RHYSHer lips had scrambled my mind in the elevator. Her scent, her touch. My body was on fire, straining to sate the appetite she had stroked back to life. I was still rock hard and moments from giving in to this feeling I hadn’t had in six years. I didn’t even care if we made it to my apartment. But when I followed her down the hallway, everything inside me numbed. Completely froze up.What the fuck was going on?The urge to give Rae what she wanted died the second I saw her stop at her apartment. Did she live there?Of course, she lived there. Her scent followed me everywhere in this building; that should have been my first clue instead of believing I was losing my shit again. Fate hated me so much that it put the woman who’d almost killed me right across the hall. My beast howled, his pleasure at the turn of events reverberating through every cell in my body. No. No, this was insane! How could I live anywhere near this woman?Rae was trembling as she searched for her key; I cou
SIX YEARS AGO RHYS The forest had more to hunt than the last town a pack had chased me out of. It was too soon to tell if the local pack would allow me to live on the outskirts of their territory. It shouldn’t have been an issue. I was on neutral ground and didn’t bother anyone. I’d been through territories with plenty of other rogue wolves living near them. But they always took one look at me and declared I would cause problems with their Alpha. Never mind that I had only just hit twenty-one and barely come into my strength. Rogue Alphas were never really accepted anywhere. Being packless and sane was a testament to how strong we were. But there were others just like me in the forest. I'd respected their boundaries, but I could sense them. It gave me hope that I'd finally found my place. I caught a scent to my left and crouched lower behind the shrubs. A doe appeared in the clearing and sniffed the air. She could sense the danger but wouldn’t catch my scent—a handy gift from my
SIX YEARS AGO RHYS The woman’s laugh echoed around us. I sat back on my heels, reeling my head back in case she was contagious. Her body still shook with what I imagine was shock, but she threw her head back and laughed louder. “That was insane!” she laughed. The voice. Fuck me. “What the hell was that thing?” she asked. She met my gaze with the most beautiful coloured eyes I had ever seen. She stole my breath. One second, I’d been thinking how crazy she was; the next, I was hit by lightning. In the dying light, her eyes almost looked gold, like Ares’. They sparkled with a hint of excitement even after what she had gone through. And there was something more. Something terrifying. I thought I was the scariest thing in the forest, but this woman... There was danger coming out of every pore. “You shouldn’t be out here this late,” I growled. “Who are you? The Lake patrol?” the woman snorted, and she giggled again. Wet strands of her hair fell across her face. Most she-wolves p
RAESon of a—I knew where I was before I even opened my eyes. The cool breeze on my skin and the hard, cold ground under my body woke me up. I felt grimier than usual, all sticky and wet. I didn’t want to imagine what I could have fallen into while sleepwalking. There were a lot of rubbish heaps between my apartment and the park.I took a second to appreciate that I was finally over that nasty hangover before slowly opening my eyes and looking up at the starry sky. Maybe I was supposed to die here. Something in my subconscious led me here several nights every month because I was meant to be mauled by wolves or whatever that thing was.Not for the first time, I wondered if I should have died in the accident. I had cheated death, so it had finally come back for me. No one else had this much bad luck.I sighed and pushed myself to sit and look around. This wasn’t my usual path. Everything was dark and blurry, but I could tell there were more trees around me than usual. The moon was no l
RHYSRae’s screams had wrecked me. The wolf’s threat was still fresh in my mind, but it wasn’t the beast's emotions that made my heart pound like that. The scent of her fear in the air had twisted everything inside me until all I wanted to do was hunt those rabid rogues.Two of them. How were there two of them?And their desire to rip Rae apart still hung in the air as much as their putrid scent. I wanted to hunt them and finish the job, but I couldn’t shake off what her fear was doing to me. And I couldn’t take my eyes off the blood all over her body. Human blood. Still fresh. Someone was dead in these woods. Rae’s teeth clattered, and her body shook just as much. Her heart was going too fast, her breathing was harsh, and her eyes were unfocused. She was in shock. The sound of humans talking as they walked towards the park spurred me into action. I took off my jacket and wrapped it around Rae. One final look into the park told me the rabid wolves were already near the exit in the
RAEI watched the blood swirl down the drain until the water ran clear. A part of me had hoped that my body had been cut up and it was my blood that had covered me. But there wasn’t a single cut on my body. Not even on my feet.The water turned cold before I finally pulled myself back together and finished showering. My mind was going a mile a minute. Had I fallen into a puddle of blood? That seemed unlikely. Maybe I had disturbed those things that had chased me while they had been killing someone. Again, that seemed impossible. I would have become a victim, too.Fear hadn’t left me the entire time. I should have gone to the police. I needed them to lock me up if I had done something wrong. Perhaps then I would stop sleepwalking. Perhaps my mind would stop unravelling. I looked outside my window for the millionth time before I flopped onto my couch again. It was closer to noon, but the stranger hadn’t returned as he’d promised. Rhys.It was a firm name for a strong man. I vaguely r
RAE I tried to roll over, but the weight of someone’s arm and leg over me stopped my movement. A smile stretched my lips even before I opened my eyes. Vickie was like a cuddly octopus in her sleep. It felt good to wake up in my bed. I was over the hump for another month. That was the pattern in the last few months. For several days every month, I feared waking up somewhere I shouldn’t be. Then everything was fine again. I opened my eyes and turned to face her. The desire to murder her disappeared once the food had arrived. Her lust for Rhys had turned into pleasure at the mountain of food we had to devour. And then that was replaced by her total concentration on her books when we studied. I loved Vickie’s mind. I loved watching her work. She had a love for knowledge that nothing else could surpass, not even the ‘hunky’ neighbour. My smile disappeared when I remembered I still had to sneak off and talk to Rhys. I couldn’t do it while Vickie was there because she’d asked me several
RHYSIt was my fault. I’d been so busy trying to figure out why that girl’s scent was familiar that I’d forgotten about the unwanted bond flaring back to life between us. If my stupid wolf was caught up in it, Rae’s wolf would be the same, whether we wanted it or not. Her jealousy had knocked some sense into me.And her murderous rage had kept me up all night. I could feel it even with the walls between us. We were in the middle of the city with humans all around us. It was the wrong place to rampage. I’d been anxious all night while the monster inside me waited eagerly for the show.The fact that Rae hadn’t kicked that girl out was insane. Why would she risk killing a human after what she had just done? But then again, she’d always been insane. How the hell had she lasted so long without exposing herself? They would kill her before I had the chance to redeem myself.Or maybe she had already exposed herself several times in the last six years. Nothing I had seen so far suggested that