Unchained (Dark Shifter Romance) (10 page)

Her dreams were liquid heat and fire.

There was something chasing her-- or was she chasing it? Lacey ran, first on two feet, then four, her body shifting wildly beneath her as she ran. She felt like Alice in Wonderland, growing bigger, than smaller, the bigger again. Furred, then bare; fanged, then not. The moon was nearly full in the sky above her, calling to her.

She woke up covered in a sheen of sweat, the cool night air seeming impossibly cold against her overheated flesh. For a moment the room spun around her, dizzyingly, but then she remembered where she was, and who-- if not what. She felt like she had a fever, like she was trapped in a sweet inferno, and only wanting to walk further into it. Beneath it all, something burnt even brighter: that magnetic pull inside her, urging her towards some unseen compass point.

Blinking sleep from her eyes, Lacey looked around the cabin. Jenny was in the bed that had previously been her own, looking exhausted even in sleep. The dark shadows underneath her eyes were a testament how long she had gone without full night's sleep, thinking she was the only person left alive in a nightmare.

Lacey watched Jenny sleep for a while, as if her attention alone could give her sister a dreamless sleep. There was a hint of that compass-like pull in it, too: even if her eyes had been closed, and she'd been blindfolded and spun around, she knew she would have still known where her sister was. She could have been dropped in the middle of the ocean, and still, she would have been able to hold out a hand and point.

It was comforting, in its own way. The terror of not knowing whether her family was alive or not had been replaced with a deep certainty of where her loved ones were, etched deep into her bones. Was this how wolf shifters felt all the time? No wonder they put such a close emphasis on pack. It was the sort of thing that could either make you happy, or make you a wreck.

But that wasn't the only force thumping beneath her breastbone. As silently as she could, Lacey got up from the messy blankets on the floor next to Jenny’s bed, and padded towards the cabin door. Jack’s armchair was empty, but she knew that he was nearby.

She took a deep breath, letting her lungs fill with air, and let it filter through her, telling her all the facts that she would have otherwise missed, a new sense to fill in a gap that she didn't even know she had. Even though the man himself was not there, she could smell him, getting a read on the empty air which he had passed through. There was the scent of masculine clean masculine sweat, leather from his boots, and the woodsy sent of trees and dirt.

Underneath it all, there was the scent of an alpha shifter, dizzying and electric. Belatedly, Lacey realised that her hands were closing into fists, her nails biting into the bare flesh of her palms almost painfully.

It was like being in a tilt-a-whirl at the fair, new senses pulling her this way and that, her head being filled with things whooshing by too quickly to grasp. Her head pounded, her heart racing, and above it all, the sky burnt like liquid ice.

Jack had warned her about her inevitable transformation, humanity giving way to shifter, but only now did she realise how much she had been hoping that the man was wrong. Now, though, it was unmistakable.

Still silently, she opened the cabin door, and headed out into the woods.

Even though she couldn't see the river, she could smell the bright, clean scent of it, and its gentle rushing sound filled her ears as if it were right on top of her. Every little living creature on the wood was visible to her as if they were standing in the open, the scent and sound of woodpeckers, chipmunks, and squirrels as blatant as if they had been picked out in neon for her. For the first time she was truly aware of how full of life the woods were.

And underneath it all, there was another scent. She lifted her head to the breeze, an instinctive motion, her nose twitching as she picked up the scent.

Shifters.

When she'd been attacked, both in the town and in her family home, she hadn't given much thought to scent. Reasonably enough, she'd been much more busy trying to fend off the people trying to kill her. But now, even though they were blessedly far away from her, she could catch traces of them in the breeze, like a crackle on a poorly tuned radio station.

She shivered, a shudder of disgust running down her spine. In their human forms, she hadn't felt anything much, but now, their wolf scents were unmistakable, overpowering in their rank, predator scent.

She swallowed. It made her queasy. There was something uneasy about the scent, something sick and mocking.

"Lacey?"

Lacey spun around, her bare feet scrambling the leaves for purchase, and she found herself dropping into a defensive stance, hands raised.

"Whoa there." It was Jack, stepping up the shadows with his hands raised placatingly. He cocked his head, and she knew that he was scenting the breeze just as she had done moments before. "What are you doing here? You should head back inside."

Lacey shook her head, trying to regain her thoughts. "No." She saw him open his mouth again, knew he was about to try persuading her yet again, and she cut him off. "There’s no way I’m going to be around Jenny while this,” she gestured to herself, “is going on." She tried to make her voice sound strong and calm, but even to her own ears, she could hear the strain in her words.

Jack stepped forward and placed his hands on her bare upper arms, soothing her out of her defensive stance. Her flesh was burning as if she was feverish, but his hands still felt warm to the touch, strangely pleasant. Lacey let herself be calmed by his touch, shutting her eyes as the sensation washed away the outpouring of scent and sound that was threatening to drown out her panicking human mind.

"It’s a lot to take in at once, isn’t it?” He grinned a little, his bright white canines slightly pointier than usual. He nodded up towards the nearly-full moon. “It’s the dress rehearsal for the big show, and in a few hours, when it’s at its peak, you’ll be the star.”

“What your buddy said about me and Colt... was that true?” Overloaded with her new senses, Lacey couldn’t help the way her fears blurted out of her. “About me going to him? This scar— it’s pulling me, wanting me to do something...”

She snarled, and felt fangs press against the curve of her lip. "God! I'm not going to be that. I won't let myself be that." She shot a look up at Jack, trying to will herself to sound stern. "I'll— I’ll kill myself before submitting to an asshole like him."

