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“Take me?” The
confusion in Holly’s voice was so pronounced that Dustin finally had to draw
back and look down at that full, sweet, heartbreakingly vulnerable face. Only
then did Dustin realize she was trying the use her hands and arms and posture
to cover her nudity. “I know you don’t mean that you actually want….”

Because he wanted to
shout at her, and fuck her, and tell her things he wasn’t ready to say about
what was going on inside his aching chest, Dustin very slowly and deliberately
removed his shirt and wrapped Holly in it before even attempting to respond to
her.

“I know,” he said
firmly, staring into Holly’s face until she relented and looked up at him,
“that you can’t possibly keep telling yourself that we don’t want each other.”

Holly, willful little
wolfkin, still shook her head no. “I’m not the kind of girl you’d…. I mean, I’m
heavy, thick, curvy if you want to be generous.”

“Jesus Christ,” Dustin
sighed, his temples throbbing with the effort of having fought down his wolf
before it could take and mate and breed the luscious female in front of him.
“You really insist on being clueless. I’m a shifter, Holly. To me, your body
screams out that you are soft and warm, vulnerable, juicy,
fertile
.” Dustin had to stop himself, to take a second as he felt
his canines coming in again at the thought of Holly under him, spread for him,
taking him. In a moment of impatience, he grabbed her hand and pressed it to the
ridge of his cock as it strained against the fly of his jeans. “Do you
understand that, little lupa?”

She emitted a tiny
gasp, then held her breath, averting her eyes. But she didn’t remove her hand.
He had to catch her wrist and pull her delicate fingers away before he started
the whole shift over again.

“Let’s get you inside,
lupa. There’s a lot I have to explain to you before my pack brothers get here.”

Holly jerked back on
Dustin’s hand as he started to lead her. “Like how I ended up naked in the forest?
That dream, it was—.”

The shifter shook his
head and cut her off. “Not a dream.” Even in his own head, Dustin had been
calling Holly a wolfkin, but that wasn’t the case anymore. “You turned into a
wolf last night. I can tell from what I saw back at the cabin and the way I
found you.” And thank god he had. The fear he’d felt on waking and not finding
her with him…. “You’re a shifter, too, Holly, an Odin’s Wolf like me.”

To Dustin’s relief and
surprise, the lupa didn’t argue with him or deny the facts. She didn’t
rationalize or bargain or cry. Holly was eerily silent and cooperative as he
led her back to the log cottage and let her have a moment’s privacy to change
back into her dried track suit. He poured them coffee and then heated stew out
of a can the size a restaurant would have used. Not a lot of fresh food on hand
in a safe house the pack seldom visited, and shifters were known for their
appetites…in all things.

For once, Dustin had no
interest in his food, but he emptied his bowl anyway to make sure he had enough
energy to finish healing and for the events he knew he’d be facing soon. All
the time Holly ate, hunched at a stool pushed up to the wood grain kitchen
island and staring down into her bowl without comment, Dustin stood opposite
the wolfkin—no, she was a shifter now, he reminded himself—and weighed what to
tell her, how much, and how. Half of him wanted to sugarcoat the whole story
for her, ease her into this new reality. The other half of him knew, however,
that there was no shielding either of them when the pack arrived. The woman had
turned all on her own, without mentoring, without the process of bonding to a
pack. There’d be more on the agenda than going out in force to meet a varg on
the hunt.

Dustin dragged his
hands roughly through his hair as he realized he finally had more to worry
about than his own wilding. He had Holly now, even if she didn’t know it or
wouldn’t admit it. He suspected she felt it coming on as well as he did, the
mating, even if she had no inkling yet as to what it meant. It put him in an
impossible position with his pack, if they chose to…. If they refused to accept
her.

One challenge at a
time. Dustin cleared the knot that had been expanding in his throat for the
past thirty minutes. “As much as we’d both like to pretend that’s the best stew
west of Texas, we’re going to have to talk about what’s happening. Best we do
it before the pack gets here.”

