“None of them seem the type to chase a woman who doesn’t want to be chased, but Jay’s serious about making this a safe place.” Eden returned the tea to the fridge before grinning at Lorelei. “That means all the chasing is up to you.”
“I’m not chasing anyone.” Lorelei tugged at the back door, holding it open for Eden. “It was just an observation.”
“Mmm.” Eden didn’t push. She slipped through the door and almost bumped into Jay on the porch. His proximity roused the prickles under her skin as quickly as his touch soothed them, and she leaned against his chest for one indulgent moment. “Is it time?”
“Yeah.” He stroked a hand over her hair, and she felt the gentle questing of magic. “You’re ready.”
She felt the words in her bones, bones that would snap soon enough. Twist, change… Pain was nearly the only thing she remembered from the first time. Pain, and Jay’s warmth around her. “I’m a little scared.”
“We’ll go someplace alone, if you want. Just us.” Beyond him, out at the edge of the blackened circle where they’d built the bonfire, Kaley tugged her shirt over her head and let it fall.
At some point, Eden would have to grow used to the casual nudity. Kaley wasn’t the only one stripping off her clothes. Fletcher unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a tanned chest. Colin, already na**d above the waist, tugged at his belt as he muttered something to Shane, and even Mae seemed unbothered. She stood next to Lorelei in jeans and a bra, showing off an intricate tattoo of flowers and vines encircling her waist.
Eden tucked her face against Jay’s chest. “Maybe this first time. I don’t know if I’m ready for an audience.”
He grasped her hand and tugged her off the porch. “We’ll be around shortly,” he announced. “If there’s trouble or you need us…just howl.”
A couple of the wolves smiled. Someone murmured encouragement—Mae, or maybe Kaley. Eden barely heard it.
Her wolf knew it was time.
Every step away from the farm pushed anticipation higher and wrapped nerves tighter until she couldn’t pick one from the other. She was high on both, on the call of the moon and the promise of being one with the stranger who’d taken up residence inside her body.
Jay led her to a small copse of trees, so tightly circled that the trunks surrounded them like a curtain. “I’m going to show you how to find your wolf, set her free.” He turned her to face him and pulled her close, so close his mouth hovered over hers. She could feel every rapid breath as he exhaled. “How to shift.”
She tugged at the top button on his shirt, easing it undone. “First I have to be na**d.”
A hint of a smile curved the corners of his lips. “Then why are you undressing me?”
Growling, Eden closed her teeth on his lower lip and ripped her own shirt open. Buttons popped off, disappearing beneath the pine needles and fallen leaves, and she let the rent fabric drift to the ground to join them.
Jay cupped her ribcage and brushed his thumb over the lace of her bra. “I like this. It’s very pretty, but I’m about to rip it.”
“If you don’t, I will.”
“On second thought…” He slipped his fingers under the strap and tugged it off her shoulder. “That won’t help you control your transformation.”
The adrenaline boiling through her veins made that clear, but she still felt a stab of disappointment. “Later,” she rasped, tugging her jeans open. “The houses will be soundproofed when we get back.”
“If Stella’s half as good as she says she is.” He grasped the tab of her zipper and jerked it down.
Every move was a tease. Foreplay, even with sex as a far distant goal. He was playing with her, stroking desire and taunting her wolf, bringing both to the surface as fear and nerves drifted away. Eden fumbled with her bra and groaned as he knelt and took off her shoes.
He stayed at her feet, staring up at her, as he slid her jeans and panties down her legs at the same time. “You feel it, now get control of it. Wrap around it, Eden, and make it yours.”
Her skin tingled. Constricted. Or maybe it hadn’t changed, but she was growing. Either way, her body didn’t fit anymore. She swayed and caught her balance on Jay’s shoulders, and his breath spilled across her bare abdomen.
Hers. The power had to be hers. Clenching her eyes shut, she tried to gain control of the rising power. Her wolf snarled, and the pressure turned to pain. “I can’t,” she growled, her hands spasming. Her fingers twisted painfully, and she whimpered. “She’s stronger than me. She’s going to rip me apart.”
He rose and pressed his forehead to hers. “Doesn’t matter. Don’t fight, honey. This is just another part of you.”
Control her power without fighting the wolf. As if it was that easy, like flexing a muscle she’d never used before. “Can you let me feel it through the bond?”
“I can.” Jay released her and stepped back, already unbuttoning his shirt.
If Jay undressing her had been foreplay, Jay undressing himself was out-and-out pornography. Grinding her way to an embarrassingly public orgasm against his thigh suddenly seemed tame. Innocent.
