Half Wolf by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom Page B

happened here, and the fine gray dust sifting down was nothing more than out-of-season snow.
    “You’d better not go like that,” Cade warned, unbuttoning his shirt before stepping out of his pants. Handing his clothes to Michael, he added, “We’d have people after us for far more ridiculous charges than for being what we are. Indecent exposure springs to mind.”
    Michael put on the borrowed clothes with a barked “Thanks.”
    Kaitlin didn’t watch him dress. Emotions like lust and fright should have been separated by a vast distance, and weren’t. The emotional roller coaster refused to stop and let her off.
    “I’d lend you some of my stuff in turn, Cade,” Rena said in jest. “But you at least have shorts on. I go commando.”
    The fourth Were, whose name Kaitlin didn’t know, cleared his throat and said with a slight accent she recognized as Irish, “So, we’ll be going now, Michael, unless you need us for chaperones, or to have your back on your promenade back to civilization.”
    Michael sniffed the air before leveling a look at Kaitlin. “Not a vampire around at the moment. I think we’ll be okay on our own. What do you think, Kaitlin? Shall we chance it?”
    Tired of the hot seat, and though she wasn’t sure about letting these werewolves go, Kaitlin nodded. She immediately found herself alone with the handsome shape-shifter, her soul fielding a hunger for Michael that defied rational thought.
    When he stepped toward her, she stepped back.
    “I’m not the enemy,” he said.
    Kaitlin looked up at the moon.
    “Neither is she,” Michael added.
    “How can you not think so after what happens to you and the others in that light?” she asked.
    He shrugged. “It is what it is.”
    “Can the rest of this pack fully shape-shift? Become a wolf that looks like a real wolf?”
    Michael shook his head. “In this pack, only me.”
    “Why?”
    “It’s not in their genetics. At least that’s the way it’s explained to those of us who can.”
    She tilted her head, examining the moon beyond the treetops. “Since your blood saved me from death at the hand of one of those monsters, will that change the outcome of my own transformation, if and when it starts?”
    “No. Hot blood wins out over cold. Because you didn’t die at the hands of that vampire, your human side will have a say in what happens.”
    “Will I change? For sure?”
    “Yes.”
    “How long until I do?”
    “During the next full moon would be my guess.”
    “You don’t know?”
    “Everyone is different. Sometimes it takes longer for the wolf to catch up.”
    She went over his statement in her mind before speaking again. “The next full moon comes the day after tomorrow.”
    Michael nodded. “Not much time left.”
    She bit her lip hard to keep from shouting. “Are you you when you shift?” she managed to ask.
    Michael obviously knew what she meant. “Weres don’t lose our minds, like in horror movies. We are aware of everything we do. The wolf isn’t another entity taking up space inside us, it is us. The mind still functions properly and remains in charge while in either shape.”
    “That’s something,” she muttered.
    Michael was close enough to further boost her pulse. Cade’s dark blue shirt was a size too large, but suited Michael perfectly. Then again, so would a towel.
    Michael was a werewolf, and she knew next to nothing about the reality of that yet, except that Weres were real. They were also brave, bold, exceptional fighters that seemed to be on the right side of the battle against creatures exemplifying the dark side. At least Michael’s pack fit that description.
    “You scare me a little,” she confessed.
    “Only a little? I must be losing my touch.”
    Michael was smiling when she turned back. After reducing vampires to dust, he appeared to have regained his calm. But mind reading went both ways tonight. Kaitlin also knew he wanted more private, personal time with her in spite of his inner protests