Shift Into Me (Werewolf Shifter Romance) (The Alpha's Kiss) (4 page)

Damon closed his eyes and fell back on the bed, stretching his arms above his head so far his shoulders popped. “I don’t know about much anymore. Every time I think I have things figured out...”

I laid down next to him, taking my place in the crook of his arm. “Hey,” I said. “Look at me.”

He turned his head to the side and grunted as he opened his eyes.

“Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out,” I said. “And no matter what, we have each other, right?”

Damon smiled, stroking my hair. “Yeah. Nothing’s ever going to change that. You’re right. We’ll figure it out.” He kissed the top of my head.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. I heard that note of concern in his voice. “It’s not me you’re worried about.”

“It’s...”

“Be honest. We’ve been through this before,” I said, sliding my hand under his shirt and running my fingers over the muscles on his side. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Yeah. It’s just... I hope I’m as ready for this as I think I am. I hope I can be as strong as I need to be, you know? As strong as Poko believes I am. As strong as you need me to be.”

He took a deep breath before continuing. “I just have to get used to being Alpha. I have to be strong for everyone now. I can’t rely on others anymore. It has to be me.”

That last line took me by surprise.
How did he know I need his strength? But I can be what he needs to be too. I can hold him just as tight as he can hold me.

“You are,” I said, letting my hand rest on his belly. “You’re everything you need to be. You just have to let yourself believe it.”

––––––––

D
amon’s eyes snapped open.

Somewhere, not too far off, a chorus of voices called out; howling, clear, and chilling, wordless cries pulled him from sleep. His ears tingled at each different tone ripping through the night.

As strange as hearing all those howls was, it made Damon feel like he was in a home he’d never known, not really anyway.

Turning onto one side, he propped himself up on his elbow and turned as softly as possible to look at Lily without waking her. One brown curl had fallen across her perfect face. He pushed it behind her ear, and she stirred enough to make him freeze.

Letting out a soft snort, then a breathy snore, she freed him from stasis.

She looks like an angel when she sleeps. How did I ever get this lucky?

The sight of her kept his attention for a moment longer before something pulled inside his chest. Like a muscle, exercised just slightly too hard, a tingle spread across his torso and up his neck.

Suddenly, it wasn’t only the howls he heard. No, it was a scent. He pulled a breath into his lungs, and realized he was smelling life. In his mine, he formed an image of eight wolves, gathered in a clearing, calling to the moon.

Calling to
him
.

The bed creaked but not enough to faze Lily. He checked, just to make sure, pulling the blanket back up to her shoulder. Instantly, she grabbed it and curled the downy quilt around her hand, pulling it under her chin.

One last brush of his fingers against the exposed skin on the back of her neck satisfied Damon’s need for her. “I’ll be back soon,” he whispered. “I promise.”

As soon as he emerged from the bedroom, a flicker of light from Hunter’s giant television caught his eye. “You here?” he asked in the darkness. “Hunter?”

No answer. Just the non-committal drone of some sports channel’s newsfeed.

“Hello?”

There it was again, the twinge in his chest, urging him to go out into the night, to experience his other nature, his wilder one. When he finally crept into the living room, he saw rumpled blankets, and by the door, a pile of clothes.

Damon snorted a laugh.
So that’s how I keep from having to buy new jeans.

It felt strange to undress in the middle of his friend’s house, but there was just no fighting it. Not anymore. Damon needed to let himself be what he was. Fighting it was just a pointless exercise in frustration and guilt. Back in Fort Branch, he’d never do what he was about to do, but out here, things were different.

Everything
was different... except him.

Damon was among his kin, his pack.

He was so exhausted after they ate that he just fell asleep in his clothes, so he pulled the shirt off over his head, undid his belt and dropped it all to the ground. When he went to try the door, he shook off the last remnants of the shame he felt at wandering outside totally naked.

It was already partly open.

The September air kissed his skin. A chill crept down his back that made all the little hairs running along his backbone stand at attention.

