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After I stroked under their chins a couple of more times, I peered through the woods, feeling someone’s eyes on mine. If there were foxes in these woods, they had to have predators somewhere. Wolves …

“Have you girls ever seen wolves shift into humans in these woods?” I asked.

They stared at me, confused for a moment, and then a twig snapped in the woods again, and they were off. And so was I. I wasn’t that dumb to stick around for something like that to happen again, if it had actually happened.

The next wolf I ran into wouldn’t be so … friendly.

Another snap of a branch, and a low growl echoed through the forest.

After racing home, I slammed my front door closed and pressed my back against it. Those piercing golden eyes were burned and branded in my memory. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see those viciously long canines dripping with saliva, hungry to taste me.

It couldn’t have been real.

I had to have imagined it. Those stupid drugs that my doctors kept prescribing were now making me hallucinate! They weren’t getting me better in the slightest. I had to get off those things because now I was hearing growls when I shouldn’t, seeing beasts, feeling things …

“I was seeing things,” I whispered to myself. “Hearing things too.”

A man had just transformed into a wolf in front of me.

The sound of his bones snapping. The fur that sprouted from his skin. And those glowing golden eyes …

I wiped my eyes again and again and again, yet the sight was burned into my memory like a brand.

“What the hell is up with this town?” I muttered.

“You okay?” Cade, my brother’s best friend, asked, staring at me through wide eyes.

I leaped and placed a hand over my heart, adrenaline rushing through me.

God, he is going to give me a heart attack one of these days!

Cade wasn’t supposed to move in until tomorrow. What was he doing here so early? And where had Pavel gone off to so quickly at the café?

Cade stood six foot something, a gray V-neck hugging his muscles in all the right places, surrounded by moving boxes in the center of the living room. He crossed his huge arms over his chest and smirked at me. “The only time I’ve seen you this flustered, Em, was last year at the bonfire when my fingers were buried deep inside you.”

Chapter Five

Ember

I slapped a hand over Cade’s pretty mouth and shuffled closer to him. “What are you doing, saying stuff like that around here?! My brother will be back any minute now, and if he hears you saying that shit, he’ll kill us both!”

We were inches apart, just like we had been that night by the bonfire when he … pushed his hand down my pants and fondled my pussy while everyone was around, so discreetly that nobody, not even my brother, saw us.

“Besides, what are you doing here a day early?” I said, still trying to catch my breath.

“Helping you move. I’ve been hauling your boxes all morning,” he said, pulling his shirt over his head. He picked up a box with the word Stuff scribbled in black Sharpie across the side, his biceps flexing. “Where do you want these?”

Fuck, this is not the sight I need right now after that run-in.

“In my room,” I said, watching his muscles flex as he walked to the stairs.

After gawking at how the sweat covered his muscles, I grabbed a box and followed him up. I tried not to stare—really, I did—but his muscles were always so … nice. So big, veiny. And I couldn’t pull my gaze away from his back.

“You didn’t need to move in with us, you know. I don’t care how much he paid you to⁠—”

“Your brother didn’t pay me anything. I wanted to bring you to your appointments out of the goodness of my heart.”

I arched a hard brow at his back. “You’re full of shit.”