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“There was something my mother said in her panic a few days ago. I think the first time I ever shifted as a small child, it was as a wolf. Somehow, it never happened again and this was the first time with my knowing it. But I’ve always felt something else clawing inside me. I never talked to anyone about it. Considering my mother and the man I thought was my father were both alphas, I kept hoping I was going to be the latest late bloomer in the history of all alpha shifters.”
I nodded, my thoughts only partly focused on the words escaping her sensual mouth.
Before I could get lost contemplating her lips or that striking green gaze, I pushed another question at her. “Why’d you leave wherever you were at? And where was that?”
“Outside Chicago,” she answered, her reluctance to answer why she’d left writ large across her expressive features.
I let her gently stew in silence, her face beginning to contort with emotions, contortions that included a trembling of her lips that could easily damn me to hell if I didn’t get them to stop with some distraction other than kissing them.
“Don’t know your name yet,” I said, sticking my hand out to her. “I’m Doone.”
“Dune?” she repeated. “Like the mounds of sand on beaches and stuff?”
“Not exactly,” I laughed, the question infrequent because of my solitary ways, but not completely new. “D-o-o-n-e.”
“Like the cookies?”
I laughed again, only longer and harder, blood leaving my brain to color my cheeks, swell my chest and heat my gut.
“Well, kitten,” I answered with a bit of salt. “You’ll need to take a taste to find out.”
Her cheeks blazed brightly as she looked away.
Too fast, the civilized part of my brain warned. My wolf didn’t want to listen. I already knew that, if the pack in Night Falls didn’t take her in, I would escort her to hell and back if she’d let me. I didn’t understand it, but she was affecting me in ways I’d never felt around human females or the female shifters I had encountered since my arrival in Night Falls.
Granted, I had never encountered a female shifter before coming to Night Falls, but nothing special had awakened when I did. I wanted this woman badly—and had next to zero idea what to do with her if she felt the same way.
I mean, parts of me knew what to do. The wolf in me certainly had ideas. But there was a human dance that had to be performed.
“So,” I continued quickly on. “What should I call you?”
“I’m Mosa,” she answered after a reluctant roll of her lips.
“Short for Hermosa?” I teased even though my brain was screaming at me to shut up or at least flirt better if I was going to flap my lips.
Shaking her head, she took a deep breath and held it just long enough that I wondered if I had seriously screwed up in asking if her name meantbeautifulor if there was some other reason for her reluctance.
“My mother named me Mosaic.”
Interesting.
“I guess she never explained why, although now you know.”
Mosa nodded then shoved a bunch of blackberries in her mouth.
“Okay,” I moved along. “Next question. Not knowing that you’re what closed-minded shifters would consider a freak, what brought you to this paradise of freaks?”
Her head bobbed like she was about to answer, but she paused to take a long drink from the spring before beginning.
“I found a video a few days back on a thumb drive that was supposed to be accounting files. I think Henric set me up, he wanted me to find the video. He had to know I would recognize Onyx and know it was real.”
“Onyx Murphy?” I asked when she paused.
“Probably, but I knew of her by the surname Parry,” Mosa shrugged. “Somehow, my mother never saw the video before despite being married to the leap’s leader or how her father was the leader before that. I think her husband, the asshole I’ve always thought was my father, wanted me to find and watch the video when she and I were together. I don’t know why, but I don’t think it was an accident. Have you seen the video I’m talking about?”
“Sure have,” I answered, digging my phone from my jacket pocket. “That’s what brought me here from the west coast.”
I navigated to the folder I had password protected and started the video playing. Instead of handing the phone over to her, I slid closer until our shoulders touched and we could watch the video together.
