Pack Introductions

WILLOW

I woke up the next morning with his kiss still stamped on my mouth.

It’d been soft and measured, as if he’d been testing the taste of me. My lips still tingled, and my fingers kept brushing the spot, hoping for a trace of something he’d left behind.

Which was stupid.

Groaning, I flopped onto my back, one arm over my eyes. What was I even doing? I had no business blushing and gushing over a man I barely knew. Especially one who actually thought I was capable of killing off his entire pack.

I tried to shift my thoughts away from him, but the memory of his hug slipped in uninvited.

~His scent wrapping around me—cedar, fresh air, and something very male. His warm and solid embrace. His heat. His restraint. His arms not holding me in but holding me up.~

Then snuck back in the image of Connor naked. My brain recast it for me in high definition: his wide shoulders and muscle-cut torso, the clean lines of a body built for war and worship alike. And lower… I’d looked.

In the facility, I’d been taught about anatomy, sex, and arousal. But I’d never thought I’d get to experience any of it. Now, as far as arousal was concerned, it seemed I was making up for lost time.

My brain was a blender set to hormone overload, whirring with adult ideas and animal instincts. I needed either a lobotomy or a cold shower.

“Pull it together, Willow,” I muttered into the pillow after covering my face with it.

But that little scolding only brought the snapshot of his wolf into my mind. How massive he’d been. How power rolled off him like smoke from a battlefield. But its eyes were still Connor’s. Sapphire blue, gentle yet fierce, and watchful.

I wondered what my wolf looked like, and the thought hit me sideways.

It suddenly occurred to me that I’d never asked about it in the lab, and they’d never told me. When I had shifted, it hadn’t been in my fishbowl, so I’d been unable to catch glimpses of her in the glass. Not that I would’ve wanted to see her.

But now I did.

Pulling myself upright, I sat cross-legged on the bed, slowing my breath the way the teacher had taught us yesterday. ~“Start with stillness,”~ she’d said. ~“Your wolf isn’t a weapon. She’s a voice. Listen.”~

So I did.

~Breathe in.~

~Breathe out.~

What used to feel like an abyss inside me now shimmered. I detected a hum, a presence, a low, sleepy huff in my mind that might’ve been a stretch.

My wolf—primal yet terrifyingly ~calm~. She wasn’t snarling. She wasn’t trying to claw her way free. She seemed happy. Content, even. Which was weird.

“~You good in there?~” I asked cautiously.

Another mental shift, fur against silk. Warmth curled into the corners of a soul I hadn’t known was cold. A sense of quiet satisfaction came over me, along with something else.

Excited interest, I felt.

But in what?

The knock on the door answered me.

It was Connor. His scent gave him away even from behind the wood.

“Coming!” I called out, jumping up and nearly tripping over the blanket wrapped around my legs. ~How graceful.~

I threw on jeans and a hoodie from the stash of clothes that had somehow grown since yesterday morning. Then I shoved my hair into a ponytail and opened the door like I hadn’t been obsessing over our kiss for the past ten hours.

He looked… unbothered. Ridiculously attractive, sure, with that messy hair, soft black tee stretched over broad shoulders, and worn jeans that clung in all the right ways. But there was nothing in his demeanor that suggested he’d been thinking about that kiss.

Until I met his eyes and caught their glint.

A crooked smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “Morning.”

“Morning,” I echoed.

“You ready for that tour?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “Let me grab my boots.”

***

We walked side by side in the crisp morning air. Connor started in the downtown area, pointing out the dozen or so shops that lined the main street. The town was rather cute, and small enough that I didn’t feel overwhelmed by all the people.

In fact, there were hardly any in the beginning. But as we moved toward the outskirts, the numbers increased. It was harvesting season, it seemed, because ahead was a fruit orchard being attended to by a horde of people.

One by one, Connor named for me those we passed. Most gave polite smiles in greeting. A few whispered behind our backs. One older woman actually sniffed the air when I walked by.

The stares and whispers would’ve made me uncomfortable, but I was too busy pretending not to be aware of how close Connor’s and my arms were. Too busy to notice how often he glanced sideways at me, checking in.

“Sorry about the looks. We don’t usually get guests,” he said after we left the farms. “Not like this.”

“Free-roaming prisoners, you mean?”

He grimaced.

