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“You could be.” He cupped his hand around her cheek. She tilted her head into the warmth of his hand.
Panic beat butterfly wings against her. She could be a wolf? How? And could she when she had a phobia?
“Do I have to change?”
“No,” he answered softly.
His eyes shifted, his wolf side surfacing. An angry glint reflected there before his human eyes returned.
A jolt raced through her. That was different to when he’d looked at her in his wolf form. It was like his wolf was part of him, and yet its own entity.
She didn’t know how that worked. Except that it did.
“Was…was that your wolf?”
He didn’t answer for a couple of beats. “Yes.”
She nodded. “Your wolf says otherwise.”
“My wolf will learn to accept whatever decision you make.”
Tamaska pulled his hand away from her cheek. “What, exactly, is your wolf unhappy about?”
Kodiak sighed, taking her hand in his. “It’s complicated.”
Tamaska was about to ask why when his muscles tensed. She went to pull out of his grip, immediately understanding why he’d tensed, but he stopped her.
“I can see why you’re afraid of my wolf.” He held her wrist with one hand, the other tracing the scars up her arm from the dog attack.
“How can you see them?” she asked, her voice shaking. The scars had faded over the years, so most people didn’t notice them.
“I’ve got good eyesight.” He traced a different line of scars back down her forearm.
She shifted uneasily. Not only was he touching her scars, but he was also a wolf. He had teeth as sharp as the beast that had harmed her.
Tamaska wouldn’t flee. No matter how much she might want to on that deep-down, instinctual level. After all, she trusted him enough to have sex with him, which was when she thought about it, utterly vulnerable.
But something inside her whispered the fear didn’t have to do with her phobia, not this time. It didn’t have to do with him being a wolf. This was different.
A base level fear that came with complete emotional vulnerability and exposure.
He knew her weakness, the irrational part of her, the one no one ever saw. She worked hard and cracked her whip because she never wanted to be seen as weak. Yet she’d exposed herself with Kodiak. Let him see her how no one ever had.
In another life, before him, if she’d discovered vampires and shifters, she’d have been exactly like she was now. The difference was, no one would ever know. She’d appear to take it in stride.
And no one would ever know her carefully covered scars bothered her, not the scars themselves, but what they represented. No one, except, apparently him.
Even in the darkness she could see the glimmer of understanding, of him seeing her. Down deep.
She’d never allowed herself to open up like this to anyone before.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” he said gently.
Her throat constricted as she fought to keep the memory from surfacing. “I…”
“My wolf would never attack you.”
Tamaska stared up at him. No, she didn’t think his wolf would.
