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No, thanks.
I can’t go on like this, though. By the third evening, my wolf is getting ready to collapse. I need food. Safe shelter.Sleep. I need somewhere to hide because constantly running isn’t sustainable. If I can find a cave or some place to cover me, I might be able to hunker down again and plan my next move.
For once, I think the Luna has truly blessed me; it’s about freaking time, considering how much I’ve gone through these last few years. Following my instincts, I push my wolf deeper into a dark woods. The air is clean, the land unpolluted. There’s no sign of humans on this land, or anyone really. Perfect for a lone wolf.
It’s even better when I stumble upon an abandoned one-room shack that has all the marks of a feral’s den.
Ferals are the most dangerous of my kind. As shifters, we are an equal mix of our human halves and our beast. Ferals are more wolf than man, with very little impulse control. They’re wild. Unpredictable. They do what they want, when they want, and there’s nothing to temper their mood or their violence. Pushed too far, they might turn completely wolf—but only if they’re not put down for being too much a threat to other shifters first.
Now, while lone wolves are shifters that reject being part of a pack, a feral is completely on its own. They still crave territory, though. They can’t help it. So long as they’re still partly human, a feral will make itself a house-like den in the middle of the most inaccessible parts of nature.
Bones litter the outside. There’s no denying the old stink of blood and fur and rot that clings to the wood. Claws mark nearly every surface on the outside, and when desperation leads me to shift to my skin and use my opposable thumb to turn the doorknob, I see it’s even worse inside. My nose tells me it’s been abandoned for a couple of years at least, though there’s still a pallet of torn fabric—probably the remains of clothes that ripped to shreds during a hasty shift—mixed with fur and something that looks like hay.
A scuffed up wooden table is to the side. Two home-made chairs sit on opposite sides. One has a gouge taking out of the wooden back, with dried blood splashing the whole thing, turning the pale wood brown with its color.
So, yeah. Definitely a feral’s den.
I don’t care. It has a roof, a door, and a window in case I need to make a quick escape. In a pinch, I can use one of the chairs as a weapon. Surprisingly, the tap has running water, and the solar panels that are out of place on the shabby roof gives me electricity so I don’t need to mess around with candles.
All I want to do is collapse in the pallet and knock out. My wolf assures me that there isn’t a threat around for as far as she can sense, but just in case someone somehow finds this shack with me in it, I pull one of my simple shift dresses out of my duffel bag and shrug it on over my shoulders. I could sleep as my wolf, but I haven’t been back in my skin for days. I really should give her time to rest her paws.
Besides, even in my skin, I’ve slept in worse places than a pile of musty hay and some unknown shifter’s clothes.
Keeping my duffel bag within reach, I plop down in the nest on the ground. It’s not the most comfortable thing in the world, but it’s better then laying on the hard floor. My wolf agrees with me. Or maybe she just is desperate to rest because I can already feel her curling up, her muzzle on her front paws. Following her lead, I fall fast asleep.
I didn’t plan on waking up until at least morning. It was around evening when I passed out, and when I jerk awake, I can see through the window that it’s pitch dark outside. The only light comes from the moon, only a few days out from being full, and she shines down on the midnight black forest.
At first, I don’t know what made me wake up. I’m drowsy and stiff, and I just want to close my eyes again… until I realize that my wolf is up, her ears cocked, a soft whine coming from her throat.
Or maybe that’s mine.
Am I imagining it? Despite the electricity and the running water, the shack doesn’t have any heat, and the woods can get cold at night in April. I don’t have a blanket, and while shifters run hot, goosebumps cover my bare arms as if I’m freezing.
Ice. It smells like ice, mixed with fresh meat, blood, and…
Licorice.
Aleks.
I hop to my feet, my wolf snapping her fangs at me to hurry. Peeking out of the only window in the room, I don’t see anyone out there. I step back, then eyes the door. There’s no windows built into the slab of wood. No peephole, either. If I want to see if my suspicions are right, I have to open the door.
Do I want to, though? Inside of me, my wolf is singing a song to her mate. She knows exactly who is approaching the cabin.
And when I throw open the door and see the Luna’s light reflecting off of Aleks’s pale skin in the distance, I do, too.
He doesn’t say anything. Neither do I. The silence of the woods seems to echo as my pulse pounds, my heart thumping wildly. I make no move toward him, and for a few deafening beats of my heart, Aleks stays where he is, silhouetted by the moonlight.
I blink. Silly, Elizabeth. You know how fast vampires are.
I blink, and suddenly he’s only a few feet away.
“Ksiezyca,” he rasps out. “Won’t you let me in?”
CHAPTER11
TASTE OF HIS SKIN
Itake a couple of steps back inside the shack.
