Impulse

Chapter Ten

The first time they’d snuck into Panama City Beach, Julio had been traveling as a wolf on a vacation, and she’d been an anonymous friend. Her jean shorts and sports jersey had been enough.

The second time they’d be arriving as representatives of the Southeast council, and Sera put aside her pride somewhere around Tallahassee and asked Julio to take her shopping.

Not that new clothes would make up for the fact that she was a coyote, but it was one less thing they could sneer about. When facing wolves, sometimes all you could do was minimize your disadvantages and smile a lot.

Sydney met them on the edge of town with a smile and an invitation to skip the hotel and stay as guests of the pack. “At least we’ll get to run,” Sera pointed out as Julio guided Jackson’s car up the twisting driveway that led to Sydney’s house. “This is sort of weird, though. I guess I never think of the wolves in New Orleans as a pack because the only thing they all have in common is that they listen to Alec.”

“Regional custom?” Julio shrugged. “I heard of one pack in northern California that actually lives as wolves as much as they can. Guess it takes all kinds.”

“Yeah, I love my coyote, but maybe not that much.”

“No kidding.” He reached across the seat and laid his hand on her knee. “If anyone makes you feel uncomfortable or acts like a jerk—” Sera dropped her hand to cover his. “If we’re going to do this, you can’t protect me from anything but the worst offenses. If you smack down everyone who doesn’t approve, you’ll run out of wolves.”

“I can’t smack them, but I can glare and growl.”

And cause tension and problems when he needed allies. “It’s just words. Trust me to be tougher than that. All I need to know is that you won’t let anyone touch me. And I do know that.”

He sighed. “You don’t have to suffer on my account, okay? I don’t want you to.”

“That’s the point. It’s not suffering.” She squeezed his hand before lifting it so she could kiss his knuckles. “I work in a customer-service industry. I get more creative verbal abuse during a busy shift than most wolves could come up with in a year. As long as I don’t have to be friends with them, I don’t care.”

“All right.” His tension didn’t ease. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and Sydney won’t tolerate that bullshit in his pack anyway.”

No, he probably wouldn’t, which made the evening all the more nerve-wracking. If they couldn’t handle the friendly alpha of a small pack, their relationship would be dead before it had a chance to live. “We’re about to find out.”

Julio rounded the last bend in the driveway, and a modest brick house came into view. “I guess this is it.”

It looked worn and welcoming, a smaller version of Alec’s house in Louisiana. Some of the tension knotting her shoulders eased. She might have to face dubious werewolves, but at least they wouldn’t be the rich, snobby sort.

Not like Julio’s family.

Sydney parked his truck and made a beeline for Sera’s door as Julio pulled to a stop behind him. She squeezed Julio’s hand again and lowered her voice. “Are you going to make it?”

“Don’t worry about me.” He opened his own door and climbed out.

A woman had come outside, and she approached the car as Sydney helped Sera from her seat. “Are these our guests, Syd?”

“Julio Mendoza from the Southeast council,” Sydney supplied, steering Sera around the car.

“Meet Patty, the woman who has the unenviable task of keeping me honest.”

“Most of the time, I do a poor job.” The woman smiled as she shook Julio’s hand, then Sera’s. “We’re having barbecue. Nothing fancy, but there’s plenty to go around.”

“Barbecue sounds perfect.” Sera used her best friendly smile—and her best manners. “I’m Sera. And thank you so much for inviting us to stay with you. It will be nice to have a chance to run tonight.”

“We run almost every night.” Patty turned and beckoned them to follow. “Everyone’s out back. Come on.”

Sydney fell into step next to Patty and led them through the house. “Not everyone’s here, of course. Plenty work night shifts in town. We own the bar, a strip motel and a couple of restaurants. Keeps money coming in.”

“Like a co-op,” Julio observed.

“Pretty much. Money comes in, whether they work for us or someplace else.” They passed through a comfortable-looking living room that showed signs of being hastily tidied, and Sydney pulled open a sliding glass door. “Well, for a long time, money was going out as fast as it came in. Cesar raised tithes twice in three years.”

“Yeah, I bet he did.” Julio walked out into the back yard and accepted the can of beer someone handed him. “Hear anything else from him lately?”

