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The
were straightened up on his knee and pressed his warm forehead to Holly’s, hot
skin to hot skin. “Are you sure?”

“No, I’m not,” she
admitted. “I can’t be sure about something so different from anything I’ve ever
known. But that’s what’s good about it. That’s why I have hope. It’s nothing
like what I’ve always known.”

Then, before Dustin
could say anything else, something encouraging or reassuring, she asked,
“What’s the wilding? Why is everyone so concerned about it? Why are you?”

With his face still
pressed to hers, after taking a moment to gather a deep breath, he said, “It’s
a shifter losing his humanity, little by little, every time he turns. Less
human, more wolf with each shift. Until one time, he or she takes on the wolf,
and that’s all they have left. They don’t come back from it.”

“And you?”

“I won’t lie to you,
Holly. I’m feeling it.”

“But why? Why you and
not Ron or Eric if they’ve been shifting longer?”

Dustin pulled away
enough to shake his head wearily. “It’s different for each wolf. No one knows
why. Genetics? Strength of will? Maybe the amount of time
the
were holds his wolf form each time he turns? I am young for it, as shifters go.
But I’m not gone yet, lupa. I’m still fighting—.”

And Holly kissed
Dustin. She kissed him with a sudden urgency she’d never let herself express
before. The mug rolled out of her lap and thudded against the rug at the foot
of the bed as she slid from the mattress and into the shifter’s arms,
straddling his hips. She settled over his groin, her rounded thighs circling
his waist perfectly, like her body had been made to fit his despite the
contrast in their frames. His hands slid under her, gripping and kneading her
ass with obvious appreciation, fingertips digging into her voluptuous flesh. He
hardened, god, so quickly, so thick and straining through his jeans against the
inseam of Holly’s track pants. Feeling the lips of her flushed sex part for him
even through their clothing, feeling the walls of her pussy throb to embrace
him, Holly devoured Dustin’s lips and mouth with mounting insistence. It took
all her concentration to realize the growl she heard rumbling between them was
in her chest, her throat.

She tore her lips from
the kiss just long enough to demand, “Fuck me. Mate with me.” And for once…for
once she was not ashamed of her size, not intimidated by his looks. Holly dug
her nails into Dustin’s shoulders, pulling him toward her, clutching him tight.

“Baby, we can’t,” he
groaned. “It’s happening. It’s starting. This is the frenzy coming over you,
Holly.”

“Lupa,” she said. “Call
me lupa again.” Holly panted out the order as she ground herself down hard
against her mate’s swelling cock.

“Holly!” he warned,
louder, even as he returned her hungry kiss.

“Lupa.”

With a furious snarl,
Dustin lifted Holly and spun her around like she weighed nothing to him.
Spooned up behind her with both on them on their knees, he bound her tight in
his banded arms. She felt his teeth at her neck and craned her head sideways to
bare herself to the growling, panting shifter.

“Holly—!” he grated.
She cut off his thought by bucking back against his groin, by rolling and
rocking and bouncing her hips, fitting his erection along the crevice of her
full, curvy ass.

Dustin squeezed her
tighter, but Holly struggled free and turned to shove him down, to push him
back onto the floor and straddle him again. She wasn’t stronger than her mate;
he just didn’t have the will to resist as their wolves rose up to meet one
another.

“Right then, she’s
ready.”

Eric’s voice only
vaguely pierced Holly’s haze of mating lust. It was his hold on the hood of her
jacket, jerking her up and back from Dustin, that brought the cabin and the
people around them back into focus, not clear but clear enough.

“Fuck,” she snarled,
bereft of her mate’s heat against her body. Goddamn Eric chuckled behind her.

Holly felt large,
strong hands shoving her forward, through the door and onto the porch, out into
the chill fresh air. Rather than clearing her head, the cool breeze brought
back that overwhelming swell of sensation that had accompanied her shift the
night before.

The blond shifter was
right. The wolf in Holly was there, ready, just below the surface of her hot,
tingling skin. Eric closed his massive hand on Holly’s face to make her look at
him.

