Shift Into Me (Werewolf Shifter Romance) (The Alpha's Kiss) (18 page)

“Got you some things for the road, brother,” Hunter said as he jogged up.

My hand fell from Damon’s shoulder to his leg. The soft, supple leathers he wore warmed me palms.

“Let me guess,” Damon said with a grin. He took the sack from his friend and peered inside. “Yep. Jerky, cured sausages, and a... oh my God is this an entire chicken?”

Hunter beamed. “Made it for you guys last night! All that stuff came directly from the casa de Hunter kitchen. Fresh ground pork, an eight pound chicken – which, by the way, I didn’t even know was possible – and yeah, all that fresh jerky. That’ll hold you guys.”

Giggling, I turned to him. “You know the drive is about fourteen hours, right? This is like... I don’t know, maybe a week or so of food for me?”

He shrugged. “There’s two of you, and one of them is a young man just growing into his skin. Anyway, I wanted to give you guys something for the road. I gotta find someone to take care of.”

“Whoa,” I said. “That’s quite a conversational shift. You want to come back to Arizona with us? There are plenty of eligible mates. We can do you a personal ad and everything. I can see the title
‘Strapping Young Wolf Seeks Mate’
working really well back home.”

“I don’t know if I’m the desert type,” he said, massaging his bruised jaw. “But I guess it couldn’t hurt anything to strike out and see new things, all that. And anyway, it seemed to work out pretty well for you.”

Damon nodded. “Yeah, worked out pretty damn well.” He squeezed my hand. “If you decide to come, you can stay in one of three places... though I doubt you’d want to live on a straw mat in Poko’s cave.”

Hunter crinkled his tanned face. “Does he have a fridge?”

“He’s got his ways,” Damon said with a chuckle. “Doubt he has a fridge in there, though. You could meet him if you wanted to though. He’s really not as scary as everyone seems to think. Little bit strange, with the talking to spirits, but if you’ve ever seen anybody wander down the street with a bluetooth thing stuck in their ear and having an argument, it’s nothing surprising.”

“So, uh, Lily,” Hunter said. “I kinda did mean what I said. I’m pretty damn alone here. All the wolves are either older or younger, but... that’s not really what I’m looking for, you know?”

I nodded. “I know a few people.”

Caitlyn might be a little wolf-shy after her run in with Devin, but if nothing else, at least she knows they exist.
I shook my head. “I even know one who has some experience.”

“Cat?” Damon quirked an eyebrow at what I said. “Don’t you think...?”

“She’s a strong girl. Really strong, the way she got over what happened.”

“Okay, okay,” Hunter cut in. “The hushed tones make me think this is some kind of crazy plan that may or may not be a terrible idea. What are you guys talking about?”

“My friend Cat,” I said. “She’s the one who... er, well, Damon’s brother’s ex-girlfriend.”

Hunter opened his eyes wide and nodded. “Don’t you think she’d rather not... I mean, certainly she’s got some pretty bad impressions of us. Like, of wolves.”

“She’s a smart girl,” I said. “She’ll see you for who you are.” I was a little surprised at my own tenderness. “But it’s up to you. Offer is there for the taking if you want.”

We all three sat there for a moment, not sure what to say, but not wanting to part. Finally, Damon made the first move. He stood up and took Hunter’s hand in a shake that became a hug.

As I watched them embrace, I realized that no matter what happened with Damon’s murderous, blood-related brother, the man he was holding right then was the closest thing he had to a
real
brother.

After a moment, they parted. Hunter waved back to me as Damon swung his huge leg over the bike.

“What you asked earlier,” he said, turning back to me and kicking the engine to life. “About home?”

“Yeah?” I slid closer to him, my legs wrapped around his, my arms around his hard, muscled stomach. With every breath he took, every beat of his heart, and every throb of the motorcycle between my legs, I felt a little more alive. Then I thought about seeing Grandpa Joe again, I even thought about old Poko, and grinned. “What about it?”

“I think I finally decided on my real answer. No dumb jokes, either. I’ll tell you as soon as we’re back on the road. Until then, I want you to try and think of what I’m gonna say. All right?”

