Page 39 of Make Me

He nudged her shoulder with his snout and took off trotting towards the trees. They ran around the neutral grounds for almost an hour until they collapsed back in the clearing next to each other. Bethany stretched out in front of him, her front paws almost touching his chest. Cody’s wolf lowered his head to hers, nuzzling her softly. Bethany froze, not moving a muscle. Her lioness let out a loud purr when Cody licked her ear, completely ignoring human Bethany’s objections.

Grooming another shifter was an intimate act, usually reserved for partners. But as Cody continued, she didn’t want to move. She was half afraid if she went to move, her lioness would jump the wolf’s bones. Her cat fought in her mind to move closer, but Bethany used every ounce of her mental willpower to keep her still. So she remained frozen but purring as Cody’s wolf groomed her face.

When he was satisfied she was clean, he nuzzled his head next to hers and closed his eyes to take a nap. Bethany couldn’t sleep, though. She was terrified if she did and relaxed her control, her lioness would do something she would regret later. Especially because Bethany wasn’t sure where she stood with Cody or Zack after their… shenanigans during the Summer Solstice. They hadn’t had a chance to talk about it with everything that happened with Claire afterwards. She needed to make sure they understood it was just fun between friends and couldn’t turn into something more. There was too much at stake.

They lay there for a few minutes before Cody’s wolf lifted its head and Cody shifted back. He kneeled next to her and ran a hand over her fur. “All right, hellcat, shift back and talk to me. I can practically hear your brain thinking even in shifted form.”

Bethany lifted her head from her paws and twitched her nose at him. He laughed. “You can’t hide from me.” Cody laughed at her put out expression.

Sighing, Bethany rose to her feet and shifted back. She settled next to him, her back to a tree and her legs folded in front of her. There was no way in hell she was going to talk to Cody about what had happened with Zack during the Summer Solstice. She preferred to bury that deep until she absolutely had to talk about it. Besides, it felt wrong to talk about it without Zack.

“Just thinking about everything we learned a few weeks ago,” Bethany said, referencing their conversation with their friends.

Cody blew out a sigh. “That was a doozy.”

“Do you think our parents knew?” Bethany asked quietly, her voice barely a whisper.

Cody tilted his head, his brown eyes unfocused as he stared out into the trees. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “I would like to think they didn’t. That they believed the lie, but I don’t know. The way my dad talked a few weeks ago… I don’t think he knew, but I don’t know. What about your mom? Have you talked to her about it?”

Bethany nodded, staring at her hands in her lap. “I don’t know how to,” she admitted. “Or if I even can bring it up. It’s not like she makes a habit of listening to me.”

Cody nodded. “I know how you feel. I want to ask my dad more about what he meant, but… maybe it’s wanting to believe the best in them, but I don’t think they know that it might all be a lie.”

Bethany wanted to agree with him, but she wasn’t sure. If her mom thought the pride would benefit from the lie, she would have told them the lie. Anything to keep the pride safe and powerful. She didn’t want to rule like that. To do anything, even lie and compromise her moral integrity for the sake of the pride.

She took a deep breath. If there was anyone who was going to understand what she said next, it would be Cody. Even if they weren’t as close as they once had been, they had so much shared history together and even now shared the same weight from their parental pressures.

“I don’t want to run the pride like my mom doe,” she confessed, not looking at Cody.

Cody was still as he took in her words. “What would you want to change?”

Bethany huffed out a laugh. “So much. Starting with the mentality that power is everything.”

Cody barked out a laugh with no humor. “The damned currency of the Realm.”

Bethany laughed. “That’s an excellent way to put it. Maybe it’s too lofty of a goal with it being what the Realm values, but it feels like we take it a step further. At least inside the pride, I want us to work together instead of it always feeling like a transactional relationship, with everyone only considering what they get out of something.”

Cody nodded, looking thoughtful. “I want that for the pack too,” he admitted. “I just don’t know how to get them to see past the dominance. Shifters have hot tempers, that’s just a fact. Getting them to take a breath before acting might take a Champion of the Realm.”

“Maybe Claire will do it.” Bethany smiled at the thought. The witch was sweet for sure, but she was powerful. She could do anything she put her mind to.

“I would pay so much gold to watch her smack our parents' heads together,” Cody said.

They laughed, and Bethany relaxed further back into the tree, her thigh brushing Cody’s leg softly. Cody stiffened, but he didn’t move away.

“What else would you change?” he asked.

Bethany tapped her finger against her chin. So many things, including lifting the ridiculous ban on intermixed matings, but she didn’t want to bring that up. If she brought that up, Cody might want to talk about what had happened at the Summer Solstice, and Bethany didn’t want to talk about that yet.

She finally settled on, “Too many things.”

And it was true. Regardless of whether the Realm ever changed its view on power, when she took over the pride, she was going to change a lot of things about how it was run. That is, if her mother ever let her.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

ZACK

Age 21

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