counter as her claws sliced out, perforating her gloves. “No one had to die!”
His wolf rose up into an alert position inside him, hackles raised. Not because of her growled statement. Because of the distress hidden beneath her anger—and because she was still growling low and deep, her eyes having gone pure wolf. Placing his hand on one deceptively delicate-appearing shoulder, he made his tone hard. “Throttle it.” It was an order. “Your denmates need you calm and in control.”
Baring her teeth at him, she said, “Get your hand off me,” in a voice that was more wolf than woman.
He heard the unspoken coda: Don’t you dare give me orders in my own den.
Kenji decided to dice with his life.
Because what most people didn’t realize was that Garnet was actually more feral than Kenji. She ran her den with aplomb, gave off the image of being totally civilized . . . but she wasn’t. Piss her off enough and the wolf was right there, ready to rip off your head. Or punch you in the face. Of course, that wolf only appeared with those she considered equals.
Raising an eyebrow, he leaned in close enough that he could count every one of her golden eyelashes. “Make me.”
He didn’t even try to avoid it when she shoved off his hold with a clawed hand, leaving four thin scrapes on the skin of his wrist. “Feel better?” His heart pounded at the scent of blood, at the wild physical contact, at the feeling of being marked by the one woman whose brand he’d always wanted to wear.
“Or,” he added with a deliberately wicked smile, “would you like to beat up on me some more?”
“Bite me,” she muttered, but her eyes were less gold and more blue now . . . though the wolf, it was still very much present.
So present that he could almost see her fur bristling.
Chapter 4
Kenji wouldn’t have been surprised had Garnet drawn more blood, but she narrowed her eyes at him and said, “Let’s go talk to Athena. If anyone knows what led to this, she will.”
After they both stripped off and disposed of the forensic gear they’d been wearing, Kenji stayed back with Eloise while Garnet first took the samples to Lorenzo; the healer was authorized to run most of the necessary biological tests. Anything he couldn’t process, he’d keep in a special locked and temperature-controlled storage cabinet.
“She’s amazing,” Eloise said softly as Garnet strode away, the younger woman’s voice full of shimmering hero worship.
“Yeah.” Leaning against the wall, Kenji held his grazed arm by his side and fought not to go after Garnet, beg for more contact. He’d take another clawing if that was all she’d give him.
And it wasn’t because he was a player.
Contrary to general pack opinion, Kenji hadn’t exchanged intimate skin privileges with anyone for over a year.
Changelings needed touch to stay stable, but the affectionate cuddles he received from pups, the hugs from friends, had helped paper over, if not fill, the void. His body hurt with a deep sexual ache and his wolf was desperately lonely, but it had started to hurt being with anyone, too. Because no one else was Garnet. No one else would ever be Garnet.
Neither wolf nor man wanted anyone but her.
Rubbing his fist over his heart again, he tried not to think about how things could’ve been different, how he could’ve had the right to call her his own as they grew into their skin and strength side by side, but his brain, it was a runaway train. And it wanted to go straight back to the most painful moment of his life.
For so long, Garnet had just been his friend Steele’s tiny kid sister. Smart and funny even when she was butting in and being annoying. She’d also been painfully kind. He’d never forget how she’d hugged him fiercely tight when she’d found him crying as a ten-year-old after his parents had another massive fight—and she’d never told anyone, keeping his hurt to herself.
Then the night of her high school graduation, she’d laughed and hugged him after he gave her a journal for her upcoming trip to France, and his wolf had quivered in shocked understanding inside him: after all that time, he’d finally seen her. Seen the strong, highly intelligent, and beautiful woman she’d become. But she’d still been Steele’s kid sister, still only eighteen to his twenty.
So he’d gripped his need in a merciless fist and given her the room and the time to