Page 5

I’d been so determined to have a good time, and I had almost accomplished it.

I laughed, I drank, I danced, and I flirted with a cute guy.

Maybe I would have let him kiss me, but Ethan fucking Cain had to shove his nose where it didn’t belong.

If I were being charitable, I might have thought he was just being protective of his best friend’s little sister, but I wasn’t feeling charitable as I sat next to the dying bonfire, watching the celebration wind down.

The darkness had crept up on us all, with the dusk so long and the night slow to set in, but the sky was now pitch black, the only light coming from the low flames of the bonfire.

Orange tongues cast dancing shadows from the leaves and twigs lying on the scorched grass.

There was no rhythm to it, no music, but it was beautiful all the same.

When I was a child, I’d always wanted to stretch out a hand and try to catch the shadows cast by the flickering flames, but my father had always pulled me away.

I’d been convinced, then, that I could catch them if only I were allowed near enough.

With a wry smile, I reached forward, closing my fist around a jumping shadow, and for just a moment, I felt a sliver of something cool brush against my palm.

A twig snapped close by, and I jumped. Beneath the smoke of the bonfire, I could smell a familiar steel and leather scent, bristling as Ethan took a seat beside me. I couldn’t see him—he’d sat on my bad side—but perhaps that was for the best.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” he asked, too late.

“You’re already seated, so I think you’ve answered your own question.”

“Right.”

The night seemed even quieter after the hubbub of earlier; a few shifters were still hanging around by the food tables, but they were far enough away that the conversations were nothing more than a quiet murmur.

Ethan and I were the only ones near the fire, listening to the crack and pop of the logs.

Did he think it was dangerous for me to be over here on my own or something?

Was I too far away from the festivities, a prime target for the Arbor hunters and the bogeyman? Before I could ask, he spoke:

“I’m, uh—I’m sorry about earlier.”

That was absolutely not what I expected to hear, so much so that I wasn’t even certain I had heard it.

“You’re what?” I said, incredulous, and Ethan sighed.

“Don’t make me say it again,” he muttered. That was all I needed to confirm that I had heard him right the first time, but I couldn’t resist teasing him.

“No, you’re going to have to,” I said, grinning. “I could swear I only had a couple of beers, but—”

“Very funny. I said I’m sorry about earlier. I was out of line.”

This was the first apology I’d ever received from Ethan, and as much as I enjoyed it, I also had absolutely no idea how to respond. With Caleb, I would have just told him I loved him and punched him in the arm. That definitely wasn’t the way forward here.

“I wasn’t really gonna fuck him,” I blurted. “I just said that to piss you off.”

It was true. I might have been a little starved for male attention—between being the Alpha’s little sister and the Pack’s resident Bad Omen—but I wasn’t going to lose my virginity to some random Beta at a party, no matter how cute he was.

“I mean you can… You can do whatever you want,” Ethan replied, although it sounded as though the words physically pained him. I appreciated the effort.

“I know that,” I told him, gently, “but I’m glad you’ve caught up.”

He didn’t reply to that, but the quiet that grew between us this time was almost companionable.

Again, my attention turned to the fire, and it was easier to get swept up in the dance of the flames now that my anger had subsided.

For a couple of seconds, the flames flickered in something almost like a beat, the pattern of their movement reminding me of a song that I’d liked as a child.

I sang the tune in my head, imagining the flames dancing to its melody, the shadows they created dancing along with them.

I was so caught up in my imagination that for a moment I really saw it: the shadows dancing in time with the music in my head.

They elongated and contracted steady waltz—one two three, one two three—for a few beats, and then a few beats longer, and then I could really see it.

The shadows were dancing to my tune, utterly out of sync with the crackling fire whose light created them.

I shook my head, squeezing my eyes shut, blocking out the memory of music. I was just tired. I’d had a couple of beers. It had been a long, emotional day.

When I opened my eyes again, the world had changed entirely. It was fuzzy and indistinct, but it was far wider than I was used to, and I flinched as I saw something moving to the left: something on my blind side.

I immediately closed my good eye, narrowing my field of vision once again, but it didn’t disappear.

Instead of the three-dimensional, colorful world I was used to, there were only different shades of grey, different shadows shifting and moving in the darkness.

I could see the shadow cast by the large oak tree just a few yards away, along with the long shadows of the chairs and logs assembled around the edge of the bonfire.

Strangest of all, I could see Ethan beside me; his shape was slightly stretched but still recognizable.

My heart was in my throat, my stomach doing somersaults. I had to say something, to do something, to prove to myself this wasn’t all just a strange and cruel dream.

“Hey, Ethan?” I ventured.

“Yeah.”

This was a terrible idea. I wasn’t really going to tell Ethan I was seeing things that might not be there. Then again, I supposed if anyone was going to tell me to pull myself together, it would be him.

“I might be going crazy,” I continued, “but I think I can see you.”

“What do you mean?” I didn’t have to see Ethan’s frown to hear it in his voice, and I realized that he’d never known I couldn’t see him in the first place.

“You’re sitting on my blind side,” I explained, and I felt him tense beside me.

“Shit, I’ll move—”

“Don’t!” My arm shot out to stop him from rising, and he sank back slowly onto the log. I kept my head determinedly forward, refusing to turn my head the ninety degrees that would be required to see him out of my good eye.

“Alright, talk me through it,” Ethan said softly. “What do you see?”

Wow. Okay. He was taking me seriously.

“I can see—not you, not fully, but like… your shadow?” I tried to explain. How did you tell someone you could see their shadow just floating in space, not seemingly attached to anything? Ethan clearly didn’t quite understand either, because he prompted,

“Describe it to me.”