“Relax, I’m just teasing you.” I shrugged. “As I said, I get it. With everything that happened, is happening, I wouldn’t trust me either.” I shot him a smile, and he mirrored it. “So, they all live here?”

“Full-time.” He nodded. “Most were born into the pack, others joined later if they found a mate among ours. But this is home. Some have jobs off pack lands, and some work here. If they work here, the pack’s company, Aurora, pays them.”

The closed yet open nature of the pack fascinated me, but once we entered the indoor training gym, all thoughts left my mind. One step over the threshold, and I was frozen to the floor.

It took my brain a whole minute to understand what was happening, that the humans sparring on rubber mats with wolves weren’t actually in danger. That the humans who were shifting midmotion into wolves were meant to do that.

And that all the snarling, growling, and jaw snapping was normal.

“They’re practicing agility,” Connor said, but when he noticed I’d stopped following him, he returned to my side. “Is this too much for you? Shit, I’m sorry. Let’s go—”

“No!” I reassured him with a wide-eyed smile. “It’s amazing. Terrifying, sure, but mesmerizing, actually. Will I be able to do all this one day?”

The beam he flashed nearly blinded me. “Yes, absolutely! We just need to—”

After that, I couldn’t hear anything Connor was saying, because ~he~ stole my focus.

Travis—the brute, my torturer—strode right toward us.

I tried not to react, but my body betrayed me, snapping alert on pure instinct.

“Alpha said I could talk to you,” Travis said before he stepped up, his eyes steady on me.

The old fear flickered through me before dying almost as quickly. What replaced it surprised me more.

Anger.

A white-hot fury made my fingers curl into fists as Connor’s anxious look reminded me of what I’d said, that I’d forgiven them both. But looking at Travis now, at the man who’d tried to break me, I realized forgiveness was messier than I’d thought.

Travis had hurt me more than any single person ever had. And I’d seen the enjoyment in his eyes when he’d done it. While that made me uncomfortable around him, it also told me he would’ve tortured me with or without Connor’s orders.

The part of me that used to tremble at the memory of what Travis had done? Gone. In its place burned something fiercer, something that wanted to rip him a new one.

Maybe that was progress. Maybe you had to get angry before you could let go.

“Okay, so talk,” I said to him, crossing my arms over my chest.

“I was wrong. I hurt you.” He looked me straight in the eye. “I thought you were a threat, maybe still do, but that doesn’t excuse the extent of…what I did to you.”

Snorting, I asked, “Was that an apology?”

His jaw worked like he was chewing on broken glass. But then his shoulders dropped, and he dipped his chin in a reluctant nod.

I could’ve pushed harder, made him grovel. Part of me wanted to. But I’d made promises—to myself and Connor—and standing here nursing old wounds wasn’t going to honor them. “I forgive you. But if you ever touch me again, I’ll break more than your hand.”

The corner of Travis’s mouth twitched upward. “Deal.” Another curt nod, and he was gone.

Connor exhaled, almost laughed, and continued the tour.

We moved back outside, winding around a garden full of herbs and lavender until a little girl ran up to us.

Her hair was in wild pigtails, and her eyes went wide as moons before she asked me, “Are you gonna be our luna?”

Connor choked on a laugh beside me.

“What’s a luna?” I asked her.

“The alpha’s mate, if she’ll have him,” he answered, and when my head snapped to him, he added quickly, “Don’t answer that—I wasn’t asking. Well, not yet.”

This time, it wasn’t only my cheeks that turned crimson.

The little girl ran off giggling, and we followed her to the schoolhouse in silence.

Inside, the teacher smiled when she saw me. “Ready to try again?”

I nodded, and Connor gave me a hug, warm and disarming, before winking and stepping out. Without him nearby, it felt easier to breathe.

My wolf stirred as the lesson began, and when the instructor asked us to call on our wolf forms, something indeed shifted. I assumed it was internal, but high-pitched squeals told me otherwise.

Snapping open my eyes, I glanced around. The kids were giddy, pointing at my lap. I brought my gaze down, and to my amazement, I saw that my nails had thickened into massive claws.

Actual claws.

It was only for a moment, long enough for me to glimpse it, and then it was gone.

Gasps and claps and cheers erupted, and I beamed.

~I can’t wait to show Connor~, I thought, but the pride only lasted a breath. Because a siren tore through the room.

~BWAAAHHHHHH.~

The teacher’s face paled. “To the pack house. Now!” she barked. “Everyone, go!”