The huge brown wolf I remember. Eyes catching the moonlight. Thinner than the clearing — he’s been running hard, not eating.
He shifts. The wolf contracts, and the man comes through.
Naked. Twenty feet away. His eyes are gold, even in human form, the wolf right under the surface. His body is taut, everymuscle held, and he’s hard — visibly, unashamedly — and he isn’t trying to hide it.
My mouth goes dry. My body goes wet. Both at the same time. The contradiction is so bare it would be funny if anything about this were funny.
Don’t look at him.
I look at him.
“What are you doing here?”
He looks at me for a long moment. The gold in his eyes. The way he’s holding himself — controlled but barely.
“You know what I’m doing here,” he says.
I don’t respond to that. Instead, I say, “Every wolf in that compound is on your trail. Half of them would happily rip you to pieces themselves.”
“I know.”
The words are so simple, yet they show that he understands the threat, and he’s here anyway. That’s so much harder to be twenty feet away from than arrogance would have been.
“You’re mad,” I mutter.
“You’ve been calling me,” he says. “Your body has. Every hour.”
“I wasn’t calling you.”
“You’re soaking wet standing there. I can smell it from here.”
The fury comes fast. The humiliation of being read by a wolf’s nose while my own scent calls me a liar. I cross the distance, and my palm hits the side of his face before I’ve decided to swing.
He catches my wrist before the second one lands. “Is that your thing, Briar? Inflicting pain?”
“On you, yes,” I hiss.
“I got your message.” His jaw works. Something crosses his face — the gold in his eyes going briefly dark. “The girl—”
“Don’t.” The word comes out before I’ve decided to say it.
He stops. Considers. He wants to say it — I can see that plainly, the effort of keeping it back — and he sets it aside anyway. Not because it doesn’t matter. Because I asked him not to. The distinction is in the line of his jaw, the slow breath he releases, and I hate that I can read him well enough to see it. His worldview is changing. Inch by inch.
“Not now,” I say. “This isn’t the time.”
He nods. Once.
His fingers tighten around my wrist, and the contact, after days of bitter herbs and cold water and nothing, sends a shock through me that buckles my knees. His other arm locks around my waist and catches me against his chest before I drop.
Skin to skin. The heat coming off him is the same heat burning in me, and my body fits against his the way the mark on my neck fits the teeth that made it.
His thumb finds my pulse.
“Your heart’s racing,” he says, against my hair.
“I hate you.”
“I know.”