Holly abandoned her
spoon in her bowl and sat back in her chair, only shifting those brown eyes up
to meet Dustin’s after she’d had a moment to chew on her lip and take a breath.
“You said you were calling for help. So why do you make it sound like they’re
not coming to help us?”

“Our run-in with the
varg is definitely the reason my pack brothers are on their way, but when I
called them, I didn’t know yet what had happened to you.”

“Yeah, I get it. My
dream that wasn’t a dream. That man called me wolfkin and said he could smell
it on me. Can you…smell me? Did you know about that, my wolf’s blood? Have you
always known?”

“Yes.” Dustin watched
Holly’s cheeks flush.

She clenched her jaw
and lowered her chin, and he could have sworn he actually saw that wall of hers
rise up. “Is that why you’ve always been so nice to me? You and that other
wolf, Ivan, you both wanted to know if I had enough of
it
in my blood to turn and then what kind of wolf?”

Dustin folded his arms
to keep himself from punching or clawing through one of the cabinet doors.
“Sounds like you two had a very long conversation.” Again, he felt guilt sear
his gut over not being beside Holly when she’d needed him. How much longer
before Ivan would have killed her? A few minutes at most? The varg was already
turning when Dustin had caught the scent of another wolf and smashed in the
door.

Holly agreed, “He was
surprisingly informative for a murderous lunatic.” Under her breath, she added,
“Who turned out to be telling the truth about everything, as far as I can
tell.”

“Okay, I’ll lay it out
for you, Holly Annabelle Parker,” Dustin said, and her brow knit at the mention
of her middle name. It was time she knew. Mated, they couldn’t have secrets,
not this kind, anyway. “Yes, I know your middle name and your date of birth and
even your social security number. I know you were orphaned at twelve and
shuttled from one foster home to the next, and that most had been abusive or
neglectful, until the one with the elderly woman who kept you with her for two
whole years before the lady’s health became too fragile to continue serving as
a foster mother. I know you struggled to work your way through college with a
course overload, and that you still go to night school even though you have a
full-time job.” He knew everything he needed to be absolutely certain Holly was
the strongest woman he’d ever met and probably the loneliest, the most in need
of a mate to protect and comfort her. “And I have a very good idea who you work
for.” The comment made her close her mouth, which had been gaping slightly
since the moment he’d begun to rattle off what he had learned in eight months
of watching her.

Holly shook her head
and held out her hands in question and shrugged, momentarily at a loss,
speechless. Then she balled her fists and pounded them against the counter in
front of her. “How can you get all that information? You just, what, pay off records
clerks and orderlies to tip you off?”

And Dustin nodded.
“When specific situations come up.”

“Like varg attacks.”

“The bite mark on your
shoulder. That was a strong indication you were probably wolfkin. It’s the only
reason a varg would attack a person and leave them alive. He wanted to see if
the bite would turn you.”

“That’s what he said,
but I wasn’t
his kind
. Is that next
on your list? You or one of your friends going to chomp on me when they get
here?”

Dustin shook his head.
“No need. That’s for Fenris Wolves, the way they turn, because their line is
less about general genetics and more about a very specific bloodline back to
Fenris.
The
Fenris Wolf. You know
your mythology, Holly?”

She grimaced, those
delicate lips bowing down with disapproval that would have made him wince had
he not actively resisted the urge. Was that what
lupas
could do to their mates, cow them with a look, make the fiercest wolf want to
roll over and bare his belly if it made her smile? Was mating really going to
be any easier than letting the wilding take his humanity and his mind?

“Ivan asked me the same
question,” she said, and Dustin did wince then. “I know enough.”

“Then you know that
Fenris and the giants are eternally at war with Odin and the other
Aesir
.”

“
Aesir
?”

“The Norse war gods.
The nature gods who sometimes ally with them are the Vanir.”

