HIS WOLF TOLD ME EVERYTHING

Chapter 4: Two Wolves, One Secret Each

Edena snatched the phone back so fast her knuckles hit his chest.

"You have a choice," she said. "You can interrogate me for two minutes, or you can let me send something, and nobody you love ends up on the internet tonight."

That landed. She watched it land. *Nobody you love* went through Hollis Rourke like a bullet through glass, clean, leaving a hole you could see daylight through.

He stepped back.

"Send it."

She hadn't expected that. She turned away from him, thumbed through the photos, and with steady, quick fingers cropped the bottom of every single screenshot.

Every **L.I.** disappeared.

Whatever that was, she wanted to know first.

**Sent.** 11:59.

Three dots. Then: **Thorough. Keep going.**

She let out a slow breath and turned around. Hollis was leaning against his desk, arms folded, watching her the way he'd watch a stock he didn't trust.

"You didn't stop me," she said.

"Nothing that matters is on that tablet." He tilted his head. "Who is it?"

"I don't know."

"Fiendh?" He said her wolf's name like he'd been practicing it. Edena hated how good it sounded. Then he listened to something she couldn't hear, and his mouth tightened. "She says you're telling the truth. And that I have, quote, *the forearms of a man who could open any jar.*"

*It's relevant,* Fiendh said primly.

"What do they have on you?" Hollis asked.

"Something old."

"How old?"

Edena smiled. In PR, when someone asks the question you can't answer, you answer a better one.

"Let's talk about something new instead."

Silently, she asked one question. *Zikal. Does he love Leona Dessa?*

*No,* Zikal said instantly, because he couldn't say anything else. *He's paying her four million to pretend. Oh no. I shouldn't have said that. Actually, I'm not sorry. It's a horrible contract. She makes him wear beige.*

"Leona," Edena said aloud.

He didn't move. That was how she knew.

"Four million," Edena said, "for a fake engagement, timed to the launch of Lumen Spa. Expires the day after the launch party. Very romantic. I cried."

"You're threatening me."

"I'm *balancing* us. You know I have a secret. I know you have one. Neither of us opens our mouth." She held out a hand. "Mutually assured destruction. It's the foundation of every lasting relationship."

He looked at her hand. Then, slowly, he took it.

The moment his palm touched hers, heat tore down her arm like someone had pulled a fuse.

Edena gasped.

Her spine bowed. Her skin prickled from scalp to heel, hot then freezing, and inside her ribs Fiendh threw herself against the bars of all those years with a howl that made Edena's vision white.

*OUT,* Fiendh roared. *OUT, OUT, I'm STARVING, Cage, let me—*

"No," Edena choked. "Not here—"

Her fingernails had gone dark. She stared at them. They were lengthening.

Hollis was already moving. He caught her under the arms before her knees went and hauled her against his chest, one hand spread on her back.

"Look at me. Edena. *Look at me.*"

She'd never heard him say her first name. It worked better than it should have.

"There are four cameras on this floor," he said, low and fast. "If she comes out here, we both burn. Can you hold her for forty minutes?"

"Forty—"

"Breathe with me. Hold her. I'm taking you somewhere she can run."

---

The Maybach took the coastal road faster than the road allowed. Hollis drove it himself, which felt like watching a lion do its own taxes.

Edena spent the drive curled in the passenger seat with her forehead pressed to the cold window, breathing through her teeth.

*You're doing very well,* Zikal murmured the whole way, soft as a blanket. *Very, very well. He's driving like a criminal. That means he's worried. He's never worried. He's ignoring three calls from Theo. I've never seen him ignore Theo.*

The Rourke Estate rose out of the pines in glass and pale stone, lanterns strung across the lawn like somebody had hung up the stars to dry. Edena saw a helipad. A pool house. A garage with six doors and a car behind every one.

She didn't care about any of it.

Hollis pulled up at the edge of the trees, came around, and opened her door.

