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I did that again last night, and though I’m still feeling a little ginger as I wrap the afghan around me, I’m a-OK with that.
What I’m not a-OK with? Is the lifeless black eyes of the wolf head mounted on Lucas’s wall.
Weird, huh? I knew it was there. He has a deer head mounted, plus the wolf, and a collection of weapons… but it’s the wolf that catches my attention this morning.
Weeks ago, I stared up at the ax over there. I’d jokingly thought of Lucas as the huntsman who rescued me in the twisted version of Red Riding Hood I was living in at the time, and part of the reason I did was because of his wall of weapons—and the mounted animal heads he had up on the wall. The wolf just added to the story, especially since I had no idea that Lucas himself was a shifter at the time.
But it gets weirder. During the night of the full moon—when I first learned Lucas was the feral beast my grandmother tried to sacrifice me to—I followed Jade’s advice and tracked him down to the alpha cabin. Before he told me to ‘run’, I got a peek at what he did to the place when he battled his feral side.
He destroyed it.
The couch was knocked over. The afghan tossed in a corner. There was wood and fluff and debris everywhere, but the biggest mess came from that wolf.
The taxidermied wolf head was on the floor, slashed apart as sand poured out of it. The next time I visited him in the cabin, it was either repaired or replaced. Everything was cleaned up, like his fit of rage didn’t happen, and if I hadn’t seen the mess myself, I never would’ve known.
Later, Lucas admitted it was because his ‘human’ side was preventing the beast from going after the one thing it wanted: me. The curse made it so that Lucas was forced into becoming the broken version of himself—part man, part wolf—twice a month. On the full moon and the new moon, he turned into the beast all because he lost his fated mate before he could bond her to him.
I returned to him. The beast wanted to rut, but Lucas refused to let it take control. So he locked himself up in the cabin like he’d done twice a month for the past seventy years, only it was so much worse because both he and the beast knew I was within running distance—and that was before Jade conned me into almost serving myself up to the beast on a silver platter.
Something about the wolf head snags my attention. Is it because it doesn’t make sense that a shifter would put of the head of one of his kind? Or because I don’t understand why he’d rip into it with his claws, then fix it?
That’s not all I don’t get, either.
If I’m being honest, I don’t really understand the curse. I know what it did, and how I was expected to break it, but nearly two months after living in Winter Creek, no one’s ever told me how exactly the curse came about after Jolie died.
The witches blamed the wolves for her death. The wolves blamed the witches.
Lucas blamed himself.
And, somehow, the entire town got cursed because of it… until my grandmother finally tracked me down, sent me a telegram, and invited me here to break it.
I did, right? When I asked Lucas about that earlier, he confirmed that he was in complete control during the new moon for the first time since they were cursed. That means it has to broken…
Right?
I really freaking hope so.
As I continue to look up at the wall, my gaze darts from the wolf to the deer head.
Now, to me, the deer makes sense. Wolves in the wild eat deer, and I’ve sat through enough meals at the pack house to know that the wolves of Winter Creek love their meat. Venison hasn’t been on the menu yet, but that’s probably because of me. I’ve never had it, and so many of the meals I shared with the pack were coincidentally my favorites.
Yeah. I snort under my breath. Coincidentally my furry ass. How much do I want to bet that the meals I like just so happen to be some of Jolie’s favorites, too?
Whatever. That’s not the point. It’s the wolf head that’s making me uneasy this morning.
I look at it this way: Lucas is a werewolf. A wolf shifter. How is this any different from putting a human’s head on the wall?
I don’t know, but I don’t think I like it. And, yet, I can’t look away?—
“What are you thinking there, sucre?”
Holy shit. Lucas’s sleep-roughened voice has my eyes just about rolling in the back of my head. It’s so goddamn sexy, and the first time that I’m hearing it.
Isn’t that weird? I’ve never fucked him, then slept beside him. The first few times we were intimate, Lucas made his excuses to leave after we were finished. Of course, that set of my ‘rejection’ radar big time, making things even more shaky between us, but I still slept with him—and he still slipped away.
Then there was the night we formally bonded. Considering I shifted into a wolf, then went for his throat before ending up in a cage, it’s pretty obvious that cozying up to him didn’t happen.
As wolves, we slept together—but no fucking happened. I didn’t expect it to. During one of my hours-long chats with Eleanor, before I accepted that I was Lucas’s fated mate, I was curious. Obviously, it would’ve been really fucking weird if Kirk turned into his wolf to be intimate with Ellie as a human, but what if, like, Tristan and Jade got together? Both shifters… would they be into having sex in their beast form?