“
Aesir
and Vanir,” Holly repeated. “Norse gods. You’re saying they’re real?”

“As real as shifters
like you and me.” And Dustin gave that a minute to sink in as he circled the island
to walk past Holly and pick up the folded fur throw from the top of the
blankets stacked in the rocking chair against the wall. “The Sons of Fenris are
what they are because they descend directly from the Fenris Wolf. A bite from
one triggers their shift, like activating a virus attached to their DNA. With
us….” He held up the fur wrap. “It’s more like a genetic predisposition, a
combination of traits like those that might make up an Olympic athlete or
distance runner or a special forces soldier. You have enough of the traits,
enough wolf soldiers somewhere back in your family tree, that when you
accidentally came in contact with a relic-grade wolf skin, you shifted.”

Holly cautiously slid
from her chair and padded toward Dustin in her bare feet, regarding him with an
angry, wary glare that said she wasn’t sure if he’d pounce without a large
piece of furniture between them. She was right, but for entirely the wrong
reason. He could still taste her kiss, her skin, on his tongue and the inside
of his mouth. Standing about two feet away, staring at the ancient pelt, she
started to reach for it like she wanted to trace just her fingertips along the
lush fur. But she stopped herself.

“I don’t understand.
You weren’t wrapped in fur when you shifted at my townhouse or on the road.”

“It stops being
necessary after
awhile
, kind of like training wheels.
At first, we have a fur-lined jacket or belt or gloves, from a pelt older than
you can imagine. Fur from a fallen Odin’s Wolf.”

“Oh my god, are you
saying that used to be someone?”

Dustin shook his head
no, trying not to chuckle. It wasn’t funny, the death of a pack soldier, no
matter how long ago. Yet, if he didn’t let himself laugh, there was only the
wolf left—to growl. “Not at the time, no. He or she died a wolf, not a
someone
.” Maybe it had even belonged to
a wolf who had succumbed to the wilding, unable to resume human form, and death
had been a mercy, a release.

“This explains a lot.”
Holly folded her arms much like Dustin had earlier, like she was restraining herself
from something. “Your pack learned a woman had been bitten. You needed to see
if she’d turn, or if she was one of yours.”

“And when you didn’t,
we knew the varg would come back for you, to kill you. And we’d be there to
kill him. Except that he turned out to be the biggest, most powerful varg I’ve
ever encountered.” It unsettled Dustin to admit, “The most powerful
wolf
, period.”

“And you kill
vargs
, whatever those are, because?”

“They’re rogues,
outside a pack. Fenris Wolves and Odin’s Wolves alike hunt them down.
Otherwise, separated from the stabilizing influence of a pack, they become more
and more dangerous and unpredictable. They prey on humans and risk revealing us
to the population at large.”

Holly nodded. “When,
normally, no one knows about you. No one who survives, at least.”

Dustin hesitated to
add, “Except the people you work for.”

“That’s why you’ve been
so nice to me, to get close to me, right?” Holly’s fists clenched tight, arms
still folded under her breasts, and she glowered. Her eyes flashed with all the
formidable anger she had pent up over the last year. Over a lifetime.

“Holly—.”

“See if I would turn or
could be turned. See if I’d bait the varg out into the open. See if I’d lead
you to…to the people you think I work for.”

“Holly, I know who you
work for, and they’re not your friends any more than I’m your enemy.”

The lupa stepped up to
Dustin. “I don’t know what you are.” Then, as though only just realizing how
close she’d let herself get to him—physically now and emotionally over the last
few months—she stepped back, farther away than she’d started. “I don’t know who
you are.”

That was okay; no one
knew anymore, least of all Dustin. It was too much to explain for now, the
terrible balance he was trying to strike between remaining close enough to his
pack to keep from going rogue, losing his mind as a varg, and letting the
wilding take him. Holly held the key to changing all that, if he was right, and
if she’d stop fighting the attraction that he had to believe she felt as much
as he did.