Soon she was standing there on all fours, looking up at Case. Through her color-blind wolf’s eyes, he was mostly shades of yellow and gray, but he still looked familiar.
And, she discovered with a twinge of embarrassment, she liked his scent.Reallyliked it.
She couldn’t lie and say that even as a human, she hadn’t noticed that he smelled nice. But that had mostly been about the cedar-and-salt scent of his aftershave. That was what her human nose could easily pick up on.
Her wolf nose caught everything, and it was pleased to inform her that even if it ignored the artificial scents Case had added to his body, he smelled pretty damn good. Better than good, actually. Sublime.
Clean masculine musk and wide open spaces. Wind and trees and sun-warmed grass.
Now that she knew that scent was there, she would be looking for it even when she was human again. And if she tuckedher nose against his neck and breathed in against his skin, she would probably find it.
The thought almost made her shiver.
“Wow,” Case said. “That’s—that’s not a special effect. You are definitely a werewolf.”
Lydia gave a tiny yip of agreement, and Case laughed.
She shifted back, and somehow that look of stunned wonder on his face didn’t go away. It only changed key.
“Okay,” Case said, nodding a couple times. “You’re a werewolf. And you have a problem.”
“I do.”
She told him about her pack and about Reeve. The words came out slowly and haltingly at first, especially when she got to her run-in with Reeve in the woods, where he’d propositioned her and accidentally given her this whole idea.
When she talked about Reeve coming on to her, something flashed behind Case’s eyes, and the deep, luminous gray-green suddenly looked like hammered steel. Lydia’s breath caught in her throat.
“He didn’t do anything,” she said quickly, to avoid giving the wrong impression. “He—he just wanted to make me feel vulnerable. I don’t even know if he would have mated with me even if Ihadsaid yes. He might have just laughed at me.”
Case’s jaw had tightened up, but he forced it to unstick for his next question. “When you say ‘mated’ ...?”
That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? Lydia had rehearsed an explanation for this, but now that she was face-to-face with him, all her prepared speeches seemed to fly right out of her head. Now it felt like she had to choose every word all over again, like she was putting magnetic poetry together.
“It’s like marriage. Nowadays, itismarriage, unless you’re part of some back-to-nature pack that doesn’t believe in paperwork at all. But between two wolves, it’s also about beingpart of the same pack. There’s a bond between you and your mate, like there is between you and your pack. It’s like your souls are tied together.”
“And you don’t want your soul tied to Reeve’s, obviously.”
Lydia’s laugh sounded brittle even to her. “I want my soul as far away from his as possible.”
“I’m glad you’re not taking his offer,” Case said quietly. “What are you going to do? How can I help?”
He hadn’t realized what she was asking him. Of course he hadn’t. No one in their right mind would jump to this kind of conclusion.
“I can’t fight Reeve on my own. As soon as my grandmother dies, he’ll challenge me for control of the pack, and if things stay the way they are right now, he’ll win.” She’d already told him that much, so she could see that he was still waiting for more. She took a deep breath. “I need a co-alpha. If I had one, Reeve would have to defeat us both to take control of the pack. And the only co-alpha I can have is a mate.”
She saw the instant Case understood what they were talking about. He went very still.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
“And the only mate I can have, the only one who can stand as co-alpha,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady, “is another werewolf. So what I’m asking for is something you probably won’t want to give me, and I can’t blame you for that. But it’s the only thing I can think of that might save my pack. I’d need to bite you, turn you—and I don’t even know if that would work. And we’d need to get married. All so you could fight for the happiness of people you haven’t even met yet.”
Case wet his lips. “And—and if I did all that—”
He wasn’t already saying no? Did she actually have some reason to hope?
“—what would happen after the fight was over?”
Lydia had barely let herself think that far ahead. Everything hinged on the fight itself. What happened after that might as well be a hundred years from now.
