te'

me so much as I felt

into my chest hard enough to knock the air out of both of us. My hand caught her arm on instinct, nothing more...the same insti

had been silent for eleven yea

u

dn't so much as lifted its head at anyone who'd ever stood close enough to touch me. Now it was slamming itself against the inside of my chest like something let out

uieter this time, almo

rk all at once and never came back on. I spent years testing it before I accepted it. Clubs where women did everything they knew how to do to get a reaction out of me and got nothing. Men, eventually, because I'd started to wonder if the wiring had simply crossed somewhere i

ll three in abundance once I stopped wasting time waiting to feel something that clearly wasn't coming back. I told my mother it was a choice, that I'd simply decided love was inefficient, a weakness other men could afford and I

ain, and my wolf is trying to claw its w

had refused to answer me at all. It didn't listen. It never had, and now that it fina

d somewhere lower than my chest, somewhere

cond too long...her hand fisted in my jacket without either of us deciding it should be there, my grip still locked around her arm...and I told myself it was a shock. Hers, from whatever she was running from. Mine, from a decade of silence breaking o

tever comes down that str

out so quiet that I almost lost it under

us...but I could see enough. Tears, or rain, or both, tracking down skin gone pale with fear. Her whole body was shaking, and it wasn't fro

of us needed to be, and it clearly wasn't going to be the

oward the mouth of the street, where headlights had just swung around the corner, cutting through the rain

word, never take a threat at face value before you understand what it costs you to believe it. My wolf didn't care what ele

and this time I sto

hind me,

ing with the kind of confidence that told me everything about who was driving them. Men who already believed they'd win. Men who

cloth. My wolf pressed forward with her, wanting to be closer still, wanting there to be nothing left between her and whatever was coming but me. The alley behind us dead-ended thirty feet back. I'd clocked

even fully stopped. Doors opened on both sides. I counted four men before the second car had even finished pulling in behind the first, boxing the al

o rigid agai

r the first time in eleven years agreeing on exactly one thing...decided, before a si

on a signal from whoever was in charge. The other two advanced first, slow, confident, the kind of confidence that came from men who'd never once had to work for what they wanted. I'd left the house without so much as a knife on me, certainly the only

aid, low and certain,

ntention o

ere else, and I understood, with a clarity that should have frightened me far more than it did, that what