“Oh good, a guessing game,” I said with a smile. “Okay, fine. What do I win if I guess right?”

“Win?” he laughed. “Don’t you already have everything you could possibly want? I mean, you’ve got me, right?”

“I always wanted a Land Rover,” I said, totally ignoring his pseudo-smugness.

“How about a kiss?” he haggled.

It was so good...
so
good, to have my Damon back to his old self. “That is a lot cheaper than a giant SUV, isn’t it?”

We both fell silent for a second.

I was able to see Damon’s face if I looked in his rear view mirrors. He had this distant, distracted look that I wanted to try and help him ease away from, but I knew it was probably as hard for him to leave Hunter and Scagg’s Valley as it was for me to see the goodbye sign leaving Fort Branch.

No matter how much we may act like we don’t like wherever we’re from, it’s in us. Part of us is there, part of our souls stay back wherever it is we call home – even if we only say that with a little bit of reluctance.

Then again, once you leave, is it really home anymore? I seem to leave little pieces of me wherever I go. At some point, I’ll run out, right? That’ll be it, that’ll be the end of the parts of Lily I have to leave. What then?

He paused to turn the bike around and point it toward Arizona. Toward the only home I’d ever known. I didn’t know what to make of it, not really. Everything that happened in the last week felt like a blur punctuated at the end with a haze. A few seconds passed before I remembered he was going to say something.

The road rolled by under us, the brown and green landscape started to disappear by the time I remembered our guessing game.

I moved the microphone closer to my mouth and accidentally coughed.

“Jesus!” Damon said, snorting a laugh. “You trying to surprise me right off the road? All right, so, this is far enough.”

The brownish-red dirt looked almost purple as twilight turned to night and the moon started its slanted path along the horizon. Somewhere behind us, a howl broke the impending darkness, and was joined by another and then a third. Soon a chorus was going, howling away in a harmony that was at once haunting and strangely comforting.

“I don’t need any of that,” he whispered. “I’ll miss it, I guess. Miss being around others of my kind, around my pack... it might surprise you, but there are such things as lone wolves. Even lone Alphas, I guess.” He grinned back at me in the mirror. “So, you gonna guess?”

I thought for another second. “I’ll go with what
I
need, and just hope it’s the same thing. I just need you. You make me feel safe. Loved. Like I’m at home.”

Suddenly, Damon killed the throttle and pulled the bike off the shoulder. The front tire crunched some dirt as the huge motorcycle slowed to a stop. Damon whipped the helmet off my head, and the one off his, then forced my head back with a kiss so deep and so urgent that I almost fell over backwards.

“Oh my God,” I gasped, when our lips parted and I had a second to catch my breath. “What was that for?”

Wordlessly, Damon grabbed my hand and swung his leg off the motorcycle, then pulled me to my feet. “This is crazy,” he said. “This is absolutely nuts, but I’m going to do it anyway.”

“Huh?” I said. “What are you talking about? Damon, what’s going on?”

His leather squeaked and then the dirt crunched under his knee. Immediately, I sprung a leak and a sniff at the exact same time.

“Lily,” he said, “we’re joined by fate, made one by prophecy, but that’s not good enough for me. I can’t live without you. I don’t
want
to live without you. I don’t just want you to be my mate. I want you to be my,” he swallowed. “I want you to be wife.”

From his breast pocket, Damon produced a ring.

The
ring.

I sucked a breath into my lungs. “Damon, it’s... I... saw this... no way,” I said. “No way, I thought this was just something Hunter’s mom... I don’t...” My first instinct was to grab the fang that hung around my throat and hold onto it for dear life. I tried to speak more, but all that came out was a vaguely embarrassing squeak.

He watched me, studying my face, for just long enough that I started squirming.

When Damon finally said something, it was like a pressure valve letting go with how hard the breath came out of my lungs.

Taking my hand he said, “I knew from the second I laid eyes on you that we were meant to be together. I screwed it all up and then I managed to get you back. You saved my life more than once. You’ve kept me from going insane. We’ve been through more in a few months than most people go through in their whole lives.”

I was already nodding by the time he got the question out.