“I don’t know, it’s your shadow!” I said. “It’s you, but all flat and black. It’s stretching out behind you and like to the left? It’s long.”

For a while, Ethan said nothing. Then his shadow moved.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” he asked. There was a note of teasing in his voice, but I could clearly see the dark shape of his hand out of my blind eye.

“Dickhead. Three.”

The shadow shifted.

“And now?”

“Two.”

He didn’t move.

“And now?”

“Still two! Stop trying to trick me.”

The hand went down, and Ethan let out a long breath.

“Well, shit,” he said. “Have you ever—has this happened before?”

I shook my head.

“Never.”

There were so many thoughts racing through my head that I couldn’t catch one, couldn’t make sense of the absolute insanity that this night had become.

“What were you doing just now?” Ethan asked, breaking the wild spiral of my thoughts. “Before you saw me?”

Right. Start from the beginning. That was a good idea.

“I was just—I was looking at the fire and the shadows the flames made, and I thought… what if I could move them?” I told him.

When I turned to face him properly for the first time, he was looking at me intently, and I continued, “I wanted to make them dance—the shadows. I was thinking of this song, and I was imagining the shadows dancing to the tune.”

I’d thought he would laugh at the childishness of it all, but he only continued to stare at me, utterly concentrated.

“And how did that go?” he asked.

“I made them dance.”

“You made them dance?” he parroted.

“Yeah.”

There was silence again. His strong brows furrowed together, his mouth twisted, and my heart sank.

“You think I’m insane.”

“No, no, I’m just thinking.” Ethan stood suddenly, the unexpected movement making me jump. Raising his fist in the air as if giving a salute, and said,

“Make my shadow hold a finger up.”

“Don’t tease me, Ethan.”

“I’m being serious. Do it.”

Taking a deep breath, I closed my good eye again, plunging the world into shadow.

It was still a surprise to see anything at all, and Ethan’s shadow was clearly defined, his right arm held up in an L shape, his fist closed.

I concentrated on that closed fist, exploring it with my mind.

The longer I explored it, the more I could make out its real shape: I could feel the fingers where they were tucked into the palm, invisible but there.

I imagined one of the fingers coming to stand to attention. Nothing changed. Irritated, I tried again. Nothing.

“You can do it,” Ethan said, low and gentle. “Take a breath. Try again.”

I didn’t respond to him, but I did take a breath as he instructed, concentrating on the feeling of the air dropping in and out of my lungs. I made my mind completely blank and tranquil, and I reached for the hand again, lending my energy to the shadow of Ethan’s hand.

A single finger unfurled, reaching up like a sapling reaching toward the sun. Ethan’s shadow was now giving me a tenebrous middle-fingered salute.

“Am I doing it?” I asked, my heart jumping as I heard Ethan’s surprised snort of laughter.

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re doing it,” he confirmed. Then, incredulous: “Julia, that’s—that’s magic!”

“I know that, idiot,” I said, but I could scarcely believe it myself. My good eye flew open to see him staring at me as if I were something entirely new, something fantastic and wondrous.

“You can do magic,” he said, and maybe it hadn’t sunk in the first time because this time the words sent sparks flying through my veins. I gasped as I sprang up from my seat, covering my mouth to stop the hysterical giggle that emerged.

“I can do magic!” My voice trembled with excitement, every limb thrumming with energy so intense that I couldn’t stop myself from throwing my arms around Ethan’s neck, utterly jubilant.

To my surprise, he responded immediately, wrapping his arms around my waist and lifting me into the air, twirling me around once, twice, three times before he set me back on the ground.

Dizzy and grinning, my arms fell away from his neck, fingers tracing the bare skin of his arms, and the world stopped.

The feeling in my belly was insistent, a tug that refused to be ignored, and I’d heard about the pull of a mating bond before, but this couldn’t be it.

This didn’t make sense. Mating bonds formed the first time a male and female touched after they’d both reached Shifting Age.

Ethan and I had touched in a hundred small ways since my wolf first took my skin when I was fifteen.

It couldn’t be the bond, and yet it was.

I’d never been more certain of anything in my life.

My hands fisted in the material of his shirt, and I risked looking up to meet his gaze. The joy and amazement in his eyes were gone, replaced with a hunger that sent heat rushing between my thighs. His hands on my waist gripped me tight, not letting up even as he growled,

“You should get inside. Get some rest.”

I didn’t want to get some rest. I couldn’t sleep if I tried.

Somewhere in the back of my head, a part of me was insisting that I listen to him; I wasn’t going to let Ethan Cain fuck me in a field.

That was ridiculous. The other part, though—the louder part—was insisting I do exactly that.

I’d never known a need so intense, and I was going to get what I needed.

“I don’t want to go inside,” I breathed, tugging at his shirt. I needed him closer. Needed his scent all over me.

“Julia—” he started, his voice rough and desperate, his hands glued to my waist as if he didn’t trust himself to move them.

“Don’t think about it too hard,” I said, and then I kissed him.

It felt like I had released him from his leash.

Crushing me against the hard muscle of his torso, Ethan kissed me like a starving man, and I could do nothing but allow myself to be consumed.

In a matter of minutes, he walked me backward, away from the fire and into the darkness.

No one was paying attention; no one would care.

It was the Solstice, and we probably weren’t the only couple enjoying the balmy evening.

I gasped as my dress was lifted, and Ethan pulled away from my mouth to say,

“Tell me to stop.”

I didn’t reply. I kissed him again.