What is sense?

Well shit. Now I remembered why I didn’t let her come out to play. The wolf was wild. She was unruly. She had no attachment to humanity, and I hadn’t spent twenty-three years teaching her to respect pack law.

My wolf didn’t give a shit about rules because I’d never taught her any.

I’d just caged her and thought nothing of the damage it might do.

I got hold of myself, remembering what it meant to be in control, and I screamed for her to stop. She fought me, but we staggered, tripping over our legs, and she was forced to stop running or we would go face first into a tree.

Bitch.

Well if that wasn’t the pot calling the kettle black.

We were going to run with the pack or we wouldn’t run at all. I concentrated and used everything in me to command control over our body. We sat.

My wolf form was a panting, trembling mess.

Run, she insisted.

I kept us sitting. We twitched. My wolf mouth sighed and whined.

Slowly, one paw at a time, we got back on all fours.

Run?

This body was mine, and if she wanted to run, we would go the direction I chose. I turned us back the direction we came. She fought, trying to spin us deeper into the woods. Again, we sat. I waited, my control here weak, tenuous. I was just slips of consciousness inside a wild animal. No one expected animals to use good judgment.

Fine.

I let up, and we started running again, this time back towards the smells and sounds of the pack. She didn’t fight me anymore. Instead she loped onwards, tongue lolling out like a blissful dog. Then I smelled it. My sense of smell was intense, almost too finely tuned in this form. I’d adjusted to the aroma of the forest, to the sharp odor of the other wolves, but this smell was alien and wrong.

Human.

Metal.

We skidded to a stop, smelling the air. I yipped a warning.

Too little, too late.

The flash from the muzzle rendered me blind. The crack of the bullet exiting from the chamber brought deafness. All I could smell was peppery smoke.

And when the metal slug ate its way through my fur and into my body, my wolf and I screamed in unison.

When it came to pain, we were of one mind.

I didn’t remember shifting back.

At first I didn’t know if it had been seconds or hours since I’d been shot, but it must have been the former because the sound of a body leaping from a tree was what brought me out of my fog. I tried to stand, but whatever gun he’d used, the bullet packed a whopper of a punch.

Strong arms helped me to my feet, and I lashed out until the cool, familiar scent of vampire washed over me.

“Hold on,” Holden said, scooping me up into his arms.

Under normal circumstances that would have been when I pointed out I had working legs. Only right then they didn’t seem to want to cooperate, so I let him carry me as he ran. Another shot rang out, splintering the tree trunk closest to us in a shower of wood chips and moss.

Holden didn’t let up until we were back at the compound.

When we arrived at my cabin, he tried to make me lie in the bed, but I refused. Finally we compromised with the porch swing, where he wrapped me in an old quilt from the back of the couch.

“Get a knife,” I whispered, my throat raw.

“Why?”

I parted the blanket and showed him the hole between my ribs. The area around the entry wound had begun to blacken, the infection snaking out with thin fingerlike lines, crawling towards the unblemished skin of my torso.

“Silver,” I said.

“Fuck.” He ran back into the cabin, and I watched the tree line, waiting for either the assassin or the pack. I wasn’t sure which one I hoped would come first. Metal rattled, and a moment later Holden returned with a steak knife. “I’m sorry,” he said.

I rolled onto my side, exposing my injured ribs. “Don’t apologize unless you can’t get it out.”

The knife was dull, but it was steel so even the pain of the unsharpened edge sawing a hole into my flesh didn’t hurt as much as the poisonous pellet inside me. Once he’d cleared a big enough path, Holden stuck his fingers deep into the channel carved by the bullet, snaking his way after it.

I whimpered, not bothering to fight against the tears pouring from me.

He found something. I could tell because his fingers got tense.

When he pulled his hand out with a wet, sucking sound, his fingers were smoking from the bullet pinched between them. He threw the bloody object, so small and unassuming, onto the deck, where it sat covered in blood. It looked so harmless. Just a gob of metal.

I buried my head in my arms.

When I looked up again, Holden was gone and a dozen werewolves in their naked human form stood in a half-circle around me.

Lucas appeared confused until he saw the knife and the bloody bullet.

“Someone told them where I was,” I said.

“Someone shot you?”

