Page 2
Two
H e had smelled her behind him, strong soothing lavender, but he smelled everyone all the time. That her scent was more pleasant than average didn’t register much while he tried to focus on Ms. Adamski’s obligatory syllabus explanations—tried and mostly failed to take notes, his pencil instead sketching a cool logo that had just popped into his head for a bar and grill that didn’t actually exist. Then the girl had rushed around him to relinquish her paper first, and her swinging braid swished across his arm. Now he noticed. First that scent of hers. Second the braid, soft and…lavender. As a human, she didn’t know how she smelled to wolves, not unless one of his kind had told her. Her chosen hair color was a coincidence.
A distracting coincidence.
So he’d blurted his name and now she was blinking and mute, and for a moment he wondered if the shielding of his gaze had slipped somehow. For an adult wolf, even a young adult, shielding ought to be unconscious. Even when that wolf all but collided with a lavender-haired, lavender-scented…
Mine.
His breath caught in his throat. That was…weird.
She is mine.
Okay, wait…
She. Is. Mine.
“Um, I’m Lucy, um, Campbell. Lucy Campbell. Hi.”
“Hi,” he said, not for the first time. But adrenaline flooded his body along with a surge of something else, something he’d never felt before and could not name. Something connected to the howl inside him that insisted Lucy Campbell…
...is mine.
A glad growl rose in his chest, and he had to swallow hard, burn his throat with the unvoiced feelings brimming over in his wolf heart. His hand trembled once as he bent to pick up his book bag. He had to break eye contact with her until he knew he could control this, and he couldn’t know that until he knew what this was.
“Design major?” she said.
He straightened, cast his gaze around the room at anyone but Lucy. The other students were gone or going. Right, it was past seven.
“Yeah,” he said. “You too, I guess.”
“Interior. I want interior decorating, but I also wanted to experience college, so I’m getting an associate’s even though I don’t technically need one to be residentially hirable as a decorator.”
The cascade of words drew his eyes to hers again. The frames of her glasses were dark purple, complementary to her lighter hair. Her eyes were gray, keen as she studied him. Smart woman. And wow, gorgeous, tall and curvy. Tall enough not to make him feel like a giant. Curvy enough for him to…
He hefted his bag onto one shoulder and turned away. Had to. His brain was aware of every soft line of her as if he had touched her, run his hands down her hourglass outline.
Whoa. That’s what this was.
The howling triumph in his head rose until the remaining students and Ms. Adamski ought to be able to hear it. My mate! Lucy Campbell, my mate!
“Hey, sorry,” she was saying behind him. “I overshare sometimes.”
“It’s okay.” He headed outside to breathe, to chill, to stop in its tracks the desire to scoop her into his arms and hold her close, inhale the scent of her, and…
Stop. Stop it. Calm down. It was intense right now. All things wolf were intense at twenty-one, though he’d been leveling out lately, finally, as Patrick had promised him. Maybe the discovery of his mate was enough to heighten his wolf instincts all over again. In any case he could not carry Lucy around the campus grounds howling with joy. Humans would know his true nature. Oh, and probably call the cops. Worse, if she were a reasonable woman, Lucy would freak out.
But how could he let her walk away without knowing who she was to him?
No. Worst idea ever.
On his heels came her signature scent, the soft sound of her footsteps on the grass. “Is something wrong?”
“No.”
He turned to face her. Her mouth was pursed in a frown, but she didn’t walk away. She waited for him to explain his apparent escape from the classroom and from her.
“Sorry,” he said. “That was rude.”
She shrugged, but her eyes were sharp.
“Let’s start over.” He smiled, hoped he didn’t look tense. “Nice to meet you, Lucy.”
“You too, Jeremy.” She cocked her head. “How tall are you?”
The tension left his shoulders for real as he grinned. “You could try to be original.”
“What?”
“If you want to get to know me. Strangers in the grocery store ask me that one.”
“Well, at this moment, you and I are strangers.”
Ouch. Accurate. He knew that. Only his wolf instincts didn’t. “Fair enough. I’m six-five.” And a half, but whatever.
“Wow.”
He smirked. “How tall are you?”
“Five-eight.”
She said it as if her taller-than-average height were somehow preordained just for them. Did she know? No. Her DNA was one-hundred-percent human, unlike his eighty-six percent. She didn’t know the wolves who lived outside town. She didn’t belong to the pack.
“Do you want to get coffee?” Lucy said.
He blinked. “You just said you don’t know me.”
“And I don’t love that fact, and I’d like to fix it.”
“Okay,” he said. “The little indie café in town.”
“Right. Never a chain when there’s an alternative.”
“Right.”
She shifted her book bag strap from one shoulder to the other. She studied a long moment with those steady eyes, no shyness, simple open interest in him. “Why are you saying yes? I might be a psycho with a dozen exes.”
“Because I don’t know you,” Jeremy said, “and I’d like to fix that.”
And protect you with my life. Claim you for my mate. Build a life together. Maybe someday make pups with you.
He nearly growled. He needed to talk to Patrick. Really really needed to.
“I’ll meet you over there,” Lucy said.