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“I think this means I’m fine,” I whispered, and his hand spasmed.
“Don’t. Don’t tempt fate. Please,” he begged.
I understood his worry, of course, but I hadn’t survived this long only to be taken out by my father’s fucked up experiment going wrong at the first full moon. And maybe it would have, eventually. Maybe, if I had stayed longer, whatever he was doing would have transformed me completely.
I had to wonder how many had gone too far—how many humans had been brought to the brink, then shoved over it. I wondered how many died screaming.
I dozed on and off for the rest of the night, and I knew Kor hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep. He sat ramrod straight on the couch with his gaze pointed toward the door, and his hands on me like he couldn’t let me go. At some point, he probably should have gotten up for a drink or a piss or something. He should have stretched his legs or gone for a walk around the room, but he refused to budge.
The tension in my own body started to ease as I watched the clock tick toward dawn, and it was around that time Kor’s shoulders started to slump.
“I felt something,” I told him now that I was absolutely certain there was no shift happening—not even one I had to fight off. “It was sort of like… an itch.”
His face tipped down, his black, black eyes fixated somewhere near my right ear. “Just under your skin?”
“Something like that. Like when you’re too hot and you feel the need to do something—to sweat it all out. But I didn’t fight it. I just let myself feel it.” I reached up and traced his jawline with a curled knuckle. “I’m obviously tied to the moon somehow. I mean, there are changes in me.”
His thumb brushed over my eyelashes—the most tender graze I had ever felt. “Your eyes,” he said.
I smiled at him and pulled his hand down to kiss the pads of his fingers before pressing his palm to my heart. “And my heats. My slick,” I added, my voice a little lower, and he let out a small, subvocal growl that made me laugh. “And this. I can feel the moon rising, I can feel it set. I want to be outside with it, but I’m going to live, okay?”
For the first time, I felt actual, honest belief pushed through the bond, and he gathered me up into his arms and kissed me properly. “Okay.”
He called Orion to arrange for a car to be at the entrance to our building for the sunrise. It was too far to walk to the mouth of the tunnels if we wanted to get there in time, though I knew on another night we could start earlier if we wanted, now that he wasn’t waiting to see if I was going to collapse into a heap of misshapen bones and skin.
Climbing into the back seat, I could feel Kor’s tension since the last time we ventured out, I’d been shot. But that was another bonus to this change—I could heal. Not as well as the others, but enough that I didn’t think I’d have to worry much if we were attacked again. Of course, Wolves could be killed the same as humans—a bullet to the heart, to the head, to a vital organ. Injuries that were too big, bleeding too fast for the healing to catch up with it.
And I would be even more vulnerable than any of them. But not as vulnerable as humans.
If my father could solve the problem of our skeletons killing us during the shift, he might actually succeed in his plan. But something was niggling at me—because I realized he might not want humans to shift at all. It would only make sense that he would try to isolate the parts of the Wolf that could offer benefits without losing human to animal, and I jolted.
Maybe I was finished. Or nearly so.
“Misha?” Kor asked, his voice hesitant.
I turned to him. “I need to speak with Danyal as soon as we’re done.”
Kor let out a soft groan and dropped his head back against the seat. “I was hoping to sleep a little.”
I nudged him gently with my elbow as I saw the entrance to the tunnels come into view. “It’s not my fault you were up all night.”
He scoffed and reached out, pinching my arm. “Are you going to tell me what has you all worked up, or…?”
I bit my lip and looked up at the driver, then sent my uncertainty through the bond as hard as I could. He wouldn’t know the nuances, but maybe he’d feel the idea of it. I couldn’t trust this man—I couldn’t trust most people. Not without knowing for sure.
“Alright,” he said, his voice nearly a whisper, and he tugged me back against him. “Tomorrow, okay? It can wait until tomorrow.”
He was right—it could. I relaxed a little, then laced my fingers with his as we hit open air. “We’re out.”
“Yes,” he said, sounding entranced, “I can feel it.”
We didn’t go far, just around the bend and off on a secluded dirt road not more than a quarter of a mile. It was close enough we could run if we had to—and Kor wouldn’t lose scent of the compound in his wolf form. The car rolled to a stop, and the driver said nothing, but I hadn’t expected him to.
The military training in the Wolves was intense, and it was likely why the man who shot me still wasn’t giving up any information. I knew he was alive strictly from what Orion was telling Kor, but I didn’t think he was going to last long.
Climbing out of the car, Kor took my arm, and I led the way through a small copse of trees and into a clearing. The sun was just coming up over the mountains, and I closed my eyes against it as he pulled my back to his front and held me.
“What do you see?” he asked.