"Take off anything you want to keep," he said.

"Is that a line?"

"It's advice. The dress at my gala was a loan, wasn't it?"

She'd have laughed if her spine weren't trying to rearrange itself. She kicked off her shoes and peeled her shirt over her head, and he turned his back without being asked, which she noted, and filed, and refused to think about.

Then she stopped holding on.

It was not graceful. It was years of everything at once. Bones snapped and slid and reset. Her face pulled forward. Fur raced over her skin in a wave of copper fire, and the ground came up to meet four paws instead of two feet.

The night opened like a door.

Pine. Salt. Rabbit, three of them, terrified. The sea a mile off, breathing. And beside her, the scent of cedar and cold air, so strong it almost knocked her over.

She turned.

The wolf behind her was enormous. Charcoal black, with a single line of silver running down his spine, and eyes the pale gold of old coins.

*Hi,* said Zikal shyly, now with a face. *Do you like it? I brushed it. Mentally.*

*Oh,* breathed Fiendh, who was now also Edena, and Edena was also her. *Oh, look at you.*

And then a third voice, low and dry and furious, rolled through the night between them.

*Zikal. If you tell her one more thing about my calendar, I'll get you neutered.*

Edena's ears flattened.

She could hear him. Hollis. Inside the wolf, inside her head, as clearly as if he'd spoken in her ear.

*Ah,* Zikal said. *Yes. When we're both shifted, everyone hears everyone. I forgot to mention. That's on me.*

*You forgot,* Hollis's voice said flatly.

*I can't lie to her, I can absolutely lie to you.*

Fiendh didn't wait for the argument to finish. She ran.

The woods flew past in silver and black. Branches whipped over Edena's back. Her paws hit moss, stone, a stream so cold it rang in her bones, and she laughed, a wild breathless sound that came out as a bark. Years. Years of pills and blouses and saying *let's reframe that*, and she had forgotten that the world was this big.

The charcoal wolf ran beside her, matching her stride without trying.

*You're fast,* Hollis said, and there was something new in his voice. Something unguarded.

*You're slow,* Fiendh shot back.

*I'm pacing myself.*

*You're old.*

*I'm in my prime.*

*Your prime called. It wants a nap.*

Zikal laughed so hard he tripped over a log.

They ran until the moon came up over the trees. At the top of a ridge, Edena stopped, sides heaving, and the black wolf stopped beside her. His shoulder brushed hers.

She heard him think, before he could stop it: *God, she's beautiful.*

Silence.

*You heard that,* Hollis said.

*I did,* said Edena.

*I'd like it back.*

*No refunds.*

The black wolf turned his head, and those coin-gold eyes looked into hers, and he breathed in deeply, right at her throat.

*You smell like chalk,* he said, puzzled. *Wet chalk. You don't smell like a wolf at all.*

*Years of pills,* Fiendh muttered. *It's all I smell of. Nobody can find me through it.*

Edena felt something pass through Hollis's mind, quick as a fish under ice, gone before she could see it.

Then he turned away. *We should go back.*

---

They shifted back at the treeline, which was worse going backwards: like being folded into an envelope two sizes too small.

Edena knelt in the grass, naked and shaking and stupidly happy, fumbling for her shirt.

A shadow fell over her. A man's shirt landed on her shoulders. Black. Warm. Cedar.

"Yours is inside out," Hollis said, his back already turned. He'd pulled his trousers on and nothing else, and there were three long, pale scars across his ribs she hadn't seen before.

She opened her mouth to ask.

Then a light clicked on near the cars.

A phone flashlight. Pointed straight at them.

Leona Dessa sat on the hood of the Maybach in a silk robe and fluffy slippers, legs crossed, holding her phone up like a cocktail.

"Out for a walk, sweetie?" she called sweetly. "In the woods? Naked?"

The camera shutter clicked.

"Smile," said Leona. "You're about to be famous again."