In Love With The Wild

CHAPTER5

I offered her my crooked arm and she linked hers through it without hesitation.

My wolf was beside itself, jumping around on the inside like an overexcited puppy reunited with its owner.

That had never happened before. Not once.

I filed it away as something to be disturbed about later.

We walked slowly through the flower garden, past the rows of white gardenias I’d planted in the early months of my isolation — something to tend to when the walls closed in — and climbed the spiral stairs to the foyer that overlooked the ocean.

The air was cool and salted and carried the faint scent of her. Thanks to my wolf, her scent had been imprinted onto my memory the night she first walked into the bar.

Now it follows me everywhere.

Below us, the waves broke against the cliff in long, rolling crashes. Everything else was quiet.

I stared out at the water for a long moment before I said it.

“I am a werewolf.”

She didn’t move. Didn’t laugh. Her silence was the steady kind — the kind that said keep going.

So I did.

“Thirteen months ago I was working late. It was a typical night for me, you know? Case files, cold coffee, the usual. I was a criminal defense attorney. Good at it too.” I paused. That life felt like it belonged to someone else now.

“I’d parked further than usual that evening and took a shortcut through Greywood Lane to get to my car. It was poorly lit. I remember thinking I should have taken the main road.”

I remembered everything about that night with the merciless clarity my wolf afforded me. The fog sitting low on the ground. The smell of rain coming. The sound of my own footsteps.

“I heard it before I saw it. Something large, moving fast through the dark. I thought it was a big dog at first that had gotten loose. Then it stepped into the light.”

It had been enormous. Easily seven feet on its hind legs, black-furred and looked like something that should not exist. Its eyes had flashed amber before it lunged.

“It had me on the ground before I could run. I remember fighting. I remember screaming. I remember thinking I was going to die on a dirty backstreet and nobody would find me until morning.” My jaw tightened.

“The attack lasted maybe forty seconds. It felt like forty minutes. When it was over, it just — left. Like I wasn’t worth finishing.”

I’d lain there in the dark for a long time, too broken to move, watching the fog drift over me.

“A woman found me. She called an ambulance. The doctors said it looked like an animal attack. They assumed a dog, maybe multiple. I had lacerations across my back, a fractured collarbone, two broken ribs.” I exhaled slowly.

“I healed in four days. That was the first sign something was wrong.”

My first change came three weeks later, on the first full moon. I hadn’t known what was happening. I’d woken up on the shore naked, bloodied, with no memory of the hours before and spent three days convincing myself I’d had some kind of psychotic break. The second full moon took that theory apart completely.

“I looked into it the way you research something you hope you’ll be able to explain away. I couldn’t. I found the woman who did it. She wasn’t hard to track once I knew what to look for. She’d been doing it for years. Building a pack, she called it.” My voice went flat.

“She thought she was giving people a gift.”

I hadn’t seen her again after that conversation. I hadn’t trusted myself to.

“I couldn’t go back to my old life. Couldn’t stand in a courtroom and argue for someone’s freedom when I was one bad night away from becoming the worst thing they’d ever encountered. So I left. Told my parents I needed a change. Bought this house. Bought the bar.” A hollow sound left me.

“And I’ve been here ever since.”

I hadn’t told anyone. Not my parents. Not the friends who’d called for months before they stopped. No one.

Saying it out loud, not just the skimmed version but the whole, detailed, ugly story made me feel both agony and relief.

I waited for her to pull away.

Instead, she reached up and placed her palm gently against my cheek, turning my face toward hers.

She’d been crying silent tears, the kind that fall without your permission. She’d felt the weight of it. She understood what it had cost me — not just the wolf, but everything that came before it. The life I’d built and had to abandon. The person I used to be.

“I believe you.” Her voice was soft, barely a whisper, yet reassuring.

Maybe it was the way her eyes caught what little light the night offered and held it. Maybe it was the fact that for the first time in over a year, someone had looked at me and not flinched.

Whatever it was, it made me want to close the distance between us and kiss her.

I drew her into my arms instead and let myself just...breathe.

I was certain she could hear my heart crashing around in my chest. She rested her head against me, her own breath unsteady.

Then, as if on cue, it began to rain.

“Ready to go home?”

She tightened her arms around me before nodding.

I drove her home. Waited at the curb until I saw the light come on inside and heard the lock turn. Only then did I pull away. Now I knew where she lived, I could keep her safe.

Great. Now my wolf wants to protect her.

I laughed at myself.

Tonight was a lot of things but I had a strong feeling Neve was a part of my life now. And I couldn’t let her go, not that I wanted to.