Page 11 of Wild Wolf

Jerome snorted like I was joking, reaching for me again but when I ducked aside once more, bobbing and weaving like a whale in a jet stream, he fell so very still.

Scary still.

Psycho killer on the prowl still.

I side-stepped to put me in front of my babycakes and raised my chin. “Say it,’ I growled, the badness in me roughening my voice because I could feel the challenge in the air as it ran down my spine.

“You can’t be serious?” Jerome sneered. “You think you…love her?”

“Thinking is for top hats and cats with monocles,” I reminded him. “It isn’t my thinker that fell for her – it’s my thumper.” I put my hand over my heart in demonstration, its violent pounding a testament to that truth.

“More like your cock,” Jerome replied dismissively, and I didn’t like the way his lip was curling just a little, a sneer in my direction which he’d never offered me before. “Come on, Sin, you know how this goes. How many Fae have claimed to love you just because they’re obsessed with fucking you? It’s always the same though, isn’t it? No one actually wants you. They just want the fantasy you paint for them and the feeling of your co-”

Pain and rage and blinding screams were filling up my skull to bursting point, but it wasn’t them who lunged for him first – it was my wild wolf girl who shoved me aside and rounded on Jerome with a feral snarl.

“You say one more vile word about my man and I’ll rip that festering tongue from your mouth before choking you with it, bastardo,” Rosalie hissed with a venom that made my heart stall then race then do a triple flip, tuck, curl, whirly-loo-ha and flamble. Did she just call me hers??

Jerome straightened, fire flaring in his eyes because no one ever spoke to him in a tone even close to that and lived. No one ever threatened him and made it out the room - but she would. Somehow, as I met his rough and ruinous stare, I knew he knew it too.

“Tell me then,” he said, that sneer still in place as he looked from her to me where I lingered at her back, the damsel for her to protect. “What form does he take to suit your desires, oh great queen of the Oscura Clan? What does he have to become for your love to burn so fiercely?”

Rosalie smiled darkly, offering him a sight of all those pearly whites as she offered me her hand.

“Show him, Sin,” she purred, and I purred too, inside and out as I took her hand and looked straight at Jerome as I shifted into her perfect desire – and nothing happened.

The seconds ticked by and Jerome stared from her to me, confusion turning to a calculating comprehension. That fire burned hotter, fiercer, more furiously for a few moments and then he blinked and poof, it was gone.

Jerome straightened, a smile breaking across his dark features at long last as he saw it. “She wants you as…you.”

“Only me,” I agreed. “And she has me.”

“And there was me thinking you don’t have a heart,” Jerome said, a little sting in his tail because he was obviously upset that I’d found new places to be.

“So he stays with me,” Rosalie reiterated, and I shrugged, a pawn to her dominion.

Jerome nodded slowly. “I suppose I’ll see you soon then, brother.”

I nodded. “As soon as a spoon in a lagoon.”

He tossed stardust over his head and was gone just like that, leaving me and Rosalie with an address which I snatched from her hand to double check there wasn’t a cake recipe on the back. No joy. But I was soon going to find out if Warden Pike knew how to bake.

CHAPTER FIVE

The raucous laughter and rampant howling of the Wolf pups greeted me as I stepped through the wide front door to Aunt Bianca’s house again, the scent of something delicious calling out to me from the kitchen.

Sin draped his arm around my shoulders, his large body enveloping mine and making me feel secure in a way that had nothing to do with him protecting me and everything to do with the way his heart thumped in time with my own.

I looked up at him, meeting his dark eyes. “Welcome home,” I murmured a beat before chaos descended and cousins, aunts, uncles and every vaguely related member of my famiglia appeared to greet us.

“Is it always this loud here?” Sin asked, smiling big.

“Usually a little less than this,” I admitted. “But often louder too.”

His smile only widened at that, his arm staying firmly locked around me as we moved deeper into the house. Gabriel had foreseen the FIB raiding the estate tomorrow in their hunt for us so we were going to have to leave tonight. Of course, in my famiglia that was the perfect excuse for a party so we would be joined by every Oscura from here to Mount Lupa and beyond.

Members of my pack reached out to brush their fingers over my arms and hands as we passed them, everyone beaming at me, clearly pleased to have me home at last. But the more wide grins I passed, the harder it became to draw a full breath, the heavier the weight in my chest felt. Until I wasn’t able to stand it any longer and I strode through the house so fast that people barely recognised me before I was gone again.

“Are we having a race?” Sin asked, keeping pace with my fast steps and letting me steer us.

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