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His revelation deals the final blow. I can't take in what he just said. He's a shifter? My family killed his pack?
I’m too stunned to speak. It's like my lips are sealed by the heavy grip of shock, burying my words of denial.
This can't be real! It's not real! Luke’s been lying to me. He knew what I was and said nothing. He kept his pain from me when, in my own ignorance, my family was responsible for it.
He takes his hand away from my neck and steps back. The fury in his eyes disappears as though someone has raised the curtain from his clouded mind, showing him what he's doing.
As I watch him, tears roll down my cheeks uncontrollably. My heart is heavier than a rock. Pain crawls up my body as though someone has set me ablaze. I shake my head, trying to kick his confession out of my head. He's lying. Luke is messing with me.
"You didn't know, did you?" Luke asks.
But I'm not listening to him anymore. I just want to get out of here. Away from him.
When I go to move, Luke grabs my arms and makes me face him again. "You didn't know, did you?"
I soon find my voice. "You're lying. My family would never do that to you."
"They did. They killed my family. I watched them do it."
I break free from his grip, wiping my face with the back of my hand. "You're lying. Who are you? What's the name of your pack? Where are you from?"
Luke sighs, pressing his fingers into his temples. "Is that necessary?"
"I demand to know!" I yell.
The tables have turned. I'm the one boiling with rage now.
"Okay," Luke answers. "I'm Luke Holland, the only surviving member of the Black Diamond pack. Five years ago, the High Ridge pack stormed into my pack and killed every wolf, including my father and the mate I was supposed to marry.”
Chapter11
Luke
Her clothes are the first to come off.
They fall to the wet ground, circling her feet just as the first strands of fur begin to shoot out of her skin. The hair spreads up her body, her curvy form, her gorgeous face until a different being is staring back at me, eyes inky with pain.
The Adeline before me is the real one, naked in the actual form she was born. No long hair. No deceitful human skin. Just her. The werewolf.
"Adeline," I call her name just as she dashes into the night on all fours.
The theater is beside a forest and so it awards her a chance to shift in a flash and run into the trees. I glance around, noting we’re alone.
And that I have a choice.
With a groan I shift too, shedding my clothes the same way Addy did. My muscled frame changes into a bigger one, fur replacing my skin, eyes adjusting to the cloak of the night.
I can see everything now, sense all, hear all; the clicking of a woman's stilettos on the tarred road, the gray-haired man smoking in his car at the mall a block away, people's emotions as loud as the throbbing of a heart and the stench of their bodies clouding my nostrils.
But they don't matter. I want to think about Adeline. Only her.
In my wolf form, I try to find Addy in the chaos of emotions hitting me. Weaving through the feelings. Moving past the reactions.
Then I find her. She’s a bundle of pain, an overwhelmed mass of hurt. Adeline's agony is raw. Uncontrollable.
I connect with her mind. She's racing in the bushes close to the movie theater, heart thumping.
I follow suit, jumping into the thick cluster of wild plants and catching up with her. Adeline growls at me as soon as she sees me, a clear sign that I should go away.