Sera watched as Sydney studied Julio, and recognized the tension of a man taking a careful step toward trust. “His brother called a month ago and said he’d be around to collect this quarter’s tithes.”

Julio froze and turned to him. “Alec said everyone should funnel this quarter’s money directly back into the pack.”

“Which is what I told Diego. He didn’t press the matter.”

Too late, Sera made the connection. Cesar’s brother…Julio’s father. Her heart ached for him, but there was nothing she could say. Not in front of strangers. “If you need to talk to Sydney, maybe Patty could show me around.”

“No, stay.” His hand closed around hers. “The next time either one of them shows up, Sydney, I think Alec and I would take it as a personal favor if you’d let us know.”

“I’ll do that.” Sydney waved a hand toward a scattering of picnic tables that had been shoved together in two long lines. “This is no way to start a party, though. You two take a seat. Sera, honey, pick your poison. Beer, sweet tea, something stronger?”

“Beer’s fine.”

Sydney gestured, and a shy teenager who’d been staring at her snatched a bottle out of a cooler full of ice and trotted over. The boy gave Julio a nervous look before offering Sera her drink. “You’re really a coyote.”

Sometimes the spite was easier. Loathing and hatred were simple. The fawning awe made her feel freakish too, but it felt bitchy to snarl when the kid was trying to be friendly. And he was a kid, so she managed a smile. “So I’ve heard.”

“Where are you from?”

“I grew up in Louisiana. Not far outside New Orleans.” She tried to judge the boy’s age.

Fifteen, maybe, a gawkish age for any shapeshifter, with instincts and hormones doing serious battle. “How about you? Do you live around here?”

He pointed toward a line of trees, through which she caught a glimpse of silver. “In the RV camp. Most of the pack lives there.”

Sydney clapped the young wolf on the shoulder and turned him around. “Go on and make yourself useful, pup.” The kid bolted, and Sydney’s face took on a strained expression as he turned back to Julio. “Your uncle and Coleman before him squeezed out a lot more than most of them could afford, especially in this shit economy. We all make do.”

Julio lowered his voice. “I wish you’d said something when Alec and Carmen came around last summer.”

“It’s easy to say you’re different,” Sydney replied just as quietly. “In my experience, nothing drives good intentions into the mud as fast as money on the table. Maybe I was still having trouble believing.”

“I’ll talk to Alec before we leave, see what can be done short-term.”

Sydney looked from Julio to Sera, and it was hard, keeping an impassive expression in the face of so much desperate pride as it bled into hope. “We’re not looking for handouts. But a little of our own back would be nice.”

“I understand.” Julio lifted his beer, then shook his head as he set it back down. “No, you know what? I’m going to go call him now. He needs to see this.”

Sera squeezed his hand before releasing it. “I’m going to stay here with Sydney and Patty.”

“Yeah, okay.” He flashed her a quick smile and walked away, digging his cell phone out of his pocket.

“He’s sweet as pie,” Patty murmured. “Where’d you find him?”

In a tiny exam room during the worst moments of her life. Not exactly a romantic start to the story, so she picked a different start. “He pulled my father from a burning building.”

“Well, now he’s just making me look bad,” Sydney grumbled. He leaned over to kiss Patty’s cheek. “I’ll check on the grill. Shout if you need me.”

“We won’t.” She winked at Sera. “We’ll be talking about you, that’s all.”

“Girl talk. Totally.” When Sydney was gone, Sera smiled. “He seems great too. Holding together a pack can’t be easy.”

“He’s had a rough time,” Patty conceded. “But like he said, you make do.”

Sera followed Patty to the closest picnic table and ignored the curious and assessing stares from the wolves. Most seemed unwilling to come closer—a wariness that no doubt came from uncertainty and a healthy dose of fear of what Julio might do.

Fear wouldn’t stop the powerful wolves, but maybe she wouldn’t always be a liability. “Julio and Alec will help all of you. Alec’s not perfect by a long shot, but he cares. And Julio’s sister does too.”

“I believe you, actually. And trust me when I say it’s been a long time since I could say that and mean it.”

“I’m not surprised.” Sera sipped her beer and watched as Julio held a low, animated conversation with Alec. “Will you tell me something?”

“Name it, sweetie.”

“Seeing him with me. Does it make it harder to trust him?”

