first time so I could go to the doctors. It took them a while to figure out what was wrong with me because, at first, they didn’t believe me. They thought I was making it up.”
“Making up that you were sick?”
She shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Why would you do that?”
My question had Ethan scoffing, “You know humans lie.”
“Now who’s the dumbass?” I retorted, when Sabina’s hands morphed into fists at her sides. I was almost grateful for my brother’s idiocy, because her tight grip on the blanket lessened and I caught a flash of her cleavage.
“How dare you say that?”
“Humans lie.” Ethan shrugged. “About many things. Just today, a girl in the gas station lied to me.”
“Luna Jenson shortchanged you?” I asked, because I’d told him the Jensons’ girl tended to do that, and he hadn’t believed me. Like frickin’ usual.
Why he thought I’d make shit like that up, I’d never know.
“I hope she did,” Sabina muttered, prompting me to shoot her a grin.
Ethan didn’t react, just explained, “She flushed, and I asked if she was well. She said she was when she evidently wasn’t.”
Sabina’s brow rose. “What was wrong with her?”
“She smelled aroused.”
I rolled my eyes at his words, and on the brink of muttering, “Show off,” Sabina stunned the fuck out of us by growling. The sound was low, menacing.
Deadly.
And fuck if it didn’t get my cock harder than a pike. I knew from the sudden haze of lust in the air that I wasn’t the only one affected.
Ethan, realizing he’d fucked up, backpedaled. “She’s only seventeen, Sabina!”
That didn’t stop her from growling, but she did stop bristling.
I pressed a hand to her thigh and had to admit that her possessive jealousy was as much of a turn-on as that quick glimpse of her pussy had been a few moments ago.
“All is well,” I soothed. “There’s no need to worry.”
She ground her teeth, and her eyes flickered over us all. “Why do I feel this way?” she rasped, concerned and confused, but still feeling the overwhelming jealousy that had prompted her to growl in the first place.
And that wasn’t as easy as it sounded.
The human voice box wasn’t made to utter those long, low, throbbing sounds that had the vocal chords ululating like a yodeler singing a voodoo chant.
I knew her throat was gonna ache like fuck in a little while.
Eli pulled a face. “It’s complicated.”
“Life tends to be that way. Explain,” she demanded, her strength throbbing through each word. I’d admit to being surprised by that. Thus far, she’d been a weak little thing, not that I’d minded, but still.
This whole grumpy, honey, possessive thing she had going on?
Better than porn. That was for fucking sure.
Sabina
I had no right to feel the way I was feeling.
No right at all.
But that didn’t stop me from wanting to maul the little bitch at goddamn Jensons, whoever the fuck she was, and send her back to Kali Sara without a smile on her face.
I’d never felt this overwhelming—
This…
This, what?
So overloaded with emotions, yet so physically secure in knowing that I was safe and sound and well protected? So free from pain that all my senses were allowed to function at a high level once more?
I hadn’t lied to them.
My doctors hadn’t believed me when I’d gone to them with my symptoms. They’d bullshitted me. Sent me to different specialists. Then, out of nowhere, they’d begrudgingly come up with fibromyalgia, and all that diagnosis had gotten me was eighty grand in medical debts, and given my father a tail to follow that had had me on the run ever since.
I’d been nervous about shifting since I’d awoken that first time free from pain. I hadn’t wanted to do anything to jeopardize it, but today, I’d felt stronger than I had in the recent week, and suddenly, touching the men who hovered around me better than any caregivers, had become imperative. Rubbing my nose against them, or touching my face to their arm or leg, simply didn’t cut it.
I needed a closer connection.
As a she-wolf, I’d admit that I could hear everything they were saying, and sometimes, I could even reply to them mentally, but nothing beat being able to speak like a normal person again.
And another reason I’d made my shift was because my little peaceful sojourn had come to an end. I could feel it. Things were changing. The wheels were turning, the cogs of time never stopped, and the next phase of this new path in my life was recommencing.
Mostly, I didn’t