"It won't come to that." Reaching up, Jack slid his hands around her, pulling her into a protective embrace. "His business is with me, not you. "

Ashamed, of her own weakness, Lacey nonetheless let herself lean into Jack's embrace, pressing up harder against his broad chest as if she could soak up comfort and steadiness through her skin, absorbing it on a molecular level. This close, she could hear his heartbeat, could feel it pulsing in the arms is that surrounded her, holding her close.

She wondered if she could if he could sense the same of her, if he could pick up the rabbit-like pounding of her panicked heart. The thought made her feel vulnerable in some way. Nervous, she let out a laugh. "I can hear your heartbeat."

Jack cocked his head, and let out a ghost of a smirk. "Of course you can. Your hearing’s got to be ten times as good as it was before, and I’m right here."

"So can you hear mine?”

His arms tightened around her. "Yeah. Is that a problem?"

"No. Yes." Lacey shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. "I wish you couldn't. It's… embarrassing. "

His smirk was genuine. "That you have a heartbeat? I mean, I thought you were a bit cold-hearted when I first met you, but I’ve always known that you had a heart."

She let out a snort of laughter. "No, that-- that you can tell how fast my heart's beating. It's like all on display for you, and there's nothing I can do about it."

"But I'm on display to you, too, if you look." He tilted her chin then, here in the eyes. "This isn't a one-way street. Everything I can sense, you can sense too. I'm as bared to you as you are to me."

"And that doesn't make you feel vulnerable?”

Jack shook his head. "When you grow up in a pack, you learn that you're a part of something bigger than yourself. No one can lie to each other-- at least, not well. You see the truth of your pack mates, whether they want you to or not. No secrets, only trust."

The intensity in his eyes as he spoke about his pack, now gone, was too much for Lacey. She tore her gaze away from him, resting her head back against his chest. But it hadn't been raw, wounded pain of what he'd spoken about them previously: now there was something calm in his gaze, fond, but collected. She knew he would bear the pain for the rest of his life, but now, at least, it wasn’t swallowing him alive. He’d stepped back from the cliff, wrestling whatever inner demons tormented him.

"That sounds terrifying," she managed. "Being a part of something like that."

His voice was serious. "But you want it, don't you?"

He placed his hand between them, pressing against her collarbone, his palm on his sternum. Her heart beat underneath his hand, some tiny point of connection between the two of them. "You've got a shifter side to you now, and that means you've got everything that comes along with it. You can feel it can't you? Your pack within you, anchoring you."

For a moment Lacey was overcome, wordless. Underneath the warmth of his touch, somewhere underneath the thumping pulse of her heart, she
could
feel it. It was that magnetic pull, a new sense. She knew that even at this moment, Jenny was still asleep, her breathing still peaceful. She could feel it almost as if her sister was there alongside her, like there was another heart beating alongside of her own.

She nodded. "Yeah. That's always been there, to a degree. I've always loved my family, even when we were apart.” She let out a shaky laugh. "But now I've got GPS mapping involved. It’s a hell of an upgrade."

Jack chuckled. “You’re a wolf now, Lacey.”

“I guess I really am. Can I change yet?”

His voice grew serious. “Tonight you will, and while the full moon is out, you won't be able to change back.”

“But shifters can change whenever they want, right? I've seen my fair share of that already.” She flexed her fingers, as if she could make them change into claws through sheer force of will alone. “

“You know, I don't actually know. Born shifters find it easier to change the closer the new moon gets, but made wolves like you are incredibly rare. Maybe...” There was a glimmer of playfulness in Jack's eyes as he gazed at her, seeing something in her expression. She expected him to console her in some way, preparing her for what she'd go through that night, but instead he just gave her a cocky grin. "Lacey?"

She blinked. "Yes?”

He winked at her. "Try to keep up."

In one swift movement, he turned on his heel, and then he was no longer a man. Running as he shifted, the wolf that had been Jack mere seconds ago bounded off into the forest, a sleek, wild creature.

If he had simply asked Lacey to shift, she wouldn’t have known where to begin. Now, though, without thinking, her fresh new instincts overwhelmed her and propelled her forward. She began to chase him.

Her bare feet pounded on the ground, kicking up leaves as she ran. Ahead of her, she could see the glimpses of Jack's thick black coat in the night as he ran ahead of her, jinking around trees, disappearing into the undergrowth. She ran, and her breath burned within her, with all the pure energy of a sprint.

She let out a breathy laugh, the joy of movement wiping away the confusing tangle of sensations welling up within her. For her the woods were no longer the mess of distracting scents, no squirrels, no river, no woods and trees, no other shifters. It was just her and Jack, and their wolf sides.

She stumbled, her feet uncooperative for a moment, but the chase led her on, the toothy grin of Jack's faint muzzle catching the moonlight head of her. She was running, and there was nothing but the chase and her goal…

She stumbled again and threw out her hands to steady herself, but they were no longer hands. The last human part of her mind reared back in alarm, wanting to look at everything logically, getting everything into place, but the wolf side of her, now thoroughly revved up, gently took the lead.

Her bare feet were no longer vulnerable fleshy appendages, but paws, thickly padded and furred to protect against brambles and thistles. Her legs pumped powerfully beneath her, urging her onwards across the landscape in a way she had never before experienced. Her lungs worked like bellows, powering her as she zipped through the trees and bracken after Jack's wolf, keeping on his track. If she had still had a human mouth, she would have laughed-- as it was, she let out a wild yip as she chased him, her instincts of this new shape easing the transition with joy.

He must have been deliberately being slow, giving her a chance to catch up with him, but it was unimportant. With her heart pounding and her breath racing, she finally caught up to him, slamming him down against the ground.

His wolf was big, bigger than her own, and those blazing golden eyes bore down into her with a wild animal fire. He could have torn apart then and there, she knew, that body not just for show. Instead he stretched out beneath her, paws splayed like a pup.