Patty snorted. “After the mess with Coleman and the other Mendozas, it’s already damn hard to trust him. I’m not sure what you’re asking, exactly.”

Something inside her relaxed. “So you don’t care that he’s slumming with a coyote?”

For a moment, the wolf looked almost guilty. Then she sighed. “It’s a bit of a relief, actually.

That he might not be thinking he’s better than a bunch of panhandle rednecks.”

Sera reached across the table to cover Patty’s hand. “No. Not remotely.”

“Not,” the woman continued firmly, “that I think of you that way. But I’m used to other wolves looking at me like… Well, like I might not be fitting company for anyone, much less important people like them.”

“I am a redneck,” Sera said lightly. “The only shapeshifters I had around me growing up were wolves. The boys thought I was fitting company when they got lonely, and a stray who needed to be kicked to the curb when they weren’t. So I get it.”

Patty smiled, the expression edged with hard reality as well as commiseration. “Then you are one of us.”

In a lot of the ways that mattered, maybe she wasn’t so different. If she wanted to be with Julio, she could use that. She could help him regain the trust of the wolves who’d lost trust in anyone with power.

Of course, it wouldn’t change the other challenge. Julio’s family had been willing to risk Carmen’s life to try to turn her into a wolf. Diego Mendoza had looked at his daughter and had decided that she’d be better off dying as a newly made wolf than living as a human psychic.

If they’d destroy their own family to protect their precious bloodlines, she didn’t want to imagine what they’d do to her—or what price Julio might have to pay to stop them.

Running with a wolf pack was a new experience for Sera.

She’d run with wolves. Miguel and Anna took her running as often as she wanted, and there was always a camaraderie between them. It was fun to test herself against Anna’s strength and speed, or to tumble across the grass in a fake battle with Miguel, who had enough nervous power to exhaust even Anna.

Running with a pack was different. They were a pack. They flowed together under the moonlit sky, the communication between them so subtle Sera could only wonder at it. They ran as a group and played as a group, the youngsters testing themselves in teasing challenges that Sydney always broke apart before they could turn too real.

Sera ran with them, her blood pulsing in a primal, familiar beat that matched the fall of her paws against the ground. A little quicker than Julio’s—she had to fight to keep up with his larger stride. She was smaller than all of the adults and most of the adolescent wolves, but pride made her push herself until the pack began to splinter, veering off in private chases or circling back for games of tag.

She nipped at Julio’s tail and took off toward the denser part of the woods, slowing her pace to give her tired legs a chance to recover. He followed her, growling at another wolf who broke apart with them. The stranger tucked his ears and backed off, hunkering close to the ground, his tail between his legs.

Sera kept running without guilt. They’d done their duty. Talked to wolves all through dinner and into the evening, and men approached Julio with growing surety, and women talked to Sera with a heartbreaking mix of caution and envy. It was hard to blame even the ones who looked on Julio with covetous eyes—he represented safety and security in a world that had taken too much from them.

But he was hers. And now, after sharing him all evening, she wanted him to herself.

Julio slowed to a walk, his gaze focused on her. She could feel its weight, its careful assessment.

So serious. So carefully protective. She circled back and nipped at his tail, trying to tease him into playing with her, but he was having none of it.

Too many strangers, then. She huffed and nipped at him again, then took off into the woods, heading away from the pack and into the darker, stiller parts of the forest.

He ran her down after half a mile, his panting breaths moving closer and closer until he’d drawn even with her shoulder—running beside her instead of chasing.

This was peace. This was life as she was meant to live it, as comfortable in her fur as she was in her skin, strength at her side but not overwhelming her. The forest lay quiet around them, but still they ran. Sydney owned endless acres around his house, enough to give the pack a taste of solitude whenever they needed it.

She’d had no idea how very much she needed it.

Julio stopped and wandered in a wide circle around the edge of a shadowed clearing, then threw his head back in a wild howl.

The sound thundered through her. Not a call, but a warning. A proud statement of ownership, if only for a while. No wolf would trespass on his territory. No wolf would dispute that it was his territory.

He was strong and beautiful, and Sera crept to him with her head bent low, savoring the whisper of instinct that urged caution and respect, because for the first time she had no fear of rejection or danger. He met her with a soft rumble, rubbed his nose against hers.

