It’s the memory of my worst lapse of judgement. The only way to correct a decade-old mistake.

  I cleared my throat and went on the offensive. “It’s mine. Give it back.”

  Unfortunately, no pelt appeared in my peripheral vision. Even when I remembered my humanity and tacked on a modifier:

  “Please.”

  Instead, a ghost thumb blazed a semicircle behind my left earlobe. Well, behind my pelt’s left earlobe. The stranger was teasing his fingers through my shed fur. Stroking gently, curiously. Was that good news or bad?

  His reply, when it came, rumbled through my belly like a drumbeat. “Look at me.”

  My eyes remained riveted on the ground, fixed on the dandelion down caught in my right-most toe cleft. I’d learned the hard way that non-woelfin were spooked by amber irises. I shook my head rather than obey him.

  We were at an impasse. Silence lengthened. Crickets restarted. There was no traffic.

  Eventually, I rounded my shoulders and mumbled an explanation at my toenails. “I’m sorry. I thought this was a park, not private property.”

  “And the ten-foot-high fence?”

  I couldn’t help myself. My mouth quirked sideways. “To keep out zombie giraffes.”

  He laughed, the sound rich and enticing. I felt rather than saw as his whole hand massaged my pelt this time. My human neck turned jelly-soft beneath the caress.

  His words tensed me back up in short order. “Do you need help?”

  Of course I needed help. My cousin was dying. I craved a time machine. Or perhaps a way to break into the vast, dark house before me and steal back what didn’t rightfully belong to the people inside.

  What I had was a man dropping down to kneel so close I was finally forced to look at him. His eyes were the stormy blue of a sunlit ocean. His dark curls had tousled free of any civilized arrangement. His shirt was misbuttoned, as if he’d seen me lurking in the shadows and half-dressed before rushing over to hunt me down.

  “Is this your home?” Words tumbled out before I could stop them.

  He shook his head. “Yours?”

  “Heh. No.” The hem of my t-shirt was ragged and holey. The house—almost a mansion—was extravagant. The fact this stranger could even ask that question proved he was either delusional or kind.

  He stared into my eyes, not flinching at their color. “Here.”

  My pelt lay atop his hands, halfway between us. For one insane instant, I imagined leaving it there. His touch was blissful. The unfamiliar intimacy was gut-wrenching.

  Instead, I asked the most relevant question in the face of this overwhelming attraction: “Do you have a twin?”

  His brows drew together, but he didn’t request further explanation. Just shook his head and dashed the hope sparking in my belly.

  “No.”

  “Ah, well, then.” I turned away. If he didn’t have a twin, he wasn’t for me.

  Snatching my pelt out of the stranger’s lax fingers, I grabbed up jeans, shoes, and socks in one hurried gesture. I was halfway to the fence, plotting my escape route when he called after me.

  “My name is Luke.”

  A low-hanging limb assisted my ascent. Scrambling across the scrap of carpet I’d lugged along to shield against razor wire, my bare ankle nonetheless snagged on a protruding point.

  An inhaled breath from below. I glanced down in time to see the man—Luke—catch a droplet of my blood in his outstretched fingers.

  “Clothes,” he suggested. “They’re for wearing.”

  I shrugged, shoving off the carpet then grabbing one corner to take the square with me. Down, down, down. I landed on the sidewalk on two bent legs.

  Straightening, I found myself eye to eye with Luke, nothing but air and fence between us. In the seconds I’d been busy, he’d lowered himself to perch on the edge of a concrete planter. Despite the fact I’d used perfect plummeting posture this time, my lungs felt as windstruck as when I’d landed on my back a few moments before.

  Luke was tall and broad but not muscle-bound. The veins on his hands stood out even in the shadows. He was strength and power incarnate.

  He was also patient. His head cocked but he didn’t request my identity a second time.

  Perhaps that’s why I gave it to him.

  “Honor. I’m Honor, master zombie-giraffe hunter.”

  Then, without allowing myself another moment for banter, I turned to flee from the home I’d hoped to burglarize in an attempt to regain the right to use my name.

  Keep reading book one in the Moon-Crossed Wolves series for FREE in Shifter Origins II…

 

 

  Aimee Easterling, Wolf's Choice

 

 

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