Chris snorted. “You’re still two weeks from the full moon. That’s goddamned amazing. What did you use for motivation?”
I hesitated. The first answers seemed obvious. “Peter. Chloe. Dillon. I can’t help them the way I am now.” Chris waited for more. “Can’t explain the other. The wulf wants out, I want it out. I thought if I kept pushing myself, it would come.”
He took a mouthful of his breakfast as though people tried to push for a wulf transformation every morning. When he raised his eyes to mine, however, I saw concern in them.
“Be careful what you wish for,” he said. “You aren’t ready for the full wulf. I do, however, admire your dedication to the cause.”
I can do it. The surge of defiance caught me off guard. It must have showed in my eyes, for his widened slightly. My respect for the enforcer made me push it back down—if I wanted to get through this, I needed to pay attention. So I nodded and shoveled in another load. I became aware of Josh, standing very still as he listened to us before he turned to fill a bowl with hot water and grabbed towels from a drawer. He approached me—disapproval and worry radiating from him in waves.
“You’ll get there soon enough,” he groused as he kneeled by my feet. I twisted sideways to accommodate him, holding my precious plate of breakfast. He washed the cuts, working with incredible gentleness. They had stopped bleeding, but Josh made a soft sound when he raised one foot to look at the hamburger beneath. He plucked a crushed crab apple from between my toes.
“They’ll need soaking,” he said through gritted teeth. He stood and disappeared down the hall, in pursuit, I suspected, of a container big enough for my size elevens.
I paused in my shoveling. “Is he okay?”
One corner of Chris’s mouth curved up in a smile. “Some people fall on swords. And some patch them up. Sometimes he tires of doing the patching.”
Thinking of the network of scars across Chris’s body, I figured Josh had likely done more than his fair share. Josh returned, wielding a plastic tub that fit my feet with room to spare. I plopped them in, and he poured the hot water over them, followed by a generous dollop of antiseptic from an oversized bottle. Refilling the smaller bowl with fresh water, he thumped it onto the table near the food, and placed the bottle beside it.
“When you’re finished eating, Chris can clean those cuts. I have a rose bush that needs pruning.” He stalked down the hall and disappeared outside. A second later he returned to dig out gardening gloves and his pruners from a cupboard. Then he left again, slamming the door with vigor.
I looked at Chris. His gaze remained fastened on the door until he sensed my stare. The small frown he wore cleared as he grinned at me. “Don’t let him get to you. He worries, and I suppose if the situation were reversed, I would too. I wouldn’t want to be married to me, either.”
“You guys are married?”
“Mated in the wulfan world, married in the human. Not everyone knows, because prejudices exist among the wulfan, just as they do with humans. His parents don’t approve.” He shrugged and reached for the pancakes.
I almost asked what he’d left behind in Texas, but I was too damned hungry to talk. I swallowed as I handed him the syrup and slipped Keen a hunk of bacon. We all chewed in a curious harmony, at peace with each other and a situation that should have terrified me. I wondered at it. My time as a vet had been fulfilling but now, I realized I’d been running on autopilot. My difficult past had been buffered by my present relative and reassuring uniformity. I’d believed control over my daily existence would lead to the balance I craved.
Since Dillon bit me, everything had been tossed in the air. Yet I was aware of excitement kindling within, almost a sensation of rebirth—as though for the first time, I raised my head to look around. And recognized that I hadn’t dealt with my past, or even left it behind, I’d just got more efficient at hiding it.
To find my wulf, I had to tear the memories free from behind the walls and embrace them.
The concept daunted me, but something within rose to the challenge. I sensed the jigsaw pieces of my life coming together when they should have been ripping apart.
I glanced across to Chris, who raised an eyebrow at me. “Next time you want to try to kill yourself, take me with you, eh?”
My face split into a grin. “Eh? You sure you weren’t born Canadian?”
He snorted, and the final piece clicked into place. Chris and I were the same on some fundamental level. It had nothing to do with the usual things that pulled humans together.
It had everything to do with the wulf.
11
That night, the fever burned so hot I thought I’d leave scorch marks on the sheets. By morning, it had subsided, but it left me feeling wrung out. Chris arrived and forced two bottles of water on me.
“I have news from Texas,” he said as I guzzled.
I choked on the water and coughed. “What did you find out?”
His expression revealed his reluctance, as though he’d debated telling me. “I had a friend, a fellow enforcer, sniff around. First up, Dillon was a hair’s breadth from being bull’s-eyed when he and Chloe took off.”
I cracked the seal on the second bottle, listening. This revelation didn’t surprise me.
“There was an incident at a bar. A guy asked Chloe to dance. Two days later, he turned up dead in a river, with his throat torn out.”
The bottle was elevated in my hand, while my mouth opened and closed. “Oookay,” I said. “They couldn’t pin it on Dillon?”
“What human rips out someone’s throat? It looked like an animal