This was dirty promise. Jay bared his body in stages, his hot gaze never leaving her. Broad shoulders. Strong chest with dark hair that her fingers itched to touch. Flexing muscles. Lean waist. And lower…
Human shyness screamed for her to avert her gaze. But Jay kicked his pants away and stood before her, na**d and smugly self-assured. Eden had never fully appreciated the seductive lure of a shamelessly aroused man.
She did now.
Jay bent low, the smooth arch of his spine rippling as the bone and muscle beneath began to stretch and reform. He closed his eyes and whispered her name. “Feel it, Eden. The most natural thing in the world.”
He began to shift, but instead of pain his features remained relaxed, almost beatific. He was at peace, and that peace flowed through their connection and into her. When he finally stood before her on four paws, that peace melted into sheer exultation.
He tipped back his head and howled.
Eden sank to her knees and reached for him, sliding her shaking fingers through the fur at his neck. “You’re beautiful,” she whispered, awed.
Somewhere in the woods nearby echoed an answering howl, and Jay butted his head against her side.
Closing her eyes, Eden followed the whispers of peace, searching inside herself for a place that resonated with the same tangle of human and beast. The place where they were joined, where her wolf waited with growing impatience.
She brushed something, and heat flooded her limbs. Fire, burning painful enough to drive a cry from her lips. Pain enveloped her, froze the air in her lungs so that she couldn’t even whimper, couldn’t beg Jay for help because this hurt, hurt like she was breaking, broken, splitting out of her skin—
Panic gripped her, and she huffed in oxygen and used it to unleash her terror in a wild scream that echoed off the trees as a howl instead of another human cry.
When she lowered her head, Jay was there, his shoulder against hers. He nudged the side of her muzzle with his nose and backed away, his tail held high.
Muzzle.
She took a tentative step. Her paws slipped on the pine needles, and she thumped to the forest floor in an awkward sprawl of legs. For one disorienting moment, she was trapped, she was Eden in a wolf’s body, her senses a jumble of unfamiliar input and mounting panic.
Then she inhaled, dragging in the scent of the woods and the smell of her partner—her mate—and the wolf surged. Pain snapped through her chest, followed by a flood of relief, like a badly set bone had been jerked into alignment. She was no longer human or wolf.
She was human and wolf.
Surging to her feet, Eden bounded toward Jay, crashing into his side with a giddy lack of concern. She nipped at his flank and danced away, daring him to follow her, to play with her.
He lunged after her with a soft growl, his jaws closing lightly on her tail. Then he raced past her as a short yap blended with a lower howl to rise in the night—an invitation, one Eden felt in her bones.
She followed him. She couldn’t do anything else.
A large, reddish-brown wolf broke free of the trees ahead of them. Power rushed before him, whipping through the trees, a wary, restrained strength that could only belong to Fletcher.
Jay eased between them, his ears straight and his gaze steady. He seemed to be both welcoming and warning Fletcher at the same time, a notion confirmed when he growled with a slight baring of teeth.
Mine. This one is mine.
Yes, that was how it should be.
Fletcher didn’t back down, but he did back off, giving Jay and Eden space as more wolves appeared. Their forms were unfamiliar, but Eden felt them with that same newly awakened sense that told her when Lorelei was uneasy or Mae frightened. A taste in the air, an aura she couldn’t quite see.
Colin felt strong and a little wild, his danger tempered by the way he fell into place at Jay’s side with clear deference. Shane hung back, keeping a bit of distance between them as Lorelei—it had to be Lorelei—moved closer to Eden’s side, her head held low.
Submissive, but not so much as Mae. Kaley danced around her, encouraging her to play, but Mae crept forward, her ears flat against her head, tail tucked low. She stopped a few feet short of Eden and Jay and rolled to her back, baring her neck and belly.
One by one, they circled and sniffed, stepped into the places they’d spoken of as humans—dominant, subordinate—but speaking had been different. Words compared to these actions, to the way Fletcher and even Kaley moved more carefully than the others. Wary.
Watching.
As humans, they could choose their paths. As wolves, it would always come down to this. Instinct, the gut knowledge of what was right and proper…and what was undeniably wrong.
Eden barely knew them. She barely knew herself. But she knew what she was, here and now. Leader. Protector.
Alpha.
Tilting her head back, she let joy carry her voice, let it lift through the trees and into the bright afternoon sky. A second howl joined hers, lower and rougher, a familiar sound from her childhood. Zack welcomed her to his world with a howl that held everything—affection and gratitude, loss and regret.