“Jason, you’re scaring me. I’m coming in.” She tried the doorknob. Locked. Of course it was. The lever-style door handle was the type mainly designed for decoration. Not exactly tamper proof. She removed a bobby pin from her hair and stuck it in the tiny hole next to the lever. She heard a pop, and the handle gave way. But she’d barely had enough time to pull her hand away when the door flew open. She staggered back, dodging the swinging wood by mere inches.
From the belly of the dark room, Jason stalked toward her like a predator, chin tucked, shoulders mounded with tension. Yellow eyes tracked her every move. She barely recognized him. His presence had devolved to something purely feral.
“Jason, your eyes. Your wolf is too close to the surface.” This shouldn’t be happening. It wasn’t even the full moon.
He inhaled deeply in response. Jason’s skin gave off a sweaty sheen, and his pupils were dilated. Selene wondered if he was fully sentient. And the smell, oh goddess, the scent of his arousal was a complex spice in the air that made her heart race and not just from fear.
She backed away, hands raised in the universal gesture forstop. A growl rumbled from deep within his chest, his longer legs chewing up the space between them. She scampered for the door like a fleeing rabbit. He couldn’t leave without her permission. If she could get on the other side of the door, she could give him the space he needed while he wrestled himself under control.
She reached for the doorknob, managed to open it an inch. He pounced, shoving her against it, slamming it closed. She spun to face him, her backside bumping into the closed door. “Jason, stop!”
Pressing the full length of himself against her, his long, tapered fingers rose to wrap around her throat until his thumb stroked her pulse. “Let me out,” he growled into her ear. Not his voice, more animal than human. The sound made her scalp tingle.
She couldn’t speak through her fear-constricted throat, but she shook her head. No. She couldn’t let him leave.
His knee pitched forward, wedging itself between her legs and thumping the door behind her. In this position, his thigh grazed her most sensitive flesh, his body heat covering her like the world’s sexiest blanket. His weight pressed against her chest as he brought his lips to her ear again. “Let me out, now.”
She attempted to push him away, but even with his diminished body weight, he was bigger than her, stronger than her. Her hands shoved ineffectively at his chest, the feel of his lean muscle against her palms awakening that thing within her she’d fought so hard to suppress. Why did he have to look the way he did? Against her wishes, her body responded, a rush of heat flooding her core.
He inhaled sharply. Damn, he could smell her excitement. He let go of her throat and caught her wrists in one hand, pressing them against the wall above her head. Was it possible for him to get any closer without being inside her? The thought made her insides quiver. His breath coiled against her lips.
All at once, everything changed. She was no longer an acolyte of twenty-five in Jason’s apartment. She was fifteen, on a dirty mattress in the back of a truck stop, and a foul man was holding her wrists. The memory slammed into her, shaking her to her bones. Any desire she’d felt quickly turned to fear, and her breath came in ragged pants.
“Go!” she shouted. “I give you permission to leave.”
Jason retracted immediately and snatched his keys from the small table in the foyer. She lunged out of his way as he barreled through the door.
Once he was gone, Selene pitched forward, catching herself on her denim-clad knees. The walls wavered, the air hot and oppressive. No. It wasn’t the walls or the apartment. It was her. She was under attack from the inside. Panic. Anxiety.
She closed her eyes and thought of her anchor, that one supremely happy memory with the power to bring her back from the brink of a full-blown meltdown. It had been a long time since she’d needed to use it. But with her ghosts circling, the trauma of her past creeping into the present, she needed to employ the coping skills she thought she’d perfected long ago.
When she called on the memory, it was always the color blue she remembered first: a shade deeper than royal blue, but not quite navy. Edged in white, it was the color of a wall… no, a room. The blue room. Rivergate Manor. She was too dirty to be in that room, but the man who had brought her there had told her to wait. He’d seemed nice.
“Hello, dear.” Artemis’s gray spirals seemed to pick up a hint of the blue, further emphasizing the color of her eyes. Selene thought she looked like an angel. “My friend tells me he found you living under a bridge. Where is your family?”
Selene shook her head.
“My friend tells me he saw you shift last night.”
Hugging herself, Selene’s eyes widened.
“You didn’t think I’d know about the shift? Oh yes. I’m a werewolf too. We all are wolves here.” Artemis sat down on an upholstered bench near the fireplace. “Are your parents wolves?” she asked softly.
Selene shook her head.
“Did they kick you out of the house?”
How did she know? Selene looked down at her feet.
“It happens more than you might think. Lycanthropy is genetic. On occasion, werewolves breed with humans and the gene is suppressed. It might rear its head two or three generations from the source. This can be terrifying to people unfamiliar with our kind.”
“They’re gone now. They moved,” Selene said, remembering the day she’d come home from high school to find an empty house and no forwarding address. “I haven’t seen them in almost a year.”
“That’s a long time to be living on the street. What are you… fifteen?”
“Sixteen. I’ll be seventeen in January.”
Artemis nodded. “How would you like this to be your new home? You can stay here with us and I’ll take care of you. We’ll become your pack.”
