Shift Into Me (Werewolf Shifter Romance) (The Alpha's Kiss) (7 page)

Never exactly seen anyone react to a cell phone like they were Dracula having a lump of garlic stuck in his face
.

“Of course, sure,” I said. “Doesn’t get reception down here anyway.”

At first, I was hopeful. There were a handful of murders reported through the years that reminded me of what Damon described. Bodies discovered chained up and all that. But all the bodies were reported as normal, which unless the police reports were simply lies, couldn’t be werewolves.

Box after box of newspapers, loose files, torn up letters and everything else that I could go through shed very little light on much of anything. About the only useful information there was to get is that the town of Scagg’s Valley seemed to have a horrible desert drifter problem. The almost-homeless people who lived outside town got approximately one hundred percent of the blame for those old murders.

It reminded me of people just blaming “gypsies” for whatever bad things happened. None of it made sense, but there also were so many more boxes to go through that I knew I’d never manage in a day.

With noon looming, I remembered that Hunter needed his car soon, and gathered my things to take off.

Just as I opened the door, I heard a creaking chair and a hiss.

“Ma’am?” It was Carrell, and he was behind me a lot closer and quicker than he should have been. Suddenly I remembered the weird brain feelings he gave me, particularly when my skin started crawling as he put his fingers on my shoulder. “Will you be coming back to use the materials? Or may I,” he swallowed, and then licked his lips before continuing. “Shelve them?”

The way his voice tilted up at the end of his words was for some reason very unsettling, and I got the distinct feeling that I’d known him or met him before, though I knew that was impossible.

“N... no,” I said. “Not today anyhow.” I shifted a little and his hand fell off my shoulder.

Sometimes it’s the little blessings.

“I see. Well fine. That’s just fine. Tomorrow? From the amount of things you have on your list for me to pull, it’ll take quite some time to go through it all. I’d hate for you to leave unsatisfied in your research.”

I don’t know why, but I needed out
then
.

“Oh my God! Look at the time,” I said. “I’m late to meeting someone. You’ll have to excuse me.”

I don’t think I’ve ever left a place faster, or with more burning need to get the hell away from someone.

Out in the parking lot, I could finally breathe.

One heavy, deep inhale later, I found myself shaking, almost uncontrollably, as I slid into the car. When I was in and the door was locked, something really damn weird seemed to take hold of me.

I gripped the steering wheel so tight with one hand my fingers started to ache, and when I tried to get the keys out of my purse, my hand trembled so hard that I dropped them twice before getting them anywhere near the ignition.

It was like the air was getting crushed out of my chest. My lungs constricted, my heart pounded, and it was all I could do to get the car in gear and start out of the parking lot.

Almost the instant I began to get further from the courthouse, the tension inside me began to release, little by little, until it completely relaxed when I left the cramped little parking lot and pulled onto the road that led to Hunter’s house.

Instinctively I grabbed my phone and immediately wished that Damon was a reasonable human being with a cell phone. Hunter would have to do.

He answered on the third ring. “Hey, you on the way back?” he asked.

“Yeah sorry, I got held up by the weird guy who works the archive desk at the courthouse. Is Damon okay?”

Just saying his name made me feel a little better.

Damon. Damon. Damon.

Repeating it in my mind brought me a weird sense of zen.

“Oh yeah he’s fine,” Hunter said. “He got up and ate some sausage. He’s back asleep now though. And I was right.”

“About?”

“About you and Damon. That boy’s absolutely screwed up over you.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “You have no idea how good it is to hear that,” I said.

I took a deep breath, held it in, and shook as it left my lungs. “Okay, just wanted to let you know I hadn’t forgotten. I’ll be there soon. Oh, Hunter?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you tell Damon that... uh, if he wakes up before I get there, anyway...”

“Yeah, I think he’s kinda rumbling around in there.”

“Tell him I love him.”

“Will do. See ya soon.”

The line went dead.

By then I’d almost completely forgotten the horror of only a few seconds before. Thinking about Damon made me feel better, but saying his name out loud made everything feel just right.