Every time he’d done this before, he very quickly ended up either in a fight or blacked out. He gritted his teeth, made up his mind and knelt.

Crouching on the manicured grass, Damon’s knee sunk in.

Just like Poko taught him, he imagined his body changing.

Long, hard hairs stretched his pores. Damon’s hands and feet went first to claws, then to paws. His thick muscles grew leaner, longer and loose.

It should have hurt. His muscles twisting, bones sliding into new places, it should have hurt like absolute Hell.

But instead, it felt
good
.

The world around him exploded to life. Sights and sounds and smells filled him.

And then the howls came back.

Bursting through the night, he felt them call him.

Damon started to run, awkwardly at first. He looked back to where he’d been and saw two split socks.

Shaking his head, snorting into the air, he charged forward into the brushy woods.

Something was calling him, he knew.

And he was going to find it.

*

A
strange darkness ringed the tiny cabin.

Damon approached slowly, sensing that this is where the voices wanted him to be. As soon as he entered the clearing, the baleful howls silenced one by one.

It was a lonely cottage, all by itself, nestled inside a clearing that extended a few feet on either side before returning to fairly dense scrub trees. Off in the distance, the top of a bluff was barely visible if he craned his neck. Behind that rocky outcropping hung an orange half-moon that seemed closer than it should have been.

Standing up, his muscles contracted, his lupine hair vanished, and Damon was once again Damon, and once again, naked in the dark.

Carefully, he slid through the shadows to the side of the wooden house and peered through a window at what he was afraid he was going to find.

Two Skarachee, bound in silver, stuck halfway between man and wolf. He’d seen that before – he’d
been
that before – but seeing two of his kin bound and gagged, helpless, sent a wave of revulsion through Damon’s whole body.

Gritting his teeth, he swallowed hard.
If this is what it means to be a leader, then this is what I have to do.

A gentle tap on the window above his head was all it took to send it swinging open with a soft creaking sound. He reached up, grabbed the worn, wooden windowsill and silently scrambled up the side of the building, and inside.

The first breath that Damon took of the cabin’s dense, thick air filled him with the sense that something was not quite right. His hand fell on a light switch as he felt his way around, but he decided not to risk it, instead letting his eyes adjust to the filtered moonlight coming through the thin curtains.

Thankfully, it only took a second before he was able to make out details as he circled the bodies.

No clawmarks. No teeth. I knew it. This has nothing to do with werewolves.

Damon touched one of them gently on the arm. The skin was leather, hard and dry. Where the chains had fallen loose and slipped, he noticed the tell-tale black burns that silver left.

And then, all at once, he had to turn away. He couldn’t look anymore, couldn’t stand it.
I can’t... I just can’t. This is too much, too real. I want out, I need out.

He turned to the window, but just as he was about to give in and run, the front door groaned and opened. Two pairs of feet moved along the floorboards.

“Why do we have to keep coming back here?” It was a woman’s voice, resonant, though quiet. “I did what you wanted me to, what’s the point of coming back to stare at the mummies?”

“Quiet. Be quiet,” a man said. “Something’s amiss.”

The woman took a deep breath and released a sigh. Footsteps had almost reached the top of the stairs. Damon shot a quick glance around the room. All he saw was a split, ragged-looking wicker clothes basket, and a pile of trash in the corner.

“After you,” the man said as the door slid open. Briefly, it hung against something on the floor, giving Damon a split-second to crawl back out the window. As soon as his feet were out and his head disappeared from view, the door opened with a squeak.

The four footsteps – two of them clomping like boots, and two moving with the stutter of high-heels – moved to the center of the room. Damon curled his bare toes in the tiny space between the boards on the side of the cabin, but supported most of his weight with his hands clutching the windowsill.

Don’t give out... don’t let go.

He felt his heart pounding in his chest, but somehow, he thought of Lily’s angelic, sleeping face. He thought of her words the night before.
“You’ll already what everyone needs. You just have to believe you are.”

Damon tightened his jaws.

“Why do they do this when they die?” It was the woman talking. “Why can’t they just keel over like normal people?”

