Page 36 of The Alpha Dire Wolf (Bloodlines & Bloodbonds #1)

Lincoln

“I am a wolf shifter.”

The shock on her face had to mirror my own.

It was the first time I’d ever revealed my secret in such plain language to anyone not from my world.

The biggest and sometimes darkest secret I’d ever possessed, my true nature, and with Vee, I had spilled the beans as easily as if she’d asked how I slept the night before.

It was almost too easy.

Pulling back internally while her face appeared to work through shock, I searched myself for any foreign interference, any signs that I was coerced into telling her. Nothing seemed out of order, no traces of magic in my mind, but then again, would she leave any?

I tested the air. Magic always came with a scent. You could smell it, if you knew what to look for.

“Do I stink to you?”

The question startled me back to reality. “Pardon me?”

“You’re smelling the air, like you think I just passed gas but don’t want to say the words out loud,” Sylvie said.

“Oh. Umm …” I shook my head. “Sorry, no, that’s not it.”

“What do you smell then?”

I sniffed again, nostrils opened wide. The air flowed in and …

“Nothing,” I said, smiling. “Nothing at all.”

“Are all wolf shifters this weird?” she asked, leaning back into her chair while projecting an air of casual comfort.

“No,” I said, wondering if she knew I could see through her facade. While I didn’t smell magic, I did smell something else. Fear sweat had a distinct, acrid odor that was unmistakable. Sylvie was terrified.

There’s no way this is a powerful witch. The acting is too top notch. No witch is that good at it, especially not one who is rumored to be as powerful as Sylvie could be. She has no idea who she is. She’s just scared of what she’s uncovered.

I had to hide a wince at that. The elders were going to have a meltdown when they learned of everything that just happened here.

They would have many questions on why I hadn’t just let the tree-thing get her and then destroyed it.

Let the Chained minions do the dirty work for us, they would say, all the while totally missing the point.

If she was evil and in league with the Chained, why was it manifesting its very limited powers to try to kill her?

That wasn’t even all my problems. I could argue that one away in the end, most likely. Yet to do so would force me to admit that I had committed, in some ways, an even larger sin.

I had revealed our existence to a human. Telling a mortal is strictly forbidden, and for good reason. Part of me smiled on that, though. They couldn’t enforce that code, without making the argument that she’s mortal, which would prevent her from being the woman that would bring doom to us all.

That was a problem for another day, though. As was the trouble Noel would kick up over my actions. Mortal or not, he would say I was acting rashly. Then he would call for my removal.

“A wolf shifter!”

I jerked at the sudden outburst. “What? Yes. What’s wrong? We’ve been over that.”

“You’re a werewolf!” Sylvie cried out, scooting to another chair on the far side from the couch, erecting an impenetrable barrier of six feet of space between us instead of three. “Not only that, I let you into my home. I invited you in!”

Sighing, I very gingerly eased myself back into more of a reclining position on the couch. “Both of those comments are so incredibly inaccurate.”

“You just told me you’re a werewolf.” She was wringing her hands, looking around wildly until her eyes landed on something. Ignoring the pain, I cranked my neck around to see what it was.

On the kitchen counter was a wicked-looking woodsman’s knife, lying open on top of its sheath.

“Sylvie … Vee,” I said, grabbing her attention and pushing down the anger that she would feel fear from me. From the one person who would do anything to protect her. “I need you to listen to me and repeat the exact words I said to you. The exact words.”

Licking her lips, still not able to fully meet my gaze, she nodded fast. “You, um, you said, ‘I am a wolf shifter.’”

“Exactly.” I blew out a breath. “Did I ever use the term werewolf in there?”

“That’s the same thing,” she groaned. “That’s like saying a dragon and a wyvern are different. They really aren’t.”

“One’s a majestic, intelligent, incredibly powerful being with four paws and the ability to change shape and use magic that could flatten this entire town.

The other is a pint-sized Microsoft paint rip-off version without the intellect or magic and lacking half the paws. They are, in fact, different.”

She glared at me. “That’s semantics.”

“Sorry,” I said, crossing my arms. “I didn’t realize you knew so much about us.”