––––––––

T
he voices called again.

Just like before, in the darkest hours of the night, the wolves cried out for Damon.

When he opened his eyes, there was no need for them to adjust. Instantly, he focused and his senses came to life. He thought he could almost
smell
the moonlight, somehow.

Pushing up on an elbow, Damon kissed Lily’s neck right above her collarbones as her chest rose, then fell, with peaceful sleep. “Stay safe,” he said. “I’ll be back before you know I’m gone. I promise this time.”

Everything went smoother this time. Sliding out of his pajama pants and old Guns N’ Roses t-shirt that had long since faded, he stood in the window for a moment, the moonlight glinting off his naked body. As he stared, a slow drizzle came from the sky, wetting the badly paved road outside Hunter’s house.

Low and fat and orange on the horizon, the moon seemed to light a path right in front of him. A shimmering street ran between the disc in the sky and his window. He threw one more glance back to Lily and drank in her purity, her beauty. She was breathtaking in the pale light that danced across her face as he moved back and forth in the shadow.

He wanted to return to her, to ignore the wolves. Damon wanted to abandon everything and just stay with her – be with her – and nothing else, from then until eternity claimed him took him home.

But he knew that couldn’t happen. Abandoning the pack wasn’t a choice Damon had. If he abandoned his duty, what would that say to Lily? She needed his strength. He needed hers.

He couldn’t abandon his duties, his responsibilities, not even for a night.

The wolves howled again, their ghostly voices stirring Damon’s wolf soul. He felt himself changing before he was outside. There was no thought to it, no conscious effort. One moment he was human, standing in the window, admiring Lily, and the next he was out, paws thumping across the ground

Running, ever running, on and on, always in one direction, to wherever the voices came from, he went. When Damon reached the edge of the scrub woods, something pulled his attention back.

He had to take one more look toward the house, which was already disappearing into the night; one last look back to where his beloved Lily lay, perfect and sweet and safe.

And then the voices reached him again.

Damon, finally, threw back his head and answered.

*

D
amon didn’t notice the first wolf before it crashed into his side, a tidal wave of teeth and claws and sheer force. He gasped, fell to a side and skidded through a short, thorny bush before flipping back onto his feet.

He snarled. “Who’s there? Answer!”

The end of a tail disappear into the night.

Circling slowly, eyes sweeping from left to right, Damon squared himself, and spread his feet wide, waiting for the next blow.

“Show yourself!” he shouted into the dark. “Whoever you are, come out!”

The voice he heard blasting out of his chest didn’t seem like his own. It seemed distant, strong, and a whole lot fiercer than he felt. Inside, he was trembling, but as he scratched his claw on the ground and crushed the bush that had broken his slide a moment before, Damon steeled himself.

From the edges of his perception, one pair of pale, golden eyes appeared, followed by elongated jaws, and then sloped, hunched shoulders on top of a massive body. What he saw was no wolf, but instead a savage beast halfway between man and wolf.

“Who are you?” Damon demanded again.

“Someone who doesn’t believe you’re ready for the responsibility you’ve been given.” The huge wolfman scraped his claws across his chest, leaving a bloody mark that gleamed in the moon’s silver light. “I want to make sure the Skarachee are not in the hands of a cub.”

“I’m no boy,” Damon said. He crouched, visualizing his legs expanding, stretching into muscular pillars like those that stood in front of him.

A moment later, his bones wrenched, his muscles tore, and the Alpha stood upright, unleashing a roar that shook the whole earth. He scraped his foot backwards on the hard-scrabble dirt, waiting to drive forward.

But then, from his left and from his right, more eyes emerged. Wolves crept into his vision, then stood and changed into forms just like he and his aggressor shared. Damon could hardly make out any difference between the three, except that they were all slightly different in size.

“You’ve been gone too long, boy,” one of the new ones said. “You don’t know what this world is. You grew up outside it, outside us. How can the Skarachee Alpha not even be a proper Skarachee?” The voice was familiar, but only vaguely so.

