He nodded.
“I know you didn’t expect this. Forgive me. I’m not a wolf all the time. I’m a Lykan—a kind of Monstrum.”
“A Monstrum! But I’ve been working with them for ages now—how come I never heard of you?”
He shook his head.
“I stowed away on the Mother Ship when our universe went up in flames, consumed by the Darklings. I…” He shook his head again, his expression tightening with pain. “Forgive me. It’s…so hard to talk about.”
“No, that’s all right—of course it’s hard. I mean, you lost your whole world.”
Kiera pushed herself slowly to her feet, never taking her eyes off him.
He was still standing there as though waiting for her judgment, the stun rifle hanging forgotten in one hand. Up close, she could see details she hadn’t noticed at first—the way the fur on his chest thickened slightly over his pectorals…the powerful ridges of muscle in his arms and his flat stomach…the strange, beautiful contrast between his very human mouth and those faintly wild, lupine angles to the rest of his face.
He looked both alien and male in a way that made her skin feel too tight all of a sudden. And to think, she’d been sleeping with him every night for over a week. Even worse, she’d been allowing him to watch her with the pleasure blooms in the bath!
Just the thought made her cheeks get hot, but she tried to push the embarrassment away. After all, how could she know that her rescue wolf was actually a seven—foot—tall muscular Monstrum warrior? Still…the way he’d watched the pleasure blooms fucking her…
Stop it, she scolded herself silently. You almost got killed five minutes ago. Shouldn’t that be your main focus?
But she couldn’t quite stop staring. And apparently, he noticed.
A faint flush darkened the tops of his cheekbones, and he shifted his weight slightly, as though suddenly aware of his own nakedness. Which honestly, if Kiera hadn’t been so stunned, would have been almost funny considering all the times she had been naked in front of him.
“I don’t understand,” she said at last, dragging her gaze back to his face with some effort. “So you were pretending to be a wolf all this time?”
He shook his head at once.
“Not pretending—I was stuck in my primal form—my animal form. I tried and tried to change—to shift. But I couldn’t do it until I saw that beast coming for you.”
As he said it, his eyes shifted—just for a moment—from electric blue to blood red. He turned to look at the fallen Vorn, which was still breathing in deep, stunned gusts where it lay sprawled in the grass.
“It almost killed you—I should finish it off,” he said, and his voice had dropped to a low, menacing growl of pure fury.
“No, no,” Kiera said quickly. “It’s not the Vorn’s fault—Higgs is the one who set him loose. Who set all the animals loose this morning.”
Buck frowned and his eyes flashed red again.
“Higgs—is that the name of the stinking male who tried to attack you?”
Kiera almost laughed at his description.
“Yup, that’s him. Old Higgs isn’t going to win any prizes for personal hygiene anytime soon.” She took a breath and tried to steady herself. “Come on.” She held out a hand to him. “Let’s go get the large animal mover so we can get the Vorn back in his area and then we can talk.”
“No need to get equipment.”
He lifted his head and straightened his shoulders and Kiera’s breath caught in her throat.
He really was enormous.
She had known Buck was huge, obviously—he had been the size of a small horse in wolf form—but seeing him standing upright was something else entirely. He had to be a full seven feet tall, maybe a little more, and all of that height was thick and solid with hard, functional muscle. Not pretty—boy gym muscle either–real strength. The kind that came from being made to fight and run and survive.
For one wild second, Kiera had the completely ridiculous thought that if Jerome had ever stood next to him, her ex—fiancé would have looked like a decorative throw pillow.
Before she could say anything else, Buck placed the stun—gun in the grass, went to the stunned Vorn, bent, and gripped it by the back hooves.
Then he started dragging it.