The glare grew hotter.

“They are not the same thing, Sylvie. In my world, differences like that matter. You can insult the wrong people by calling them the wrong term. We are dire wolf shifters. We can shift into our forms at will. We are in control. Werewolves are not. They are more wild beast than man. And under the full moon … they are dangerous.”

Sylvie listened while I spoke, the only sign of her nervousness the constant gnawing on her lower lip. I hoped she didn’t bite it off. Eventually her brain would clue in to the fact that I’d talked with very specific knowledge of dragon versus wyvern. Probably.

“And the full moon, it doesn’t make you dangerous?”

“To ourselves, perhaps,” I muttered. “And the letting me into your house bit, by the way? You’re getting that one confused with vampires. Don’t ever let one of them in, though. That would be bad.”

Her next question died on her lips as she went bug-eyed. “Vampires are real? ” she hissed.

“Very. There’s a coven that lives a couple of towns over.”

Her face went white.

“Don’t worry. You’re not in any danger,” I said, hoping it sounded reassuring. The last thing I needed was Sylvie succumbing to shock. In my current state, I doubted I could catch her.

“Not in any danger?” she said with a strange hiccup.

“Not in danger? That’s kind of hard to believe, Lincoln Wolf Shifter.

I nearly died to a tree-monster earlier today.

At least, I’m assuming that’s what it wanted to do.

Now I find out you’re, like, a half-wolf shapeshifter.

Vampires exist as well. This is fucked up . ”

Sighing, she pulled out her phone and started punching at the screen.

Alarmed, I got up into a sitting position. “What are you doing?”

Sylvie didn’t pull her nose out of the phone screen. “Checking when the next full moon is, so I don’t get hurt by you.”

I growled. “One. I would never hurt you, Sylvie. I told you that, and I meant it. Second, I told you that it doesn’t affect us that way.”

“How does it work on a wolf shifter then?” she asked, finally looking up at me.

I tried to fight it back, to stay calm, but I failed.

“Are you … blushing?”

I snarled wordlessly. “No. I don’t blush. To answer your question, the full moon acts as a, um, as heat. Okay? There. But that’s not the point. The—”

“Remind me not to be around a bunch of you during the next full moon,” she said, shaking her head.

My growl shook the room, freezing Sylvie. “I. Will. Not. Let. Them. Hurt. You. Understood?”

Sylvie, limbs rigid, managed to meet my eyes. “Can you protect me from yourself when it comes around?”

I didn’t shy away from that gaze. It was time I laid some of those cards on the table. Called her out on it to see how she reacted. “If you can tell me you don’t want it, I won’t.”

She was the first to break the stare, looking away before her cheeks could flush pink.

“All we’ve ever done is kiss,” she whispered.

“And you can tell me with complete honesty that kissing is all you’ve ever thought of between us?” I asked, pushing on her walls and testing their strength. “Your mind has never wandered to anything … else? To the idea of more, between us?”

She looked back, sharply, her eyes full of accusation and curiosity, mixed with perhaps a little surprise. “Yours has?”

“All the time,” I said bluntly, not bothering to hide it. “Being around you is intoxicating in ways I don’t understand. The more I do it, Vee, the more it’s all I want. The more you’re all I want. I don’t know what’s pulling me to you, but it’s there.”

Licking her lips, she stalled for time. Not that it mattered, I could hear her heart racing from across the six-foot gap between us.

“That’s, um, a strong statement,” she whispered so quietly only my wolf’s hearing picked it up.

I sat forward, or I tried to, and my body screamed at me. I ended up grunting, sitting up halfway and then falling back into the couch. “Normally,” I said, a bit of wry humor slipping in. “I’m a strong man.”

Sylvie’s eyes darted to my arms. I said nothing.

“I should take you to a hospital,” she said, her eyes lingering on me in a way that told me all I needed to know about her internal thoughts. “You’re badly hurt.”

“No.” I said it as gently as I could while leaving no room for compromise or argument.

“You’re covered in wounds. Some of them aren’t even from today. You need proper treatment.”

