallowed hard. “Maybe they’ll change. We don’t know. Because I'm different.”
“You willing to take that chance?”
He reached out to push a strand of hair back from her face and even though she wanted to step closer to him she forced herself to take a step back.