Page 25 of Cold Moon

The wolf inside me pressed. It wanted to run. It always wanted to run, but it especially wanted to run tonight, with Dante. Probably recognized the difference between him and everyone else, and the way they always treated me like I was made of cotton candy or spun glass. The nervous way he bit his lip, how he slid our hands together, and the way he couldn’t quite meet my eye, well... Dante might know I had the Condition, but if he thought I was special, maybe it wasn’t because of my illness.

“I’d like that,” I agreed. I stood, squeezing his hand even tighter as I did.

He bit his lip hard, stepping up next to me and not trying to shake my hand loose. “You’ll have to show me where to go,” he prompted, looking around at the thinning crowd, a few of whom always dumped their clothes right there in the bar before heading out in their fur.

I headed for the door, dragging him along. “It’s not too far. Just out back.” There was a little area in the woods with what amounted to lockers, though there had never been a need for actual locks on them, where people stuffed their clothes and wallets and such, if they were so inclined.

“I don’t run with the pack very often, so I might be a little out of shape on four legs,” I warned as I reached for my shirt. I didn’t want him to expect anything other than my scrawny, pasty self, and seeing the disappointment on his face at the sight of it was an overwhelming idea, so I turned my back as I disrobed as quickly as possible.

Yeah, it was rare for a wolf to be body shy. It was also rare for a wolf to be as skinny as me, so I thought it was an understandable hesitation. I stuffed my clothes in a cubby as quick as possible, letting my wolf ripple over my skin. The tickle of wind running through my fur made me full body shiver as I turned back to see Dante... And it was both good and bad that I was a wolf.

Good because I couldn’t gasp and stare quite as pitifully at Dante’s unexpected snow-white coat, so bright and perfect that it almost glowed under the waxing moon.

Bad because in this form, my consciousness and the wolf’s were switched.

Okay, fine, it’s not like there are actually two of us. There’s just one Skye. But on two legs, I could sigh and tamp it down when the wolf demanded that I rub myself all over Dante because he was supposed to be ours.

And on four legs, the wolf could do the same to me when I insisted that we did not do precisely that.

So instead, I practically wrapped myself around him, winding my small body around next to him, rubbing our necks together and mouthing playfully at his jaw.

The Skye in my head was covering his eyes, peeking through gaps in his fingers and praying that Dante’s wolf liked me as much as he seemed to on two legs. Apparently my wolf definitely liked his as much as I liked him.

After a moment, I pulled back and gave a tiny yip. Questioning.

Dante turned and... licked my face. And that was it. I threw myself at him, my body barely budging his with all my weight, and he huffed amusedly, reaching out to nip at my ear and deliberately missing it.

I spun and danced back a few steps, tail waving playfully, and he stepped forward. He was hesitant at first, but when no one took any notice of us, he was emboldened, and leapt after me.

And the chase was on. I turned and ran, around trees and through piles of leaves, skidding around and over and under, and keeping just a pace ahead of him. He was probably letting me get away—his stride was so much longer than mine, it wouldn’t be that much work to catch me. But he let me run, and he gave chase. Like he wanted to catch me. Like he wouldn’t mind catching me.

I sped as much as I could, my black coat offering me the one thing Dante’s majestic white didn’t give him—camouflage. He actually lost me for a second in the shadow of one of the giant oaks, and I darted in another direction. It took a moment before I heard him stop behind me, and another before the chase continued.

When he finally caught up a few minutes later, I slowed. Mostly because I wanted to. Maybe a little because I was out of breath.

And he bowled me over, if such a term could ever be construed as gentle. He rolled against me, knocking me onto my back and licking my muzzle, just as careful and sweet in his wolf skin as he was every other moment.

Even Dante’s wild instincts were tempered by caution and kindness. I wanted to roll around in it forever. We lay there in a pile of leaves, tussling, then cleaning the bits of dirt and leaf off each other.

When the pack’s howls went up all around us, I joined in without stopping to consider. Dante froze, looking around, then at me, with worry written in every line of his body. That wasn’t the pack howl he knew, after all. He was surrounded by foreign wolves.

So I pressed my body into his and howled again, as though claiming him in the name of the pack. He pressed back, content to sit and listen to me howl with the Groves. Maybe someday he’d be comfortable enough to howl with us. As one of us.

Not, however, if the Groves acted like complete assholes.

As we discovered when we went back to reclaim our clothes, that was, unfortunately, an option.

The clothes Dante had worn to the pack meeting had been taken out of his cubby and chewed into pieces.

“What the hell?” I demanded, shifting into my two-legged form, ignoring my nakedness in favor of raw anger. “Who would do such a childish thing?” Matt came immediately to mind. Or Skip Chadwick. But half the pack had been through the clearing over the course of the night, and it was impossible to pick out one scent from another, or who was responsible for this.

My instinct said to howl for Linden, that he’d come and help and make everything right.

But when I looked over at Dante’s hunched form, so resigned, almost like... like he thought it was to be expected that people bully him... I couldn’t do it. I turned and snatched my clothes out of my cubby, shoving my legs into my pants without even bothering to put my underwear on.

“I’ll walk you home,” I told him. I wanted to rail and rage and that—was not what Dante needed. He had been treated badly by my pack, and he didn’t need to hear that I was going to tell Daddy about the bad wolves. He needed me to be me, and be with him. So I plastered on my manic-scarecrow smile and looked around when I got my shirt on. “I guess I don’t actually know where you live, so I’ll follow you.”

Even as I said it, I buried my hand in the ruff of fur around his neck, scratching and holding on for dear life. He didn’t make any effort to pull ahead, just walked beside me, nudging me one way, then another, until we were standing in front of one of Isaac’s rental units. I’d looked at it before I’d talked to Cliff, but it had been a little more than I’d wanted to pay.

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