“Proper treatment?” I stared at her. Waiting for her to think it through. To understand.

Sylvie sensed I was testing her. She looked off into the distance. It took half a minute, but then she nodded. “And if you go, they’ll find out what you aren’t. Won’t they?”

“Yes.”

The worry lines etching into her face didn’t belong there. I wanted to reach out and caress her, to tell her it was all going to be okay. That she didn’t have to worry. Not now, not ever again.

But too much had happened in too short a period of time. Sylvie needed to heal just as much as I did, but in her own way. Accepting the change in her worldview would not be easy. I suspected she could do it, but I wasn’t going to push. I would respect her unspoken but obvious wishes. For now.

“Do any of them know about you? About what you are?” Sylvie asked. “Am I the only one you’ve been hiding from all this time?”

The pain waiting on that question was evident. Being the only one on the outside was not a pleasant feeling.

“No. They don’t. We keep ourselves hidden.

The world, your world, doesn’t want to know about mine.

They find it a lot easier to live in a world that exists only according to their rigid science.

I can’t begin to imagine the panic that the truth would cause.

Truth be told, I’m rather impressed at how well you’re adapting and handling it. ”

“I’m not,” she said with a brittle laugh. “If you could hear the inside of my head right now, you’d know I’m on the edge of losing it. Tree-things. Wolf shifters. Vampires. Probably more you aren’t telling me about.”

“Dragons,” I added.

“Dragons.” She grew paler. “Dragons and magic. It’s a lot.”

“You aren’t screaming, or trying to shoot me with silver, or any of a million other things,” I pointed out. “So no, you’re actually doing wonderful. It’s not easy. It’s—argh!”

In my effort, I had twisted, and the wound on my side split open at one point.

“That looks really bad, Linc,” she said.

I smiled. I liked when she called me Linc, and I wanted her to know it, despite the pain. “In the morning, it will look like these,” I said, pointing at the twin lines from the elk-beast the night before. “I promise. A couple of days and I’ll be like new again.”

“Days?”

“I heal fast like that.”

“I see.” She rubbed at one eye. The adrenaline must be wearing off. She’d be getting tired soon, even if night wasn’t coming on in full force already. “Where did you get those other ones?”

It was my turn to see. “Vee. I really am sorry I wasn’t here at sunrise. I am. I meant to be, but … I needed more time to recover.”

Explaining about the Chained was not on today’s list of topics to cover. I didn’t want to overwhelm her more than she already was.

Sylvie clucked. “You really need to stop picking fights with things bigger than you.” She was teasing.

“Maybe I’ll learn one day.”

“I doubt it,” she muttered, looking me over once more. “Those really are from just last night?”

I nodded, glad to be able to tell the truth with her. “Like I said, a couple of days of rest and food, and I’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

Sylvie’s look was long and analytical. “The way you say that … you’re talking like you plan to stay here for those couple of days …”

“I hadn’t made firm plans, but thank you for the offer. That’s very kind of you. I accept.”

“What?” The spluttering went on for several seconds. “That’s not—but I—you can’t just …”

It trailed off into a glare that bounced off me with ease.

“I’ll sleep outside if that makes you more comfortable,” I said. “But that thing is still out there somewhere, and I am not going to leave you alone, not until we can find out what it was.” I stared at her, driving home my truth. “I will not let you get hurt, Vee.”

Her throat bobbed up and down. “Fine,” she said after some thought. “You can stay here, but you can’t sleep outside. I won’t have you breaking the rules.”

I frowned. “Rules? What rules?”

“City bylaw of course,” she said, staring at me like I was an idiot.

“People can’t sleep outside on their own property anymore?” I had to admit, I felt like an idiot.

“No, no, not that one,” she said.

Her lips twitched, bringing about a narrowing of my eyes. She was up to something.

“Which one then?” I asked warily.

“The one that says that animals must be on a leash and collar when outside.”

“Leash … and collar,” I repeated slowly.

Sylvie nodded eagerly, the smile finally breaking through. “It’s a county bylaw. Don’t worry, though, I’ll go get you a nice set bright and early tomorrow.”