Not clean. Not gentle.
His hands stop. His eyes find mine.
Not fully back. But cracking through. The vacancy that was there at the south fence gone, something underneath it pushing to the surface.
I don't ease. Don't soften. Don't give him room to misread it.
"Stay," I say.
He stills.
Breathing hard under me.
And this time he sees me.
Chapter seventeen
Alex
The horror hits him before I can move.
I feel it through the bond — not my horror, his. The recognition landing all at once, what he's done, what he almost did, Dalton on the ground and his own hands the reason. He looks at them. Then at me. Then at Dalton behind me pushing himself upright.
His face breaks.
He fully shifts.
Not slow — an instant, the wolf taking him between one breath and the next, massive and dark and already turning. He hits the treeline before anyone can move.
I'm on my feet.
"Keep everyone back," I say to Dalton. "Everyone. Nobody follows."
Dalton looks at me. Blood at his collar, jaw set, eyes still fully shifted. "Alex—"
"Nobody follows," I say.
He holds my gaze for one beat. Nods.
I shift and go after him.
***
The forest is different as a wolf.
Not different — more. Every sense sharpened past what I have in human form, the cold air carrying information in layers, the ground telling me things through my paws. RJ's trail is everywhere — scent and displaced snow and the deep gouges of a massive wolf running at full speed through undergrowth that didn't slow him at all.
I run.
He's faster. Bigger. He's been feral longer and his wolf knows this terrain the way mine doesn't yet. But the bond is a wire between us and I don't need his tracks — I need the pull, and the pull doesn't lie.
I find him in a clearing a mile into the trees.
He's in wolf form, massive and dark, pacing the far edge. He feels me arrive and goes still. His head turns. The yellow of his eyes catches the light between the branches.
I shift back.
The cold hits immediately and the winter air and the snow brilliant and white. I don't move toward him. I stand at the edge of the clearing and let him look.
