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CHAPTER TWELVE

emma

O livia glanced at Logan, but he quirked his eyebrow, and she added nothing else.

I gasped. More of the memories hit me, more clearly than they had all night.

“I didn't know what to do about the mountain lion. He attacked me, and I couldn’t get to my mace. My stick didn’t do any good.

I was terrified.” My gaze jumped to Logan's, and I pointed at him. “You were… you were… you were…” I cleared my throat, trying to sort everything out. “You were there, waiting, watching me. What were you waiting for? Why didn’t you help me?”

“You didn’t want help,” Olivia interjected. “From the naked-ass man, remember?”

I said nothing.

“You didn’t need me.” Logan gave me a long look, his lips pressed into a tight line.

“But why were you naked out there?”

He sighed. “You muttered about that a lot while you were 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 he didn’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 seeing me 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 this my way.”

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 so considering 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?”

“You shifted .” 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?” Logan asked.

“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.”

Olivia took a step toward me with her hands held up as if in surrender. “I didn't see it, so I don't know how much I believe, but Logan said you shifted. Twice.”

“Shifted?” They kept using that term as though I didn’t know what it meant. “What? From side to side?”

Olivia snickered. “Yeah, that’s what all this is about.”

“No, it means you changed from you into something else,” Logan interjected. “Do you remember?”

I gasped again and dropped to my knees as it all came crashing in. It hadn’t been a drugged-up dream. The mountain lion came first, and then I…

“A bear?”

Logan didn't move. He let me rest there on my knees for a long moment. “And something else.”

I climbed to my feet and eased down on the edge of the queen-sized mattress. “Fox? Did I turn into a fox? I remember running away and then… and then… falling down. Like I tripped on my own legs. ”

Olivia gave me a half-smile. “You've never run on four legs before. That's why you didn't know how. Once the danger had passed, you realized how absurd everything that had just happened to you was, and you became you again.”

“What?” None of it made sense.

“You started overthinking your instinct, and you tripped yourself,” Logan added. “Then you changed back into a human.”

Wait…

I groaned as I recalled the clothes all over the ground under my paws, and I wanted to hear him say what I suspected was true. “So, did you see me naked?”

Logan shrugged, but his eyes snapped with a lusty twinkle. “After you shifted. Maybe a little.”

For a long time, I studied the walls, my feet, everything else but the two people in my room.

“It’s unreal. Metamorphosis doesn’t happen,” I said, finally.

“Well, it’s why we brought you here. We’re all shifters. Even the guard at the door. That links us and makes us responsible for one another,” Olivia said, her tone kinder than it had been since she’d stomped into the room.

Logan took a deep breath. “There's something important I have to tell you. It’s about a prophecy…”

“I don’t think I can handle any more big news today, Logan.” My stomach clenched in on itself and growled. “Food needs to happen.”

“This is the last big thing. ”

I’d lost my damn mind, entertaining these fools. That was the only answer.

“No, I can’t handle any more big news today,” I repeated, refusing what they were telling me. My voice rose an octave with each syllable. Panic clenched my heart, and my stomach rolled. I was upset, but I was famished, starving, hungrier than I’d ever been in my life. “I need to get out here.”

Logan gave me a knowing smile when my stomach growled again. “You're hungry. It always happens that way after the first shift. You shift, you pass out, and then when you wake up, you could eat a whole buffet by yourself.”

Olivia jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Take a sniff. There's food downstairs. Loads of it on the dining room table. All for you.”

“So, I can leave?” I asked.

Logan shook his head. “Not yet. You're not safe to drive yet, but when you’re ready, your keys are on my desk in my study.” He pulled a phone from his pocket and held it out to me. “But you can let your mom know you're okay. She's called a few times.”

For the third time, I gasped. Mom! She had to be so worried. I hadn’t checked in when the sun came up or when I should have gotten home. I didn't think I'd sent her a picture of the stars.

No, that wasn’t true. She’d noticed the eyes in the photo of the tree shadows.

I opened the text message app, relieved to see it was only eight in the morning on Sunday. I’d only been out for several hours.

Me: Mom, I'm fine. Slept a little late.

Mom: Oh thank God. I was about to call the cavalry.

Me: A little premature, don't you think?

Mom: Never too early to come to the rescue.

Me: You could have gone camping with me.

Mom: Next time. Let me know when you’re back in Willow Creek.

Me: Will do. Love you.

Mom: Love you too.

At least I wasn't talking to her on the phone. If I had been speaking to her, she would have known something was wrong. She knew me better than I knew myself sometimes.

At this rate, it wasn’t like I knew when I’d make it back to Willow Creek. Logan acted like I could leave once my head was cleared, but would they let me go?

I held out my phone. “I assume you want this back.”

Logan waved it off. “No, it’s yours. Keep it.”

My stomach growled again, and it felt like my stomach was eating itself from the inside out. “You said there's food downstairs?”

Olivia offered her arm as though I was supposed to walk out of the room with her, like her bestie. I gave her a nasty look, and she dropped her arm. “Fine. Suit yourself, but the stairs might be a bitch since some lingering dizziness happens after the first time you shift.”

“I’ll use the banister. When I feel like it.”

“You can come or not. I don't give a flock. I’m going down to eat my weight in bacon.” She turned to Logan.

“Why you ever brought her here, I'll never know.” Her gaze dropped to his crotch. “Actually, scratch that. I do know, and boy, can you fucking pick ‘em. See you two downstairs. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” She leered so hard I recoiled, but she finally left.

Logan stood and crossed to where I sat on the edge of the bed. “Listen, you have no reason to trust me, none, but I'd like you to try. Your mom knows you're safe, and I have no interest in hurting you, but you need to learn what to do with your shifting ability.”

“Will you let me leave?”

“As soon as I think you can drive, you can leave.” And then he smiled. Not a leering one or a flirty one. Just him being friendly and inviting.

I made a sour face at him. “You shouldn’t be grinning at me like that after kidnapping me.”

He shrugged and wiped the happiness off his face. “Whatever you say. You’re the boss.”

What did I have to lose? I knew who Logan was, and he hadn’t been aggressive toward me since the passenger seat of his truck. I had my phone in my hand, I could share my pinned location with anybody and everybody right now, and I was famished and likely unfit to drive.

He gestured toward the door, waving me ahead of him. “If you stay, I’ll help you figure out how to harness your powers.”

Carefully, I stood, grabbing at the bedpost to gain my balance before taking a step forward. “I’m not sure I believe you about all that, but I’d like to have a tour of the grounds.”

“Sure, when your legs are steady. In the meantime, I’ll introduce you to some of the shifters in our pack, and you can watch them change. Olivia’s invited a few of our members to breakfast, so there’s plenty of food downstairs.”

“I’ll stay long enough to eat, and then I have to get back to my life in Willow Creek.”

I had worked hard for that life, and I wasn’t willing to give it up on the whim of curiosity. I moved over the threshold and out into the hallway, noticing again how the floor creaked. At least my risk-taking self was back.

“What did Olivia mean by calling you the alpha?” I asked.

Logan’s mouth twisted into a wolfish smile as he joined me in the hallway, and his gaze traveled up and down the length of me, sending excitement tripping through my bones. “Oh, you’ll see,” he said, “but I promise you, Emma Carter. Your life will never be the same.”