Damon slid the ring on my finger, and as soon as the perfectly fitting hoop went over my knuckle, I swear there was a fire in the middle of the diamond. A surge of heat crept through me, radiating through every inch of my being.

“Lily,” he said, throwing a quick glance at the moon. “Here, in the desert where we met, underneath the moon that made it all real, will you make me the happiest man on earth?”

“I,” I started, but he cut me off.

“Lily, will you marry me?” Damon held my hand and kissed the back of it, then my fingers one at a time. “Will you be my home? Will you be my everything?”

I nodded again, my eyes open so wide my eyelids started to hurt. “Yes!” I whispered. “Yes, yes, yes, I can’t believe this is happening, I—”

He stood up and crushed me against his body. There, in the pool of silver light that the moon dripped down onto us, Damon kissed me, again and again, down my neck and up my jaw. He pressed his lips to mine, taking my breath and filling me with his.

“I’m yours,” I said when I got a second to breath. “I’m yours now, I’m yours forever. How did you ever afford this thing?” I turned the ring back and forth, the diamond flickering with a fire deep in its center. The moon worked off it just perfectly.

“It’s my mothers. Or was.”

I grabbed his shoulder, opened my mouth and started to speak, but another lupine choir interrupted me.

Off in the distance, the pack howled.

“Listen,” Damon whispered between kisses. “There’s something behind the wolves. A sound that only I can hear, apparently. The same spirits Poko hears, I can hear them too. And they can hear me – they can sense when something is wrong, or...”

“When something is right?” I breathed, pulling Damon’s face back to mine to taste his lips once again.

Damon pushed my hair out of my eyes and arched my back with another kiss that plunged deep. He studied my face for a moment, and I felt a shudder go through him.

“No,” he said. “When something is perfect.”

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D
amon’s eyes glittered in the flame that danced around the age-smoothed walls of Poko’s cave. He stared at me – right straight into my soul – and squeezed my hand. The ring of warmth enveloping us in the center of Poko’s cave seemed a barrier against the darkness — a blanket against the cold.

We’d been there for almost an hour, waiting for the moon to be right, in the sky. The ancient wolf elder shuddered, his whitened eyes shot open; his meditative trance at an end, and Damon’s tattooing ceremony about to begin.

“You have,” Poko began, his voice rattling, and as old as the cave where we knelt, but full of power, “passed the trials. Not only are you the Skarachee alpha, but you are the next elder. Many will fight you, many will complain, and many will think me insane – if they don’t already – but this is my decision. You are the heir to the Skarachee.”

Damon nodded, solemnly.

The fire crackled. A little, wooden bowl sitting on the rocks ringing the pit and began to bubble. Black liquid within roiled angrily, until Poko reached out, plucked it away, and set it on the ground.

Poko grunted with effort, then waved away Damon’s offer of an extended hand, to help him to his feet.

“Old, yes. Helpless, no,” he said with a dry laugh. “Helpless no, pup. But soon, I will be gone, and the dangerous times are just ahead. They’re... coming...”

He glanced left, and then right, smiling into the darkness at some unseen visitor. He spoke to spirits, Poko did. They told him things, gestured to him... guided him. And Damon was starting to hear the same things, though, only when they wanted him to hear them.

“Yes, I think so,” Poko said to someone neither I, nor Damon, saw. “He’s ready. I know that much. Don’t you think? Mmm-hmm.” The old man’s thin lips hardened to a tight line. “He may be ready, but I’m not sure I am.”

Finally, he turned to Damon, who smiled, before he looked away.

“Whatever comes, I’ll do my best to do what’s right for the pack. For our people.”

Damon’s voice was firm, strong and serious. It made my stomach clench a little, and sent a flutter through my chest.

“For the Skarachee.”

Poko laughed, almost too quietly to hear.

“This time, I think, it’ll be for more than just
our
people.”

The twist at the tail of Poko’s voice meant that he wasn’t saying everything he knew. But then again, he
never
said everything he knew.

“But, I know you will. We all do,” he said, with a sweep of his hand.

Damon nodded.

“Thank you,” he said, and squeezed my hand.

Poko chuckled again.