Page 25

“But why were younakedout there?”

He sighed. “You muttered about that a lot while youwere unconscious. If you’re going to be one of us, you’re going to have to get over that, you know. Naked is a way of life out here.”

“I’m not naked now,” I said, pointing at the clothes I couldn’t recall putting on.

“Because I dressed you,” Olivia interjected.

My cheeks flamed. Get over noticing when people were naked?Fat chance. She dressed me while hedidn’t?

I climbed to my feet to cover my embarrassment over being dressed by another adult while my two-faced feelings warred with each other, one side more disappointed he hadn’t seen me naked and the other part of me wanted to scratch out her eyes for seeingme naked.

“You shouldn’t have been out there,” the woman began, “risking yourself like that. We can’t let anything happen to you.”

“I will be wherever I damn well please,” I snapped. “If you think I’m going to listen to either of you, you can fuck off.”

She took a step toward me, waving toward Logan. “You will not take that tone with the alpha.”

My lips curled upward, and I leaned forward. “Back off, bitch.”

Logan held up his hands before the blonde could say anything else. “Quiet, Olivia. Let me do thismyway.”

A shiver ran through me as he growled the last. Something about Logan rubbed every inch of me the right way, and it was only marginally less dangerous here than it had been back in Vixen’s. Maybe more soconsidering there was a bed right out in the open, right next to me. My face flushed. What was I thinking?

Olivia ducked her head and took a step backward.

Then Logan turned to me. “Something happened to you out there in the woods. Do you recall what it was?”

“I got attacked by a mountain lion. And then I woke up here.”

Logan shook his head, and he took a seat in an upholstered chair in the corner of the room. “No, that's not all that happened. You shifted.”

“Yeah, shifted my opinion of you,” I yelled, my voice raspy and shaky. “I wouldn’t have sex with you if you were the last man on earth, so whatever you thought you were going to get by bringing me here, you’re not.”

Even as the sentence left my mouth, I knew there wasn’t an ounce of truth in them. Logan’s pull was magnetic.

With a grunt, he scrubbed his hand over his face. “That’s not what this is about.”

“Then what?”

“Youshifted.” He emphasized the word as though it meant something I wasn’t getting.

“Where's my car?” I asked abruptly.

“I used it to bring you back here. I carried you, placed you in the back, and loaded all your things into the back seat.” He winked at me, and I startled as though he’d pinched me. “I also cleaned up your campsite.”

“Thank you,” I said, out of some mother-taught Southern reflex.

“Do you camp out here often?” Loganasked.

“I don't see how that's any of your business.”

He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees. His expression turned thoughtful, and his blue eyes darkened until they radiated in intensity. “Emma, listen to me. Something happened to you out there. You were attacked by a mountain lion, and then what happened? Think about it carefully, slowly, action by action.”

I frowned, staring down at my own bare feet. “What are you talking about? I'm me.”

Nothing else. I couldn’t be anything else. Only human me.

“And something else,” he said. “Now think.”