Page 36 of Wolfsbane

Which involved me, walking with Buddy the raccoon who’d eaten kibble off our porch when I filled the bowls for some nearby stray cats and was now, apparently, a shifter too, into the very center of a werewolf pack that I’d⁠—

Well, maybe I hadn’t hurt them directly, but I hadn’t stopped them from being hurt. I’d seen enough to know it was wrong, and I hadn’t been brave enough to do anything about it until I had one of them inside me.

So I still hadn’t done them any good. We weren’t allies. And I⁠—

I trusted Viktor, but I had a deranged impulse to gnaw off my arm rather than face them.

Viktor, who’d carried his balled-up shirt in his hand ever since he’d shown me how to shift, offered it to Buddy now, who frowned at it for a second, glanced over at Aleks, and then pulled it over his head.

The thing swallowed him completely.

He was just—all right, he wasn’t a kid, but he had to be younger than me. And the coven had killed his parents.

I’d seen Buddy around for years. Been feeding him. I had no idea he was a shifter and all that time, he’d been alone.

I had let him eat cat food—a kid alone in the woods.

We’d murdered his family!

At this point, my best bet was to run into the woods and forget I’d ever been a person at all, but Viktor held out his hand beside him, searching for me.

I was a fool, that the only thing I wanted to do was shove myself under his palm. But his fingers ran through my fur and scratched the scruff of my neck. I shoved against his leg.

The second-best thing for me to do was just to stick by his side.

We kept moving, and I kept Viktor between me and the rest of his pack. I had no idea how he kept pace without getting winded, but by the time we saw the werewolves’ old shacks through the trees, I didn’t hear the coven’s SUVs anymore.

After Tristan and Kate hadn’t come back, there was no way they’d want to face the wolves on their own territory again. Mother was stuck, her spell half finished, and for the moment, we were safe.

One of the wolves—an enormous gray one with brown on his muzzle—shifted back onto two feet. He looked like Viktor, if Viktor had never been stuck in Russia maybe. His eyes were clearer, his face more emotive.

He stared at Viktor like he’d been stricken. “Where did you go? Who were you⁠—”

Viktor’s twin stared down at me, and I shrank behind him.

“That is your wolf, isn’t it?” His twin asked, brow furrowed like even he couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing.

Viktor sighed. His hand was still nestled in my fur. My tail curled up between my legs, pressing up into my stomach.

“Yes,” he admitted. “The witches took him.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” the alpha asked, his arms crossed.

Viktor didn’t even flinch. “It was my problem to fix.”

“And now you’re, what, running around half here and half there?”

Finally, Viktor grimaced. I smelled his frustration as he gauged how to answer, but I—I was the only one who knew exactly what had happened and why. As tempting as it was to stay on four legs and let them think I was just a wolf and nothing more, Viktor glanced down at me with a frown, and a throbbing sense of shame made it impossible to stay down there.

Now that I’d shifted on my own, it was easier to change back. I pressed myself against Viktor’s back, still half behind him, and raised my eyes to look at the pack.

I didn’t have to say anything before one of the wolves—sleek and dark—crouched toward the ground, snarling. His lips pulled back from long white fangs. I jerked back, fully behind Viktor, but that didn’t stop the wolf from barking furiously.

Viktor threw his arm out behind him, his hand on my hip to keep track of me.

What happened if he got bit by a werewolf when he was full of my magic? Fuck.

I grabbed his wrist and tried to pull him back, but he stood firm, leaning forward and glaring. “Back off, Cash,” he said, not loud and angry but leaving no room for argument.