The man clicked his tongue against his teeth. “You’re crass, Danness.”

“I’m crass? You’re the one who summoned me to do your dirty work. You’re the one who won’t let me go.”

“Not just yet,” the thin-voiced man said. “There’s just a little more to be done, and then you can flutter back to whatever hellhole you call home.”

The woman laughed sarcastically. “Carrell, you forget which one of us is the immortal and which one of us—”

“Dredged the other up to get a war started?” The man – Carrell – snorted. “What would I do without you? Aside from have far less dyspepsia.”

Damon wanted to pull himself up and look, but he dared not, even though it sounded like the two people in the room above him were in full make-out mode. Shortly, the woman gasped a sharp breath.

“You’re choking me? Oh naughty boy,” she said. “I’m supposed to be the one playing dirty, you mangy old warlock.”

The words sent a shiver down Damon’s spine. A warlock? Did that mean the woman was his ward? Or... whatever warlocks called their demons? Poko dropped enough vague hints that Damon was aware of all kinds of things existing outside the realm of normal, but he had no idea it went
this
far.

“What’s left for me to do?” Danness breathed. “Why can’t we get out of this place and go do what we both want to do?” She curled her words in such a way that Damon was vaguely sickened.

A boot heel tapped rhythmically on the wall right above Damon’s head. Seconds later, the high heels clicked just inside the window. Danness let out a drawling
‘hmm...’
making Damon tighten his whole body and freeze in place.

“Anyway,” she continued, “I don’t know why you’re so excited about this plan of yours. It’s all so petty, all so mortal.”

“It’s not for you to care,” Carrell snapped. “What I do is my business, succubus. What you do for me determines whether you live or die. We’re clear on that?”

“Testy, testy,” she said. Damon could almost see her rolling her eyes. “Two hundred years should have been enough to teach you some patience.”

“Do what I told you,” Carrell said, ignoring her. “The young pup of an alpha will be here soon. We can’t have him finding these two without any signs of a wolf attack.”

So that’s it... a set up? But why? What could this—

Danness laughed another cold chuckle. “If it’s a wolf attack you want, why not just do it yourself? You’ve certainly had the practice.”

“Enough! Do as I command or I’ll send you back to the pit and trade you for an incubus.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” The succubus’s voice took on a kind of golden, harp-like melody. Damon momentarily forgot himself, his wits lost in the crescendo of her cadence. “Well fine.”

There was a brief flurry of activity, and then the boots clomped over to the center of the room. “Good enough, at least. Not quite as jagged as I’d like, but it’ll have to do. We don’t want anyone happening upon us out here. Can you make your own way?”

“Can I?” Danness asked. “But first, when do we get to hunt down his mate?”

Lily? Is she somehow talking about Lily?

“You’ve been reading my notes,” Carrell said in a cold voice. “Soon enough. He’s a lovesick puppy. We can’t take her until the war is good and started. If we do, he’ll likely just curl up and die. You know how it is.”

“I do?” she asked. And then out of nowhere, a loud crack, like a peal of thunder mixed with popping ears, made Damon wince. As soon as he heard footsteps – but only one pair – on the steps heading down to the entrance, he pulled himself back inside and crouched behind the window, waiting to see who, or what, left.

For what seemed an eternity, he sat there, crouched and holding his breath. For an instant, a flicker of heat, and a searing purple light shot through his vision. It traced the veins in his eyeballs, and then, with a second blink of his eyes, it vanished.

Damon shook his head and refocused his attention on the front door.

A thin man wearing a sharply tailored, dark-colored suit pushed the door open and stepped into the night. He took a quick glance around before undressing, stuffing his clothes into a sack that he slung over his shoulder. Carrell crouched, and moments later, dashed off into the woods.

Damon swallowed as he turned to once again face his fallen kin. This time, they were claw marked from their faces to their feet. He shook his head, staring absently at what lay before him. A knot balled up in Damon’s stomach.

Moving to the window, he saw dawn was less than an hour away.