But I didn’t know how to ask for any of it. So I closed my eyes and went to sleep, his big, delicious body pressed against mine.
Chapter Eight
“You sure you’re going to be okay?” I bounced baby Eddie for a minute, then pulled him close and pressed a kiss to his forehead, inhaling the baby scent before I handed him back to Holly. “I don’t like leaving you behind.”
“Someone has to stay with the baby,” she said with a sweet smile, accepting him back into her arms. Eddie held his chubby hands out to Holly, eager for her again, and she held him close, grinning. “Dan promised to take me out on a run tomorrow night just to get the wolf out of my system.”
Well, that wasn’t surprising. In the short time that Dan had arrived into our pack, the young man had meshed with the teenagers as if he’d been here all his life. His eager-to-please personality was a perfect fit with my group, especially good-natured and shy Holly. The two of them had taken to each other as if they’d been sweethearts all their lives, and every time I turned a corner, I found them sitting or whispering together, or playing with the baby together. There was never anything untoward going on - I suspected Dan was extremely conscious of his place in the new pack - but it was clear they mutually adored each other. Two missing puzzle pieces, suddenly joined at the hip.
I was envious of their easy acceptance of each other. Why couldn’t I have been that way with Jackson? Instead, every time he looked at me, I blushed bright red. Every time he touched me, I jumped. I gave a nervous laugh every time he cast a flirty comment in my direction.
In short, I was obvious as hell and completely uncomfortable. I didn’t know if I should flirt back - heck, I didn’t know how to flirt back - and I didn’t know how he’d react if I did. So I just stared at him when he teased me.
Sexy, I know.
Which was why I was glad that tonight was the full moon and we were readying for our pack run. Some packs just let their members turn wolf whenever, or spent a ton of time in wolf form. My father had always cautioned me against it, though; it was too easy to give in to the beast and let it turn you wild. We were human above all things, and we needed to embrace our human side, and just let the wolf out to play occasionally. With civilization creeping into every corner of the world and no place safe for a wolf anymore, it made even more sense to hunt as a pack. Safety in numbers. We’d go out as a group, spend all night hunting and howling at the moon, vent a little steam, and return in the morning ready to go a few more weeks in our two-legged forms.
But I was reluctant to leave Holly and Dan behind. I knew, logically, that someone would have to stay with the baby. We couldn’t just leave him to fend for himself all night.
As I watched, Dan moved forward and held a finger out for Eddie to grab. The baby snagged it, fur sprouted in a show of aggression, and then he giggled, the fur dying away again. Dan grinned at me, clearly pleased.
I sighed. They’d be fine, but I still worried. Tonight was the full moon, and Roscoe was still out there, looking to score females for his pack. Holly was vulnerable. “All right. You have the keys to the panic room if anything happens?”
Holly nodded, glancing over at Dan. “We’ll probably go in there and watch movies anyhow. Just to be safe.”
I leaned in and gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. “You do that. I like safe.”
She took the baby’s hand in hers and guided it into the baby version of a half-wave. “We’ll be fine. You go have fun.”
I left them reluctantly, heading out to the back porch. The air was hot and humid despite the fact that it was almost nine at night and the sun was finally going down. The heat wouldn’t matter once we were in wolf form - you’d be surprised at how little things like that matter when you’re in wolf form - but for now, the bodies of my waiting pack were gleaming with a fine sheen of sweat and I could smell it in the air, along with burgeoning excitement. Len, Spence, and Trina were waiting on the back porch, hanging out on one of the stair rails and horseplaying. Jackson stood nearby, leaning against one of the plantation-style pillars and watching them bicker with amusement.
All eyes turned to me the moment I arrived, and I felt an excited flutter in my stomach. Time to run. I stripped off my shirt, grinning. “Let’s go, then.”
I’d been nervous about changing full wolf in front of Jackson, but the moment the anticipation hit me, all worry disappeared. I tore off clothing, feeling the itch of transformation under my skin. When I was naked, I knelt on the porch on all fours, noticing the others were only a pace behind. My wolf came to the forefront then, and the shift tore through me, the painfully sweet jolts of muscle and tendon and bone locking and maneuvering into a new form. Shifting hurt - it always hurt - but you grew to anticipate the pain because of what came next: pure and utter freedom.
In wolf form, I bounded off the porch and looked back at the others, wagging my tail and waiting. My ears pricked as I took in the sounds of their changes. Jackson was done - a shaggy yellow-brown wolf - but had waited on the others. Spence was next, his wolf small and dark, and Trina’s gangly she-wolf form. Then Len, who was tall and lean and equally so in wolf form. Now that my pack was ready, I gave a small whine to call their attention, and then darted for the trees.
I could hear the others behind me, paws hitting the ground. I flicked my ears and slowed my pace, waiting for Jackson to take the lead. He was the alpha, and even though I might dart off into the woods, Cash had always overtaken the lead from me.
But instead of passing me, Jackson simply nipped my flanks, indicating that I should keep running. He was content to let me lead. My pack, my woods, my lead. I turned and gave him a wolfy grin before lifting my head and howling to the moon.
The first few hours of wolfiness were usually the most feral. We’d run at top speed, howl at anything in the sky, chase anything moving, and generally act like wild dogs with our first taste of freedom in weeks. I was no better, of course, being just as obnoxiously frisky as the others. Eventually, though, the racing through the woods turned into games. We wrestled, chased each other, and then played a wolf version of hide and seek where you attempted to hide your scent trail from the others. Spence, Trina and Len knew the games well, but I imagine we surprised Jackson when we all dashed away in opposite directions at once - and he’d been more or less defaulted to ‘it.’
I bounded through the woods, lungs full of night air and the scent of the trees. I could smell skunk and armadillo, squirrel and snake, and some sort of musky dead thing in the distance that made me want to check it out, but curiosity took a second place to the thrill of the chase, and I bolted through the woods merrily.
As my paws landed on a ridge, something hot snaked around one foot and then the world tilted. The next thing I knew, pain was lancing up my hind leg and I was dangling, upside down, from a tree. I’d been caught in a snare of some kind.
I yelped, but no one was close by to hear me. I flailed helplessly, but the rope only continued to cut harder into my foot, and I could feel the bones straining. My wolf hind leg couldn’t support my body - I needed to transform, and fast. Furious, I called up my human side and began the painful transformation back.
A few minutes later, my human form was writhing upside down, the rope cutting into my ankle. I swung back and forth, my head a few feet from the ground. If I stretched, I couldn’t quite touch the ground - my fingers barely brushed the grass.
“Hello?” I called. “Anybody? I’m stuck!” I was going to be furious later, when I had time to relax and calm down and let it process that someone had been on my property and set a rope trap. But for now, I was focused on the pain in my leg and the need to get down.