AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The shower had been justas hot as the sweat lodge, and I wasn’t talking about the water. I never knew how dirty getting clean could be, but I was ready to roll in mud if it would get me back there quicker. Billy Bob kept touching me, even after, as if he thought I’d disappear if we weren’t anchored to each other. Had I really been so awful that he thought I was going to bolt the second I got a chance to really think about the ramifications of being a lycanthrope’s mate?
Holy shit. A lycanthrope’s mate. How the hell did I explain that to my parents? And, crap, I’d never hear the end of it from Sunny. That bitch was never going to let up with all the I-told-you-sos and the happiness talk. What was I getting myself into?
He kissed me, and I swear to God I felt as if he were filling me up like an empty gas tank on payday.
He smoothed back my hair, still wet from our shower. “Let’s get dressed. We’ll talk in the kitchen,” Billy Bob said. “If we stay in the bedroom, I can’t be responsible for my actions.” Billy Bob’s hand trailed down my back, making me shiver in all the right places.
Whatever I was getting into, I knew for certain, I didn’t want out.
While he ran to get my clothes out of the sweat lodge, I hurried to the car and retrieved the star.
By the time I dressed and got into the kitchen, Billy Bob had tea and sandwiches ready. I was starving now—lycanthropes had big appetites.
I sat across from him and said, “Okay, spill.”
“Brother Wolf is an animal spirit. He began talking to me after my grandfather died. He taught me the ways of healing the soul. I went to med school because my calling to heal was so strong, I wanted to be able to help people in all ways.”
His altruism made me feel inadequate. “My only goal was to open a restaurant with my best friend so we could hang out all day together. I’m a total asshole compared to you.”
“True,” he said without a hint of humor.
“Hey!”
“I’m kidding. Brother Wolf was my grandfather’s spirit guide. He was a shaman for our people.” Saying “our people” pained him.
“Other lycanthropes?” I realized I knew nothing about the way wolves lived. Other than Billy Bob, I’d never met anyone of his kind. “Did you live in a pack?”
“Of a sort,” he said. “We live in groups, but it’s not like fiction books where there is one alpha for each pack.”
“It rarely is.” I laughed. “I’ve seen what stories get made up about therians. Hell, most writers don’t even get the language right.” I drew him in close to me and relished the feel of his hands on my back as he wrapped me in his arms. “You mean you aren’t going to go all he-wolf-alpha on me? Wait. You already did.” I matched his wicked grin with one of my own. “Okay. Tell me about Brother Wolf.”
“He’s a guardian.” He shook his head. “Of sorts. He can’t intervene with the mortal plane. He can only interact. The fact that he chose you…”
“Because you prayed for me.” And he’d done that before he loved me. It really did say a lot about Billy Bob as a man.
“I wish I—”
“We can’t turn back time,” I interrupted. When he didn’t say anything, I asked, “We can’t turn back time, right?”
“No. We can’t turn back time, but if I could, I would kill them all. I would do it with my bare hands.”
“You’re a healer, not a killer. I like that about you. I don’t want you to change because you’re angry on my behalf.”
“But these killers, whoever they are, I’m afraid, Chavvah. I’m afraid for you. It’s why I want you here.”
“So you can babysit me?”
“Yes.”
His bluntness threw me. “I’m not a baby, Doc. Bad things happen. If anyone knows it’s true, it’s me. But I can’t hide from evil. It finds us no matter where we are. I won’t pretend to understand everything going on with me. These changes. You say I turned into a wolf, and I believe you. You’re stubborn, egotistical, and a general pain in my ass, but you’re not a liar.”
“You have the sweetest way with words.”
“You say this voice in my head that showed up as some dark shadowy figure is a spirit guide named Brother Wolf, I’ll allow it. We both saw him and heard him, which means unless you were burning drugs in that sweat lodge fire pit—” I tucked my chin for a second then tilted my head back to glare at him. “You didn’t put hallucinogens in the fire did you? That shit is still illegal in this state.”
“No, Chavvah. No drugs,” he said, then muttered, “not this time, anyhow.”
I let it go. “So we can discount mass hysteria. The stuff about me being a spirit walker.”
