Page 84 of In the Mouth of the Wolf

And who even was that shifter?

“So, what are you thinking, Arch?” I called out.

“I’m not going to say yet. I don’t want to pressure Marlowe or get our hopes up.”

Ugh, I was dying to know. “Can’t even drop a hint?”

“Nope,” he replied quickly. “Too risky.”

Dammit.

I glanced up at the calendar and groaned. “Today’s her dad’s funeral. Do you think she and Elias are going to be okay?”

Marlowe appeared from the bathroom wearing Camden’s shirt, and he led her back up the stairs. “You fuckers almost finished yet?” he snapped.

“Dude, this wasn’t even us,” I yelled back, but he ignored me.

“...eggs, ham, turkey, apples…”

Elias had finished showering, taking his sweet ass time and getting out of the majority of the clean-up. I had moved on to making a new shopping list to replace everything the two of them had eaten when he re-entered the kitchen

“At the very least you can go get the new groceries, right?” I asked him.

“Huh? Oh yeah, sure.” He poured himself a cup of coffee on autopilot, sitting down at the island and staring off into space.

I clicked my tongue against my teeth. It wasn’t fair to be jealous, but at least I could be annoyed. “That good?”

“When you slept with Marlowe, did you also feel a sense of completion? Like you’d finally done something wonderful your body had been made for, and you couldn’t imagine going back to a life before it happened?”

Walking into Cam’s cabin that first night and just smelling her sweetness had been enough to trigger a latent, biological switch that had lain dormant in my soul. A switch that, once turned on, couldn’t be turned off again. A switch that drove me to fulfill a greater purpose.

Knotting was just a confirmation of that feeling.

“Yes,” I replied softly, thinking of my fight with Marlowe. I hoped I hadn’t done irrevocable damage to our relationship.

“Yeah, shifting’s like that.”

Marlowe had to be the key to shifting, but Archer was right. Until we knew how or why or if it was something she could even awaken in all of us, we needed to give her space.

I still had to talk to her, though, the sooner the better. Nothing had been resolved last night, and now that I was thinking more clearly, I should be able to articulate my side a little better. Not that I wanted to be right, or even believed I was right. Not one hundred percent, anyway. I just wanted her to see my point of view, and understand that, while my reaction might have seemed extreme for someone who had grown up in human culture, for shifters, it was normal. Expected even.

That didn’t mean I couldn’t change, though. Especially if that was what she needed.

39

MARLOWE

Nolan knocked on my door around noon. “I take it you don’t want anything for lunch?”

I groaned. Even after throwing up everything I’d eaten in my wolf form, I still felt like my stomach was full. How was that even possible?

“I don’t think I want anything for the next week,” I replied. I stared at my phone, looking at the text my friend from grad school had sent that morning.

Esther: Haven’t heard from you in a while, how are things?

I wasn’t even sure how to respond. Would it be better to cut off all my old human connections? How could I explain my life here now?

“You still there?” I asked.

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