“Something has changed,” I say. “That’s why I’m here. I don’t understand what’s going on. It doesn’t make any sense. And yet I don’t want it to stop, Liam. I can’tthinkabout it stopping, about not wanting her.”
“Hold up.” Liam leans forward. “Start at the beginning. Wantingwho?”
So I explain, beginning with the chase through the city in wolf form, then the meeting in the park.
Finally, I end with yesterday, when I saw her at the gym.
“I thought I was going to change both times,” I tell him. “In the park and at the gym. I haven’t felt like that since I was in my early twenties.”
Liam sits back, running a hand through his hair. “I’ve never known you to feel this way about a woman. Or anything when I think about it.”
I smirk. “Well, hooking up isn’t exactly fun when you could start changing any goddamn second.”
“No.” Liam shakes his head, looking at me in his typically no-bullshit way. “We both know you could’ve held yourself back. Maybe not with this woman. With Ruby. But with somebody else, somebody who wasn’t making your scent so powerful, I could smell it from miles away.”
I sigh, nodding. “All right, Liam. Yeah. I don’t care too much about dating, women, or any of it because I’ve never met the right person. I never thought Icouldmeet the right person. And now I have.”
Liam massages his forehead.
“What?” I snap.
“How can you say she’s the right person when you almost changed, in public,twice? And your scent...if there’s a hunter in your city, just one with the ability to track a scent, then it’s only a matter of time before they find you. Before they try to finish what they started.”
“I know.”
“Guess how many of us are left, by my last count. Guess, Ramsey.”
I grunt. “No more than three hundred.”
“Two hundred and twenty-one. I’m sure there are more wolves who don’t know about us, about the support we could offer. But there can’t be many, or we would’ve heard about them.
“In the old days, the wolves would’ve made more, run out to some village, scratch or bite someone and give the curse to somebody who wanted it, somebody who needed this power. We’d be able to train them. To help them learn how to control it. Or two wolves would breed, giving the ability to their children. Or hell, a wolf and a human would breed, and maybe the child would start to turn. Maybe not.
“It doesn’t matter. The world’s grown smaller since we were kids. One camera on one wolf, and the whole thing could blow up. Right now, it’s only the hunters. But what if the military got involved, the CIA and NSA tracking us? What if all the resources of the American government started hunting us down...what then?”
“I know,” I growl, my wolf coming out for a moment when I sigh.
Liam snaps his gaze to me sharply, eyes narrowed. “What was that?”
“What was what?” I say, turning away from him and taking a long sip of the scalding coffee.
“That growl, Ramsey. You’re really on edge, aren’t you?”
I turn back to him, letting out another sigh, a human one this time. “You taught me to be calm, Liam. You taught me to breathe slowly and to exist in the moment. But lately…remember the jokes I used to make?”
A far away smile touches Liam’s lips. “Yeah, I can hear your cocky little voice now.I thought we were werewolves, not Jedi.Ha, that was when you were still calling us werewolves.”
“Well, we are. At least, that’s where the legends come from, even if they get a lot of it wrong.”
Liam nods. “Mostof it wrong.”
“But now,” I go on. “It’s like all that training has just disappeared. This woman, Ruby, she’s...I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like the wolf is trying to burst out of me every second, like it’s desperate to get to her, to claim her because she belongs to me. Just me. Nobody else.”
Liam leans back, eyes narrowed, looking at me like I’m about to throw myself at him.
It’s my eyes, I realize. I can feel them flaring, the redness, the fire.
With effort, I calm myself.