The clearing was thick grass covered in leaves. Comfortable enough to stretch out upon, even when she let magic shimmer through her on a wave of giddy heat that left her human and tingling, naked beneath the endless sky. “I love the woods at night.”

Another pulse of magic behind her. “So do I.”

Shifting brought arousal, a high no drug could match. Awareness left her limbs liquid as she rolled to her stomach. “I love running with the big bad wolf too.”

Julio huffed out a laugh a split second before his mouth descended on the back of her neck.

Teeth dug into her skin, and she gasped, fingers closing helplessly on the grass as the sweetly edged pain brought her body from lazily interested to starving in the space between heartbeats. Her hips lifted without her permission, driven by the urge to submit. To offer herself, to beg to be taken.

He covered her body with his and continued to nibble on her skin. “How much do you love it out here?”

“I could live in a cabin in the woods.” She curled her toes as his teeth scraped across her shoulder, and had to fight the urge to squirm. If he dragged her to her knees and drove into her, she wouldn’t complain. Not when she was this hungry, this ready. Thinking enough to talk was a struggle, and her words came out breathless. “As long as I got cable and a modern kitchen.”

“Here, or anywhere?”

“Anywhere.” She shivered as his breath ghosted across her skin. “But I like it here too. I like Patty. She knows about hard living.”

He brushed her hair away from her shoulder and covered the newly bared skin with kisses.

“They like you more than me, that’s for sure.”

“Because they don’t know you.” His lips found every spot that made her breathing hitch, but he kept kissing her, slow and easy. She was starting to wonder if he knew how to go fast.

“You’re a Mendoza, baby. They’re always going to assume you’re one of the elite. And I’m a coyote. They’ll always know I’m not.”

“You’re better than elite.” His fingers trailed down her spine to her hip. “You’re Sera.”

She twisted to look over her shoulder at him. Darkly handsome and so serious, even now.

“I’m your girl. And you’re my wolf. You’d better keep that in mind. I may be a submissive, but I’m still damn territorial.”

He smiled, slow and dark, and jerked her hips up, pulling her to her knees. “I know better than to forget.”

Oh yeah. The less-human parts of her thrilled as she bowed her back, stretching her arms out above her head and pressing her forehead to the grass. “I don’t know what to beg for. Your fingers, your tongue or a fast, hard fucking.”

He slapped her ass, driving a startled moan from her lips. “Then let me decide.”

Her skin burned where his hand had fallen. A good burn, the kind that fuzzed the edges of the world and let her focus on nothing beyond her body. She dug her fingers into the grass and wiggled, teasing him with a throaty laugh. “Can’t keep your hands off my ass, can you?”

“You don’t mind.” He leaned down, his chest against her back, and nudged his erection between her thighs.

She whimpered and arched, entirely unselfconscious for once in her life. “Again? Please?”

He rubbed his hand over her tingling skin, then rewarded her with another slap.

Heaven. Not tied up in games and guilt, just something that afforded them both pleasure. She closed her eyes and gave herself over to sensation as her lips formed another plea. Mindless, begging words, tangled up with his name.

Julio pushed forward, the head of his cock slicking close to her entrance. “Sera.”

She edged her knees apart. “I want you inside me. So bad. So deep.”

“If we weren’t rolling in the dirt, I’d make you wait.” Then he thrust into her, only a few inches, but hard enough to claim.

She bit her own arm to muffle her cry, a helpless noise that squeaked out regardless. One knee slipped on damp leaves, and it was so much hotter like this. Outdoors, on the ground.

Messy and a little uncomfortable, with a twig digging into one arm and the sharp smell of crushed grass twisting with the forest and Julio and the unmistakable scent of sex.

It was raw and real, and she pushed back against his grip, ready to take every stretching inch of him. Ready to be fucked inside out, to scream her release to the sky and not care that every wolf in the pack heard her.

Julio twisted a hand in her hair and pulled her head back. “You want to be loud, don’t you?”

“Yes.” A rasped confession. A groan, because the fist in her hair was the right kind of dirty.

“I don’t care if they all know. I want them to know that you’re mine.”

“You think they can’t tell?” His skin slid over hers, and he breathed his next words in her ear.

“They saw the way I look at you. How much I want you.”

She twisted against his grip and pressed her lips to his jaw. “How much? Tell me.”

