now. “Friends,” he said, flicking her a quick look before he glanced down.
She stayed with him for another few minutes, asking about the planting and the trees, questions which didn’t stress his wolf and that he could answer in as much depth as interested her. Once again, he watched her leave, a strong, intelligent, and sensual woman who’d only ever see him as a pretty diversion. When it came time to choose a mate, she’d go for someone stronger, someone dominant, someone who was the total opposite of Felix.
Chapter 2
The planting area was quite a way down from the SnowDancer den, but Felix had decided to run home today, his wolf needing to stretch. Stripping in the garden shed, he set his clothes aside and shifted. Agony and ecstasy, piercing pleasure spliced with pain, his wolf skin forming out of the millions of particles of light that had once been his human form. Then he was shaking that skin into place, the white-streaked light brown of his fur settling.
His packmates teased him that his fur was as pretty in wolf form as his hair was in his human form. A few of them had even threatened to comb and braid him. He knew the teases, had grown up with them, and he ragged his friends as wickedly in turn. Drew, one of the worst, had cheerfully taken Felix’s teasing during the time when the other man had been flamboyantly and—at first—unsuccessfully courting Indigo.
As Felix stepped out into the cool night air, he considered what Drew would’ve done if Desiree had approached him while he’d been single. Not talked about plants, that was for sure. Felix’s wolf growled, and the human part of him winced at the harsh reminder. Just because he wasn’t dominant didn’t mean he didn’t have value. Every member of SnowDancer had value. That was why it was such a strong, stable pack.
He couldn’t allow his unwilling response to a leopard soldier to mess him up again after he’d spent years putting himself back together after the last time he’d played with a dominant. Sinking deep into the wolf’s mind, he let the animal take over and they padded carefully out of the planted area . . . to pick up a trail scented with lemon spice that held a wilder undertone.
Desiree had passed this way during her watch and he was tempted, just for a second, to follow, to discover if she found him as intriguing in this form as she did while he was human. Then he came to his senses and headed homeward, the little bonsai she’d given him safely ensconced in the garden shed for the night. He’d take it home in the truck tomorrow.
Tonight, he ran under a darkening sky still swirled with faint glimmers of vivid orange and red. The colors faded during his run and the stars were starting to appear by the time he neared the den. Slowing to take a seat on the edge of a waterfall, he looked up and watched the stars glitter to life like frozen diamonds, and when the wildness of his nature wanted to sing to those stars, he lifted his head in a howl that was answered from other parts of the territory.
Their ensuing song was pure, primal music.
Home. Family. Friends.
Wolf content and the man in a better place, Felix turned and covered the final distance to the den. He padded to his quarters in wolf form, would’ve gone in using the special pressure switch built low into the door, but his sixteen-year-old sister was in the corridor and came running over to kneel beside him. “Felix!” Throwing her arms around him, she rubbed her face against his fur as if she hadn’t seen him for years.
He returned the affection, Madison a beloved member of their small family pack that existed within the larger SnowDancer pack. At so many years younger than him, Maddy had always been a pup in Felix’s mind, a pup of whom he was deeply protective. But even as she drew back, her bright eyes the same color as his, and started to tell him all about a new project, he saw the strength in her, felt the dominance of her.
His slender baby sister was growing into a soldier, but he knew without question that she’d never attempt to use her dominance against him. That would break the bonds of trust and of family. Those bonds had taken a lifetime to form . . . and such trust wasn’t