“You,” Damon growled. “Who are you? Who are you to say I’m no Skarachee?”

The creature shook with laughter. “You don’t know me. If you’d not been hidden from us all your life, you would... but...”

“The old man,” he growled in recognition. “From the other day.”

“So he
does
remember. I thought you were so taken with your mate that you were dumbfounded.”

“What is this about?” Damon asked again.

“We’re going to make sure you’re ready.” The voice that spoke that time was unfamiliar, but Damon was sure it was another from the ice cream parlor that had seen him and Lily when they first arrived.

The three drew closer. The one with the mark on his chest squeezed his fists. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said. “I love you like a brother. I just want to make sure you’re not in over your head.”

Damon almost fell backwards when
that
voice hit his ears. “Hunter?” he said, unable to believe what he heard. “Why are you...?”

“I don’t like it,” the beast, Hunter, replied. “I didn’t want to do this but... but they convinced me. And they’re right. You were gone for so long, so far away from anything that we are.”

“I was with the elder,” Damon said. “The oldest of all Skarachee Alphas chose me. And I had to go. I had to go be with him, and I had to go claim my mate.”

The mention of Lily got the eldest of the three attackers excited. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Your mate. You care more for her than you do your pack. If you don’t have a strong heart, if you don’t have the stomach for combat, you’ll never be my Alpha.”

“Nor mine,” the second voice joined in. “Unless you prove yourself.”

Damon tensed.

Hunter shrugged then charged.

In the instant before his friend slammed into him like an out of control Volvo, Damon saw that in a ring around the four combatants, eyes of every color glimmered in the darkness. Some were yellow, some pale red, some green, some gold, but the one thing they had in common was that they were all glowing softly. Patiently watching, none of them moved.

The split second between Hunter’s feet leaving the ground and the impact against Damon’s chest felt like it stretched into minutes, but then the entire world went savage red first with impact and then with pain.

Shooting through his chest, Damon felt the blow rattle him to the core, but he didn’t fall. Curling his toes into immobile fists, he dug in, refusing to give any ground.

“Well,” Hunter grunted as he and Damon tied up in a wrestler’s clash to gain leverage, “you’re strong as shit. You got that going for you.”

Their faces inches apart, Damon groaned with effort, driving his knee up underneath Hunter’s ribcage. Hunter recoiled slightly and grimaced in satisfied pain.

Without even realizing it, Damon twisted himself to the left, just barely avoiding a punch he never saw coming. One of the wolfmen – he didn’t know which – swung wildly and let out a deep grunt when the second blow sailed wide too.

The next one that came from the right met its mark.

A fist, or an elbow, or something else, crunched against the side of his head, sending Damon’s vision wobbling and lurching as he fought to keep his balance. If it weren’t for the hand he had locked on Hunter’s forearm, he would have fallen.

Another blow caught him in the stomach, but with the sharp, lurching pain creeping down his neck from the first one, he hardly noticed. A claw raked down his back, finally forcing him to release the deathgrip he had on Hunter’s shoulder and elbow.

The slick burning of his skin healing itself quickly followed, but even if the wound closed, the pain still bit deep. Damon fell to one knee.

“Left,”
a voice that was felt more than it was heard, urged him.
“Now.”

Damon ignored it, and a round, awful pain blasted through his ribs. “Too... much,” he groaned, as he covered his head with his arms, deflecting a punch just in time. “Can’t... see...”

Blood ran from an unfelt wound down into his eye, momentarily blinding Damon. When he wiped it away, another fist caught him in the chest and forced the air out of his lungs in a whoosh.

“How can I... I can’t fight, I can’t...”

Wildly, Damon thrashed out with a fist, and then with another. The first one caught one of his attackers solidly on the side of the face. Whichever one of them it was yelped in surprise, but wasn’t distracted for more than a second before pummeling Damon with another flurry of blows.

“Left. Now.”
The voice, again, commanded him, but Damon reacted an instant too slow. He moved, but not in time to avoid a knee that caught him square in the ribs. Damon grunted and extended an arm just in time to grab whoever it was that kneed him.