He buried his nose in the hollow of her throat and inhaled deeply. “I didn’t even want them breathing in your perfume. You belong to me.”

Oh, that touched off a shiver—one of fear as much as longing. Those were words she’d heard before. Words that she’d craved, words that had turned claustrophobic and cruel.

She rubbed her back against his chest and closed her eyes. “I’m your girl.”

“No,” he whispered, his muscles tense. “Because it’s not okay. It’s too much, too far.”

“It’s us.” Reaching back, she gripped his hip, dug her nails into his skin and tried to pull him deeper. “It doesn’t have to be okay to be true.”

“Yes, it does.” He didn’t move. “I won’t be that asshole, Sera. I’m enough of one already without adding ‘stupidly possessive bastard’ to the list.”

Frustration raked her, and she snarled and dropped her hand to claw at the grass. He was right, and there should have been relief in it. To know that Julio wouldn’t trap her, wouldn’t crush her.

Human relief, maybe, but this wasn’t a night for human things. She twisted to bite his jaw.

“Mine. Tonight, you’re all mine.”

He pulled her hair again. “I’m what?”

“Mine.” She panted the word as she squirmed, needing him deeper as much as she needed to be claimed. He was hot and hard, but he was still holding back.

He drove forward, pushing into her with a grunt as his teeth closed on her neck. The force pushed her back to her elbows, body bent low to the ground with his chest burning possession against her back as he covered her.

Over her and surrounding her. Inside her. Everything about his touch was proprietary and possessive, and she found she didn’t need the words when his body spoke a language her coyote understood.

Except he wasn’t fucking her. Just pinning her to the earth, every nerve aflame, her entire being focused on how good it would be when he moved…

She whimpered and arched her back. “Julio. For the love of—are you waiting for me to spontaneously combust?”

He flexed his hips against hers. “Shh. Can you feel it?”

“What, your dick?” She rasped out a laugh and clenched around him. Maybe words would get him moving. “Your perfect fucking cock, which feels really good and will feel better when you’re riding the hell out of me?”

“Dirty bitch.” His own laugh tickled her ears as he slipped one hand down and stroked her clit. “Not my cock. Us. When we’re close like this.”

Her hips jerked, a helpless reaction beyond her control, and her knees slipped on the ground as she spread them wider, anything to grind down against his fingers. Release was seconds from claiming her, and nothing would stop it.

But his question hung between them, and she answered with the last bit of air in her lungs, the words escaping as she tipped backwards off the cliff toward glorious free fall. “Always feel it, ’cause I’m yours.”

He answered with a pleased growl, then pulled back and began to thrust, starting with one firm snap that brought bliss in a drowning wave. Only the first, because he kept going, hard and fast, power and lust tangled up together, and the combination undid her.

It wasn’t choreographed and elegant. It was dirty and crude, her eyes squeezed shut against pounding pleasure and her ears filled with her hoarse cries and his grunts and the slick, wet sound of him sliding home, and the damn orgasm had bled into a second without respite because he kept rubbing his fingers over her clit like he was going for a world record.

His teeth grazed her earlobe. “One more, baby. Just one—” A lie, because nothing was just about another orgasm, not with her whole body shaking. Not when she was coming so hard you couldn’t count, couldn’t distinguish. She gasped for breath in the valleys and moaned through the peaks, moaned and begged until Julio dropped his forehead to the back of her shoulder and came with a rough groan.

She wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, Julio’s body covering hers, her face hidden against her folded arms. The wind played with the leaves on the trees, a quiet rustling underscoring the pounding of his heart against her back.

As her own pulse slowed, a giggle bubbled up. “Dirty bitch, huh? Your sister would wash your mouth out with soap.”

He nipped at her skin. “Are you really talking about my sister right now?”

“That’s what you get when you fuck a girl cross-eyed.” Sera stretched her arms above her head and laughed at the streaks of dirt. “I am dirty. Gonna-need-a-bath dirty.”

“That should get us some fun looks when we meet back up at Syd’s place tonight.”

“Like I’ll be the only one. Shifting gets everyone riled up.”

“Mmm.” Julio pulled away, wrapped his arms around her and rolled to the ground with her on top of him.

It took some maneuvering to turn around without kneeing him in an uncomfortable spot, but in a few moments she draped herself across his chest, her cheek resting over his heart.

