good. Big, strong…she liked dominant.
“Hi,” she said. He couldn’t understand her, but she still thought it.
“Hi, yourself,” a deep, gritty voice whispered across the pulsing bond between them and into her mind.
We’re so fucked, Summer whispered. She sounded drunk on happiness.
Wolf agreed with her thought. So. Fucked.
The deep, reverberating voice chuckled, and Wes rounded on her fast, clamped his teeth on her neck, and applied enough pressure to make her go to her belly on the ground in submission.
“Not fucked,” he said. “Safe. Mine.”
Damn her traitor tail as it wagged hard enough to dislodge the dry leaves on the ground behind her.
Wes released the scruff of her neck and trotted away, stopped five yards off, and turned. Such a serious face, and his slanted eyes would intimidate any wolf. His voice was there again, right in her mind. “Everyone should be afraid…but not you.” And then that enormous red wolf lowered down on his front end, butt up in the air, tail wagging. “Play and hunt and sleep tonight. Relax. Stop thinking. Just be.”
Just be? No. That’s now how she wolfed. She raged and destroyed stuff and then felt better. He was messing up her Change.
“Do you trust me?”
“No,” she muttered through their bond, which for some reason seemed to be getting stronger and easier to access. Now she could damn-near see it, a purple glowing thread trailing from her to Wes. Mayday and danger.
“I can close the bond down whenever I want,” he assured her. “If you start to feel trapped, tell me, and I’ll cut it off.”
Wolf shifted her weight from side to side. That sounded…painful. Not physically, though. Taking the bond away sounded painful to her heart. If she didn’t have it, she and Summer would be alone again. He was messing up her head. Confusing her. Causing pain when she didn’t want pain anymore.
“You’re thinking too much,” Wes rumbled. “Relax.” He wagged his tail again and then bolted for her so fast it startled her. She snarled and snapped at him as soon as he was close enough for her to graze him with her teeth. He dodged easily and bounded around her. Geez, this wolf was the size of a god-dang gorilla. He probably had fifty pounds of pure muscle over her, but he wasn’t scary. Not right now. He tossed a stick away with the shake of his head and bounced around her like a rabbit, trying to get her to play. Her tail wagged again, but it was an accident.
“There you go,” Wes encouraged her. “Let’s race. First one to the water wins.”
“What water?”
“Listen. Hear it?” He stood still and searched her eyes. “It’s close”.
Wolf perked up her ears, but the sound of her racing heart was deafening right now. She took a steadying breath and concentrated. Listened. Focused until she could hear the trickle of water toward the east.
“I don’t like racing. Racing is beneath—" Wolf took off as fast as she could, blowing past the pines where Wes had Changed. She could hear his laugh echo in her mind, and Summer whooped. Faster!
Wolf found another gear and pushed herself until her legs stretched out. This was as close to flying as she would ever get. Branches reached for her face, but she was good at this, good at dodging, good at trusting her body to make split-second decisions.
She could feel him right behind her, hear his breath, but it wasn’t scary being chased by him. It was fun.
Because you trust him, Summer said smugly.
Piss off. Trust is a human emotion.
No, it’s not. Wild wolves trust their packs. That’s what Sherrie said.
Sherrie was their therapist. Sherrie was also a human, so really, what did she know about being a werewolf? Not much.
The sound of the running water was getting louder with every step, every zigzag around the trees, every panting breath. And as she burst into a clearing and down a sloping embankment toward the water, she knew she’d won. Or she thought she had until she looked down the bank and saw Wes sitting there like he’d been there for hours. He wasn’t even breathing hard. Just sitting there with the moon illuminating the creek beside him, his ears perked, eyes glowing like blue flames, head canted as he studied her.
Geez, he’s fast, Summer murmured.
Wolf couldn’t even argue. “How did you do that?” she asked him through the bond, her lungs on fire from panting.
He didn’t answer but instead stood and trotted toward her, only pausing when he was right beside