“Focus, shifter. Eyes
on mine.” His were green, cool, not warm like Dustin’s but nice if light eyes
had been her thing. “You’re going to follow your pack mates out into the woods.
You’ll turn there. Your wolf, your true beast, is going to come out along with
all your deepest instincts, and we’re going to see where your heart and your
hungers lead you, lupa.”

“You,” she wheezed
raggedly at Eric, “don’t call me that. Only he calls me that.”

Through her blurry
vision, Holly saw the blond shifter smile and shake his head, chuckling again.
He stepped back then. “Do it,” he said.

A weight settled on her
shoulders. “Holly?” a male voice said. “Lupa.” It was Dustin, behind her, his
voice muffled by the distraction that was the smell of damp earth and the
remnants of the storm in the wind, the wolf in Holly sniffing and tasting the
air. “Lupa, slip your clothes off, under the blanket. You know this. It’s the
fur from last night.”

Too late for modesty
now, she thought, and she’d be a wolf soon enough anyway. With Dustin holding
the huge pelt up around her, Holly stripped down to bare skin. Barefooted, she
followed her mate down the wooden porch steps to the driveway, toward the
trees. Gravel shifted under her toes.

Holly couldn’t have
said how far she got before she turned. The wolf took her so smoothly, and her
human side was so willing, so eager to experience the primal power and
liberation of her animal form again. As soon as she felt four feet under her
instead of two, she streaked into the woods at a full run. Wind in her fur.
Leaves in her face. Earth under the pads of her paws.

The sky grew dark as
she forged deep into the trees, where the branches spread a canopy too thick
for sunlight to penetrate in more than thin, scattered shafts. In the
comforting darkness, in the wash of bestial senses, Holly’s wolf picked out the
scents and sounds of the others—three of them, all male, all wolves.

She was paused at the
bottom of a gully sniffing at a small stream when the big tawny wolf barreled
into her and sent her tumbling through the shallow water. The she-wolf
clambered back to her feet and reared on the larger beast, her fur bristling,
lips curled to expose her fangs. But she knew instantly this was a mistake, a
natural expression of fear and confusion, but one that would not serve her when
facing her obvious dominant.

As a human, Holly would
never have submitted, but as wolves these were not her tormentors. Fighting
down her human instincts to resist and even to attack, the lupa crouched
cautiously, still growling low in complaint but with her ears and muzzle low.
The tawny wolf was dominant to her, Holly submissive to him, but with their
agreement tenuous. This seemed enough to satisfy him, though. He lifted his
head and his tail and pranced back from Holly.

This provided the brown
and white wolf the space to rush forward from behind the tawny beast, to snap
at the cinnamon-colored she-wolf as he sparred with her. He wanted to pin her,
trying several times to make her roll, force her to expose her belly. This the
lupa wasn’t having. If he had been her mate, perhaps, but the scent was wrong,
and Dustin’s wolf was all brown. And beautiful.

Holly ran instead, her
instinct telling her to try to circle and take the other wolf by surprise. With
her senses spread thin trying to take in so much information, she struggled to
keep track of the other two wolves as they moved among the trees with speed and
assurance she was still developing. They seemed to disappear sometimes. At
others, they appeared to be everywhere, behind very tree and at every turn she
took. It was disorienting, frustrating, maddening to her wolf. She snapped
furiously at one of them as she darted past him and only later asked herself if
it have been Dustin.

Stop
running from them
. It was Holly’s voice inside her head,
not her wolf speaking and not her wolf she was talking to. This was the trail
to establish her order in the pack, she had realized easily enough, and she
still resisted. She resisted—resented—having to grant them that trust, having
to risk herself, her guarded heart. And yet she was asking even more of them.
She was the stranger, the rogue among them, allied to people whose job it was
to exterminate all supernaturals. She was taking their pack brother as her
mate.
Stop running from them
, she
told herself again.
 
Stop running from
the idea of caring about someone for fear of losing them. For pride. For the
cold illusion of safety and control over that which could never be safe or
controlled, over
life
.

