Page 73 of Rocky Top

He flinched. Like I’d taken a bat to his ribs.

Eliza gasped. “Birdie...”

Rocky’s jaw clenched. “I’ll give you space.You wanna hate me? Fine. I’ll wear that. But you’re alive.”

Then he walked out, leaving me alone with my fury, my fear... and the fire he’d set inside me.

And somewhere deep inside, under all the pain and anger... I felt it.

A new heat.

A newwildness.

Something had awakened.

And it wasn’t going back to sleep.

Chapter 19

Birdie

The second the bite sank in, everything changed.

Not just in my blood or in the wild little tremor that still clung to my spine days later, but in the way I saw the world, the way I sawhim. Rocky. The biker who bit me. The wolf who saved me.

And maybe the man who’d just ruined everything.

I holed up in Eliza’s spare room for three days straight. She offered me her bed, sweet as always, but I didn’t want comfort. I wanted distance. I wanted silence. I wanted to rewind to that moment before everything went sideways.

But there ain’t no rewind button for the kind of shit I’d stepped into. Not when your best friend’s baby daddy was a fox shifter, and the brooding, tattooed biker who’s been toeing the line between protector and heartbreaker just up andbitesyou like a goddamn chew toy.

I’d been holding it together. Sorta. Until this morning when I tried brushing my teeth and gagged on the smell of mint. The same toothpaste I’d been using for ten years suddenly made me wanna puke. My gums itched like they were stretching over fangs I couldn’tsee. When I told Eliza, she had no answers.

“Everyone handles it differently,” she explained, offered me oatmeal and a, “Don’t freak out, sweetie.”

So yeah. I was freaking out.

I stared out her kitchen window, arms wrapped around myself, watching Emma chase bubbles in the yard. Knox stood nearby like a shadow in boots, arms folded, shades on, ever the protector.

Behind me, Eliza leaned on the counter. “You should talk to him.”

I didn’t look back. “I don’t want to talk to him. I want to un-bite myself. Reverse the spell. Hit control-alt-delete on this whole damn situation.”

She was quiet for a beat. “It’s not a spell, Birdie.”

“Oh, Iknow. It’s worse. It’s... it’s biology. Magic biology.”

“Shifter biology,” she corrected gently. “And Rocky didn’t have a choice. You were bleeding out.”

I rounded on her. “Hebitme, Eliza.”

She didn’t flinch. “And I watched you pass out in his arms. You would’ve died.”

I blinked hard, the sting in my eyes not from tears but from frustration. “Now what? I’m just supposed to accept that in a year I’m gonna grow fur and howl at the moon like some damn... werepoodle?”

Eliza bit back a grin. “Werepoodle? Seriously?”

“I don’t know what kind of dog I’ll be! What if I get stuck as a chihuahua?”

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