With her body exhausted and her head still swimming, talking was easy. “I know you don’t want to own me. And I know you need to.”

“I—” He bit off the words and sighed. “I do. I can’t help that part.”

She traced her fingernail over his skin in a looping circle. “The part that scares me is that I need it too. I’ll never be happy if I don’t have it, but I can’t fake it if I don’t feel it. I tried.”

His voice dropped. “The real question is whether it makes you feel trapped.”

A serious question that deserved a serious answer. “Right now? Naked in the woods? No.

The shapeshifter part of me needs to belong to someone strong.”

“What about all the other times? Every day?”

Panic tried to rise. Her breathing sped, and she concentrated on slow, even exhalations. “It’s not as easy as that. Maybe it’s irrational. Some things I’d like. Some would make me feel smothered.”

His hand smoothed circles over the small of her back. “I guess it’d be easy if you could tell someone, make a list of what was okay and what wasn’t.”

“It’s not fair to be scared of you.” She closed her eyes and whispered her words against warm skin. “You’ve never tried to trap me. You’ve never done anything but try to make me feel strong.”

“Fair’s right up there with easy, sweetheart. Last I heard, life wasn’t either.”

No, it hadn’t been. Not for either of them. She kissed his chest and changed the subject. Not to an easier one, but to something equally important. “Your family’s not going to be excited about you wanting to keep a coyote.”

Julio lifted her gaze to his with one finger under her chin. “The only family I have left that matters won’t give a damn. You know that.”

“Carmen and Miguel?”

“And Veronica, and my Aunt Teresa.” His jaw tightened. “My uncle and father sure the hell don’t count.”

She planted a soothing kiss on his palm. “I wasn’t there at the challenge, you know. Alec fought your uncle, didn’t he?”

“He wouldn’t let me do it,” Julio confirmed. “For Carmen’s sake—just in case the worst happened.”

In case their uncle put power over family and tore his nephew apart on the challenge field, even if it meant the end of his brother’s wolf-born bloodline.

Babies. It always came back to-Oh, damn.

Reaching between them was stupid, but she did it anyway. Brushed her fingers across that tired but still perfect dick and groaned, as if discovering soft skin instead of latex was a surprise.

She rolled off his chest and hit the ground next to him, familiar panic so much stronger this time. Give her another second and she’d be hyperventilating, three generations’ worth of senseless fear rising up to choke the life out of her. “No condom. Fuck. ”

He sat up and held out his hand. “You’re on the pill, right? I saw them in your toiletry bag at the hotel.”

“That’s not foolproof, even if you take them every day at the same time.” Every slip-up was the same. Frantic math. Counting the days while the failure rate throbbed through her head with the rhythm of her pounding heart, and the grand finale—the memory of her mother’s crazed eyes as she shoved her under the bathroom sink. Hide, hide, hide.

She grasped at Julio’s hand and waited for the irrational fear. Waited for the worry in her gut to break open into terror.

It didn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I realize this is scary for you. I should have been more careful.”

She wet her lips, mostly to give her time to be sure her voice wouldn’t shake. “It’s on me too.

I wasn’t thinking. But hell, it’s stupid. I don’t even know what would happen if we had babies.

They could be human. They could be anything.”

Julio studied her for a moment, then touched her hand. “Hey. I would be there if you got pregnant. I mean, how depends on a lot of things, but if we had a kid… I wouldn’t let anything bad happen.”

Her eyes burned, and she had to squeeze them shut and look away. “I know. If I didn’t, I’d be having a panic attack.” Knowing was a relief. Wanting…oh, Christ. That was an urge she thought she’d stomped out. She had plans and college classes and glorious dreams of independence, and babies seemed mutually exclusive to all three.

He pulled her closer. “Just…remember that, okay?”

“I will.” She relaxed back against him, soaking in the heat of his body. “You know it’s not about you, right? You’re not like your father.”

He tensed. “No, I’m not.”

Stroking her fingers along his arm, she concentrated on finding her own quiet calm. The soft, comfortable place where her power could whisper over him, accepting and loving. “We don’t have to talk about him, if you don’t want. Miguel doesn’t really like to.”

It took a moment for him to speak. “I don’t hate him for the way he kept pulling at me all those years, but I do hate him for what he did to my mother. And to Carmen and Miguel, even before he risked their lives with those stupid fucking spells.”

