Cold Hard Secret (Secret McQueen) by Sierra Dean

I’d taken an electric shock to the spine. I crumpled to the floor, panting, and spasmed several times. What was she doing? I’d told her we couldn’t shift, and this was suspiciously shifting-like in its symptoms.
    “ Stop, ” I gasped.
    I shuddered violently, and without realizing I’d moved, I was now crouched in a low squat, my palms flat on the stone. When my mouth opened, it wasn’t because I was trying to speak, yet words came out anyway, and they weren’t mine.
    “Lie down, beast of the ranks. You have challenged me before and proven unfit. Kneel before your queen or suffer.”
    There’d been times in the past I wondered how Lucas had ever believed I was suitable to be the werewolf queen. As Secret, I wasn’t. But the wolf inside me? She was a different story, and she commanded so much respect, I understood now what he’d seen. She was the queen, not me.
    Wolf-Desmond edged forward, sniffling the air, still showing his front fangs in a sign of fearful defiance. Because of the position I was in, I was now facing the wolf head-on, his snout barely a foot away from me. I was terrified, but my wolf was having none of it.
    Show no fear, foolish girl. Don’t make him doubt us.
    Easy for her to say since she wasn’t the one whose body was on the line. What did she care if my human face got ripped to shreds? It only mattered to her if I died.
    I swallowed hard and focused on the rough feeling of the stone beneath my fingers. It was wet and slippery, and I curved my nails around one of the cobblestone edges and gripped it until it hurt. Focusing on the pain took my mind off the trail of saliva dripping from Desmond’s yaw to the floor.
    “ BOW DOWN. ” The voice ripped from me and sounded like something echoing from the bowels of hell itself. If it hadn’t come out of my own mouth, it might have scared the living shit out of me, but as it was my fingers began to tremble.
    What was this thing inside me?
    I had never spent a lot of time focused on the finer details of living with a wolf trapped in my body. For much of my life I’d ignored her completely, using the cool, calming effects of my vampire blood to keep her in line. But ever since my trip to Louisiana, when I’d shifted for the first—and only—time, she was hell-bent on making me acknowledge her.
    And she was winning.
    More and more often now I was relying on her to engage in partial shifts, or using her power to keep others in line. Right now I was still getting the better end of the bargain, and she had yet to ask for her pound of flesh in return. But the time was coming when she would, I could feel it. She would want to shift, and she would want to run, and once we were in wolf form, I had no idea if I’d wield any control at all.
    Sometimes I wondered if she would keep us in that form forever.
    A small part of me asked if that would be the worst thing to happen.
    Several of the vampires had reacted to my cry, crowding around the edge of the pit to look down at us and watch what was transpiring. Desmond’s lips relaxed so I could no longer see every tooth in his mouth, and he gave a short growl before finally whining and lying down, covering his snout with one paw as if ashamed to face me.
    “You do not dare to disobey your queen again. If it happens a third time, I will not be gracious.”
    The bitch meant business too. I could feel the truth of her words reverberate through me. She wasn’t one to toss down empty threats, and apparently it didn’t matter that Desmond was our mate—as she constantly reminded me—she would make him regret another assault on us.
    I found it bizarre I’d needed to resort to threats against Desmond, of all people. In his human form he was the kindest, gentlest man who wouldn’t dream of doing anything to hurt me. Even the first time I’d seen him in his wolf form, he’d been so careful with me. Yet he was showing an antagonism he never had previously. It was like Desmond was hiding away a part of himself