I nodded, but it hurt. For the third time in two weeks someone had tried to ventilate my body with silver bullets. That combined with my foray into the swamp with the Loups-Garous? Well, needless to say I’d had my fill of this little vacation.

“I want to go home.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

New York, New York. Home of the Empire State Building, Times Square, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the best place on Earth. My apartment.

I hadn’t spoken much since we left Louisiana. Callum had been more than willing to give his blessing for us to fly out of Baton Rouge, so not only did we not need to drive two hours back to New Orleans, we also didn’t need to go anywhere near Maurepas.

Good riddance.

Family might be all well and good, but if the McQueens ever wanted to see me again, they’d have to haul their Southern asses north, because with God as my witness I would never again set foot in the great state of Louisiana.

Dominick dropped me off at my front door, and Lucas reminded me we had a meeting with Kimberly the next evening to discuss the final details of our ceremony. I thought I was being pretty gracious when I said, “Fuck Kimberly and whatever white horse she’s hired for you to ride in on.”

Lucas, having already spent the last several hours with my silver-poisoned surliness, just smiled. “We’ll pick you up at seven.”

I grabbed my bag and stomped into my apartment like a grizzly bear with a stubbed toe.

Rio was waiting for me.

“Brreow?”

“I missed you too.”

I dropped my bag on the floor, and she skittered under the loveseat.

Desmond came out of the bedroom, looking deliciously huggable in a soft gray cardigan over a Led Zeppelin T-shirt and his paper-thin at-home jeans. “I thought I heard a circus setting up shop out here. But nope, no elephants. Just my girl.”

I wish that had been the first time someone had compared me to an elephant.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” I sighed.

“Where else would I be?” He smiled. “I live here.”

I crossed the room in two steps and threw myself into his arms.

Desmond sneezed. He set me down and sneezed again. “Are you wearing perfume?”

“No.” I never wore perfume. It would be scent overload.

He licked his lips, and a devastated look came over him all at once. He pulled me close, his nose dragging along my neck, and again he sneezed, harder this time.

“Jesus, Des. Are you allergic to me or something?” I was kidding, but the look on his face was too serious to ignore.

“Can you taste me?” he asked, his voice tight with fear.

“Of course I—” But I had to stop when I realized I hadn’t really thought about it. I touched my tongue to my lips. Sucked the inside of my cheeks. Breathed cool air between my teeth. Nothing. Nothing to remind me of margaritas, or key lime pie, or popsicles. “No. I can’t.”

Pain chased worry though his eyes, and he pushed me away.

“You and Lucas…you completed the ceremony, didn’t you? During the full moon.”

I’d planned to tell him, but I had hoped we might have more than five minutes together before I had to.

“Yes.”

“We were supposed to have time, Secret.”

“I didn’t know. We hadn’t planned for it to happen there. I didn’t even know what it was.” I reached for him, but he sidestepped my touch.

“All I can smell is him. I can’t taste you anymore.”

“Desmond…”

He sat on the couch, staring at the fireplace. “He told me he’d wait. He told me it would be at least another month.” He was talking to himself, but the words cut me like tiny little knives.

“Desmond, look at me.”

“It was bad enough when he said he’d send me away if I made a fuss. But this…” He turned to me, nothing but naked anguish written on his features. “How could you let him do this?”

“We had to.”

“Is that what he told you?” Desmond laughed, and it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “Because he’s been so fucking honest with you in the past?”

I came to stand in front of him, kneeling on the carpet between his legs. I took his hands, and this time he didn’t fight me. I kissed his fingertips and held them over my heart. “He didn’t tell me this would impact you and me. I swear to you.”

“Of course he didn’t.”

“But believe me when I say we had no choice.”

“There’s always a choice.”

I shook my head. “When has free will ever come before the needs of the pack?”

He opened his mouth then closed it. His brow furrowed. “When did the needs of the pack ever outweigh what you wanted?” Those words hurt me more than a slap would have. Wasn’t I doing all of this for the pack? Did he honestly think I wanted this? “Did you stop to think about what this would do?”

“Yes.” My throat felt thick, and it was hard to form words.

“Did you think of me at all?”

“Yes.” I squeezed his hand tight. There was a wetness to his long black lashes that hadn’t been there before.