I kissed her forehead. Let lips linger. “He has no idea. You’re the one who makes me invincible.”
Chapter 11
Juliet
After the revelation about my family, Bronc, wolf blood, I tried to make sense of everything. I wanted to call my mother. That was out of the question. The information I’d learned just had to sit with me. Mine to ponder. For the next several days, Bronc and I kept our routine. We ate breakfast and lunch together. The books were showing a pattern of a larger extortion plot that had been happening over the course of a couple of years. And something had his club officers meeting more frequently. I missed him. Honestly, I was falling in love with him. Craving him was a daily occurrence.
I encountered Tyler several more times. He seemed to pop into the shop randomly. I don’t know if he wanted to see if I planned on staying or what. But on those visits, I found him to be bright and funny. So much like his dad. It was a slow acceptance, but anything that made Bronc happy made me happy.
One morning I woke with the wedding ring quilt bunched between my fingers as I stared at the ceiling fan’s lazy rotation. Bronze light from the bedside lamp caught dust motes drifting above Bronc’s abandoned sweatshirt—the one I’d stolen last week that still carried hints of leather and gun oil. My thighs pressed together beneath the quilt’s geometric patterns. I thought back to how his calloused palms had gripped my hips the night he’dbrought me home when I was so drunk at the compound. Before everything shattered.
Alpha.
The word ricocheted behind my ribs. I knew he was meant for me. Knew it when I stepped off that damn bus and saw him standing there like some kind of god. It didn’t matter that his hair had silver mixed in with the raven strands. I still wondered what his closely shaved silver and black beard would feel like against the inside of my thighs. His massive biceps covered in tattoos should have been a turnoff. But I wanted to trace them with my tongue. I rolled onto my side, pressing a pillow over my face until the cotton pillowcase stuck to my damp cheeks.
Presidents led motorcycle clubs. Generals led armies. But Bronc—Bronc with his quiet laugh lines and patient hands guiding me through Texas Hold ‘em, and cracking black pepper on my chicken fried steak—commanded wolves. Actual wolves who tore out throats under darkened skies. Who hunted. Whochanged.
The sudden memory of his transformation punched through me. A crackle of tendons rearranging beneath tanned skin during last night’s nightmare. Only it hadn’t been a nightmare at all. Sunlight had gilded the silver streaking of his lupine fur as he changed right in the middle of my kitchen floor just days ago, those same blue eyes burning with streaks of gold through his beast’s skull. My palm itched where I’d buried fingers in his pelt, equal parts terror and recognition thrumming in my veins. I’d dreamed of that exact shade of midnight-black fur since childhood. He was magnificent.
“Bullshit,” I whispered to the empty apartment. The clawfoot tub’s porcelain gleam winked from the adjacent bathroom, mocking me. Normal girls didn’t fantasize about mythical creatures. My stomach churned. But this man was so much more. The way he’d stormed into my apartment that first night when I hadn’t answered his texts or calls. His worried face told me he cared, even though we’d just met. Then, when his searing lips had touched mine. They set my soul on fire.
He had also been so kind when taking me to his house. His only concern had been my safety. I knew he wanted more, as much as I did. But he gentled me into a guest room. I never once feared that he’d violate my privacy. Never take what wasn’t offered like it was owed to him. Not like Harrison. I shook those memories quickly away. Bronc was all man. And apparently, all wolf.
My memory went to how Tyler’s lip had curled when he came through my front door, a perfect sneer inherited from his father. “Another stray?” Is what he’d seemed to ask, boot heels digging into my living room’s hardwoods. Disapproval filled his accusation.
I kicked off the quilt, bare feet slapping against hardwood still warm from the morning sun. Several steps took me to the kitchen’s butcher block counter. Condensation fogged the window above the sink, outdoor heat warring with the A/C’s aggressive hum. I traced a finger through the mist, revealing slivers of the pasture beyond Pearl’s main house. Distant cattle lowed.
A hot blade twisted beneath my navel.
I gripped the counter’s edge, knuckles bleaching white. Cramps weren’t due for another seven days. Not that my cycle had ever been precise, not since the stress of living with Harrison. But this felt different. Sharper. Meaner. The wood floor rushed up to meet my knees as I folded over, forehead pressed to the cabinet door.
“Just breathe,” I ordered myself, the mantra I’d used during the nights I tried to hide from my fiancé’s tirades. But the invisible knife kept twisting, carving runes of fire along my uterus. Sweat slithered between my shoulder blades. I fumbled for my side pocket—no phone. Left charging by the bed.
Another spasm ripped through me. I gagged, acid burning my throat. The calendar above the toilet flickered in my mind’s eye. Red Xs marched toward October. Wrong timing. All wrong.
The next cramp hit like a cattle prod to the spine. I crawled toward the bathroom, knees skidding on tile that now felt scaldingagainst my skin. My vision tunneled—clawfoot tub emerging from the haze like some porcelain life raft.
Fumbling to tear off my leggings, I nearly ripped the Lycra getting them down. Brightness flashed behind my eyes at the sight of slickness staining my underwear. Not the rusty brown of old blood, but something clear and viscous, glistening under the vanity lights. The scent hit me first, honeyed earth and something feral that made my teeth ache.
“What, what, is this?” I chanted, scrambling backward until my shoulders hit the cold tub. Cotton wadded in my fist as I scrubbed at my thighs, but the moisture kept coming. Heat radiated from my core like I’d swallowed a coal, sweat pooling in the hollow of my throat. My reflection in the mirrored cabinet showed flushed cheeks, pupils blown wide and dark.
Another wave crested, muscles clenching in ways that had nothing to do with cramps. A whimper escaped before I could clamp my lips shut. The sound felt foreign, needy in a way that scraped raw against my nerves. My phone buzzed from the bedroom, muffled through the wall.
I lurched upright, catching myself on the marble sink. Cool stone bit into my palms as another contraction rolled through me. Liquid trickled down my inner thigh. The animal part of my brain screameddangerwhile some deeper instinct purred,right, this is right.
Staggering into the bedroom, I nearly tripped over the quilt pooled on the floor. Phone charger yanked free with a spark. Bronc’s contact photo filled the screen, a candid Pearl had taken of him laughing by the shop’s air compressor. Thumb hovering over the call button, I tasted copper where I’d bitten my cheek.
His son’s sneer flickered behind my eyelids.You don’t belong here. The phone slipped from my damp grip. What if this was… normal? For them? Some shifter puberty I hadn’t been briefed on? Another cramp bent me double, nails scoring the wedding ring quilt.
The first ring trilled in my ear.
He answered before the second. “Juliet?”
Something in his voice, that Alpha gravel layered over genuine concern, unlocked the floodgates. “I don’t… I can’t…” My free hand clutched at my tank top, fabric sticking to sweat-slicked skin. “There’s this… hurts… I’m… it’s so hot.”
“Stay put. Do not open the door for anyone.” A motorcycle engine roared to life, drowning his next words. “Ten minutes. Less. Are you bleeding?”
“Not blood.” I pressed the phone tighter to my ear, as if proximity could pull him through the cellular waves. “It’s like… like when you… you know… pouring.”