At the shore of the
lake, as Holly and her wolf made their decision to stand fast and face the
pack, he found her—the black wolf.

CHAPTER
TEN

Dustin’s wolf caught
Ivan’s sour stench as soon as the wind shifted over the reservoir.
No, no, no
, he snarled with his hackles
rising high and hard. A few yards away, the tawny wolf that was Martin and the
brown and white beast that was Tate both lifted their muzzles and took in the
scent. And all three wolves were off, like arrows through the underbrush headed
for the lake.

The black wolf had the
lupa down on the ground by the time the Odin Wolves reached them, his teeth
buried in her bloodied neck. It took Martin at its throat and both brown wolves
charging and snapping at its flanks to separate the hulking black beast from
the she-wolf. Ivan must have known Dustin, must have had a taste for him from
the night before. Dustin had only a second to see that Holly’s wolf was still
moving, struggling to her feet and limping severely. Then he and his enemy
locked jaws on one another and tumbled into the mud and water.

Three times, Dustin
fought his way out from under the huge black wolf. Four times, Ivan pinned him,
even with Dustin’s pack brothers tearing at his haunches. A bite aimed at
Dustin’s neck tore his chest instead, and he yowled. Behind them, at the edge
of the lake, the she-wolf yowled in twin pain. Bobbing in the water, Dustin
caught a glimpse of her loping toward them in obvious agony from a bright red
gash in one leg. Blood streaked her fur along her throat, and she wheezed hard
for breath.

Dustin’s distress over
his mate’s injury, his distraction, was all the opportunity Ivan needed to take
him by the throat. Massive jaws drove fangs deep into the brown wolf’s flesh,
so deep and true that Dustin couldn’t even cry out. The black monster shook
him, whipped him back and forth like a dog shaking small prey. Dustin’s wolf
kicked out, clawed, writhed, but those teeth held, cutting off his breath. His
vision began to fade as warm blood gushed from the tear in his neck. Pain faded
quickly to numbness, like the image of Martin and Tate atop Ivan harrowing the
varg faded to an indistinct blur of movement.

The worst agony, the
pain that didn’t fade, was Dustin’s knowledge that he was failing Holly. He’d
promised not to leave her, not like everyone else had. And she was injured now.
Would Martin and Tate be strong enough to protect her? Blindly, Dustin lashed
out with teeth and claws, with all his remaining strength. He was determined to
hurt the massive rogue in any way he could, as badly as he could. Any injury he
inflicted was an advantage to his pack brothers, even if it was too late for
Dustin.

No wilding for him, he
realized distantly as his wolf spent itself and went limp. But it was not the
relief he expected, because it also meant no pack. No mate. No Holly.

Lavender and cedar.
Holly smelled like heaven, even with blood in the air, in the water. She was
near. In those final moments, she was there with him. Right there. What was she
doing? Why wasn’t she running while he and Martin and Tate kept the black wolf
busy? Amid the crashing splash of churning water, Dustin heard a high snarl he
recognized instantly, and he fought to open the eyes he thought he’d never use
again.

The light brown
she-wolf had attached herself to the back of Ivan’s neck. No, a little lower,
about the place she’d driven the glass shard into the varg the night before.
The black beast shook and thrashed and whined in outraged pain. The slight
brown body that was Holly whipped to and fro, but there was no dislodging her.
As little actual injury as she might have been doing to Ivan, she was also
hindering him, distracting him, throwing his balance off.

From his back in the
water, rasping and frothing blood from his mouth, Dustin rose up and tore into
Ivan’s throat. And wouldn’t let go. Dustin at the black wolf’s jugular, Holly
at the back of his neck. The varg finally yowled in true pain and careened sideways,
off his feet. Dustin and Holly wouldn’t let go. Even after Martin and Tate
backed away, and Ivan’s blood began to dye the lake water crimson red, the two
brown wolves persisted. Ivan was bigger, stronger, older by far. But Martin and
Tate had claimed their share of blood and flesh from him, and Dustin and Holly
had refused to relent…until the black wolf collapsed limp in the water…and
didn’t get back up.