“How long were we like this?” I asked, my voice hoarse.
“Just the night,” Ginny said, sitting across from me with her back against a wall, hair disheveled from her shower. She’d bandaged her arm in gauze.
“I don’t know what to say. Your arm—”
“Will heal,” she said, and glanced at the clock on the nightstand. The sky outside glowed pink with the coming dawn. “I have to get you out of here before tonight. The Seeonee will be angry.”
She’d told me about the drug she’d smelled, what had sent me into a rage. She’d also told me about her pack’s plans to make me murder a human.
“Ginny,” I said, but I turned my head and buried my face against her comforter. I wanted to tell her the truth. She’d already had the chance to kill me, and to trick me, and she hadn’t done either.
I heard her come closer, felt a hand on my arm and when I lifted my head she sat beside me. Wordlessly she pulled me against her and I laid my head on her shoulder.
And I talked.
I told her about my infection, about Jules, about the Rothschilds’ plan to overthrow the Seeonee, about my role in it. I guessed they’d administered the drugs when they sedated me at full moons, testing on me, planning all along to make me go insane and hurt someone. I opened up to her about my fears of dealing with it alone, about what a mistake I’d made in agreeing to help with the Rothschilds and how horrible I felt.
“If you hate me,” I said, “I understand.”
After a moment of tense silence, Ginny said, “Likewise.”
Then she stiffened against me.
“My mother,” she said. “That’s who they wanted you to attack. She can’t change while pregnant. That’s why they feralized you with drugs.”
“Well,” I said, sitting up straight, “I won’t be there to do it. You told me the drugs got flushed out of my system.”
She nodded, “You smelled clean, after.”
I touched her bandaged hand. “I didn’t … didn’t
At that, she looked at me with her Chardonnay eyes and flashed her dimpled smile. “No.” Then she assumed an Irish brogue. “If anything, I pray you swallowed some honest Donnelly blood and put your spirit to rights.”
I laughed with the relief of broken tension.
She laughed, too.
And then she kissed me.
She hesitated, as if unsure. After my surprise subsided, I nudged my lips against hers. Accepting that as permission, she kissed with renewed fervor, parted my lips with her tongue and drew me into her lap.
I ran my hands through her disheveled wet hair and traced the features of her face with my lips, moving towards her neck. She opened my robe and slid her hands in, cool against my warm skin, sending electric shudders along my flesh.
I pulled back long enough to peel off her shirt. Straddling her, I slid my hands down her breasts, drawn to her warmth. Her hands caressed my ribs. I shivered as her hands slid lower, tracing my hips. Her thigh pressed up between mine.
Ginny rolled me and laid me down on my back, parted the robe and pressed her breasts and stomach down against mine. She nudged my head to the side and wrapped her lips around my earlobe as her hand slipped between my thighs, her hair spilling across my face, our heartbeats pressed against each other.
I panted, clinging to her shoulders. Her breath trembled against my ear and then she was inside me, eclipsing all other sensation. heat radiating against mine, her careful rhythm built a slow mounting pressure within me. I moaned into her shoulder.
The sensation crested, then faltered, lingering.
“Claire,” she whispered. A sweet nothing carried by her breath, but so genuine. I knew what it asked.
I surrendered. The mental barrier dropped; the sensation blossomed and exploded within me. The world fell away.
When it passed, she held me, fingers exploring the contours of my body. I’d never dreamed I would feel so safe at the hands of a wolf.
After a moment, I took a deep breath and said, “Can I touch you now?”
She smiled, nipped at my throat. “What’s your hurry? You’re mine now. Think I’m letting you go anytime soon?”
My heart swelled. I answered with a kiss, long and slow.
I laid my ear against the spot between Claire’s breasts and listened to her heartbeat, letting it lull me. She dozed on the carpet, her fingers tangled in my hair.
I recognized then and there, watching her sleeping, that I wanted her as my mate. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind. I didn’t care that she wasn’t a natural-born; she had smelled perfectly natural to me.
In the afternoon I returned to idle stroking along her skin. She eventually squirmed and made little half-asleep noises. I set my mouth to work rousing her as pleasantly as I could, her legs parting as she realized what I was up to.
Suddenly alert, her nails dug into my shoulder blade. “What time is it?”
“Who cares?”
Claire opened her dark eyes, but they slid closed again as I pressed a palm to her cheek and she turned her head to kiss my fingers.
Then she started to sit up. “The full moon.”
I rested my hand on her chest. “You changed last night. Don’t worry. It won’t happen again so soon.”
“But the Seeonee think I’m going to be there,” she said. “And the Rothschild Pack knows I won’t.”
I froze. “You told them you weren’t going?”
Her expression turned worrisome and I reminded myself she wasn’t to blame for this.
She said, “I told them. What if they send someone else?”
“What are their plans, exactly?”
“I don’t know. They kept me in the dark.”
I started to disentangle myself from her limbs and the blankets. “I should get to them,” I said, glancing at my clock on the nightstand. We’d been lying here all day. Evening approached.
Claire sat upright, wincing. She was probably still sore from her change last night. “I’m going with you.”
“Better if you didn’t,” I said, pulling on my underwear. “I haven’t talked to my pack yet. They think you’re coming to play our scapegoat.”
“I’m not going to let you face this alone,” she said.
I opened my mouth to speak but a loud crash interrupted. I flinched. Someone kicked in my front door and just as quickly, footsteps sounded in the living room. I pushed Claire to the floor behind me, but as soon as the shadows appeared in the bedroom doorway something stung my thigh and I looked down at a tranquilizer dart.
The dart, the room, and the advancing figures spun out of focus as the ground rushed up to meet me.
They’d found me. I didn’t expect them to come after me, but they had. Ginny landed beside where I lay, unconscious, and I threw myself over her to shield her from the red wolves that stalked into the room on their hind legs. Peter stood in the doorway with a tranquilizer gun. Peter, alpha of the Rothschilds.
Worse, Jules was there, too. I recognized her instantly: curly dirty-blond hair, firm short figure. She was only a few inches higher than five feet and, even so, she was strong. She’d had to quit rugby after she’d broken the clavicle of a woman twice her size.
The wolves came towards me. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have the instinct for this sort of thing. They grabbed my arms with their padded hands, hauling me to my feet. Naked, I shivered.
Lamplight glinted off Peter’s glasses as he scanned the room. His short gray beard gave him a wolfish appearance even in his human state. He motioned to the wolves.
They pulled me along after him. One of them stooped and lifted Ginny, throwing her over its shoulder. Peter rummaged through Ginny’s satchel until he found her cell phone.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
