it, even if you’re scared—it’s good. There’s a lot of charting around those times, though. And sometimes being yelled at by drunks.”
Lucas snorted. “My dad was a drunk.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I never was sure which came first, the alcohol, or the asshole. He did this to me.” Lucas stroked a finger along the dent on his nose. “Said if I changed into a wolf to heal it, he’d rip off my arm and beat me with it. I believed him.”
“How old were you?”
“Fifteen. He always preferred to fight me as a human. He said the wolf would know how to fight when the time came—it was the human half that needed training,” Lucas said, his voice an imitation of his father’s. “It took me years before I realized he did it so he’d be bigger than me for most of my life.”
“That’s awful.”
“Yeah, it was. I spent a lot of time in JV after that. He always waited until the day of the full moon to spring me. Thought he was punishing me. Little did he know, I preferred staying in jail.”
“Lucas—” I set my coffee mug down on the ground and drew an equation in the air between us. “You’ve had a rough life, you don’t have an education, you’re not from here. And you’re going to lead the Deepest Snow wolf pack why again, exactly?”
“I’m of age, and I’m the closest related male blood. It’s how our system works.” He shrugged. “I’m only holding the spot until Fenris Jr. comes of age. Believe me, I don’t want it.”
“I just don’t see why you’re more competent than, say, Jorgen.”
“He’s bitten. He doesn’t know what being a wolf is like. He’s still chained by what made him a man.”
“Then why don’t you give them shots to cure him and the others? Or do they really all opt in?”
Lucas gawked at me, then laughed. “I’m just imagining you interrogating my uncle. Jorgen would tell you his service to my family is an honor—he was bitten by the old man himself. And as for opting in—the world is full of paths, Edie.” He leaned forward, even with me, and his voice went rough, otherworldly, like the wolf was pushing through. “Sometimes you take one, and it gets you lost in the woods.”
I sat very still, and for a moment I felt like a rabbit must feel when a hawk’s shadow crosses above. Then Lucas laughed and shook his head. “I’m teasing, of course.”
“Of course,” I readily agreed. I held my mug out. “More coffee, please?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
I watched him as he walked back to his kitchen, barefoot on the tile floor. He poured more coffee, and I wondered how far I’d get if I flung it into his face and ran for the door. Consciously, I didn’t feel like I was in danger, but my subconscious had other opinions something fierce. Maybe it was the predator-and-prey thing I was picking up on—he the spider, I the fly.
On his way back with my mug, his phone chirped from the kitchen table. He got the message, and brought the phone with him. “They’re done with your place now.” He handed the mug and the phone over at the same time, with the screen still lit. “So you can see they’re not telling me anything other than that.”
I took the coffee and sipped it—he’d put in sugar and cream for me already, made it just the way I’d had it before. “For all I know, this could be an elaborate code.” I was only half teasing.
“Don’t give my people so much credit. In the wild, a dumb wolf would starve or get killed. But as humans nine-tenths of the time, a higher percentage of us are able to bumble on day-to-day than you’d think.”
“Well. Thanks for the coffee. I should probably be getting home now.”
He frowned down at me. “Or you could just stay here tonight. It’d be easy for me to protect you here.”
I looked around the confines of Lucas’s small living room. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“You still don’t trust me?”
“I don’t know how I can. Sorry.”
If he’d looked angry, I’d have been scared. Instead he seemed bemused, and he reached for his phone. “Fine. I’ll call you a cab. He’s one of ours—he can stay outside your apartment for the rest of the night.”
His phone call sounded very real. He gave them an address and everything. I packed my stuff, after getting another trash bag for my stained clothing—maybe I should carry around trash bags just in case, at the rate I was going—and Minnie was still in the carrier, still growling her displeasure. After that, I didn’t know how long we had to kill until the cab arrived.
“You’re still sure I can’t change your mind?” he asked when I was in the living room again, Minnie at my side. His eyes searched my face. “I promise no harm will come to you tonight.”
“You just told me people wander off and get lost in dark woods. That makes it hard to believe you.”
Lucas snorted and looked at the ground. “That was a mistake.”
“Lucas, I want to believe you—which is probably why I should go.”
I reached down and picked up my mug to carry it into the kitchen, and Minnie hissed behind me. I looked over, and she wasn’t looking at me—
I turned around and Lucas was gone. In his place was a wolf as big as the couch. I stepped back. It took up so much space I felt like there was little room left to breathe. Not it—he. Lucas. His fur was the color of a worn penny, dull red, with streaks of gray. Minnie kept hissing.
“Is frightening my cat really the best way to convince me?” I picked her up and set her on the couch, away from him. When I looked back, he was sitting on his haunches, watching me with copper eyes. He got down on all fours and stretched toward me, head low. He crept nearer, bowed down, until he was an arm’s length away. He kept looking, and I did my best not to move.
He could have attacked. He would have won. But he kept coming closer until his wet nose almost touched my kneeling thigh.
I reached one finger out, to trace the fine hairs on his muzzle the wrong direction. Lucas the wolf closed his eyes. Bolder, I stroked a path up to his eyebrow. The fur wasn’t soft, but tactilely different than I expected. Somewhere between bristles and fur, both thick and springy. I ran the palm of my hand down the back of his neck, pressed it into his fur, felt it give, and then the solid muscle hidden underneath.
His head turned slowly to the side, and his teeth caught my wrist. His rough, warm tongue ran over my hand.
There was a knock at the door. My ride.
I pulled my hand away slowly, and he bit down a little more, pulling me toward him. His teeth were like the ends of blunt pens—not needle-sharp, but his jaw could crush my wrist and I would never chart again.
Then he let me go.
There was another knock at the door. Louder, insistent.
“If the world is full of paths, why does yours have to be the one lined with puppies?”
Lucas’s eyebrows, and lips, pulled up into a literally wolfish grin. He sat up and bit my bicep with his frightening-not-frightening teeth, and then licked at my throat. I closed my eyes and laughed and pushed him away, and found myself touching skin.
“I’m a wolf, not a dog.” He was sitting on the floor very near me now, completely naked. My hands were on his chest, and I pulled them back with a yelp. “Are you really so frightened of me?”
“No. But I should be. That’s the problem.”
“Edie, I don’t want you to be afraid.” He was near enough that I could feel the heat radiating off him, feverish. He was beautiful, and I could see all of him now, his tattoos scrolling up and down both arms, his stomach lean, his cock hard.
I’d spent the past few weeks angry, frustrated, overthinking things, running scared. Here was something I could do that would be so simple, and feel so good, if I just let it. I was tired of fighting, I was lonely—and I was hungry. “I don’t want to be afraid either.”
The door knocked one final, last time, and I could hear someone cursing behind it as they walked away. I didn’t jump up to follow.
Lucas reached out for me, ran his hand into my wet hair, caught a fistful, and gently pulled. His eyes—they
