Keeping Secret (Secret McQueen) - By Sierra Dean Page 0,70

Free, free, free.

That freedom was more addictive than any drug, more pure and beautiful than love itself. I’d never felt anything as sweet and rich as the joy my wolf felt running among the pack. Why had I kept this from myself for so long? What kind of fool denied themselves such perfection?

Yes, she whispered. Be wild.

And from the passenger seat I let her have her way.

One moment we were within the ranks of the pack, and the next she veered left and into the darkness. Only there wasn’t darkness. Every tree glowed faintly, every object visible as if outlined in the light of the moon for our eyes.

But where the hell were we going?

Be wild.

Yes, but couldn’t we be wild with the rest of the pack?

My wolf growled and ran on.

No, this was wrong. This defied common sense.

What is sense?

Well shit. Now I remembered why I didn’t let her come out to play. The wolf was wild. She was unruly. She had no attachment to humanity, and I hadn’t spent twenty-three years teaching her to respect pack law.

My wolf didn’t give a shit about rules because I’d never taught her any.

I’d just caged her and thought nothing of the damage it might do.

I got hold of myself, remembering what it meant to be in control, and I screamed for her to stop. She fought me, but we staggered, tripping over our legs, and she was forced to stop running or we would go face first into a tree.

Bitch.

Well if that wasn’t the pot calling the kettle black.

We were going to run with the pack or we wouldn’t run at all. I concentrated and used everything in me to command control over our body. We sat.

My wolf form was a panting, trembling mess.

Run, she insisted.

I kept us sitting. We twitched. My wolf mouth sighed and whined.

Slowly, one paw at a time, we got back on all fours.

Run?

This body was mine, and if she wanted to run, we would go the direction I chose. I turned us back the direction we came. She fought, trying to spin us deeper into the woods. Again, we sat. I waited, my control here weak, tenuous. I was just slips of consciousness inside a wild animal. No one expected animals to use good judgment.

Fine.

I let up, and we started running again, this time back towards the smells and sounds of the pack. She didn’t fight me anymore. Instead she loped onwards, tongue lolling out like a blissful dog. Then I smelled it. My sense of smell was intense, almost too finely tuned in this form. I’d adjusted to the aroma of the forest, to the sharp odor of the other wolves, but this smell was alien and wrong.

Human.

Metal.

We skidded to a stop, smelling the air. I yipped a warning.

Too little, too late.

The flash from the muzzle rendered me blind. The crack of the bullet exiting from the chamber brought deafness. All I could smell was peppery smoke.

And when the metal slug ate its way through my fur and into my body, my wolf and I screamed in unison.

When it came to pain, we were of one mind.

I didn’t remember shifting back.

At first I didn’t know if it had been seconds or hours since I’d been shot, but it must have been the former because the sound of a body leaping from a tree was what brought me out of my fog. I tried to stand, but whatever gun he’d used, the bullet packed a whopper of a punch.

Strong arms helped me to my feet, and I lashed out until the cool, familiar scent of vampire washed over me.

“Hold on,” Holden said, scooping me up into his arms.

Under normal circumstances that would have been when I pointed out I had working legs. Only right then they didn’t seem to want to cooperate, so I let him carry me as he ran. Another shot rang out, splintering the tree trunk closest to us in a shower of wood chips and moss.

Holden didn’t let up until we were back at the compound.

When we arrived at my cabin, he tried to make me lie in the bed, but I refused. Finally we compromised with the porch swing, where he wrapped me in an old quilt from the back of the couch.

“Get a knife,” I whispered, my throat raw.

“Why?”

I parted the blanket and showed him the hole between my ribs. The area around the entry wound had begun to blacken, the infection snaking out with thin fingerlike lines, crawling towards