The spells meant to wake the inner wolf had failed spectacularly with Carmen. But their father had tried to force the magic on her. With Miguel they’d coaxed, and Julio’s younger brother had made the decision.

But not blindly. After the time she’d spent with Miguel and Kat, Sera knew that. “He could never lie to Miguel, because Miguel could always hear his real thoughts. I don’t know if that made it harder or easier. Maybe harder.”

Julio met her gaze. “Sometimes I think Miguel only agreed because he figured he’d need to be stronger to survive everything that was going to go down.”

“Like his big brother?” Sera touched Julio’s cheek, tracing a line down to his lips. “You’re not strong because you’re a wolf. I think he knows that.”

“No.” His gaze turned bleak. “But physically, I can survive things that would kill a human in a heartbeat.”

Torture. She ghosted her thumb over his lower lip again, then pressed her forehead to his.

“Tell me?”

Julio barely moved, except for the fine tremor that shook him. “Knives. Heated wire. Pretty much the only part of the theatrical torture guidebook they didn’t break out was the car battery.”

The ground was cooling beneath them, stealing warmth, but this moment was so fragile.

They were lost together in a world where no one else existed, and she took her time stroking her fingers over his cheek. “Kat told me you stayed strong for her.”

“Well, it’s a lie.” He snorted. “The only reason I didn’t crack and blubber all over everyone is because I didn’t want to give the bastards the satisfaction.”

“Uh-huh.” Another circle, stroking from his cheek to his neck and back. “You still kept her in one piece. They picked the perfect way to crush her, and you fucked it all up. If you’d let her see what you were going through, it would have broken her before Andrew and the others found you.”

He relaxed into her touch. “I grew up with an empath. I know how it goes.”

“You did what you could to protect her. And that’s the unfair part. That’s the balance.” She cupped his cheek and nuzzled his nose. “You alphas get all the power, and all the responsibility.

You have to protect everyone else and you never get to be the one hurting.”

“There’s never any time for it.”

“There’s right now.”

He chuckled. “Naked, in the woods, with spiders biting your ass?”

“You’re the only thing that’s bitten my ass this week.” Not that the thought didn’t make her squirm her way back on top of him—just in case. “I know what the first thing on my not-smothered list is.”

He slipped both arms around her waist and pulled her closer. “What’s that?”

She caught his gaze and held it. “Now might not be the time, but if you don’t think you can share things with me, then I’m not a partner. When you keep all the responsibility, you keep all the power too.”

Julio arched one eyebrow. “You think I’m playing Mr. Tough Guy? That I’m not vulnerable?”

“I don’t know.” She smoothed the furrow from between his brows and tried to pick her words carefully. “I know you like me. But you keep coming into my life at the low points. When I’m beat up or bruised or broken inside, and you pick me back up, and sometimes…” She swallowed hard and made herself ask. “Do I give you anything back?”

He caught her hand and brought it to his lips. “Being with you… It’s loud and quiet all at the same time. Does that make sense?”

“As much sense as being sheltered and free.” A sharp breeze cut across through the trees, and she shivered. “Okay, I want a bath. Or a hot shower. If you’re nice, I’ll share with you.”

He got to his feet with her in his arms. “If? How heartless.”

She laughed and closed her teeth on his jaw. “Poor Julio. Maybe I’m trying to go easy on you. I do have the sex drive of a twenty-two-year-old, you know, and you’re an old man.”

“I’ll show you old.” He swatted her hip, and she laughed again and kicked her legs, trying to squirm out of his grip.

Laughter. She’d laughed more in the past week with Julio than she had in recent memory.

Josh hadn’t laughed unless he’d thought she wanted him to. Like everything else about their relationship, his laughter had been a bribe, a calculated action meant to keep her too content to go running home.

Everything about Julio was honesty. Painful, sometimes. He wouldn’t fib or sand the sharp edges off the truth, even when they bruised her. But he let her laugh. He let her feel. He made her hope.

He was everything she’d known he would be the first time he’d touched her. He was the kind of strong a girl could drown in, but he wouldn’t let her. If she tried, he’d drag her up and tell her to start swimming again.

Hell, maybe if she let him, he’d teach her how to fly.