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I swallowed the lump in my throat.
Sterling pulled open one of the bottom drawers where Cye kept the placemats we never used, and pulled out a small bottle. The label said almond extract. He fished a quarter teaspoon out of the drawer. He set both down on the kitchen island.
My swollen eye throbbed with my pulse and stung with watery tears. “Is that what your mother takes?”
“Yes. It might be a little rough. She’s been taking so much for so long she has built up a resistance,” Sterling said.
It’d be better than the brew I’d otherwise have to mix up in the kitchen. “Do you know where she gets it?”
“The VineTail out in Napa. They deal in wine, weed, and MoonDark.”
There was a joke in there.
“You don’t need a suppression dose,” Sterling said. “Just enough to take the edge off.”
It wouldn’t be much MoonDark. Just enough to wet my mouth. I’d taste it, and it’d absorb through the membranes. Within three hours, it would dull my sense of smell and bind my skin to my bones and dull my predator’s instincts. Make me more human. Like sliding a condom over my fur coat.
I poured myself the dose, and before I could think about it, shoved it in my face.
The irony of MoonDark was it didn’t taste all that bad. Sort of like a slightly soured sarsaparilla.
“I’m sorry, Winter.”
So was I. I couldn’t even be trusted to be myself. Or I could be trusted to be myself, and that was the damn problem, because I was actually a furry death-monster from human nightmares.
He took both of my hands, holding my cracked one very gently. My fingers had swollen up enough from pounding faces that I’d had to take off my wedding rings. He pulled both my hands up to his lips and kissed my knuckles lightly.
I’d gotten a look over the edge. “I don’t want to be that wolf. I never thought that’d be me. I thought I’d outgrown this.”
“You are my wolf,” he said with a glint in his hazel eyes. “Although I am not sure what to make of you coming in bruised up like this.”
I smiled, even though it hurt my face. “Never seen she-wolves throw down?”
He looked me up and down and said, “I’ve been told that nothing is meaner than a she-wolf in a fight but…this is…” He picked a piece of hair that had fallen into my stitches and tried to tuck it back in with all my other hairs, patting at it and failing as it refused to stay in place.
“Right. And how many times have you gotten bitten and bruised since we’ve known each other? And how many times have I so much as thrown an icepack at you?”
“I don’t recall you even throwing an icepack at me.”
“Because you weren’t really hurt,” I scoffed.
“But I’m the male.”
“Hmm.”
“And it’s my job to take a certain amount of abuse.”
“And we both know that if those she-wolves had jumped you, you’d have let them pound you into the grout.”
“Guilty.”
“And then I’d have had to go find them and get your prestige back and so on and so forth.”
He smiled and gently cupped my cheek in his palm.
I sighed and leaned into his hand.
His phone rattled.
