Page 47 of Big Bad Wolf

He should not come up. There was no scenario in which coming up was a good idea. And yet…

Rafe glanced over his shoulder to find his damn tail waving like a sail in the wind. Son of a bitch. His own body betrayed him.

Ruby smiled.

He jumped up.

Apparently, being in wolf form was not going to help him as much as he hoped. He circled twice out of habit and dropped down on the blankets beside her. She tried to keep her distance at first, as much as she could in the small bed, holding up her phone so they could both watch, laughing quietly at every snarky remark from Sophia and every absurd comment from Rose. But slowly, her hand began to droop, and she slouched lower into her pillows.

Ruby sighed softly in her sleep and snuggled in closer to him, her body warm and soft against his side. He could feel every breath she took, every twitch in her sleep, every dreamy murmur. He lowered his head to his front paws and watched the clouds sweep past the moon out the window, casting shadows on the bed.

Sleep was no longer an option. Not with Ruby’s hand resting on the top of his head, her chest rising and falling against his back. It was the perfect torture. And it gave him far too much time to think, to remember.

Thoughts of Scarlet played on the back of his eyelids like a depressing movie of his past.

He’d met Scarlet when the pack had moved closer to town. Not this town but one just like it, small, insular, protective. He’d gone to get supplies. Wolves lived rough, but they still needed things. They weren’t actually wild animals. Not completely anyway.

And most important to his father were cigarettes. His favorite human invention.

Rafe had been picking up a carton for his old man when he first laid eyes on Scarlet behind the register. She’d smiled at him.

She’d looked at him like he was something other than the Alpha’s son.

She didn’t know anything about that. She didn’t know that he was supposed to fight for his place in the pack. She didn’t know that his father was always pitting him against his brothers, always sizing them up against each other. That Rafe’s life felt like one big battle.

And maybe that was her best quality.

Or it was her smile.

Or her pretty green eyes.

Whatever it was, Rafe returned to the store whenever he could find an excuse.

He went back until Scarlet asked if he wanted to hang out after work.

He went back until she invited him up to her apartment.

He went back so many times he started to believe that he could have that life. A new life, a different one far away from his old man. That he could be human. That he could be with a woman like Scarlet.

And then it had all blown up in his face. His father had found out. He’d lost his shit. Threatened Rafe with every curse in the book. His father demanded complete obedience. Rafe didn’t even realize how much until he defied his father and kept seeing his human girlfriend.

Until she ended up dead.

Attacked in the woods outside her home.

His father never admitted to it, but Rafe knew it’d been him.

Knew it in his smug smile, in his offhanded comments about how weak humans were. His father had taken the one thing that had given him hope, and after that Rafe had felt lost without it. Fighting and scraping to get by because he had to.

Until a year ago when he’d left for good.

But nothing he did now could save Scarlet.

For the second night this week, Rafe was in her bed.

Unfortunately, he was here as a canine and not a man.

“What should we watch tonight?” she asked even though he couldn’t answer. Not really. “How about An American Werewolf in London?”